Here’s the complicated part: I almost always love when artists draw significant influence from these bands’ worst qualities. Hello, Jellyfish!

This isn’t a music video, but after looking at that album cover I think you’ll agree that the less frames of video this band produces, the better.

Jellyfish was a band of unfortunate souls in the early 90’s trying to hold dear to their gaudy 80’s rock cassettes in a world being swallowed whole by Nirvana. “Fan Club” perfectly shows off everything they were doing wrong with so much adorable enthusiasm you just want to pat them on the head and say “you guys.” It takes guts to mug such a painfully forced Freddie Mercury impression, and the terrible, long-ass guitar solo ripped straight from my recurring “My Sharona” nightmare is so bad that I can only conclude Jellyfish love playing every second of it.

But still, I am charmed. I have listened to this song countless times. Jellyfish are the only people having fun in “Fan Club,” and good for them. I listen to this and wish I could have led a life that involved sending more envelopes to bands, long before the idea of “snail mail” even existed. You just can’t fill a bathtub with youtubes and mp3s.

15) Peter Bjorn and John – Living Thing
14) Asobi Seksu – Hush
13) I Was a King – I Was a King
12) The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
11) Felix – You Are the One I Pick
10) La Roux – La Roux
09) Passion Pit – Manners
08) Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
07) Annie – Don’t Stop
06) Japandroids – Post-Nothing

5) The xx – xx
The xx were The band to talk about in 2009, if you liked to talk about everything in music that does not actually matter. There is something about sleepy looking early 20’s art school students with hip, easy-to-connect musical influences that just drive bloggers crazy, and next thing you know you have to decide if the girl singer reminds you of Margo Timmins or not and what you think will happen now that the band is falling apart and who they remind you of besides Young Marble Giants and Chris Issak. Who cares? Me, I guess, because I have talked about all of these things, and even cared about my answers. But that’s stupid.

For real: I have seen it as a talking point, multiple times!, that “everyone” has a different favorite song on xx. It is insane to me that anyone finds this interesting at all. I can’t think of a single album where everyone is expected to agree on one song as the “best,” much less an album where it is impressive that people like different songs over others.

So why do The xx make everyone act like idiots? Because they’re really cool. That may not sound very convincing, so let me explain: The xx are practically a walking field recording of cool detachment in the urban wild. They’ve instantly perfected a minimal pop sound that’s postured and deliberate, but smart and almost completely effortless. It’d be aggravatingly hip, except it’s so accessible and enjoyable from the outset that, just for a little bit, it makes you feel like you’re part of the club, a little cooler. Until you start acting like an impressed critic because people like different songs than you.

(The best song, though, is Basic Space)

4) Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
At one point, right after I realized how much I liked The Beach Boys, I decided I liked “precise” music. I don’t think I knew exactly what I meant by that, but it sounded specific and correct in a way that made me feel proud that my taste had “developed.” I think I was trying to say that I liked tight harmonies and clean production and nothing else, which was true at the time, because that is what happens for a little while when you fall in love with Pet Sounds.

But my definition of “precise” was all messed up. I thought it meant I was seeking the most sweetly crafted music, void of imperfections, which meant I listened to a lot of boring Beach Boys knockoffs. I had a hard time with any sort of fuzz, distortion or dissonance getting between me and my chords. I just wanted something that sounded warm and smooth. I wanted to pick music like little flowers and then smell the flowers and cast them toward the sun and then lie down in the petals. I was awful.

Veckatimest is named after Veckatimest Island, a very small, uninhabited island off the coast of Massachusetts, where the flowers remain mostly undisturbed by overbearing nineteen year olds like my precision-loving younger self. “Massachusetts” sort of takes away from the romanticism, but Grizzly Bear aren’t worried about being romantic. They’re more concerned with being precise. The mistake I originally made in identifying “precise” music was that I was looking for something finely polished, sharpened. I didn’t understand that something truly meticulous starts at its construction, like growth occurring in nature. Veckatimest is lush and thorny in a way that I might not have fully appreciated at the time. It sounds like it had been playing for a hundred years before I had stumbled upon it, and is still blooming. I guess I am still a dweeb for flowery music after all.

3) The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
The Flaming Lips entered the decade coming off of the brilliant The Soft Bulletin, and from there they kept pumping more color and drug-induced funny faces into their music until they became a sort of sad cartoon band. They weren’t making bad music, but they started to sound tired and forced. I went from loving the rush of songs like “Fight Test” to wondering if Wayne Coyne ever gets too hot in that animal costume when he’s rolling around in confetti.

