-G$, Discoveries of '09, Favorites of the Aughts

Alright,

It's -G$ (part of the BC crowd). I'll get right to it.

Top Discoveries of 2009

For the past few years now, I have been downright terrible about keeping up with new music. 2009 has been no different, and so this list will be rather brief.

1. TAT, Soho Lights

- Easily, the best discovery I had this year, and the best (only?) album that I purchased. I caught TAT by pure happenstance. I was chaperoning my teenage niece at this year's Warped Tour, which was downright depressing. With the exception of Bad Religion, TAT, and some other band that I can't remember, every group was trying so hard to produce what were hackneyed, pre-packaged teenage rebellion, pseudo-anarchy promoting results. ugh. I was walking along at some point and saw a crowd gathered watching this 3-person band with British accents that had a genuine stage presence, real attitude, witty banter, and downright infectious hooks song-after-song. It was absolutely refreshing to see (& hear), and sure enough, the crowd kept growing as their set progressed. Their album did not disappoint (sample it here: <<http://www.myspace.com/tat>>). Great musicianship, smart lyrics, remarkable energy; about as good a pop-punk band as I've heard in a very long time.

2. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak

- This album came out in late 2008, but whatever, I "discovered" it in 2009. Kanye, as we all know, has about as big an ego as we can stomach. But he has backed it up so far with one daring & inventive album after another. He's like the Charlie Kaufman of mainstream hip hop. This album in particular resonates strongly with me. It's the first one to come out since his mother's well-publicized death, but instead of taking the more obvious route of producing songs directly about his trials and tribulations over the matter, he's made this haunting work that's mostly about love gone wrong, loneliness, and bad encounters with women and whatnot. The songs are so well-written, that American Idol hack Kris Allen can perform a straightforward, solo acoustic rendition of "Heartless" and be rightly praised for the way it sounded. It's a stellar, mature album that makes a powerful impact.

That's it. I will now briefly list 2009 albums that I've sampled and which, had I delved into them more deeply, would have probably earned a more prominent spot on this list: Mastodon, Crack the Skye; The Decemberists, Hazards of Love; Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix; Silversun Pickups, Soon; maybe Muse, The Resistance.

Now, some killer singles hit the mainstream airwaves in 2009. It's fair to say that none came from Kings of Leon and that many of them came from Lady Gaga.

25 Favorite Albums of the Decade

These are listed in alphabetical order by artist, not in any particular order of preference. Listed here are the albums that I have turned to again & again, year after year, long after the initial buzz surrounding them has died down. There's a few more than 25 listed here. If more than one album is listed for a particular artist, then that's the way it worked out.

The Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)

Coheed and Cambria, The Second Stage Turbine Blade (2002); In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (2003); Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV, Volume 1: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (2005); Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV, Volume 2: No World for Tomorrow (2007)

Colplay, X&Y (2005)

Daft Punk, Discovery (2001)

Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism (2003)

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, Once: Music from the Motion Picture (2007)

Green Day, American Idiot (2004)

Hot Hot Heat, Make Up the Breakdown (2002)

Interpol, Turn on The Bright Lights (2002)

Iron Maiden, Brave New World (2000)

Jimmy Eat World, Bleed American (2001)

Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Les Claypool's Frog Brigade, Live Frogs: Set 2

The Mars Volta, De-loused in the Comatorium (2003)

Muse, Absolution (2003); Black Holes and Revelations (2006)

My Chemical Romance, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004); The Black Parade (2006)

The Postal Service, Give Up (2003)

Radiohead, Kid A (2000); Amnesiac (2001)

The Smashing Pumpkins, MACHINA/The Machines of God (2000)

Stellastarr, Stellastarr (2003); Harmonies for the Haunted (2005)

The Stills, Logic Will Break Your Heart (2003)

The Strokes, Is This It (2001); Room on Fire (2003); First Impressions of Earth (2006)

Surferosa, Shanghai My Heart (2004)

System of a Down, Toxicity (2001); Mezmerize (2005); Hypnotize (2005)

TAT, Soho Lights (2008)

Tegan & Sara, If It Was You (2002)

The White Stripes, White Blood Cells (2001); Elephant (2003); Icky Thump (2007) [their other releases are great too]

-Finally, though "Hey Ya" can be justifiably considered the mainstream single of the aughts, Speakerboxx is the better of half of Outkast's bombshell of a mid-decade release.

