i hate the sound of guitars

Artist of the week: Vulgaires Machins

Here’s a working definition of lack of critical distance: on Friday, March 12th, I learn that the new Vulgaires Machins album, Requiem pour les Sourds had been released on March 2nd. I’m frustrated that there’s been nine whole days that I could have been listening to this album, but wasn’t. That’s like, more than a week.

Requiem pour les Sourds doesn’t mess a lot with the formula of Compter les Corps, which I’m completely fine with: my tolerance for undeniably catchy, indie-rock inflected pop-punk with terrific male-female harmony vocals is prodigious. When it’s delivered with this much passion and such great production values, my appetite approaches the infinite. (The joie de vivre of these performances stands in sharp contrast to the cynicism or even nihilism of the lyrics — at least as far as my high-school French can decipher them.)

I’m still evaluating what I think are the highest points, although “Parasites” and “Mourir pour le Système” are early standouts. As with Compter les Corps, I think it flags a tiny bit in the middle of the second side (I love that “Une Chanson Acoustique” — “An Acoustic Song” — is about as close as les Vulgaires Machins get to hardcore, but its moves are perhaps a little too expected). But I’ve listened to it straight through several times already, and I don’t feel like I’m going to get sick of it anytime soon.

A relatively rare English-language interview (linked from the Vulgaires Machins website, which makes few concessions to non-French speakers) confirms what I had deduced on my own: Vulgaires Machins listened a lot to The Pixies, and California pop-punk, eventually bumping into, and admiring the political content of, Bad Religion and more musically complex artists like Fugazi. (The article doesn’t say so specifically, but I bet they like Strike Anywhere, too.)

This is the second week in a row I’ve heard a record that has an almost definite lock in my year-end best of list. That option implied by “almost” part could be exercised, for instance, if this turns out to be the best music year ever. Or not.

Months are when I first heard the recording, not necessarily when it was released. I’ll update monthly.

Mar

Aloha – Home Acres
David Bazan – Live at Electrical Studio
Broken Bells – Broken Bells
Cast of Coraline – Original Off Broadway Cast Recording
Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks
Golden Triangle – Double Jointer
The Happy Hollows – Spells
Hussalonia – Alonia
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – The Brutalist Bricks
The Light Footwork – National Historic Landmarks
Holly Miranda – The Magician’s Private Library
Emma Pollock – The Law of Large Numbers
Rogue Wave – Permalight
So Cow – Meaningless Friendly
These New Puritans – Hidden
Titus Andronicus – The Monitor
Vulgaires Machins – Requiem pour les Sourds

Feb

Buzzcocks – Love Bites (reissue)
Paula Carino – Open on Sunday
Giant Drag – Swan Song (ep)
Juliana Hatfield – Peace & Love
Hussalonia – Dear Hussalonia: Letters from Animals, Mostly Ducks
Magnetic Fields – Realism
Robert Pollard – We All Got Out of the Army
Quasi – American Gong

Jan

Bettie Serveert – Pharmacy of Love
Hussalonia – Know Your Eastern European Anthems
Los Campesinos! – Romance is Boring
Adam Marsland – Hello Cleveland
OK Go – Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
Spoon -Transference
Laura Veirs – July Flame

2009 late arrivals

Cloud Nothings – Turning On
Copy Haho – Bred for Skills & Magic
Gay for Johnny Depp – Manthology
Grammatics – Grammatics
Holden – Fantomatisme
Johnny Foreigner – Grace and the Bigger Picture
Pull Tiger Tail – PAWS.
Spottiswoode – Piano 45
Stripmall Architecture – We Were Flying Kites, Object 03
Talk Normal – Sugarland
These Are Powers – All Aboard Future
Tubelord – Our First American Friends
Tuff Darts- You Can’t Keep a Good Band Down

Awaiting

Apollo Ghosts, 31 Mar
The Capstan Shafts
The Fall — Your Future Our Clutter, 26 Apr
Foals – Total Life Forever, 10 May
Kristin Hersh – Crooked, 10 Jun
Robyn Hitchcock – Propeller Time, 22 Mar
Hussalonia – one per month?
The Indelicates, Mar?
Liars, Sisterworld
Love is All
Love of Diagrams – Nowhere Forever (US)
JJ – Let Go, 6 Mar
Kaki King – Junior, 13 Apr
Lali Puna – Our Inventions, 6 Apr
Minus the Bear – Omni, 4 May
One for the Team – Ghosts, 16 Mar
The Secret History – 18 Mar?
Stars – The Five Ghosts, 22 Jun
Static of the Gods – Knowledge Machine, 26 Mar
Stripmall Architecture – Feathersongs for Factory Girls, 20 Apr
Tokyo Police Club – Champ, 11 May
Veda Hille?
Venice is Sinking – Sand and Lines, 15 June
White Hinterland (Casey Dienel) – Kairos, 6 Mar