Embryonic is no less animated or richly colored than The Lips’ previous few albums, but it’s a whole new palette. Our cartoon heroes have traveled from a candy palace to a terrifying witche castle, and the resulting music is sort of (very) unnerving. This album is actually physically taxing to listen to. Once, while high, I said The Soft Bulletin is like “jamming pop rocks into your eyes, and then your eyes become your ears.” I don’t know if I would ever want to listen to Embryonic on drugs. It’s like setting a reel of Hanna Barbara cartoons on fire, and then that fire becomes your brain.

2) Girls – Album
It’s like Elvis Costello in board shorts! It’s like Jesus and Mary Chain open a hot dog cart! It’s like I’ve never walked on anything besides warm sand in my entire life!

Girls recall sickeningly perfect days of youth that couldn’t possibly have existed in my life, even if I wanted them to. To listen to Album is to remember hanging out with your beautiful, photogenic friends on the beach every day, surfing until you want to go get fucked up and and lay down in your friend’s basement, feeling heartache so heavy you can’t possibly believe it’s just a fleeting part of being a teenager. Growing up in a polite Midwestern suburb, I never had a single day like this. So why do I feel like Girls are directly connected to all the best parts of life before legal drinking age?

When I shared the music video, I said that the song “Hellhole Ratrace” “makes me want to hug every friend I’ve ever gotten drunk and told a secret to,” and I’m pretty satisfied with that.

Okay, time to make way for #1:

PHOENIX
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Meanwhile, Phoenix spent the decade mastering the art of the single. Every album came with the promise of more catchy, Summer-defining pop songs and a focused direction for the band’s next sound. With this in mind, it shouldn’t be too surprising that Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a polished juggernaut of hooks that sounded as good on car commercials as it did on mixtapes for your girlfriend.

It’s not that Phoenix are less concerned with the past than their peers; I’m sure the primary influences at work on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoneix are clearly visible to those who want to trace them. What makes it so great is that there’s simply no need to do that. The album sounds like the product of a decade, a composite sketch of every pop song we’ve loved over the past ten years shaded so smoothly that you’re doing it a disservice to break it down into parts. Phoenix have managed to create fresh, truly pure pop music at a time when genre purity is usually reserved for novelty and nostalgia.

Shoegaze+Smiling=The Brother Kite

If a band’s credibility among their independent music peers was assessed by the sparsity of their Wikipedia page, then hopefully someone will catch you listening to The Brother Kite ’cause oh my god. The Brother Kite, both little known and well regarded, have yet to follow up their spectacular 2006 release Waiting For the Time to Be Right, but not for lack of trying. The band has just sent word around their newsletter list that they are currently a free-agent. Says they, “for the first time in the band’s history, we’re without a label contract.” They’re seeking a new home for two new releases (LP & EP). In the meantime, they’ve announced new tour dates and released some new tracks for you to listen to.

The Brother Kite – Isolation

The Brother Kite – The Scene Is Changing

The Brother Kite – Eye To Eye

All across the nation, possibly dozens of friendships are undergoing the ultimate stress test; A band that some people like and other people don’t like has released an album, and now we all need to fight about it.

Michael and I are two such “friends,” and Vampire Weekend is the terrible band that is driving a stake between us with their awful music that I hate. We’ve been having this same fight since 2008; I make a joke about the band looking like assholes who I want to beat up, then he makes the reasonable statement that I should judge them on their artistic merits and not their pastel color scheme, and I say “Oxford Comma” sucked and we just let it drop and eat dinner in silence (over the internet).

We don’t argue about other bands like this. Other bands usually provide some glaring mistake for us to rag on, a focal point for our disdain. Everything I hate about Vampire Weekend only exists in my peripheral vision, vanishing when I try to point to it directly. But it’s there. But I can’t find it. Where is it?

Michael has said that 99% of my hatred for Vampire Weekend comes from my own assumptions about their attitudes, and that is true. But that is also valid. 99% of why we hate any musician comes from assumptions about their attitudes, and it’s debatable as to whose fault that is. This is why people hate Morrissey, Prince, U2 and the Guns n’ Roses cover band playing at the bar this weekend. They are all doing something so on purpose that if we don’t get it we become furious. They seem in on a joke that they are only telling other people. It makes us call their sincerity into question, which is the fastest way to lose your footing when trying to argue about bands. In this way, I will confess that Vampire Weekend are brilliant: my problems with them are too slippery to hold on to, and I’m left empty handed while they sit there with a “who me?” smugness that just makes me hate them more, because I’m imagining it in my head.

