Best of 2009

Every year i burn a 20 Best Songs of the Year mix. i was waiting around to hear all of Dylan's Christmas album before before making the list official, but since initial returns indicate that it is about the same amount of creepy as Hannibal Lecter singing nursery rhymes, i'll just get it out there. Here it is folks, my top 20 for 2009, sequenced for optimum listening pleasure:

1.Waving Flag-K'Naan

2.This Tornado Loves You-Neko Case

3.Empire State of Mind-Jay-Z

4.The Rake's Song-The Decemberists

5.The Fear-Lily Allen

6.Blood Bank-Bon Iver

7.French Navy-Camera Obscura

8.Sunken Union Boat-John Vanderslice

9.The Walls are Coming Down-Fanfarlo

10-Actor Out of Work-St-Vincent

11.Help, I'm Alive-Metric

12.I'm Confused-Handsome Furs

13.Never Had Nobody Like You-M. Ward

14.Good Love-Bat For Lashes

15.Nicorette-Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

16.Lisztomania-Phoenix

17.Crush on You-BrakesBrakesBrakes

18.Fitz and the Dizzyspells-Andrew Bird

19.Please Read the Letter-Robert Plant & Allison Krause

20.Through&Through&Through-Joel Plaskett

And dere you go. Pretty good year i think. Big releases due in 2010 (Hello there Arcade Fire) so i'm an excited mannish boy. i've been compiling these lists since 1995, so i think i'll blog 'em for posterity in a little bit...Rocket Reducer out.

LORD BUCKLEY

Hipsters, Flipsters and finger poppin' Daddies--Knock me your lobes! I come here not to jive his sweet double Hipness, but to swing wit' 'em. Now dig this, all you Cats and Kittens and Studs and Stallions; this lame bit I'm puttin' down won't hip you to the actual Genius that was his Lordship. For that you need to hop in your short, and groove on down to the wax museum to pick yourself up some sides of the swingingest Cat what ever swung.

And if you do, m' lawds and ladies of the Royal Court, today's Hipstory lesson will run the gamut all the way down from Jonah and the Nazz to The Hip Ghan, with stops along the way for the Gasser, that poor misunderstood Marquis de Sade and maybe even that story written on the inside of your eyelids.

Grab your pith helmets and your spinnin' wheel baby, and dig the hippest jive in all of Mother India (or anywhere else too).

Astral Weeks

There is an exchange between Jack Black and a fellow vinyl devotee somewhere near the midpoint of High Fidelity, in which Black's surly record store clerk says "Dude, I can't believe you don't own this F***ing album!"


That's somewhat akin to how i feel when snooping through someone's record collection (given the opportunity i will always check out people's CD stack, it helps with the snap judgements) and i don't find a copy of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.

Ultimately more uplifting than a bucket of Paxil, this album nevertheless goes to all the scary places of the human psyche. Maybe it's the fact that it explores those places (the major themes here include obsession, addiction and death) while maintaining a shimmering beauty that make it so powerful.

We do know that it was a happy accident, Morrison did little, to no communicating with the talented jazz musicians (Richard Davis is unbelievable) assigned to his session. Despite (because of?) this, Morrison would never approach this level of genius again, and has in fact spent most of his time disowning it. Ours is not to disown, but to own.It's going to be OK.