Also: Bradley’s Almanac’s upcoming release list

Artist of the week: So Cow

On the latest release, Meaningless Friendly, So Cow basically sounds to me like a slightly (but not obnoxiously) lo-fi amalgam of Television Personalities, The Wedding Present, and Boyracer: smart, catchy, sometimes noisy pop with a distinctly from-across-the-pond air. (The original C86 scene is an obvious influence, and Beat Happening, too.) Several tracks from earlier releases (These Truly Are End Times and I’m Siding With My Captors) were more-or-less shmushed together to make last year’s eponymous So Cow release; this betrays So Cow’s origin as Brian Kelly’s one-person project, with a little more hush and acoustic guitar evident.

In addition to the official releases, there’s also the ultra-rare, not-really-released Wackity Schmackity Doo, and some nifty goodies are findable on the intertubes, including a swell live set on WFMU from last year, and a spiffy pair of free all-covers EPs, So Cow in a Shed, and So Cow in the Sitting Room.

I think it’s all pretty marvy. Yes, “marvy.”

Artist of the Week: Buzzcocks

I try not to get too caught up in the whole expanded/remastered reissue thang, but I’m making an exception for these updates to to the original Buzzcocks releases. The albums are rounded out not only by contemporaneous singles and a passel of demos, but also full live sets. I dived in with Love Bites, which I’ve probably listened to much less than either A Different Kind of Tension or Another Music in a Different Kitchen. At least some of the demos have appeal beyond the die-hard fan; my favorite so far is an early version of “Promises” with a lot of “da-da-da” in place of clearly-not-written-yet verses — a fascinating glimpse into the band’s songwriting process, but also fun on its own.

Song of the Week: Public Image Ltd., “Home”

Song of the Week: Ozzy Osbourne, “Over the Mountain”

I’m certainly not going to accuse PIL of ripping off Ozzy — the songs themselves are totally different, lyrically, thematically, even melodically. But the chugging riffs that power these tunes were definitely twins separated at birth, and raised in different, but equally strife-torn, places. And is it just me, or does Vai kinda quote a phrase or two of Rhoad’s solo on the Ozzy track? I guess with all those blissful layers of noise, it’s a little hard to tell for sure.

Artist of the week: Robert Pollard

Hullo, is it Monday yet?

I’ve been wrestling with contradictory opinions: on the one hand I have the impression that Robert Pollard is on a bit of roll since 2008 with a series of strong solo albums as well as with the Boston Spaceships. I enjoyed the first time I listened to Robert Pollard is Off to Business, Elephant Jokes and the new We All Got Out of the Army* quite a bit. Critics have been describing them with un-Pollardy words like “focused” and “coherent.” But while they sound good while I’m listening, the tunes don’t really stick with me long afterwards.

On further listening, I really do like We All Got Out of the Army, but the songs that make the strongest impression — the stomping “On Top of the Vertigo,” the mournful, string-accented “Faster to Babylon” — tend to be not necessarily the catchiest, but the ones that shake up the formula the most.

It’s easy to point the finger at producer/play-almost-everythingist Todd Tobias; if there’s just one guy playing guitar, he’s always going to play guitar like the guy he is — there’s an inherent monochromatic quality to that. This is exacerbated by similar arrangements and instrumental timbre in many of the songs. I have the (probably unfair) impression that Tobias dialed in some EQ settings he liked and left them more-or-less unchanged for most of the mixing sessions.

But I think it also provides some insight into the genius of the sequencing of the classic GBV albums (by which I mean everything through Under the Bushes, Under the Stars/the lineups with Tobin Sprout/Mitch Mitchell/Kevin Fennell). I’ve heard several people describe one aspect: the predominance of short songs means that if one tune isn’t connecting with you, you don’t have long to wait for the next. But some of the half-assed/fragmentary bits also provide useful contrast with the more solidified compositions. “Cool Off Kid Kilowatt” may be kind of cool on its own, but it also helps “Gleemer (the Deeds of Fertile Jim)” stand out more on a record with a lot of stand-out tunes. And the full band rendition of “My Valuable Hunting Knife” might not have been such a revelation if the drum-loop version hadn’t been there to tantalize us.

