AllMusic Loves 2009. Appropriately for the final year of the decade, 2009 seemed to be the 2000s in microcosm. Every trend of the past 10 years surfaced over the past 12 months: dance divas with irresistible singles mingled with the electro-pop and art-punk vanguard with Lady Gaga bridging the two extremes, new bands rubbed elbows with veterans who either mounted a comeback or proved the value of consistent work.
There was a lot that was twee and precious and not much macho, save for some crackling underground metal and the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. There were seemingly too many animal bands to count -- led, of course, by Animal Collective, the consensus pick for album of the year in many quarters, but followed not far behind by Grizzly Bear, Arctic Monkeys, Bat for Lashes (and, if you're being generous, a resurgent Black Crowes) -- and there was yet another new project from Jack White. Indie Albums of 2009, Pt. Favorite Rock Albums of 2009. Favorite Jazz Albums of 2009.
PopMatters. Edited and Produced by Sarah Zupko and Patrick Schabe Here we are nigh on 12 months through the whole thing, and yet for some reason “music in 2009” seems like a mystery. Without speaking ill of the dead—or diminishing its cultural significance—it’s a strange thing to say that the biggest musical event of 2009 was the death of one of music’s iconic megastars. And we can mine any number of implications from the fact that Michael Jackson’s untimely passing resulted in the summer sales charts being dominated by a catalog that stretches back some 30 years.
It speaks to the continuing relevance of MJ within the cultural memory, sure, but it also speaks volumes about today’s diffuse musical territory that again we needed Thriller to provide something that everyone heard, talked about, and yes, (re)purchased. (No offense to you Off the Wall die-hards, but the Guinness Book of World Records don’t lie.)
—Patrick Schabe. Hiphop. If 2009 doesn’t go down as the year when one of hip-hop’s biggest stars interrupted a young country singer’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Awards, then it should be known as the Year of Returns and Comebacks. Albums by Mos Def, DOOM, Eminem, DJ Quik & Kurupt, and Ghostface Killah certainly fit the bill, not to mention the sequels the genre produced this year, such as Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, and Method Man & Redman’s Blackout II. Many of these albums also contribute to what my co-author Michael Miller aptly refers to as “middle-aged rap”. Hip-hop has gotten older, and so have the artists who helped to build and extend its cultural relevance. The dilemma is figuring out what position to play in the coming years: hardcore lyricist and storyteller (Raekwon, Ghostface), eccentric genius (Mos Def, DOOM, Madlib), elder statesman (KRS-One & Buckshot, Rakim), comic relief (Method Man & Redman), or business mogul and name brand (Jay-Z, P.
Quentin B. Jazz. Everything in the culture these days is political, right? Partisanism is the new black. Jazz, at its heart, resists polarization. The premise of the blues, after all, is the creation of joy from adversity, and surely no music has ever reconciled as many contradictions as jazz. Still, there has always been a pseudo-political inner tension in jazz between a conservative impulse to honor the past and a liberal impulse to innovate at every turn.
During down periods in the music, those impulses do battle, creating dull music: either mindlessly imitative or mindlessly free. During good periods—and that includes the bulk of the new century so far—there is mindfulness on both sides. The tradition is referenced and transformed while still being a touchstone. 2009 was a great year for melding innovation and tradition. This piano trio, led by the legendary drummer, takes brilliant advantage of alternate and electric instruments. Electronic. In 2009, electronic music was 20 years beyond England’s second summer of love in 1989, the year when waves of four-on-the-floor reverberated from Manchester to the moon and set in motion a long arc of momentum that can now be said to be completely decentralized. If you’re having troubling chasing the concordant memes of electronic music in 2009, you’re not alone.
Even an obsessive with no distracting family, social, or economic preoccupations would have a hard time keeping up. Back in the acid house moment, it would be easy for Luddite rockists to chide “I don’t listen to techno, because it all sounds the same.” Now, you’d be hard pressed to find any cogency amidst the variety of synthetic noises out there. Sure, there will always be pasty-faced demagogues rallying around guitar dinosaurs (U2) and new-school fogies (Jack White), but more people are listening to electronic sounds now than ever before. The past continued to be reanimated in the form of reissues in 2009.
