Heels top 10 Albums of 2009

[Gonzo]

Some of this is great man. Fantastic list.

Oddly enough, I REALLY enjoy a lot of this music [sometimes not the lyrics/way the song is sung, but I can appreciate it; most notably Bombay Bicycle Club].

The Dirty Projectors song you linked is just great all around. Really digging some of this, and I'll definitely be checking some of these bands out on youtube.

e/

Just listened to Julian Casablancas; This is by far my favorite song on this list. Fucking great; Great voice, fantastic music, mesmerizing sound.

Fucking props man. Good shit here.

[RosettaStoned]

Gallows

They released their second album this year, and this album makes it back to back albums where they've completely fucking blew the doors off.

Not bad nig, but that fucking singer is awful.

[wingsfan77]

Good list, I'll definitely check out more stuff by most of these bands

[Anthony]

the last 5...

Japandroids- Post-Nothing

Despite the nihilistic bent of that title, the world must seem a rosy place for this Vancouver noise-pop duo right now. Over the past few months music fans and critics alike have been throwing about all sorts of glowing adjectives concerning their debut album. And whew! – their debut is a gale-force riot, a virtual tempest of joyous abandon. “I don’t wanna worry about dying/I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls”, yelps guitarist Brian King on the bristling, vital ‘Young Hearts Spark Fire’. We’re sold, then – just one small quandary left to figure out… Which is weirder: the fact that some of these songs sound a lot like Foreigner recording in a wind tunnel, or the fact that that they’re the most killer moments here?



Bombay Bicycle Club- I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose

On paper, things don’t bode well for Bombay Bicycle Club: their curry house-inspired name implies a wacky and erroneous grasp of irony that wears a traffic cone for a hat; at their first gig they played funk songs to their school assembly; and the ink’s barely dry on their A2 certificates – which makes them as good as past it in comparison to Tiny Masters Of Today and their spritely green ilk.

Throw in the fact that producer Jim Abbiss was responsible for arguably the most significant British debut of the 21st century (Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’) and it would be reasonable to speculate that BBC are facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge with regard to proving their mettle.

But if ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’ is the band’s Everest, not only do they conquer it with unassuming boyish romance, but they’ve also created the most poignant anthology of what it means to be young and restless in the city since fellow Londoners Bloc Party’s ‘Silent Alarm’ – though they’re a lot less frosty than Okereke et al.

‘Emergency Contraception Blues’ has the kind of title that’ll have Daily Mail hacks frothing at the mouth about lax sexual mores. But rather than peddle post-coital bravado, its sensitive shoegazey warmth and bluster burst forth from the momentarily blissful sensation of ignorance upon waking into the sound of tempestuous consequences, all My Bloody Valentine swooping synth albatrosses and brow-knitted walls of sound. It rumbles into ‘Lamplight’, where Jack Steadman’s voice quavers like Interpol’s Paul Banks or Devendra Banhart and is equally as beautiful as ‘Autumn’, their conjuring of young love (“These scattered flashes of delight, they can’t help but sway your mind” – though it’s evidently not to be), where jagged guitars stab as regret consumes his faltering voice.

Gorgeous as these fragile emotional explosions of songs are, it comes as something of a relief that BBC occasionally stay true to the record’s title, breaking out ‘Matinée’-era Jack Peñate pizzazz (thankfully, the only nod to their humble origins in funk) on ‘Always Like This’, following a minimalist introduction that’s clearly been worshipping at the temple of Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works’. ‘The Hill’ is an upbeat, rousingly distorted lament for days of carefree innocence atop Hampstead Heath, hungry but never mawkishly indulgent, calling on Greek mythology’s original teenage rebel, Icarus, to evoke the follies of youth (“We flew too high, to let the sun burn our wings”). It’s a shame that they’ve used the exact same version of the song as on their 2007 EP, ‘The Boy I Used To Be’ (as with ‘Cancel On Me’, and ‘Ghost’ from the ‘How We Are’ EP, save for an added 25 seconds of grungy Foals-like drumming), but the record coheres nonetheless.