* I just now learned that I somehow missed 2009’s The Crawling Hand

artist of the week: The Magnetic Fields

Usually I’d expect that after seeing an artist two nights running I wouldn’t want to spend the next few days listening to the artist’s catalogue, but when the artist is The Magnetic Fields the usual rules do not apply. The wide-ranging setlists inspired me to revisit records I didn’t know so well, like Get Lost, which I think I bought only after immersing myself in 69 Love Songs.

As with the tour for I, hearing songs from Realism is where my appreciation of the record begins to slide from “like” to “love.” I’m a little perplexed that I wasn’t instantly smitten with Realism, becomes in one respect it’s the record I’ve wanted Stephin Merritt to make since I was first introduced to the awesomeness of the live Magnetic Fields experience: the songs are (mostly) arranged for the the live band line up, without a lot of obvious studio trickery. But it didn’t initially strike me that “I Don’t Know What to Say” and “You Must Be Out of Your Mind” were as strong as any other Merritt compositions.

Part of the problem, I think is that Merritt’s music functions much better as foreground, but necessity often forces me to treat music as background. But when Merritt’s songs have my undivided attention, it’s apparent how sturdily constructed they are, in so many respects. His lyrics are uncommonly fine, both at a line-by-line level, where he consistently delivers unexpected, witty, and delightful rhymes, and a structural level. He’s adept at several of the time-honored forms: exploring a metaphor through several verses, spinning a compressed, but complete, short-story narrative. Although I’ve heard him accused of being too arch or insincere, his songs also draw on (and evoke) genuine emotion; they’re not exercises in cleverness for cleverness’ sake. And then there are his melodies: in classic templates, but characteristically his (he can even write a blues song a like, a feat few living writers can manage). And the arrangements (particularly his ear for vocal harmony). I could go on and on — oh, wait, I have.

Another aspect of the live performances revealing an album’s pleasures more deeply are the asides between Merritt and manager/band-mate Claudia Gonson. Their dynamic is uniquely charming: simultaneously sharp and sweet. Gonson provokes many eye-rolls from Merritt, each one of which seems worth the admission price to me, but they also sometimes offer unexpected insight into the art, as when Gonson introduced “I Have the Moon”: “This is a song from Charm of the Highway Strip, a record which I thought was about travel, but which I’m now learning is about vampires.”

Bradley’s Almanac captured some more of the hallmark banter.

I wrote about The Magnetic Fields 2 years ago, and I probably would have gone on at greater length this time if I didn’t agree so thoroughly with what I said then.

artist of the week: Stripmall Architecture

artist of the week: The Indelicates

artist of the week: Pest 5000

Stripmall Architecture and back

A friend on Twitter mentioned the new Stripmall Architecture single Radium Girls. I liked the title — reminded me of OMD’s “Tesla Girls” — so I listened. Liked what I heard, bought it, and more. Stripmall Architecture are one of those bands centered around a male multi-talented instrumentalist and a female singer, in this case Rebecca and Ryan Coseboom. I hate to quote a band’s own press, but the artists they liken themselves to, The Cocteau Twins and Sigur Ros, are unusually useful signposts. Stripmall Architecture balance atmosphere and urgency — it’s evident that a lot of care goes into the recording, arrangement, and production of their work; there’s ear-candy a-plenty — but it doesn’t feel too mannered or too polite. Some of the guitar work, in fact, is downright rude (and that’s praise).

I thought I’d encountered the Coseboom’s previous outfit, Halou, when I was exploring trip-hop artists, which seems plausible, except that if I did, I didn’t listen to it much, which seems unlikely. It’s more dance- and less rock-oriented than Stripmall Architecture, reminded me a bit of Splashdown (and that’s no condemnation).

The Indelicates and sideways

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to Luke Haines’ projects The Auteurs or Black Box Recorder, so probably The Indelicates would remind me less of either band than I think. The Indelicates have a fairly wide stylistic range, sometimes sedate, sometimes pretty rockin’, but they seem very British whether Simon Indelicate or Julia Indelicate (the latter formerly of The Pipettes) is singing. They also write a good bit about music itself, and they’re not afraid of the grandiose. “If Jeff Buckley Had Lived” is much better than any song with such an unwieldy title should be, like something The Waterboys’ Mike Scott might have penned on one of his very best days. I wanted to hate “The Last Significant Statement to Be Made in Rock’n'Roll” on the basis of its title, but it’s pretty catchy (and it doesn’t hurt that Simon Indelicate really makes the most of his vocal resemblance to Jon Langford on the track).