-G$

Year in Movies, Mark Cummins

So I just got done reading a bunch more entries, cause I didn't want to be affected by them while I was writing my own. But I'm having a lot more fun listening to music already. Thanks everyone. Grizzly Bear with Michael McDonald was great!

And because I just saw how long my previous entry was I'll try to keep this one short--except woah, lots of great American directors had new movies this year: Wes Anderson, James Cameron, Jonze, Coens, Greg Mottola, Tarantino, Soderbergh (x2), Jason Reitman, Andrew Bujalski.

Out of all those folks, Inglorious Basterds was my movie of the year. All the known pleasures of cinema in the service of a cockeyed trash premise. An incredibly satisfying experience. Honorable Mentions goes to Avatar (imax 3d, $17), which has all the novel pleasures of 3d in service of a cockeyed trash premise. Reading the James Cameron profile in the New Yorker was almost as good. And one issue of that only costs three dollars. And to A Serious Man, a funny, unusually structured movie, which is to say it's a Coen Brothers movie. Complex and modern like Burn After Reading, but with heart. I had no idea where it was going. This trailer should give you a taste.

Double Features:
I'm gonna explode/The Good Times Kid: Two movies from Gerardo Naranjo. New Wave film and a Post-Punk one. I'm looking forward to more movies by this guy.

Where the wild things are vs. MGMT Kids video: I liked WTWTA, but didn't love it. Props to Gandolfini's performance. The most distinctive breather in the business. The Kids video has an intensity WTWTA falls short of.

Billy the Kid/Overnight: The most likable and most loathsome documentary subjects respectively I've so far encountered (the latter barely beating out Robert McNamara). Quotables for days.

Girlfriend Experience/The Informant!: Two interesting movies by Soderbergh. The former seems much more current than Up in the Air where The Informant! is like a retrospective for the 90's and how stupid we used to be. Best narration of the year, and great use of allusion to Michael Crichton novels.

Adventureland/Zombieland: Jesse Eisenberg guns for that top nebbish spot. Without hyperbole, Zombieland has one of the best cameos ever, goes straight from 7 to 9 in a flash. Adventureland is just a solid movie with likeable characters, beautiful shots, and a sick soundtrack. Highly recommended.

Up in the Air/Mad Men (final episode): I liked Up in the Air, but have several reservations. Mad Men's finale was maybe my favorite hour of TV ever (right up there with Omar Little taking the stand). Don Draper spends most of season 3 hating the idea of being tied down until he discovers "I want to work. I want to build something." Me too. Balls to your modern anomie, Up in the Air.

Lastly, I don't know what to say about Bad Lieutenent. I've never seen a plot wrap up all its loose ends with such insane glee. Kilmer, Cage, Xzibit. Shoot him again, his soul's still dancing.

Duds: Taking Woodstock, Tetro, Beeswax, 500 Days of Summer (aka Zooey Deschanel's just not that into you. Oddly, she is into a blond-haired doucher). The Highline (architecture)

Some of my favorite movies of the decade:
There Will Be Blood
T tu mama, tambien
Yi Yi
I Heart Huckabees
I'm not there
In the Mood for Love
Eternal Sunshine
The New World
Sideways
24 Hour Party People
Incredibles
Squid and the Whale
The Lives of Others
Knocked Up
Michael Clayton
Hot Fuzz
Bourne 2 and 3
Most Underrated: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Morvern Caller
Biggest Disappointment: Gangs of New York

Musical Anhedonia (it's like the opposite of Liztomania); Mark Cummins

This was probably the first year I spent more time listening to music streamed off the internet than any other kind of music consumption. I didn't even want to download an mp3 and open it in itunes, let alone go to a store and purchase a cd. I'd stream a few songs from a group off myspace or youtube and decide which one's I liked. So I can't say I listened to very many albums, and a best of list would be a joke.*

