Top 30 Albums, 2009

It’s already that time of year when music executives gather restlessly around a wireless, clutching semi-unplugged bottles of chilled Bollinger and waiting for the BBC World Service to announce this blog’s top 30 albums of the year. Setting the benchmark for middle-ageing indie-farts since 2004, my carefully researched list - a more or less arbitrary ranking of most of the albums that one individual just happens to have bought this year - is seen by music lovers across the globe as the industry standard pointer towards buying seasonal gifts for people they intensely dislike, usually the family’s aloof musical snob with an inflated sense of his own importance, especially where it concerns musical taste. You’re welcome.

30. The Avett Brothers – I And Love And You

There seem to be less albums like this around these days, filled with muscular, emotional, country-influenced music. As serious and as musically deep as you’d expect with Rick Rubin producing, the fundamentals here are fiddles, philosophy and a vocal finesse that underpin a solid, if sometimes overly safe set.

29. Monsters Of Folk – Monsters of Folk

Indie super group featuring M Ward, Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Jim James, with each contributing a handful of songs, all too easily recognisable in Oberst’s case. It’s a broadly successful collaboration, though, which thankfully has as much relation to R&B (on the superb opener ‘Dear God’), rock, pop and country as it does to folk.

28. Dead Man’s Bones – Dead Man’s Bones

Why didn’t I think of this? Indie-mood, electro sounds composed by a pair of actors backed sparingly by a children’s choir. Could be a disaster, but it’s quite the opposite, despite the juvenile band name.

27. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Beware

Another year, and another immaculate slow-burner of a record from one of America’s most prolific, consistent songwriters. As ever, it’s not exactly packed with laughs and party tunes, just the usual low key musical musing on love, loss and death. So, something for everyone.

26. The Pastels/Tenniscoats – Two Sunsets

Fancy a nice cup of twee? Check out this Scottish/Japanese indie-pop collaboration. Glasgow fey may have had its day (give Stuart Murdoch’s tame God Help the Girl project a miss), but the two groups here work off each other to produce a neat little box of spangly gems, if you’ve got a quiet half hour to spare.

25. Alela Diane – To Be Still

I’m still a sucker for a Joni-influenced girl with an acoustic guitar if the voice, the songs and the string-picking can endure over the course of a whole disc (although this voice may not to be to everyone’s taste). Catch a thousand copyists in a coffee house near you, but none as good as this.

24. Califone – All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

If you’ve ever wondered what an album recorded in an old barn by possibly drunk musicians messing around with dusty equipment would sound like, then welcome to Califone. From the lo-fi doodlings there eventually emerges some half-realised, rough-cut jewels. Perhaps there’s more scheme to this than seems apparent from the end result, but I prefer to believe they just put it out the way they recorded it. Categorise under ‘experimental country/broken folk.’

23. Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything To Nothing

I think it was on the letters page of Paste magazine that someone described Manchester Orchestra as “ridiculously derivative”, but that’s probably just because they’re from the grunge states. True, they still channel that 90s sound through big guitars and interludes of introspection that sometimes verge on the timeworn, but they have the songs, as well as an overt flair and bite to their delivery, that allows them to carry it off.

22. Eels – Hombre Lobo

Nothing much unexpected here from Mr E, but he’s one of the elite who can pull off delivering stylistically similar sets, thanks to the inherent strength of his compositions, fuelled by the throaty, soulful suffering of a lead voice that mixes the sour with the sardonic, while never forgetting the importance of delivering a tune.

21. Jah Wobble – Chinese Dub

Best Chinese folk-influenced dub album of the year. Oh heck, ever.

20. Royksopp – Junior

I love the simple things in life, like thoughtfully manufactured electronic pop. It’s easy to digest, and if taken in limited doses you never lose your taste for it, even if you would never throw yourself upon its practitioners and passionately proclaim them harbingers of the world’s most indispensable art. More likely you’d say, “Nice work, keep pressing those buttons.”

19. Maria Taylor – Lady Luck

We all love Maria in the Indie-Pop household, reliably recording a fine album every couple of years, and half-packing them in at the Rock and Roll Hotel, where we all get lost to ‘Song Beneath The Song’ at the end of a beer-travelled night.Lady Luck is another very decent collection, although slightly patchier than her first two superb efforts. 11:11 and Lynn Teeter Flower.

18. Metric – Fantasies

This band remind me of Blondie, in that they write nakedly commercial pop songs boasting enough punch and power to keep them bouncing around your sub-conscience, but in a rewarding rather than an irritating way. And yes, I still love Parallel Lines.

17. Sufjan Stevens – The BQE

Stevens recently told Paste that since this classically-oriented project, presented here with a mesmerising film fixed on and around the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, he’s lost the ability to write ‘normal’ songs. So the 50-album project, with each record focused on an individual US state, is on hold for now, 48 states short of its target. In the meantime, lose yourself in this astonishing journey, where he uses alternately manic and reflective composition to transform an unwieldy, traffic-clogged concrete artery through New York into an absorbing mirror of the urban human condition. Brave, fascinating, disconcerting and musically moving, all in one culturally packed package.

16. Magnolia Electric Company – Josephine

MEC’s mournful latest is a stripped down song cycle that apparently laments the titular subject, but on the band’s admittance is more of a loose tribute to its late bassist, Evan Farrell. It avoids the descent into dirge that has occasionally blighted Jason Molina’s voluminous and mostly magnificent past register of grey cloud, country-blues. It’s hard to imagine Molina as a London resident now - every note of this record is steeped in the feel of a vast and lonely America.

