Green Go - Borders

Like I’ve mentioned before, music in 2009 kind of kicked 2008’s ass. Personally, it was really difficult to narrow lists down, so much so that I’ve created separate categories at the bottom, just because I didn’t find it fair to categorize some with the other. For example, putting the Dark Was the Night or Friends In Bellwoods compilations in my list just wouldn’t be fair because it’ll kick everyone else’s ass. But regardless, what I’m trying to get at was 2009 was a good year and kind of shines a light of optimism as we head into 2010. Good job, everyone! Here’s my best of 2009 (in no particular order or rank):

The Balconies – The Balconies

If you didn’t guess this one by now, you clearly don’t read this blog enough. I don’t think I’ve shut up about The Balconies’ debut album since August, when I picked it up at one of their shows. This Ottawa trio’s self-titled debut album is packed with pop-rock punch from beginning to end, arguably one of the catchiest records of the year. Definitely the most exciting new band of 2009; I can only imagine the good things that are ahead for the Balconies in 2010.

May I Suggest: “300 Pages”, “Battle Royale”, “Ghost Fever”

Dan Mangan – Nice, Nice, Very Nice

Dan Mangan, I find, has been a hit or miss this year – either you love him or you find him utterly boring. But what some has perceived as dull and unexciting, I see as simplistic and quite amazing. Sure, Mangan isn’t breaking ground on anything new; his acoustic singer-songwriter card is quite common among the sea of music we drown in today but there’s a reason this particular album has risen above the rest, even winning him Artist of the Year at this year’s XM Verge Music Awards. The combination of that distinctive voice (seriously, how do you not love that voice) and phenomenal songwriting is really a combo to be reckoned with; Mangan produces some of the most heart-warming, cheerful and comforting tunes of the year. If this album was a person, it would be like an old friend that you’d want to cuddle up on a couch with a cup of cocoa with and just talk for hours with.

May I Suggest: “Robots”, “Sold”, “Tina’s Glorious Comeback”

The Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

Like I mentioned on my “Best Shows of ‘09” list, I wasn’t able to fully appreciate Bitte Orca on record till I saw them live in July, and again in November. But man, when I finally got into this album, I really got into it. The meticulous instrumentation, including the use of female vocalists Angel Deradoorian, Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle as the band’s secret weapon instruments, creates musical masterpieces within every song. There is something innately original about the Dirty Projectors and that’s why I love them; only this band can pull off what they pull off – a unique brand of Mariah Carey-esque vocals backed by rhythmic perfection, sharp riffs and exceptional song structures.

May I Suggest: “Remade Horizon”, “Stillness In The Move”, “Two Doves”

Green Go – Borders

Out of all the albums on this list, this was the one I probably listened to the most throughout the whole year. Ever since January, I developed a school-girl crush on Green Go and their music. Refreshingly energetic, Green Go’s music was definitely some of the most fun times I’ve had this year. Borders is chock-full of synths, beats, hooks and some of the best lyrics to scream along to, whether you’re in a car, a bar, or just your own bedroom (there are others out there who do this, right?). As I already mentioned, Green Go, hands-down, hottest band of the year and there will always be a place in my heart for these guys; words can’t even explain how happy they make me. If this album was a perfect ice-cream sundae, it would be topped with a disco ball instead of a cherry.

May I Suggest: “Put On Your Specs Boy”, “You Know You Want It”, “Ghosts Of The Future”

Jenn Grant – Echoes

Am I the only one who feels that this album is completely underrated? Jenn Grant’s second album Echoes is a beautiful collection of songs of heartbreak, captured in the moment. Not only are these songs relatable, but they literally reach over the headphones and Grant’s voice weaves a thread between herself and the listener, making it an intimate affair when you hear a song like opener “Heartbreaker”. Musically, Grant’s instrumental arrangements are impeccable, offering many layers that need multiple listens to truly appreciate and understand. Honestly, Echoes is an album that I’m shocked didn’t more lists this year. You guys are missing out.

