threevue

This week we’re happy to present you with three individual Top 20 Albums of 2009 lists, from all over the globe. Agree? Disagree? We don’t really care, but leave your comments below.

My previous top albums lists: 2008 / 2007 / 2006

20. The Kingsbury Manx – Ascenseur Ouvert!
At first glance, Ascenseur Ouvert! sounds like a meditation on mediocrity. But somewhere down the line, you start to figure out that this album isn’t about being middle-of-the-road, but about being comfortable. Not entirely unlike Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, this is an album of quiet, subtle songs that appeal to everyone and fit with almost any group setting.

19. Various Artists – Dark Was The Night
This has got to be the most unfair compilation ever created. Without getting too far into it, I’ll just say that it’s 31 songs that is more like a who’s-who list of indie rock superstars than anything I’ve ever seen. Produced and compiled by the Dessner brothers (from The National), this double-disc album is full of potential that’s about 75% realized. Most of the allure of these songs is simply hearing new tracks from your favorite artists (which includes The Arcade Fire, Beirut, Blonde Redhead, Bon Iver, Jose Gonzalez, The Decemberists, Dirty Projectors, Feist, Grizzly Bear, Iron & Wine, The National, The New Pornographers, Spoon, and Sufjan Stevens among others), but at the end of the day, some of these songs are pretty forgettable. But still, you’re looking at over two hours of new, original material from some of my favorite bands, so I have to give this compilation its due credit.

18. Andrew Jackson Jihad – Can’t Maintain
This AJJ release feels like the black sheep of my list – it seems like it would fit better on Lookout! Records than the stuffy Barsuk/Merge/SubPop leanings of the rest of my list. But maybe that’s the allure of this acoustic-but-nearly-punk album; it contains 13 songs that whiz by in 28 minutes, exuding creativity, self-loathing, and tongue-in-cheekery by the truckload. Definitely for those young at heart but world-weary. Shit, there’s even a song about the singer’s Dad, who left him as a child. Perfect!

17. fun. – Aim and Ignite
After sinking my teeth into The Format’s last album a couple years ago, I really didn’t think that anything else good from the duo would ever surface. How many times can somebody make a near-perfect sugary pop album with just the right mixture of indie rock sensibility and simple appeal? And then The Format broke up, and the singer formed the hard-to-Google “fun.”, making skeptics out of most listeners. Luckily, fun.’s Aim and Ignite ups the ante significantly, and delivers in ways that The Format couldn’t. Rather than create a universally appealing pop album, we’re given a complex, mostly-appealing pop record that invokes Brian Wilson more than Elton John. It’s the perfect open-window, summer-day pop album for the music snob.

16. Ben Barnett – Songs About Zombies and Trust Issues
Ben Barnett’s huge, apocalyptically prolific project Kind of Like Spitting dissolved a couple years ago both publicly and bloodily (thanks, MySpace blogs!), and I accepted the fact that my iTunes library was done with Mr. Barnett. Then this year he started circulating CD-R’s called Songs About Zombies and Trust Issues at shows, which then showed up on music blogs, which then showed up in my music collection. This DIY 4-track recording is the best music I’ve heard from Mr. Barnett in about eight years, and I’m excited to find that his new band, Blunt Mechanic, is re-recording most of these songs for their debut full-length next year. If you’re looking for diverse, guitar-and-shame-based indie rock, look no further.

15. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion
Goddamn, I’m so sick of writing about Animal Collective albums and describing them as their “most accessible record to date”. These assholes need to stop writing increasingly-palatable music, so I can take them off one of my end-of-year lists. This may very may well have been the album that put Animal Collective on the map – if not for its (goddamn) accessibility, then it’s for the greatest songs they’ve written to date, “My Girls”.

14. Japandroids – Post-Nothing
Man, I don’t like most noise bands. You know who I’m talking about, those Times-New-Viking-Wavvves-etc bands. If you’ve got a melody, let me hear it; don’t pummel me with fuzz and force me to find it while getting a headache. That may be a little extreme, but Japandroids is the first noise band that I can really get into. This two-piece (guitar/drums) captures a full-band sound and crafts some really original, heavy indie rock sounds. But it’s not the sound that makes this record great, it’s the songs. The band carries just enough fuzz to drive their songs in the right direction, which is somewhere between chaos and indie pop.

13. Jason Lytle – Yours Truly, the Commuter
This is the first post-Grandaddy album by singer Jason Lytle, and it sounds more like Grandaddy than the last three Grandaddy releases. It’s predictable territory for anyone that loved The Sophtware Slump, sure, but is that a bad thing? Hands down, my most comforting album of the year.

12. Wilco – Wilco (the album)
After an adult-rock nightmare (Sky Blue Sky) which had followed a poorly-produced guitar-solo-rock album (A Ghost Is Born), I was nearly ready to give up on Wilco. But their latest album does a commendable job of taking the two elements I hated about their previous two albums and fuse them together and make some damned sense out of the whole thing. This is guitar-rock that even my mother could get into, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I finally feel like I’m old enough to properly enjoy the new Wilco.

