Said the Gramophone

WANDERT MONAE A WEERY FET

Clare and the Reasons - "You Got Time". A new year yawning, gaping with twelve-paged jaw. We clutch ourselves, like we're about to step into a chill. We step into twenty-ten with eyes closed, breath braced, counting down. If we end the year on a frozen lake, we begin it on that same lake. It is one dawn closer to spring. And though we don't hear the cracks yet, though Clare and the Reasons lull so reassuringly, though they sing You got time to turn around: you don't. We don't. It's slipping away. It's slipping away. It's slipping away. The second is already gone. The minute is past. Quick: GO. [buy / thanks Brian]

Exuma - "The Vision". I don't believe Exuma's story for one second. He had a vision of judgment day? Like heck he did. Listen to this song. This ain't a song about Apocalypse. This ain't a song about rising seas and lifting lava. This is a song about New Year's day. January 1. Tomorrow. Everything beautiful new, clean cherished, loose ready. Nothing certain except the hot human tremble in your voice. [buy]

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Wishing you all a very happy new year.

(painting by Vilhelm Hammershoi)

ON VIC CHESNUTT

Vic Chesnutt died on Christmas Day. He was a songwriter who lived in Athens, Georgia. He wrote one of my favourite songs of this year, a song about flirting with death, a song where he sang with forceful life: "No, I am not ready." I don't know what to do with the fact that now he is gone. I do not know whether to be sad. Maybe he was ready.

No, listen, I have to be honest: I'm so angry. I'm not sad. I'm angry. Angry at a healthcare system, yes, that betrays its citizens. Angry at Vic Chesnutt, for leaving us. But more than anything, angry at those black moments, those tiny fucking black moments, like cinders, that alight on your shoulders and cloak the stars and let life seem so easy to wink out. I don't believe in fate, or justice, or a natural order. Those black moments don't come because they're deserved. They happen because they fucking happen: the way 2:59pm happens, the way December 25th happens, the way one morning you wake up and you feel like shit. They're like the opposite of wonders. They are small, mundane dooms. And for all the loves, friendships, treatments, medications, songs and stories, there will always be some of these small dooms left, winging.

I am not as familiar with Vic Chesnutt as I wish I were. He recorded 16 albums in less than 20 years, four in the last two. His songs were so rich - wild and peppered. I listened to them one at a time. They made me feel ugly, sometimes; or very beautiful. They reminded me of the dooms. But also they reminded me of life, of perseverence and celebration (and also more modest things: petty grievances, urban folklore, girls in gingham dresses).

I do hope that maybe, somehow, somewhere, in some manner I am not quite able to believe in, Vic Chesnutt is at peace and dancing. These past days, I have been unable to listen to his music. I am unable to now, and so there is no dandy mp3 for you here. (Those who do not know Vic's work, look here, here, here, here.) But I suppose I have the rest of my life to listen to his songs. And I will try to chase away those black moments when I glimpse them. I will go into rooms and say: Get. I will light fires where fires have gone out. I will furiously try, for Vic and all the others.

Please donate to Vic Chesnutt's family.

It Never Snows In Harlem

Sam Cooke - "Medley: It's All Right / For Sentimental Reasons"

It never snows out here. It stays warm and brown the whole holiday season, in East Riley. A lot of people are stuck out in East Riley for the holidays, stuck in the grassy brown ghost town of sleepy closed businesses and spray-on christmas lights. For all the people who don't want to be here, there's a few people who do. His name is Henry and he has a holiday party unparalleled in all the warm parts. He has an all-night gathering in a park on the edge of town, so he "can catch anyone before they leave, and everyone before they miss it" as it says on the invite, which is a banner that hangs across the main street in East Riley. Everyone dresses up as presents, they gather and talk and sing songs. But one song, near the end of the night, Henry knows just how to sing it, just right and sweet and loud and clear, and he sings it and the town sings along, beneath the warmth of the stars and the sleeping vultures.

[Buy]

NOCES

Ryan Driver - "When Were You In Mexico?". He and Antonia had stood in the doorway and kissed. The mistletoe hung over their heads, gently conspicuous. They kissed & they kissed. In the living-room window, the stars were turning on a disc. The Christmas tree was plugged-in and blinking. He and Antonia kissed, peppery from gingersnaps. She was long and he was tall and their hands were the same size. // It was six years later when he stood in the same doorway, opening the same box of plastic mistletoe, and remembered this moment. Clara was in the next room, wrapping presents. Their hands had been the same size. [buy / thanks, Nathan]

the1shanti - "I ♥ Olivia Munn". In Nathan Laskar's quest to produce a record for Olivia Munn (I am not familiar, but Google tells me she is talented), he has done a wise thing: he has made a killer track. It's not an ode to Munn - he only mentions her in the hook, nervously - it's instead a show of bravado, skills, of rhyme & dance & tip-of-tongue. No flattery, just backflips; the tang of novelty-rap, sure, but the1shanti evokes the mincemeat chaw of MF Doom, or even MIA's elastic flow. When he tells the story of the Bean, his little clone, it's as if he knows he's getting distracted, knows he's digressing, yet it doesn't matter. He's having too much fun. He'll wriggle through the seaweed, gather nonsense, "put everything I ever want in the chorus". He'll make her fall for him. [website/open-source hip-hop]

(photo source)

Later, Forgiveness

Parenthetical Girls - "Thank God it's Not Christmas"
Parenthetical Girls - "Flowers For Albion"
Sparks - "Thank God it's Not Christmas"

In 1992 there was a bill that came inches from beign passed in the Senate. Put forth by Rev. Conrad Merkis, known by his parish as 'Connie Christmas', the bill described a way for rock music, especially the growing popularity of grunge rock, to 'pay back' to the spiritual community the debt it owed for stealing the hearts and minds of its youth. The method was simple: every single song, especially hit songs, were required to have a 'Christmas Counterpart', which could be swung at spiritual holiday gatherings. The song simply needed to reference Christmas in some way - be it the words 'Christmas', 'Christmas time', or an 'infusion of a few bars from a famous Christmas carol.
'It's easy,' Rev. Connie used to say at rousing rallies, 'just add on to the end of your chorus a few bars from Joy to the World and I won't bother you anymore.' He would often finish these rallies by playing a medley of 'Christmas Counterparts' that he was suggesting to famous artists. He offered to write counterparts for the back catalogues of artists who were either retired or dead, and even went so far as to send demo tapes to Chris Cornell and other artists, with notes on them saying things like, 'for the Japanese release!' The bill was actually passed and still persists in a few municipalities, where local musicians enjoy a health living based on producing Christmas Counterparts for all the songs that become popular in the area.

