My Favourite Songs and Albums of 2009

There’s a difference between ‘best of’ and ‘favourite’ lists.  Everyone agrees Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s everyone’s favourite.

Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear will make every ‘best’ list this year.  Their albums were imaginative, technically inspiring, brave and challenging.

But they wouldn’t make my favourite list.  Sure, some of their songs did but their full albums never grabbed my attention and held me.  I didn’t wake up needing to hear them.

This is a music marketing blog mostly.  But the only reason music marketing matters is that it helps people connect with music that changes their lives.  And this is the music that’s changed my life this year.  And I hope that at least some of it changes yours.

Paul Dempsey - Everything Is True

Something For Kate’s ‘Echolalia’ is one of my favourite ever albums.

Paul (SFK’s lead singer) is one of my favourite songwriters.  As soon as I knew this album was coming, I knew it was going to dominate my life for at least a month.  But it went further than that.  It’s still with me most days a full four months after I first heard it.

Animal Collective - ‘My Girls’

I’ll never be able to hear this song and not connect to this year.  That intro is amazing.

Miike Snow

I saw Miike Snow bubble up on We Are Hunted and did nothing because I thought it sounded like it would be bad white rap.  Then Taylor McKnight Tumbld about it and I looked again.  It was really, really good.  That very same day, while I was looking for the new Mos Def album in my shelves, I came across a copy of Miike Snow’s album, still in plastic, amongst a pile of Inertia releases I’d been given (thank you, thank you, thank you Mark Dodds).  I put the record on and then I just played it constantly, all the way through, over and over.  I think it’s ruined relations with our neigbours.  Less hype, but better than Passion Pit’s ‘Manners’.

Alberta Cross - ‘Broken Side of Time’

This was sent to me by Asho - the man behind the Way Cool Jnr name - and one of the people whose taste in music I most trust.  I heard 10 seconds of this record and I knew I loved it.  I am still in the thick of it, playing it over and over.  It’s like Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket, but heavier.  Brilliant.

Jonathan Boulet - ‘Community Service Announcement’

I heard Triple J playing this one morning in the car and it just blew me away.  I had to go to JPlay when I got home and track it down.  It’s one of those singles from an unsigned artist that makes you scratch your head and say - “how did you do that?”.  An A&R guy I know dissected this song for me recently.  He said the most amazing part was at the end, where Boulet makes you think the song’s about to end on that coda - and then kicks back in all over again.  I bought the album on the strength of that song.  The album’s not like the song, but it’s still really good.

Ellie Gould - ‘Starry Eyed‘

After telling the aforementioned A&R person how much I liked the Florence and the Machine singles, they suggested I’d like Ellie Goulding even more.  They were right.  Such a great piece of electronic pop.  Sounds better to my ears than anything La Roux or Little Boots has written.

Grizzly Bear - ‘Two Weeks’

Enough’s been said about this song.  It’s perfect.

Something I’ve never quite figured out is why people don’t think this sounds exactly like ‘Gone’ off Kanye West’s ‘Late Registration.  Listen:

Yeasayer - ‘Tightrope’

From the ‘Dark Was Night’ compilation, by far the standout in an amazing field (Bon Iver, Cat Power, Grizzly Bear, Iron & Wine, My Morning Jacket).

Phoenix - ‘Lisztomania’

Such a return to form for one of my favourite bands.

Neko Case - ‘People Gotta Lotta Nerve’ + Wild Light - ‘California On My Mind’

These two came to me on the same morning via the epic: TSURURADIO Presents… An Extremely Premature Most Awesomest Tsururific Albums Of 2009 Mixtape!!!

I love both these songs.  Short, perfect pieces of pop.

Drake - ‘Best I Ever Had’

As a mixtape obsessive, my greatest challenge this year has been to create a mixtape that’s good for lifting weights at the gym.  The first one I did had The Decemberists on it.  I soon discovered they are the worst workout music possible.  Fortunately, Drake’s ‘Best I Ever Had’ landed in my ears via my Twitter feed.  It’s simultaneously the best and worst film clip of all time, directed by Kanye, of course.

‘Best I Ever Had’ changed the whole direction of my gymixtapes which now look like this:

Jonski & Alex - ‘Riceboy Sleeps’

Sometimes music serves a practical purpose and ‘Riceboy Sleeps’ has been my late night album.  One of the defining things about this year has been how hard I’ve been working and this album (alongside 808s and Heartbreak) has pushed me through many hours of late-nights and early mornings.

Passion Pit - ‘Manners’

This album leaked so heavily through the blog-world that by the time I got it, it felt slightly overplayed.  It’s entirely my fault, I had these songs spinning so frequently for so many weeks.  It’s the most inspiring and uplifiting album I’ve heard in a long time and as the US was putting it on for summer, I was getting used to my first ever Adelaide winter.

What has been your favourite song or album this year?