SCQ's Top Twenty Albums of 2009

Rest in peace, 2009.

Embarrassing fact: I start preparing my Top Twenty as soon as I have twenty records to work with. That’s just the way it is. A few years ago that would mean my first draft would be scribbled out in April or May. This year, I started in February, and have since compiled no less than one hundred (I’m being conservative) drafts in preparation for this very moment. Regardless of when I started, the majority of jumps, drops and general changes in my list typically slow down by mid October and cement themselves by the end of November. 2009 has proven to elude this trend, forcing me to choose the final #20 spot out of a shortlist of twenty-two artists and keeping me unsure of the exact, final order up to the last minute. Another embarrassing fact: I kind of prefer it this way.

After all, compiling year-end lists isn’t supposed to be exhausting work so much as the enthusiastic/nerdy sport of assembling your perfection summation of 2009. Those albums you immediately welcomed into your life, the ones that continually crept into your headphones; that’s what these lists are in pursuit of. So forget the hype machine and its cliquey lemmings chasing shadows. Forget objective viewpoints, how we discuss music as if the whole world is listening and consider varied tastes. Forget SCQ Ratings. Year-end lists are nothing if they aren’t personal, mere statistics if they lack conviction. And adding one more to the countless millions, Skeleton Crew Quarterly presents the Top Twenty Albums of 2009; a collection of the very best LPs I turned to consistently, releases I’ll champion in conversation through the years to come.

2009 has been a wild ride for me, as I've met wonderful people and been introduced to so much incredible music. Thank you to all the artists and labels who have contributed to Skeleton Crew Quarterly's year and special thanks to everyone who has stopped by to read a review or two. To turn last year's habit into an official SCQ tradition, I hope some of you will add your own Top Albums lists in the comments section of this post.

I wish you all the happiest of holidays and will see you in 2010!!

Love always,

SCQ.

#20 Album of 2009: Dustland - The Gentleman Losers

Dustland

The Gentleman Losers
City Centre Offices.

SCQ Album Review

To say there’s something haunting about Dustland is a terrific understatement, although not in your traditional, scary way. Instead, the Gentleman Losers’ sophomore album is positively spooky in how it rests like fog around your eardrums, how it sprinkles sunlight through overcast and how each song unravels an aural terrain of rolling hills, shadowed valleys and stretched plains to wander indefinitely. Here’s a record that somehow gets better while you don’t play it, returning to you when you’re focused on something else and itching your random playlist every time you catch its cover-art from the corner of your eye. Merely haunted? Just another understatement for 2009’s most understated album.

#19 Album of 2009: You Can Have What You Want - Papercuts

You Can Have What You Want

Papercuts
Gnomonsong Records.

SCQ Album Review

Funny thing, time. I can spend six, eight, ten months insisting that a certain record isn’t fantastic yet if said album can survive that passing of time without losing its conversation-piece, its durability kinda outshines any argument I can make to the contrary. And to perpetuate that theory, You Can Have What You Want really isn’t that fantastic… but it does get under your skin. Here’s a record that is as adequate to soundtrack your 4am drunken walk home as it is ideal for melting into the couch. The excessive haze and reverb songwriter Jason Quever packs into each song, although claustrophobic at first, begins to comfort over time and plays out like the warmest, hippest psychedelic tunes you could find in your parents’ LP collection. If not quite fantastic, You Can Have What You Want is certainly timeless.

#18 Album of 2009: Lost Channels - Great Lake Swimmers

Lost Channels

Great Lake Swimmers
Nettwerk Records.

SCQ Album Review

One of the reasons I love year-end lists is that they give you an excellent opportunity to wield hindsight into your critical ear. Without hindsight, we’d never realize that album we fawned over in June was actually pretty one-note or that Myspace band you quickly scanned deserved increased attention. Take my review of Lost Channels for instance, and that regrettable sentence where I insist the record is “top-heavy”. Ack! While I eventually acknowledge that the bottom half characterizes Great Lake Swimmers best, I can now appreciate how centered and well-sequenced Lost Channels is, with many of its best tracks (‘Stealing Tomorrow’, ‘River’s Edge’) orbiting the contemplative final third. A mesmerizing collection of atmospheric folk.

#17 Album of 2009: Colour Codes - Red Box Recorder

Colour Codes

Red Box Recorder
Acroplane Records.

SCQ Album Review

My first few listens to Colour Codes found me rightly overwhelmed. From the symphonic beat-mongering of ‘Unabomber’ and lazer-beam trance of ‘Kid Cadmium’ to the gentle IDM of ‘Leonard’, Red Box Recorder seemed to be scratching out blueprints and rewriting his strengths between tracks. This eclectic nature never lets up and, in the odd case, maybe journeys too far from home, but I’d rather hear an artist occasionally overshoot his boundaries than insist on playing it safe. Despite its variety, Colour Codes feels united by its jubilant nature, continually surprising and engrossing.

