The Awkward World

I heard a theory a while back that great music is on a two-year cycle, because that’s about how long it takes the great artists to cut a new album. I’m not sure how much credence we should put in that, since 2006 and 2007 were both very, very good, but there has to be some explanation for 2008. Seriously.
(As a side note, my 2008 year-end list would look a little different if I were to write it now. Big bumps up the list for Bon Iver and Old Crow Medicine Show, and the inclusion of M83’s magical Saturdays = Youth in the top 10.)
So now we come to 2009, which is a little over halfway over, and it’s great. Really, really great. I mean, where have you been? It’s already blown 2008 out of the water, and competing with the best of the decade.
Without further ado, the best albums from the first half of 2009.

10. Dark Was the Night by various artists
Way back in 1993, an AIDS nonprofit called Red Hot released a little compilation called No Alternative, which featured basically anyone who was anyone in the alternative rock scene of the early 90s performing covers, collaborations, and new originals. Many a grunge neophyte first heard of the Smashing Pumpkins, Goo Goo Dolls, or Soundgarden on No Alternative, and to amateur music historians like us, the compilation is an amazing snapshot of the alternative scene at its best, uniting for a cause with original, top shelf art. In 2009, Red Hot Organization is back with another compilation called Dark Was the Night, and it’s our generation’s No Alternative. Over two discs produced by Aaron and Bryce Desner of the National, it’s the rare compilation that flows like a single-artist album, showcasing the best of the late-2000’s indie and alt-country scene. Where else are you going to hear collaborations between Ben Gibbard and Leslie Feist, David Byrne and the Dirty Projectors, Antony and the National, or Jose Gonzales and the Books covering a Nick Drake standard? It’s well worth owning a hard copy of, if for no other reason than you can replay it 15 years from now when the scene is completely different, and show a younger generation what 2009 was all about.
The New Pornographers – Hey, Snow White

9. Farm by Dinosaur Jr.
If someone put a gun to my head and asked me what makes me like or dislike most bands, I would have to admit that it’s the singer. After that, probably the lyrics and arrangement. I’m a big fan of texture too. Very rarely do I zone in on a single instrument – I guess I like Foo Fighters for the drums – and rarer still is that instrument the old rock and roll cliché machine, the electric guitar. But oh my god, J Mascis has to be rock and roll’s most expressive electric guitar player – and I am saying this on record. Listen to the solos on Farm, or on Dinosaur Jr.’s other post-reunion album, Beyond, and I dare you not to be moved by their thundering, streamlined delivery. Mascis’ own shy vocals, Murph’s drumming, and Lou Barlow’s driving bass are all in service of  Dinosaur Jr.’s real frontman, that Fender Jazzmaster. A great album, thoughtfully constructed, and a headbanging good time.
I Don’t Wanna Go There

8. Outer South by Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band
I saw Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band live at Summerfest last month. Their live shows are quickly becoming legendary for a number of reasons: for one thing, they refuse to play Bright Eyes songs. For another, they’re awesome. Bright Eyes was dull as dishwater on stage, but the Conor Oberst before us today is nigh unrecognizable. With a big, floppy, country hat, a screaming electric guitar, and a top notch backing band, he’s redefined himself as the musician’s musician, focusing on live performance, cheerful country rock, and – perhaps most surprising – division of labor. That’s right. Oberst only sings lead on about half the songs on this record, giving songwriting and singing duties to three other dudes in the Mystic Valley Band. Does it always work? Hell no. But Oberst has always been a progressive artist, and this seems the next logical step after the gorgeous and uneven folk of the last few Bright Eyes albums (and the god-awful honky tonk of his first solo release). If this is who Oberst wants to be now, I’m ready to embrace it. For the first time in his long and distinguished career, he sounds like he’s having a good time.
Nikorette

7. Far by Regina Spektor
I’m not even going to review this. You like Regina Spektor, don’t you? Well, this is her new album and it’s really good. Go buy it. She makes dolphin noises on this one song.
Folding Chair

6. The Last Pale Light in the West by Ben Nichols, and Murdering Oscar (and other love songs) by Patterson Hood
Here we have a pair of bleak, violent, minimalist solo releases by the frontmen of two of alt-country’s finest acts. Ben Nichols’ gravel-mouthed vocals tie together Lucero’s shit-kicking anthems of youth and rebellion in the style of the Hold Steady or early Springsteen. Lucero has been called the most punk rock country band out there, but on Nichols’ first solo EP, he shows more range and depth as a songwriter and a singer than he has on any of Lucero’s fine, fine releases. The Last Pale Light in the West is based on Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy’s ultraviolent novel about mercenaries cutting a bloody swathe through the southwest in the years after the Mexican-American War. Nichols, like McCarthy, humanizes these amoral murderers, and his stirring acoustic ballads are as lyrically solid as their source material. It’s one of my favorite novels, and I think it’s legendary curmudgeon of an author would be proud of this adaptation.
Murdering Oscar (and other love songs) is the second full solo album by one of the many talented singer-songwriters that make up the alt-country supergroup Drive-By Truckers. The songs here are similar to Hood’s tracks with the Truckers: ruminating, cerebral, sometimes startling in their brutality. As the album title suggests, these are mostly tongue-in-cheek tales of questionable morality, mostly acoustic, and consistently strong. Rarely do two unrelated records complement one another as well as Nichols’ and Hood’s latests. Pick them both up, as well as this year’s #2 entry below for the awesome alt-country trifecta.
Ben Nichols – The Kid
Patterson Hood – The Range War

5. Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors
Among other things, 2009 could go down as the year that the freakazoid indie electronica acts went mainstream. Well, mainstreamier. With Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective, and Grizzly Bear all releasing their best and most accessible albums to date, that pretentious subgenre is finally available to us common folk. And I have to say I love the direction Dirty Projectors have have been going for their last few albums, with warbler-in-chief David Longstreth diverting some of his vocal duties to allow for the frenetic harmonies of Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman. (Side note: “Angel Deradoorian” = my favorite name of all time) In fact, the ladies of Dirty Projectors provide the records’ best moments: Coffman’s spectacular spotlight track “Stillness is the Move,” the appropriately cooing “Two Doves,” and this impossible-to-describe chiming thing on “Remade Horizon” that I had assumed was created in the editing room but when I saw them live THEY CAN ACTUALLY DO IT WITH THEIR MOUTHS. It’s weird and beautiful, and, like the rest of Bitte Orca, kind of hard to explain.
Stillness Is the Move

4. Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective
Animal Collective is the Kate Finneran of bands. I resent almost everything they stand for, from their pseudo-intellectual posturing to their weird-for-weirdness’ sake non-aesthetic, and most of all what it adds up to: a snobby band you “don’t get” if you don’t like. Then there’s stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid Merriweather Post Pavilion, a near-perfect synth-pop album containing the year’s best song (even NPR says so), and yes, Merriweather is just as amazing as everyone says it is, and I’m forced to admit that maybe the emperor is wearing some clothes, socks, maybe. A banana hammock at most. I still hate this band.
My Girls

3. Swoon by Silversun Pickups
This was the biggest surprise for me this year. Silversun Pickups were almost completely off my radar (though I hear their debut album, Carnavas, is also very good), and I picked up Swoon on a whim. I was in Reckless Records to pick up the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs (which blows, unfortunately) and the cover art caught my eye, as well as an employee recommendation that this was the new Siamese Dream. It isn’t, not by a long shot, but I can understand why he said that. The record opener “There’s No Secrets This Year” is the closest thing to a cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Silverfuck” I’ve ever heard that wasn’t actually a cover of “Silverfuck.” Like the early Pumpkins, Silversun Pickups make sensitive, textured, ear-bleedingly heavy rock and roll, and there’s that same sort of shaggy charm to Swoon. It’s an earnest, personal, and instantly accessible record that is sure to have a long shelf life on both Top 40 radio and every hipster kid’s turntable.
There’s No Secrets This Year

2. Yonder is the Clock by The Felice Brothers
If I could have but one wish on this sweltering summer afternoon, it would be this: for the Felice Brothers and the Jonas Brothers to switch places. I can guarantee there would be a lot more cocaine-fueled knifings at Camp Honky Tonk. And they’re kind of dreamy, right? Do preteen chicks still dig squeaky-voiced bearded fat guys playing accordion? Well, until abstinence promise rings are replaced with promiscuity barbed wire bracelets, we out-of-touch old fogies are going to have to console ourselves with Yonder Is the Clock, the audio equivalent of that dangerously unhinged skinny drunkard at the bar who might buy you a drink or might smash a bottle over your head for looking at him wrong. It’s a wild and cynical ride in the same vein of Tom Waits or Old Crow Medicine Show, careening between southern satire (the title comes from a Mark Twain story) and poignant sketches of rural desperation and the ghosts of the new Depression. Also: two songs about chickens. I smell a Disney Channel series!
Run, Chicken, Run

1. Middle Cyclone by Neko Case

I’ve written plenty about Neko Case in the past, so I don’t feel the need to gush about her too much here. Suffice it to say, Middle Cyclone is on par with Case’s perfect 2006 album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which is a bit like saying some new book is on par with Finnegan’s Wake. It’s an album about nature, about animals and instincts, and the frightening, titillating undercurrents of the world that we can’t understand but seem to understand us. And believe me, Neko Case understands you. She punctuates her lyrics with vivid abstractions that resonate like those of the best poets – I don’t know exactly what “I listened in when you thought you were alone / calling the Sphinx on a tornado’s phone” means, but I know exactly what she means when she sings it. The orchestration is tight and layered, and Jon Rauhouse’s ratatat pedal steel cuts as clean a line as ever, but the biggest reason to listen to Neko Case is still her booming, lusty vocals, which only seem to grow louder and bolder with each new release. And like Fox Confessor, you don’t need to be a Case superfan to appreciate a precise and disarming work of art such as this.
The Pharaohs

These records didn’t make the top ten for 2009, but they’re all on par with the best of 2008. Check them out. For real.

Actor by St. Vincent
Get Guilty by A.C. Newman
Tonight: by Franz Ferdinand
Art Brut Vs. Satan by Art Brut
Noble Beast by Andrew Bird

I didn’t make a mid-year list of best songs, but I can, if that’s something people want. What do you say, readers?

Either way, thanks for reading. Now go buy some records!

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