Ten Best Music Blogs Of 2009

ZACH THAT:

10.) Melophobe

Don’t have enough money to go to the show?…head over to Melophobe where they document hundreds of concerts with beautiful photography and reviews. The first time I stumbled on this site I was mesmerized for hours.
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09.) I Guess I’m Floating

For the last three years this has been either my favorite music blog or in the top three. For some reason I feel like the posts were less frequent, hence the drop. Regardless, IGIF is a must read for under the radar bands and music reports from two highly intelligent music bloggers.
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08.) Pretty Much Amazing

We don’t see eye to eye on most music, but I have to give respect to one of the cleanest and best looking sites out there. Daily mp3 updates, podcasts, mixtapes, and a really fantastic section called “The Thinking Man’s Take…” If this was an indie rock blog it would be near the top. You Pop fans…here is your heaven.
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07.) The Needle Drop

The hardest working music blogger out there…no joke. I don’t even need to write much about this blog…just spend a few minutes clicking around his site…Youtube updates everyday, podcasts, radio work, blog posts, culinary school…the guy is busy. I’m convinced he has a twin, which is not fair for the rest of us music bloggers who now look lazy. His only flaw is that he calls everything pop…but with all the solid content TND provides, I can’t complain.

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06.) Slowcoustic

This is just a great music site. Fantastic taste in music mixed with sleek, easy to navigate site, results in a daily visit. They have an “essential series” that is a must read for those who love great music.
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05.) Said The Gramophone

The most poetic music blog ever. That’s all I have to say about that.
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04.) Daytrotter

One of the most impressive music projects this decade. Amazing live sessions with the most sought after bands/artists….and the tracks are free to download. Can’t ask for much more.
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03.) Tsururadio

I consider this blog my internet brother. WLFY and Tsur will one day run this sweet musical blog land with our mutual love for vinyl and similar music. You want a real treat? Join Tsur’s Our Society…trust me.
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02.) Analog Apartment

The best site for all things vinyl. The cherry on top is the amazing software provided by the site which allows you to database your entire record collection.
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01.) Aquarium Drunkard

The best music writing we have out there today. Some say that mp3 sites have killed music journalism…I say you’re not looking in the right places. There are a lot of amazing sites, just look at this list, that use mp3’s as an add on for their posts…the writing and original content is what makes these ten shine. Rolling Stone turned into Pitchfork and Stereogum…and when they both quit honestly writing about music AD became the best source for thoughtful music journalism. I have two exciting reads in my life with a cup of coffee…the New Yorker and Aquarium Drunkard…my favorite music blog of 2009.
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WLFY's TOP 50 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE

Lighting Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow

A bass with one guitar string. A bunch of shitty drums. Playing in someone's kitchen in Lubbock, TX. Two RISDy dudes named Brian. Wonderful Rainbow was Lightning Bolt's quinceañera. It didn't just change the band forever, but everything that punk rock stood for and the way underground music would sound in the new millennium. (HW)










Death From Above 1979--You're A Woman, I'm A Machine


Two guys. That’s all this is. “You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine” is still one of the hardest things I have “rocked out to” in years. Yet, it’s only two guys doing this. Whenever I find myself pissed off and in need of a musical release I will often turn here. Through eleven tracks DFA never lets up; the guitars grind and the drums pound until your ears scream and bleed. I still think one of the saddest days of recent memory in music was when Jesse Keeler and Sebastien Grainger split. Yeah they both have come out with different side projects and what not but are they really as good as this album? Hell no. “You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine” is like a supernova on the music landscape. It exploded. It was bright and it was beautiful. Then it was gone. Even today, though, the effects are still there and every one still considers this a rock classic. Maybe in another universe or galaxy somewhere they never broke up… (BS)









Bright Eyes—Lifted Or the Story Is In the Soil, Keep Your Ear To the Ground


I think the love, the sadness, the pain, and the emotion that Conor Oberst expressed throughout this album is priceless. The fact that he pushed so much feeling out of a single album has never ceased to take my breath away. This album truly was one of my first forays into what I guess you could call “emo” music but more so “indie music”. I understand that Oberst has sort of been branded with a very sad white boy/emo vibe throughout his career as Bright Eyes but the fact remains is that there is truth in all of these songs and only people who haven’t been lucky/unlucky enough to experience all this will truly be the ones left in the dark by this gem. (BS)










Clues - Clues


While this album is fresh of the presses and ignored by many, year after year the dust will be blown off and fans will gather around to hear one of the best albums of the decade. I've never heard an album like this and its uniqueness is only surpassed by its brilliance. (ZH)










