It's become a sort of obligatory internet tradition for music sites to post their "best of" lists at the end of each year. I enjoy the tradition as much as anyone, but I'll be the first to admit that it's a flawed concept. Once music passes a certain point — arriving in the mercurial netherworld of Objectively Good Music — it becomes extremely difficult to critique or compare it without stumbling through the magical wardrobe of Extreme Subjectivity. If you've found ten albums from a year that were all excellent, what makes any one of them better than the others, except that you liked it more? Past a certain point, your own personal appreciation is all that matters. Thus new music often goes through a cycle: discovery, heavy rotation, over-exposure, then sitting around for weeks without another play. This makes it hard to decide what albums even you yourself really liked at the end of a year, since some of them may be fresh releases, while others have been in your collection for nearly a year already.
That's why, here at The Luxury Yacht Review, I'm going to take the time to check back in a year later and re-evaluate what lasted the test of time — and what albums I may have simply missed the first time around, despite my best efforts to listen to everything and anything. And I will also admit — many albums I listened to in 2009 just didn't hit me until much later. But now is the time to make amends. In retrospect, 2009 was one of the best years in history for my music collection, though I scarily realized this last year. My favorite albums from last year just became favoriter, and releases I only discovered after my list was compiled ended up blowing me away just the same.
Here is my Best Of 2009, as it stood last year:
1. Sol Eye Sea i (by) Irepress
2. Daisy (by) Brand New
3. From Fathoms (by) Gifts From Enola
4. Gin (by) Cobalt
5. Hollow Be My Name (by) Eleventh He Reaches London
6. Sunden (by) The Waters Deep Here
7. Dyad 1909 / Found Songs (by) Olafur Arnalds
8. Axe to Fall (by) Converge
9. The Other Truths (by) Do Make Say Think
10. Eras (by) Apse
It was an okay list, full of albums that impressed me with their originality and innovative genre blending. But technical merits don't always equal lasting, emotional resonance, and with the discovery of a few newcomers (that is to say, albums from 2009 that I only discovered in 2010), my list looks quite different today. But one thing hasn't changed: the top half of the list was extremely hard to rank, and any of my new "top 4" albums could trade blows and take the Album of the Year slot. Many of these albums have settled into my record collection as all-time classics. So here it is, my revised Best of 2009.
1. Sol Eye Sea i (by) Irepress
2. From Fathoms (by) Gifts From Enola
3. Blue Record (by) Baroness
4. Daisy (by) Brand New
5. Gin (by) Cobalt
6. Axe to Fall (by) Converge
7. The Great Misdirect (by) Between the Buried and Me
8. By the Throat (by) Ben Frost
9. The Other Truths (by) Do Make Say Think
10. Hollow Be My Name (by) Eleventh He Reaches London
Baroness' Blue Record first grabbed me only a week or so after I published my original Best of 2009, yet quickly blew away almost everything else on that list. From January to March of this year, I listened to pretty much nothing but. In any other year (including 2010, actually), it would easily grab Album of the Year status. The Blue Record is like a sludge-metal version of Led Zeppelin III, just faster and denser and heavier. This is perhaps the pinnacle of the booming Georgian metal scene, a perfectly written, relentlessly energetic bombardment of rock. Pretty much an all-time classic. The Great Misdirect is another album I was unfortunately late to the party on. Over six songs and one hour, Between the Buried and Me races through a half dozen genres and more switch-ups, solos and tangents than I could possibly keep track of. You might find this sort of restless, ADD musicianship unfocused, and maybe it is. Maybe The Great Misdirect will never go down in history as an example of pioneering song-writing, but that doesn't stop it from being a hell of a lot of fun. In spite of its eccentricities, The Great Misdirect still sounds more grounded than the majority of progressive metal, maybe thanks to its earthy, gritty textures. Ben Frost's By the Throat sounds like it could be the soundtrack to a profoundly disturbing film — could be, though it's already the most frightening album I've ever heard. The soundscapes you'll find here are blacker than the blackest black metal without laying down a single guitar riff — instead, Ben Frost crafts an subtle, ambient story of sounds, creaking violins and throbbing electronic bass. This isn't an album you should listen to for entertainment — or alone in the dark — it's an experience.
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