Parenthetical Girls have released a Christmas 7" called Christmas Creep. It's got a New Order-ly cover of Sparks, it's a got a song built for this post (written independently, while listening to french news in a waiting room) and like all things ((GRLS)), it's got fascinating details, unignorable sexiness, and surprises at every turn. It's a double-A-side release, and it can be ordered here. With 150 in existence, get this already rare snowflake gem for someone you love, even if that's yourself. [Order]

also: [Buy Sparks' seminal incredible Kimono My House]

(image source)

HAYDN SEEK

Woodpigeon - "Music Belongs To Those Who Make It". This is, I presume, a song about the music business's empty suits. (And not, I hope, the biz's bloggers.) But Mark Hamilton's artistic license, his sticking guns, aren't represented in roaring shouts or a steely stare. Instead, he executes one of the most precise songs of his career: something carved out of piano, voice, clarinet and strings. Everything is perfectly measured; nothing is to excess. And yet the song is not timid. It is merely quiet, baroque, sturdy as a man with a notebook full of marvels.
[buy Die Stadt Muzikanten and get all of Balladeer, from which this is taken, for free.]

Midlake - "Rulers Ruling All Things". As the press release says, Midlake's new music forsakes 70s soft-rock for the glens and valleys of British folk-rock. But Jason Upshaw can't play guitar like John Renbourn, Tim Smith can't sing like Bert Jansch (let alone Sandy Denny), and Midlake aren't as haunted as Espers. So what I've heard of the result isn't much like "Tamn Lin": it's American; it's lakes and canyons; it's eagles and dust. Midlake's melancholy is warm, gorgeous, untouched by rain; full of birches. [buy 12"]

(photo by Alison Scarpulla - source)

Li'l Wall-E

Railcars - "Dreams (Cranberries Cover)"

Sometimes my memories expand to fit the size of the room. A car came an inch from my face, a dog was as snarling and foaming as any nightmare monster, a kiss was as long and as perfectly placed as can be. Either everything was just so or nothing worked at all. My reactions to events are huge in my memory, jaws on floors, eyes popping out of heads, faces slapped, knees entirely buckled. They don't look in my mind how I'm sure they actually looked: minimal facial movement, slight turn away, maybe a raised eyebrow. My memories on tape sound like this mix, blaring, blown paper-thin against the speakers, near-unintelligible, nearly dead were it not for the aftertaste of a melody, the ghost of a beat beneath. [Keep up with the tour]

Lil Wayne - "Drop the World (feat. Eminem)"

In the final slow-motion moments of an epic adventure musical, a rain of credit cards glitters down on the streets of an apocalo-future city. Slow crane down from emptying heavens to the lowly clean-up droid back on the job. Lived its whole life in the gutter, held the only piece of knowledge needed to keep the forces of takeover at bay, used all its gumption and prime-directives to save every measly squirming human on this stupid hellish rock, and now back in the gutter, no one to thank it, no one to sing to it, no one to care. It raises its droid hands to the sky and lets the credit cards, slide on past its grasp to the ground. It passes by a reflective window, an abandoned insurance firm, and stops to watch the vista of the plastic rain. It goes closer to the window and looks calmly at its face. It flickers through different make-up combinations that could change its face. A light foundation with electric blue eyeliner. A deep starting layer with heavy lipstick and a cigarette holder. A dark foundation with silver teeth and Egyptian eyes. Beat. Black. Credits. [site]

TETANUS THOUGHT

Sorry for all the technical troubles here this past week. It's unfortunate (and unusual). We're still trying to get all our troubles hammered out and apologize for any hiccups. Fingers crossed that everything will be better soon.

Moderat - "Rusty Nails". The dark treacle of these vocals is at first too sweet, but Sascha Ring's singing resolves itself into something that recalls Elbow's Guy Garvey. (This is good.) There's nothing else here to remind you of Elbow, however: it's dubstep skitter, looming synths, the wail of an empty city. It's not quite beautiful - and also not quite lost. [buy]

-

Elsewhere:

I highly recommend the first MP3 from Shearwater's upcoming Golden Archipelago, "Castaways".

I'm also really smitten with Portishead's new song, "Chase the Tear". It's tense, upbeat and kraut - and I can't get enough of it. Alas, it's an Amnesty charity single, and Amnesty are wonderful, and so I won't post it here - but please don't hesitate to buy the song here.

ROUGH N BUMBLE

Dañez vs Rifhes - "see u fallin". Sinead O'Connor as ice-sculpture, run through with a snowblower, scattered glittering into the street. This is a remix that's all shards - the pure chorus uttered only once, if that, and when it comes it's like a prayer that makes it through all that cloud; a love-letter that makes it through the slot. [thanks so much, Andrew - send more any time / free download / site]

Hop Along, Queen Ansleis - "Bay Area Baby". Hop Along's singer does everything with her voice: bends it, cradles it, throws it, tears it, strips it of bark, builds a lincoln-log house. It's the changes in her voice that push the song along, make it breathless. (Who needs the glockenspiel? The power's in that dusty roar.) I don't get what the song is about, don't get what the band name is about (though they've now abbreviated it to plain old Hop Along) - but there's an addictiveness to this complicated, peppery track, its slopes of changing tune. [thanks Luke / MySpace]

[image source]

Jumbling Towers

Jumbling Towers - "Put Your War Paint On"

In this world of gray smiles and clammy hands and incessant, relentless power outages, candles are very important. There are many who believe that candle flames can be inhaled, that they can speak, that they have transformative powers. There is a legend of a young filthy ratter who burned a book he'd written in a candle flame, page by page, to make the words exist in the world. The effects of his efforts are now known as the Night of Hawks and Chains, the most heinous tradition in an already barbarous existence. It is said that only one child in a family of ten will survive this night. The limits of the body's acids and muscles are tested, the mind's tipping point, the spirit's very bottom. There is no grass wetter, colder, than the grass of that horrible dawn.