Timothy Gabriele. Indie pop. Pop music is always in flux. Indie-pop seems especially so. In part it’s the way of the genre to be oriented towards the new. There’s always a hot new band that you must hear right now, whether their sound is already familiar or not. The flip side of that is how many musicians struggle to keep going. With indie-label pop music, we’re generally talking about small businesses, about people making music and people selling that music, without a corporate structure of support. My indie-pop year 2009 was about young energy and autumnal melancholy, about the rush you feel when you first hear an exciting new band and the bittersweet feeling you get when your favorite band calls it quits. 2009 saw the Lucksmiths break up after 15 years or so, a sad moment for those of us who think they were one of the finest groups of our time.
On both sides of the equation, growth and departure, stand record labels. Singer-Songwriter. In my most cynical moments, I’m sure that the Zach Braffs and Starbucks of the world have rendered the singer-songwriter bloodless, toothless, and simple. That they merely produce fodder for producers of cheap television drama, to either remind us what we already know—that we’re in a pregnant moment—or to do the emotional work their lazy scripts avoid. This, in darker moments, is how I see the singer-songwriter of the new century. But to give in to these lazy thoughts is to give those faceless corporations too much sway over how we react to and define our art.
A singer-songwriter album is not all acoustic guitars, fey vocals, and easy confessions, as the overhead system at the organic foods store downtown might have you believe. Neither, however, is it a product that comes solely from descendents of the Greenwich Village protestors and traditionalists, as purists might declare. We got it all in 2009. Thao had a party on her last record, We Brave Bee Stings and All.
60 Albums. Themilkfactory. By themilkman Posted on Dec 13th 2009 07:52 pm Filed in Albums,Best Of The Year | Tags: Alva Noto, Angel, Animal Collective, Ólafur Arnalds, Ben Frost, Broadcast, King Midas Sound, Machinefabriek, Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Mountains, Oberman Knocks, Peter Broderick, Rival Consoles, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Simon Scott, SND, Strings of Consciousness, Symbiosis Orchestra, Telefon Tel Aviv, The Focus Group, The Village Orchestra, Tyondai Braxton, Vladislav Delay Comments (15) Twelve months compiled into just twenty albums.
From the thousands of records released each year, it is difficult to get even a handful on the site, and even more difficult to decide which ones were the best of the lot. This is however the twenty albums that have marked 2009 for themilkfactory. VLADISLAV DELAYTummaa The Leaf Label BEN FROSTBy The Throat Bedroom Community STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS & ANGELStrings Of Consciousness & Angel Important Records PETER BRODERICK & MACHINEFABRIEKBlank Grey Canvas Sky Fang Bomb. Pitchfork Top 50. We close out 2009 with our annual review of the year's 50 best albums. Yesterday we highlighted another 25 that missed our top 50 but we feel deserve some attention. 50. WoodsSongs of Shame[Shrimper/Woodsist] Woodsist had an auspicious 2009, releasing well-liked albums from Real Estate, Ganglians, and the Fresh & Onlys. 49. The standard thinking on Catacombs, the fifth LP from singer-songwriter Cass McCombs, goes something like this: enigmatic troubadour takes a welcome turn toward accessibility, loosening the knotty arrangements of previous recordings to offer his best and most direct album yet. 48.
For his best album in five years and his rawest in 10, DOOM came back from a mysterious hiatus with a hungry, take-no-prisoners ferocity. 47. Considering how quickly the splinters of dubstep progress and mutate, it says something about the strength of Zomby's Where Where U in '92? 46. 45. 44. tUnE-yArDsBiRd-BrAiNs[Marriage/4AD] Originally released on cassette (!) 43. 42. 41. Bob Boilen. Robin Hilton.
Stephen Thompson. ADM Top 10 Article from Any Decent Music. The ADM Top 10 Amid all the end of year listmania (or Lisztomania if you are a Phoenix fan), the chart that gives the most reliable guide to what albums have earned the widest acclaim over the course of the year is the AnyDecentMusic top 10 of 2009. The scores out of 10 in our chart are - like the main chart on the ADM home page - the averaged ratings from all the reviews we've collected. In most cases there's around 20 reviews for each album, from publications in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. We've listed them here with an extract from one selected review which best sums up the general reaction to the album.
