10. Girls
Album
[True Panther/Matador]In the original video for "Lust for
Life", Girls singer-songwriter Christopher Owens does a little
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" routine. Dressed in a stripey bathrobe,
he sits in the middle of a cluttered bedroom and flips scrawled
messages that range from witty ("you wouldn't be so stupid if you were
Randy Newman") to confessional ("Maria-- I'm sorry"). Along the way, he
unveils one Sharpie'd piece of printer paper that stands out: "believe
in me." While many bands hid their ambition and/or emotion behind fuzz,
fussiness, and psychedelics this year, Girls took full responsibility
for their potential impact on the hearts and whims of young adults
besot by that perennial, perilous question: "Now what?"
Owens doesn't offer an answer, exactly. His solution takes the form
of inclusive understanding; he's a mess, and he's just trying to figure
some shit out, too. Lots of people have compared Owens to Elvis
Costello, and their voices do share a high-pitched timbre. But Owens
doesn't snarl or bark-- when he calls himself a "big bad mean
motherfucker," he's in on the joke. A more apt godfather may be Paul
Westerberg, another gut-spilling King of Nothing with his eye on
transcendence. "Hey, are you satisfied?" asked Westerberg on the
Replacements' "Unsatisfied", possibly the best song about being
frustrated with your own ennui ever written. It's down, but not done.
With the seven-minute album centerpiece "Hellhole Ratrace", Girls
create an equally rousing sequel. "I don't wanna cry my whole life
through/ I wanna do some laughing too," howls Owens. I believe him.
--Ryan Dombal
9. Fever Ray
Fever Ray
[Mute/Rabid]When the first singles for the Knife
singer Karin Dreijer Andersson's Fever Ray dropped, it was clear that
her solo project was inscrutable, even by the standards of someone who
considers Venetian plague masks a cornerstone of her wardrobe. The
first impression is that atmosphere trumps narrative; bass notes,
simple rhythms, and stark synth chords creep like a rolling fog while a
cast of pitch-shifted voices emerge from dark corners of the woods or
darker recesses of the mind. But Andersson's use of chilling childhood
imagery and warped lyrics, filled with morphing perspectives that
cultivate curiosity and raise questions that may never be answered,
make it addictive. Who knew dishwasher tablets could be so unsettling?
What's made Andersson's work even better is how her videos and
performances amplify the music's sense of dread and mystery. Does the
dirty rave dancer on a diving board know she's being watched ("When I
Grow Up")? Why is the Miss Havisham figure in a silver dress cavorting
with farm animals ("Seven")? Are they the same person? It's deliberate,
theatrical smoke and mirrors, constant reinvention, and a David
Lynch-like veneer of unseen danger that invite audience
reinterpretation. The more material this unique artist releases, the
less any of it makes sense. --Patrick Sisson
8. Phoenix
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
[Loyauté/Glassnote]The banality of evil's got nothing
on the banality of music stardom-- not in 2009, anyway. Consider:
Frumptastic Scottish virgin breaks debut-LP sales records;
cherub-cheeked Idol appropriates rock hedonism; and Phoenix, the
decade-old French pop outfit known to longtime Pitchfork readers as
trendsetters in "the sparsely-attended arena of new soft-rock," become,
well, sorta famous.
And it's richly deserved: From its giddy opening salvo to a finale
that makes chippy guitars and keyboards set to harpsichord seem as
natural a pairing as drums-and-bass,
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenixis a joy of geeky craftsmanship, irony-free cliché, and simple animal
pleasures. No accident that the album pits Franz Liszt's celebrity
against Mozart's musicianship, only to expose it as a false dichotomy.
Or that Phoenix licensed its effervescent jam "1901" to an ad for the
Cadillac SRX-- a
crossover vehicle. For a local-boys-done-good
victory performance this autumn, "Take Away Shows" auteur Vincent Moon
staged the band at the site of that most hackneyed of package-tour
icons, the Eiffel-frickin-Tower. But Moon knew what he was about.
Bystanders-- foreign tourists, a beaming bride and groom-- are at first
tentative, confused by the camera crew converging on these ordinary
looking buskers. Then Phoenix reach the crackerjack chorus, shedding
their street clothes for rockstar-superhero duds. Oh how banal, and
utterly exceptional. --Amy Granzin
7. Bat For Lashes
Two Suns
[Astralwerks/Parlophone]There is no separating love from fantasy on
Two Suns.
