So, having consumed my first of three Christmas dinners this weekend (without being a little too disgusting, the quotient of stuffing being consumed will probably be ending up tearing a new aperture in my posterior if I'm not careful!), I thought I'd better carry on with my 2009 chart sooner rather than later... So here are positions 60-41 (Doi!)...
60. Inside Your Guitar by
It Hugs Back
Pitchfork: "Cuddling is out of the question, as the record's overwhelmingly melancholy tone suggests consolation rather than romantic bliss ... Even when It Hugs Back seem to hold us close, the intimacy in their music seems hollow, impersonal, and anonymous."
Link
TinyMixTapes: "The further you get into this album, the more you realize that this 11-song LP actually only has three songs ... In a world where the business side of music has permeated all its other aspects, if not eradicated them entirely, this album will destroy a solid fraction of whatever idealism you may have left."
Link
What I Said: "Buzzes from the speakers with all the grace of a lumbering, giant fuzzy monster waddling patiently towards you for a warm embrace ... Dynamism and cockiness are nowhere to be found here, just slightly discontented malaise delicately whipped into a gossamer-light broth."
59. Wild Young Hearts by
Noisettes
Pitchfork: "If Noisettes' goal for the album was to be better and more adventurous than the debut while retaining the awesomeness of their meal ticket frontwoman, they nailed it ... No one's perfect, I guess, especially when they're trying to go from one-note to every note in the space of a single record."
Link
TheTimes: "The album fizzes with energy, huge and undislodgeable pop hooks and choruses that fall over themselves ... Shoniwa and her band mates, Dan Smith and Jamie Morrison, have dusted themselves down, remembered what they love about music, and written a brilliant pop-soul album."
Link
What I Said: "Straddles the line comfortably between indie, pop and soul ... with a voice both youthfully fresh and rustically soulful when it wants to be, and most of the tunes found on the CD better the single in terms of being elegantly funky slices of indie pop."
58. The Spirit of Apollo by
N.A.S.A.
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Best Single/Video Of The Year
Best Hip Hop/Rap Album Of The Year
Special Prize For Most Glamorous 'Featured Guest' Roster
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Pitchfork: "It would be nice if The Spirit of Apollo had a compelling reason to exist beyond just showing off these guys' Buddy Lists ... But when your idea of creating community is to mush artists of different genres together into a character-free paste, all you're really doing is making a good argument for genre xenophobia."
Link
PopMatters: "They say too many chefs spoil the broth, but this is a little ridiculous ... The obvious complaint will be that some of the artists involved are either underused or overused."
Link
What I Said: "Whilst the guest list is undeniably impressive, and the results even more so ... the whole thing coheres more like a compilation than an album. No doubt this was exactly the intention of Clean and Zegon, but it does present a slightly disjointed listen."
57. Turning The Mind by
Maps
NME: "What is it at the moment with all this half-arsed, evangelical Christian hymn-aping synth music masquerading as dream-pop or screen-gaze? If I wanted to go to church I would do."
Link
BBC: "The only thing more tedious than people on drugs is people who used to be on drugs talking about how they’re not on drugs anymore ... it’s a shame, because he’s still bashing out some fearsome pop songs."
Link
What I Said: "Embraces elements of rock, house, trance and pop to create a nebulous whitewash of at-times inspired electro symphonies ... For those who are a little dismayed by how perky and bright most of the electropop this year has been, this one is most certainly for you."
56. Yours Truly, The Commuter by
Jason Lytle
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Best Country/Folk Album Of The Year
Pitchfork: "Sounds an awful lot like a Grandaddy album-- not just another Grandaddy album, though, but a really good one ... Such care and attention show through in these songs, which generally sound a little spacier and synthier than the band's records."
Link
TheIndependent: "It's hard to understand why he split up the band, so closely do these tracks follow the Grandaddy formula of folksy guitar-rock glazed with electronic washes and fronted by Lytle's fragile, reedy vocals."
Link
What I Said: "Those expecting a change of meter from Lytle on this disc though will be quite disappointed, as Commuter very much plays like vintage Grandaddy, all subtle electronica mixed indelibly with slow acoustic alt-rock and Lytle’s breathy vocals awash with detached melancholy that are hard not to fall for as ever.."
