Sound Fix | Best Albums of 2009

Best Albums of 2009

1. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca
We knew this day would come. The Dirty Projectors were one of those bands that just got better and better with each new release, and on Bitte Orca, 2009’s indie breakout hit and the Projector...read more
2. Mulatu Astatke & the Heliocentrics: Inspiration Information 3
We were all expecting great albums from Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear and Flaming Lips in 2009, but this record arrived with little fanfare and knocked us for a loop. Mulatu Astatke (born 1943) i...read more
3. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: s/t
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart gave us the first great debut of 2009, an album exploding with hooks, energy, style and unabashed enthusiasm. The band’s name is no affectation: This local dr...read more
4. The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
At War with the Mystics was a respectable placeholder, and instrumental soundtrack Christmas on Mars holds an auspicious place in the Flaming Lips’ catalogue, but to fans who’ve been waiting ye...read more
5. Yacht: See Mystery Lights
Be right with you, I’m having a low-grade psychedelic experience with the cover of Yacht’s new See Mystery Lights. Wow, it’s — I see them, the mystery lights! Once you stop your...read more
6. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
It’s hardly a revelation at this stage that Grizzly Bear had a good year in 2009. When a Brooklyn psych-folk act makes the Billboard Top 10 (we’re not kidding), that’s news. But i...read more
7. Dan Deacon: Bromst
Bromst is one hour of the most thrilling and exuberant pop we heard all year, as well as one of the most fresh, exciting and inventive in the electronic-pop field. Deacon, of Baltimore’s aptl...read more
8. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
When Merriweather Post Pavilion arrived, we sold out of the vinyl pressing in about a day, and had to hear “Do you have…?” for weeks. As if we needed any hint that this record wou...read more
9. Intelligence: Fake Surfers
In a year when lo-fi guitar rock has made waves (and Wavves), Fake Surfers by Intelligence has to come under consideration as one of 2009’s best. Mainman Lars Finberg is (hmm, maybe was?) the...read more
10. Bibio: Ambivalence Avenue
What a year for the UK artist known as Bibio, a.k.a. Stephen James Wilkinson. Not long ago he hovered just under the folktronica radar as a Boards of Canada acolyte. This year he jumped from Mush t...read more
11. Woods: Songs of Shame
Words will never quite be enough for Woods. Not to suggest this Brooklyn outfit is The. Greatest. Thing. Ever!, just that when I tell you Songs of Shame is a collection of ramshackle floaty folk-ro...read more
12. Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Only French people could do something so clearly unoriginal and yet make it seem perfectly right and natural and cool. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix sounded best during the warm months, but it’s a...read more
13. St. Vincent: Actor
St. Vincent (Annie to her family, the Clarks) returned this year to prove her debut was no fluke. On Actor, Clark leads with her cute, pointy chin, updating the ambitiously composed songs that made...read more
14. Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
Artists who’ve been around as long as Neko Case, and who’ve been roundly celebrated by critics and cash registers alike, tend to get taken for granted after a certain point. Yet Middle ...read more
15. Dinosaur Jr.: Farm
It is very rare that a band returns from a 16-year hiatus and makes as much of an impact as Dinosaur Jr. have since reforming. Granted, J Mascis never went anywhere in the interim, but truth be tol...read more
16. Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport
Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power of Bristol-based electro duo Fuck Buttons are noisy experimentalists, but they are devoted to rhythm. On this gorgeously assaultive second LP, a typical track wi...read more
17. Fever Ray: s/t
Artistically perhaps the biggest record of the year, Fever Ray‘s self-titled debut is the sound of one Knife cutting. Of course, this isn’t your standard debut – Fever Ray is Kari...read more
18. Death: For the Whole World to See
This is not a reissue per se, since it was never released until this year, so call this mid-70s masterpiece one of the best debuts of 2009. Detroit has given us many hard-rocking but idiosyncratic ...read more
19. Bat for Lashes: Two Suns
Everyone who fell under the spell of UK hippie-goth siren Natasha Khan’s 2007 debut, Fur and Gold, had the same worry: Would the attention paid to it (and its not very unattractive creator) s...read more
20. Girls: Album
The group’s name and album title seem like some sort of postmodern tip of the hat: take archetypes and reduce the rock album to its essence. It’s a fake-out, though: at its best, this is as emo...read more
21. Mos Def: The Ecstatic
The year’s best hip-hop album is also the crowning achievement of Mos Def’s recording career – no small feat, given that this is the man behind Black on Both Sides. After some rec...read more
22. Lightning Bolt: Earthly Delights
Lightning Bolt may be better known for their live “guerilla gigs”—just imagine a hurricane with two adrenaline machines pulsing in its eye—but make no mistake, when drummer/vocalist (if you...read more
23. v/a: Dark Was the Night
For months this record just flew out the door. For months after that, it walked briskly. Basically, Dark Was the Night has been the hottest indie-comp of the year — no real surprise consideri...read more
24. Amadou & Mariam: Welcome to Mali
Such a simple title for such a spectacular piece of music. Welcome to Mali is also a bit misleading, as the divine duo of Amadou & Mariam made an album that is so very much a product of Earth r...read more