Jumbling Towers have reached a near-crippling level of darkness with their new album, The Kanetown City Rips. They've generally been a creepy band, but in a Vincent Price kind of way, where it's a smirking kind of ghoul, a deep maniacal tongue-in-cheek kind of cackle. But that was the old Jumbling Towers, or perhaps just not the Jumbling Towers of this record. A band that used to squeeze blood out of their guitars, that would crash a cymbal wide enough to change the tides, is suddenly holding back. The drums have been muted, they're thudding instead of ringing, the guitars are lying dried on the beach. Kanetown is suddenly their Your Blues. But, as in Your Blues, it all feels like it has a purpose. One that may take getting used to, but will find you soon. The album tells a story, or rather gives impressions, of a turbulent and unwelcoming world. From the constant perspective of the "rips", which are kids, themes of adults deceiving children, fearmongering, and revolution abound. There's a throughline to this album that leaves you at once triumphant and unsettled. It's mysterious, unfriendly, and gorgeous.

|this track is exclusive to Said the Gramophone, made available to us in advance by the band, so thanks to them for that. If you like them, see my past writings on them here, and here, and here|

[MySpace]
[Site]
[Buy their old records]
[buy the Kanetown single from Half Machine]

--

Elsewhere: would that this were real. via the Fiery Furnaces' twitter feed, you can feel those FF details between your fingers.

(image via à la garconnière)

EXAGGERATE

Christina Courtin - "Rainy". [buy]

It snowed all day, Wednesday; things got buried.

I helped a Hasid in black push a car out of the snow. He was standing next to a telephone pole, bird chest heaving, holding a shovel. An older man was forcing the gas on a white Chevrolet, a car like my grandfather used to have, twisting the tires every which way. It skidded and slipped on the snow. I said, "Can I help push?" The younger looked at me. His eyes flashed from surprise to happiness to eagerness, like film passing in front of a projector. I lowered my hood. I kneeled into the curb. "Go," we said together. He had a yiddish accent; it made him sound German. He sounded so young. I thought: I'm young too. We pushed. It didn't work. The car slipped in the slush. We straightened. We tried again. We straightened. Before we strained a third time, two more people came over. They squinted in the flurries. One was a swaggery guy in a leather jacket, looked Greek or Turkish. He gave orders to the driver. The other was a girl, a young girl, French. She smiled at me like we had both stumbled across something, an amazing icicle maybe, in the woods. "One, two, three," we said together. We pushed. We straightened. "One, two, three," we said. The car moved, it moved and it was away, and the young Hasid said "Thanks; thanks so much," but we were away too, all of us with hoods raised, away from each other, down the white-packed street, bent into the blizzard. None of us said goodbye.

I know I should have said goodbye.

My People Sleeping - "Take Anything". [buy/MySpace]

I could rattle off some shit about stepping through mirrors and the steam of a kettle, but all I really want to say is: you wonder if all it takes is choice to make something easier. You decide: ok, and then it is; you shed your skin like you're just taking off a shirt.

Here's a song in shades of hope and loss. The organ and guitars are just struts for the singers to stand on, things to cast shadows upon their faces. They sing different kind of songs. They sing separate and together. But they are not singing for each other. (Unless they choose to be.)

Maybe if you step through the mirror, you can hold your face right up against the steam.

My People Sleeping do not sound anything like Fleetwood Mac, but this is the picture their press release paints, these days: a gang of former lovers, and fireflies flying. I am excited to see what their band is, these days, when they play the CD release for Feye this Friday. It is in Montreal, at Sala Rossa, and they will be accompanied by three great opening acts: Adam & the Amethysts (with new band, new songs), Mountain Man Pat Jordache (Patrick from Sister Suvi), and North, My Love (Katherine Peacock, of Mussaver, Coal Choir, Dorien Hatchet, and formerly My People Sleeping). It costs just $8 ($7 more gets you the album) and if you live here, you should go.

(There's another fine concert on Saturday night, with Jane Vain, Mixylodian and Mountain Man Pat Jordache again. It's at Green Room.)

---

Do listen to: Gorilla vs Bear's favourite songs of 2009.

(original photo source unknown, thanks sirhc)

WHO WON THE LONGEST ROAD?

Sleigh Bells - "Ring Ring". Didn't hear this until late last week, but here's a song better than Sleigh Bells' late-breaking addition to my Best of 2009 list. Loose-fitting indie pop that's been weaned on r&b, that's got the nimblest little groove. "Ring Ring" is breath & snap & jingle, like the office Xmas party that might go late, that goes late, with the girls you weren't sure would come; there they are; hi. It's a winter-ready raspberry jam. [Sleigh Bells' MySpace]

Beyonce - "Halo". A few days ago, I listened to this song as I walked home. First I heard it from a car stopped at a red light, sound coming cloudy through the windows. I heard it and thought yes, slipped my headphones on, chose the song with fingers stinging in the cold. Made private, the song changed. Standing at the intersection, hearing Beyonce on the radio, I had heard a hit: a public ballad, for the whole world to share. These moments later, walking alone - it was an intimate thing. I was staggering a little, because of different things, and "Halo"'s drums were my demolitions. I felt them like two-hundred tomorrows, winking shut. And they were quieter than I expected. [Thanks, Neva / BUY]

(photo source)

Music Had Its Place

Tangerine Dream - "The Dream is Always the Same"

