FEATURE:
Ending the Decade in Style
PHOTO CREDIT: @julemergener_/Unsplash
Part II/V: The Finest Albums of 2009
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THE reason I have put together a new feature…
PHOTO CREDIT: @priscilladupreez/Unsplash
is to shine a light on the albums that ended a decade with a huge bang. I feel it is hard to define what a decade is about and how it evolves but the first and last years are crucial. Entering a decade with a big album is a great way to stand out and, similarly, ending it with something stunning is vital. It can be hard leaving a brilliant and bountiful decade of music but I wanted to shine a light on the artists who brought out albums that did justice; gave hope the next decade would be full, exciting and brilliant. I will do a five-part series about albums that opened a decade with panache but, right now, the second in a five-part feature that collates the best decade-enders from the 1960s, 1970s; 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s. I am focusing on 2009 and the best ten records from the year. The 2000s started off brilliantly but hardly relaxed and phoned it by the very end! In fact, some truly terrific records arrived that got us all set for 2010 and what that would offer. As we came to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century; music was evolving and hitting new heights. Here is ten album that prove we ended the decade…
PHOTO CREDIT: @florenciaviadana/Unsplash
WITH a real explosion!
ALL ALBUM COVERS: Getty Images
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Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Release Date: 26th May, 2009
Label: Warp
Review:
“Distressed electric piano, disembodied choirs, and the instantly discernible strings of Nico Muhly color the album’s meditations on distance, as seen in the bitter retreat of the galloping opener “Southern Point” (“You’ll never find me now”) and the hushed, heartbreaking refrain of “All We Ask.” (“I can’t get out of what I’m into with you.”) But for all Veckatimest’s talk of space, its brilliance lies in subtle, interlocking moments such as the backward guitar disrupting the lockstep girl-group groove of “Cheerleader,” the way the watery ballad “Dory” shifts seamlessly from genteel to creepy, or the cinemascope cacophony that ends “I Live With You.” As with Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion (a record it seems likely to vie with for album of the year), Veckatimest offers more than just an inventive exercise in collage: It’s like hearing the past few centuries of music playing in symphony, which sounds—thrillingly and reassuringly—like the future” – AV Music
Standout Track: Two Weeks
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
Release Date: 6th March, 2009
Labels: Dress Up; DGC; Interscope
Review:
“Elsewhere, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and producers David Sitek and Nick Launay find other ways to shake things up, from the disco kiss chase of "Dragon Queen," which features Sitek's fellow TV on the Radio member Tunde Adebimpe on backing vocals, to "Shame and Fortune," which pares down the band's tough, sexy rock to its most vital essence and provides Chase and Zinner with a showcase not found anywhere else on the album.
However, It's Blitz!'s bold moments are a bit misleading: the album's heart is often soft and searching, offering some of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' quietest work yet. This approach doesn't always work, as on the too-long "Runaway," but when it connects, the results are gorgeous. "Skeletons" is luminous with an oddly Celtic-tinged synth part; "Hysteric," a love song about being happy with someone rather than trying to make him or her stay, feels like the mirror twin of "Maps." The serenity in It's Blitz!'s ballads feels worlds apart from Show Your Bones in a much less obvious way than the album's outbursts. But between the violently happy songs and the softer ones, this is some of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' most balanced and cohesive music” - AllMusic
Standout Track: Skeletons
The xx – xx
Release Date: 14th August, 2009
Label: Young Turks
Review:
“On paper, it's a mongrel mix. As the languorous swirl of Intro fades in, however, you immediately sense you're listening to something seductively special. When Croft and Sim start singing, on VCR, they come across as being in an advanced state of fatigue. Standout tracks such as Crystalised, with its off-key riff, possess a very modern sense of anxious turmoil, while Shelter mixes spare, dolorous guitar lines with a restless chorus. It's an album to play when you're wallowing in a comedown and slow-paced melancholy offers a strange comfort.
There is a lightness of touch at play that gives the XX a sophistication beyond their years. It probably means that their dream pop will become the ubiquitous dinner party album du jour. But really, their panicky atmospherics are too strange for that. This is uneasy listening to soundtrack the gentle gnashing of teeth” – The Observer
Standout Track: Islands
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
Release Date: 3rd August, 2009
Label: Domino
Review:
“The band display little appetite for radical change on their second album, but those who like their pop arch, odd and romantically heightened will find Two Dancers a treasure trove. The guitars say Orange Juice, Talking Heads and early Aztec Camera; the voice says Billy Mackenzie, Sparks and Antony Hegarty; and the words say plenty, much of it frankly filthy. Whether it's "his dancing cock" or "my boot up your asshole", sex is never more than a hot breath away. Like Franz Ferdinand's Tonight, Two Dancers reeks of well-read, middle-class lads gone bad, out on the lash and on the pull.