May I Suggest: “Sailing By Silverships”, “Blue Mountains”, “Heartbreaker”

Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

This is the album that mainstream media and I agree on. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is just pop at its best and you can’t deny it. Regardless of your knowledge or opinion of the band prior to this album, once you’ve listen to this album, you’re immediately a converted-fan, and if not, you’d at least leave humming a melody or two. I mean, how do you not fall in love with hit singles like “Lisztomania” and “1901”? If “1901” is car commercial-worthy, its catchy shit. But don’t get me wrong, the rest of this album is just as addictive. Bon travail, Phoenix.

May I Suggest: “Lisztomania”, “1901″, “Lasso”

St. Vincent – Actor

Imagine smashing a guitar over a fairytale-esque Disney movie – the result you’d get is St. Vincent’s second album Actor. A brilliant collection of part whimsical, part intensely dark songs that only Annie Clark can master, Actor’s aesthetic reflects Clark’s signature style of heavy guitars paired with an angelic voice. Taking off from where her last album Marry Me left off, Actor is the perfect soundtrack to a twisted Disney classic of some sort and each song is hypnotic, compelling and as addictive as a poisonous apple that Snow White can’t put down.

May I Suggest: “Actor Out Of Work”, “Marrow”, “The Strangers”

Timber Timbre – Timber Timbre

Hauntingly captivating and the record of the year that got me through those dark, rainy days, Timber Timbre’s self-titled album is seriously an exquisite piece of work. Fantastically sombre, every track on this record is chillingly personal and intimate. As our guest contributor Lauren Schreiber put it, “Taylor’s talent is otherwordly…”

May I Suggest: “Demon Host”, “Magic Arrow”, “Lay Down In The Tall Grass”

Think About Life – Family

Albeit, Think About Life will always be a live-over-record band for me, Family was still a phenomenal album and definitely worthy of being one of the best albums of 2009. Bursting with oomph and energy, Think About Life’s second album is made for dancing, singing along to and yes, is occasionally mosh-pit-inducing. The main point of Think About Life’s music is to just enjoy life, live in the moment and party like a rock star and that is all you can do when you listen to Family. Combining clever samples and original melodies and instrumentation, this band pulls off some of the most entertaining tracks of the year that I never thought could be pulled off.

***

Honourable Mentions:

The Wooden Sky – If I Don’t Come Home You’ll Know I’m Gone
The Wilderness of Manitoba – Hymns of Love and Spirits
Evening Hymns – Spirit Guides
Bruce Peninsula – A Mountain Is A Mouth
Great Bloomers – Speak of Trouble
Tegan and Sara – Sainthood
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
Young Galaxy – Invisible Republic
Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees – Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees
Patrick Watson – Wooden Arms

* Note: I didn’t include The Rural Alberta Advantage’s Hometowns and TuneYards’ BirdBrains because I consider them 2008 releases. Also, The RAA was on my “Best of ‘08” list.

Best EP of the Year: (tie) Sports The Band and Everything All The Time
Best Soundtrack of the Year: Where the Wild Things Are (by Karen O & the Kids)
Best Compilation of the Year: (tie) Dark Was the Night and Friends In Bellwoods II
Best Video of the Year: “All Yr Songs” – Diamond Rings
Best Triple Album of the Year: Joel Plaskett – Three
Best Instrumental Album of the Year: Bell Orchestre – As Seen Through Windows

(Diamond Rings – “All Yr Songs”)

***

Till next year! Happy holidays, everyone!
xoxo

Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest

Are you familiar with the concept of dualism? Me neither. Completely irrelevant to the philosophical concept, though, 2009 definitely presented quite the interesting polarity when it came to album releases. There were plenty of great ones and an unfortunate amount of things never meant for the ears. But focusing on just the positive side of 2009′s musical spectrum, the following are some of the records I’ve fallen in love with this year.

Personally, ranking stuff in accordance to best and least just make me uneasy. Hence, I’m listing my top ’09 records in alphabetical order (with supplementary zany visual aids for your short attention spans)!