#16 Album of 2009: Ambivalence Avenue - Bibio

Ambivalence Avenue

Bibio
Warp Records.

SCQ Album Review

Ambivalence Avenue and its critical acclaim this past summer confused just about everyone. Attracting newcomers who didn’t quite understand the levels of hype and Bibio faithfuls who couldn’t anticipate the record’s variety, Ambivalence Avenue requires some backtracking to understanding all that’s mind-blowing about these twelve songs. As it turns out, this album is only groundbreaking compared to the rest of Wilkinson’s discography, culminating with Vignetting the Compost, released a mere three months earlier. Incorporating crunchy beats, clearer vocals and forays into funk and hip hop, Bibio’s Warp debut is, if nothing else, a sudden and massive artistic leap forward; that rare statement record courtesy of someone we all cast off as a one-trick pony. Thank you, Mr. Wilkinson, for calling our bluff.

#15 Album of 2009: Girls Come Too - Still Life Still

Girls Come Too

Still Life Still
Arts & Crafts Records.

SCQ Album Review

Numbers don’t lie. And what a refreshing fact that is, when year-end lists can pit album against album, personal preference against preference, until you’re tempted to start the list over from scratch. With Girls Come Too, all I had to do was check out its play-counts on I-Tunes to know how fanatically and unconsciously I spin this record. This debut finds Still Life Still already mastered in the art of damaged, carnal lusting, in songs where fractured reflections and one-night stands are equivalent to eating and breathing. Drinking is still equivalent to drinking, however, from the clinking sound of two bottles cheers-ing at the start of ‘Flowers and a Wreath’ to the morning-after farewell of ‘Wild Bees’.

#14 Album of 2009: Years (By One Thousand Fingertips) - Attack In Black

Years (By One Thousand Fingertips)

Attack in Black
Dinealone Records.

SCQ Album Review

From my earliest days as an EP-collector, I’ve always encouraged less tracks on a release. Ten is fine, nine is great; better to pack more ideas and time into less songs than the other way around. You know why? Less tracks give a band less opportunity to screw up and lose sight of the project. I need unity, cohesion! If I wanted a buffet of individual tid-bits, I’d have gone to the internet and made a podcast. Alas, somehow Attack In Black tightrope all sixteen songs on Years (By One Thousand Fingertips) without grinding my gears.

Moreover, these Welland boys use such scope to craft their best full-length yet, combining the bravery of their lo-fi The Curve of the Earth sensibilities with the commanding nature of their radio-rock-flirtation Marriage. A sprawling web of concise folk-rock, Years (By One Thousand Fingertips) proves Attack In Black to be one of the best Canadian bands going.

#13 Album of 2009: Ursa Major - Third Eye Blind

Ursa Major

Third Eye Blind
Mega Collider Records.

SCQ Album Review

Ursa Major was my Chinese Democracy; a mythical collection of songs by an increasingly marginalized act, one who littered rumours of release as often as their fans doubted band-loyalty. And like Guns N Roses fans, I awaited official word of new music because I cherish Third Eye Blind’s back catalog for the devastating songwriting talent radio singles barely scratched the surface of. And even though Ursa Major mounted their great surprise on naysayers by cracking the Billboard 200’s top 3 this past summer, it’ll still shock some to find Third Eye Blind among this shortlist of predominantly indie selections.

Well forget for a minute that Third Eye Blind helped shape our current crop of brash singer-songwriters and discard the bizarre fact that Third Eye Blind are now, indeed, indie. Ursa Major, while not the band’s best work, remains a potent cure for what ails modern radio. As any high school reunion will prove in spades, the coolest classmates were those who evaded the fashionable cliques. Thirteen years after ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ set the pedestahl, and caught between aging mainstream notoriety and their growing second-wave fanbase, Third Eye Blind are proving to have lost none of their cool.

#12 Album of 2009: We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River - Richmond Fontaine

We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River

Richmond Fontaine
Decor Records.

SCQ Album Review

Out of complete SCQ obscurity, Richmond Fontaine arrived mid-Summer boasting Willy Vlautin’s Tweedy-in-his-prime drawl and an accomplished yet volatile band harkening back to my love of early Ryan Adams. Unfortunately these comparisons, although honest in how I was drawn to their sound, are pretty insulting - given how Richmond Fontaine have been turning heads since the mid-90s - and sidetrack how extraordinary We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River is. These fourteen songs seem to span a time period – two loaded weeks, six months, maybe a year or two – as Vlautin’s novelist tendencies are strongly imbedded through the dedicated scope of this record. Lower class characters find and lose themselves, tragedies and disappointments distinguish each other and, in the record’s finest moments, Vlautin finds himself in the thick of it.

