Top 10 Releases of 2009

1. Dappled Cities – Zounds
2. Burning Hearts – Aboa Sleeping
3. The Legends – Over And Over
4. Stricken City – Songs About People
5. Love of Diagrams – Nowhere Forever
6. The Rest – Everyone All At Once
7. My Tiger My Timing – This Is Not The Fire
8. Annabel – Each And Everyone
9. Bear In Heaven – Beast Rest Forth Mouth
10. Foma – Inverness

I’m actually pretty shocked. While browsing other “Best of 2009″ lists (Stereogum, Pitchfork, Prefix Mag, Gorilla Vs. Bear, Amazon, Rolling Stone, .etc), only one of my picks (Bear In Heaven) made it on a single Top 50 records of 2009 list. Either I like shitty music or they like shitty music. I’m betting it’s them. (Seriously though, how did Dappled Cities or Stricken City not make it on a SINGLE LIST?!? Those records kill!).

Top 10 Concerts of 2009

1. The Bird And The Bee – The Echoplex, Los Angeles
2. Kitty, Daisy and Lewis – The Echo, Los Angeles
3. The Cool Kids/Clipse – House Of Blues, Los Angeles
4. Tender Forever – The Echo, Los Angeles
5. Quintron – The Echoplex, Los Angeles
6. Pulsars – The Echo, Los Angeles
7. Red Sparrows – The Echoplex, Los Angeles
8. Portraits of Past/Swing Kids/Threadbare/Unbroken – Glasshouse, Pomona, CA
9. Skinny Puppy – Nokia Theater, Los Angeles, CA
10. Gil Mantera’s Party Dream – Spaceland, Los Angeles, CA

When putting together this list I was feeling pretty lame. I had a terrible time coming up with 10 good live shows I saw this past year. I thought I finally hit the official threshold of being old since it was painfully evident that I didn’t go out to see bands anymore. Then I cross referenced it with my “Best of” list above. Not one of the those bands played LA this past year. That made me feel a little better.

Top 10 Releases of 2009

1. The XX - XX
After I put the list together, I heard Christgau (supposed arbiter for decades of cool in music and culture) waxing poetic on NPR about the London band The XX and their minimal aesthetic — apparently, he turned off a football game to hear the CD his friend had put on, which should impress Louisianans. The very next morning, I heard their single, “VCR,” on KLSU. Are they overexposed? Maybe. The fact is, this group of high-school friends (now just 22 or so), with their stripped-down compositions, really are The Next Big Thing, like The Arcade Fire were five years ago. Brilliantly reduced, with beautiful traded-off male-female vocals. And they’re coming to Spanish Moon in March.

2. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Like The XX, these kids have worked for a while (this time in Brooklyn) to put together a sound before releasing an album. In this case, the sound is full of distortion in the wall-of-sound style, with strong influence from 80’s-era Cure, but adding heartfelt male-female duets — are you sensing a trend?

3. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
I have to admit, the title of this album made me think, “Another guitar-and-synth band with delusions of grandeur,” like so many lame Killers-type pretenders. (Incidentally, if you type “wolfgang amadeus…” into Google, Phoenix now comes up before Mozart. I’m not sure what this means). Want a Cadillac SRX? Phoenix can sell it to you. All style and no substance, I thought. Turns out, though, that all style isn’t necessarily so bad. Sweet New Order-type pop — best I’ve heard in a long time.

4. Fever Ray - Fever Ray
One half of the incredible electronic Swedish duo The Knife, Karin Dreijer Andersson, appeared this year with an equally stunning solo album under the name Fever Ray. Surreal vocals — I mean downright weird — combined with haunting melodies, yet they still work as pop songs.

5. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
OK, OK, I know: last year I went on an anti-prog-rock-revival tirade (ugh, keyboard parts that go nowhere!). But Sunset Rubdown, supposed side-project of Spencer Krug (better known from Wolf Parade), is my guilty pleasure for 2009. Maybe the difference is that these songs have substance; the baroqueness of them is in service of something big. “You Go On Ahead” is a strong contender for song of the year.

6. Art Brut - Art Brut vs. Satan
If you missed Art Brut’s appearance at Spanish Moon at the end of October, you missed the best show of the year in BR. Their latest, produced by The Pixies’ Black Francis, finds them calling out the general public for their terrible taste in pop, while providing a welcome antidote in the form of 2 min 30 sec songs like “Alcoholics Unanimous,” and “Summer Job,” full of catchy riffs and pithy lines.

7. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Neko (we’re on a first name basis, right?) seems increasingly fixed on the big picture — especially the idiocy of people who ignore their tiny individual power against nature, whether human, environmental, or both. Almost like a Greek tragedy, but her voice makes the bad news so easy to take.

8. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
Great bands that actually did make plenty of noise in the ’80’s — as opposed to those that just copy the ’80’s — seem to be making big comebacks, too. Sonic Youth almost made the list with “The Eternal,” and so did Yo La Tengo with “Popular Songs.” Dinosaur Jr. followed up their return to form (return to existence?), 2007’s “Beyond,” with an even better straight-up rock album. J Mascis’ voice is as scratchy as ever, and the songs are catchy, powerful, and most of all, loud.

9. Malcolm Middleton - Waxing Gibbous
Middleton was one-half of one of my all-time favorite bands, the now-defunct Arab Strap. AS’s unflinching lyrics spared no-one, least of all the authors, in describing the harsh reality of love and life gone sour. I always thought of them as simultaneously the most vulgar and most romantic band I’ve ever heard. You might have noticed that that kind of sincerity goes over well with me (see also The Hold Steady). Middleton is sweeter with both the melodies and the lyrics in this, his fifth solo outing; it could almost be called twee.

