This is a record I intend to return to in the summertime. It's refreshing and rockin, both serious and light at the same time. I'm happy this band picked up where Smashing Pumpkins left off.
9. Pyramids With Nadja - Pyramids With Nadja
The lone Hydra Head release on this year's top 10, this record shows the real beauty available in the ambient metal form. Most folks I've played this for have said, "this is metal?"
8. Mastodon - Crack The Skye
Nobody wonders whether this album is metal. My favorite metal album of the year, "Crack The Skye" is smart and fearless. It's also my choice for saddest album of the year, and I'm amazed this band lived through the process of writing this music.
7. Julian Casablancas - Phrazes For The Young
While seeing 80s-style clothing around town still freaks me out, I'm very happy about the way artists are revisiting the late 80s alternative and new wave scenes. This album is poppy, accessible and witty. It's quite a good step forward for Casablancas.
6. The Difference Engine - Breadmaker
While they call themselves a "steampunk" band, this album is pure power pop. There's really pretty guitar sounds here - kind of dreamy and airy. My intuition says this record will yield some more gems upon continued listening.
5. BK-One - Radio Do Canibal
BK-One has been Brother Ali's touring DJ for a while, and he carries on the hip-hop tradition in a very inclusive and positive manner. This album focuses on Brazilian influences, but is so full of guest verses and familiar beats
4. Basement Jaxx - Scars
I don't think these guys care what anyone thinks. This album is all over the place, and continues to surprise me. Jaxx are strong as ever, and "Scars" is as proper a party album as they come. There's guest artists on almost every song, and the global scope of their samples tells me these guys have been having a lot of fun digging deep in the bins.
3. Brother Ali - Us
This is overall a slower, more pensive album than Ali's previous full-length, "The Undisputed Truth," but is a clear example of an amazing artist still improving, still focusing his power on really changing the world. Brother Ali and Rhymesayers absolutely represent the hopeful future of underground hip-hop.
2. USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker) - Questamation
Here is my confession: this is the band I've been hoping to hear for a long time. I believe the future of rock music is all about hybridization, and USS embraces this idea wholeheartedly. Equal parts fresh-faced rock and knob-twiddler-party, this album defies categorization and keeps me guessing.
1. Mos Def - The Ecstatic
Without a doubt, "The Ecstatic" is a masterpiece. 16 songs in 45 minutes and consistently fascinating from beginning to end, this album stands out as a rebuttal to anyone who said rap music was a fad, or that MCs don't have real musical talent. Mos has perfect delivery: it's expressive, powerful and subtle. His rhymes are playful, abstract and evocative, and he sounds like he's having a fantastic time. In contrast to some other great albums this year, Mos barely shares the stage here. Talib Kweli stops by near the end of the album, and "Auditorium" features Slick Rick dropping an amazing verse from the point of view of an American soldier in Iraq. 2009 was a great year for underground music, so turn your radio off and fall in love with an independent label or two!
I'm celebrating New Years this year with some old friends, and amazed at the beauty our aging is bringing us. I now have friendships I can trace back to the 5th grade, well over 20 years. Some of those folks I see on facebook all the time!
Every year we note the passing of time, the ticking of the big-ass clock. Every year it's hyped up and well planned. Yet rarely are these the best parties of the year. Often, they're bittersweet or anticlimactic. It's hard to forget ourselves in the miasma of equal parts hope and fear that surrounds the changing of the year.
This year, I say fuck that. Let us gather in families, posses, scenes and cities. Let us look at the sky and wonder what it means to be alive. Let us laugh and cry and dance about it all. Let us remember the many forms friendship takes: from the single-serving moment of shared humanity to the Krameresque neighbor we are both happy and surprised to see every day. Let us simply be together.
09 was the year of facebook, the year of underground hip-hop and metal. It was the year of progressive reality-checks and conservative schism. These factors influenced my friendships; because of them, I both made and lost friends (a net gain, I believe).
This year I saw the scariest movie I've ever seen: Paranormal Activity. (Everybody in the theater screamed at once - it was awesome.) I sent probably 10,000 text messages and received as many. I made friends with a spider.
Next year let's dance more, hug more and eat better food. Let's go to bigger parties and smaller shows. Let's discover a favorite new band and a favorite old band. Let's learn something new about someone we've known forever, and maybe even something new about ourselves. Next year when we end a conversation with, "Peace," let's mean it a little more.
2008/12/31 12:14 10. Beck - Modern Guilt
Up to his old tricks, Beck put out a pretty good record this year. I suspect, however, that this album is somewhat diminished by overplay on the radio.