I'm getting ready for a fight. I'm taping up my hands, and chalking up my hands. I'm splashing cold water on my face and I'm in a basement locker room. Where the paint on the concrete is so thick it's all smooth and soft looking. I'm looking in the mirror and I'm telling myself not to be scared. For some reason I know it's a two-way mirror, or is it a one-way mirror, there's someone behind it watching me, and I know that I'm putting on the act for them. I tape up my hands and punch the air and practice flinging the sweat away. I hide my bag under the bench, I don't want to have to worry about someone stealing my keys when I'm fighting. I can hear the commentator talking about me, for some reason they've wired the commentators down into the basement, and he's talking about me. And he's saying I'm going to get pummeled, he's reading my obituary already. "He was a nice man, he won forty dollars in the lottery, not much of a fighter. That ol' dog's gonna tear him up." It was true, I wasn't much of a fighter. Not at all, really. I saw my TA from Comparative History walk by and I knew it was time to fight. He, his name was Gavin I think and there was a rumour he jerked off on a girl in the tutorial, he led me slowly up to ring, and I got in, and everything was about to begin. Only there was just a cloth-covered figure in the other corner. Like the way they cover statues in comic books, with like a purple silk cloak, and he was just waiting there, stock still underneath. They announced me, they got my weight wrong they said 140 and I'm actually 148, and then they announced the other fighter. They pulled the silk sheet away, and underneath was an old dog. Like an actual old dog, they wanted me to fight an old dog. The bell rang and we advanced on each other and he was baring his fangs. As we get closer and closer, I just keep thinking, "This isn't fair, I shouldn't be fighting this old dog, it's mean. I'll kill it." I was so worried about killing this old dog, as if I were anywhere near as strong as a dog, that I totally let my guard down. And he jumps up and bites my neck and even as he's putting his teeth in I'm thinking, "See, he should get a chance to kill me, he's just an old dog." And then it all wells up so quick that I wake up.

[Buy]

--

Paul F. Tompkins - "The Sink and The Mirror"

Paul F. Tompkins has a new album out called Freak Wharf. It's full of his casual, endearing, approachable style, and like all top-form comedians, makes it look easy. He's completely comfortable, and that only makes him stronger. Almost impossibly, he has followed up Impersonal with an album of equal calibre.

[Buy from A Special Thing Records]

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Also: The season finale of The Bitter End went up yesterday. And two of the creators were interviewed yesterday on Canada's most popular entertainment radio magazine, Q. <--(listen to the podcast of the show)

BEST SONGS OF 2009

These are my 75 favourite songs of 2009: songs I love more than peaches & pears.

I follow one arbitrary rule: that no artist may be listed twice.

I made similar lists in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Of course this year I did the daftest thing and expanded from fiftysomething to 75 best tunes. Guys, I had to.

The best way to browse this list is to click the little arrow beside each song and then to listen as you read. The things you like you can then download by right- or ctrl-clicking with your mouse.

You can also download a complete zip of the 75 songs here [315mb], via InfiniteMb.

Don't forget: Dan listed his favourite albums of the year here yesterday.

Please buy albums, singles and EPs by bands that you enjoy. Whenever possible, I've included links to make purchases. In some cases, Said the Gramophone will get a small commission. We've also set something up with the fine mail-order Insound: Add the coupon code STGsongsof09 to any order and receive 10% off (expires Jan 30). Hurray!

