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WHY? - this blackest purse

Gegen Ende des Jahres bin ich in den Genuss dieses schönen Songs gekommen, der meine entscheidende Top 10 für 2009 noch gehörig durcheinander bringen wird. Bislang habe ich die Band immer gekonnt ignoriert, was durchaus am Hype eines deutschen Frontmanns gelegen haben könnte.
Allerdings muss ich dazu sagen, dass mir beim Durchhören des Albums via Last.fm wirklich nur dieser Song ins Ohr ging. Aber der hat es in sich. Klasse.

Lieblingszeile im Song:
Mom, am I failing or worse?

In der engeren Auswahl war auch:
There Will Be Fireworks - In Excelsis Deo

I know its not 2008 but i was away

1. Adrian Orange - Bitches Is Lord
2. Brian Borcherdt - Coyotes
3. Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire - Lost Wisdom
4. WHY? - Alopecia
5. Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane
6. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
7. Throw Me the Statue - Moonbeams
8. The Wave Pictures - Instant Coffee Baby
9. Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now Youngster
10. Noah and the Whale - Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down

1. “Lust For Life” by Girls
2. “Mirrored And Reverse” by White Denim
3. “Ready, Able” by Grizzly Bear
4. “Feel It All Around” by Washed out
5. “Norway” by Beach House
6. “Empire State Of Mind” by Jay-Z
7. “Deadbeat Summer” by Neon Indian
8. “Useful Chamber” by Dirty Projectors
9. “Cold Spring” by Cymbals Eat Guitars
10. “Surprise Hotel” by Fool’s Gold

11. “Quick Canal” by Atlas Sound
12. “IRM” by Charlotte Gainsbourg
13. “Paddling Ghost” by Dan Deacon
14. “Be My Girl” by Smith Westerns
15. “Ason Jones” by Raekwon
16. “Crystalised” by The xx
17. “Tunnelvision” by Here We Go Magic
18. "Love Like A Sunset (Animal Collective Remix)" by Pheonix
19. “Psychic City” by YACHT
20. "Do You Know" by DJ Quik and Kurupt

Honorable Mention:

“Haikuesque (When She Laughs)” by Bibio
“All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beast” by Bill Callahan
“The Fun Powder Plot” by Wild Beasts
“Auditiorium” by Mos Def
“Nsokoto” by The Very Best
“Throw It In The Bag” by Lil Wayne
“Fake Blues” by Real Estate
“Solid Gold” by The Golden Filter
“January Twenty Something” by WHY?
“We Will Rob You” by Raekwon

Animal Noises' Best Albums of 2009 list continues:

Rank: #29
Album: Eskimo Snow
Artist: Why?
Label: Anticon

Always up for experimentation, California's WHY? has made a career weaving in-and-out of genres. However, some elements of their indie hip-hop roots were maintained at all times. This not so on the band's fourth release, Eskimo Snow though. Instead of off-beat, admittedly un-gangster rap, Why? treads gently on Eskimo Snow. It's a guitar and piano oriented indie showcase, chock-full of all the standard conventions we've come to expect of the genre, with a psych-folk twist. But how did we get here?

Honest to a fault, Why's [artistYoni Wolf takes a heartfelt, vulnerable approach to songwriting here, and the results could either change the group forever or just be a fun side note a decade from now. Wolf trades off between seriously damaged (this blackest purse) and nonsensical (On Rose Walk, Insomniac), expressing frustration with his upbringing, and his current life. It's not depressing, but rather, just a light commentary. For the most part, Wolf stops every song from plunging too far, teasing listeners with the surface of the emotions contained within his solemn crooning. It takes real talented artists to pull off a change as stark as this one, but Wolf and his cohorts achieve it with flying colors, and deliver an emotionally-driven pop record full of intrigue and even an air of mystery too.

Best Track: Even The Good Wood Gone

Check out the original article: Best Albums of 2009: #29, Why?'s Eskimo Snow

I'm missing a ton, I know, but these are the only memorable acts I can remember going to over a few years.

Neon Indian
Peaches
Men
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Cymbals Eat Guitars
Depreciation Guild
WHY?
Kid Cudi
Leonard Cohen
Wilco
Grizzly Bear
The Breeders
Modest Mouse
Giant Drag
Architecture in Helsinki
of Montreal
Sufjan Stevens
Spice Girls (DUH)

WHY? - Eskimo Snow
www.pianofire.wordpress.com

I suppose Eskimo Snow isn’t a great album to listen to for the first time when you’re consistently told WHY? are a hiphop band. Especially when a hiphop artist lyrically speaks of loneliness, self-doubt and isolation rather than marvel in their own excellence, “bitches”, and how much money they are currently rolling in. The lack of fat beats, and fast melody are the same reason why Eskimo Snow is WHY?’s greatest achievement to date.