25. Monsters of Folk: s/t
Here comes the supergroup of our time, an indie Traveling Wilburys. With a name like Monsters of Folk, this could’ve gone either way, really bad or really great; thankfully it’s the lat...read more
26. Thee Oh Sees: Help
Thee Oh Sees on In the Red: In this age of suffering and unenlightenment, finally, something just plain makes sense. John Dwyer & Co.‘s latest follows in the style of their lastest, ??The...read more
27. Jim O'Rourke: The Visitor
The greatest musicians are those that are not easily classified. As a solo artist, collaborator and producer, Jim O’Rourke has displayed an uncanny ability to create music that is at once fam...read more
28. The Very Best: Warm Heart of Africa
On the heels of last year’s well-received mixtape, Malawian singer Esau Mwamwaya and European production duo Radioclit hit 2009 with another diverse collection of infectious Afropop, Warm He...read more
29. Cass McCombs: Catacombs
One of Gertrude Stein‘s keenest quotes: “For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.” This year is when things pivoted for Cas...read more
30. The Antlers: Hospice
Blog-rock of the most adorable stripe, the Antlers’ Hospice — originally self-released before being plucked by French Kiss and becoming a genuine indie hit — is full of highly ant...read more
31. Real Estate: s/t
Don’t blink: Between now and when you finish this paragraph, Real Estate, a young North Jersey quartet, may have released another album, an EP and a couple of side-projects. But before they b...read more
32. Kurt Vile: Childish Prodigy
Kurt Vile may not be a star yet, but we expect that to change soon. In our little corner of the world, this Philly-based rocker took us by storm. On his third release and first for Matador, Vile st...read more
33. Junior Boys: Begone Dull Care
This Canadian duo’s ongoing fame and acclaim are due to the fact that, deep within their Internationalist techno-pop, you can still hear their early-period bedroom-beat sensibilities. Put Jun...read more
34. Jack Rose & the Black Twigs: s/t
This is no easy to review to write, as we’re all still stunned at the sudden passing of Jack Rose, who died on Dec. 5 at the age of 38. For those of us who value the beauty and wonder of the ...read more
35. Here We Go Magic: s/t
What’s in a name? Here We Go Magic is the new nom de musique employed by indie singer-songwriter Luke Temple, whose previous work was solid if a bit unremarkable. Things have changed: The reb...read more
36. Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career
Scot-pop outfit Camera Obscura is one of the few bands to whom we’ll give a pass on making the same record a coupla-few times. Which is good, because My Maudlin Career, the group’s four...read more
37. Sonic Youth: The Eternal
Sonic Youth’s return to the indie ranks resulted in no major changes from their previous song album, 2006’s Rather Ripped. The Eternal still features lots of moody mid-tempo grooves; the te...read more
38. The XX: XX
This London quartet’s cool, quiet ditties exude DIY charm. Sometimes, with their quiet male/female vocal tandem, they seem to be reworking the dreamy end of the post-punk spectrum, as if Young Ma...read more
39. Broadcast & the Focus Group: Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age
Across the almost 50 minutes and 23 tracks of this experimental “mini-album,” Birmingham’s suave mod-futurists Broadcast trade snippety notions with longtime album artist and Ghost Box Music ...read more
40. Nisennenmondai: Destination Tokyo
Nisennenmondai is a Japanese group, as if you couldn’t tell from their name (which means Y2K Bug) and album title. Here at Sound Fix we greatly enjoyed their previous offering, 2008’s compilati...read more
41. The Mountain Goats: The Life of the World to Come
The Mountain Goats’ sixth album on 4AD finds them in trio formation: John Darnielle and Peter Hughes are here joined by *Superchunk*’s Jon Wurster on drums. It’s the most dynamic “full-band...read more
42. Mokira: Persona
Can I just tell you? I have had it up to here (here, see?) with the new wave of ambient. It’s all pretty, yes…pretty lazy. It is the one subgenre of music where so-called artists feel m...read more
43. Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light
The Crying Light is another heartbreakingly beautiful record from Antony Hegarty, at once complementary with his most recent full-length, 2005’s stupendous I Am a Bird Now, and wholly indepen...read more
44. Black to Comm: Alphabet 1968
Pay little mind to the misdirecting names used here (“Black to Comm” being a blazing old MC5 psych-soul track, and 1968 being the most explosive year of the Sixties). This Black to Comm...read more
45. White Rainbow: New Clouds
Another hard-to-classify gem from Kranky, the latest from Adam Forkner‘s one-man project, White Rainbow, is pure bliss: sprawling, meditative and hypnotic, full of rich textures and spacey el...read more
46. Papercuts: You Can Have What You Want
We don’t like it when someone tampers with a good thing, so we weren’t sure at first what to make of the Papercuts’ latest, You Can Have What You Want. Few bands can deliver the k...read more
47. Sunn O))): Monoliths & Dimensions
Monoliths & Dimensions is a fantastic display of that hugeness you’ve likely read about in stories on this band and the new avant-doom-metal scene that orbits it. What no amount of hype c...read more
48. Cymbals Eat Guitars: Why There Are Mountains
Fans of canonical indie-rock: If you haven’t already hupped to it with Cymbals Eat Guitars in the wake of the notice Pitchfork gave to this album, well, it’s not too late. This scattere...read more
49. Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens: What Have You Done, My Brother?
Besides being good music, this record is a heartening story of perseverance finally rewarded. Naomi Shelton has been singing gospel and soul for over four and a half decades, but this is her first ...read more