Favorite albums of 2009

I thought this would be a good place to preserve my 2009 lists. It feels like this may be out of place, but I don't really care.

This was a really big year for me and new music. It might go down as one of the best years of my life for new releases, hence the rather large honorable mention catagory...

Honorable mentions in no particular order:

New Albums by Prefuse 73, Dead Man's Bones, Fuck Buttons, The Raveonettes, Grizzly Bear, Converge, Mt. Eerie, Andrew Bird, The Dodos, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Sufjan Stevens, Heavy Trash, The Flaming Lips, and Lightning Dust.

Favorites:

15. YACHT - See Mystery Lights

This barely made it to where it is. You could probably switch it out for any of my honorable mention picks, but it is here because I've listened to it a few times more than any of those.

14. Dizzee Rascal - Tongue in Cheek

Dizzee should be in my top five of the year. This album is still good, but it is obviously not the work of someone concerned with perfection. Dizzee is getting distracted by all that money he made with his last three amazing records. (Impressive that he made it into my top 15 with a mediocre effort, though)

13. St. Vincent - Actor

This would be higher if it was a "best of" list. I liked it a lot, and it showed some great talent, it just didn't get as many listens as it deserved.

12. Decemberists - Hazards of Love

I thought this album was the years best when it came out early this year. It had some stiff competition and lacked a little in staying power, but damn it was good live. And the Double Vinyl is certainly still a proud member of our collection.

11. Magnolia Electric Co - Josephine

A sad album honoring the death of Jason Molina's close friend Josephine. I'm a sucker for eulogy records.

10. The Thermals - Now We Can See

I think this album proved to me that even pop-punk, if done tastefully and creatively, can be listenable. My inner 13 year old is satisfied, but won't be complete until ska gets the chance to prove its value to 25 year old Joe.

9. Built to Spill - There is No Enemy

Local dudes delivered their best album in years.

8. Shelley Short - A Cave, A Canoo

This might be here because it was in our car stereo for half the year and I have every song memorized. But even so, it made it to the 8th spot of the list by being able to survive in the stereo for as long as it did.

7. Dan Deacon - Bromst

Reptile Rumble will be spinning this one till its grooves are demolished.

6. Clem Snide - Hungry Bird

"I can't find comfort in the fact that it could be worse." Diana lives by that line.

5. Mewithoutyou - It's All Crazy, It's All False, It's All a Dream, It's Alright!

Mewithoutyou has finally written praise music that doesn't sound trite, cliche, or forced. This is a fully Christian album that stands up on it's own feet. You don't have to say "this record is good, for a Christian band," it is just good on its own. Who knew that was possible?

4. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

I love Yo La Tengo. They make me happy. They could put me in a guitar fuzz daze any day of the week.

3. Megafaun - Gather, Form & Fly

This album makes it this high on my list because of how addicting it is. The songs are incredibly memorable and their ability to do something new with the Americana/Folk genre makes me excited for their future output. I listened to this album hundreds of times this summer.

2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

These dudes are probably in my top three artists of all time list. I just think what they are doing in electronic music will never be matched by anyone else. All I need to say to describe their album is that I believe they are my generation's version of the Beatles. (The Beatles in the sense of songwriting and creativity, obviously not in the sense of affecting pop culture.)

1. David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

David Bazan's most honest and abrasive album yet. I wrote a blog after the first few listens of this album that sums up my thoughts. This album will make you laugh, cry, and feel dead inside. It is incredibly moving, and has probably changed my life.

Christmas Trees For Sale

This story begins as the sun goes down on a stale, cold November night. The type of night where everything in the world seems to have a grey tint, and you hit every red light on your way home from work. A woman pulls her old Lumina mini-van into a dirt lot. The sun is now far enough covered in the horizon that her headlights are on, but aren't doing much. Only letting others on the road know of her vehicle's presence. As she pulls into the lot her wheels roll through the ruts made by the many cars and trucks that have preceded her. She avoids the bigger potholes concealed by tan, muddy puddles left by yesterday's rain. The tires make an all-too-familiar crackling sound as they kick up gravel while pulling into the closest parking spot she could find. She puts the car in park and lets out a long disheartened sigh as she turns the key to kill the engine. The front door of the van swings open. She steps out and looks closely at the giant inflatable Santa Claus with his right hand up and his gaze set upward as if he was waving hello to someone in the sky. From the road she couldn't see the mud splattered on him by traffic or the grey water spots left by the rain. Close-up, the big, bright Santa is just as bleak as the world around her.