That is, aside from on its closing number. After 11 tracks of effervescent fuzz and heart-wrenchingly urgent choruses, the resonating acoustic bass notes and sweet drum machine shuffle of ‘The Giantess’ could almost be an outtake from Grizzly Bear’s ‘Veckatimest’, less the harmonies. It’s totally uncharacteristic of the rest of the record – Jack’s voice sounds submerged deep underwater, and rises to the surface on expressive, billowing floor toms – but it’s a swooning, lovely closer that’s proof of a developing musical maturity.

A great philosopher once said, “Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing”. If you’re over the age of 18, consider ‘I Had The Blues…’ your invitation back to the heady rush of teenaged rapture, and the rest of you, stay drunk on its certain romance while you still can.



The Dirty Projectors- Bitte Orca

Pity the maverick, won’t you? While blinkered bands peddle straightforward (read: drab), indie ‘Music For The People’ with nary a murmur of complaint, others stick their heads above the parapet with something inventive only to be met, far too often, with the suspicion that they’re over-complicating things. That smart, creative bands are somehow reneging on music’s main purpose (presumably to make us want to be Liam Gallagher) is, of course, a massive crock of shit. Proudly representing the clever clogs are Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors, who, on this fifth album, sound something like Vampire Weekend refracted through a trippy hall of mirrors.

Truth is, any complaints about Dirty Projectors being too clever for their own good (can that ever be a valid criticism?) are well wide of the mark. The only real difficulty is that they almost sound like a brilliant pop band, thanks to their silvery hi-life guitars, gorgeous strings and tense, wiry rhythms, only to put curious bystanders to the ultimate test when David Longstreth (a chap even David Byrne thinks is weird) warbles like a monstrous cut-and-shut of Antony Hegarty and Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside. It was this meandering voice that put the Projectors’ last thrilling outings – ‘The Getty Address’, a glitch-opera about a suicidal Don Henley, and ‘Rise Above’, Longstreth’s reimagining of Black Flag’s ‘Damaged’ from teenage memory – out of reach for some.

But like the equally bonkers Wildbirds & Peacedrums, the 2009 Projectors have adopted a more enjoyable model, thanks in part to Longstreth holding back that horn. From sun-dappled opener ‘Cannibal Resource’ to euphoric closer ‘Fluorescent Half Dome’, which sounds like Prince leading a drum circle, there’s not much that you could say isn’t made for the pleasure of ‘…The People’. ‘Bitte Orca’ is easy on the ear yet mightily complex, warmly empathetic and a kaleidoscope of styles. Tumbling together we have ’60s psych-pop, prog, Scritti’s falsetto soul, a hyperactive take on King Sunny Adé’s Afropop and, to top it all, sassy, late-’90s R&B.

This last influence bares itself in ‘Stillness Is The Move’, sung by Amber Coffman and sounding not unlike one of Timbaland’s hits with Aaliyah. It should do for Dirty Projectors what ‘My Girls’ did for Animal Collective: prove that cleverness is a virtue.



The Drums- Summertime!

There are few things that unite the NME office, bar mild alcoholism, social retardation or the threat of imminent nuclear holocaust. So when we heard The Drums and realised that we all thought they were brilliant, we were suspicious. Surely some trick? This perfect band must be a kind of Trojan horse, a trap to get us all into one venue and then gas us like the vermin we are.

Probe as we might, though, we can’t see any rotten molars on this fine-fetlocked gift pony. From the innocent/knowing euphoria of the early-Cure-gone-west-coast sunshine pop of ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ via the Jonathan Richman-ish naivety of ‘The Saddest Summer’ to the synth-soaked, John Hughes-soundtrack new romantic crush-angst of ‘I Felt Stupid’, it’s so flawless you almost feel embarrassed for everyone else. And they only formed less than a year ago!

‘Down By The Water’ deftly seduces the moodiness of Black Lips and the ghostly doo-wop of Grizzly Bear into a delicious bad-boy and prom-queen tryst down under the boardwalk. ‘Don’t Be A Jerk Johnny’’s sweet gender-battle (“You used to be so pretty/But now you’re just tragic”) is like a less try-hard, less dull Vampire Weekend, while ‘The Saddest Summer’ is the best misleadingly titled evocation of randy summer fun we’ve heard since Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’.