Beacons – Ohbijou

Check: New Years – Ohbijou

Bitte Orca – Dirty Projectors

Check: Stillness is the Move

Far – Regina Spektor

Check: Laughing With – Regina Spektor

If I Don’t Come Home You’ll Know I’m Gone – The Wooden Sky

Check: Oh My God (It Still Means a Lot to Me) – The Wooden Sky

It’s Blitz! – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Check: Heads will Roll – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Merriweather Post Pavillion – Animal Collective

Check: Summertime Clothes – Animal Collective

Speak of Trouble – Great Bloomers

Check: This Ain’t You – Great Bloomers

Technicolor Health – Harlem Shakes

Check: Strictly Game – Harlem Shakes

Tight Knit – Vetiver

Check: Everyday – Vetiver

Veckatimest – Grizzly Bear

Check: Two Weeks – Grizzly Bear

Black Lips

1. Black Lips feat. GZA – “The Drop I Hold”

On paper, it probably shouldn’t work. In one corner, you have one of the founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan, the legendary New York hip-hop outfit who have wrote some of the best ever songs about drug-slinging and kung-fu. In the other corner, you have the Black Lips, the soon-to-be legendary Atlanta garage rock band who have wrote some of this year’s best songs about religious skepticism and um…drugs. But what started as a surprising hookup at this year’s South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, ended up with GZA crossing genres to contribute a few lines to this track off the Lips’ latest album, 200 Million Thousand. Blame my own indecisiveness as the main reason I wasn’t able to come up with a “Best Albums” list this year, but rest assured if there was one, 200 Million Thousand would most certainly be on it. On an album of lyrically dense, soul and blues-infused psychedelic jams, with guitar riffs as dirty as lead singer’s Cole Alexander’s mustache, “The Drop I Hold” was probably the biggest departure. This song features an eerie, almost hip-hop beat with guttural screams and Alexander lazily singing/rapping (dude rhymes “Vietnam”, “atomic bomb” and “blacklips.com”) before GZA comes in with an equally hazy verse. Could garage rock bands with heavy blues influences collaborating with rap artists be the new musical trend in the coming year? The Black Keys recently put out an album as their hip-hop side project BlakRoc, while GZA has announced plans to work with artists including Fucked Up and King Khan. As long as it keeps yielding tracks like this one, then here’s one trend that I can certainly get behind.

2. The Dead Weather – “Treat Me Like Your Mother”

Jack White is my favourite male frontman of all-time. The Kills’ Alison Mosshart is my favourite front-woman of all-time. So you don’t need to be a genius to figure out that I was beyond thrilled when I heard that both of them would be starting a new band, with the killer backfield of The Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita from Queens of the Stone Age, to boot. The result was everything that I had hoped for and then some. While “I Cut Like a Buffalo” and “Hang You From The Heavens” are standouts in their own right, “Treat Me Like Your Mother” – with its cacophony of guitars and crashing drums – is a study in glorious excess. The band is clearly going for a “more is more” approach with this song; piling on tempo changes, shrieking vocals, and surprisingly catchy “M-A-N-I-P-U-late” chants, with thrilling results. The chemistry between White and Mosshart is comparable to a wooden box full of lit firecrackers, and on “Treat Me Like Your Mother”, they sound like their going right for each other’s throats (think a more badass version of Brad and Angelina in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but with more leather jackets). With their debut album, Horehound, The Dead Weather have avoided the dreaded “don’t quit your day jobs” jokes side-projects like this often do (my verdict is still out on Them Crooked Vultures), and have created music that stands outside the involved members’ previous bodies of work.

3. Japandroids – “Young Hearts Spark Fire”

Best Canadian album of the year? Maybe. Best new Canadian band of the year? Un-fucking-doubtably. Luckily for us, Japandroids apparently missed the memo about young bands not being supposed to be this good, and this year we got their fantastic debut album, Post-Nothing. Consisting of nine perfectly-crafted garage-rock songs, Post-Nothing proves you don’t need a full band to make a glorious racket – one guy on guitar and one guy on drums will suffice. Earlier this year, I described the duo of Brian King and David Prowse as “No Age hooking up with Death From Above 1979 at a Red Bull and vodka-fueled dance party”, a comparison that now seems pretty ludicrous in retrospective. “Young Hearts” is the album standout; over a fuzz-drenched mess of bass and Prowse’s frenetic drumming, King sings, “I don’t wanna worry about dying, I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls”. The resulting song manages to somehow feel equally cathartic and a youthful call to seize the day at the same time. If there was any justice in the world, this song would be the official anthem of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. For now, we’ll just have to settle with Post-Nothing finding its way onto this year’s Polaris Prize shortlist, and Japandroids finding their way onto playlists everywhere. The only direction for this band to go is up.

