Always Sunny in Colcord

1) The Radio Dept. – Heaven’s On Fire

2) Tennis – Marathon

3) Local Natives – Wide Eyes

Wide Eyes by Local Natives

4) Two Door Cinema Club – Something Good Can Work

Something Good Can Work by Two Door Cinema Club

5) Neon Indian – Deadbeat Summer

Deadbeat Summer by Neon Indian

6) Gorillaz – On Melancholy Hill

7) Miike Snow – Burial

Walk the Moon – Anna Sun
Anna Sun by Walk The Moon

9) Free Energy – Dream City

10) Generationals – Greenleaf

11) Foster the People – Helena Beat
Helena Beat by Foster The People

12) M83 – Midnight City

13) Phoenix – Lasso

14) Ra Ra Riot – Boy

15) Matt & Kim – Cameras
Cameras by mattandkim

16) Robyn – Dancing on My Own
Dancing On My Own by robyn

17) The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition

18) Freelance Whales – Hannah

19) Sleigh Bells – Rill Rill

20) Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – Home

10. Regina Spektor – Far

She can be a little kitschy but she is so stinkin’ talented. Her vocal abilities never cease to amaze me . And she has cooked another great batch of interesting, contemplative, and downright enjoyable pop tunes. I think this album is exactly what you’d expect from Regina and more.  It’s goofy, but you’re her voice will knock you off your feet.  She’ll bark like a seal, and then slap you up side the head with one of the most profound lines you’ve heard all year. Don’t ever stop paying attention to this girl.  She ain’t just messin’ around.

9. Gomez - A New Tide

This veteran indie pop band has finally hit its stride. I was actually really suprised that this album stuck with me.  I just assumed that it would be just another pop record that I would just eat up and then allow to fade into the noise.  But that was far from the case. I have had this album since February and it only gets stronger with time. A New Tide just has a really fun and diverse sound.  But there is also a lot of depth to these songs.  If Britain doesn’t want to claim them anymore we’re more than happy to sing their praises here in U.S. of A.

8. Bat  For Lashes - Two Suns

Natasha Khan may have outdone herself on this one. Those who have heard a track or two off of this record might find its inclusion on this list slightly puzzling.  That is because this album is more than just a collection of singles. It is an experience.  Khan has invited us into a world inhabited by her “desert-born spiritual self” and her “destructive, self-absorbed, blonde femme fetale” alter ego, Pearl.  Take a moment to sit down and put this record on from start to finish. The stories and the music that Khan brings to us are just absolutely mesmerizing.

7. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Neko Case has one of the most beautiful and soothing voices I have ever heard.  Thank goodness she’s also one hell of a songwriter. I’ve been a fan of this New Pornographers collaborator for quite some time now, but Middle Cyclone has turned me into an enthusiast.  This was her first solo venture away from her alt-country roots.  Not that she left her sound behind, but she simply infused the power pop that she learned from her good buddy A.C. Newman into her own musical stylings.  And what we get  is a simply wonderful album, through and through.

6. Bad Veins – Bad Veins

The debut album from this little known indie rock band from Cincinnati has  been probably the biggest surprise for me. Not surprised that I like it.  I knew it would be on this list before the first track was even over.  What I’m surprised by is that this album is still virtually unknown.  I have yet to see this record on another year-end list and that is a shame.  There is a lot of depth to the music being played in this record, music that I believe will stay with me for a long time.

5. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

“From the mess to the masses.”  That is where French pop band, Phoenix has gone with their 4th studio album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.  This album is a pop masterpiece.  Easily one of the catchiest records of the year with the two most danceable songs I heard all year (“Lisztomania” & “1901″).  They have come leaps and bounds since their 2006 “breakthrough” album, It’s Never Been Like That.  Not only have they created some of the best musical hooks of the year, but I am so jealous of their lyrical ability, especially for a group that is writing in their second language.  I am eagerly anticipating what they will give to us next.