#11 Album of 2009: As Good As Gone - Nudge

As Good As Gone

Nudge
Kranky Records.

SCQ Album Review

Full disclosure: my first listen to As Good As Gone occurred while I happened to be on a near-lethal (although entirely legal) drug cocktail. ‘Harmo’ had all the charm and serenity of a chimney-smoking log cabin but from ‘Two Hands’ onward, with its dubbed-out basslines and Honey Owens’ chilled-out vocals, I became increasingly intimidated. By the time ‘Aurolac’ crept through my ears, I was convinced As Good As Gone was omnipresent, no longer playing through speakers but all around me, its menacing vibes revealing themselves in reality as if the Gods were chilling to Nudge. At first I resisted and, well, freaked out, but eventually I calmed myself to both the nature of my condition and the brilliance of these songs. While that first terrifying listen forged a survival-bond between this record and I, its unusual beauty has grown deeper with each subsequent, sober listen.

#10 Album of 2009: Junior - Royksopp

Junior

Royksopp
Astralwerks Records.

SCQ Album Review

One of my many social distastes has always been when someone refers to an object as “fun”, unless said object happens to be a rollercoaster. Calling a song or album “fun” has always been particularly grating – I can’t explain it. Once I’ve gushed about Junior's bouncy, free-spirited and relentless nature, however, I can’t dance around the issue any longer: this is a tremendously fun album. As its absurd cover announces, Junior is the opposite of all the chin-scratching pomposity that the ‘P4k generation’ validates music with, and reaffirms how deftly addictive Royksopp’s songwriting is. With a cast of guest-vocalists ranging from Lykke Li and Robyn to Karin Dreijer-Andersson (of the Knife and Fever Ray), Junior’s onslaught is similar in scope to Basement Jaxx’s 2003 effort Kish Kash… only less aggressive and more cohesive. Royksopp will have quite the dominating discography if they are able to continue putting out albums of this quality every three years.

#9 Album of 2009: Vancouver - Matthew Good

Vancouver

Matthew Good
Universal Records.

SCQ Album Review

At least on paper, I think Vancouver is the album many Matthew Good fans have been waiting for these last six years. Not that Hospital Music isn’t an essential touchstone in his career, and not that White Light Rock and Roll Review wasn’t without its merits, but no record compliments the lush orchestration and patient explosiveness of Avalanche quite like this one. In terms of padding electric guitar with tender symphonies and writing personal songs that comment on the political, that 2003 effort and Vancouver perfectly bookend his solo work as the antithesis to Matthew Good Band’s discography. Where that band put an interesting spin on power-chord hooks and angst-ridden rhetoric, this latest Good work concretes the maturation that at first sought to find his place on this planet, and now the refinement of finding his place in British Columbia. Having come full-circle in his solo endeavors, the question now is: where to next?

#8 Album of 2009: Immolate Yourself - Telefon Tel Aviv

Immolate Yourself

Telefon Tel Aviv
Bpitch Records.

SCQ Album Review

As the frigid winter gripped Toronto and I started each day staring at frosted bus windows en route to a job I disliked, Immolate Yourself should’ve been a poor choice. There I was, miserable at 7:30am, and yet continually picking Immolate Yourself to soundtrack my perceived misfortune. Some tracks were nearly too bleak and concealed to play; ‘Mostly Translucent’ acts as the record’s empty, endless hallway, while ‘Your Mouth’ is almost too fatalistic to romanticize. And when I wasn’t basking in those shadows, I was floored by ‘upbeat’ tracks like ‘You Are the Worst Thing In the World’ and ‘Helen of Troy’ which, for all intents and purposes, provided the sound I’d once depended on the Junior Boys to deliver. Mood fills the purposeful gaps in these compositions, making Immolate Yourself perhaps the darkest electronica release this year.

#7 Album of 2009: Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective
Domino Records.

SCQ Album Review

While this album inched out all its competition with an SCQ Rating of 91%, it was in September – nearly eight months after I first deemed it incredible – that Merriweather Post Pavilion fell from my #1 spot. It deserves the highest SCQ Rating, hell it deserves to be considered the best album of the year from every hipster website to major print publication. Washing the dishes that sunny autumn day, however, I realized it didn’t deserve to conquer SCQ. Yes, Merriweather Post Pavilion is the strongest, most impressionable album this year yet I can’t deny how many times I’ve skipped over listening to Animal Collective’s latest in favour of something else. Merriweather Post Pavilion isn’t perfect in my books but it’s terrifyingly close, and my enjoyment of it has been matched by its intimidating greatness. This Brooklyn ensemble remains the most ingenious musicians I’ve ever heard, and while their latest isn’t the be-all-end-all for me, it’s a requisite for any year-end list.