55. Everybody by
Ingrid Michaelson
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Best Country/Folk Album Of The Year
Allmusic: "Michaelson is no longer a part-time waitress with a songwriting habit; she's a seasoned road veteran, acutely aware of what it takes to invest her audience ... Rarely does an independent album sound so assured, so polished, and so agreeable."
Link
ConsequenceOfSound: "Throughout the album’s 12 tracks, strings, layered guitar, and acoustic rhythm piano dance with double-tracked harmonies, expanding the singer’s sonic palette ... confident and assured in both her singing and songwriting, expanding her sound, but maintaining her indie spirit."
Link
What I Said: "Now, with this fourth album charting respectably in the Top 20 in the US, it would appear Michaelson’s finally ready to breakthrough properly; she’s certainly not hampered by a lack of bustlingly enjoyable ditties ... it’s hard to not be taken in by her charms."
54. Lungs by
Florence + The Machine
Pitchfork: "Instead of giving this gothically pale 22-year-old with megaphone vox some classy pop-soul to work with à la Duffy or Adele, Lungs takes the smorgasbord approach. Welch bursts mouth wide wide over garage rock, epic soul, pint-tipping Britbeat, and-- best of all-- a mystic brand of pop that's part
Annie Lennox,
Grace Slick, and
Joanna Newsom."
Link
NME: "[The hype] all sets up the most hyped and derided singer of the year’s debut album to be the biggest love-or-loathe opinion-divider since Jigga bought his wellies for Worthy Farm. Which makes it so surprising
that
Lungs is so distinctly… OK."
Link
What I Said: "Welch’s hype is somewhat justified on her major label debut disc, convincingly veering between indie anthems of earthy rock bohemia, evocatively simple moments of tender admission and dreamy cosmic balladry ... Even if it doesn’t quite supersede the comparisons to
Kate Bush or the relentless PR 'machine' charting her meteoric rise."
53. Thunderheist by
Thunderheist
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Best Hip Hop/Rap Album Of The Year
Pitchfork: "On their first full-length, the duo still can't hone a shtick of their own, relying instead on a bland mix of homage and innocuous one-liners ... you'd have to get pretty smashed to ignore the album's missing spirit and just dance, which, sadly, may be the point here."
Link
NME: "Isis’ talk of jerking it off, jailbait, bending over and tapping the booty just aren’t clever, surreal, skewed or, disgraceful enough to provoke the same kind of amused grimace that
Ghostface Killah, the ex-imprisoned one from
Yo Majesty or Thunderheist’s ace labelmates
New Flesh might."
Link
What I Said: "Chock full of
Diplo-style cuts brought to the next level of danceability with some inspired performances from Isis. Taking in hip pop criticism and borderline creepy horniness, there’s no reason why this duo can’t break it big this year."
52. Sounds Of The Universe by
Depeche Mode
Pitchfork: "If the album as usual seems to have little or no bearing on anything outside the group's own, um, universe, the wheels and gears are definitely still turning and churning in the Depeche Mode machine ...
Sounds Of The Universe concludes anticlimactically, an echo of its promising start."
Link
DailyTelegraph: "The sonic vista of rock remained static throughout the Nineties, even regressing slightly with Britpop. Depeche Mode's electro arrangements, every sound altered and treated to create a unique sonic palette, shows up the imaginative constraints of most guitar-based rock."
Link
What I Said: "The one grind against this album that can be said is that it is typical Depeche; miserable, angular, sublime and such a lovely downer that it makes arriving back to hell from a glowing paradise seem almost like a glorious homecoming."
51. Grammatics by
Grammatics
NME: "A bold, ambitious and diverse collection of songs ... it seemed like Grammatics had too many ideas, they couldn’t quite decide who they wanted to be. In the end, they just decided to be themselves, and the result frequently approaches bona fide genius."
Link
AbsolutePunk: "
Grammatics is one of the few albums released in the last couple of years that I can actually deem "unique" ... They seem like they're ready for the spotlight and ready to go on to become something great."
