My Favorite Albums List

[brak55]

Here's my list of my favorite albums of the year as published on my site.  Yes, I'm writing plural instead of singular.  It's to make readers think there's more there than just me.  :)

Last year, when we entered the "best of" fray for the first time, we did it with much trepidation, because we had only heard a small fraction of the thousands of albums released during the year.  That's why we call this our "favorites" and not the absolute best albums released during 2009.  We'll totally admit, the list represents our particular take on music in the genres that appeal to our tastes (we still don't totally understand the Flaming Lips at times) but you should still see a fairly wide range of music styles.

Because this site does concentrate on the veteran artists who have been recording for 25 years or more, we will make our choices on two different lists.  The first, the veterans, represents new recordings by artists that the site covers on a daily basis.  The second list, the modern artists, presents our favorite recordings by today's artists who, if they keep recording music of this quality, will become working veteran artists down the line.



Vintage Vinyl News Top 10 Albums of 2009 by Veteran Artists

1. Yes
   - Pet Shop Boys - After a few years of diversifying their style and sound, the Pet Shop Boys are back to what they do best, great synth-pop.  From the opening bounce of Love Etc. to the huge dance hit Did You See Me Coming and through the ambient closer Legacy, this is an album without a bad track and enough variety to keep us coming back.
    


2. The Kinks Choral Collection
   - Ray Davies & the Crouch End Festival Chorus - What sounded like a horrible idea turned out to be one of the most beautiful albums of the decade.  Ray Davies takes many of the Kinks classics and performs them with a regular band backed by a large choir.  With only one or two missteps, the choir blends beautifully with the music and doesn't sound in the least contrived.  The gems of the collection are a cycle of songs from the Village Green Preservation Society album and the openers, Days and Waterloo Sunset.
    


3. Under the Covers, Volume 2
   - Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs - Yes, it's an covers album.  What makes this so good is that it is flat out fun.  Sweet and Hoffs pick sixteen songs from the 70's ranging from the Dead's Sugar Magnolia to Bread's Everything I Own and gives them fairly dead on readings.  Highlights include their takes on Fleetwood Mac's Second Hand News, Mott the Hoople's All the Young Dudes and an excellent version of Rod Stewart's Maggie May sung by Hoffs.  This is a great album to put on in your car and turn up loud on a hot summer day.
    


4. Together Through Life
   - Bob Dylan - Dylan has had an amazing run this decade with Love & Theft, Modern Times and this year's Together Through Life (we'll consider Christmas in the Heart as just an aberration) .  This one is messy, spontaneous and is the most alive Dylan has sounded in a long, long time.  Based around the sound of New Orleans and the blues, there are some great songs to add to the Dylan canon such as Beyond Here Lies Nothin', Life is Hard and Forgetful Heart.
    


5. Songs From Lonely Avenue
   - Brian Setzer Orchestra - When Brian Setzer assembled his big band, it was the beginning of what would peak in the mid-90's as the Swing Revival.  Unfortunately, this superb group of musicians got caught in the fast burnout of the fad and have been written off by too many.  With Setzer on sizzling guitar and one of the tightest bands around, they've continued to make some great albums, including their latest.  Songs From Lonely Avenue is described as the soundtrack to an unmade noir film, and you can hear how it would fit but, more important, it is a fantastic album performed by some of the best musicians in the business.
    


6. Preliminaires
   - Iggy Pop - Another total surprise of the year, the normally hard rocking Pop recording an album based on the jazzy sound of European pop.  The opening cut, Les Feuilles Mortes, starts with a small combo and Iggy talking in French.  It's not until you're a third of the way into the track that you realize that the song is Autumn Leaves and Pop is going to finish it out as a crooner.  There are surprises throughout this album of very unusual material.
    


7. Secret, Profane and Sugarcane
   - Elvis Costello - The combination of Costello and producer T-Bone Burnett had us hoping for another Raising Sand, but the album fell short.  It's not that it isn't a great album, but our expectations were so high that it ended up somewhat disappointing.  There are still some great tracks here, including our favorite of the year, Complicated Shadows, the rather bawdy Sulphur to Sugarcane and the Emmylou Harris duet The Crooked Line.
    