After loathing their self-titled debut, I wanted to give Contra an honest shot. I listened to “Cousins” and thought it was legitimately great; The song contains all of the energy, ideas and worldbeat influence that everyone keeps talking about. I was on the verge of “getting it,” but the album didn’t live up to the single. It began underwhelming, and by the time I got to “California English” it had me outright livid. Pointless autotune (as opposed to “properly used autotune?”), recycled hooks and uninspired instrumentation covered up by needlessly big drums had me gritting by teeth too hard to come down during the admittedly stronger second side.

If you ask Vampire Weekend fans to tell you why the band is great, they will often (always) point out the glaring Paul Simon influence in their songs. This has sort of become Vampire Weekend’s big pitch, that they are the band that is going to make Paul Simon cool for the kids again. I listened to Contra with this in mind, and I think it only made things worse. Yes, Vampire Weekend can hock a derivative Paul Simon line with the ease of selecting a font in Microsoft Word, but beyond that they are just another indie pop band without any interesting ideas. There isn’t enough variety between their melodies, and the music supporting it sounds flimsy when you give it your attention. Just like everything I hate about the band disappears when I try to pin it down, their positives seem to disappear when I’m looking for them as well. Contra requires that Paul Simon-colored lens to keep up the illusion.

It’s almost disappointing that Vampire Weekend are not the villains I wanted to make them out as, instead turning out to be a sort-of-boring pop band that likes Paul Simon a lot. At least I have less reason to be angry with them now. Hopefully my online conversations with Michael will not be so heated for a while, at least until there’s a new horrible Panda Bear album.

NPR is hosting a stream of the Beach House’s new album for you to check out. It’s free for your ears until the 26th when the album actually comes out.
Beach House is a band that I could never really sink my teeth into. I’ve already heard this album a couple of times now through the stream and I actually really love it. The album has a very subtle melodic element that swims in and out of the several layers of sound. It’s a very rich, rewarding, and accessible album. I think you’ll enjoy it.

I like this shitty video because it reminds me that no matter how old we get and no matter how dumb our hats look, we are all bound by a fear and fascination with The Secret World of Alex Mack that we’ve held since we were children.

Your friends don’t want to hear you talk about a wide variety of topics. They don’t want to hear about why you like Wes Anderson films. They don’t want to hear about your Twitter friends. Today I will talk about one of these topics: why I like Vampire Weekend.

Yeah, that’s right; Your friends don’t want to hear about why you like Vampire Weekend. Why? Because like all the other listed topics, talking about why you like Vampire Weekend makes you look like a douche bag. Even if your friends like Vampire Weekend, something about explaining Vampire Weekend evokes horrible phrases and adjectives like “lush”, “tight”, “valiant”, “bare”, “head bobbing bass”. Let us all just cringe a little bit together before I move on.

Acceptance heralds the last stage of grief, but in music reviewing it’s where we often begin. That in mind, let’s get something out of the way: Vampire Weekend is a very small band who stands on the shoulders of much larger, dare I say gigantic, bands. They’ve made it pretty clear that they are aware of this. When Ezra Koenig calls Tom Petty a “true fucking poet,” that’s Ezra “I name drop the Futura typeface” Koenig being pretty honest about where he falls on the food chain. [ed. Tom Petty is a vegetarian and he would not eat Ezra Koenig or any other mammal regardless of songwriting ability.] When I think about the popular reaction to Vampire Weekend I remember The Strokes. The Strokes were another small band conceptually who just happened to be in the right zeitgeist at the right time. Pop critics heralded them as the new music for young persons while rock historians spat a lot. Vampire Weekend is really similar; to date they have not reshaped how we think about music, but they have got a bunch of kids buying Paul Simon LPs at Goodwill and that’s all we can really ask for.

