OMG It's A Thing! Part 1.

So I finally got around to putting together a BEST ALBUMS OF 2009 LIST (or rather, I finally settled on one)! Yes, just what everyone was anxiously waiting for, don't I know it. It... It was really hard. Not because every single piece of music released this year was astoundingly awesome, no, more because, at some point, saying that one piece of music is better than some other, entirely different piece of music is extraordinarily arbitrary. But these are familiar issues. Oh yeah, I decided to split it into three parts in order to waste everyone's time. WITHOUT FURTHER ADOOO:

10. Islands - Vapours: This album STARTS with a reasonably obscure Kate Bush musical reference. Man, I was impressed. Other than that, it's a (merely) pretty good album. Much more mellow that I might've expected from Islands. It's pretty good for chilling out and making myself some dinner. Pretty good for taking a break while making myself dinner in order to write this. Pretty good for burning down the house from some hideous kitchen mishap born of a well-established maladroitness regarding ovens. Pretty good for I better get back in there. Pretty good for I wrote this blurb, like, a week ago, so I'm not actually going into the kitchen right now. Pretty good for Next Album Please!


9. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion: Yeah, I know, I'm totally failing to be an experimental indie rock hipster dude by putting this album so early. But... Argh, I don't know. Some of these songs are great. My Girls and Brothersport are really superb, and they totally get me dancing, get me singing along with the indecipherable lyrics and Adobe Slabs. But I feel like the only song on the album with any actual emotional resonance is Bluish. And most of the songs on the album besides those three are merely... Alright. Yeah, I really just can't place my dissatifaction with this album. It's good! I mean, yeah, it's good, it's on my list, isn't it? But it doesn't really do that much for me. It's just some songs, you know. Incidentally, I have pretty much exactly the same things to say about Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free. SPOILERS!


8. Bat For Lashes - Two Suns: Oh man, I totally forgot about this album. Just before it came out, when I'd just heard a few of the tracks, I was very excited. It sounded like... Like Bat For Lashes previously had hints of some amazing potential awesomeness, but now it was all going to come out in a torrent of ethereal Kate Bushesque whimsicawesomeality. So yeah, excited. Then when I actually heard the album, it was inevitably just a little bit of a let down. But you know, listening back to it again, after quite some time, it's still actually a /really/ good album. Sure, its heights soar far above the rest of the songs, but said rest of the songs are still solidly enjoyable.


7. The Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice - Moon Colony Bloodbath: So, I'm cheating already, this is only an EP. It's a collaboration between the Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice. Both of whom released their own, seperate, entire albums this year, both of which actually rather disappointed me. This, on the other hand, is excellent. Exactly the kind of music I like to hear from The Mountain Goats, exactly the kind of music I like to hear from Vanderslice, all in one terribly convenient package. This provides me with clear evidence that John Vanderslice needs to continue to be The Mountain Goats' producer. It would totally be higher, were it longer.

To be... CONTINUED! On Wednesday!