Every track, from the mythic grandeur of "Glass" to the operatic sorrow
of "The Big Sleep", revels in impossible desire and dark romance,
resulting in an album that is alternately exhilarating and emotionally
exhausting. Whether singing about infatuation on "Daniel", heartbreak
on "Moon and Moon", or yearning for affection on "Sleep Alone", Natasha
Khan invests her songs with the heightened drama of epic fiction
without sacrificing nuance or emotional depth. Her darkest fantasies
are isolated in the persona of a toxic yet fragile narcissist named
Pearl, who in the album's brilliant centerpiece "Siren Song" delivers a
line so devastating in its terrible irony-- "My name is Pearl and I
love you the best way I know how"-- that it can be hard to listen
without wanting to somehow shake the man she is addressing and beg him
to run away. Much of the record's seductive allure is owed to Khan's
gift for melody and evocative atmosphere, but ultimately the most
compelling element is her voice, which is as technically stunning as it
is expressive. Her passionate performances keep the songs from
descending too far into misery, and place the emphasis on the beautiful
romance in the music rather than all the melancholy and tragedy.
--Matthew Perpetua
6. Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest
[Warp]You can tell a lot about a band from
how its members line up on stage. Stick the drummer in back, place the
singer in the front, and you might as well wear t-shirts that say
"Generic Band." Not Grizzly Bear, who go four across in their live
show, a demonstration of band democracy that suits their elegant,
interlocking sound. Credit the friendly songwriting competition between
Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen, which-- while the band is most praised for
their intricate arrangements-- bloomed here into songs pliable enough
to be reworked by Neon Indian and covered by Michael McDonald. The
combination made for the most thrilling one-two opening punch of the
year-- the onrushing storm of "Southern Point" bleeding into the
psychedelic stomp of "Two Weeks"-- and it continues to pay dividends
throughout the album. And in the spirit of equal praise, the
double-Christopher rhythm section is hardly mere time-keeping, adding
the off-kilter crunch to "Fine For Now" and "I Live With You" that
prevents GB's ghostly sound from evaporating. In a year where abrasive
was the In texture, Grizzly Bear's warm sound was a welcome respite, a
sepia-toned tapestry that could have been weaved only by four equal
partners. --Rob Mitchum
5. Raekwon
Only Built for Cuban Linx... Pt. II
[H2O/EMI]At a time when many critics have
mistaken hip-hop's state of creative flux for the genre's final
flatline, it seems simultaneously fitting and frustrating that a sequel
to a 14-year-old album is one of the few things everyone can come close
to agreeing upon. The long-awaited successor to Raekwon's
groundbreaking solo debut doesn't push the art of hip-hop any further
outside the boundaries of classic 1990s East Coast lyricism or
production-- in fact, it doesn't point the way to an exciting new
future or direction for the genre much at all. It's an album for people
who are comfortable with the way rap sounded in the mid-90s, a work of
high-caliber Wu-Tang fan service that acts as a 71-minute buffer zone
between the listener and the splintering, agitated state of rap in 2009.
But
OB4CL2 doesn't need to push things forward-- it builds
upwards, using old foundations to create a permanent monument. Whether
Rae, Ghost, Deck, RZA, and the rest of the album's star-studded cast
represent a bygone era or not becomes irrelevant once the atmosphere
sinks in: this is one of those records where everyone seems hellbent on
proving why they're still here and why they still matter. The stories
of betrayal, despair, remembrance, and celebration that they tell are
relentlessly gripping, and set to the most impressive collection of
beats gathered in one place all year; six of the contributing producers
can lay claim to being all-time greats. It might not sound like the
future, but it'll always be worth going back to. --Nate Patrin
4. The Flaming Lips
Embryonic
[Warner Bros.]"Experiments" are great, but they
matter most when their results can be put into practice. In retrospect,
a lot of the Flaming Lips' quarter-century of intermittently inspired
fucking around seems like preparatory work for this assured, forceful,
savagely dark album, and for the way their cracked sense of humor glows
through its darkness. This is a double album because it's
heavy,
an hour and a quarter of superabundance whose omnipresent digital
distortion gives it heft like a jagged slab of lead, a mammoth pile of
mammoth songs that offer more than it's possible to take in on a dozen
listens because they're written around their sound design. The
prettiest sounds the Lips can make are spot-welded to the ugliest, and
one mix after another focuses squarely on "errors": the sheet of
gristly static that drifts from "Sagittarius Silver Announcement" onto
"Worm Mountain", the slowly hemorrhaging guitar solo in the middle of
"Powerless", Karen O's priceless vérité aside at the end of "I Can Be a
Frog". And a lot of the album's existential bleakness is also as funny
as anything Wayne Coyne has ever offered up--this is an astrological
celebration whose concluding ritual chant goes "Yes yes yes/ Killin'
the ego tonight." --Douglas Wolk
3. The xx
The xx
[Young Turks]Sensual music is so rarely about
dialogue. The xx make lovers' rock, yes, but they make it for lovers
who can't help but talk about their love. Diving rhythms and creeping
basslines keep tensions high, buoying traces of Young Marble Giants and
Gainsbourg, while guitarist Romy Madley Croft and bassist Oliver Sim
trade opaque declarations like, "I'm frozen by desire, this is the
choice I make." But
The xx, an album that billows under the
sheets but never reveals what's underneath, is far from plaintive.