4. The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

One of the best folk groups of all time have just completed what may be looked back upon as their masterpiece.    With the help of producer Rick Rubin, this album is much more polished than any of their previoius works, much to the chagrin of their hard-core fans. I actually enjoy the change in flavor. But I could take it or leave it. The reason this album makes this list is because of the words.  Seth and Scott Avett have a way with words that in the past decade has gone completely unmatched.  This album picks up where Emotionalism left off, with brand new batch of personal, heart-wrenching ballads that speak to the very core of what it means to live and to love.  I urge you all to head to your local record store and pick up this album. For one of the greatest aspects of this record is the epic poem about love that Seth wrote and included in the album insert.

3. Fanfarlo – Reservoir

This band has drawn comparisons to several of my favorite indie acts of the past decade, from Beirut to the Arcade Fire to the National.  Let’s use that as a reason for you to listen, and that alone. For these guys have no reason to exist in their shadow for even a moment longer. What they have accomplished on their debut album, Reservoir, is worthy of all the fame and accolades of the aforementioned acts. This album is sweet. It’s hypnotic. It’s bombastic. It’s grandiose.  And it is simply gorgeous.  Some of the best string and brass arrangements of the year.  And to think that I got all of this for only a dollar.

2. Passion Pit - Manners

I have been absolutely in love with these guys from the moment I first heard “Sleepyhead” off of their 2008 debut EP, Chunk of Change.  I loved it, but I wasn’t excited about what they would release next. Rather, I was nervous, because Chunk was an accident, nothing more than a Valentine’s Day present for lead singer Michael Angelakos’ current girlfriend. I was worried they wouldn’t be able to recreate the magic.  Fortunately for us they couldn’t but they were able to make something even better. The best indie dance-pop album of the year was born in Manners.

1. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

How can an artist that has never had a record so much as graze my top 20 all of sudden create what I consider to be the best album of the year? The answer is simple they started channeling the spirit of my favorite artist of all time (Brian Wilson). The vocal arrangements and overall production quality of this album are absolutely breathtaking.  The vocal harmonies on this album are incredible and to a quality rarely achieved outside of Brian Wilson and his surfin’ buddies. Two weeks is one of the catchiest and most enjoyable song of the year, but outside of that, this album needs a little room to grow. So give the time it needs and you won’t regret it.

The lonely thump of late-90s techno that was formerly a major influence on popular music gave way to a movement of open-minded, more cerebral musical ideas.

This year, the iPod generation embraced a quasi-disco revolution, the music industry’s funeral procession is halfway through and music is an almost-free commodity. And Beyoncé is still making hits! (She is one of our generation’s icons) Pop music culture is diverse, fertile and constantly inventive. These are the top records of 2009.

10. Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free – Akron/Family

Bands like The Very Best, Animal Collective and Akron/Family consciously incorporate rhythms and textures from all points of geography, but the last group is special in its technical proficiency. The nods to Afrobeat are subtle like they should be, the songwriting is sound and diverse and if this music has anything, it’s spirit. Wild sounds like a utopian hippie commune, where everyone gets to sing lead.

9. Drift – Nosaj Thing

When I met Nosaj Thing, prior to his opening set for Bassnectar at George’s in November, I behaved like a giddy little girl. I stuttered and posed eloquent compliments like, “your music is nice.” But what could I say? Jason Chung, the 24-year-old L.A. native behind Nosaj Thing, made one of the year’s most compelling records, an unsolvable hip-hop nightmare straight out of “Mega Man.” Eventually, Drift’s tracks sound a little too similar, but no one cares when the beats are as hypnotic as these. For nighttime activities.

