Yeah, I knew you really liked it. That's one of the reasons I gave it a shot. FWIW, my wife seemed to like it when I listened to it with her so it may get so more plays due to that.

Kind of surprised you're not really into the lyrics. They seem like a strong point most of time. He does a pretty good job of avoiding cliches while not being too obtuse.

Anyway, I just haven't been able to get into it in any big way, and I'm sort of grading on a curve here. It's been a really good year, I think, and this hasn't held my attention as well as a large number of other things.

It's not that close. The initial cadence is sort of the same, but as a whole it's pretty different.

I've only recently begun to listen to lyrics more attentively, generally. I know the words when I hear them, but I don't process what he's saying by stringing em together. It's definitely not front and center for me.

I agree that this has been a good year, yet I still can't name 20 albums I really liked.

Jackie-O Motherfucker - Ballads of the Revolution (emusic download 8/12/09)

If you only count their proper studio albums - they've put out a lot of live and semi-live records - JOMF have a pretty stellar track record. Since Magick Fire Music, not only have they not put out a bad album, but they haven't put out an album that wasn't at least very good. In fact, each new record has pretty much been a shoe-in for my top 20 of its respective release year. This is a band with a totally winning formula that somehow never gets stale. At least it hasn't yet. I can imagine that if they put out another album fairly similar to this year's Ballads of the Revolution, I'd be pretty happy with that, too.

The JOMF brew is a well-balanced blend of Americana (gospel/blues/folk), free jazz, avant-garde improv, drone, Krautrock, found sounds/field recordings, and a smattering of other fringe and mainstream musical elements. On paper it may look like a messy concoction of everything at once, but in practice that mess comes across as finely-aged, sophisticated, self-assured, and perfectly nuanced. JOMF frustrated and perplexed a lot of people while touring with Godspeed You! Black Emperor several years ago, possibly because their deliberately slow, ramshackle music does not always build into the desired or expected payoff or climax, the way GYBE often dependably did. Instead those quiet, ethereal moments are an end unto themselves with JOMF, and there's a certain celebratory and triumphant vibe that permeates even their quietest moments. To me, this is what "free" music should sound like.

Ballads of the Revolution is very much like the two JOMF studio albums that preceded it (discounting 2006's sprawling, live-based America Mystica and any other live recordings released in the interim), Flags of the Sacred Harp and Valley of Fire. Former Yume Bitsu/Surface of Eceon and current (?) White Rainbow guitarist Adam Forkner continues to add an extra melodic sheen and prettiness to their usual junkyard folk while Tom Greenwood continues to apply his unfortunately weak vocals to the otherwise powerful and majestic music. There's no Honey Owens this time around (I don't think), but she's not really missed too much as her pipes aren't really much stronger than Tom's. One standout is the album's centerpiece, "The Cryin' Sea" which is probably the most rhythmically-driven and Krautrock-derived track they've put out since 2002's Change. It's nothing new for them, really, and there aren't really any new elements being introduced to the JOMF canon here. But as far as these guys go, that's not really a problem.

Rating: 8/10

Love that Jackie-O and had actually planned on writing about it today, but given that you write much better than me I reckon I will just leave that one be.

It's interesting that you mentioned how good each of their studio releases has been as I was thinking about that while listening to it this morning. Over the course of this decade when thinking about bands who have put out more than just a couple of albums I don't know that any band has been more consistently good than they have. Animal Collective, maybe? But I definitely think a case could be made for Jackie-O to have been the best band this decade, at least in my opinion.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (downloaded 8/14/09)

I'm really surprised by how much I like this and how well it's stood up. I mean, I feel like I hear "1901" in a commercial every time I turn on the TV (not too often these days), and I'm still not really tired of it. Furthermore, I typically hate this sort of thing. That last Cut Copy album was one of the worst things I've made myself listen to in a long time. Typically electro-pop - or whatever you want to call it - is just not my bag, but I guess it's a pretty big testament to just how good this album is - and maybe how good Phoenix is - that I dig it anyway.

There's really not a clunker on the whole thing. Solid all the way from start to finish. It's pretty much a perfect pop album, and it's so rare that something like this comes along. I should have given this band a chance sooner.

Rating: 8/10

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Bat for Lashes - Two Suns (CD purchased 8/17/09)

This one is kind of a snoozer. I could call it Bjork-lite, I guess, but that's not really fair. I suppose that it's really just not my bag, and pretty much any dark, brooding, operatic, overly-serious songwriter stuff over a mostly electronic or piano-driven backdrop is going to have a pretty steep hill to climb in order to impress me. This is arty, but not really experimental, wierd, innovative, or all that distinctive. It's like if Cat Power were British and way less soulful.

Rating: 6/10

Radiohead - "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)"/"These Are My Twisted Words"

Two measly songs, but it's Radiohead so I guess it demands an opinion of some sort. They weren't officially released together, but I'll just pretend like they're the A and B sides of an actual single.