10. The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control
I debated this final spot for a while. Danish duo The Raveonettes made the list last year with “Lust Lust Lust,” and as previously noted, the new Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo albums were each strong in their own ways (Grizzly Bear, too). Plus, there are some just plain silly moments on TR’s album, like the eye-roll-inducing “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed),” or “D.R.U.G.S.” But in that seemingly effortless Scandinavian way, both the tunes and their production feel so spot-on, and even the silliness is true to themselves. Heavy distortion over late-50s/early-60s arrangements, reminiscent of Jesus and the Mary Chain and, of course, layers of male-female vocals.

TSOI will be finishing out the rest of the year with all of our writers “Top 10 releases/concerts of 2009″ and “Top 20 releases/concerts of the decade.” Relive some of the best albums/shows that have graced this planet.

The Pulsars made a rare NYC appearance opening for Wye Oak and Field Music (who cancelled) at The Bellhouse in Brooklyn. I didn’t get “the skinny” on why The Pulsars showed up in NYC, but it seems that the show was for someone’s birthday, since The Pulsars and Wye Oak repeatedly mentioned it, saying things like “Thanks for having us out and Happy Birthday”. I wonder what it would be like to have the clout to say, “hey Pulsars dudes, its my Birthday, why don’t you come to NYC and play” and actually expect them to come out. That would be sweetness.

What is sweetness is when a true TSOI favorite like The Pulsars crosses streams with another TSOI favorite. In this case, The Pulsars covered The Magnetic Field’s Deep Sea Diving Suit, which is among the very best MF songs. The lyrics were muffed a bit in this cover, but nonetheless, a much welcomed bonus to an otherwise unexpected treat of a show.

Ed Note: The Magnetic Field’s have announced that they will drop another (what! what!) album, “Realism” in January 2010! HouseofTomorrow for deets.

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Download: Pulsars – Deep Sea Diving Suit (Live)

One of my absolute favorite records in a while – and landing high on my 2008 best-of list – Ruby Isle’s “Night Shot” is now getting the remix treatment. Ruby Isle includes the genius mastermind of Dan Gellar of another all-time TSOI fav, I am World Trade Center. “Night Shot” is a perfect slab of bouncy dancecore-pop laced with machine clipped guitar riffs. I listen to “Night Shot” constantly at work and, on top of that, they absolutely kill live. TSOI got an early sneak preview listen to the upcoming release of “Night Shot The Remixes”.

This particularly track is a hard disco funk take, ala Daft Punk, on So Damn High.

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Download: Ruby Isle – So Damn High (Will Eastman Remix)

“I never go far without a little Big Star” is a line from The Replacement’s Alex Chilton, which is about the wayward Big Star and Box Tops guitarist and vocalist. Big Star, if music journalism is to be believed, through a few impossible to find out-of-print records recorded in the 70s, defined what became the pop informed alt-rock template that The Replacements and REM (among others) were to draw heavily. REM covers “I am the Cosmos” and The Replacements, of course, have their paean to Alex Chilton. Nearly every rock journalism reference to Big Star, whether from musicians who cite them as a influence, or in album reviews speak of Big Star in hushed tones of their exalted greatness on the level of The Beatles.

A newly constituted Big Star played in Brooklyn, for which I suspect is a warm-up for a Coachella appearance. Here is a live take of Thirteen from the recent Brooklyn show. This song, you might know, was nicely covered by Elliot Smith.

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Download: Big Star – Thirteen (Live)

Skinny Puppy
Logo
Bochum, Germany
10/21/86

I had the opportunity last week to see Skinny Puppy on the last date of their most recent tour and as always, they put on an amazing performance. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of their recent work, they can certainly pull the tracks off live. And as they did way back at this show in ‘86, they ended their set with Far Too Frail.

Setlist:
1. Film
2. One Time One Place
3. Deadlines
4. Smothered Hope
5. Assimilate
6. Dig It
7. Last Call
8. The Choke
9. Glass Houses
10. Brap
11. Far Too Frail

Sample:

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Download: Skinny Puppy – Bochum – 10/21/86 – 336 MB

As mentioned in a post of a The xx last week or so, CMJ brought swarms of rock-and-roll locusts into NYC for a week of devastation and inebriation. I managed to miss most of the brunt of it but did catch three bands which included The xx out of London, Brooklyn’s School of Seven Bells (or SVIIB in alpha ‘Rome-eric’ notation) and lastly a band called Bloodgang from Iceland in what turned out to be a very small but fruitful dabble into CMJ 2009.

SVIIB is a female fronted psychedelic neo shoe-gaze type outfit. This track is from CMJ 2009 and was introduced as a new one. This track bodes well for future releases, since it was among the best they played that night.

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Download: School of Seven Bells – Unknown Track (Live)

Earlier in the year we wrote about our disappointment in missing Champagne Riot’s only Los Angeles show. They were kind enough to e-mail us with an update about the band who apparently have gone from a three-piece down to a two-piece and are busy working on new tracks. One of those tracks is featured here today, and more can be found on their MySpace page.

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Download: Champagne Riot – The Champagne Anthem

Wow, if there was one song that was apparently screaming to be covered, it’s this one. Newcomers Codeine Velvet Club come out swinging with their version of The Stone Roses’ “I Am The Resurrection” right before their debut album is released on the 28th. Though I can’t claim myself as a Fratellis fan (50% of this band is Jon Lawler) and I can’t vouch for the rest of the record yet as I have only heard snippits, if this cover is any indication, it’s got a better than average chance at being great.

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Download: Codeine Velvet Club – I Am The Resurrection (Stone Roses Cover)