9. Xasthur - A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors
This is actually a re-issue of the artist's first demo from 2001. If you're not already familiar, I advise you not to seek out this music, as it will curdle the blood of the casual listener. This is very dark, very challenging music. I've listened to it because it creates an aural space inside my head, which I've found conducive to various intellectual pursuits
8. Pyramids - Pyramids
While it shares a certain lineage with the previous entry on this list (I would classify them both as ambient metal), "Pyramids" is a much more listenable, colorful exploration of the same nightmares. Sometimes soothing and sometimes abrasive, this album is consistently beautiful and intense.
7. Guns N Roses - Chinese Democracy
Say what you will, I loved it. This record tells me that Axl has been listening to all the music that's come out since the heyday of GNR, and has enjoyed a lot of it. This is a great modern rock record, and I would totally buy it if it wasn't a Best Buy exclusive.
6. In Flames - A Sense Of Purpose
Awesome. Loud, consistent, and perfectly produced, this record is spectacular. One of the few metal albums I could listen to first thing in the morning.
5. Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
These two can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. The show is brilliant, the videos are hilarious, and the album is irresistible.
4. 5ive - Hesperus
In the worst namespace collision ever, instrumental rock band 5ive shares a name with a horrifying boy band created by the same people who brought us the Spice Girls. That band ended in 2001, but their odorous legacy lives on in wikipedia and music databases everywhere. It's a proper tragedy because "Hesperus" is fantastic. It's pretty much all giant, rhythmic riffs and rock beats, which I find refreshing and satisfying.
3. Nas - Untitled
THE hip hop album of the year, Nas is in his prime, with a few more great albums still in him, I bet. This record is in the best tradition of rap, sounding like a news broadcast from the street. What's masterful here, though, is that Nas knows we're listening (my white middle class ass included), and is using his platform to spread some serious awareness.
2. Baroness - Red Album
Pure rock n roll here, this album should be on the "classic rock" radio stations within a year. This four piece rocked my socks at a Satyricon in Portland this year, and it was a sweaty sing along. Joey Ramone would be proud.
1 - Torche - Meanderthal
Anyone who's been around me this year is sick of this album, I'm sure. It's 13 songs, 36 minutes long, and constructed entirely from beautiful hooks psychidelic guitar sounds. I confess I saw this band live this year, too, which definitely helped push them to the top of the list. Even without that, though, this is a standout album this year.
Please notice that "Meanderthal", "Hesperus", "Pyramids", and "A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors" were are released on Hydra Head records. This label is the place to look for the future of rock and metal music. They are supporting and nurturing really innovative and forward thinking bands, and I couldn't be happier about that.
Honorable Mentions:
Genghis Tron - Board Up The House
Equal parts New Wave and technical death metal, Genghis Tron is one of the most provocative bands out there today.
Everlast - Love, War, and The Ghost of Whitey Ford
It's a pleasure to listen to Everlast grow into an old bluesman.
Hope is belief in a better way. Hope is invoking love and life in the world around us, a world we know to be flawed and fearful. Hope is seeing that our friends are hurting, and making choices so our kids have it better. Hope is wanting to be happy and realizing that it happiness doesn't just happen to any of us. We have to visualize our happiness with optimism, manifest it with hope, and maintain it with peace.
I see the corruption. I see the power structures. I see the subhuman corporate interests, and I see the hate that lingers in our culture, fed by the continued fear mongering of fundamentalism. I see war with no end in sight. Still I hope, I believe that we can do better. It's a choice, and an active one at that. I hope, and then I make and take opportunities to implement that hope.
If hope were a fantasy, George Washington would have accepted kingship and the American experiment would have been over before it started. If it were a fantasy, the sacrifices of the abolitionists, the suffragists, and all civil rights activists would have become myths instead of a legal framework. If hope were a fantasy, Barack Obama would have been born a slave.
Look around. Nothing is certain. Trust is in short supply, and those we ask to represent us turn us against each other to hold on to their own scraps of self-claimed authority. Every societal system and institution we have tried so far has led to the commodification of life in all its forms, and to the violent support of that commodification. We've not gotten it right yet – even democracy doesn't work the way we expected it would. However, just because we don't have a way to live in peace yet doesn't mean we won't ever. Without hope, though, we may as well not even try.
So I don't think Barack Obama will change the world, or even change any of our lives in any noticeable way. The world is a big place, and full of serious challenges. I do think, though, that Obama believes a better way is possible. This campaign has shown me that he's willing to work for that better way, thoughtfully, seriously, and consistently. That's a train I can get on.
I live in the same world as all the cynics and haters, and I see all the warts, flaws, hubris, and greed. Still I hope, but not out of idealism. I hope because I choose to be happy. Hope is not a fantasy. It is a reminder that, in the end, we each are responsible for the stories of our lives, and that is as real as it gets.