4. Joel Plaskett – “Through & Through & Through”

This song has been a recent topic of debate between myself and one of my good friends – whom typically I see eye-to-eye with musically-speaking – but I cannot convince him of Joel Plaskett’s genius as a singer-songwriter. His loss. With Three, Plaskett proved that ambition suited him well and cemented his status as one of the best musicians to ever come out of Atlantic Canada. “Through & Through & Through” casts Plaskett in the role he was born to play; a lovable loser devastated by a beautiful “wrecking ball in a summer dress”, and contains perhaps some of the best lyrics that the Dartmouth guitar balladeer has ever penned. The reference to iconic Canadian rock band April Wine (Wikipedia ‘em or ask your dad who they were) certainly wasn’t lost on any Nova Scotian over 35, but the line that stuck out for me, was Plaskett’s tongue-in-cheek “You be Israel, I’ll be Palestine” metaphor. To make the hours pass quicker (not to mention block out my many bitchy ex-classmates that I had to put up working with) when I worked in the kitchen of a Jewish camp this summer, I would bring in burnt mix CDs, that would then compete for playing time in the kitchen’s crappy stereo. Unfortunately for myself, my coworkers tastes veered more towards the Jonas Brothers than Justice, but I couldn’t help but smile when ever this song managed to creep on. Special mentions go out to the very talented Rose Cousins and Ana Egge, who provide the lovely backup vocals on this song.

5. Matt & Kim – “Daylight”

What a difference a year makes. Before 2009, most people would have been hard-pressed to identify any songs by the Brooklyn couple, with the possible exception of the ubiquitous “Yea Yeah”. This year saw the release of the duo’s sophomore album, Grand, and all of a sudden they were everywhere: in a Bacardi commercial, on the FIFA 2010 soundtrack (alongside the likes of Metric, Wyclef Jean, and others), and rocking out on Jimmy Kimmel. If you need proof that Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino have gained popularity here in Canada, look at the size of the venues they’ve played over the past two years: last November, I caught them playing an all-ages show at the community hall-sized Whippersnapper Gallery. Fast-forward to this year, where they sold-out Wrongbar during NXNE in June, and packed the Kathedral wall-to-wall only two months ago. “Daylight” is a first-rate example of how a song doesn’t need to be complicated to be catchy; Matt plays the keyboard, Kim thumps away on the drums, they throw in a nonsensical (but catchy) call-and-response chorus (“And in the daylight I don’t pick up my phone, ’cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home”), and you have a recipe for DIY pop gold. Bands from New York City come and go, but with Grand, Matt & Kim have proven that they’ve matured without losing their sense of fun.

6. The xx – “Basic Space”

With so many great tracks, picking a standout from the London quartet’s (now a trio) self-titled debut album proved to be both a blessing and a curse for music critics. The band’s brand of melancholic nouvelle pop and a sparingly used drum machine, combined with lyrics about seduction, isolation and despair in the vein of Joy Division and The Cure, and the almost-whispered, haunting vocals of Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft, was so unique, left most unable to pick a standout. One thing everyone could agree on was that the band have made one of the most unique debut albums of the year. When I first listened to it for the first time, my initial favourite was “Crystalised”, an opinion that seemed to be shared by everyone from Rolling Stone (“This hyperstylish London buzz band makes moody bedroom jams with girl-boy vocals – it’s like R. Kelly for kids with giant eyeglasses, an MFA and a heroin addiction”) to EXCLAIM! (“The xx may be the subtlest band you’ll ever hear”). Ever so slowly though, as the album became my soundtrack for late night walks through the city and before falling asleep at night, I began to sway more towards “Basic Space”. It might be the stuttering, skeletal beat, it might be the clarity that Sim and Croft deliver their lyrics with, but every time I hear this song, I get chills down my spine. This song is that good.

