2009 Year End Review
Well, we are three days into the new year and here I am looking back at 2009 instead of forward into 2010. As always I’m a bit late to the gate. I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday and that the next year will bring lots of music into your lives. As Nietzsche said, “Without music life would be a mistake.”
The year 2009 was interesting for sure. We saw Lady Gaga burst slowly onto the scene (her debut single took 22 weeks to climb to the top of the Billboard charts) in January, in contrast Kelly Clarksons single My Life Would Suck Without You leapt up the charts moving from #97 to #1 in one week and selling 280K downloads in the process. U2 released their mediocre album No Line On The Horizon; Springsteen released Working On A Dream; Morrissey released Years Of Refusal; Franz Ferdinand released Tonight: Franz Ferdinand which made a fan out of me; The Beatles (or their label) released their remastered box set to much hoopla, and Handsome Furs released Face Control. Of course there were many more great releases, hundreds of them really and with it being easier and cheaper to make a CD at home albums were being spit out like chewing gum. With the glut of CD’s on the market it made it difficult to wade through them all and that saw mp3 blogs and the like become a popular method of sorting through the new music. In fact, mp3 blogs were becoming so popular that the RIAA and the blog hosting site, Blogger, decided they had to put a stop to them by issuing take down notices and by taking down posts by bloggers even when they had permission from the record companies to release the songs for free download. It’s impossible to grasp what the RIAA is thinking.
2009 also brought sad news with the deaths of artists such as Ron Asheton (The Stooges); Dewey Martin (Buffalo Springfield); Les Paul; Lux Interior (The Cramps); James Sullivan (Avenged Sevenfold); Haydain Neal (Jacksoul); the circus that became Michael Jackson, and Wayne Allwine (the voice of Mickey Mouse). In happier news Britney Spears made a comeback with a world tour The Circus Starring: Britney Spears; Kanye West continued to prove what a jackass he is (no need to expand further on that); Mott The Hoople decided to reform for touring only; the Foo Fighters decided to disband go on hiatus; The Cheetah Girls did breakup; the Dead Weather and Monsters of Folk were formed, and the Mighty, Mighty Bosstones released their first all-new album in 6 yrs.
In 2010 we will see Ringo Starr; The Eels; Editors; Spoon; Butch Walker; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; The White Stripes; She & Him; Arcade Fire; Basia Bulat; Rufus Wainwright; Vampire Weekend; Eels; Spoon; MGMT; Fleet Foxes; Kings Of Leon; Corrine Bailey Rae; Peter Gabriel, and yes, even Amy Winehouse release new albums. We can expect to see continued resistance by the record companies to drag themselves into the 21st century and continue to proclaim that illegal downloading is ruining their business. In 2010 we will also see the Sam Roberts Band; 54-40; Hot Hot Heat; Dan Mangan; Wintersleep; Hey Rosetta, and Tokyo Police Club perform at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Depeche Mode; AC/DC; John Mayer, and Paul MacCartney all plan tours this year while U2, and Green Day continue the tours they started in ’09.
So, now to the real reason to post this: my summing up of the best music of 2009. This isn’t going to be a list of all the bands that everyone else has proclaimed to be the best. No. This is just the best of what I have reviewed this year. So even though the review came out in 2009, the album itself could have been released much earlier. This is just a “best of” of the bands I liked and reviewed this past year. So here goes:
10: The Wonderland Avenue – Inizio EP – “If I had one gripe it would be that it’s too bad that Inizio is just a four song EP and not a full album…”
The Wonderland Avenue – Inizio
9: Will Hanson – Hope On Top EP – “It’s nice to have an album where the flow from song to song is consistent and almost seamless. A lot of albums now-a-days just seem to jump from single to single with a bunch of filler in between. These songs are all tied together and work individually as well as a whole. And even though the subject matter is more suited to the Gothic Archies than to Bob Dylan, it’s nice to hear traditional folk reworked in untraditional ways. And, really, how can you not like a glockenspiel?”
8: Helicopters – Sizing Up The Distance – “This is certainly the strength of this album, that each song has it’s own distinct rhythm and atmosphere and yet they seamlessly flow into each other with no jarring changes in direction. “ (I said in my original review that I thought this might grow on me, it did. Even my problems with the thin drum beats are gone.)
7: Donora – Self Titled CD – “…deserves more attention that what it is currently getting. A lot of these songs deserve a wider audience and hopefully radio will catch up and add them to their playlists. I’m sure Donora is a great live band, and such songs as, “Saturday Night”, with it’s cheer-leading chorus would leave a crowd exhausted by the end.”