#6 Album of 2009: The Crying Light - Antony & the Johnsons

The Crying Light

Antony & the Johnsons
Secretly Canadian.

SCQ Album Review

If instrumentation is secondary on any given Antony & the Johnsons album, The Crying Light deems it downright supplementary. Whether arrangements (courtesy of Nico Muhly) are sparsely integrated as on ‘Dust and Water’ or built to a full-orchestra crescendo on finale ‘Everglade’, Antony Hegarty’s voice rules twice the emotion and dimension. And it’s these breathtaking performances that render The Crying Light not only a beautiful album on par with I Am a Bird Now, but better than so many high-quality releases that, frankly, don’t employ Antony as a band-member.

I used to marvel at the thought that Hegarty’s songs could never be covered righteously, but now I realize my theory was half-finished. With The Crying Light it becomes evident that these songs don’t exist without Antony. Tasteful instruments may drift in and out with complimentary moods but they’re latched to a voice that births and lets go these songs. A more intimate showcase of a singular songwriter.

#5 Album of 2009: 3:03 - Plastik Joy

3:03

Plastik Joy
n5MD Records.

SCQ Album Review

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more adventurous electronic album in 2009 that’s this easy to listen to. Sure, there’s nothing quite groundbreaking about Plastik Joy’s love for folktronica; in fact, I credit 3:03’s prettiest songs for getting me hooked [the ratchety auxiliary percussion of ‘63 (She Was Trying to Sleep, I Was Trying to Breathe)’, the heartbreaking ‘Barcelona – Reykjavik (FHE276)’]. Yet for every trace of the familiar, Fannar and Cristiano contrasted with doom-laden guitars (‘Medispiace’), fuzzed out IDM (‘Hands’) or a flurry of guest-vocalists who each give these compositions their own vulnerability. If this album is poised to be classified under the folktronica banner, 3:03, at the very least, stretches the sub-genre’s limitations and gives the term some much-deserved credibility.

#4 Album of 2009: Spirit Guides - Evening Hymns

Spirit Guides

Evening Hymns
Out of This Spark.

SCQ Album Review

It’s no surprise to me that my favourite album out of Toronto this year is the one that sounds farthest removed from any concrete jungle. A breath of fresh air, Spirit Guides is a full-blooded, handsomely orchestrated folk record that instates Evening Hymns (aka Jonas Bonnetta) as a folk troubadour able to see more in the forest than just its trees. Merging the natural with the spiritual, Bonnetta’s songwriting seeks a higher order where the past is soaked in rainy field recordings (‘Cedars’, ‘History Books’) and every step forward unearths a mountainous chorus (thanks to contributions from Ohbijou, Forest City Lovers, and The Wooden Sky). Fittingly, no other record this year sounds quite as expansive and dew-drenched as the cover of Spirit Guides.

#3 Album of 2009: New Leaves - Owen

New Leaves

Owen
Polyvinyl Records.

SCQ Album Review

I truly believe Mike Kinsella speaks for most men; his honesty is admirable, his vulnerability often scary. If he’s every inch the asshole he sometimes paints himself as, it only furthers my point. In other words, New Leaves isn’t a departure so much as a continuation of his bildungsroman: Kinsella acquires more responsibility and accepts his age, all the while kicking and screaming. So for New Leaves to land so prominently on SCQ’s year-end list would come as a paradox if it was truly just another Owen record (updated themes, similar brilliance). Thankfully, as stubborn as he is, Kinsella has broken ground on New Leaves, offering a richer showcase of instruments and production for many of his best songs yet.

When it comes to year-end lists, some albums can be tough to discern the quality of. Others instinctively compel you, leaving no room in your mind for dismissal. Case in point: I can’t listen to segments of New Leaves without getting goosebumps. That’s enough assessing for me.

#2 Album of 2009: Fleurs - Former Ghosts

Fleurs

Former Ghosts
Upset the Rhythm.

SCQ Album Review

If Former Ghosts were aiming to make a pretty record, they picked one hell of a way to go about it. Here’s a record as jagged and abrasive as rusted knives, built-up and broken down like the last desperate phone-calls of a dying relationship. Snare hits sound like rulers against chalkboards, synths buzz like haywire band-saws, and Freddy Ruppert’s vocals sound torn-up, inside-out, even underwater. Regardless of the album’s sweltering slow-burners (‘Choices’) and pounding anthems (‘Hold On’), the entirety of Fleurs is driven on urgency, as tangible and obsessive as a past too recent and complicated to forget. Musical reference points range everywhere from The Cure’s Faith to Xiu Xiu’s The Air Force but what’s unavoidable and impossible to duplicate is Fleurs’ inherent prettiness; that out of dire, brutal situations can arise a life-or-death beauty unattainable to anyone remotely comfortable.