The music, too, has a seductive fluidity, with echoes of the Acorn's Glory Hope Mountain on standout track All the King's Men, where the Afrobeat guitar lines ring crisp and clear over a lascivious lyric about "girls from Hounslow, girls from Whitby". The heart of Two Dancers lies in these seemingly jarring juxtapositions. The individual ingredients may be a decidedly mixed bag, but the final product is both coherent and very satisfying” - The Observer
Standout Track: We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ on Our Tongues
Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
Release Date: 9th June, 2009
Label: Domino
Review:
“…With its nodding R&B beat and Amber Coffman’s melismatic vocals, that breakout waiting to happen is but one “all the single ladies” shout-out away from being a Hot 97 jam. Over nine indispensable tracks, Bitte Orca forges a more perfect union between eccentricity and accessibility: The pop crescendos of “Temecula Sunrise” filter through what feels like 10 different time signatures; the warped electro pulse of “Useful Chamber” dissolves into finger-picked introspection before exploding in noise-rock abandon; restless guitar skitters, and esoteric Nico references add anxiety to the heart-stilling balladry of “No Intention” and “Two Doves,” respectively. Much ink will likely be spilled on 2009 being the year that Brooklyn’s experimental class finally went “pop,” and—with apologies to Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear—it’d be hard to find a better thesis statement” – AV Music
Standout Track: The Bride
Anthony and the Johnsons – The Crying Light
Release Date: 19th January, 2009
Label: Secretly Canadian
Review:
“Elsewhere, on the gorgeous chamber pop of "Epilepsy Is Dancing," terror, power, and beauty are wrapped as one entity: "Epilepsy is dancing/She's the Christ now departing/And I'm finding my rhythm/As I twist in the snow...Cut me in quadrants/Leave me in the corner/Oh now it's passing/Oh now I'm dancing." Curse and blessing, sacrament and damnation. Other standouts, including the utterly gorgeous, elliptical "One Dove" and the single "Another World," reflect similar themes, though always from the projection of the most hidden flicker that seeks union with a larger illumination. Certainly this is spiritual, but it is not limited to that because it also exists in the physical world. Death is the constant undercurrent, but it's not so much morbid as another shade of the verdant universe. "Kiss My Name" is the hinge track, in waltz time with lovely reeds and violins, skittering with a drum kit -- it is both an anthem of love to life itself and a self-penned epitaph in advance. Whatever hopes you held in the aftermath of I Am a Bird Now, they have been exponentially exceeded in poetry, music, and honesty here” – AllMusic
Standout Track: Another World
Florence + the Machine – Lungs
Release Date: 3rd July, 2009
Label: Island
Review:
“An intense young woman who read a lot of Edgar Allan Poe as a child, Florence specialises in dark, gothic imagery - werewolves, wedding dresses, bleeding hearts and coffins - and quirky tunes that start quietly and build into big, soaring climaxes. The songs are generally angry, with an undercurrent of violence and/or animal passion, and a nagging hook to keep you there. When this girl falls in love, you gather, she really falls. When it's over, the only recourse is pain, rage and vast quantities of alcohol. The current single Rabbit Heart was written after her label asked her for something more upbeat, but ended up with a typically jaunty chorus about sacrifice: "This is the gift/ It comes with a price/ Who is the lamb/And who is the knife?".
Sometimes the rough edges have been over-smoothed: there are all kinds of strange, cheap synthesised noises buried under the layers of polish that I'd like to hear more clearly. But this is a minor gripe, for despite its dark heart, there's a real joy about this debut. It's the sound of someone who has found their voice and is keen to use it - as loudly and freely as possible” – The Observer
Standout Track: Dog Days Are Over
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Release Date: 6th January, 2009
Label: Domino
Review:
“There’s a beaty bent through the whole album, although this is dance music hammered together from the weirdest of materials; ‘Lion In A Coma’ fashions a funky shuffle from a medieval rhythm and a didgeridoo. ‘In The Flowers’ starts with a long, oscillating Eno-esque intro before it’s engulfed in a wall of radiating ambient noise and a motorik beat, as Avey Tare fashions a new futurist folklore of kinetic energy, imagining “A dancer high in a field from her movement… I couldn’t stop that spinning force I felt in me”.
There are moments when they still trip off into self-indulgence: ‘Also Frightened’ is dreamy, a tribal, woozy waltzing that recalls CocoRosie via Björk, but stretches out just that little too long. ‘Bluish’ edges
a tiptoe too far into Fleet Foxes territory, but these are tiny moments in an album that’s overwhelmingly rich in invention and imagination.
‘Brothersport’ rounds it off perfectly, a resplendent orgy of Afrobeat pop with touches of hard house, like Orbital double-dropping with Fela Kuti or Vampire Weekend in space. It ends in radiant, My Morning Jacket-style harmonies and leaves you wondering what happened to your mind and ears.Put the album on again. Listen hard. Focus on each sound, analyse it, pin it down, pull it apart. It’ll just shift under your gaze and run off laughing. Or you could just run with it” – NME
Standout Track: Keep on Movin’
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Release Date: 21st April, 2009
Labels: XL
Review:
“The album ends with the song that first signified The Horrors’ reinvention, ‘Sea Within A Sea’. Here it works as ‘I Am The Resurrection’ does on ‘The Stone Roses’, allowing the acid house elements to come to the fore in a bravado demonstration of what the band are capable of.
For us listeners, it’s a relief to hear a band growing so impressively at a time when most others have neither the talent nor the opportunity to do so. Time will tell how ‘Primary Colours’ stands up to the likes of ‘Loveless’ or ‘Psychocandy’, but right now, this feels like the British art-rock album we’ve all been waiting for” – NME
Standout Track: Primary Colours
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Release Date: 25th May, 2009
Labels: V2; Loyauté; Glassnote
Review:
“At another point in Lisztomania, Roger Daltrey's entire body is sucked into a devilish princess' underthings. (Seriously.) Before that happens, though, the cigar-chomping heiress quotes Oscar Wilde while explaining her unladylike smoking habit, "It's the perfect form of pleasure, it's exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one ask?" Phoenix seem to understand this line of thinking-- and not just because they look like a group of guys who know their Gauloises. They're pleasure-pushers, filling tunes with riffs, phrases, and beats a five-year-old could love. But, on Wolfgang, those same songs are unfulfilled-- and this band wouldn't have it any other way. There's beauty in a sunset. Phoenix are wringing it out” – Pitchfork
Standout Track: 1901