"Harry Patch" is pretty but somewhat forgettable. It's at its best when the strings get dark and weird somewhere in the middle. Then it goes back to being all cinematic and boring, but at least it's something just a little bit different for them.

"These Are My Twisted Words" is definitely B-side caliber, and not '90s Radiohead B-side caliber, unfortunately. More like the castoffs from Amnesiac like "Kinetic" and "Transatlantic Drawl". Remember those songs? Nope, no one does.

Rating: 6.5/10

Getting way behind on these. I've got several piled up that I need to do so these next few will be brief.


The xx - xx (emusic download 8/28/09)

The xx have a familiar sort of sound, but it's still fairly hard to pin down. Low-key, smokey, sexy, sad... sort of a post-trip-hop, post-shoe-gaze update to Young Marble Giants. Maybe not. I feel like there are closer, more contemporary comparisons that could be made.

Anyway, this is pretty good. Nice late night/early morning/twilight mood music. Breathy and sort of romantic, I guess. "VCR" is still probably the track that stands out most to me, for better or worse, but I'm not sure it's the best. It's just the most memorable. The rest is uniformly pretty good, but it blends into a pleasant sort of haze. Enjoyable but inessential.

Rating: 6.5/10

agree on VCR being my fave track and generally agree with your review, but would probably give it a 7.25. good for background music or late night listening.

Lotus Plaza - The Floodlight Collective (emusic download 3/25/09)

A low key entry from the prolific Deerhunter camp, this album seems content not to set its sights too high. It's a solid shoegazey atmospheric piece without any real peaks or valleys along the ride. I've generally enjoyed listening to it, but I could not tell you a single song name or recite any of the choral refrains. That's not to say that it's without its highlights... I just can't recall any of them specifically, and I just listened to it yesterday.

Rating: 6.5/10

I seem to be handing out the 6.5's pretty liberally...

Here We Go Magic - s/t (emusic download 8/28/09)

I could probably just defer to contradiction's review of this in the similar-type thread he started. It was pretty spot on. The long and short of it: uneven but pretty good album that I'll probably find myself coming back to a lot for the considerable highlights "Fangela" and "Tunnelvision". Those are two of the best songs of 2009. Elsewhere, "I Just Want to See You Underwater" and "Everything's Big" add some additional substance while the rest of the album just sort exists in a nebulous limbo.

Their overall sound is perhaps a little eclectic, but I think I fault bands less for that than for being uniformly predictable and derivative. This is pretty good, and it demonstrates at least of couple of instances of great pop songwriting.

Rating: 7.5/10

Yeah 6.5 might be a little low, but I've been sort of grading on a curve based on the other stuff I've heard from this year. I'd already given something that I'd rank just higher (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) a 6.5, so I was sort of stuck there.

Various Artists - Dark Was the Night (2xCD purchased 3/25/09)

I've been a little hard on this one over the past few months. I've kept it near the bottom of my '09 list because it's generally felt like a chore to get all the way through. There are some serious clunkers here - and songs that flat out don't fit in an otherwise stylistically consistent comp - that have left me with little desire to ever listen to it.

The Sufjan Stevens song is pretty bad, but then the Buck 65 "remix" of it or whatever on the 2nd disc is even worse. The Grizzly Bear tracks on here are both about the 19th version of those songs they've released, and a lot of other fairly well-known artists have contributed the usual compilation castoffs. The Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, The National, The New Pornographers, and The Decemberists all contribute some of the most annoying tracks on the whole comp.

But, as comps go, this is still a pretty good one. Many of the best tracks come from somewhat unexpected sources (for me) like Kevin Drew and My Brightest Diamond. The Yo La Tengo track here is solid (if a little standard for them) as is the Spoon track, even if it feels like it was written and recorded on autopilot (something Spoon seems to excel at). The Dirty Projectors + David Byrne track that leads off the comp is excellent, and the Books track that follows is the best thing I've heard from them in a long time. Most of the rest of the comp, aside from the duds mentioned above, maintains a nice earthy, acoustic vibe and makes for a pretty satisfying listen.

So I suppose overall, there's really a fairly decent amount to like here. I certainly don't regret buying it, but in the future I will most likely only be listening to select portions of the track list.

Rating: 6/10

pretty spot on with that one.

And not much else. Almost disappointingly mediocre with a few bright spots.

6.5 is about right, Drink.

Wild Beasts - Two Dancers (emusic download 9/2/09)

I like this band. They may sound like Franz Ferdinand fronted by Antony on happy pills, but dammit, they're good. This album improves on their last one, Limbo Panto, in just about every way. That album pretty much centered around one obvious standout - "The Devil's Crayon" - while this one maintains a pretty even quality level throughout, mostly up to the level of that previous high point. They've also dialed back the cabaret somewhat and kept things more uptempo. It's a much more fun record that comes a lot closer to living up to their name.