That title reminded me of My Favorite, another act I loved despite/maybe even because of their pomposity and tendency to write pop music about pop music. In fact, I could have sworn My Favorite once called a song “The Last Great New Wave Song.” I can’t substantiate this claim unless it was released on a 45 I’ve grievously misfiled, but they could have written a song with that title, even if they actually didn’t.

Turns out most of My Favorite has re-coalesced as a new outfit, The Secret History (danger:MySpace). Perhaps knowing that Mick Ronson’s daughter Lisa is one of the singers colors the way I hear the music, but I like to think that having Lisa in the band inspired guitarist Darren Amadio to play riffs that evoke her dad a bit more than he used to in My Favorite. In any case, sounding a bit more like Mott the Hoople* isn’t likely to lessen any act’s endearment to me. And one of The Secret History’s songs has the line “This! Is! The end of music” as a vocal hook, and you could slot it right next to “The Last Significant Statement to Be Made in Rock’n'Roll” on a mixtape with no problem.

Both The Indelicates and The Secret History have new albums due imminently, and I’m even now struggling to rein in my expectations.

Pest 5000 and forward

Listening to Interabang (or, if you prefer, (In-ter/a-bang/) (?!)) I was struck by two thoughts. First, it sounds like a record that could have been released last week as much as one from 1996. It’s co-ed vocalled music that that’s a little too harmonically unruly to be quintessential indie pop, but not texturally abrasive enough to be indie rock, and there’s a lot more of that around now than there was then; I think maybe the Internet/quasi-hobbyist model of releasing/distributing/finding music is kinder to quirky artists than the college radio model. Although Pest 5000 were heavily hyped by CMJ, so I’m probably full of it.

The second thought was surprise that I never put more effort into finding out what became of Pest 5000’s members. Then I played Palimpsests and remembered why: over-long, self-indulgent, deliberately listener unfriendly (like some of The Swirlies’ least-approachable and most baked-sounding releases) it is not an album that left me screaming for more. Still, it’s probably the easiest way to hear “Fault,” perhaps the best Ed’s Redeeming Qualities song that Ed’s Redeeming Qualities never wrote. And it’s much easier to trace band lineages with the modern Internet at one’s disposal.

Bassist/vocalist Patti Schmidt is now a Canadian radio personality; she was a co-founder of the Ta-Da record label which released an eponymous album by Nanobot Auxiliary Ballet, featuring Schmidt and Pest 5000’s Kevin Komoda. It’s blippy bloopy jittery stuff; much less pop than Interabang, but much more focused and coherent than Palimpsests.

Violinist/vocalist Geneviève Heistek played in Sackville, which explored territory somewhere between slowcore and alt-country, with a bit of outside seasoning. They seem like the sort of band I should have been listening to since their inception, but now I have to play catch-up. Heistek now plays in Hangedup, a violin and percussion centered duo with Sackville’s Eric Craven. I’m not sure if it’s best described as post-rock, jazz, or what. A mutant version of New Order’s “Blue Monday” is the most accessible introduction (on their self-titled release). Interesting stuff I need to spend more time with.

* Even if Ronson wasn’t technically in Mott the Hoople long enough to matter

artist of the week: Holden

artist of the week: These are Powers

artist of the week: Johnny Foreigner

artist of the week: Gay for Johnny Depp

Case in point why I don’t even try to come up with year’s best lists anymore — last week I discovered 4 artists with albums last year that could have been contenders.

Holden: A tiny bit of noise
I first heard Holden’s “Où sont vos bras, monsieur?” (from last year’s Fantomatisme) on shuffle, and at first I thought it was Julie Doiron: Armelle Pioline’s voice has a similar timbre and tentative delivery. After a minute or so, drums creep in, accompanied by hisses and hums building to a (gentle) crescendo. It’s a much milder version of the sort of tricks that Mogwai applied to such great effect on Young Team. Holden clearly knew they were on to something with this, because they built to the crescendo twice in the same song, which didn’t stop me from listening to it four times in a row before I took my iPod off shuffle to hear the whole album straight through. “Où sont vos bras, monsieur?” is probably still my favorite song, but the record is a strong, consistent listen — pretty, pleasant, but with little dollops of noise here and there to prevent it from being saccharine or snoozy.