The Postal Service – Give Up


Industrial wastelands, nuclear fall out, incarceration, and bitter breakups never sounded quite so appealing. Somehow or another, Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard and electro enthusiast Jimmy Tamborello made it happen. The fusion between Gibbard's delicate vocals and the impenetrable trip hop landscape is like the eye of the storm, with a weird kind of near-apocalyptic calmness. If this is what the end of the world sounds like, I say bring it on. (LH)










Beruit – Gulag Orkestar


No one would know that Beruit's Zach Condon was just some boy from New Mexico, judging by the sound of Gulag Orkestar. Since when did ukulele, full-fledged brass sections, and rousing polka beats have anything to do with the American Southwest? Condon's merging of Eastern European folk music and Western pop seems authentic and effortless. Cuts like "Postcards From Italy" are radiant and carefree – a snapshot of a sunny afternoon over a rolling countryside. Is it possible for something to be a bit too idealistic? If so, this album is certainly Exhibit A. (LH)










Bloc Party—Silent Alarm


I enjoy “Silent Alarm” because of how pure of a rock album it is at times. “Like Eating Glass” is one of my favorite openers on any album and from there the album continues to take you in. The incredible thing is how you will go into the first few tracks of the album and be blown about by how badass the songs feel. Then all of a sudden “Blue Light” comes in and the dreamier aspects of Bloc Party come rolling in. Even when Bloc Party goes reaching for the starts with their sound they still maintain a gritty feel. Though the band hasn’t really been able to do anything with as much grandeur as their debut, it is still a blueprint for how to do an album right. (BS)










Joanna Newsom – Milk Eyed Mender


I listened to this album for the first time on a rainy day in Southern California. I still can't listen to Newsom's girly shreik of "I AM BLUUUE! AND UNWELL!" on "Peach, Plum, Pear" and not giggle. There' something so instinctively honest about putting those emotions together. It's why, for me, given the jeremiad of Ys, this album is infinitely more listenable: it's compact, imaginative, and puts things in ways that will forever change how you see them. (HW)










Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest


Choosing between Yellow House and Veckatimest proved to be a tough choice. The fact remains, however, that the excellence of Yellow House made Veckatimest the most hyped album of the year, and it delivered ten-fold. ‘Southern Point’ cracks the tension with an intense introduction displaying the musicality we have come to expect from Grizzly Bear, complex and enticing. The simple guitar riff juxtaposes perfectly with the string arrangement in the final verse, and then explodes into a slow and tense explosion of guitars and drums. How else to follow up such an epic introduction than the highly addictive soundtrack to your Monday morning ‘Two Weeks’? Ed Droste’s drawn-out oration of everyday uneasiness made ‘Two Weeks’ everyone’s favorite song at some point or another. With Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear made fans of everyone. Jay-Z, the entire family of Beyonce Knowles, hey, even Michael McDonald, the guy your dad was listening to when he ever-so-gently placed you inside of your mom got on board the Grizzly Bear Express. This was the breakout album of the year, and a very deserving one. (CJ)










Outkast - Stankonia


I shall let Outkast's words justify why this is on the list:
"Did you ever think a pimp rock a microphone? Like that there boi and will still stay street. Big things happen every time we meet. Like a track team, crack fiend, dyin to geek. Outkast bumpin' up and down the street." (ZH and Outkast)










Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise


The album is extremely visual, each song placing the listener into various parts of the state and at the same time, each track tells a fascinating story. "Illinoise" runs the gambit of emotions and moves swiftly from upbeat to downbeat with grace. In my mind, "Casimir Pulaski Day" might be the best song written this decade. (ZH)

REVIEW: Royal Bangs - Let it Beep

HANK ALTOGETHER:

I got drunk and played Royal Bangs drum at a show once. Yeah. I admit it. It was me. But in my defense, there was no way that I wasn't going to be a part of the insane bacchanal noise coming out of the quintet of lads from Knoxville. While the prevailing winds of indie are blowing extra-musical, extra-slick (see Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, etc) Royal Bangs are something totally different. Heavy on the low-end, dythrambic percussion, you might hear parts of the early 00s DC-scene coupled with a kind of hack-eyed optimism that could only come from a band not corrupted by the insularity of the east coast. Royal Bangs are their own animal.

I loved their prior album We Breed Champions even going so far as to put it #50 on our soon to be released "Best of the Decade" list (Spoiler Alert: It didn't make the final list). Unlike the live shows, which are booze-fueled rampages, Champions revealed the sound to be, dare I say it, melodic, hooky, and almost pop. Fast forward to aught 9 and Royal Bangs' latest effort, Let it Beep, which picks up right where it's baby brother left off.

If anything, Let it Bleep is too true to its name. The harmony of guitars and vocals are kicked to the side for more keyboard wizardry. "Brainbo" is a prime example -- a math rock intro into a s 8-bit meets vocoder 21st century psychedelia. In fact, the whole record skews more into the math rock vein. Even the rambunctious jam "Poison Control" with it's anthem-worthy chorus ("I'm not a kid / I don't fuck around!") feels more constrained that the preceding album. There is, as Tom Waits might say, less pulp in this orange juice.