8. Logos – Atlas Sound

Fall has been more than kind to Logos, a record that stayed with me through road trips home and back. As a whole, it’s a contemplative record. Bradford Cox, the man behind the moniker, makes songs that get pleasantly lost in a cloud of introspection, and these are no different: “The Light That Failed” sounds like a swamp dive on barbiturates while “Attic Lights” meditates on the leisure of paradise. But Logos is never lazy. Like his recent work with the more popular band, Deerhunter, Cox integrates his affinity for doo-wop into many of these tunes. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but…

7. Alien in a Garbage Dump – Eric Copeland

So you’re throwing the most bumpin’ party of the year. You need a record the fellas can nod their heads to, some beats that make the ladies get down. This record is undoubtedly the poorest choice for that scenario. Alien is skuzzy, violent and downright ugly. The record mashes noise with hypnotic bits of song, sometimes letting them wander (a bold move, especially on the first two tracks), sometimes fencing them in (the excellent “Reptilian Space Beings, Shapeshifting Bloodsucking Vampires”). But Copeland somehow structures his noise experiments into a cohesive record. It won’t make you lots of friends, but Alien is the ideal headphones album, filled with hidden sounds and subconscious melodies.

6. Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street – Jon Hassell

Isn’t jazz supposed to swing? Or does it saunter? I know very little of jazz music and all its folklore. But I know that composer Jon Hassell’s newest record sounds like no jazz I’ve heard. Night creates a voyage through an Istanbul night, shrouded in fog, dotted with silky trumpet lines. Electronics burble for a few seconds, never to be heard again. The grooves are implied, meditative and forlorn. Delicious, like pipe smoke.

5. Childish Prodigy – Kurt Vile

The cover finds a bookish, fancily dressed kid staring into purple dusk as if his date had just abandoned him for a dance with the prom king. The songs of Childish Prodigy sync nicely with this scene: the only thing lonelier than Vile’s thick, groaning voice (think early Velvet Underground) is the swirling chorus of acoustic guitars. With titles like “Hunchback” and “Freak Train,” it’s obvious Vile’s got a case of the outcast blues, but he puts them to good use in psychedelic takes on Nick Drake (“Heart Attack,” “Dead Alive”). Who wants to be prom king anyway, right, kid?

4. Tarot Sport – F**k Buttons

My roommate listens to Explosions in the Sky when doing homework, which I accept but do not understand. Does post-rock lend hydrocarbon extraction a certain sense of urgency? Anyway, this Bristol duo win “best improved” by combining elements of that genre, with its endless, sincere crescendos, and danceable techno beats. It’s no coincidence that Tarot Sport’s best songs are also its most ambitious, with “Surf Solar” and “Olympians” clocking in at over 10 glorious minutes. The group is unafraid of experimenting with sounds, and this set of songs is paradoxically diverse and cohesive. If you want an A in geology, buy this album.

3. Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle – Bill Callahan

The 2007 film, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” is one of my favorites. Brad Pitt’s depiction of the infamous Western criminal is sinister, yet always vulnerable. There are moments when, as a saddled James looks out over the sweeping plains, his eyes are glowing pools of reverence and sadness. Bill Callahan’s appropriately-titled Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle is one of those moments. Each song is a thunderhead with pockets of sunshine, minor-chord dirges (“The Wind and the Dove”) interrupted by subtle strings and French horn (“Jim Cain”). Callahan sing-speaks poetry in a baritone as thick and tall as the Smoky Mountains and on Eagle, his unrest has never sounded so at peace.

2. Merriweather Post Pavilion – Animal Collective

Much has happened in the world of Brooklyn sensations Animal Collective since this album leaked on Christmas Day of last year. Merriweather nearly reached the Billboard charts in vinyl sales alone (in the dead of winter, no less!), performed on Letterman (“Paul, do you have anything for the trick-or-treaters?”) and got praise from everyone from M.I.A. to Twilight author Stephenie Meyer. What’s the fuss? Merriweather combines the group’s penchant for repetition with very shiny production in their bounciest, most contagious songs yet, from “My Girls” to “Summertime Clothes” to “Brothersport.” Lyrically, the collective is less secretive, focusing on the communion of domestic life, the simple value of “Daily Routine,” strange and joyful monogamy. Next up: a record about bittersweet fame?