Yoni Wolf is brilliantly consistent at pumping out imaginable lyrics that are so often found in hiphop artists. On opening track “These Hands” with “These hands are my father’s hands but smaller, Soaked in paint thinner, Until they’re so dry coming together, They make the sound of resisting each other“. There is the relevance of self doubt that pops up over and again, in first single, the excellent “Against Me” melodically singing “Will I gain weight in later life? And when will someone swing a scythe against me?”

A hiphop genre album is drowned out particularly by piano, glockenspiel and falsetto, over pop drum beats (though crashing cymbals more commonly in triphop exist) and excellent bass riffs. Though not always. “Into The Shadows Of My Embrace” is a fast paced number, infatuated with lonely lyrical expression, and the occasional slang ei. “Cussing“, “I don’t feel nothin’” and “Someone dialed up my line today“.

It’s a contrast for Wolf from is work as cLOUDDEAD (check them out), and this may have you fooled from first listen considering how natural WHY? feel in this genre. Wolf’s lyrical composure brings you back down to earth, mostly on “Berkeley By Hearseback”, kind of sick in imagery, but by the same token it’s the vulnerable beauty in Wolf that makes you look at yourself and appreciate.

My Favourite Albums of 2009

1. Between the Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect
Essential Track: Disease, Injury, Madness

2. Baroness - Blue Record
Essential Track - Swollen and Halo

3. Converge - Axe to Fall
Essential Track - Effigy

4. Mew - No More Stories...
ET: Silas the Magic Car

5. Mastodon - Crack the Skye
ET: Crack the Skye

6. The Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate
ET: I Will Return

7. Isis - Wavering Radiant
ET: Threshold of Transformation

8. Coalesce - OX
ET: The Villain We Won't Deny

9. WHY? - Eskimo Snow
ET: Berkeley By Hearseback

10. Crystal Antlers - Tentacles
ET: Andrew

11. Kylesa - Static Tensions
ET: Scapegoat

12. Suicide Silence - No Time to Bleed
ET: Smoke

13. dälek – Gutter Tactics
ET: No Question

14. City of Ships - Look What God Did to Us
ET: Complacence in the Nest

15. The Red Chord – Fed Through the Teeth Machine
ET: Mouthful Of Precious Stones

16. Doomriders – Darkness Come Alive
ET: Bear Witness

17. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
ET: Two Weeks

18. Skeletonwitch - Breathing the Fire
ET: Stand Fight and Die

19. Job for a Cowboy - Ruination
ET: Unfurling a Darkened Gospel

20. Wavves - Wavvves
ET: So Bored

21.BeardFish - Destined Solitaire
ET: Awaken the Sleeping

22. Behemoth – Evangelion
ET: Ov Fire and the Void

23.Success Will Write Apocalypse Across The Sky - The Grand Partition and the Abrogation of Idolatry
ET: Cattle

24. Cobalt - Gin
ET: Pregnant Insect

25. Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic
ET: Wanderlust

26. Thursday – Common Existence
ET: As He Climbed the Dark Mountain

27. Papercuts – You Can Have What You Want
ET: Once We Walked in the Sunlight

28. Darkest Hour – The Eternal Return
ET: No God

29. Architects – Hollow Crown
ET: Early Grave

30. John Frusciante - The Empyrean
ET: Unreachable

31. Brand New - Daisy
ET: Bed

32. Pissed Jeans – King of Jeans
ET: False Jesii Part 2

33. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
ET: Young Hearts Spark Fire

