Summing up the year in popular music is a fool's errand, especially if said fool is not a gainfully employed critic on the receiving end of record company promo shipments. While some may argue that the age of the download has allowed any discernible music fan to stay abreast of developing trends and hot new acts, I find the shift from album format to compressed file a bit dispiriting. So, what follows is not in any way a definite list of "the best" music of 2009 - I imagine I'll be catching up on last year's various artists and (I'll say it) albums for quite some time. Such are the benefits of moving beyond the world of the eternal hipster and into the more comfortable realm of the skeptical yet enthusiastic pop culture consumer. Below, find 15 aural artifacts of the decade's final year, arranged alphabetically. All should be played loud on free-standing stereo systems.
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1) Mulatu Astatke / The Heliocentrics - Inspiration Information Vol. 3
Astatke is an Ethiopian musician who's been exploring what he dubbed "Ethio-Jazz" since the early 1960s, both in his native Addis Ababa and in London. The Heliocentrics are a UK-based groove collective. Together, they've released a true collaboration of pan-Arab freak jazz that's tough enough to function as dance music and smart enough to reward close attention. Complex, yet never simply complicated, these artists understand that explorations in modality and scales needn't disregard paying homage to The One (we're talking beats rather than gods here). For once, a collective that proves to be more than the sum of their influences, which is to say I thought about James Brown, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, Charles Mingus and DJ Shadow while listening but was rarely reminded of them. Guitar distortion and vibes paired alongside masengo, washit and begena -this must be what the proponents of globalization have been talking about all these years.
2) Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
Matador stepped in to reissue this blink-and-miss-it pressing of tunes from ex-hardcore and art-slop aficionados from Philly, and lucky for us (well, some of us). The chilliest of icy electronics dominate half-familiar melodies buried beneath layers of gauze that both shimmer and smother, and if several tracks shuffle awfully close to Bauhaus or Sisters of Mercy mope, Wesley Eisold at other times achieves some kind of genius mashup of bouncy hooks plus noise blasts - a mashup not without its own perverse and unsettling brand of pleasure. The title track boasts a life-affirming jangle that betrays this supposed misanthropic outfit's warmly beating human heart. Like Goth kids congregating for Bats Day at Disneyland, they welcome both sunshine and gloom.
3) Edan - Echo Party
Edan's been keeping the old-school hip hop flame burning in his native Maryland since his days at Berklee, and after a period of inactivity, the good folks at Traffic Entertainment Group set him loose on their hallowed vaults. Two years later, what he offers up isn't exactly what the South Bronx sounded like in the late 70s, but it might resemble how it felt. That is, there's plenty of vinyl crackle and pop, and the classic jams do ebb and flow. But Edan's more concerned with taking a decidedly bent take on block party rhymes - weirder, more chopped up, with added moog and guitar blasts punctuating the mic battles. Like an AM station going in and out of service with each passing bridge and tunnel, let the static drift by and you just might see the big picture. The single track ends after 29 minutes because any more would simply be pretentious.
4) Girls - Album
San Francisco duo, equal parts bohemian fog and afternoon sunshine, whose idea of a profound lyric goes something like, "I wish I had a suntan/ I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine". But if you've heard this line sung within the album's opening minutes, it won't soon leave your head. No denying that bands sporting such generic names or having the audacity to title a song "Lust For Life" rarely prove to be a band of ideas. Unless your concept of ideas includes collecting all of indie rock's better practices into one Elvis Costello / Paul Westerberg cocktail. If this sounds appealing (or if you like the idea that they've named the loveliest song on the CD "Hellhole Ratrace") you may be ready for Girls' charms. In which case, may I recommend playing them with the windows open? Not simply to share the melodies, but to feel the breeze.
5) Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
The usual gripes remain - overly fussy arrangements, opaque lyrics, singer Edward Droste sounding like he's carefully balancing a saucer of milk on his head throughout. Yet why snidely deny pleasures and complexities when they strike home so successfully? Even if they have memorized all their connecting instrumental parts, they rarely sound over rehearsed, and they valiantly fend off the prog beast while never coming across as anything less than progressive. A little mud on their shoes would certainly improve their music. But all gripes aside, a single like "Two Weeks" is the "Penny Lane" for our decade - baroque, poppy, upbeat, melancholy, melodic, choir-boy vocals and all. And, yes, a bit fussy.
6) Mos Def - The Ecstatic
"We live in an age of extremism," intones the Malcolm X soundbite before opening track "Supermagic" slams into a deeply satisfying Bollywood groove. This isn't reactionary or lazy hectoring - it's a deliberate attempt to frame Mos Def's explorations of rhythms and melodies beyond black America into explicitly political terms. His dizzying yet firm grasp of the disparate strands of recorded sound is even more impressive when distilled to 16 short tracks, with only two passing the 3.45 mark. At the end of a decade which saw commercial hip hop sink ever-deeper into the synth-bloated morass of Dirty South imitators, he gives hope to crate diggers and quick rhymers everywhere. What would you expect but historical perspective from a rapper humble enough to use a frame from Charles Burnett's 1977 film Killer of Sheep as the album cover? And what can anybody expect but surprises from this Black Muslim who makes sure the above-cited Malcolm X clip includes the statement, "I, for one, will join in with anyone, I don't care what color you are"?
7) Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970s Funky Lagos
A welcome reissue of Strut's out-of-print 2001 compilation of funk from the greater Lagos area, this 2 cd companion to last year's Lagos Jump may have some tracks familiar to Afropop aficionados young and old, and may include some tracks of little interest to us non-fanatics. And what is there to say about Bongos Ikwue's "Woman Made the Devil" aside from the fact that it's worth hearing once, if only to witness the dumbest kind of woman hate wedded to what can best be described as Nigerian country and western? But only the most jaded of listeners will be bored by the 22 offerings of fresh beats, deep bass lines, spacey production and knowing voices within this jewel case. William Onyeabor's decidedly odd basement-production funk lecture on the crimes of the world may well be worth the price of admission alone. The last few years have been good ones for Afropop reissues and compilations. We can only hope the current generation of music consumers continue to listen with open and curious ears.
