Best Music of 2009, Pt. 2: Albums #20-16

[Note: only full-length studio albums were considered for this list. Therefore, EPs (Animal Collective’s Fall Be Kind) and compilations (Nick Cave & Warren Ellis’ White Lunar and the AIDS benefit Dark Was The Night) are not included here, as awesome as they may be. Making lists like this is arbitrary enough as is. Adding compilations and short-form releases only makes things more complicated. But seriously…go check the other 2009 Favorites out. They’re all quite impressive.]

#20
Rain Machine
Rain Machine

Escaping the narrow confines of simply being a “side project,” Kyp Malone, who by day sings and plays guitar in TV On The Radio, came into his own in a big way this year with Rain Machine. Without TVOTR’s furious guitar rush and Tunde Adebimpe’s roaring vocals to distract attention, Rain Machine reveals Malone as a gloriously emotional and potent songwriter. He can do the whole in-your-face rock thing, with songs like “Give Blood”, but he can also restrain himself and write tracks like the eleven-minute long “Winter Song”, while magically keeping something that unwieldy from becoming boring. Topped off by his expressive voice and urgent delivery, Malone and his band have created something that should be familiar to TVOTR fans, but engaging and unique in its own right.

[original review]

#19
Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
Patterson Hood

The Drive-By Truckers are a wildly prolific band and it almost feels weird to have a year go by without a new studio album from Alabama’s finest. Thankfully, the band did treat us to two solid stopgap releases this year: The Fine Print, an impressive b-sides and rarities collection, and Murdering Oscar, the second solo album from the band’s guitarist, singer and all-around leader, Patterson Hood. Playing with his band, the Screwtopians, Hood has compiled a frighteningly strong set of songs, written at various times over the past decade. Yet, over the course of the album fifty minutes, a cohesive sound and style emerges. Party country shitkicker and part keen social observer, Hood and his band churn out blistering southern rock and heart-wrenching balladry to back up Hood’s sharp lyrics and nuanced character sketches.

[original review]

#18
Years Of Refusal
Morrissey

There’s something about Morrissey that can be insanely frustrating. The Pope of Mope has made an entire career of his self-fulfilling lyrical obsession with no one ever loving him. Plus, when he’s not singing about that lack of love, he’s singing about the qualities that make him unlovable. It’s a vicious cycle and Moz has shown no signs of jumping off his specific hamster wheel anytime soon. The upside to all this is that Morrissey is in the middle of a full-fledged career renaissance as of late and Years Of Refusal is the best album he’s released since the 1990s. Heaven knows he’s still miserable now, but his dourness is balanced out by the short, sharp rock of his songwriting compatriots, Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer. At the ripe old age of fifty, the Mozfather sounds as vibrant and caustic as ever.

[original review]

#17
The Sound The Speed The Light
Mission Of Burma

As far as I know, there is literally no precedent for what Mission Of Burma have accomplished this decade. How many other bands can break up after recording only a single (admittedly legendary) album… and then reunite nineteen years later and end up recording material that sounds just as immediate and thrilling? It helps that during that absence, alt-rock was flung into the mainstream and Mission Of Burma were retroactively given demi-god status, but still… The Sound The Speed The Light is almost too good. The dry, brittle sound of their 1982 debut, Vs., is replicated wonderfully on this new album, full of angular guitars, dissonant bass and pummeling drums. It only took, y’know, twenty-seven years, but Mission Of Burma have recorded their second full-length masterpiece.

[original review]

#16
Album
Girls

“Do we really need a Californian Elvis Costello?” This is the question I’ve been asking myself since Girls debuted with Album earlier this fall. Without a doubt, the San Francisco-based band wears its influences on their thrift-store-bought sleeves: two parts Costello pen-wielding nerd vocals, one part Beach Boys harmonies, some Buddy Holly to taste and voila! However, the appeal of Girls is that they take all those classic pop touchstones and turn them into something that sounds weirdly contemporary. The growls of static and noise that underpin songs like “Morning Light” and “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” show that the band see themselves as more than just a jukebox on legs that waltzed out of a 1950s diner. Plus, few bands this year could match Girls for sheer, heartstring-tugging balladry, with the heartfelt “Lust For Life”, “Laura” and “Hellhole Ratrace” proving that teenage angst and emoting can still be wonderfully appealing in this post-emo age.

[original review]