1. Sharon Van Etten - "Much More Than That" [buy]
   In a year of so many songs, I don't know why it is that my favourite is a thing of voices and acoustic guitar, improperly recorded. And yet in certain ways, I do know: it is about words, tune, the way this melancholy yearns toward beauty. Sharon asks a question I ask myself every day. // I have wondered it often. Watching the wind push down a plastic chair. Standing and holding my grandfather's hand. Seeing a girl turn away. I have wondered this as I stared at a padlock; as I stared at a key; as I woke, at 6:45am, to the bleep of an alarm. There are no words, I thought at these moments; and always I ask if it is the words that are lacking or I who lacks them; and like Sharon Van Etten I wonder if I can improve, if I can become better, if one day I will have words for everything. If I will be able to say I love you in a way that speaks its every leap and ridge; if I will be able to say I'm sorry with words that do not tremble or glow; if I will have another word for darling, a better word, hidden and small, and dawning.
2. El Perro Del Mar - "Change of Heart" [buy]
   A glossed and despairing kind of Fleetwood Mac, I wrote. Earlier I tried (and failed) to tell this song as a story. The song doesn't need all that gabbing. It tells its own tale in drums and flicks of guitar, soft light, a gorgeous doom.
3. Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks" [buy]
   It's like the label suits took Grizzly Bear aside, stubbed out their cigars, and said, "Give us a hit!" The band built this glad, voracious tune with swirling voices, cymbal smashes, struts of ringing piano. Yet there's also something creeping in the corners, green and malevolent, alive and deadly, as if the ivy is taking over the house.
4. Dirty Projectors - "No Intention" [buy]
   "No Intention" showcases the Dirty Projectors as summer pop band, as streamers in a park ... But as airy as it feels, (like Spoon on a beach, or the instrumental middle-eight of Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa",) "No Intention" is virtuosic, utterly intricate. The arrangement of voices, of fingers on guitar-strings, of rhythmic twitch and back-step ... snapping sunshine out of the sky.
5. Drake ft. R. Kelly - "Best I Ever Had (Skeemix)" [unreleased - MySpace]
   It's the same story: foul-mouthed & silly, AutoTuned & crass, and yet (or rather: and therefore) a chorus you want to sing to your darling, you desperately do; and if you don't have a darling, you wish you did, just for this.
6. Clues - "Approach the Throne" [buy]
   I tried writing about this song in April, talking about friends and rivals, crowns, a molotov cocktail thrown at a tree-house. Someone in the comments complained, You forgot to mention Fugazi. This album is among the very best of the year.
7. Girls - "Hellhole Ratrace" [buy]
   This is a better song than "Lust For Life" (the other highlight from Girls' hearty, lusty debut), but it's also more hidden. It smiles and keeps itself secret. Girls sing the song three times before you see what the song really is, there behind the wine-stained melody, the jingle-bells, that golden guitar. Then, at last, they lift up the sky and let the roaring starlight in. // I tried to write "Hellhole Ratrace" as a short story, here.
8. Micachu & the Shapes - "Golden Phone" [buy]
   With a ting, a stutter and three bongs, Micachu introduces herself; and then with oohs, organ, more bongs - she introduces herself again. And yet again, this time with handclaps, buzzes, balloon-squeak & guitar. What we learn: She's from London. She's a genius. And here's a daft and broken pop song, a violent collage, a phone left off the hook. One of the year's most thrilling new acts.
9. Twin Sister - "I Want A House" [free EP]
   The first half of this song is about how good it would be to move in with your lover. It's coo and thump, swing and lick; it's blue and rose. And then the second half of this song is about what it's like once you've moved in. It's a paradise in windchime and bassline, hair on pillow and ice in glass. I can't help but imagine Daft Punk passed out, unconscious; and in that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly reverie, laying in bed, the sun touches the drapes, touches the floor, leaves fingerprints on yr chest.
10. Fever Ray - "If I Had A Heart" [buy]
    Probably the best show I saw this year; and yet not because I learned something more about Karin Dreijer, one half of The Knife; no, I left knowing less. I went into a concert-hall and when I came out, these songs had lost their dressings of fact and bio. They reached me even more deeply, directly, like a lover glimpsed in a nightmare.
11. Tune-Yards - "HATARI" [buy]
    For us, this album came out last year - and "FIYA" was the fifth-best tune of the whole damn year. But 2009 was Merrill's - celebrated, touring, signed to 4AD and stunning everyone silly. So I can't let this go, can't ignore a friend. Here: "HATARI". A Montrealer who was neither born here nor dwells here, singing five different kinds of beautiful YES. Oui.
12. The-Dream - "Rockin' That Shit" [buy]
    Similar to Drake's "Best I Ever Had", "Rockin' That Shit" takes a relatively seedy lyric - in this case, "she rockin' that shit / like / oooh oooh" - and bathes it in beauty. Atlanta singer-producer The-Dream is 2009's virtuoso of synth, laying the same blurry, dawny, shimmery sounds across dozens of tracks. He's like a man with a briefcase full of sunsets. (Thanks, Tyler.)
13. Bear In Heaven - "Lovesick Teenagers" [buy]
    Beast Rest Forth Mouth is an album of bled bytes, vomitted pixels, tears of pure #@&;(*xE%. Synths stream like paint from a spraygun, stars from Zeus's cock, the mantra from a monk's mouth. Drums like immutable physical laws; the facts which dictate everything else. (See: Bear In Heaven's StG guest-post.)
14. The xx- "Islands" [buy]
    A song that proves the value of restraint - the things you can do with two voices, bass, guitar, the snap of drums. Matte, white-hot, neither too little nor too much.
15. Major Lazer t. Vybz Kartel - "Pon de Floor" [buy]
    For making us dance, it's a time-honoured formula: utter discipline joined with demented bounce. Rarely do we hear something so magnificent, so dumb, so precise.
16. Here We Go Magic - "Fangela" [buy]
    Luke Temple's work as Here We Go Magic recalls the Beta Band, Paul Simon and Panda Bear, but its strength isn't in its allusions: it's in its plain musicality. "Fangela" is synth shuffle, dusty voice, and a melody that's simply worth singing. (Previously.)
17. Shakira - "She Wolf" [buy]
    A killer track, with Shakira trying at least three different modes: (1) the song's happy principal flounce, Shakira a cyborg Dolores O'Riordan; (2) Shakira's occasional lycanthropy, transforming into a breathy sex animal (naturally, this is the principal interest of the song's video); (3) gentle, dewy Shakira - the one who quietly calls "awoo!" and skips along to "She Wolf"'s closing strings. And no complaints here.
18. Shelby Sifers - "Are You Devo? (Spirituals sweet remix)" [buy charity single]
    The Spirituals fill this beautiful song with bells, rings, swishes, claps, drums; they fill it with a lush pitterpat of glimmers, crashes, gleams. It's a remix that sounds like a kingdom falling down the stairs, a chandelier in the wind, a jazz combo at sea, a heart spun silver. It's the sound, I think, perhaps, of being in love.
19. Andrew Cedermark - "Hard Livin" [buy]
    The trouble with most of this lo-fi shitgaze stuff, the stuff of 2009 for many kids, the Wavveses and Dum Dum Girlses et al, et alas, is that the sound is only rad if the songs are radder. Double-up a tune if you're dressing it in a lace of distortion. Times New Viking's "Devo & Wine" did that in 2007, brilliantly, and Cedermark does too - but this is a dusty, rusty song, more Neil Young than punk-rock; and god bless him for the cymbal crashing coda, the thing that kicks this from nostalgia into downright masterpiece.
20. Young Galaxy - "Destroyer" [buy]
    My favourite track on Invisible Republic has continued to shift in the ice-flow, but we're talking about singles here, stand-alone songs to come blooming from gramophones, and for now "Destroyer" receives the prize. It's a thundering pop-song, arena-ready, craning and adamant. As Catherine and Steve sing that ringing chorus, the whole world seems to be collapsing. (No wait, not collapsing - lunging toward dust.)
21. Burning Hearts - "I Lost My Colour Vision" [buy]
    Leave it to the Swedes Finns to take a girl-group shuffle and a basket of keyboards (plus a subtle nod to "Tainted Love") and create something absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely terrific. Perfect lyrics, a beguiling voice, one watercolour earworm hook.
22. Emperor X - "A Violent Translation of the Concordia Headscarp" [free download [008]]
    Emperor X is one of my favourite discoveries of all 2009. A lo-fi songwriter from Jacksonville, FL, he makes songs with collage, voice, mere fingers on strings. There are others who have experimented with similar sounds (The Microphones, Animal Collective, Francois Virot), but in the best instants of Blythe Archives II, Chad Matheny's whirling heart-on-sleeve may be even better. These songs are short, bleated, wilder than they can at first seem; ripple flags, power mills, rend umbrellas.
23. Cryptacize - "The Cage" [buy]