8) A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
More than a few pretenders to the shoegaze-revival throne have emerged recently, but while worthy outfits like The Big Pink make the mistake of placing their wispy voices upfront, masters like these New York soundwreckers knowingly bury their croons beneath layers of well-crafted noise. In doing so, they're the only (forgive me) Nu Gazers who suggest what My Bloody Valentine really sounded like to virgin ears back in the late 80s. But don't mistake this for merely academic exercises. "Deadbeat" opens with a perfect circa-1966 fuzz riff before leaping headfirst into syncopated sludge-thrash of the grain-silo acoustical variety, while Oliver Ackermann lazily and defensively mutters "what the fuck" over the din. This isn't just good shoegazing. It's good rock and roll.
9) Eliane Radigue - Vice Versa, Etc....
This French composer has been releasing electronic drone pieces, feedback loops and synthesizer works since the early 1960s, with an emphasis on Tibetan Buddhism since 1975. This 2 CD set is something else - preceding her discovery of the ARP 2500 synthesizer, it is a magnetic tape recording from 1970 of nothing more nor less than pulsing feedback drones. Ten copies were made, signed, distributed, urged to be played both forwards and backwards. Forty years on, those of us not Radigue's close friends can experience her project, with a bonus disc featuring the piece(s) played at differing speeds and both forwards and backwards. "Lazier listeners," according to the liner notes, can simply plow through. This one-time fetish item suggests there's plenty of unheard music waiting to find its way to the marketplace, and reminds us yet again that the mp3 file does not represent the most advanced format of audio communication innovation.
10) Real Estate - Real Estate
Stylistically and lyrically, breaks little new ground.These charmingly low key and echo-swathed Garden State boys dig surf guitar reverb, country rock, old REM, probably Modest Mouse, and did I mention echo already? So let those morbid hipster types squeeze into their skinny jeans and stand motionless at Lady Gaga record parties. These fellas think you should swing your arms while you sing along. So, hold on - relaxed country-surf dream pop from Jersey? Maybe they're breaking some new ground after all.
11) Sonic Youth - The Eternal
With one-time Pavement bassist Mark Ibold aboard and Kim Gordon assuming a larger role, this proudly New York band is now nearly one-half Californian. And this West Coast lineage shows in their increasing devotion to songcraft, trippy skronk, interlocking guitar figures, bong-soaked riffing. They give hope to greying bohemians and the rock faithful everywhere. May they continue to rumble and plink their way well into this century.
12) Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy
Funny guy, this Vile character. "Childish Prodigy" - oh, how witty. Except give the disc a spin, and you'll be struck by his encapsulation of Lower East Side grime welded to 3-chord proto punk, with more slap-back vocal echo than anything this side of Sun Records' mid-1950s heyday. And then he calms down and inserts devastatingly pretty acoustic guitar parts into the hazy mix. What is his deal? While indie types have long embraced lo-fi aesthetics for reasons ranging from the purely economical to the willfully perverse, Vile would seem to be the first one to go lo-fi because he's always wanted to hear Lou Reed take Dylan's place in The Basement Tapes. Call it moonshine - home-brewed, dodgy, even secondhand, but not without a bitter charm.
13) Where The Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968
Rhino's second scene-specific Nuggets collection of mid-to-late 60s garage and jangle casts its eye and deep multi-label licensing powers to that other great California city that boasted a multitude of recording studios and lousy public transportation. Only the first two discs devote themselves to fuzz 'n stomp, and the entire project achieves balance by contrasting such pros as Love and The Doors with one-shots as varied as Fapardokly and Peter Fonda. The result is a 4-disc simulation of a slightly groovy, slightly square regional radio station, wheat and chaff in equal measure. And it's effortlessly enjoyable. For the past one hundred years, L.A. has been synonymous with hype, crassness, materialism and phoniness. There's plenty of that here. But there's also craft, enthusiasm, charming naivete, sophistication, intellect, experimentation and energy. How very Hollywood.
14) Peanut Butter Wolf - 45 Live
Bay Area b-boy and scratcher extraordinaire PB Wolf offers up an easy-flowing yet never easy-listening 18-track survey of the 7 inch era of hip hop. The sounds of The Treacherous Three, Fearless Four and Tricky Tee may seem archaic as rap enters its third decade, yet these stripped-down drum machine and simplistic keyboard dominated party jams in a way seem less dated nowadays than tracks from the sample-heavy late 80s and early 90s. Bottom line, it's all good. While rap fans and performers alike have proven remarkably fickle even by pop culture standards, believers like Wolf insist that older voices needn't be relegated to archaeological sites. All respect should be paid to his successful reminder that the old school managed to miraculously produce world-class dance tracks and avant-garde beat worship simultaneously.
15) The xx - xx
Sparse, spare, even haunting, a London quartet (now trio) makes music that is remarkable for being so seemingly tossed-off yet carefully arranged. Rare indeed to find a new group so sure-footed in their approach, so calmly unique. Even rarer to find an indie band with members whose knowledge of black music extends beyond dub and ESG - they're not kidding about those Rihanna and Aaliyah influences. With their gentle guitar strum, charmingly low-rent Casio drones, boy-girl vocal trade offs, apparently satisfactory sex lives, and lyrics like, "can I make it better/with the lights turned on," I suspect all those x's have nothing to do with mystery, death or obfuscation. They're kisses.
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