The most obvious variance from the majority of end-of-year roundups is the appearance of Mali's ngoni star Bassekou Kouyate at No.1, ahead of Animal Collective. Merriweather Post Pavilion has headed the majority of Best Of lists, but it has not been universally acclaimed. Almost half a dozen reviewers awarded it a no more than "good" score of 7 or less. Bassekou Kouyate I Speak Fula. Best of the top 10s Article from Any Decent Music. Best of the top 10s The final votes are in, from Pitchfork, Drowned in Sound and The Guardian, and AnyDecentMusic can at last give the final word on the definitive Albums of 2009, in the Best Of The Best Ofs conclusive listing.
We've rounded up the ratings from a series of Best Ofs. The end result, we reckon, provides a comprehensive reflection of what's been providing the maximum musical pleasure in the widest number of reviewers' headphones for the past 12 months. For anyone who's been paying attention, it's no surprise to see Animal Collective a million miles ahead of the competition. If you were a bookmaker, you'd have stopped taking bets on that sometime around late spring. And the odds on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wild Beasts and Grizzly Bear being up there would have been pretty short.
But there have been surprises. And who could have foreseen electronic noise manipulators the Fuck Buttons conquering all and sundry - even after they'd teamed up with super-producer Andy Weatherall. Drowned in Sound's Top 50 Albums of 2009 - 50-1 / In Depth // Dr. So, that was 2009? Possibly the most blink-and-you-missed-it year of the decade. I mean, it literally feels like a few weeks ago that I was sitting here excitedly revealing M83 Saturdays = Youth as our album of 2008 (if you missed last year's list cast your eyes this'a way).
Yet, in the 52 weeks which have whizzed by there have been shock shifts in direction from brave Brits (The Horrors, Arctic Monkeys and Muse, to name but three) as well as many fine acts not just delivering on their promise but raising the bar, and then some (hello Wild Beasts and Fxxk Buttons!). Was it a great year for music?
A high watermark? Only time will tell but there have been some triumphant, innovative and bold records released and cherished in 2009 and we hope our list of the top 50 of the year reflects this. With all of the releases on this list the one thing that they share is their ability to take us elsewhere. So, without further ado, here we go, a year of record releases compiled into a top 50... Critics' poll 2009. TLOBF Albums of 2009. Lists upon lists, upon lists… It really IS that time of the year. We’ve been keeping ours closely under-wraps, but now the time is here to unveil TLOBF’s Albums of 2009!
This year, we got each of our writers to nominate their favourite albums of the year, we counted up the votes, and spewed forth the results below. Easy. Always discussion points, I think our Top 10 is certainly one of the most consistently great lists for a number of years. It’s FELT like a good year for music and, despite or, indeed, because of, the rampant consumerism and X-Factor dominating charts, 2009 has felt pretty fresh. Anyway, enough of my ramblings, here we go… Key: read TLOBF review // listen on Spotify 50. 49. 48. 47. 45. 44. 43. 42. 41. 40. 39. 38. 37. 36. 35. 34. 33. 32. 31. 30. 29. 28. 27. 26. 25. “The brevity and controlled fury of the songs and of the album as a whole keeps you constantly coming back. 24. 23. 22. 21. 20. 19. 18. 17. 16. 15. 14. 13. 12. 11. 10. 09. 08. 07. 06. 05. 04. 03. 02. 01.
OMH's Top 50 Albums Of 2009. MusicOMH has reviewed nearly 700 albums released during 2009. A great many of them tugged gently at our sleeve wearing a pleading look that negated any need for words. "I'm a Top 50 Album Of The Year, aren't I? " is what that look says, all big eyes and trembling lower lip. Our writers all had their personal favourites; as we cover everything from commercial pop to wistful folk via hip hop, drone metal and contemporary classical, it's arguably more difficult for an album to reach our Top 50 than it is for almost any other comparable list.
Those who deigned to vote - 36 writers in total - offered up their ordered picks of the year from a longlist. The longlist lived up to its name, consisting as it did of everything we've awarded 4, 4.5 or 5 stars to, plus Mercury nominees released in 2009 and selected albums saved from lower ratings at the suggestion of writers. There was then a second round (still listening at the back?) I'd happily recommend listening to and buying all of these.