    Wrote Dan: I feel as if this song were left for me. Like Deerhoof (my roommate now?) was leaving the house, hair up in a huge beehive, dressed in venetian blinds and collectible quarters, headed out to a pre-choreographed dance party, well-rehearsed for weeks, and she thought, with one shoe on, eyes already on her coat, "Oh, Dan would like this."
24. The National - "So Far Around the Bend" [buy]
    The National's usual melancholy, but here they are hanging with some of their rarer friends - clarinetists, flautists, string players. This in itself doesn't matter, but the arrangement is gorgeou- wait, no, not "gorgeous", "gorgeous" is ho-hum duh weak standard middle-Sufjan shit, the compliment lobbed by every loser who's never listened to Shostakovich but who bought a Clogs album. No, "So Far Around The Bend" isn't gorgeous: it's clever, beautiful, precise as a knife-fight. It clocks in at just 3:43 and there's no waste. And the words? They're great, they're prescient, they're 2009: Praying for Pavement to get back together.
25. Animal Collective - "My Girls" [buy]
    Merriweather Post Pavilion's shiniest coin - the moment when Animal Collective's maniacal insistence & timbric persistence get anchored to a sparkling set of hooks. (Dan, previously.)
26. Sister Suvi - "Deadwood" [buy]
    I couldn't get enough of this band. Now, they have dissolved. And so I listen to songs like this, "The Lot", "Desolation", "Lightning Train" and "Golden". And I'm still hungry. We took our bikes to the quarry, threw on our walkmen, went down deep. In the gloom we listened to Billy Joel, Pavement, mined copper and zinc. We came out with our jean-jacket pockets full. We biked back to my place, stopping for dark beer and honeycomb toffee. We listened to the Velvet Underground's Loaded and smiled and laughed, window open, crows weaving in murders outside my open window, and with our metals spread flat before us we hammered, hammered, hammered our armour until it was brass.
27. Kid Cudi ft. Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Common & A-trak - "Make Her Say" [buy]
    I'm glad for the costumery (as pop-star uniform goes, it beats bellybutton rings), and I like some of the choruses, but I am still unsmitten with the whole cloth of Lady Gaga's songs. Kid Cudi has shrugged off such meditations, stolen a few of Gaga's best stutters, and tossed it into a marvelous, raunchy, rhyme-rich cut. So craftily put together, tight and slack at the same time.
28. Flaming Lips - "Watching the Planets" [buy]
    It's not that the Flaming Lips went back to their old sound - it's that they went back to their old habit of being astonishing. For Embryonic, they set aside the last decade's sour pop lullabies; instead they made something loose and cavernous, glimmering and secret. They rattled bones, chipped teeth, blew out the EQ. Here, with Karen O cooing down a wire, the Flaming Lips raze every dumb young idea to the ground.
29. Rattail - "Green Go" [unreleased - website]
    Tumbling drums, blurry guitar and a voice that slurs & slips from red- to amber- to green-lit. The muddy production evokes all the nausea of new love and deep crush, but beyond the nautical sway it's a song with jokes & pluck - look out for the "underwater part". (See also Dan's fiction about this song.)
30. Dirty Projectors and David Byrne - "Knotty Pine" [buy]
    Hear it as Dirty Pros without their deliberate esoterica, or as David Byrne with a brilliant new band; me I just hear that piano riff, like a sound out of MS Windows, my ramshackle heart going 'ping' as it reboots.
31. Rihanna ft. The-Dream - "Hatin' on the Club" [unreleased - website]
    When your boyfriend arrives, that asshole in sunglasses, you don't go with him. You don't go out. You fold your arms and mouth the words "No way." Instead, as he watches you through the patio doors, you drink. ... One by one you twist open the lids of the jars, your hold them up to him, and then with the sun nooning through to you you drink that sky up, drink it in front of him, in glinting gulps.
32. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Hysteric" [buy]
    Maybe I overdosed on this song as the months wore on, but it's the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' best since "Maps", something burnished and polished and burnished again.
33. Julie Doiron - "When Brakes Get Wet" [buy]
    Months ago, this song came out, and it's short and perfect, and Dan wrote to me and said "it's amazing" and I said yes it is; and I probably used all-caps; but we didn't post about it because Julie's label, Jagjaguwar, only lets you post certain "official release" mp3s, which is what most blogs do I guess; but we wanted to post about "When Brakes Get Wet", and they said no; and Jagjaguwar is a wonderful label so we didn't want to make them mad; even though they are so wrong about that mp3 thing; I mean did you read that the give-away mp3 is always, always albums' best-selling song?; but anyway, now they say we can post about "When Brakes Get Wet", and so here we are, and it's short and beautiful, barely slipping on the rainy street, starsoaked, gentle, plain, perfect.
34. Matias Aguayo - "Rollerskate (radio edit)" [buy]
    Cat made of grated ginger; chase her across town. Flit over fences, dive under gates, climb up ivy, slip into open windows. Steal silver necklaces, little diamonds, whole satchels full of catnip. We give lovers tiny kisses as they lay in their beds, breath rising &' falling, then me and my cat of grated ginger leap onto widowsill and out, skimming the clothesline, gleaming in the white sun.
35. Wild Beasts - "All the King's Men" [buy]
    They're in like a pack of rats, handsome and gray. They weave between the glitter-balls, stalk up and down the bar. They slip a gift into every girl's pocket; flower-petals, pills, heavy gold coins. They never whisper; they murmur just loud enough for the girls to lean in close. They have perfect teeth and eyes like little stones. Did you see that bloke? says Mary to Ella, tongue & teeth. He reminds me of stepping into a cold lake.
36. Blackout Beach - "Cloud of Evil" [buy]
    "Cloud of Evil" is from one of the year's very best (and quietest-kept) albums. Frog Eyes' Carey Mercer has made something out of myth, reverb, black pools, velvet, electric guitar and treasure. Drowning dreams.
37. Iron & Wine - "The Trapeze Swinger" [buy]
    I find it hard to write anything about "The Trapeze Singer" because Garrincha already wrote it better, en français, for la Blogotheque. I can write this: that I am no great fan of Iron & Wine, finding Sam Beam too often nice and too rarely scalding. I can write this: that this song would rank higher were it not for that damned wood-block. And I can write this: that some songs have the power to heal.
38. Vic Chesnutt - "Flirted With You All My Life" [buy]
    Together with Fugazi's Guy Picciotto and members of Silver Mt. Zion, Chesnutt writes a pretty, limber love-song to death. No, I am not ready, he sings, with the slightest note of apology. (Previously.)
39. HIGHLIFE - "F KENYA RIP" [unreleased - MySpace]
    These hot highlife riffs are not right for this mountainous, temperate zone; they are too summered, glittering and seashell. But I don't care, here in the Henriquez. ... Here in my craft I will open the windows and let the cool air in - let "F KENYA RIP" go dancing out to the crags and glacial lakes, to the perked ears of antlered beasts.
40. Withered Hand - "Hard On" [buy]
    "Hard On" is ultimately about erections, but mostly it's about the intersection between yearning and doing ... The chant keeps changing, with words like flashpaper. Listen to the way he sings man, good, could, knife, car, go, FM radio, guitars, Thin Lizzy, pen, John Updike, hard-on. Each one, carelessly cast, could start a housefire. Song originally written by Charles Latham.
41. Yeasayer - "Tightrope" [buy]
    The first time I heard this song was in Yeasayer's marvelous Take-Away Show (it's the second video). There, its strum and bottle-clink becomes a vessel for time-travel, for walking backward along footprints. This image has stayed with me: "Tightrope" is the sound for turning back the calendar-page, uncrossing those dates, going back to before you found out it could all still go wrong.
42. Smith Westerns - "Tonight" [buy]
    I imagine headlamped workers, in a potash mine or something, who suddenly hear music. It's below and ahead of them, on the other side of the rock. So they raise their pick-axes and pick-axe, chipping stone, hammering away, hefting electric drills and diamond-head bores. They delve deeper and deeper into the subterranean, chasing that cavernous sound, that deep well rhythm & blues, that lost hit. (Dan, previously.)
43. Speech Debelle - "Spinnin'" [buy]
    On tracks like this, Speech Debelle shows she has enough gleam to go around; she's gleaming so hard that her running shoes, her chewing gum, the creases between her knuckles gleam. Optimism that's a little banal, sure, but ratatat drumstick whoop, yes yes, just the thing for here.
44. Mirah - "The River" [buy]
    Slow and certain, this is the highlight of (A)Spera and proof of Mirah's renewal, the way she has grown new leaves & bark. "The River" starts soft, with a slow, grim flowering of woodwinds and feedback. It's a gentle thing, in shadow.
45. Nurses - "Technicolor" [buy]