…I heard Fantomatisme by illegal means and it doesn’t seem easy to purchase in the US, but I did buy previous releases Chevrotine and Pedrolira; they’re swell, too.

Link: Holden (MySpace).

These are Powers: More noise
These are Powers remind me a lot of Suicide. Dual vocalists Pat Noecker and
Anna Barie both have somewhat yelpy deliveries, and Bill Salas provides a bed of mostly electronic and chilly percussion. But These are Powers also offer lots of noisy guitar stabs (while still keeping things spacious, if not quite minimalist), and what I can decipher of the lyrics seems a little more Dada and a little less obvious than Suicide’s). Suicide is of course hugely influential in a way These are Powers are unlikely to ever be, but I find These are Powers more fun to listen to.

Link: These are Powers (MySpace) Several early recordings are available from Pukekos.org.

Johnny Foreigner: Even more noise
Johnny Foreigner’s songs often sound like two or three sparer songs played simultaneously. The coed vocals mix sweet harmonies, histronic oversinging, and unison screams, often with overlapping or interlocking parts. The tunes shift texture and mood abruptly — they may establish a hook, but it rarely, if ever, overstays its welcome. This also describes Los Campesinos! pretty well, and Johnny Foreigner sounds enough like Los Campesinos! that I hope it’s a result of being influenced by some of the same bands than a deliberate attempt to jump another band’s wagon. But songs like “Salt, Peppa and Spinderalla” (probably the one you should hear if you’re only going to hear one Johnny Foreigner song) and “Choose Yr Side and Shut Up” from last year’s Grace and the Bigger Picture are good enough that I really don’t care, if these are just rip-offs, they’re damned good ones. Also, Johnny Foreigner sounds like they loved Superchunk more than Los Campesinos did — more nasty guitar, less snyths, some faster tempos — which, unsurprisingly, I’m completely fine with.

If you’re willing trust Music Glue with an email address, you can get download a 3-song EP from the Johnny Foreigner Band website.

Gay for Johnny Depp: A fuckload of noise
I was going to lead with some hyperbole, like “Gay for Johnny Depp might be the most abrasive band I’ve ever heard that work in song form”* But I pulled out some Pg.99 and Drowningman for comparison, and they’re also both pretty fucking brutal. But often I’ll go see some extreme noise terror band and the members will all be soft-spoken vegetarians whose day jobs involve disadvantaged schoolkids or something like that. That could be true of Gay for Johnny Depp too, I dunno. But Gay for Johnny Depp strikes me as genuinely scary in a way many metal bands aspire to, but miss. Their lyrics play with uncomfortable places like the border between homoeroticism and homophobia, and the line between patriotism and sedition. There are a few gaps in the onslaught, a few lines sung rather than screamed, some moments approaching melodic hookiness (and that demonstrate significant chopsiness), and song titles at least, that suggest a sense of humor (e.g., “Godspeed You Black Mogwai”). Mostly this is a punishing exercise of remarkable consistency and density. If this sounds like the kind of thing you like, you’ll probably like it a lot.

You can download a few songs from Gay For Johnny Depp’s website.

* as opposed to Metal Machine Music or Aube or something like that.

artist of the week: The Organ

Quick-trip to self-referential land: My post on Sky Larkin convinces Terri to give them a listen; she responds that they remind her most of The Organ*, so I have to listen to them.

The Organ sound more self-consciously retro to me than Sky Larkin — I totally get why they draw comparisons to Joy Division and The Cure (although supposedly the (young) band members never heard those bands until reviewers started citing them as influences … Christ, I’m old.) But, y’know, I like The Cure and Joy Division. And “Don’t Be Angry,” from their final release Thieves is singularly lovely.

* For some reason, it’s almost impossible for me to keep this band’s name in my head. I keep wanting to call them The Orchard or The Orchid or almost anything else.

