Tex Plush's Favorite Albums of 2009

13. God Help The Girl
Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch has made an album with all female singers, fantastic vocal and string arrangements, and a slight musical theater bent. In addition to some great new songs, this album includes reimaginings of a couple tracks off of The Life Pursuit - a B&S album with fantastic songwriting that was fatally wounded by poor production values (I literally can't listen to TLP anymore because of the way the snare drum sounds). Thanks, Stuart, for saving this song in particular from the rubbish bin:

12. Grizzly Bear - Vecatamist
11. Volcano Choir - Unmap
Bon Iver teamed up with a noise/glitch rock outfit called A Collection of Colonies of Bees. This track is one of the most song-oriented tracks off the album - the rest is often formless and instrumental, but always beautiful and worth listening to while you stare out the window at the snow. Not for nothing, this album also proves to me that To Emma, Forever Ago wasn't a fluke, even if he does sound more and more like Chris Martin every time I hear him.

10. The xx - xx
Super hypnotic, late, late, late-night, indie rock booty call music. Don't laugh until you try it at 3am with your lady.

9. Rick Ross - Deeper Than Rap
My favorite rap album of the year. Solid front to back and smoove RnB hooks aplenty:

8. Them Crooked Vultures - S/T
7. Vetiver - Tight Knit
A more calming record did not exist for me this year. Here's one of the more upbeat tracks:

6. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
Yo La Tengo really does get better with age. I like their earlier albums for sure, but on their last two they've hit on a mixtape strategy that really plays to their strengths - every song sounds totally different from the last. It was hard to pick one song that represented the record because, well, NO song represents the entire record. From 15 minute long noise rock epics to motown love anthems, everything you want is here. And it is never redundant.

5. Fruit Bats - The Ruminant Band
4. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
3. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

2. Jim O'Rourke - The Visitor
Get it. Love it. It's all instrumental and a return to a semi-pop direction (even if the album is a single track), recorded in Jim's apartment in Japan with him playing all the instruments. It sounds amazing on vinyl. You should come over and listen to it.

1. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
I don't know what else I can say about this band. They are quite simply the most innovative and exciting rock band making records today. If they remain on the trajectory of their last two albums, I would not be surprised to see them get as big as Radiohead or Wilco. I've always understood that an eccentric vocalist can sink a band for people - and Dirty Projectors certainly has one of those, even if Longstreth has all but eliminated the more divisive elements of his singing on their latest masterpiece. I also understand reticence to bow to the alter of hipster pretension. But go see these guys live while they're still playing rooms small enough for you to see fingers on the fretboards. You'll come away believing that these guys are the real deal, and humble enough to take what they're doing to the next stage. They can play the shit out of their instruments, and the singing must be seen to be believed. Bitte Orca is not perfect, but it comes close enough to be absolutely jaw-dropping. They don't make 'em like this anymore, kids.

For Your Consideration: Them Crooked Vultures

This is mostly for Via Chicago I suspect, but I am solidly in favor of the debut album from supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones. Come for the Zeppelin rehash, stay for the Queens of the Stone Age. I don't get sound on this computer, so let me know if these links don't work right.

For Your Consideration

I must entirely unironically call this my favorite video of the year.

Also, a topic for discussion: against all odds, will Christmas in the Heart turn out to be the best Bob Dylan release of 2009? The more I hear it (and I actually don't yet own it in its entirety) the more hypnotic it becomes.

Well, they're already at it

Looks like music list-making season is underway. Does it get earlier every year, like the just post-Halloween Christmas decorations at Macy's?

I'm afraid I'm going to have a hard time keeping up this year. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard even one of the albums on the AV Club's list all the way through.

You Know What Band I Take For Granted?

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Listening to some of the songs on their new live anthology reminded me how impressed I was with them as Johnny Cash's backing band on American Recordings 2. And then it reminded me how I periodically get impressed with them again, and then forget about them, taking them for granted as just another stitch in the FM radio quilt of sound that has surrounded me for as long as I can remember.

Top Ten Lists

Are we doing Best of the Decade as well as Best of the Year? I'm pretty sure we have to. Do we want to do year first, then decade or decade first, and then year? I liked all of the "for your considerations" last year -- I can't remember how early that started, but it's already almost Thanksgiving.

Jon Stewart blows my mind yet again...

This clip is fairly amusing all the way through, but it's around 3:45 that it becomes truly transcendent.

For some reason it won't embed. Here's the link:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-november-19-2009/gaywatch---peter-vadala---william-phillips

Nothin'

For all you Townes Van Zandt fans, check out the beginning of this video for his utterly unexpected commentary on the origins of the song "Nothin'"



"Good ol' Nikos". I think it actually adds an interesting new dimension to the song...or maybe it's just weird as hell. Either way, every insight you get into the man just makes him that much more complicated and fascinating.