Contra itself follows a typical album scenario. We build in from track one to peak around track seven and in the end throw in a few slow dances for the couples. As a “sophomore effort” it is more notable as Vampire Weekend’s first cohesive record rather than the eleven potential singles from the self-titled. “Run” will hold your ear the longest and represents the only real anthem on the album. “Cousins”, “White Sky”, “Holiday”, “California English”, and “Diplomat’s Son” (and most likely in that order) will all keep you moving throughout and stop you from turning on iTunes’ brutish repeat track feature.

Verdict: If you can get beyond the fact that you’re listening to a guy name drop fonts, you’re going to find some really enjoyable pop music. But don’t kid yourself, world beat existed well before Ezra and company packed a bowl together at Columbia University. Personally, this album will probably stick around for a few more sunny weekends at least.

(Thanks Pitchfork!)

Dan Deacon will always hold a special place in my heart after I lost my virginity on a boombox that was playing his album “Acorn Master”. The thumping beats of “Big Big Big Big Big” covered the sound of me crying the whole time.

This video is about why cats are great as pets!

Certain people can do this, certain people can listen to the same song over and over for weeks at a time. I’m one of those people. Those who can’t think we are insane, which I guess is fair; I once listened to “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies (don’t click that) on repeat for four hours straight. I don’t expect anyone to understand that, or even forgive me for it. But this is a common occurrence; A few times a year, a song will snag me so hard that I can not actually listen to anything else without feeling disappointed. Every song just sounds like a distant echo of the dance-pop Erasure tune I wish I was listening to. This is where the definition of “hook” comes from, the idea that a little piece of melody can get lodged in somebody like shrapnel. In my case, that shrapnel sounds something like “come to me, cover me, hold me / together we’ll break these chains of love” when the grenade is going off.

What I’ve always wondered, though, is if this quality in people is tolerance for a hook or a complete lack of regard for it. Certain songs can’t survive the kind of obsession that I’m currently experiencing with Erasure. La Roux (a synth pop band that practically worships Erasure, funnily enough. I listened to them before I ‘discovered’ Erasure, but going back now the influence is obvious. It’s like someone wondered “what would happen if Erasure didn’t make people smile? TO THE STUDIO”), as I’ve recently mentioned, is another band that I couldn’t get out of my ear for months. They’re a good band with solid songs, but I overplayed them; Listening to La Roux now, they sound withered and worn out.

Was La Roux unable to handle the stress of frequent listening? Not every album wears out so quickly. That’s why certain songs seem to “grow” on you: they wear you out first, so that you have to keep coming back in order to fully appreciate them.

A smarter listener might have avoided this altogether, pacing themselves to keep the song fresh while still deriving full satisfaction. I can’t do that. I want it all now. I knew I was killing La Roux as I listened to them seven times a day, but I couldn’t stop. What is the quality that makes a song last over time? What is the quality that makes you keep skipping back to the same track for hours? Can they both exist in the same song? Possibly, but I can’t think of any right now. I’m too busy listening to “Chains of Love.”

I Don’t Get It:
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
I tried, I tried so hard. I want to like Middle Cyclone, you guys, but it’s every bit as nonsensical as its stupid cover. A complete mess of ideas and poorly constructed melodies that have their moments, but mostly just fall short of sounding like anything other than an excuse for Neko Case to sing. Sometimes that’s enough for me, but for the most part even pipes like hers are not enough for me to tolerate songs like “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth,” which is a real title of a real song.

Wilco (The Award):
Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Ha ha I thought that was pretty clever! But this album was just okay. I’m sure it makes for an exciting press release, but I’m always wary of artists saying they are going to “return” to their earlier sound like Wilco did with Wilco (The Album). This never actually happens, and usually just a warning sign that the band is unsure of what they’re doing. Does anyone really want Wilco to return to their (awesome) early straight-up alt-county albums? Does Wilco even want that? After this, I have a feeling that Jeff Tweedy would just wind up feeling bored.

Every Year, I Like Exactly One Metal Or Rap Album, Only One:
Mastodon – Crack The Skye
I sincerely like a metal album, everyone! The problem, though, is that I have no idea how to talk about it. My taste in metal is completely pedestrian and unrefined. I have no idea how to identify the qualities that make good metal “good.” There is no difference between the way I appreciate metal now and the way I appreciated metal when I was fourteen (when metal was all I listened to), so here goes: Crack the Skye literally cracks the sky and calls down the thunder. The guitars are really good, and I like all the songs.