Theirs is a secretive conversation, the sort you might have after sex,
or on a train, or at a coat check at night's end. On "VCR", Sim and
Croft "watch things on VCR." What things? Pornography? Home movies?
"Entourage"? "You, you just know. You just do," they purr back and
forth to each other. The mystery is alluring and maddening--are the two
a real couple? What have they done to each other? The dialogue overlaps
near the end of the album's centerpiece, "Crystalised", as the two
breathlessly explain themselves, ignoring their mate. And then, at the
end, they find themselves back in harmony. Like any good relationship.
--Sean Fennessey
2. Dirty Projectors
Bitte Orca
[Domino]One of the most heartening-- and least expected-- success stories of the year was
Bitte Orca's
fearsomely complex, occasionally grating, and way-beyond-arch prog-pop,
with its nods to twee glee club harmonies and rigorous
avant-composition managing to impact the NPR-ified indie rock landscape
of 2009. It helped, of course, that
Bitte Orca contains a
handful of the Dirty Projectors' most accessible songs yet, offering
predictably tweaked but still recognizable takes on R&B and folk.
Sure, there's always Dave Longstreth's literally and figuratively
cracked falsetto and the band's jones for out-of-control ululations,
both of which mean DPs will probably always remain at least a little
divisive. But
Bitte Orca is whimsical (and gorgeous) enough to make the "difficult" bits seem less like work than glorious play. --Jess Harvell
1. Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavilion
[Domino]When Animal Collective traded up
from FatCat Records to Domino in 2007, the label was flush with the
recent successes of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand-- chart-topping
artists that presumably helped underwrite the label's more outré
signings, like Kieran Hebden, Juana Molina and, well, Animal
Collective. Even as their 2007 Domino debut,
Strawberry Jam,
dialed down the textural density and brought Avey Tare and Panda Bear's
vocal melodies higher in the mix, the cleaner, chiseled presentation
seemed only to accentuate the band's intrinsic weirdness.
So how the hell did
Merriweather Post Pavilion-- an album closer in spirit to the sub-aquatic psychedelia of 2005's
Feels and Panda Bear's 2007 solo
Person Pitchthan its predecessor-- wind up in the Billboard Top 20 and outsell both
the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand's most recent albums in North
America? That mystery is ultimately the most wonderful thing about the
album. Unlike so many indie-rock crossover artists before them, Animal
Collective did not breach the mainstream by cleaning up their act, or
adopting classic-rock conventions, or scoring a strategic soundtrack or
iPod-commercial placement. And, above all, they did little to formalize
their defining mercurial quality.
Almost everything we hear on
Merriweather Post Pavilion has
some antecedent in the Animal Collective canon. But, true to the band's
science-lab-like stage set-up, years of experimentation have yielded a
formula that mixes those core elements-- psychedelic pop, analog
electronica, West African rhythms, echoplexed dub ambience-- in perfect
proportions, producing a work that gleefully teeters on the line
between accessibility and inscrutability. And the evolution is as much
emotional as musical, the excitable yelps of old translated into
tender, sincere declarations of love, friendship, and familial duty. At
the time of its release last January, the title of
Merriweather Post Pavilionfelt like a fitfully nostalgic tribute to the Maryland amphitheater
that hosted bygone A.C. heroes like the Grateful Dead. But now, it
feels less evocative of distant teenage memories than a very real
prophecy of the kind of venues Animal Collective could soon find
themselves playing. --Stuart Berman
http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/5/
por FILIP_FB Qua Dez 05, 2012 11:20 am
