LimeWire Music Blog

A year’s worth of new music is like a mountain-sized pile of garbage: most of it stinks, it’s ridiculously easy to get trapped underneath an avalanche, and more dross is piled on top every day. Yet you attempt to climb to the apex of the heap where the freshest garbage lies. Some of it, in fact, might not even be garbage at all, but treasure! Oh, it’s a steep and treacherous climb, no doubt about that. The mountain is a real challenge for even the most experienced dumpster diver. But, luckily, you’ve got tools to aid in your journey. Live visions are presented, ones that offer unique revelatory insight; filters sort out the gross stuff from the most appetizing morsels. With these, I gladly bore the burden of this quest—the quest for treasure amongst a gigantic pile of crap.

From the top of Garbage Mountain,here are my favorite records and shows of the year:

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Baroness - Blue Record
Built to Spill - There is No Enemy
Girls - Album
Kylesa - Static Tensions
Mission of Burma - The Sound The Speed The Light
Raekwon - Only Built for Cuban Linx II
Real Estate - Real Estate
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Thee Oh Sees - Help
Tyvek - Tyvek

THE TOP 10

10. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Due in large part to “Lisztomania” and “1901,” this was Phoenix’s breakout year, and deservedly so. But, for me, it was the middle of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix that made me realize how great this band really is. Songs like “Lasso,” the two “Love Like a Sunset” tracks, and “Rome,” go beyond simple synth-pop and achieve the textural quality on the level of Roxy Music or M83. It kind of sucks that I’ll be hearing the hits off this record in car commercials for the next two or three years, but at the same time I’m happy Phoenix are finally getting their payday.

9. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
This is the first Animal Collective record I’ve even remotely enjoyed since Sung Tongs. I don’t know if the band has started taking Panda Bear’s input more seriously, if Avey Tare changed shampoos, or what, but making a sample-based album was the best decision the band has made since they started playing old songs at live shows (when I used to see this band at small venues back in 2004, they’d only play songs that had yet to be recorded). Actually, their shows are still pretty boring, but this isn’t really music suited for a live setting anyway. MWPP should be studied closely, under headphone microscopes. I mean, “My Girls” alone is reason enough to close the shades and turn on the black lights.

8. Mike Bones - A Fool For Everyone
In a year that saw releases from Bill Callahan, Cass McCombs, and Bonnie Prince Billy, A Fool For Everyone emerged as my favorite singer/songwriter album of the year because, out of all those marquee names, Mike Bones is the only one who speaks to me as a man of the city. His lyrics are filled with the urban angst, not country-ish melancholy, and his guitar of choice is electric, not acoustic. Quasi-known as a New York session player, Bones is surprisingly restrained on Fool, but that just allows the occasional guitar flourish to feel that much more powerful. Most overlooked record of ‘09 for sure.

7. Dinosaur Jr. Farm
Now on their second “come back” album, I’m still amazed by the quality of Dinosaur Jr.’s songwriting. Farm has had me wondering what Sonic Youth would sound like today if they’d have taken ten years off. Nothing against SY, but while they have, for better or worse, consistently evolved over the course of their career, the Dino Jr. of today sounds remarkably similar to their late ’80s selves (or, at least, the ’90s Mascis solo version). The band hasn’t remained completely frozen in time, though. Farm is warmer and more grown-up sounding than past releases, and J Mascis even lets bassist/nemesis Lou Barlow sing on two entire songs.

6. Screaming Females - Power Move
Marissa Paternoster and the rest of the Females (not actually female) write so many catchy hooks they’d have the oceans extinct of fish in no time. But this is hardly pop punk. Paternoster melts my face every five minutes on Power Move with some of the most epic riffage I’ve heard on anything since Farm! The fact that these riffs come out of nowhere and yet fit perfectly in the pop framework of their songs make me love this album even more. I’m totally going to be putting “Bell” and “Skull” on mixes for the next year, at least. Dudes, trust me, girls totally dig guys who are into bands with girls that know how to thrash.

5. Pissed Jeans - King of Jeans
This is their second full-length, but I didn’t really get into Pissed Jeans until I saw them open for Fucked Up last January. I remember, before they came on, a kid standing in front of me told his friend Pissed Jeans’ set wouldn’t be too wild. He said they’re slow, like Flipper, and not to worry about getting kicked in the head, or anything like that. Well, after they were on stage for like five minutes, I got kicked in the head, then Pissed Jeans’ singer punched out one of the only lights in the room, and tore at his shirt until it became a dirty rag on the floor. This is exactly what King of Jeans sounds like, except more alienating, as if they had picked up where My War left off and things only got more frustrating for the members of Pissed Jeans from there.

4. Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
Cold Cave’s mixture of synth pop and experimental noise made them a favorite for me in 2009. This band is led by Wes Eisold, who used to sing in scream-y post-hardcore bands like Give Up The Ghost and Some Girls, features Caralee McElroy from avant-pop group Xiu Xiu, and noise artist Dominick Fernow, who performs solo under the name Prurient (and runs the great noise and black metal record store Hospital Productions). Love Comes Close is great because the album manages to integrate each member’s unique musical histories, creating the ideal dark wave synthesis and the bar by which leagues of copycats, I’m sure, will measure themselves against in the months to come. Cold Cave are one of those albums that you want to say sounds like a million other bands from the ’80s or ’90s, but you can’t seem to remember exactly which bands you’re thinking of.