Link
What I Said: "Some may be affronted by the self-importance adopted by lead man Owen Brinley (trilling effeminately in an affected manner) and his less-than-merry band, yet there is still something to be said about their ability to traverse heartfelt indie balladeering and ethically ambiguous rabble rousing so confidently and sincerely."
50. Warm Heart of Africa by
The Very Best
Pitchfork: "Their enthusiasm is contagious ... In drawing lines between older African genres, like highlife, and newer ones, like kwaito, and then linking those to international pop styles of various eras, Warm Heart of Africa pictures a glittering web of connectivity where national and cultural boundaries dissolve."
Link
Guardian: "The problem with hearing so much music is it gets harder to be surprised. But this album defies all preconceptions and never settles into a genre that you could name and locate on the shelves or download menus."
Link
What I Said: "It knocks several shades and teeth out of most pop music around today, infusing the warm harmonies and buoyant instrumentation and arrangements found in Mwamwaya’s traditional Malawi roots with beauteous pop hooks and effects to make a truly refreshing combo."
49. Introducing Dionne Bromfield by
Dionne Bromfield
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Best Female Solo Album Of The Year
Best R&B/Soul Album Of The Year
Loft965:
Motown for children.
Introduce little Winehouse,
Feels good and sounds good.
What I Said: "Bromfield and her team have done well to transport her straight into the old-soul aesthetic with some carefully chosen classics, primarily because her voice, for a 13 year-old girl especially, is truly something to behold."
48. Danger Mouse And Sparklehorse: Present Dark Night Of The Soul by
Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Special Prize For Most Glamorous 'Featured Guest' Roster
Pitchfork: "
Dark Night Of The Soul has been pitched as a marquee collaboration without precedent, which makes the mundane EMI copyright baloney that scrapped the project all the more depressing ... an album on which a group of musical actors present his [
Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous'] work while he stands off to the side in the shadows."
Link
PopMatters: "Few contemporary pop albums have spoken to the human condition so eloquently, and given the listener so much pleasure in the process ... It’s no exaggeration to say Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse have crafted a near-masterpiece."
Link
What I Said: "The album confounds, enthrals, offends and entertains in equal measure, taking in moments of rough-hewn alt-rock, distortedly ravaged beauty and discordant sound design, alongside the more melodiously tuneful compositions; in short, it makes a thoroughly convincing first stab for Curio Of 2009."
47. Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future by
The Bird and the Bee
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Best Pop Album Of The Year
Pitchfork: "Like a Mojave Desert mirage shimmering tantalizingly before disappearing, Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future is ultimately left little more than a string of sweet nothings, there for your fleeting pleasure. It's a pop tease."
Link
PopMatters: "As the songs tumble over jazz changes and through curtains of digital sparkles and effects, George is confident and on point. Kurstin fills each construction with the just the right amount of layers, balancing space-age (i.e. a ‘60s definition of “space-age”) bleeps and blurps with subtler swaths of organ to support George’s lines."
Link
What I Said: "Their latest work features all kinds of delightful electro-jazz numbers, with George's aloof yet chirpily sweet vocals effortlessly gliding along the duos melodies ... it is also a credible evolution from the quaint loveliness of their first effort."
46. Songs About Dancing And Drugs by
Circlesquare
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Pitchfork: "Ultimately, the album is about the value of participating in culture through the communal aspects of art and music, which is sort of ironic given that this is a record best suited to being heard alone, with a good set of headphones."
Link
ResidentAdvisor: "Circlesquare's third LP is a tremendous comedown record, but not in the therapeutic sense, because it sounds actually too much like a comedown to help you forget your own ... the dancing and drugs are gone, having taken all the pleasures of the night with them."
Link
What I Said: "This isn’t a happy, summery dance record, as its sonicspace traverses minimal electro and spaced out eeriness to summon up the darker side of dance culture, i.e. the dreaded comedowns, the aimless conversations and aching worthlessness. And you certainly cannot fault Shaw and company for following through on their singular trajectory based on artistic merit."
45. Octahedron by
The Mars Volta
Pitchfork: "The Mars Volta's specific brand of bombast may remain an untranslatable language for those rooted in a DIY-scaled world, or committed to the shiny three-minutes-and-change tidiness of the charts. But if you're fiending for the musical equivalent of an epic, partially incoherent battle between good and evil in IMAX 3D, you could do a lot worse."