    Squawky, folky and psychedelic, but Nurses' best trick is the way they recorded this tune. It's careful without being aniseptic, intimate without being claustrophobic, open without being echoey. It's the party with only six attendees that still, somehow, turns out great.
46. Noah and the Whale - "Blue Skies" [buy]
    Noah and the Whale's wonderful, broken-hearted new album has been criticised for its lyrics, rife with cliché. But these critics seem to be forgetting that break-ups are just cliché upon cliché - an argument by the window and then walking home in the rain. There's nothing false about tired truths; and it's their familiarity that makes them sting.
47. Cuddle Magic - "Expectations" [unreleased - site]
    This is a song by Cuddle Magic, dumb and handsome, clever and plain, beautiful as anything you decide you are yes going to treasure. Oh and it's a break-up song with whistling.
48. The Daredevil Christopher Wright - "Clouds" [buy]
    Daredevil Christopher Wright performed one of the best concerts I saw in 2009 - and certainly the most unexpectedly jaw-dropping one. A band of nobodies from Wisconsin, whipping us into thrills. A take on folk-rock that's muscular, playful, rich with cymbal, handclap and three-part harmony. (Previously.)
49. Ah Holly Faml'y - "All Unfolding" [buy]
    Something magic (and surprisingly robust) in the mix of Jeremy Faulkner's geriatric vocals and his backing ladies' sashay. All that baroque flutey stuff has almost got some swing. Hypnotic. (Thanks so much, Amy.)
50. Rye Rye ft. MIA - "Bang" [buy]
    It ain't MIA that makes this song worthwhile - no it's that crazed relentless drum-beat, Rye Rye's sloppy & glowering rap. You're dead.
51. Woods - "The Dark" [buy]
    On "The Dark", Woods strike the perfect balance between slack and frenzy, making a pop song that seems concentrated and lazy at the same time.
52. Slaraffenland - "Away" [buy]
    Like a roll of film running back and forth behind a projector's lens. Handclaps, clarinet, horns, drums, piano, noise.
53. Devendra Banhart - "Baby" [buy]
    When I listen to Devendra Banhart's "Baby", my mush falters, my defenses break down; I swoon. I love it and I can't help it. No, Devendra is not singing about lending people teeth. Yes, he is sometimes on TMZ, arm-in-arm with a starlet. Maybe, his last x releases have sucked. And this is his major-label debut! But yes, no, maybe, oh oh oh: this is as self-evident as a cute kitty-cat sneezing. This is a gentle little cooing :)
54. Cain & Abels - "My Life Is Easy" [buy t-shirt]
    A song that seems at first too diffuse, not-quite-there, until that moment in the second half when the clutter is just taken away (and slowly, slowly put back in). A filigree of electric guitar, drumroll after drumroll, the title called out before a fanfare of heartfelt rock'n'roll. (Thanks, Mark and Rochelle.)
55. The Horrors - "Sea Within A Sea" [buy]
    A two-part suite, the second more exciting than the first; the world telescopes out, "Baba O'Riley" keyboards under Faris Badwan's Joy Division groan; then the whole thing combusts, smouldering down to bare white ash.
56. Kelis - "Acapella" [unreleased - website]
    A strange song for Kelis, hardly R&B, much closer to Massive Attack's "Teardrop" than to "Milkshake". (But still, uh, happy.) The chorus is the highlight, in word and melody; but heck, the whole track''s great. And not acapella.
57. Bill Callahan - "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" [buy]
    Smog covers Kath Bloom, rendering the song in late-night slows. (Thanks for the reminder, D'Arcy.)
58. Land of Talk - "Sixteen Asterisk" [buy]
    Liz Powell furiously doesn't give a shit. (Previously.)
59. Haunted House - "Sierra Trail" [buy]
    And there were bass on bass and whale-shark on keys and the lead singer was some kind of crayfish, wild-eyed and furious, raging at us through a seaweedy warble, speaking English backwards in a way that trawled our hearts. The band trundled over the same beautiful chords, part 80s chintz and part 00s noise, like an FM radio drowning in an aquarium, like Minneapolis getting eaten by a black hole, like all my longings getting tied to my old tape-decks.
60. Swan Lake - "Paper Lace" [buy]
    Highlight of the latest team-up by Destroyer's Dan Bejar, Blackout Beach's Carey Mercer and Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug; Bejar's pal "Jackie" shows up, but this track was written by Krug (and revisited on this year's Sunset Rubdown record). My favourite parts are the guitar solos, electric and acoustic, almost non-existent, like x-rays.
61. Daniel Johnston - "Mind Movies" [buy]
    I can't write about this better than Dan did, as he reflected on marshmallow islands.
62. Bon Iver - "Blood Bank" [buy]
    Justin Vernon sets aside cryptic metaphor and instead he tells a story. It's noisy, it's quiet, it's pretty; and as usual, I can't tell if it's happy or it's sad.
63. Blame Ringo - "Garble Arch" [buy]
    In a year where everyone pulled out their old new Beatles albums, it makes me very happy to find three minutes of plain, kindly pop that's nearly as good as the stuff they used to make.
64. Mount Eerie - "Ancient Questions" [buy]
    Earlier this year, I wrote about a different song from Wind's Poem (an excellent album). The reason I didn't write about this song, which is better, is that it didn't sound better when I listened to it as an MP3. It was only later, hearing "Ancient Questions" on vinyl, that I discovered what I had missed. This MP3 can't express it - the electric guitar groove is too deep in the mix, the nothingness too high. So, uh, go buy the LP.
65. Nneka - "Heartbeat" [buy]
    A wonderful song, but Nneka also sings it wonderfully - makes the chorus's stumbling drums second to her own voice, makes her own verse second to that h-h-h-h-heartbeat.
66. The Antlers - "Two" [buy]
    A song not about death but about dying. Horrible, gorgeous, far too forceful to be miserable. (Previously.)
67. Ola Podrida - "Donkey" [buy]
    David Wingo strums and sings louder & louder, and yet it's not because of mere urgency, the wish to communicate that he cares. He has to yell because there is howling. He has to raise his voice over roars, whirlwinds, tides. This doom is murmured in creak & drone.
68. Discovery - "It's Not My Fault (It's My Fault)" [buy]
    Dancefloor-smooved, with kevlar snaps and testtube bells ... The song's wry, faux-frustration reminds me of a series of cold drinks on a hot terrasse, julep after julep, and every time my girlfriend brings me another I just spill it out on the sidewalk, watch the caterpillars crawl across the icecubes.
69. Elfin Saddle - "The Bringer" [buy]
    Ramshackle and kind, Elfin Saddle might be the eeriest band in Montreal. ... Hear it all in "The Bringer"'s grim, sorcerous crescendo: slow promises, Appalachian groans, memories of old, weird Japan. There's none of night's comfort, here. There's nowhere to hide. This is the fearsome creep of daylight.
70. Patrick Watson - "Big Bird In A Small Cage" [buy]
    Watson in a duet with Katie Moore (he hoped for Dolly Parton). It's lovely as a bowl of fruit.
71. Bombadil - "Sad Birthday" [buy]
    A happy song about a sad birthday - sunburst and lime-wedge, summer folk and afternoon pop. (Previously.)
72. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - "Natural Light" [buy]
    In this song of just 2min24, Casiotone doesn't give us enough time to fall in love with the keyboard riff. Wait, wait, wait - yes he does. Yes, I'm already in love with it.
73. Abe Vigoda - "Wild Heart" [buy]
    Abe Vigoda cover Stevie Nicks' backstage version of "Wild Heart". It's unwise, it's doomed. As Dan wrote: I sold everything to get this many chips, sold my bike, my computer, even my winter boots. I take a free drink and head to the high-rollers' hallway, my pant cuffs wet with melting snow ... I introduce myself to everyone, which I shouldn't do, I shouldn't do that. ... It takes about ten minutes but I get all the chips on the table, and a crowd has gathered by this point. "He's awesome," I heard one lady say, which I try not to think about. I push my chips to the center of the table, somewhere among the numbers, and I suddenly wonder how long it would take to have a portrait of myself painted, how could I sit still for that long? The dealer waves his hand over the chips like he's casting some kind of spell, and with a wink, "no more bets."
74. Emmy the Great - "MIA" [buy]
    Don't listen to this song because the chorus talks about M.I.A. - listen to it for the weird little cuckoo pipes. I mean the "LOO-la, loo-LA" at the corners of the lines, notes whose instrument I can't trace, sounds that seem at first like sweet Hello!s, like signposts of twee, and then gradually change into something else. Because this gentle song is ultimately a song about things being wrong, wrong as in not-right, and the weird little cuckoo pipes are the only musical marker of this. They turn in place and become very mildly discordant, just one step off, and to me it's the perfect sound for nostalgia soured, & dreams' sudden sunset.
75. Sleigh Bells - "Crown on the Ground" [unreleased - MySpace]
    Sleigh Bells call this a demo, say they're going to re-record it. This better not mean they are gonna clean it up. Because right now the distortion crunches like solid demolition rainbow, the synths blast like Care Bear stare, the whole thing wallops like an unfiltered solar flare to the heart. Uh.. (Thanks, Neva.)