8. Twang
   - George Strait - There is nobody in country music more reliable than Strait, and this one lives right up to the billing.  It's filled with the type of country that few still perform, much less turn into radio hits.  While the first single, Living for the Night was a standard Strait ballad, the title song kicks it into old style country and the album closer, El Rey, even takes him in the direction of Mariachi music.
    


9. High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project
   - Loudon Wainwright III - The third big surprise of 2009.  Loudon Wainwright III recorded two discs of music recorded in the 20's by country singer and all around hellraiser Charlie Poole, along with a few original compositions in the Poole style.  Don't be scared away by the almost century old music.  The updating gives the tracks a modern sound even though the structure of the songs still retain the feel of their original days.
    


10. Chickenfoot
    - Chickenfoot - This one is simple.  It's the music Van Halen would have recorded if what's left of Van Halen wasn't so full of itself.  This is pure, simple, driving rock and roll played by a group of veterans (Sammy Hagar, Mark Anthony, Joe Satriani and Chad Smith) that certainly have the experience to pull it off.

Vintage Vinyl News Top 10 Albums of 2009 by Modern Artists

1. Far
   - Regina Spektor - Our overall favorite album of 2009 is quirky, at times unsettling and overall wonderful.  Spektor's formal training in classical music shows through in her piano arrangements and some of the song structures but it doesn't stop her from embellishing the music with her own mouth rhythms, strange instrumentation and odd interludes.  On first hearing, the album can sound almost dissonant at times but further listening shows just how well structured and memorable is her writing.
    


2. A Strange Arrangement
   - Mayer Hawthorne - Hawthorne has the voice, both regular and falsetto, to pull off a magnificent facsimile of 70's soul.  His admiration for the genre has allowed him to write all new material that reflects the style of the time and his crack band recreates the soulful arrangements perfectly.
    


3. Give Up the Ghost
   - Brandy Carlile - Mark our words.  One of these days the award givers and the general public are going to realize what an immense talent this woman is.  Give Up the Ghost is possibly an even better album than 2007's The Story, which was a brilliant mix of songwriting and style.
    


4. High Hopes and Heartbreaks
   - Brooke White - Yes, this is the Brooke White from American Idol.  Her debut album is wonderful return to the singer-songwriters of the seventies.  These finely crafted songs should have been all over the radio and charts.  Are you listening radio programmers?
    


5. It's Not You, It's Me
   - Lily Allen - Forget the tabloid reports, Allen's second album is nearly as good as her first.  The thing about Lily is that her totally unassuming style of writing has actually produced some of the most biting, clever lyrics of the decade.  Who else could write a farewell song to George Bush with the bouncy pop sounds of the seventies and call it Fuck You.
    


6. Wishful Thinking
   - Hot Club of Cowtown - Everyone thought that the Willie Nelson/Asleep at the Wheel Album Willie and the Wheel would be the best in Western Swing.  They were wrong.  The Hot Club of Cowtown sows up that honor with this album that not only covers the swing genre but ventures out into a bit of old-time jazz.  This is their first album since they reformed and we're hoping that it proved to them that they need to keep recording for a long time.
    


7. Blacksummer'snight
   - Maxwell - Here's another artist who didn't record for much of the decade but came back with a great album.  In a world filled with hip-hop and rap, Maxwell proved that its still possible to make a smooth R&B album AND get the public to buy it.
    


8. Middle Cyclone
   - Neko Case - They label her Americana, but we think she's just a good all-around artist.  Middle Cyclone includes a few more upbeat songs than her previous albums but there is still plenty of plaintiff ballads to keep her fans happy.  Particularly good is a cover of Nilsson's Don't Forget Me.
    


9. Wait for Me
   - Moby - We've been waiting for Moby to return to the heights of his album Play.  This isn't it, but it's the closest he's come this decade.  The album is filled almost exclusively with ambient songs with vocals contributed by a variety of female vocalists.  The sound of Play is here.  It just falls a little short on the quality of the songs.
    


10. Amanda Leigh
    - Mandy Moore - Her 2007 album, Wild Hope, was a revelation.  It showed that a former teen pop star could transition to very serious folk-rock-pop sounds.  Amanda Leigh continues that trend, with the exception of the 80's pop tinged I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week, with an album of sophisticated writing and arranging.  The albums opener, Merrimack River, is a particularly beautiful piece of writing while Pocket Philosopher will make you think you are listening to a newly discovered Burt Bacharach song.