Rating: 7.5/10

JJ - JJ N° 1/JJ N° 2 (emusic download 9/2/09)

JJ is another chilled out, mostly electronic-based group with female vocals. Much like The xx, but perhaps a little more on the "lite" side. That pot leaf on the album cover may (or may not) give a little more of a hint as where JJ is coming from. (The song "Ecstacy" is about taking ecstacy although maybe it's meant as some sort of character study.) It's a little less of the smoky, sexy, and sad, and more just... chill. In all it's a little empty to me, even more than The xx. Pleasant background music, but I really have enough of that already.

Rating: 6/10

i was going to ask what you thought of that wild beasts.

disagree with the jj review (at least with n2, i don't have n1. help a obner out, yo). or maybe it's just semantics. I'd call it electro-pop lite perhaps, but it doesn't seem druggy at all and definitely not chill or background fluff. those songs move, and they are catchy sing-alongs, not something that i would doze off to.

agreed. this tells me that Drinky might have just skimmed through it, not giving it time to sink in. there are some great, upbeat songs. not chill out at all.

I've listened to it all the way through about 8 times.

Maybe I listen to too many other things and not much in the way of ambient lately, but for me this is more on the chill side.

Bort, I can hook you up with No. 1. It's just two songs.

HEALTH - Get Color (CD purchased 9/9/09)

Here's what I had already posted in the thread on this album in slightly edited form:

HEALTH's s/t album was not the most original thing, but I found myself enjoying it more the more I listened to it. They did just kind of pile a lot of "hip" sounds on top of each other without much in the way of real songs underneath, but just as a piece of music taken as a whole, it worked pretty well almost in spite of itself. I mean, what's wrong with "screaming gutteral nonsense just for the sake of screaming"? I don't see why it should have to translate into any kind of literal outrage expressed through the actual lyrics. They have positioned themselves as a noise band and therefore make noise, but they do so pretty musically, with good energy, momentum, and dynamics. In their debut, I could hear clear links to Liars, Deerhoof, Boredoms, Sightings, Beaches & Canyons-era Black Dice, and the noisier side of Animal Collective, but their major fault was probably that they didn't add much of their own to that mix.

Get Color is more distinctive, although that is largely brought about by the overuse of certain sounds and effects that have become really popular with like-minded bands who use them with a little more discretion. There are more developed songs this time around though, especially "Die Slow", which is really pretty great. This album wasn't quite the mind-blowing development I was hoping for, but it does show them both narrowing down just what it is that makes HEALTH unique, and tailoring their compositions more into real songs.

Rating: 7.5/10

Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs (CD purchased 9/9/09)

Hey, it's another Yo La Tengo album, and there's really not a whole lot that can or needs to be said about that. For me, it's a good thing; for you, maybe not. Either way, "Nothing to Hide" is an f-ing great song. It's a scant 2:47 out of a sprawling 72 minutes, but the bliss it exudes is larger than life. I just love it.

And the rest is good. What else do you need to know? Maybe their forays in ultra-white pseudo R&B/funk are sort of ill-advised, but that's only a couple of tracks here. Several other tracks are barely distinguishable from a number of things they've done over the past several years, but I'm not complaining. And not content with ending an epic album on an epic track as they did on I Am not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, they close this one out with two tracks that exceed the 10 minute mark and one that's just shy of it. In all, they're not as strong as the excellent "The Story of Yo La Tengo", but that they manage to pull it off at all without being painfully tiresome is pretty impressive. In fact, it's where the album really opens up and Yo La Tengo does what they often do best, casual sprawling jams. It's perfect fall afternoon music.

Rating: 7.5/10

Polvo - In Prism (emusic download 9/10/09)

I guess I was never really a Polvo fan. I seem to forget that since they seem like the sort of thing I typically really like. There aren't too many '90s guitar-driven bands of that ilk that I don't like, honestly. These guys are good musicians, and instrumentally, their stuff makes for decent ear candy. But there are too essential flaws: poor vocals/lyrics and a general lack of good melodies. I don't think I really like the drums, either, but I haven't ever really paid much attention to them with this band. They don't really play up the more rhythmic aspects of their music, anyway. They seem to avoid grooves.

So what's here to like? Well, the guitars. So long as the vocals stay out of the way, Polvo is pretty damn good. Unfortunately the lyrics have always struck me as kind of dumb, and they're a distraction I can never ignore. If the music was truly great, maybe the vocals wouldn't be an issue, but that's just not quite the case.

As far as I can tell this album is no better or worse than the only other Polvo record I've spent much time with, Exploded Drawing. So maybe for their true fans, this album is a real unexpected treat. For me, it's just OK.

Rating: 6.5/10