While for hardcore fans of 'Bangs shows that might seem like a bad thing, in fact the album shows off the musicianship of Knoxville's punky sons. "My Car is Haunted" drops a post-funk bass line before soaring off into the haunted yonder. "Shitty X-Mas" mashes what seems like a thousand melodies into one semi-sweet self-destruction.

Royal Bangs don't fuck around. Each semblance of a noodly-guitar is pumped with noise to the point of eardrum explosion. It's a noise that always sounds, rather surprisingly, melodic. A keyboard beep that turns into a synth line, a beer can that turns into a night of rampage and debauchery. It's noise that turns out to have heart and soul. It's a transformation for the group that makes sense. And if you see 'em play live, get drunk and bust on that tom for me.

REVIEW: Julian Casablancas – Phrazes for the Young

Julian Casablancas. The name is enough, isn’t it? With the Strokes, he has tied two sides of alternative music together – the side that carries the punch of the underground and the side with the pop sensibilities of the mainstream. It’s an odd marriage that would seemingly lead to the loss of that oh-so crucial “indie cred”, but somehow worked out in the end. Well, kind of. With the Strokes on a notably long hiatus, a new album stuck in limbo, and tensions between the bandmates high, (Casablancas said in the November issue of Spin Magazine that being in a band was the best way to ruin a friendship) it’s understandable for anyone to need an escape from reality.

For Julian Casablancas, an escape came with going solo. When the conception of Phrazes For The Young was first announced, Casablancas played it up. The showy album preview was something to marvel over. It was highly sensationalized. If you’d been living under a rock and had no idea who Julian Casablancas was, you’d still be excited. The only thing that could put a damper on the news was one question: “Can Casablancas live up to the hype?”

The product of Casablancas’ vacation from the Strokes is an album that is ever much as inventive as it’s creatively spelled title. It’s not inventive in that, “Oh, look at you doing whatever you can to set yourself apart” way. It’s more of a, “God, you’re a lot more talented than you’ve been letting on” kind of way. We knew that much Casablancas’ talent laid in his ability to write amazingly catchy pop songs. The lead single from Phrazes for the Young, “11th Dimension”, further displayed that point. However, if you expected an entire record of happy synth blips, cowbell, and lyrics from a second-rate inspirational speaker, you were wrong.

Sure, there are a few light moments. The opening track, “Out Of The Blue” is an upbeat cut with flourishing guitar distortion, layers of drum machines, and some fiery lyrics. Apparently, Julian’s “going to hell in a leather jacket” and he tauntingly declares that “at least I’ll be in another world while you’re pissing on my casket.” Yeah. He’s still got the attitude. A few handclaps and random outbursts of rapping later (see “Left & Right In The Dark”), everything goes a bit serious.

Casablancas puts his raspy, soulful voice to use in “Four Chords of the Apocalypse”, a track with power choruses that are bound to get a cry of “hallelujah” out of someone. “Ludlow St.” takes an unexpected turn from eerie tribal drums to acoustic guitar and honky-tonk keyboards. Julian puts on a faux Southern accent, and makes country synth pop look appealing for perhaps the first time ever. As he groans about hipsters invading and Indians being forced from their homes, he increasingly sounds like the token old man screaming, “Get off my lawn!” The intense energy builds throughout Phrazes to reach its peak with “River Of Brakelights”. The song moodily grinds and pulses along with prog rock inspired rhythms and a synth breakdown that’s half Mario Bros. and half…well, Julian Casablancas. All goes relatively calm again with the crowning jewel of Phrazes for the Young, “Glass”. The song sways like a lullaby and is embellished with shimmering synth and a beautifully cascading guitar solo. Julian’s vocals reach a striking falsetto that pulls the track along into a heartbreaking end.

The album is impressive, but the true indication of success comes with the answer to a simple question. Does Julian triumph over the hype machine that artists of his stature often are slaughtered by? Yes. He makes the standard verse-chorus song form sound fresh. He seamlessly blends together musical components into his own unique style; the futuristic atmosphere that he crafts still manages to be warm and familiar. His raspy vocals perfectly counterbalance the shiny, precise production. As Julian gets increasingly personal with his lyrical content - the disappointments of childhood and the struggles of love are often touched on - something interesting happens. There is something extra added to his singing that isn’t heard on Strokes records; his robotic voice subtly evokes an array of emotions. It turns out that there is a human under that façade of rock star royalty. Julian is a human, yes, and an understatedly talented one at that. This album finally gives him a chance to shine all on his own. Everything is much better on vacation, isn’t it?