3. Mount Eerie - Wind’s Poem
I listened to an inordinate amount of Black Metal this year (love Krallice, Wolves In The Throne Room and Liturgy are pretty good too), and Wind’s Poem is by far my favorite Black Metal record of the year despite having little in common, at least musically, with other bands attached to the genre. Instead of making an album of start-to-finish guitar buzz, Phil Elverum focused on the ideological ethos of Black Metal. Wind’s Poem is about isolation and highlights Elverum’s deep connection with nature; it plays as a mostly quiet, and overwhelmingly moody, meditation on loneliness with spikes of metallic bombast that cut through the album’s atmospherics like wild animal calls in the forest. But even the album’s shredders are tempered by Phil Elverum’s soothing voice, which makes all the Mount Eerie records so special in the first place. Oh, and he samples the Twin Peaks theme song for “Between Two Mysteries.” Genius.

2. Fever Ray - Fever Ray
As Karin Dreijer Andersson unspooled her Fever Ray “project” over the course of the year, revealing a beautiful trans-media triptych as good as anything mainstream pop has to offer, she created a brand of staggering scope, lucidity, and outright coolness.  Between her eerie Lynchian videos to the spectacle of her live show, I was totally rapt.  But, before the fanfare there was an album. Simultaneously technological and organic, the Fever Ray disc was way more than merely a soundtrack for amazing visuals, but a soundtrack to my own mystical dreamscape. Electronic drones live-sounding percussion underscore surprisingly straightforward lyrics. It’s like Andersson means to tap into some kind of futuristic nostalgia for experiences I never had and yet feel a deep connection with on some kind of collectively unconscious level—and it works.

1. Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions
Monoliths & Dimensions is the fullest realization of the Sunn O))) sound and ethos—pure tonal exploration, dramatically staged, and cloaked heavy metal imagery—and marks the first time the band has truly managed to perfectly mix each of these elements into a powerful singular statement.  It’s also the record on which this band can truly shake their “drone” label. It’s not that core members Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley have reigned in their sub-bass and guitar vibrations, because they’re just as dense and massive as ever, but with huge assists from vocalist Attila Csihar, whose guttural bellows add demonic texture to the songs, and string arrangements by Eyvind Kang, who’s responsible for giving Monoliths its creepy ritualistic feel, Sunn O))) have finally realized their potential, and made an experimental heavy metal record that transcends all the genre’s definitions–definitions the band helped create in the first place.

I’ve been listening to this record since it came out, back in April, and it has honestly changed the way I listen to rock ‘n’ roll. I can’t stop thinking about guitar tone, and, where I used to be addicted to fast and sloppy, now all I want is slow and ponderous music. I listen to Monoliths when I can’t fall asleep at night. I love how it completely surrounds me, and makes you feel like I’m floating through music and not just listening from the outside. Sunn O))) are dark priests dedicated to the worship of guitars, and this is their gospel.

FAVORITE SHOWS OF THE YEAR

Fucked Up and Pissed Jeans at Market Hotel 1/20/09

Throbbing Gristle at Brooklyn Masonic Temple 4/28/09

Girls at Monster Island Basement 6/26/09

Sunn O))) at Brooklyn Masonic Temple 9/22/09

Fever Ray at Webster Hall 9/29/09

AND FIVE MORE I DIDN’T BLOG ABOUT FOR LIMEWIRE

Screaming Females, JEFF The Brotherhood at Death By Audio in April
There’s nothing better than stadium-sized guitar theatrics in a DIY space.

Tyvek, Personal and the Pizzas at Cake Shop in July
Personal and the Pizzas are my favorite power pop band right now. Once, I heard them on the radio talking about how Montclaire sucks. And Tyvek are my favorite lo-fi punk band. They’re like, if a bunch of kids from the A.V. club in a random Midwestern high school in 1981 formed a band instead of playing D&D in a wood-paneled basement.

Cold Cave at Cake Shop in July
This was my second time seeing Cold Cave. The first was when they opened for Comet Gain, of all bands. It was like being at Lilith Fair while Melvins were playing, or something. Who knew three people wearing winter coats and standing in front of synthesizers could be so entertaining.

Nine Inch Nails at Terminal 5 in August
I haven’t seriously listened to Nine Inch Nails since 2001, but wow, it totally didn’t even matter. I felt like I was 14 again at this show. Yeah, they played a lot of new songs I’ve never heard, but Peter Murphy came out and sang three songs and “March of the Pigs” still kills.

Krallice at Union Pool in November
During Krallice’s entire set, this one dude with a completely unironic mustache stood right in front of one of one of the guitar players and did some of the most insanely grandstanding air guitar I’ve ever seen. That’s the kind of behavior Krallice inspires.