In this part of the country, the holiday season is less of a white Winter wonderland, and more of a muddy, grey mess. The sun is too cold to warm the surface, but just warm enough to keep all precipitation from freezing. Even when the snow falls on the city, it just melts into slush in the daytime, then freezes into ice in the evening. Although its effect isn't universal throughout the city, the weather takes a heavy toll on the population's mood. It's hard to find a more depressing time to visit. People act as if a stranger is their enemy instead of an unknown neighbor. Dogs are kicked, children are harshly shushed, and spouses are given cold shoulders. Houses are still decorated with lights, but they are merely a facade. The colors adorned in trees and across rain gutters are an attempt to hide the dismay that the weather and holiday stress build in the minds of the people living within the walls of the decorated homes. The sigh that the women let out as she turned off her mini-van is a regular occurrence in most homes on most days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The woman has decided to pick up her family's Christmas tree on the way home from work. Her husband will be thrilled to avoid the slow selection process. Her children will probably cry because they wanted to help find the perfect tree. Finding the perfect tree is the last thing on her mind. In fact, she is tempted to grab the first one she sees and run with it. Throwing it into the back of her van, then speeding off into the stark, overcast sunset. Of course, that won't happen. Part of the holiday stress is the need to make Christmas morning look and feel as romantic as everybody expects it to be. She walks down the path, using a keen eye to find the tree that is the right height and with the least amount of unsightly blemishes. As she stops to get a closer look at a possible candidate a man on his cellphone brushes past her in a hurry, knocking her purse to the ground. He looks back and mouths sorry while continuing to move away into the parking lot. She bends over to pick up her purse, telling off the man with the cellphone in the privacy of her own mind.

As the sun begins to fade completely out of sight and darkness starts to settle on the city, the Christmas tree dealer brings out floodlights. The Santa Claus inflatable begins to glow, causing his cheeks to become even more red than before. Those in the road can now easily make out the dirt and mud specks all over his body. The floodlights light up the trees better than the sun, giving the woman a better view of what the tree will look like in the artificial light of her living room. She begins to smile as she walks around the lot, still searching for the right tree.

After finding her perfect Christmas tree, the woman walks up to the camper where the tree dealer has a cashbox ready. There is a campfire burning to the left of the woman with two teen boys surrounding it. She gives the man a credit card and he walks up the steps into the camper. One of the two boys looks over at the woman and they connect eyes for a few seconds. His chapped lips move into the form of a forced smile. The woman looks away. She tries to remember the number tied to one of the tree's branches. She tells them the number and they begin to walk in the direction of the tree to help load it into her car. One of the boys playfully kicks the other underneath his foot as he walks, causing him to trip up a bit. They let out a few laughs and begin talking quietly to one another. They get about halfway to the parking lot before the man comes out to tell the woman that her card had been declined. He says he ran it twice and it declined each time. He tells her that he doesn't take checks.

She didn't have any cash, so the boys had to return the tree to its original spot with the others. After it was back in place, they returned to their spots by the fire, staring at the flickering colors. The woman decided to just go home. No need to call the credit card company, she knew they must have gone over their limit last weekend while shopping for Christmas gifts. She wasn't stressed about the card declining, they had the money to pay it off, she just wished that her last minute decision to buy a tree had worked out. She wanted some time at the end of her day to just relax. To forget the stress of the season. To cross another item off of her endless holiday to-do list. The wheels of her Lumina crackled out of the parking lot. The giant, glowing Santa waved goodbye to the sky as she drove out of the lot and down the street.

The woman wouldn't return to the dirt lot to buy her Christmas tree. Instead, the next day while cruising the clearance aisle at Shopko she noticed a different sort of perfect tree. One that could permanently cross the Christmas tree off of her holiday to-do list. This perfect tree was made of metal, wire and nylon. It did not have a trunk nor did it shed needles. She did not need to water the tree, because it was not living. At the end of the Christmas season it fit perfectly back into the cardboard box it lived in before being purchased. The manufacturer would say that the tree was immortal, but in fact the tree was dead, and the box was it's coffin. She could throw out the old, metal tree stand that had been used since before the children were born. The woman kept the tree skirt, but it's function became fashion.

The tree that she had chosen at the dirt lot was never purchased. It became firewood for the Christmas tree salesman and the teen boys he employed. It gave them warmth during breaks from cleaning up the lot they temporarily inhabited. The giant, inflatable Santa Claus waved goodbye as he deflated to the ground. Soon enough, the dirt lot was empty again. The trailer that the salesman lived in for three cold, Winter weeks crackled away, and a sign on the property that said "for sale" took it's rightful place, where Santa stands each Christmas season.