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – Phoenix

All my friends love this album: the one that loves racing cars to the thrash of Metallica, the one that has a (worrying) crush on Ron Weasley, the sloppy-eyed burnout, the earnest farm boy, even my mom. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is not the most innovative release of the year, but it is the most universally likable. It’s your favorite child, skipping, grinning and forever curious. Thomas Mars sings in earnest questions: “Who’s the boy you like the most?” and “Where would you go with a lasso?” and “Could you go and run into me?” This French quartet has been playing together since childhood, and it shows in the fake out into of ”Lisztomania” and the rushing two-part “Love Like a Sunset.” Wolfgang is so clearly the work of a band, an album so pure in spirit and a piece much too fun to describe.

Here’s the real kicker; from the entire album of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, I’m pretty sure that “Rome” wasn’t even in my top ten before hearing this remix. The original just has some odd quirks to it that I just can’t get past. But this version, while scrubbing practically all the lyrics, sets a scene perfect for relaxing.

It’s worth a listen, no matter what you think of the original. And if you’re not sure of the original, then check out the refresher course below.

This remix is a prime example of an okay song being made into a great song, and the kinda thing I live for in this industry.

I hope your ears go from okay to great. Ω

Phoenix is getting some much deserved attention for their new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but it’s high time that their other albums get the same treatment. A personal favorite of mine off of It’s Never Been Like That is a song called “Long Distance Call.”

Now the original is a little slow, and…well…slow.

I’ve found a remix that fixes that!

Phoenix – Long Distance Call (25 Hours A Day Remix)

I hope your ears buy their books and pay their tuition on time. Ω

This is a maddeningly likeable record, as evidenced by the endless acclaim of buyers and critics alike. From “Lisztomania,” maybe the most immediate opener since Boxer’s “Fake Empire,” through the two-part climb of “Love Like A Sunset,” Side A is surprisingly diverse. Each song glows in neon, painted in a 1980s sound palette (think tense, muted guitars and expensive synths). Thomas Mars’ lovely melodies are double-tracked and the rhythms are always danceable. Subtle, but effective parameters.

The cocky title, the singer’s romance with Sofia Coppola, the name checks of Grizzly Bear and Steve Reich – all are hallmarks of an outfit that wears its affluent intellectuality on its sleeve. But, honestly, it’s not as contrived as it sounds. The most classical quality of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is its expert use of dynamics, its obsession with tension and release (“1901” and “Rome,” especially). It’s perfect pop, dressed up and having fun with a classical motif, an ambition at which Coldplay continues to fail.

Phoenix was always the least arresting of their Versailles brethren (fellow synth abusers Daft Punk and Air), but after 10 years, the quartet has outshined them all, producing the most complex and realized work of their careers. Who’s sparkling now?

Phoenix – 1901

Someone around here has been hard at work on a new site theme.

Well I was recently re-introduced to French rock/pop band Phoenix through their new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I adore this album, and quite frankly I would love to spend an afternoon writing the textual equivalent of a big fat kiss to that album. The first track on the album, Lisztomania, always sweeps me off my feet. Browsing the old iTunes store led me to some remixes, and I just fell into remix heaven.

The number 1 selling remix on iTunes is the “Lisztomania (Classixx Version)”.

Phoenix – Lisztomania (Classixx Version)

I’m not sure I’d say I like it better than the original…

Phoenix – Lisztomania (Original Album Version)

… but the Classixx version has  some pretty good things going for it. I found another amusing version of the irresistible tune on the blogosphere, This one has some nice bass, but I’m not blow away by any measure.

Phoenix – Lisztomania (A Fight for Love / 25hrs A Day Remix)

Maybe I’m picky, but I’m going to stick with the original for now.

I hope your ears like french rock bands. Ω