Comments on: Year End Music http://sites.middlebury.edu/onedeansview/2009/12/04/year-end-music/ Wed, 08 May 2013 01:03:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Cole Moore Odell http://sites.middlebury.edu/onedeansview/2009/12/04/year-end-music/comment-page-1/#comment-801 Cole Moore Odell Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:57:11 +0000 http://sites.middlebury.edu/onedeansview/?p=3461#comment-801 I spent more of this year looking backward than discovering new music–catching up with classic XTC, Hoodoo Gurus, The Church, The Go-Betweens, The Brilliant Corners, The Dentists and other 80s bands. “Anthology” by New Zealand indie pop legends The Clean was a particular revelation. Still, I did find some new records to admire this year, with considerable overlap with your lists:

Girls—Album; this kind of dark and sunny psych pop has clearly been done before, but this is great example of the form, with very strong songwriting
Ida Maria—Fortress Round My Heart; diverse and infectious set of punkish pop songs
Pains of Being Pure at Heart—The Pains of Being Pure at Heart; this plays like it could have come out in 1992, in a good way; the quality is more Drop Nineteens than MBV, but I’ll take it
Phoenix—Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix; what Matt said
Camera Obscura—My Maudlin Career; the same exact thing as their previous three albums; luckily, I’m not sick of it yet

Otherwise, I think I’ll look back on 2009 as a year when acts I love delivered albums I merely like–Lily Allen, Built to Spill, MF Doom and others put out decent but unexceptional work. The Dinosaur Jr. album was solid, but without the pleasant surprise of the comeback record in ’07. I appreciated Neko returning to somewhat catchier songs, but this year I had to admit to myself that I’ve reached my limit on the New Porn/Neko/Destroyer axis.

As the year winds down, I’m looking forward to getting the new albums by The XX, Jay Reatard, Grizzly Bear–and the latest Nuggets box set collecting Los Angeles-area garage rock from 1965-1968.

]]> By: Arabella http://sites.middlebury.edu/onedeansview/2009/12/04/year-end-music/comment-page-1/#comment-791 Arabella Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:36:56 +0000 http://sites.middlebury.edu/onedeansview/?p=3461#comment-791 I’m shocked, shocked, I say, that “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” did not make it to the top five for either of you.

I am being only half-sarcastic. I count myself among the presumably millions for whom his death transformed previous dismissal of his music into fan-dom.

He made some remarkably good music (imho), and I’m ashamed to admit I missed out on most of it (everything after “Thriller,” pretty much) while he was alive. Being within a year or two of his age, his passing (and becoming aware, through the movie and media coverage, of what he was doing at the time) rekindled my interest in a lot of things – among them FM radio and dance.

More for the symbol than for the content (although I am stunned at the beauty of his a capella “demo” version of Beat It), “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” is at the top of my list for 2009.

]]>