7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Soft Shock”

Comeback album of the year? While many people were quick to write the Yeah Yeah Yeahs off following 2006′s uneven Show Your Bones; they could never write an another album as epochal as Fever To Tell, they all were too busy with their various side-projects (N.A.S.A.’s “Strange Enough”, which features guest vocals from Karen O, was considered for this list) they all hated each other, etc., etc., It’s Blitz! saw the NYC trio storming back to prove the naysayers wrong. With It’s Blitz, the band managed to reinvent their sound, while challenging the public’s perceptions of what a “typical” Yeah Yeah Yeahs record is supposed to sound like. The album’s first two new wave singles, the synth-heavy and remix-friendly (from the likes of Passion Pit, Animal Collective and MSTRKRFT, among others) “Heads Will Roll” and “Zero”, are probably the most dancefloor-friendly tracks that Karen O, Brian Chase and Nick Zinner have ever written. But no matter how loudly or how softly Karen O is singing, its her emotional vulnerability that she puts on display, that makes these songs get inside your head. On “Soft Shock”, the singer wears her heart on her sleeve, as she gently coos, “Still it’s a shock, shock to your soft side”. To try and compare the song to the band’s still-celebrated tear-jerker ballad “Maps” is unfair – “Soft Shock” is the sound of a older and more experienced band, a band that has dealt with their fair share of fights and make-ups, a band that has been around the world and back (and then some).

8. Dirty Projectors – “Stillness Is The Move”

For those who had forgotten how good this song was – and why it deserves to be on so many year-end lists – all it took was Beyonce’s little sister to remind them. Solange Knowles (who also scored hip points this year for introducing her sister and Jay-Z to Grizzly Bear) recently covered Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors’ “Stillness Is The Move”, and by most accounts, doing a pretty decent job. This year saw a major changing of the guard in NYC’s indie pop/rock music scene; the garage-rock bands of the 2000s (The Strokes, The Bravery, Interpol) are out (with the exception of the YYYs of course), TV On The Radio announced they’d be taking an indefinite hiatus, and everybody tried to incorporate African rhythms (à la Vampire Weekend) or freak psychedelia (à la MGMT) into their music. Yet the Dirty Projectors stood out from the pack, mainly because they refused to sound like anyone else, and tried musical experiments that no one else would. “Stillness Is The Move” is hands-down the most accessible song on the band’s latest album, Bitte Orca, and its still pretty out there. That slinky R&B beat, Angel Deradoorian’s fluttering vocals that received numerous comparisons to Mariah Carey (in fact, Deradoorian probably did more for Carey’s name than Mimi did for herself this year), all carefully guided by the hand of head Projector Dave Longstreth – it’s a sound that is destined to spawn dozens of imitators in the not-so-distant future, but no one will do it as good as the Dirty Projectors themselves.

9. Phoenix – “1901″

I really want to absolutely hate this band. To paraphrase a local Toronto musician, who shall remain unnamed, Phoenix seems like the type of band that were put together by Urban Outfitters. I don’t really understand why every music blog, magazine, radio station and website couldn’t stop drooling over this French quartet, and why every other artist worth their salt couldn’t help but trying to remix them, with pretty mixed results. I’ve listened to their breakout Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – an album that’s appeared at or near the top of pretty much everyone’s year-end best of lists – over half a dozen times, but still can’t get into it. Finally, I find it difficult to believe that these guys sold out the Sound Academy (though they did show good taste by picking Holy Fuck as their openers), with fans ponying up forty bucks per ticket nonetheless. But then you hear the chorus of “1901″ (you know, the one that goes “It’s twenty seconds till the last call, going hey, hey, hey, hey, hey”), and it doesn’t matter where you are; whether it’s on the radio while you’re washing dishes, on your friend’s iTunes while you’re helping her put together an IKEA bookshelf, or the DJ plays it while you’re getting your groove on at Dance Cave, you can’t help but sing along – it’s so goddamn catchy. Years from now, our children and grandchildren will ask us what music we listened to back in 2009 when we were foolish young hipsters, and we will play this song.