Finally - 75 is an arbitrary cut-off. 2009 had wagon-loads of great songs, heaps and stacks of them, by everyone from Andrew Bird to Jason Derulo. Said the Gramophone spent the year writing about them, and writing about older songs too, old secrets kept in boxes. If you're new to the site, please come again (or subscribe)! We update almost every weekday, penning tales about the songs we love. Thanks for reading, sorry for the rushed writing, sorry for any broken links, and happy, happy, happy holidaze.

Quilted Quiet: Dan's Top Albums of 2009

Sweet readers, due to conditions beyond my control, I can't go into detail on my favourite records this year. Fortunately, I've gone into detail in the past so please check out the posts associated with each record, and if you like the song, buy the album, because they are worth it. All mp3s have been re-upped.

These are my 12 favourite albums of 2009, you may have heard of them, you may have them, but if you're unfamiliar, I hope you discover something you love because these are treasures.

Tune-Yards - Bird Brains (post) [Buy]
Blackout Beach - Skin of Evil (post) [Buy]
Clues - Clues (post) [Buy]
Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away (post) [Buy]
Swan Lake - Enemy Mine (post) [Buy]
Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (Bitter End ep. 2) [Buy]
Capybara - Try Brother (post) [Buy]
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers (post) [Buy]
Digital Leather - Warm Brother (post) [Buy]
Floating Action - Floating Action (post) [Buy]
Jeff the Brotherhood - Heavy Days (post) [Buy]
Smith Westerns - Smith Westerns (post) [Buy]

Also, Sean's best-of tomorrow. buckle up.

(image source)