6: Dan Mangan – Roboteering – EP – “The arrangements for these songs is sparse, not an extra note, guitar lick, banjo pluck or hand-clap wasted. The production is also sparse and not intrusive calling all the attention to Mangan’s vocals and idiosyncratic delivery. The lyrics are, well, ironic and often quaint, and I don’t mean quaint in the old-fashioned sense but in the pleasantly odd way. All in all I loved this EP and it is well worth the four bucks it will cost you on iTunes.” (Fellow contributor, Rob, also wrote a very positive review of Mangan’s album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice)
5: James – Hey Ma – “All in all, this album is a welcome relief for people such as me, who have a passion for intelligent lyrics and songs that say something without being preachy (take note Bono), smarmy or pretentious. These eleven songs flow from one to another gracefully, one song liltingly proclaiming love for someone precious (“Of Monsters & Heroes & Men”, “Waterfall”) another darkly railing against the pain of insecurity and of man’s insensitivity’s (“Semaphore”).”
4: AC Newman – Get Guilty – “All in all this is a gorgeous album full of lush songs and clever lyrics. There are a few anthems, of course, but no gratuitous guitar solos which I am very grateful for. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good guitar solo and am madly in love with guitars themselves, but I don’t like them being used to show off someone’s immense ego…I mean, talent, unnecessarily. And there is a lot of talent on this album, from AC Newman himself to Pamela Quinn on flute. I would list the other musicians but there are too many and suffice it to say that their talents only enhanced the songs. My personal favourites are: ‘There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve…’; ‘Prophets’; ‘Submarines of Stockholm’; ‘The Changeling (Get Guilty)’, and ‘Young Atlantis’.”
AC Newman – There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve
3: The D’Urbervilles – We Are The Hunters – “The whole CD from beginning to end is just a joy to listen to. The songs are intelligent and musically challenging. The jazzy textures and funky bass lines keep your interest while the drum beat keeps your toes tapping, head bobbing and hips shaking. The songs are dense, there is a lot going on but they are also lyrically sparse, leaving lots of space for the instruments to tell the story and move the songs along. Although The D’Urbervilles get their sound mostly from Echo and the Bunnymen, there are also similarities to Joy Division, Interpol, and The Doors. Not a bad thing, in my opinion. This is one CD that will end up getting a lot of play around my house.” (It does still)
The D’Urbervilles – This Is The Life
2: Pozitive Orchestra – Recycle Music – “These songs trip from tango to bossa-nova to samba with ease and with the vocals changing with every song this collection should keep everyone happy. It is a trippy mix of styles that are done with tongue firmly planted in cheek but without being disrespectful to the original.”
Pozitive Orchestra – The Girl From Ipanema
My pick or picks for the number one spot are two albums that I’ve listened to almost daily since I reviewed them. Each time I listen I seem to got more and more out of the songs. Eatliz is still by far one of my favourites of all time but Brian Bond is equally as loved but for different reasons.
1: Eatliz – Violently Delicate – “Even though this album came out in 2008 it is easily my favourite so far this year” (written in Sept)
1: Brian Bond – Ten Thousand Songs – EP – “The songs on “Ten Thousand Songs” are typical for this genre – love, heartbreak and longing – but they rise above so many simply by being honest and straightforward. No platitudes, no clichés, no over-wrought emotionalism, just plain speaking and openness.”
Honourable mention goes to Coldplay – Left Right Left Right Left Live EP – Yes, it’s Coldplay, one of the most hated or loved bands out there. I suppose it’s a mark of their popularity that the haters are just as rabid as the fans. The reason this deserves an honourable mention is simply because it was a free give-away at their arena concerts and even though CD’s are cheap to make that is still a chunk of change the band didn’t get in their pockets. It was their way of thanking fans and giving something back when the economy wasn’t looking too good. For me it would have been nicer to cut the concert ticket prices but no band is ever going to do that (I’m looking right at you U2). Anyway, as far as live recordings go this is a good one, it has some old stand-bys and some new songs. Just a fun CD from a band who knows how to satisfy their fans.
And lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the one musical event that happened this year that everyone was talking about over the summer – Susan Boyle. Susan Boyle became the most talked about “celebrity” this year, I reckon, and justifiably so. It doesn’t matter what you think of her, she rocketed into our consciousness on the strength of her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables. It’s too hard to say what long-term impact this may have on music but one thing is for sure, she put paid to the myth that you have to be young and beautiful to make it in the music world. Good for her.
All in all it was a great year for music, lets hop 2010 is as well. And as always support these and all artists by buying their music through iTunes, Amazon, HMV, or their websites. There are very few artists who are actually making enough to live on let alone millions so buy CD’s. It is also the only way you can be sure to safeguard music because it is one way to let record companies know what you want to listen to.