34. Swallow the Sun - New Moon
ET: These Woods Breathe Evil

35. The Mars Volta - Octahedron
ET: Teflon

36. The Arusha Accord - The Echo Verses
ET: The New Face of Revenge

37.Bat for Lashes - Two Moons
ET: Daniel

38. Drudkh - Microcosmos
ET: Distant Cries of Cranes

39. Girls - Album
ET: Lust For Life

40. Sonic Youth - The Eternal
ET: Sacred Trickster

41. Gallows - Grey Britain
ET: The Great Deceiver

42. Wolves in the Throne Room - Black Cascade
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

43. Handsome Furs - Face Control
ET: Officer of Hearts

44. Buried Inside- Spoils of Failure
ET: VII

45. A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
ET: In Your Heart

46. Krallice - Dimensional Bleedthrough
ET: The Mountain

47. YOB - The Great Cessation
ET: Breathing From the Shallows

48. Lye By Mistake - Fea Jur
ET: Invincible Bad Ass

49. The Agonist - Lullabies For the Dormant Mind
ET: The Tempest (The Siren's Song; The Banshee's Cry)

50. Chimaira - The Infection
ET: Coming Alive

My Favourite EP's of 2009

1. Torche - Healer/Across the Shields
ET: Mash it Up

2.Nachtmystium - Doomsday Derelicts
ET: Life of Fire

3. Jesu - Opiate Sun
ET: Losing Streak

4. Coalesce - OXEP
ET: Through Sparrows I Rest

5. Cave In - Planets of Old
ET: The Red Trail

They Had Cool Albums Too...

Megadeth, Municipal Waste, Dream Theater, Graf Orlock, Polar Bear Club, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Ghostface Killah (except for "Baby"...!), mewithoutYou, Scar Symmetry, Obscura, Goes Cube, Killswitch Engage, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Cattle Decapitation, Mono, Rumplestiltskin Grinder, Clutch, Nile, Raekwon, Tombs, Dead Swans, Lamb of God, iwrestledabearonce, Struck By Lightning, Russian Circles, Burnt by the Sun, Dinosaur Jr., Camera Obscura, Mount Eerie, Goatwhore, Keelhaul, Napalm Death, Immortal, Pelican, Phoenix, Dark Mountain, Malefice, Suidakra, My Dying Bride, The Color of Violence, Warbringer, DevilDriver, Church of Misery, Diablo Swing Orchestra


Most Overrated:

1. Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions
2. Muse - The Resistance (I hate this album so very much. If I want to listen to Queen, which I don't, then I'll shove my head in a blender. Up yours, Muse. I looked forward to this so much, for nothing.)
2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
3. Slayer - World Painted Blood
4. Suffocation - Blood Oath
5. Woods - Songs of Shame

Biggest Disappointments:

1.Muse - The Resistance
2 Porcupine Tree - The Incident
3. The Fall of Troy - In the Unlikely Event
4. 3 Inches of Blood - Here Waits Thy Doom
5. dredg - The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion

Why Are You Alive?
1. Ace Frehley

Get Out of My Sight:

Oasis

(You sucked when you started, you sucked last year, and you'd suck now if you hadn't broken up. Praise Satan.)


RIP

Burnt by the Sun
Burst
Animosity
Battle of Mice

1.How did you get into 29? (Air)
I guess it was when Sexy Boy & Kelly Watch the Stars got a lot of airplay on MTV in the late 90's.

2. What's the first song you ever heard by 22? (The Radio Dept.)
Not entirely sure, but I vaguely remember seeing them live on a festival in Sweden in 2004, which is probably when I heard their music for the first time. (Mind you, it was at a boozy music festival after all, so it's all a bit of a blur really...)

3. What's your favorite lyric by 33? (José González)
Maybe these ones from Broken Arrow:
"Summerlove left this town
It was too cold to bathe and the leaves turned brown
The sun went down
And with it the love we found
That's the way things are sometimes
Most of the time"

4. How did you get into 49? (Björk)
Well, seeing that I'm Scandinavian she was a pretty big deal there with her debut album (called Debut). The first track I heard was Human Behaviour, but I didn't start listening to her stuff properly until the late 90's.

5. How many albums by 13 do you own? (MF DOOM)
Two (Operation Doomsday & MM Food).

6. What is your favorite song by 50? (M83)
Graveyard Girl.

7. Is there a song by 39 that makes you sad? (RJD2)
Not that I can think of, or maybe One Day.

8. What is your favorite song by 15? (El-P)
Tasmanian Pain Coaster is pure genius.

9. What is your favorite song by 5? (Sage Francis)
Sea Lion.

10. Is there a song by 6 that makes you happy? (Alias)
Not really, I wouldn't exactly say Alias is famous for his feelgood-tracks. Maybe Dr.C by Alias & Tarsier.

11. What is the worst song by 40? (Coldplay)
Violet Hill no doubt. Can't stand it. I never understood how it could be released as a first album single.

12. What is your favorite song by 10? (Sia)
Breathe Me, followed by Death By Chocolate.

13. What is a good memory you have involving 30? (Sole)
I remember being on a road trip with my brother and he'd brought 'Selling Live Water' which had recently been released. I had never heard of Sole, but I loved what I heard.