The Plague, Farenheit 451, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Stitches, Pygmy, Invisible Man

Despite my lack of posts, I've still been reading. I'm posting this so that I remember which books I have read and will possibly still write about some day.

Darkness at Noon

I read Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler a few weeks ago. For some reason I didn't feel like writing an immediate response to it. Probably because I felt like whenever I write about a book immediately after finishing it I tend to feel rushed and not able to clearly communicate what I thought of the complete work, but just a minute part that intrigued me. I was going to wait a day or two, but then kept putting it off until now. Hopefully I can remember enough about it to make sense.

Darkness at Noon is a novel about a former revolutionist who is arrested by the government he helped to gain power. It is set in Communist Russia in between the first and second world wars. The whole of the novel is set in a jail cell, but the main character, Rubashov, frequently daydreams about his part in the revolution and the significant things that led to his arrest. Knowing that Koestler was a former Communist who had become disillusioned with the movement after the Stalinist show trials (of which the main character is a victim) and other detestable practices perpetrated by the Soviet government makes this novel something of a historical fiction and less of a literary exploration of ideas. I am certainly more used to novels having less to do with the setting and more about the general theme, but I believe this book did have a theme that can be explored further than just taking the story at face value.

The theme I was most interested with was the suppression of ideas for the sake of a movement. The reason that Rubashov was arrested was that he disagreed with how the communist government was being handled by "Number 1"(the name given to Stalin in the novel). He had no plans to overthrow the government or assassinate the leader, but his objection to policy was enough to have him arrested and sentenced to execution. Much of the story is focused on the methods of coercion and interrogation used to convince Rubashov to admit to false accusations, giving the novel another theme (probably more prominent than the one I am addressing) of how a imprisoned and hopeless person reacts to an antagonist. Like I said, I am more interested in how the government reacts to dissent than I am the confined person.

Basically the idea that interested me was that the Russian government (and that style of communism in general) had an ideal that they wished to achieve. This ideal was a sort of utopia where all are equal in economic circumstance and workload. The problem was that they believed that it took forcing people into much worse economic conditions and much harder labor in order to eventually reach this ideal society. It reminds me of the double-speak in Orwell's 1984, war is peace, love is hate, etc. "Number 1" had his idea of how to accomplish his ideal and that was through making all who were in the country submit to his values and principals through force. Only by overpowering the people will they eventually realize that his way to achieve equality was the correct way. Only through enslavement and suffering would they be beaten enough to know his way is the correct way. It is a very logical and reasonable method, despite it being completely inhumane and during the conditioning of the people the opposite of the utopia he wishes to achieve. This is what interests me. Is it okay to do something negative if it achieves something more positive than the former action was negative.

For example, say you are a soldier at war, and a man in your sights has a trigger for an offsite bomb. This bomb is going to kill many people (Lets say they are also soldiers, not innocent bystanders). Now, you don't believe in killing, even killing the enemies you are fighting in this war (you were drafted into the military). Would it be okay for you to take on this sin of killing so that the other man doesn't sin himself and kill many people. Obviously his sin has much greater consequences than yours. You are taking one life, he is taking many. Does that make your lesser sin a worthwhile one? If you let him live, do you take some of the responsibility for the lives of those he will kill, or does the responsibility lie solely with him? We all know what our answer to this question is. Being a pacifist, I would say that I wouldn't kill him, leaving myself clean and him responsible for his own actions. Others would say that they would share in the guilt if they didn't stop him from killing, and therefore decide that they would kill the man. There are good arguments on both sides, but the real question is: Which one of these is wrong and which one right?

The communist government believed in freedom of thought and freedom of ideas, but they thought the best way to get there was to restrict said freedom for a time until the revolution was completed and there were no biases based on past economic conditions. They believed that once the people were all rooted in equal experience and not biased by their unequal past, that they would all realize the merits of communism and then be able to keep their government accountable. Until then Number 1's ideas were the only ideas permitted to speak about. It is utilitarian ethics at it's core. The suffering that they caused for a short period of history is much less than the amount joy they will eventually bring. They were killing the lives of the present in order to save those in the future. Is that right? Say they were correct in their ideas and it actually worked. Would they still have blood on their hands?

I don't really have an answer to that question, but it sure is fun to think about.

Will there be a sunrise this Summer?

From the bathroom

I heard weeping

in the kitchen.

I knew before

this telling, uncontrollable

expression had occurred.

She was ready

and out the

door in moments.

The two were

gone and I

was left alone.

One will return,

the other goes

home to weep

with her husband

who can't help

but suffer unknowing

of the pain

the bearer of

children goes through.

