StaticBlog’s Top 10 Albums of 2009
A great year for artists with a penchant for kicking over statues and lighting out for the progressive outskirts of their particular genres, 2009 emerged especially as a landmark time for adventurous female artists who laced their pop with a dangerous edge. Sure, they often sounded like sweetness and light, but then came the gut punches, one after another.
1. “Lungs,” Florence + the Machine (Universal/Island) — Coming on like an R&B diva belting out big-screen rock anthems at a renaissance fair, Florence Welch’s full-length debut is a multidimensional wonder, a near-flawless collection of giant choruses and deadly meditations. On first glance, Welch seems to be reaching back to the late-’80s, when the howling Gothic pop of Kate Bush and Sinead O’Connor bewitched post-modern drama kids, especially on showstopping killers such as “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up),” “Drumming Song” and the soul stirring “Hurricane Drunk.” But then the big-voiced Brit’s wandering stylistic compass just keeps spinning in its chamber, allowing for blood-stained revenge ballads (“Girl With One Eye”), frustrated love songs (“Cosmic Love”), and “Kiss With a Fist,” a White Stripes-style rocker in which the heroine gives as good as she gets, repeatedly. Welch is either a magical, one-off fluke, or “Lungs” is the opening chapter of a legend.
2. “Actor,” St. Vincent (4AD) — Following 2007′s “Marry Me,” Tulsa-born singer-guitarist Annie Clark completely rebuilt her songwriting process for “Actor,” conjuring mesmerizing ballads that evoked sinister Disney fantasies (“The Strangers”), vivid depictions of connubial discord (“Actor Out of Work,” “Black Rainbow”) and a truly scary depiction of a controlling relationship (“Marrow”). “Actor” is an intoxicating nightmare, sung with great beauty by Clark, an inventive guitarist whose off-kilter lines often evoke Robert Fripp but who is no mere servant in the court of the Crimson King.
3. “It’s Not Me, It’s You,” Lily Allen (EMI) — Rather than simply repeat the grime-soaked “Mockney” pop of her excellent debut, 2006′s “Alright, Still,” Allen reinvented her sound and fury on “It’s Not Me, It’s You,” opting for the synth sheen of producer Greg Kurstin of The Bird and the Bee and maturing into a keen social observer in the tradition of Jarvis Cocker and Ray Davies on “Everyone’s at It” and “22.” Beyond taking sharp aim at multiple targets, Allen also proved on “Chinese,” a great ballad about the yearning for domestic bliss, that she could sing more beautifully than anyone could have previously imagined.
4. “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” Phoenix (Glass Note) — After a decade of great promise, France’s Phoenix delivered on all expectations with “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” a deceptively complex and utterly romantic collection of crisp electro-rock melodies and free-associative words of love and yearning. There is no use trying to forget “Lisztomania” or “1901” — these earworms have a killer grip.
5. (tie) “Embryonic” and “The Dark Side of the Moon,” The Flaming Lips (Warner Bros.) — The Flaming Lips plunged deep into a pit of fusion and fury with “Embryonic,” a dark psychedelic masterstroke that found Oklahoma City’s fearless freaks in raw and challenging new territory. Then, while operating in the same paranoid frame of mind, the Lips teamed with Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Peaches and Henry Rollins for a deconstructed and refreshingly scuzzy reinterpretation of Pink Floyd’s classic. Some classic rock purists felt violated by this full-album cover version in concert, but what did they think this was, the Pink Floyd Laser Show?
6. “The Ecstatic,” Mos Def (Downtown) — The best hip-hop disc of 2009, “The Ecstatic” served as an unexpected reassertion of Mos Def’s rap fluency and conceptual skills after years of film acting. This collaboration with producing brothers Madlib and Oh No is packed with Latin rhythms, Afrobeat and savvy, crate-diving samples. This was easily Mos Def’s most tight and committed work since Black Star’s 1999 masterpiece, “Black on Both Sides.”
7. “Two Suns,” Bat For Lashes (Astralwerks) — Natasha Khan is so enthusiastic in her love of “dark-wave” pop that “Two Suns” could pass for a Robert Smith-produced relic from 1986, but Khan’s depth of songcraft transcends pastiche. A song-cycle of tragedy and loss, “Two Suns” is delivered with a breathless air of dangerous seduction by Khan, and the first single, “Daniel,” cannily evokes not only Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” but “The Karate Kid,” as well.
8. “It’s Blitz,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Interscope) — Executing the neat trick of consolidating strengths while adopting a new musical modus operandi, the dance-rock trio drizzled synths over Karen O’s impressionistic bursts of neuroses, but the shiny new packages on “Zero,” “Dragon Queen” and “Heads Will Roll” did not distract from this band’s strongest songwriting to date.
9. “Bitte Orca,” Dirty Projectors (Domino) — Willfully odd but still utterly captivating at every turn, Dave Longstreth’s fifth Dirty Projectors disc wore its prog-rock leanings proudly but not at the expense of some landmark melodies. “Stillness Is the Move,” sung by Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian, was such an obviously amazing R&B song that Beyonce’s little sister, Solange Knowles, covered the track within weeks of its release.
10. “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” Animal Collective — Not so much an album as a fully immersed experience, “Merriweather Post Pavilion” takes the foursome’s sonic sweep and applies it to bedrock-solid songwriting. History will reveal if this is indeed the “Pet Sounds” of the 21st century, but it’s hard to imagine Brian Wilson listening to “Daily Routine” or “Bluish” and not greeting them with a crooked smile of pleased recognition.
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God! This is amazing Phoenix, Lily Allen, dirty Projectos! Thank for this!