Annual Lady Gaga Award For Excellence:
Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster
As if she wasn’t relevant enough in 2009, Lady Gaga decided to release her album again just to prove that she can destroy the world with a #1 hit whenever she fucking feels like it. Our Twitter accounts are all simply slaves to her bidding.

I’m Sure I’ll Love This Album Next Year, When It’s Too Late:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
Zero is a fantastic single. It’s so good that, for the past year, I couldn’t get past it every time I tried to listen to It’s Blitz! I’m the type of guy that will skip back to a song a dozen times in a row if I’m really into it, and “Zero” is that kind of song. I’m sure the rest of the album is good. I’ve heard it a little bit, when I was too distracted to skip back to “Zero” one time, and it sounded alright!

Immediate Correction To My Top 15:
Air – Love 2
The thing about Air is this:

Imagine a world where every James Bond movie was good. A new installment would come out and you would go see it, and it would be slick and fun and exactly as satisfying as you expected. You would leave the theatre feeling a little bit cooler and sexier every time. You would talk to people throughout the year about how the movie is “really good.” You would probably see it again, if you watched a lot of movies. Then it would be the end of the year, and you would think “hmm, what were the best movies of the year?” and your mind would immediately think about which films stood out, and the James Bond film would not be one of them. You have seen so many James Bond films, and they were all, for the most part, just as good as each other, or at least satisfying in the same ways, and now you don’t even really consider them as moments from the past year of movies. They exist elsewhere. James Bond films are now their own niche, mostly removed from the critical year-end film discussion that happens every year.

Re-read the above paragraph and replace the movie with Love 2 and James Bond with two chic-lookin’ French dudes, and there you go. They’re great, almost untouchable. However, though not formulaic by any stretch, Air albums are such a “sure thing” that I tend to undercut the poor fellows more often than I should. So, if you read my list of the top 15 albums from 2009, just replace anything ranked #15-8 with Love 2 and we’ll call it fair.

Despite this, the real reason I haven’t been caught up is that I’ve been out of town. Music takes on some strange new importance for people when they travel, it satisfies something it usually doesn’t. But I’m going to get into that in an upcoming post.

What I’m trying to say is, I have been craving Morrissey hard for the better part of a week and have had no way of properly taking care of that.

Before I even listened to Morrissey, I understood that enjoying his music was something of a duty. I remember talking to Michael Craft online. I think I was 19? We were talking about something internet related when he cut the conversation short, because he had to go listen to The Smiths, because, he said, “when you crave The Smiths, nothing else satisfies.” He was totally right. I would be introduced to Morrissey a couple of years later, and thanks to Michael he would have some weird Snickers-like feeling of appetite connected to him. Hunger is a pretty common metaphor, but thanks to Michael’s groundwork it became some weird kind of physical pang, something that physically tightens in my gut until I can listen to “Disappointed” on repeat for a few hours while I wait for a train back to Chicago. So thanks, Michael, for almost ruining my trip.

10) La Roux – La Roux
When I was like ten, my friend’s parents kept giant boxes of candy in their basement, the boxes that they kept in supermarket checkout lines for kids my age to convince their parents to buy candy from when they were just trying to put cereal on the conveyer belt. It was incredible to me that these boxes were even allowed into normal homes. One time, I found that they had my favorite candy in the basement – Skittles. I couldn’t believe that I could possibly be so fortunate. I took to the delicious Skittles without reserve, eating entire bags at a time while I watched my friend play video games. I ate bag after bag until I had cleared the entire box of its colorful stock. Almost as soon as I ate the last Skittle, I had realized my disgusting mistake. My head started pounding from the sugar rush, my stomach ached with pain from the sheer challenge of digesting this garbage. I threw up the most beautiful rainbow vomit you’d ever seen, then laid on my friend’s bathroom floor until I could stand up without feeling dizzy. I wouldn’t eat another Skittle for years.

Basically, that is how La Roux makes me feel. This debut album is an irresistible synth-pop confection that I can listen to for hours on end, until my head feels like La Roux’s hair looks. It is competent and charming in every way, even through the nagging feeling that this album is, somehow, actually bad for you.

9) Passion Pit – Manners
At last, the ADD falsetto anthems that disaffected white kids have been craving for so long: The bounciest pop you’ve ever heard, too fast to dance to. Manners first struck me as sloppy in its rushed enthusiasm, like a bunch of kids discovered their falsetto voices and had to get this down whether it meant writing a coherent song or not. After I spent more time with it and could actually keep up with the damned thing, it revealed itself to much tighter and more deliberate.

8) Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
It sounds like they are learning how to play their instruments as they go along. That is actually a compliment! The jerky arrangements on Bitte Orca sound massive, like the instruments and vocals are just being thrown on top of each other, but there’s a sharpness to them that comes from having every note in its right place. I still forget what this album is going to do when I listen to it.

7) Annie – Don’t Stop
I had pretty high expectations for this album, if only because I think Chewing Gum is legit one of the best pop songs written this decade. I was not let down! Don’t Stop is as smart as dance albums can get without forgetting why they’re called “dance albums,” but still has a sharpness and sensibility that insists it be appreciated beyond the dance floor. Ha ha, I say that like I have any business being on a dance floor.

6) Japandroids – Post-Nothing
Michael said this once, and maybe he’ll say it again, but he said “Japandroids have given me all the rock anthems I’ll need for the next five years.” He’s right! I can’t put it better than that! You should know all about rock anthems by now, I should not have to explain this. I should just have to say that when Japandroids play a song titled “I Quit Girls,” you will quit girls for a few minutes.

Best Album I Barely Listened To:

St. Vincent – Actor
I really liked it though, honest! I listened to it like I watch DVDs – a couple of times very closely and then never again for like a year or two. This is probably not such a bad thing, as Annie Clark intended Actor to be cinematic, each song directly inspired by a film. I’ll go ahead and chalk my low playcount up to successful execution of a concept.

Worst Album I Listened To Constantly:

Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson – Break Up
Personally? This is one of the best albums I’ve ever ignroed. Everyone is so hard on poor Scarlett Johansson. It’s a tough world out there for superhot, mega successful actresses who want to make laid-back pop albums, I suppose. Scarlett’s singing voice sounds as tired as she looks, and for all the flak she gets for, I don’t know, not being great I guess?, she at least knows her limits better than a lot of other singers. Pete Yorn seems aware of this, and makes a pretty easy set of songs that aren’t great, but certainly defeat the “ugh, Scarlett Johansson?” rolleyes attitude the album immediately generated.

Best Album They Played At Starbucks:

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Yes, yes, put every Andrew Bird album in every Starbucks, please. He is exactly the type of artist I want taking over the latte drinking world, every counter display a little battlestation for his string arrangement mastery and almost-indulgent whistling. Every copy of Noble Beast sold is possibly a Norah Jones or Dave Matthews Band CD not sold, and for that I am hopeful for the music buying public.

(Not That I Hang Out At Starbucks Or Anything):

Bibio – Vignetting the Compost
Oh whew, cred secured. Aside from being a safe way to impress people you don’t want to be friends with, Vignetting the Compost is a playful set of bright, lo-fi folktronica (that is a word). It’s like a music box for college graduates.

By The Way, It Is Rude To Release Two Albums In One Year:

Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue
It is hilarious when an artist releases two albums in one year, because music writers have literally no idea how to deal with this. The fact that Ambivalence Avenue sounds like Vignetting the Compost paved over and turned into a parking lot for junkers threw everyone’s bearings out of whack. Think of the bloggers! We can’t process sounds, which I’ve demonstrated with my weird analogy just now, only band names and album titles, which make year-end lists easy. We like to think that every artist has exactly one rankable achievement per year. Because of this, both Bibio albums are winding up right next to each other on several year-end lists, like this one. I hope you’ve learned your lesson, Bibio.

I Forgot This Album Even Came Out This Year:

Bishop Allen – Grrr…
Bishop Allen has long been the great uniter for me and my friends, the one band we could all agree was great and all loved for the same reasons. The Bishop Allen Bond (we do not actually call it that) was at its strongest in 2007, when The Broken String was released and it looked like the band was within striking range of recording the brilliant, universally acclaimed album we all knew they were capable of. The Bishop Allen Bond took a hit this year, though, when Grrr… was released and we found ourselves disagreeing between ourselves about music. A friend shrugged it off as a mostly forgettable set of songs that, despite a few standouts, mostly spent its time hinting as better songs on past albums. I was vehemently opposed to this, saying that Grrr… was great, and took Bishop Allen’s sound in a more stripped-down direction to highlight the sweet simplicity of their tight melodies. I guess he was right, because I haven’t listened to the album after that and didn’t even think to until I was drafting out my end-of-2009 posts. Oops.