The Bunnymen-gone-new romantic ‘Submarine’ finds a shadow in the sunshine like a plastic-wrapped body on the shoreline and ‘Make You Mine’, for all its sassy rhythms, whistling and falsetto call-and-response is more than just a stylish exercise in ’50s rock’n’roll stylings – when Jonathan Pierce sighs
“I don’t know what to do when/I see you holding someone else’s hand/And I don’t know what to say/Cos when I open my mouth I always sound so stupid”, it’s a god-only-knows-how-sweet evocation of teenage melancholy. This EP couldn’t be any more giddy with promise. Let’s just hope these cads don’t leave us with summer dreams, ripped at the seams…



Gallows- Grey Britain

The last time a flame-haired iconoclast found himself at the forefront of British punk, he coined a timeless phrase: “anger is an energy”. Energy is a useful thing; it alters its circumstances and inspires its surroundings. And this is the frustrating thing about the often-great second album from Gallows, and our generation’s ginger-savant, Frank Carter. ‘Grey Britain’ has important things to say, but due to the lack of any direction or mission, it allows itself to be eaten up by the anger that fuels it.

The country portrayed in ‘Grey Britain’’s broad concept is so fucked it isn’t even worth saving. This isn’t anything as simple as a left-wing agenda. The usual corporations, complicit governments and corrupt churches all come in for a pounding, but there’s an uncomfortable whiff of the reactionary too. Kids, if they’re not having kids themselves, are waving knives at other kids. Parents, if they’re not scamming the dole, are probably using those kids as drug mules. And anybody who isn’t involved in this cycle is complicit simply by allowing it to happen, and so just as guilty.

Meanwhile, Gallows seem to have been made angrier by their own success and subsequent portrayal as punk cartoons. And to push them over the edge is the chorus of punk purists waiting to tear them down for signing to that major for a rumoured million pounds.

‘Grey Britain’ is the sound of what happens when you wind all that ire up and let it explode. Knowing they needed to tear out something special, they drafted in GGGarth, the man behind Rage Against The Machine’s explosive debut.

What’s so impressive is how he manages to channel all this force into the shape of a landmark record. This is still rooted in hardcore, but the flair and flourish is pure metal. For a major label debut, it’s brave indeed to go several notches fiercer than last time on the nuclear-powered likes of ‘Black Eyes’ or ‘I Dread The Night’. And if the bludgeoning of apparently holy men on ‘Leeches’ lurches towards melody, and if ‘Misery’ begins with piano and strings, the album’s pure-punk second act is both classically ferocious and unremittingly grim (“I wanna kill myself just for relief”).

Elsewhere, two-part single ‘The Vulture’ begins with a genuinely plaintive-sounding Frank singing over acoustic guitar with real delicacy, and ‘Graves’ finds Simon Neil from Biffy Clyro turning up for the most terrifying episode of harmonising you ever heard.

Yes, ‘Grey Britain’ has all the makings of a classic work. Yet for all its bravery and invention, it lacks the heart and vitality of their debut – those qualities substituted for mere fire and unremitting venom.

It’s not until the very end, the sweeping, militaristic dirge ‘Crucifucks’, that we get anything approaching the scent of salvation. As pounding drums give way to sirens, which give way to nothing, it’s left to Frank to croak with what sound like the final breaths of life: “Let’s fucking start again”.
By that point you barely have the will to listen to music again, let alone effect a revolution.

The last time an album this unremittingly grim had such a shot at the mainstream jugular it was called ‘The Holy Bible’. As bleak as that was, it was also shot through with a vivacious, er, gallows humour. There’s none of that here, and they’d argue that this is the point.
But if the world that Gallows depict is even half-accurate, it’s not one you’d want to live in. And it’s doubtful you’d want to listen to its soundtrack many times either.

Japandroids

Saw these guys live along with the entire Polyvinyl Records cast.

Owen <3

[calgaryballer]

Saw the Dirty Projectors live with the Racoons and the Von Bondies. They were TERRIBLE live! One of the worst acts I have ever seen

Edit - it was with TV on the Radio that they were here

[Splugeon]

Japandroids

They might be able to be decent if they'd record their shit like normal people.

Fuck my life it kills me to hear a potentially good melody crushed to the bottom of a recording by disgustingly harsh guitar (and I love me some harsh guitar, just when it's done well) and left to die with the nonexistent drums.

