I think every gamer worth his console and controller knows that old-school awesome includes anything Mega-Man. People who love their rock knows that one must give proper homage to the Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor…more known as Queen. What would be more awesome than either two? I’m glad you’ve been asking that question. There’s only one good and proper answer: Mega-Man and Queen together.
What better way for the two to come together than what you shall witness below…prepare to GRIN.
What is a year-end list anyway?
Can a truly fair assessment really be made? Like any other year, 2009 offered a vast assortment of great albums across many genres. How does one weed through all the hype to extract them? I for one listened to over one hundred new releases in 2009, yet the top 30 I compiled out of this fell into very few other lists. With so much music available these days, my year-end list is like picking up a handful of seashells and calling one the prettiest in the entire ocean. What I want to do here instead is couple my own experiences with two other sources and come up with a more balanced top ten of what we should all go back and listen to, whether I’ve heard it or not.
Let me qualify each.
*The Pitchfork Reader Poll – Pitchfork used to be the most widely respected source of music news around, and while their editing staff has fallen into irredeemable disrepute, the reader poll maintains a degree of legitimacy that few other sites with a 10,000+ voter base are likely to attain.
*An anonymous music group’s poll – My anonymous source requires a level of interaction, diversity of taste, and depth of exploration that qualifies the bulk of its hundred or so voters as thoughtful individuals with enough experience to make legitimate choices.
*Me – I’m a metalhead with indie inclinations, and completely distanced from media hype. (No, I don’t read Pitchfork, and I only realized Phoenix were popular when I heard 1901 playing at a Steelers game.)
So here are ten albums of 2009 you should go listen to. Never mind what styles they are. Never mind that I haven’t heard half of them:
1. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
This ranked as my second favorite album of the year, #9 in my anonymous group, and #28 on the Pitchfork reader’s poll. Why should you hear it? Pitchfork’s reviewers gave it a pathetic 5/10. This album got voted in because it was so damn good that no amount of negativity could stop the masses from voicing their opinion.
2&3. Mastodon – Crack the Skye
and Converge – Axe to Fall
I placed Crack the Skye at #6. My music group gave it 14th, and Pitchfork 33rd. Axe to Fall got 15, 25, and unrated in the top 40 overall but #2 in metal albums. Why should you hear them? Metal doesn’t get much attention these days, but unlike Wolves in the Throne Room, these two bands rose to celebrity status through quality releases. Sure they ranked high due to hype, but I can attest that both are good, albeit not the best, metal albums of the year. It’s safe to assume you’ve already heard them if you’re a metal fan, so I speak to everyone else in saying these are your best bets for sampling what the genre had to offer in 2009.
4. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
In the top 5 on both sites, I haven’t heard it myself, but a metal fan who I respect marked this as the best album of the year. That’s enough to tell me that hype alone didn’t place them so high.
5&6. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
and Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Both placed #1 on one site and in the top 5 on the other. Both were also hyped more than perhaps any other releases this year. But I have heard and enjoyed WAP, not on any provocative level but enough to recommend it. Animal Collective have released decent enough albums in the past that I am confident this one would have at least made my top 30 had I heard it. With music this hyped one has to ask “is this actually great, or am I just fooling myself?” Well, I can safely count these two as “pretty good” in their own right. Great? You be the judge.
7. Peste Noire – Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor
This French black metal masterpiece is hands down the best album of the year that I’ve heard, but it didn’t make any group charts so I respectfully held it until #7. Here is my reaction the day I first heard it: This is brilliant, fascinating, unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Their ambiance of hate is gone. What replaces it is something I can’t quite define, but it’s captivating. If Famine hadn’t coined it “Black’n’Roll” I think the term still might have popped up, but it’s also a whole lot more than that. The 60s-70s rock and roll styles it incorporates, while similar in construct, conjure nothing of the sort to mind. Instead, it gives this sort of ironic (I hate that term applied to music criticism, but it fits here) lively essence to a dismal, filthy Dark Age. Take my irc reaction: “Track three feels like I’m dancing circles around someone in a torture chamber randomly sticking hot pokers into them and really enjoying it.”
8. The Fiery Furnaces – I’m Going Away
I placed this album at #4, and again no one else gave it attention. I have no idea why. I haven’t heard any of their other albums. Perhaps their earlier releases are even better? This jazzy indie disc contains some of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard. Just listen to the last track, Take Me Around Again, and try and tell me you don’t walk around singing the barely sensible lyrics for weeks on end.
9. The xx – xx
Here’s another album I haven’t heard yet. The reviews I’ve read of this really make me think I’ll hate it, but as the only other album that made both polls’ top 5 there surely must be some merit to it. I said the same thing about M83 last year, and Saturdays = Youth became a staple album for me in the months that followed. Maybe I won’t be so lucky this go around, but love it or hate it I would be doing my music sensibilities an injustice to not check it out. The same goes for you.
10. N.A.S.A. – The Spirit of Apollo
Has this discredited my entire list? Maybe. It didn’t place in either poll, but the Pitchfork editors gave it a 1 out of 10, so there must be something good about it. They went so far as to write up an eight paragraph review about how impressively unpretentious it is. “[The] beats on this album are total washed-out dorm-room funk . . . “The People Tree” is an excessively polite bloopy organ groove. “Way Down” is the reason acid jazz no longer exists. “Hip Hop” is a horribly boring attempt at ca. 1998 sunny smiley-face West Coast indie-rap. And on it goes.” In other words, this album ignores all expectations of taking music to a new level and just gets down to business with fun, catchy, simple songs that anyone can enjoy. You mean hip-hop doesn’t have to be angry or arrogant? Amazing! I ranked it my 3rd favorite of the year.