I could attribute this to a kind of anhedonia I briefly experienced this year, but I'd rather generalize and postulate this was the year in which following music crossed over from pleasurable to arduous. I think everyone who listens to music, reads pitchfork, or has mp3 blogs as bookmarks has felt burned out by the hype cycle in the last couple of years. I feel like I now consume music more than I discover it or is pat of a consumption experience. The sheer inescapable ubiquity of "new music" in bars, restaurants, retail stores, and online has in some way enervated the pleasure of discovery. Pandora and itunes genius don't enhance my enjoyment of music. Whereas a song or album used to be the soundtrack to important moments or various lengths of time, music is no longer a part of the fabric of my life. Maybe it's age, or maybe it's the fact that for the first time in about a decade my tastes no longer aligned with prevailing taste.

Matt touched upon this in his post, and this is something we've discussed together, but I don't think I understand the music of bands like Panda Bear, Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, (to a lesser extent) Dirty Projectors and Deerhunter. And I like some songs by each of these bands here and there. But in what situations would I leave any of their albums on as an LP? Having a beer at home, hanging in a bar, sitting in a coffee shop, browsing the internet, cooking? Maybe at Itty's magical campground? Perhaps I can't connect with these bands because their purpose is for me to stop what I'm doing and listen to their sweet avant-sound collage eventually find conventional song structure. But that shit is not compelling to me at all. And even the singles often don't go down well, till I watch the music video, or David Byrne okays them. But I'm already calling Yeahsayer as the next group I hear everywhere, and what can you say about a group that does this as a music video?[(Youth + back to nature + facial massage + faceless horseman+flying faces)-irony]; all to indicate how empowering being young and awesome is. [?]

One last note: I think there are more formats competing for our attention. Whereas popular music was once revitalized and energized by the advent of the mp3 and the ipod, it seemed increasingly marginalized and displaced by the advent of newer, more exciting forms of technologies (e.g., 3D, iphone applications, gaming, kindles). So the acceleration of music hype - time = diminishing returns. Caveat: While the mp3 song seems somewhat marginalized, the music video appears to be entering a golden age. Incredibly potent, technologically state of the art, and amazingly creative. I can't believe MTV now endlessly runs Men in Black, Into the Blue, and South Park instead.

*Songs/Acts/Videos that I did like:
-YYY's It's Blitz and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
-Empire State of Mind, Brooklyn (we go hard), the video for DOA
-There were Los Angeles people like No Age/Abe Vigoda/Waaves/Vivian Girls/Drums who I couldn't say I listened to their albums, so much as ambled across their videos, myspaces, concert photos. Effortlessly cool, youthful, tunes and fuzz, and always making just the proper gesture.
-Singles from Jay Reatard and Barr
-Videos for Dead Weather, Grizzley Bear, Bodies of Water
-Pavement B-sides like Frontwards, Harness Your Hopes
-Finally I want to a shorty to tell her, you my everything, and who told you to put them jeans on. 2010, be kind.

Breakthrough Acts of the 00's:
Superstars: Beyonce, Justin, Eminem (though he fell off)
Rap: TI,Wayne, Kanye, Jeezy,
Indie Rap: Doom, Clipse, Ghostface
Indie Rock Mainstream: The Strokes, The White Stripes, Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Cat Power, YYY's, Modest Mouse, The Shins, Ben Gibbard
Indie Dance/Hipster: LCD Soundsystem, MIA, Animal Collective, Girl Talk, Daft Punk
Borderline Successes: The Streets, Arctic Monkeys (only borderline cause I didn't like the new album), The Hold Steady, Spoon, TV on the Radio, Phoenix
Casualties: Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, The Flaming Lips, DJ Shadow, Clap Your Hands, Bloc Party, The Futureheads, Libertines, Rawkus, Dan the Automator, The Rapture, The Hives
Houdini: R Kelly