10. Jay-Z feat. Kanye West & Rihanna – “Run This Town”

Stop laughing! Yes, I’m putting a song featuring three of mainstream music’s biggest names on a list of supposed “indie” (or, as one of my housemates has recently taken to pronouncing it whenever I’m in earshot, “in-DIE”) songs. And here’s why: can you name another Top 40 rap song that goes this hard? If “D.O.A.” was The Blueprint III’s manifesto, than “Run This Town” is Shawn Carter’s victory speech. Love him or hate him, its pretty hard to ignore a musical career like Hova’s: eight Grammy Awards, over 30 million records sold in the United States, and 11 No. 1 albums on Billboard, putting him past Elvis. But this song is one of the album’s best, because it sounds like all three are hungry and have something to prove. Jay’s fighting the backlash that he’s run out of things to say now that he’s almost 40, Rihanna needed to prove that she’d moved on from the whole Chris Brown incident, and as for Kanye, the public just needed him to hear him flat-out rap again. Whatever their motivations, it works: Jay displays all the piss and vinegar of a much younger man, Rihanna provides the kind of warbling hook that reminds of us why the public fell in love with her in the first place, and Kanye comes in at the end to school them both with arguably one of the best lines of this year, “What you think I rap for, to push a fucking RAV 4?” (Toyota reps have yet to issue a response). The only unfortunate thing (for my friends anyways) about this song? “99 Problems” is in danger of being replaced as my new favourite song to drunkenly recite off-key at parties.

Honourable Mentions:

The Rural Alberta Advantage - “The Deathbridge In Lethbridge”
Clipse feat. Kanye West – “Kinda Like A Big Deal”
Grizzly Bear -“Two Weeks”
The National - “So Far Around the Bend”
Raekwon feat. Cappadonna & Ghostface Killah -“10 Bricks”

Neko Case

I don’t know how the rest of you are feeling, but the arrival of December hit me like a giant sack of alarm clocks, sending all those projects and to-do lists I’d put on the back burner into a rolling boil. As I’ve been scrambling to tie up loose ends and reflect a little on the past year—honestly, I was just getting used to it being 2009—I’ve compiled the following rather self-indulgent list of the earcandy that I’ve been gnawing on for the last 365 days or so. The significance of the number 9, if you were wondering, is not great—it merely reflects an aversion I have to even numbers (and thus, top 10 lists) and I felt it was appropriate, given that we are bidding farewell to the 9^th year of the new millennium.

1. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

From that long ago first listen to the song “Letter from an Occupant” I was struck by the force of nature that resides in Neko Case’s chest. And even more than my addiction to the delicious sugar-pop she creates with The New Pornographers, I’ve become hooked on her solo material which, laden with animal desire and natural imagery, is delivered in a dynamic voice whose power is unmatched in music today. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko’s 2007 release, blew me away and honestly deserves a spot among the top records of the decade. Needless to say, Middle Cyclone was highly anticipated by all, and it did not fail to deliver. From the glorious ruckus that is “People Got A Lotta Nerve” to the naked vulnerability of its title track, Middle Cyclone alternates between making me run through the house punching and twirling through the air and breaking my heart.

2. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

As much as the lyrical content of Camera Obscura’s newest album matches Tracyanne Campbell’s love-affair with all things melancholy, it also carries the joyous sonic qualities (ahhh those horns!) that I’ve come to love from this band. It’s the bittersweet juxtaposition of the shadows of life and the joie on My Maudlin Career that glues my finger to the repeat button. A beautiful rainbow sorbet of icy-sweet flavours, every track (well, almost every track—perhaps I’ll exclude a certain song about a boy whose name starts with a J) on this album is a favourite. I mean, it even makes my three-year-old niece do some elated prancing around the room.

3. Amy Millan – Masters of the Burial

Now, I must pause to mention that there is just something about Amy Millan’s voice that I will never get over. It posesses this spark that has the power to make one die a little inside and then subsequently be revived as though by a gulp of fresh air (if you really need a specific example please refer to Millan’s breathy line, “this scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin” from Stars’ “Your Ex-lover is Dead” and you will know what I am talking about). While a fan of her first solo release Honey from the Tombs, I feel like Masters of the Burial is a much more cohesive album; the gentleness of Amy’s song-writing style and her voice are the through-line that makes even her cover songs sound like originals. Directions: Listen when in need of lullabies to soften the ears and put the mind at ease. Best when enjoyed with tea and good company. And maybe some biscotti.