God gave life

unexpected. He took

life without petition.

We ask, "Will

there be a

sunrise this Summer?"

David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

The Passion of David Bazan

If you read this blog post, I advise you to first read the article "The Passion of David Bazan" linked above. If you don't read that article, this post might make less sense than I would like it.

I read this article today, but by some cosmic coincidence already have the new David Bazan album "Curse Your Branches". The article is about David Bazan's recent abandonment of traditional Christianity and his venture into agnosticism. The album is a very poignant criticism of not only the Christian faith, but of the God who put us on this earth. I am assuming this album will scare away any more of the lingering conservative Christian fanbase that Bazan's former band Pedro the Lion has built and welcome a larger fanbase of "post-Christians" looking for someone who is writing from a doubtful standpoint without the pompous and judgmental language usually used to put down the Christian faith. Not to say that all Christians that were fans of Pedro the Lion won't appreciate this new album, just that those who are akin to listening to albums approved by Christian culture and deemed "uplifting" will certainly shy away from the dark and depressing content sung in "Curse Your Branches". I hope this doesn't happen, but it is bound to be what will happen based on lyrics like in the song Curse Your Branches: "if You bully her like you've done me with fear of damnation / Then I hope she can see You for what You are." Bazan is clearly not just exploring doubtful feelings, but actually calling out the God of pop-Christianity and asking for a fight.

I would just like to share what David Bazan's music has meant to me over the years and what his latest album has said to me. Here is a little bit of background on my experiences with Pedro the Lion (David Bazan's former monicker). I first started listening to him when Control came out. This was the first album of his to really shake up the Christian music world because it included songs about adultery in a hotel room, murder, a priest denouncing his faith, and worst of all in the last song he said the word "shit." So because I was a latecomer to his music I have never really seen him as some sort of goody-two-shoes who wrote praise music for the Christian consumer. I wasn't shocked or hurt when he released albums that said "fuck" or explored his doubts about the Christian religion. I have always thought his lyricism and music made a perfect balance and his art has influenced my life in a big way. He is one of the only musicians that I feel like I want to talk to, instead of just enjoy from afar.

The reason he has had such a large impact on my life is because of his sometimes brutal honesty about the world around him. He writes songs and albums about the parts of life that aren't always clean and that don't end very positively. He explored the pain that we see every day, and the sins that we try so hard to avoid but can't always keep off our backs. He said things like "Wouldn't it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless. But everything is so meaningful,and most everything turns to shit. Rejoice." What Christian author or musician has the guts to sum up their entire work with something so honest and gut wrenching? Some might say a Christian wouldn't do that, because that negativity about life isn't a very uplifting thing to ponder, but what Christian hasn't thought something similar without the rejoice at the end? Bazan wasn't scared to let the listener decide what they want about what to do when "most everything turns to shit". He didn't end the album with a promise of better days or an alternative way to stop bad things from happening, he just let it resonate in his listener. Thinking about things like that line is what has kept my faith in God so strong. I thought about how I could intercede in other's lives to stop everything from turning to shit. I thought about how rejoicing amidst the shit was a way to communicate your suffering to God. I've been spurred to think about trenches of life time and time again by countless Bazan lyrics over the years, and have been enriched and refined because of it. To me, a Pedro the Lion album is more spiritual than pretty much any other musicians work I can recall. It is honest and grating, unlike any praise song I could hear in a modern church that demands I sing along and agree instead of listen and respond. That is what his music and poetry has done for me, it gives me a chance to listen and respond to serious issues that I feel demand attention. Singing "I love you, Jesus" over and over again doesn't solve problems or grow faith, it merely gives you self-satisfaction or tells Jesus something he probably already knows is true (or not true). Sure, sometimes we need to say things like that, but those times aren't spiritual in my experience, they are merely emotional. Maybe I am just not at a point in my faith where I can be satisfied with "I Love you, Jesus". I am satisfied spiritually when I have the opportunity learn more about Him and His creation, which is one thing that David Bazan and other gritty and honest writers have given me.

So I guess I am not going to say too much about his latest album, but I will say that despite the fact that he no longer considers himself a Christian, he is still challenging me to interact deeper with God through his honest questioning and desire to understand more about the root of our existence. He still writes important words that demand our attention.

With this album he will very likely lose his Christian audience, and that is the saddest thing about his loss of faith. I think his soul is still fine, as he told the Cornerstone audience. I am not in fear that he will be damned for his doubts. The tragedy is that the Christian world still has a lot to learn from him, but will most likely shut him out after the release of this album.