Anyway, I don't get this quote right here:

Oddly enough, I REALLY enjoy a lot of this music [sometimes not the lyrics/way the song is sung, but I can appreciate it]

What the hell do you 'appreciate' about it so much then?

Anyway, it's hard to even put into words how bad 'The xx' is, among others on the list.

I can stretch my listening into the off-indie/post-nothing stuff, but I just didn't hear anything that was worth two shits on the whole list for my taste (after at least a minute of listening on each song).

To each his own for sure, but heelswxman, if these were your favorite albums of the year, God you missed out on some good stuff in all sorts of other genres.

Just sayin'.

[Splugeon]

I don't have the time nor the decisiveness to make up a list for it. Not right now at least.

Never said anyone's tastes were superior than others, to each his own. Hence me referring to it being worthless and shit for 'my taste'.

Pull the panties out of your ass. Opinions.

Others can give their positive ones, but I can't give mine because I think that most of this is garbage, and possibly a waste of some very talented musicians (POSSIBLY)?

[Anthony]

This might be a bit biased since i'm a diehard Mike Kinsella groupie.




This album isn't too bad as well.

[leaffan]

I don't have the time nor the decisiveness to make up a list for it. Not right now at least.

Never said anyone's tastes were superior than others, to each his own. Hence me referring to it being worthless and shit for 'my taste'.

Pull the panties out of your ass. Opinions.

Others can give their positive ones, but I can't give mine because I think that most of this is garbage, and possibly a waste of some very talented musicians (POSSIBLY)?

If its not the weather he gets upset about its when someone calls one of his shitty bands shitty.

[Anthony]

●●●

Use it, abuse it.

[Splugeon]

No, you can't give an opinion because you can't even back your own up.



I'm simply asking what I missed out on. You act as though you've got all these albums in mind, then when I ask what they are, you act as though you don't have time. I'm not asking for an official list here. Just asking for a few names. Go wash your hair.

Edit- I see why you don't have time to name any albums you'd consider. You were too busy changing your avatar!

I don't need to back up an opinion on whether I think what you listen to is a waste of airspace or not. That's what I think. There's my defense. What you've posted is a waste of internet, while it's still a well done list and I'm glad it's not Ke$ha and Kid Cudi.

Are you sure you want me to suggest something to you? I mean you are pretty defensive of your own opinions, while butt fucking a negative response, so your taste is much better for obvious reasons.

Yes, I changed my avatar to someone whose shits' plops sound better than everything on your list.

And I don't wash my hair.

[Splugeon]

If its not the weather he gets upset about its when someone calls one of his shitty bands shitty.

I don't even know how some of that shit gets funded for a music video. It really is fucking incredible to me. And hilarious at the same time.

[Anthony]

Oh shit.

My fiance is going to be pissed now, I'm about to find a shitload of albums to buy on vinyl thanks to this.

:rock3:

[Anthony]

Goddamnit Splugeon recommend a band or two now! I am in dire need of some new music.

True story nigga.

[Splugeon]

Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground -- (Self-Titled) (fucking awesome)
- Hey Momma
- Birds (On a Day Like Today)
- Simon Courage Flees the Coup
(all are good at times though)

Minus the Bear -- Menos El Oso & Knights
- Pachuca Sunrise
- Knights

Monty Are I -- Wall of People
- All.

Rx Bandits -- ...And the Battle Begun (One of my favorite albums ever)
- All.

Portugal, the Man -- Waiter: "You Vultures!" (Might be more around your guys' tastes, along with Kay Kay, which is fucking awesome)
- Waiter.... OMG BONER.

The Spill Canvas -- Abnormalities EP (Just came out recently, only 3 songs but they're all fuckin' just solid)
- All.

The Girlfriend Season -- Things That Fly (Part 1) (Coming out soon )
- :D OMFGTHEBLONDEKID

Fall of Troy -- Manipulator
- Semi-Fiction
- Seattlantis
- Forget the other good ones' names

Coheed and Cambria -- In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (I'll listen to this album until I die)
- Obvious.

There, pretty good assortment of genres in there too.


EDIT: Put some of the better songs up from each album.