15. Modest Mouse – No One’s First, And You’re Next

There’s no group in the world that sounds remotely like Modest Mouse. Their nonsensical name underlies a twisted creativity that can be initially off-putting, but which ultimately draws you into a musical universe where so much is going on that there’s barely enough space in every song for all the weird ideas and tortured riffs that are kicking around. Persevere, and the rewards are durable.

14. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

It takes some kind of peculiar genius to finger-pluck a violin, whistle, and not just desist from spoiling but actually improve already excellent songs. Even though this is not Bird’s best album, that only speaks for the extraordinary quality of his back catalogue. Added award: best live act of 2009, on a dream ticket with Loney, Dear at the 9:30 Club.

13. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Stunning, smart, shockingly gifted, Neko Case gets better with every album. Bold as a banker grasping for a bonus, every song demands your attention and, in the end, your appreciation. Case’s New Pornographers band mate AC Newman put out a good enough album with Guilty, but he must have listened to this with some measure of envy and conceded, “She’s the best.”

12. Vieux Farka Toure – Fondo

Imagine a record by Vieux’s father, the late Ali Farka Toure, played on electric guitar, and you have an idea of the extra sonic dimension added to what Vieux has happily inherited – a gift for vocal palliatives, understated rhythm, controlled improvisation (if that’s not an oxymoron), and overwhelming beauty.

11. Brandi Carlile – Give Up The Ghost

Anthemic, brash, cool… the abc of Brandi, and I could go on to devilish, euphoric, fresh but fragile, and beyond (to gargantuan, hoarse-heavenly, incandescent), but all I want to really do is pathetically declare my love. Mindy Smith and Tift Merritt were just one-off flings, Brandi. This is your third album, and you’ve still got me.

10. Iron & Wine – Around The Well

It says something for the depth of Sam Beam’s exhaustive library that a double CD collection of b-sides, outtakes and cover versions can compete with the year’s best recordings. Maybe it’s because this mostly takes us back to the sparse format of his wonderful early records, with just a voice and an acoustic guitar. Two whole sides of bliss.

9. Jason Lytle – Yours Truly, The Commuter

No longer Grandaddy in name, but very much a continuation of the older generation’s genre. If that group’s thick, creamy pop sound was your favourite indulgence, then a dollop of this will sweeten your ears too.

8. Au Revoir Simone - Still Night, Still Light

Pop angels sent to soothe you with synthesisers and sisterly singing along the lines of, “I’m moving on/I hope you’re coming with me…” Definitely.

7. Kings of Convenience – Declaration of Dependence

Maestros of melody produce a third irresistible album of wistful, guitar-led singalongs. Impossible not to love.

6. Marc Almond – Orpheus In Exile: The Songs of Vadim Kozin

Almond’s albums veer between seductive twilight dance electronica and collections of atavistic, cabaret-style, Brecht-Weillian numbers, but either way he’s a genius who deserves a ton of recognition for his lifetime achievements. This album is in the latter camp, featuring the folk songs of a little-known Russian folk singer of the early 20^th century, and perfectly suited to Almond’s strong but sensitive vocals on top of perfectly realised arrangements that speckle the songs’ traditional timbre with minimalist technological touches.

5. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)

A cogent piece on the excellent Quietus music site posited the theory that Wilco are, quite simply, boring. It was a well-constructed argument, and I could see where the writer was coming from, but unfortunately the theory is wrong. This album - Wilco’s seventh or eighth, probably - should by rights be boring. Just look at the disingenuously dull title. And most bands are churning it out long before this point. Except that it isn’t - it’s brief, and it’s brilliant, their most accessible, least indulgent ever slice of whatever we’re calling ‘Americana’ these days.

4. Loney, Dear – Dear John

The subtle crescendos of Loney, Dear take you on a most relaxing rollercoaster ride, with enough warmly crafted songs to make this one of the year’s most endlessly repeatable releases.

3. Baaba Maal – Television

“Africa is the future” declares a sleeve note slogan, and if it sounds this good, the future will be shaped by hope and harmony. The record stacks a fuller sound on top of Maal’s trademark intricate acoustic work, fusing traditional rhythms with plangent bass lines and vocals that straddle a range from didactic urgency to tender crooning.

2. Anna Ternheim – Leaving On A Mayday

The darkness and the rain drive this Swedish nightingale, whose Nordic litost is matched only by her peerless delivery and immaculate songwriting. An almost perfect record.

1. Malcolm Middleton – Waxing Gibbous
Melancholy, bitter and thoroughly Celtic may not seem a high enough recommendation until you throw in Middleton’s extreme gift of being able to shroud his misery - darkly awash with the smile-shy humour at which Scotland excels - in consistently addictive, even invigorating tunes. Life is grim, but you can turn it into something dark, funny and beautiful, even as the rain keeps coming down.

The next 20:

31. Aidan Moffat and the Best-Ofs – How To Get To Heaven From Scotland

32. Twinkle 3 – Let’s Make A Solar System

33. Wye Oak – The Knot

34. Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane and Sugarcane

35. The Handsome Family – Honey Moon

36. Heartless Bastards – The Mountain

37. Beirut – March of the Zapotec/Realpeople Holland

38. Dan Deacon – Bromst

39. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

40. Mindy Smith – Stupid Love

41. M Ward – Hold Time

42. Hope Sandoval and the Warm Invention – Through The Devil Softly

43. AC Newman – Get Guilty

44. Osso & Sufjan Stevens – Run Rabbit Run

45. Lisa Hannigan – Sea Sew

46. The Nightingales – Insult To Injury

47. Steve Earle – Townes

48. Atlas Sound – Logos

49. Air – Love 2

50. Regina Spektor – Far

Previous years:

2008, 2007, 2006, 2004