Link
DrownedInSound: "If they’d only crack a smile in the studio once in a while, like they do when recalling scenes from their favourite (wickedly dark) comedies, who knows what The Mars Volta could achieve, as there are flashes of true brilliance on this LP that, with just a little more cultivating, could combine to comprise the band’s greatest album yet."
Link
What I Said: "It stops just short of being one of the better rock albums to be released this year, laden with enough languid psychedelia, hard rock-chord chaos and blistering vocals from Bixler-Zavala."
44. Why There are Mountains by
Cymbals Eat Guitars
Pitchfork: "What's most admirable about this sophisticated self-released debut is Cymbals Eat Guitars' willingness to think big with gestures that shouldn't fly in the hands of a young band, instrumentally or thematically ... here, the journey is the end not the means; fortunately, that gives Why There Are Mountains astounding replay value."
Link
SputnikMusic: "If this isn’t the debut album of the year, it’s going to take a pretty bold effort to top what Cymbals Eat Guitars have created ... Open up that damaged part of your heart that you closed up when
Modest Mouse started to suck. Indie rock got good again."
Link
What I Said: "One band that they incidentally mirror also released their debut early this year, them being Grammatics, who happen to compose songs that explore different depths of feeling within the same piece and not just being content with your typical slow burn release of other bands. Their UK counterparts though inhabit a more refined and artier soundscape then these rough-and-ready rabblers, which happens to make their effort that much more powerful."
43. Beast Rest Forth Mouth by
Bear in Heaven
Pitchfork: "Mostly made up of textural, spacious three- to four-minute pop anthems with towering choruses, BRFM is a welcome reminder that an album doesn't have to be bombastic to feel huge and important. Take out the earbuds and let it fill a space: This is music that's bigger than your iPod-- music you'll want to feel all around you."
Link
Allmusic: "An idea that this is as far as the band can either get, or is willing to get -- an extension of past sounds instead of fully engaging with the musical lingua franca of now. Not too surprising given rock's endless possibilities for self-regard, but even so, a little frustrating somehow."
Link
What I Said: "One could accuse it of never really announcing its presence and going for the rockier jugular compared to other electro-flavoured indie releases this year, but that shouldn’t detract from what is at times the most thoughtfully calibrated pop release of the year, making up for a lack in passion, perhaps, with plenty of intelligence."
42. Immolate Yourself by
Telefon Tel Aviv
Vessalis Music Award Nominee = Best Electronic Album Of The Year
Pitchfork: "one of the pleasures and frustrations of Immolate is how subtly it similarly exploits the nearly invisible barrier separating song from simple synth sketch ... For all the pleasant stops along the way, the album hasn't come full-circle so much as spun its wheels in place."
Link
Guardian: "If you're seeking an album to keep out the winter chill, you could do worse than to wrap yourself up in Telefon Tel Aviv's sumptuous head music ... It may be more frosting than cake, but there is an addictive comfort to its richness."
Link
What I Said: "Their third LP is really quite a sublime surprise; a tormented mix of hip-hop beats, ambient electronica and house-dance mechanics, with ominous vocals coasting throughout the violent soundscapes as if at they’ve reached the end of an epic search for humanity that has finally yielded fruitless results."
41. Tale to Tell by
The Mummers
BoomKat: "Few debuting bands pull off the feat of inhabiting their own unique musical idiom so comprehensively and convincingly as The Mummers ... It's hard to know where The Mummers are likely go next after such a singularly grandstanding, archly portentous debut, but it'd be worth sticking around to find out."
Link
Guardian: "It's opulent stuff ... this music, all strings and brass and careful detail, feels like being locked in a dark parlour draped with thick velvet, incense turning the air heady."
Link
What I Said: "Raissa along with her newfound friends may finally be able to strike it big with this rather lovely foray into baroque-lite pop, managing to convey wistful fancy and detached worldliness; a highly promising start for the trio then, not to mention a fine showcase for Raissa’s heavenly voice."
So, now we're over the hump, and quite a few nominees have been revealed... what will positions 40-21 bring? Find out next week...
Take care... xxx
Annie Lennox