11. Telekinesis – Telekinesis!
Seattle’s Telekinesis create that core indie rock/pop sound that I’ve become addicted to over the years. Following the gaps left by Death Cab for Cutie (too predictable) and Nada Surf (waaaay too predictable), I’m ready to give these guys the crown for a bit. Imagine a smattering of the Weez, a dash of Spoon and a spoonful of sugar and you’ve got the picture. I have a copy of pre-master demos that blow this final version away, and that’s my actual preferred copy; but for everyone else, this is still a stellar record.

10. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
I’m not one to readily admit that indie buzz bands are any good, and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart had to grow on me. Luckily, their seamless integration of Morrisey-inspired vocals, Belle and Sebastian inoffensiveness, and shoegazer fuzz is just the right blend.

9. Phosphorescent – To Willie
This may be my first covers album to make a “best of the year” list for me. I’ve always wanted to appreciate Willie Nelson songs, but it took an NYC singer-songwriter to finally get me onboard. Phosphorescent’s modern take on Mr. Nelson feels fresh and exciting, which is a testament to how well this album was arranged. I don’t think I’ll still be able to listen to a Willie Nelson record today, but I can sure as hell listen to To Willie any day of the week.

8. M. Ward – Hold Time
M. Ward had made the most accessible album of his career with Hold Time, and it features solid (if not life-changing) tracks all the way throughout. It hits the right blend of old-timey folk and new-timey…folk, and it’s immaculately produced.

7. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
I’ll admit it, this is the first Smog/Callahan release that I could really understand. Previous albums seemed forgettable and mediocre to me, but that’s all changed with Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle. Somehow, Callahan’s lyrics make sense, the pacing feels right, and the mood is fitting. If you’re looking for morose, beautifully confessional and weary singer-songwriter rock, you shouldn’t look any further than this release. 2010 may very well be the year that I get into Smog for reals, and this album will be the reason.

6. Girls – Album
Not only is this the single most ambiguous album and band name, it’s also the most achingly-familiar album I’ve heard this year. Upon first listen, I was convinced that this record was already in my music collection. After some fruitless searching, I conceded that the instant familiarity of this Costello-meets-Mazzy-Star two-peice is a strength and not a weakness. There’s a forgettable song or two on this LP, but that doesn’t take away from the album’s true gems, like tracks 1, 2, 6, and 8.

5. We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
If I had to put a name to it, this would be the year of the Scots. Frightened Rabbit finally permeated all of indie rock (read: I finally heard their 2008 album), Franz Ferdinand and The Twilight Sad released more “pretty good” albums, and We Were Promised Jetpacks came out of nowhere to fuck the world up. That may not sound like a lot for one country, but you’re looking at a country of 5 million people. I think that equates to “everyone and their mother is in a band in Scotland”. WWPJ (that acronym looks like some religious bracelet waiting to happen) provide the intensity of Frightened Rabbit and mix it with Modest Mouse’s originality. The combination of the two results in some of the freshest, most energetic indie rock I’ve heard in years.

4. MewithoutYou – It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All a Dream! It’s Alright
If you had told me last year that a MewithoutYou album would break my top 5 of 2009 list, I would have punched you in the face. Blasphemy. Crazy thing is, they made the record of their lives this year. I’ve always been a casual/skeptical listener of this stuffy band, but somehow they channeled all right ingredients – incredible songcraft, arrangement, and an eclectic feel – to create an unforgettable tale of Sufi mystic Bawa Muhaiyaddeen’s teachings in a smart, unobtrusive manner. There are more singalongs than any record can contain. Seriously, I’m hesitant to play this album in my car, because I’m scared that I’ll be discovered busting out in song by other drivers. If an album has that much of an effect on its listeners, it’s a keeper.

3. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
The perfect blend of indie pop/rock and experimentation of melody (see “Love Like a Sunset”), Phoenix went from creating pop songs to creating a pop album. The leap in scope is a monumental one, and this is an album that in the context of its predecessors is a Mike Powell long jump. Yeah, I had to look that up.

2. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
I can’t figure it out. Either Grizzly Bear crafted the perfect atmosphere and then wrote some incredible songs, or they wrote some incredible songs and then created the perfect atmosphere. However it happened, we as listeners are treated to some of the greatest reverb-drenched moody pop gems of recent history.

1. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns
I hate to do this, but an album that was originally released in 2008 (in Canada, independently, gimme a break here) is my top album of 2009. To be fair, it was re-released here in the US on an American label (Saddle Creek, the unlikeliest of places) in July of this year, so it’s a proper 2009 release for me. In a nutshell, imagine if Jeff Mangum sang for a more stripped-down and energetic band, and you’re looking at The RAA. What makes this record great incredible is the near-perfect songwriting behind it. Seriously, this is easily the strongest collection of songs I’ve heard all year, and it’s an album that I could give to anyone in the confidence that someday they’ll get it.