4. The Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

a)      Do you hear those sounds? Those are girls, singing.

b)      Why isn’t this band more famous?

While their debut release floated a bit off of my radar, Bitte Orca has me head over heels for the astonishing harmonies and poppy guitar riffs that are The Dirty Projectors’ specialty. Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of this band lies in how versatile they are, easily sliding from the bravado that is “Cannibal Resource” to the softer tones of Angel Deradoorian on “Two Doves”. I hereby mandate that it become part of everyone’s Saturday morning routine to blast a little of this sextet’s energetic sound through some big speakers. The world will be a better place for it.

5. Think About Life – Family

Without a doubt, Think About Life threw two of the craziest shows of my entire concert-going year. From these experiences I’ve learned that it is physically impossible to stand still while their ridiculously catchy retro-synth-dance-pop-whachamacallit tickles your eardrums. Every single track on their sophomore release, Family, screams DANCE! SING! ME-OWWW! Brought to you by a bunch of crazy geniuses from Montreal (yeah I know, something in the water), this is the album that will make even the blackest hearts love music again.

6. St. Vincent – Actor

St. Vincent a.k.a. Annie Clark a.k.a. Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens collaborator has created her own oeuvre of solo work that pairs songs of Disney-esque sweep with often times eerie reverb and mad guitar work. This style resulted in the brilliant collection of tracks that were released on her debut album Marry Me, and has spilled over onto her 2009 release of Actor. The dark imagery of Clark’s lyrics conveyed in her crystalline vocals is both chilling and addictive. I can’t tear my ears away.

7. Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer

Even though Sunset Rubdown’s latest release came in the form of an 8-song EP, this little gem deserves a place on my top shelf because, to put it simply, it is awesome. Definitely going for quality over quantity on this one, I would venture to say that this is my favourite Sunset Rubdown album, ever. Containing one of the best songs of the year and Bucky Award nominee for best lyric, “Idiot Heart”, Dragonslayer is captivating from beginning to end, capturing all the elements of Sunset Rubdown that I most love and distilling them down to one perfect little package.

8. Dark Was the Night: A Red Hot Compilation

I’ve already broken the rules once by including an EP on my list, so there’s really no harm in also throwing in a shout-out to this amazing compilation, because it deserves it. I usually enjoy compilations for compilation sake—that is, I enjoy hearing new songs from certain artists, even if they aren’t hit singles or chart-toppers. Rarely does a compilation, however, manage to combine so many (two discs full!) of great artists’ tracks and be as unbelievably cohesive as Dark Was the Night is. Bravo to the guys at The Red Hot Organization for facilitating such great musical collaboration and harnessing pop culture in the fight against AIDS. Containing new favourites including, but not limited to, Feist and Ben Gibbard’s cover of “Train Song”, Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner’s “Big Red Machine” and The National’s “So Far Around the Bend” this album is all kinds of wonderful.

For more information on the The Red Hot Organization and its endeavours, visit http://www.redhot.org/

9. Dan Mangan – Nice, Nice, Very Nice

From pounding back insane amounts of coffee to lubricate the creative writing process, to having intense Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em-esque robot wars in alley ways (if you have no idea what I am talking about, please refer to the latest video accompaniments to Dan’s “The Indie Queens are Waiting” and “Robots”) to winning the XM Verge Award and storming CBC Radio 3’s Bucky awards, 2009 was a busy year for Vancouver native Dan Mangan. Still on tour, Dan is traipsing across the world in support of his sophomore effort, Nice, Nice, Very Nice. This album is like an old familiar blanket: it slips comfortably around the shoulders like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It might even have some of those electric heating pads for extra warmth. The chorus of “Robots,” a true chorus in that there are many voices singing the refrain, contains undoubtedly one of the best phrases of the year: “robots need love too, they want to be loved by you……”

And there you have it—a list of albums that makes me weak in the knees. Here’s to wishing for giant helpings of snow and big sounds in the New Year. Be kind to each other.

Peace,
Leah