20 Favourite Albums of 2009

The Juan Maclean – The Future Will Come (US)
Washed Out – Life Of Leisure [EP] (US)
Mungolian Jet Set – We Gave It All Away…Now We Are Taking It Back (NO)
Fever Ray – Fever Ray (SE)
Röyksopp – Junior (NO)
St. Vincent – Actor (US)
Telefon Tel Aviv – Immolate Yourself (US)
Toddla T – Skanky Skanky (UK)
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (US)
Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport (UK)
Flying Lotus – Los Angeles (US)*
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! (US)
The xx – The xx (UK)
Major Lazer – Guns Don’t Kill People…Lazers Do (US/UK)
Electrik Red – How To Be A Lady (Vol. 1) (US)
DJ Sprinkles – Midtown 120 Blues (US)
Andrew Weatherall – A Pox On The Pioneers (UK)
Friendly Fires – Friendly Fires (UK)*
Washed Out – High Times [EP] (US)
Meanderthals – Desire Lines (NO/UK)

Just under: The-Dream, Cortney Tidwell, Franz Ferdinand (with ‘Blood’, not ‘Tonight’!), Falty DL, Moderat, Lindstrom & Christabelle, El Perro Del Mar, Ebony Bones, Junior Boys, Little Boots, Julian Casablancas and Broadcast & The Focus Group

* released in 2008. Artist name in bold indicates debut LP under that name.

Ignored by pretty much every big mag when it came to end of year lists, ‘The Future Will Come is an ambitious, bittersweet but dry-witted album with a general theme of a relationship on the edge (be it in the painful process of deterioration or literally a love affair with a machine) carried primarily by three practically perfect pop dance tracks; the very lovely ‘One Day’, marred only by it’s relative briefness and not-quite-satisfactory arrangement, the terrific ‘No Time’ with it’s dry ‘lovers tiff at a rave’ theme and ‘Mentasm’ revival, plus the teary epic disco of ‘Tonight’ demonstrating what the Pet Shop Boys COULD be doing now instead of their stagnant (by their standards) ‘Yes’ LP). But the title track, ‘Accusations’ and the poignant ‘Human Disaster’ aren’t far behind and with ‘Happy House’ closing proceedings I remain frustrated by the lack of love for the album out there. The sudden death of drummer Jerry Fuchs in November may add extra poignancy to the experience now but this seemed like a winner even before I saw their small but perfectly formed live show at Cargo in the Summer.

Just missing out on the top spot is the equally scintillating but deeply frustrating Life Of Leisure EP from Washed Out. The hooks, moods and ideas throughout this sequence of demo-like half-songs sounded SO pure, fresh and exhilarating to me (and of course capturing that sense of hedonism thru a melancholic lens that I tend to favour) that despite every track being far too short and under-developed it came very close to edging out The JM. Hopefully 2010 will see a longer FLESHED out piece of work from Ernest Greene that builds on the potential shown here.

From the agonisingly short to the almost unbearably long, Mungolian Jet Set’s own universe of sonic splendour was completely new to me last year so although many double-album’s tracks are remixes and go back a couple of years, it felt like a genuine ‘blast of future’.

Karin Dreijer Andersson left brother Olof on the dancefloor to take The Knife’s dark fantasies out of the club, through paranoid suburbia and back to the forest – retaining all that was great about ‘Silent Shout’ bar the dancefloor dynamics (instead provided by reliable remixers from Rex The Dog and Studio, to Martyn and Scuba) and consolidating her position as a towering goth pop force.

Röyksopp finally returned and so keen was I for them to do so that Junior was the year’s easiest sell. Armed with a new cascade of dreamscapes, deftly twisted samples of Funkadelic and Stevie Wonder, and an all girls guestlist of Karin, Robyn, Lykke Li and Anneli Drecker, no ambient pop album last year sounded as unfussily lush and comforting.

I can thank Pitchfork for introducing me to Annie Clark aka St. Vincent who delivered where The Bird And The Bee failed to this time and threw in all kinds of extra wonders with co-producer John Congleton, including shades of Talking Heads and Bowie on the superb ‘Marrow’. ‘Save Me From What I Want’ even reminds me of LFO’s ‘Loch Ness’.

Telefon Tel Aviv also mesmerised with ‘Immolate Yourself’ esp. its highlights ‘The Birds’ and ‘Stay Away From Being Maybe’ (too bad Depeche Mode’s ‘Sounds Of The Universe’ didn’t sound more like this imo), released a week before the death of its co-creator Charles Cooper whose dazzling talents as demonstrated here reveal another huge and terrible loss.

Youthful Yorkshireman Toddla T released my favourite (and the funn(i)est) British album last year with the help of Mr Versatile, Serocee, Roots Manuva, Tinchy Stryder and more. A few annoying bits (most of ‘Sunny Money’ and the inclusion of the “Queens Of Noise” skit) couldn’t spoil the party.

Animal Collective made up for often annoying vocals with a brilliant palette of sounds daubed throughout the duration of MPP, evoking Magnetic Fields ‘Holiday’, The Orb’s wackier escapades and…I’m still trying to work out what else it can be compared to, which means I should stop.

Fuck Buttons, assisted by Andy Weatherall, built giant beautiful storms of rhythmic textures, and though some of them went on too long without progressing for me, the results overall were pretty undeniable.

I listened to a few more albums than usual in 2009 thanks to Spotify making it much easier to do so. As a result this list is a bit more detailed and thorough than what I usually come up with (despite my continued annoyance at how album-centric things remain). Part of that may be down to thinking it might be the last time I do such a thing but as it’s likely to become even easier to hear them…I can’t decide. Anyway for the first time ever I made the list based on rating each track on an album out of 10 and calculating the average score from the total – a technique I find quite useful but hadn’t used in this way before. It’s not really worth posting all the scores but fwiw Juan and co. scored 81/100 and there were only 5 points between St. Vincent (74) and Meanderthals (69).

Some albums from 2009 I didn’t make time to hear and rate (but might get in next year’s list if I do one) in 09:

Black Meteoric Star – Black Meteoric Star
Hudson Mohawke – Butter
Joe Goddard – Harvest
Martyn – Great Lengths
Memory Tapes – Seek Magic
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms
Nite Jewel – Good Evening
Redshape – The Dance Paradox
Smith & Mudd – Le Suivant
Shafiq Husayn – Shafiq En’ A-Free-Ka

I’ve really enjoyed being able to hear music the way I want to this year (streamed in high quality and CORRECTLY TAGGED for last.fm purposes Spotify may already be too successful a method tho – I’m inclined to download stuff less and less without hearing it first, and I effectively abandoned last.fm’s own radio system last year which is a shame as it remains good in its own way.

I just wrote way more than I meant to so that’s enough for now. Happy listening in 2010 and beyond.

January 10th, 2010 by Steve as Music