While I’m not as well-versed with all sorts of music genres like some friends of mine I do have a well-rounded taste when it comes to music. Growing up during the 80’s it was hard not to get into the hair-metal which dominated the scene. Yes, I fully admit to being a Motley Crue fan and even listened to the random Poison track here and there. In addition to hair-metal I also got into rap and hip-hop during the 80’s and early 90’s which I still consider the Golden Age of the genre.
Young people nowadays can have their Lil’ Wayne or Soulja Boy (but why would they want to) and the Dirty South crew and all that. I say I’ll take giants of the genre like Eric B. and Rakim, EPMD, Wu-Tang Clan, Afrika Bambaataa, Paris, N.W.A, Ice-T and Ice Cube over these new youngbloods any day of the week and Sundays included. While rap and hip-hop have become too much about commercialization I do like current acts like Mos Def and Talib Kweli of Black Star, Common, OutKast, Mobb Deep and Goodie Mobb.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve branched out from those two genres and embraced all types of music (though folk music still escapes me most of the time). It doesn’t matter now whether the artist/band plays some subgenre of metal like Norwegian Black, Viking, Pagan or combinations in-between. Or if they’re more classical genres like baroque, chamber and symphony. If they sounded good and I got into them I couldn’t care less what sort of genre they went under.
2009 was a good year for me in terms of discovering some new bands and artists. These were not new in the way that they’ve just been making music recently. All five I’m about to mention have been making music for at least a decade or decades for a couple.
1. Altan Urag
Altan Urag is a folk-rock band from Mongolia who have combined traditional Mongolian folk music, Western rock stylings and traditional Tuvan/Mongolian “karkhiraa” throat singing. It’s just very difficult to try and explain Altan Urag who has never heard of throat singers and folk music from the region. I’ve pretty much scoured every music store in my area, the net and other shadowy options to find their music. To say that I fell in love with this band would be one of the major understatement of the year.
2. Bathory
Bathory is one band I’ve heard of in the past but never really bothered to try. I was still very leery of the subgenres of metal that went by labels such as Norwegian Black, Pagan, Viking, etc. I was very much still a child of the NWOBHM movement of the lat 70’s and early 80’s and the rise of trash/speed metal of the 80’s. But the last two years I’ve branched out to try more types of metal and in 2009 I finally gave Bathory a chance and was instantly hooked. I’ve wondered since why I never gave them a chance. My favorite track of theirs has to be “Hammerheart” from their “Twilight of the Gods” album. It’s a much more subdued Bathory, but every time I listen to it I feel like I should be at a pub or some Viking hall downing a few pints of ale or horns of mead with my buddies before going off to battle. I definitely feel like Odin is watching over me when I listen to Bathory.
3. Blind Guardian
What is there to say about Blind Guardian that its most ardent fans haven’t already said ad infinitum about this greatest of all power metal bands. Power metal have been a genre I’ve dabbled in here and there in years past but never really paid them much attention as they truly deserve. Blind Guardian changed all that for me in 2009 and I now count Power Metal as one of my favorite type of music. Blind Guardian’s epic and quite operatic 2002 album, “A Night at the Opera”, was my first introduction to this power metal band of all power metal. While I’ve come to love all the other albums of their pre- and post-Opera I found this album of theirs the most accomplished and musically complete. Even people who are not typically fans of metal would find this album as something they would enjoy listening to. My favorite track is also the longest and most complex in the album, “…And Then There Was Silence.” It is an epic 14-minute track that tells the story of the Trojan War. If there’s a song more epic than this one I haven’t heard it.
4. Boris
Whenever I used to think of Japanese popular music and rock I always thought of J-Pop and it’s rock equivalent. I’m not wrong in that assumption as those type of music coming out of Japan have become quite popular due to the rise in the popularity of anime in the West. So, color me surprised when the same friend who introduced me to Blind Guardian and Altan Urag told me to check out Boris. The band is the power trio of Atsuo (vocals/drums), Wata (lead guitar) and Takeshi (bass guitar/vocals) out of Tokyo who simply cannot be hobbled by any particular genre of rock. One album may be stoner rock while the next all about doom and drudge metal. They’ve even released ambient rock and noise rock albums where one would think the music was just amps feedbacking back on themselves. I’ve come to call Boris the mad scientists of rock and their albums attest to that. My favorite track of theirs come from their 2003 album, “Akuma no Uta.” The song in question is called “Naki Kyoku” and one just has to listen to this song just what sort of musical geniuses the trio of Boris really are.
5. Tom Waits
Tom Waits. There’s just nothing much I can say about my love for Tom Waits other than people who have never heard him should just listen to “Pasties and a G-String” and be amazed. To try and describe Tom Waits would be an exercise in failure. One either loves The Waits or just don’t get him. There’s no middle-ground when it comes to The Waits.
So that makes the 5 bands and artists I fell in love with in 2009. Honorable mentions must go to these others: Mastodon, Turisas, Isis, Otis Taylor, Mantic Ritual, The Black Keys, Mirrorthrone and Nightwish just to name a few.
Through the Shattered Lens