Best Albums of '09:

tUnE-YaRdS - BiRd-BrAiNs
This is certainly the best CD I've heard in a long, long time. Sonically it is something like The Microphones (circa The Glow pt 2) meets Joni Mitchell, with a dash of The Go! Team because why notThe "band" is really just one person whose main instruments are a ukulele and a sampler. The entire album was recorded and mixed on open source laptronica shareware (Audacity, if anyone is interested) in a livingroom and it is clippy and hissy and grating in places that are not at all endearing. If you aren't…

Best albums:
Blonde Redhead - 23
Sonicly, it sits somewhere between Björk's Vespertine and Radiohead's Kid A, by which geography alone it deserves a spot here.

Voxtrot - Voxtrot
Yes, it's disappointing that their 15 minute basement-produced EP was leagues better than their studio-produced, big(-ish) budget LP, but I got over it. There are good songs here. I think a different track order would help.

The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters
Definitely the best album of the year. Glorious, wonderful, noisy shoegaze. This is the kind of stuff that makes me glad to have…

I can't get enough of this song lately.

The Smiths - I Won't Share You

I won't share you, no
I won't share you
With the drive
And ambition
The zeal I feel
This is my time

The note I wrote
As she read, she said
"Has the Perrier gone
Straight to my head
Or is life sick and cruel, instead ?"

"YES !" No - no - no - no - no - no
No - no - no - no - no - no
Oh …

I won't share you, no
I won't share you
With the drive…

Finally! It took me a while to get around to this, but here they finally are.

10. Appleseed Cast - Mare Vitalis

Loud post-punk art rock. Think American Football with distortion and screaming. Or maybe a slightly-less-epic, vocalized Explosions in the Sky. I always think of this CD as music for musicians – the way the guitars interact, the way they play with song structures. The lyrics are minimal – you could probably fit the whole album on an index card – but they are enough to paint the picture. Songs like Fishing the Sky and Forever Longing the…

20. Circa Survive – Juturna
Abstract and experimental, but still aggressive, loud, and catchy. It also helps that Anthony Green has a fantastic voice.

19. Rainer Maria - Long Knives Drawn
I’ve loved this album since the first time I heard it, but by the time this came out, I was already a Rainer Maria disciple. I just listened to it trying to decide what to write about it and I realized – the album is good, but it’s probably not top 20 material. But, I’ve already got it here, so I’ll roll with it. I love Caithlin De Marrais'…

30 ON - Shifting Skin
The first post-Failure project of the very talented Ken Andrews, with a little help from former God Lives Underwater member Jeff Turzo. The songs are pretty simple, straight-forward pop. With the exception of maybe Slingshot all the songs on this disc are good, catchy, fun (generally), and interesting.

29 Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco’s best quality and their worst weakness has always been that their songs are always consistent but mild: they’re good, but not great, and they tend to sound same-y by the end of an album. This album isn’t really an…

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u46/DominicaCH/love-cats.jpg

The Cure - Lovecats

We move like cagey tigers
We couldn't get closer than this
The way we walk
The way we talk
The way we stalk
The way we kiss
We slip through the streets
While everyone sleeps
Getting bigger and sleeker
And wider and brighter
We bite and scratch and scream all night
Let's go and throw
All the songs we know…

Into the sea
You and me
All these years and no one heard
I'll show you in spring
It's a treacherous thing
'We missed you,' hissed the lovecats

We're so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully,
Wonderfully pretty!…

40 American Football - American Football
This is music for musicians. The interplay between the guitarists and the math-rock time signatures are the kind of thing that music nerds get into – at least this one does. The album is jazzy, mellow, and light. It’s the kind of album you could put on in the background and listen to over and over and over again. The lyrics aren’t the best, but generally they stay out of the way and let the complicated melodies take center stage.

39 Cursive – Domestica
Honestly, I’ve never liked Cursive. Their sound is grating (yes,…

I finally got around to doing my remix of the Voxtrot song Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives for Buffet Libre's remix contest: http://www.buffetlibre.net/voxtrot.html. I'm only about 7 months late. :)

You can download it here: http://www.vberisford.com/mp3/Voxtrot-MothersDaughtersSistersAndWives-MeltIntoOneMix.mp3

I think it came out pretty well.

I basically ended up using only the vocals from the original. There's a little of the original bass in the breakdown and some small bits from the organ, but the music is pretty much all original.

There is no chorus in the mix. Some earlier versions had a chorus, but I didn't really like it. It just…

Here you go. Songs for everything from drunken rabbit sex to slow romantic tea-candle love-making and everything in between. It's a little longer than a normal CD, but if you're worried you can't make it all the way through, just think about baseball. Let me know if you want a copy. I'm down for mailing or letting you download.

1. Bjork - Cocoon
2. Fluke - Zion
3. Massive Attack - Teardrop
4. Apoptygma Berzerk - Love Never Dies
5. On - If I Get to Feel You
6. Get Up Kids - Close to Me
7. Cloud Cult -…