14. What is your favorite song by 38? (CunninLynguists)
It's a tie between Seasons (Remix) and Don't Leave (When Winter Comes). The beat for the remix of seasons is amazing and fits the lyrcs perfectly.

15. Is there a song by 19 that makes you happy? (Murs)
The Night Before is nice. Bad Man! is a good party tune.

16. Is there a song by 25 that makes you sad? (Feist)
Yep. Let It Die, The Park & How My Heart Behaves. To name a few.

17. What is the first song you ever heard by 23? (Jean Grae)
Love Song.

18. What's your favorite lyric by 11? (Bat for Lashes)
From Good Love:
"In the night time we are found
Misty sorrow swoop unbound
Whisper you mean it, say you'll stay
Hold my heart till brighter days"

19. Who is a favorite member of 1? (Aesop Rock)
Ian Matthias Bavitz (aka Aesop Rock). Tricky one that.

20. Is there a song by 14 that makes you happy? (WHY?)
Gemini (Birthday Song) and A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under both put a smile on my face.

21. What is a good memory involving 27? (Burial)
I listened a lot to Burial when I initially moved to London, so maybe that.

22. What is your favorite song by 16? (Regina Spektor)
Samson was the first song I heard by her, and I absolutely loved it. Still find it amazing. But she's done so many incredible tracks, other favourites are Ode To Divorce and Somedays.

23. What is the first song you ever heard by 47? (Radiohead)
Creep, back in the day. Not really feeling their recent stuff.

24. What is your favourite album by 18? (The Clash)
London Calling - one of the greatest albums ever made imo.

25. What is your favorite song by 21? (Madvillain)
Accordion.

26. What is the first song you ever heard by 26? (Masta Ace)
Beautiful.

27. What is your favorite album by 3? (Death Cab for Cutie)
Plans. Even quality throughout, not one bad song on the entire album.

28. What is you favorite song by 2? (Sigur Rós)
Probably Með suð í eyrum or Saeglopur. A lot of good songs to choose from though.

29. What was the first song you ever heard by 32? (Boards of Canada)
Music Is Math was featured in a Swedish movie, and that's what made me start listening to them.

30. What is you favorite song by 8? (The Album Leaf)
We Need Help.

31. How many times have you seen 17 live? (Bon Iver)
None, but I'd love to. Hopefully within the next year.

32. Is there a song by 44 that makes you happy? (Lykke Li)
Everybody But Me (Christoffer Remix). The lyrics are depressing as anything, but it's still that instant party anthem.

33. How did you get into 12? (Madlib)
Through Jaylib's Champion Sound.

34. What is the worst song by 45? (Buck 65)
Kennedy Killed the Hat (which a lot of people seem to love)

35. What was the first song you ever heard by 34? (Groove Armada)
My friend, yet again on MTV back in High School. I still remember the video.

36. What was the first song you ever heard by 48? (Koushik)
Lying in the Sun.

37. How many times have you seen 42 live? (One Be Lo)
None.

38. What is you favorite song by 36? (The Shins)
New Slang & Sea Legs.

39. What was the first song you ever heard by 28? (Cat Power)
The Greatest

40. What is you favorite album by 7? (J Dilla)
Donuts! A classic.

41. Is there a song by 31 that makes you happy? (P.O.S.)
Goodbye. Great beat.

42. What is your favorite album by 41? (Zero 7)
Simple Things.

43. What is your favorite song by 24? (Azure Ray)
Rise. (In fact the song with the most plays in my entire library.)

44. What is a good memory you have involving 46? (Dosh)
I listened a lot to Wolves and Wishes when I went to Tokyo last year, and listening to that album still reminds me of the good times I spent there.

45. What is your favorite song by 35? (DJ Shadow)
Stem/Long Stem, hands down. Amazing track.

46. Is there a song by 9 that makes you happy? (The Streets)
I guess the easy answer here would be to mention any song off Everything Is Borrowed. But I'm not really a big fan of Mike Skinner going all happy-go-lucky, so I'd have to say Fit But You Know It and Don't Mug Yourself.

47. What is your favorite album by 4? (Atmosphere)
Lucy Ford, followed by God Loves Ugly.

48. Who is your favorite member of 37? (Bloc Party)
Don't have one.

49. What is the first song you ever heard by 43? (Band of Horses)
The Funeral. Still reckon it's one of their best songs.

50. What is your favorite song by 20? (The Roots)
You Got Me. High school memories right there.