How I learned to stop worrying and love Auto-Tune

• Not to imply that Auto-Tune is “the bomb.” Overuse of Auto-Tune is a scourge we have to learn to live with somehow. Maybe if we all pretend we’re all Peter Sellers it will help.
• All of this music was new to me in 2009. Most, but not all, of it was also new to the world in 2009. Not claiming it’s the “best” of anything; more about representing what I actually listened to.*
• 2009 was the year of Hussalonia. On average, I listened to more than one Hussalonia song every day — and I didn’t even start until September
• Considering I’m on record as saying the perfect length for a pop song is 90 seconds, there’s a lot of long, slowly unfolding songs on here. Dunno what’s up with that. Dunno what’s up with all the smutty disco, either.
• In 2 songs the word “Away” on two high notes hangs and fades, kinda like in Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” Coincidence? Or a gimmick to which I’m unusually susceptible?
• At my dayjob we worry a lot about “single points of failure” — if one particular computer crashing will make really bad things happen, we work to fix it. 2009’s single point of failure award goes to Beat The Indie Drum. Without this website I might not have heard Hussalonia, The Invisible Cities, MC Lars, or The Broken Family Band. (Continued props to Bradley’s Almanac, WMBR, loud-fans, and many other sources for turning me on to lots of good music, too.)
• I know it’s too darn long. You should see the list of stuff I couldn’t find room for (Sian Alice Group, Venice is Sinking, Pony Up!, Chris Richards and the Subtractions… and so many more).
• This is a suggested listening sequence, not a ranking.
• There’s f-words and s-words and other content that may not be appropriate for young listeners.
• If you control the rights to anything here and want it removed, please ask.

the mix

Part 1

1. “Ready to Lose,” Husslonia, Matt Barber Hussalonia (2007)
2. “Energy Shortage,” New Grenada, Energy Shortage (2008)
3. “Freshman Thesis,” Thee More Shallows, More Deep Cuts (2005)
4. “Satellite Mind,” Metric, Fantasies
5. “This is Fullerton,” His Hideous Heart, Only the Earth Can Make a Tree (2008)
6. “This Isn’t It,” Giant Drag, Hearts and Unicorns (2005)
7. “Cities Need a Subway,” Hello Dragon, Cities Need a Subway
8. “D.I.A.L.O,” John Vanderslice, Romanian Names
9. “Corpus Callosum,” The Invisible Cities, Houses Shine Like Teeth
10. “Meet Me on the Tarmac,” Love is Chemicals, Song of the Summer Youth Brigade (2008)
11. “All the Things You’ve Been Missing,” The Beatings, Late Season Kids
12. “Blank Passports,” Hallelujah the Hills, Colonial Drones
13. “Youth Map,” Smokers Die Younger, Smokers Die Younger
14. “The Only Ones,” The Sounds, Crossing the Rubicon
15. “Mystery Train,” The Cinch, Shake It If You Got It (2005)
16. “Spontaneous Combustion,” Nanobots, Live In Stereo (2008)
17. “Comme Ci Comme Ca,” Terry Poison, Terry Poison
18. “Hear It in the Cans,” We Have Band, Hear It in the Cans
19. “No Logo,” MC Lars, This Gigantic Robot Kills
20. “Little Tigers,” Tune-Yards, Bird Brains
21. “Single Ladies,” Pomplamoose, Single Ladies

Part 2

1. “The End,” Liechtenstein, Survival Strategies in a Modern World
2. “We Know Martha Webber,” Now, Now Every Children, Cars
3. “St. Albans,” The Broken Family Band, Please and Thank You
4. “Evergreen,” I Was Totally Destroying It, Horror Vacui
5. “Collision Theory,” Eux Autres, Cold City (2007)
6. “5 Metres Apart,” Stricken City, Songs About People I Know
7. “Proof on Tape,” Apollo Ghosts, Hastings Sunrise
8. “Got to Stop,” Pants Yell!, Received Pronunciation
9. “Purity Test,” Franklin Bruno, Local Currency
10. “Sudden Oak Death,” The Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice, Moon Colony Bloodbath
11. “Witches Vs. Wolves,” S-S-S-Spectres, S-S-S-Spectres (2007)
12. “See the Enemy,” Andrew Bird, Fitz and the Dizzyspells
13. “Sick Couple,” My Toys Like Me, Where We Are
14. “Transparence,” Asobi Seksu, Simple Mental Math
15. “Forest,” Kit, Broken Voyage (2007)
16. “Void,” T.I.T.S., Second Base
17. “Coeur Synthetique,” Nancy Fortune, Crystallized
18. “Speed,” Quad Throw Salchow, Speed
19. “Jump,” The Cast of Glee, Glee: The Music, Volume 2
20. “For Those About to Rock I Ignore You,” Hussalonia, Emile Berliner Hussalonia (2007)
21. “Mom and Dad Play Rock’n'Roll,” Ben Krieger, Class Dismissed (2008)

*There’s a teeny tiny bit of weight against records you don’t need me to tell you about (Phoenix, Wilco, Neco Case, The XX, etc.) and towards records I heard late in the year but expect to listen to a lot in early 2010.