THE TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2009, IN RETROSPECT

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.

TOP X ALBUMS OF MMIX: I

I. Sol Eye Sea i (by) Irepress
Progressive/ Psychedelic / Metal / Hardcore / Electronica

Without even getting into the first impression left by the purpley madness on the cover, it's hard to know what to expect going into Sol Eye Sea i.  And after listening, it's hard not to become defensive when spreading the good word — successfully describing to anyone else what you heard is going to be as easy as convincing them you just saw Sasquatch.  Any album as chimerical as Sol Eye Sea, by all logic, should be a mess — and maybe it is a little messy, but damn does it work.

When bands attempt to mix divergent styles together, it can usually go one of several ways.  There are "generic style + additional instrument" bands (folk metal, chamber pop), or bands which write individually unique songs, almost like they're composing a mixtape (Gorillaz, etc.). The danger is always that nothing syncs on a compositional level, and Irepress wisely fuses their influences into a cohesive sound that permeates everything from their selection of tones to the background guitar filler. At various moments on Sol Eye Sea, you'll find these guys re-imagining and re-appropriating prog-rock, post-hardcore, trip-hop, electronica, post-rock and something I'm going to call "Eastern math-sludge metal", sprinkled with handclaps, group-chant vocals, howled screams and nonsensical phonetics, haunting strings, piano, glitch, and a guitar that sounds like a bagpipe.  Oh yes — and soundclips from The Goonies remixed breakbeat style.

I'll try to explain why all this works so well, but I want to note that obviously many people aren't going to agree with me. By virtue of its uniqueness, some listeners will find Sol Eye Sea strange and indigestible.  But to suggest that this is quantity over quality, or some such glib dismissal, would be a gross misunderstanding of what Irepress is doing. The album works because the many style-shifts and quirks aren't simply staggered one after the other; this is a band whose every chord progression and interlude is rich with identity. Even so, style can only get an artist so far. Many critically acclaimed experimental acts — particularly those that incorporate electronic elements — leave me feeling cold emotionally, distant from the music and bored. Take indie-darlings Battles, a band that treads superficially kind-of similar territory as Irepress.  The members of Battles certainly possess musical chops, throwing together so many disparate technical tricks that every hip music blog seems to adore them. But the end result strikes me as only superficially "interesting" music. It's the same problem that a lot of prog-[whatever] faces: each element is there just to be there, and taken apart, each is boring on its own, innovative only so far as its proximity to all those other cute little tricks and odd time signatures. No element of the music is unique to the band; nothing defines their sound. 

Irepress, on the other hand, could never be mistaken for anything else but Irepress, and anyway, they're far too earnest to be hip and too fun to be pretentious. They understand that they need to take their time with their creativity, to pace themselves, and it's a large part of the album's success. There's certainly a lot going on, but importantly, never too much at once.  The tones and effects successfully navigate the fine line between "unique" and "tacky" — whereas the latter would amount to no more than sounds chosen for their strangeness, everything here relates to everything else, making each unexpected turn a textured revelation of tone instead of just a quirky "hey, let's add a theremin!" moment.  In other words, the music is coherent enough to work instead of gimmicky enough to distract you from the fact that it doesn't.

There is space on Sol Eye Sea, and a lot of it — even the first listen gives an impression of an experience. Instead of rushing at you headfirst and pummeling you into attention, Irepress makes music that moves with the flow of some half-crazed mosh-pit breakdown — picture those heavy, deliberate steps, swaying arms, the unpredictable energy, the sudden surge of momentum, the boot that comes out of nowhere and knocks you on your ass. When you look back up, no one seems to be moving very fast, they're just doing their little dance, but things could turn raucous at any moment.  If I really had to get specific, describing Sol Eye Sea?  It's like getting into a Drunken Master style mosh-pit throwdown with Buckethead at a Buddhist-themed discotheque... in space.  You know how there are bands where you can listen to a split-second splash of sound and immediately say "Oh, that's David Gilmour, innit."  Irepress is like that. Dancing mixed with metal? Breakdowns composed as segments of a movement instead of gimmicky transitions? Progressive music that's so fun and engaging you feel like you're on drugs, instead of just assuming the musicians were? They pull it off. This is truly 2009's classic, at least within my collection — and since Irepress aren't likely to spawn many imitators, they will likely remain one of the most original and inventive bands in music today.

TOP X ALBUMS OF MMIX: II

II. Daisy (by) Brand New

Indie / Post-Hardcore / Noise-Rock

Brand New releases an album. The majority of critics give it fantastic reviews. The majority of Brand New fans hear the album, realize it sounds nothing like their last album and immediately hate it. Half of Brand New's fans bail. Well, they're not a band for casual listeners, and this music is anything but: dense and schizophrenic, listening to Daisy is meant to be an unsettling experience. The band has claimed they'd rather make an album that 50% of people hate and 50% of people love than album that everyone kind-of likes, and that's exactly what you have here.

Brand New's lyrical themes have always come together with a clash of contrasts, balancing the narcissism of youth with frontman Jesse Lacey's obsession with death. Songs often seemed to capture a particular sort of violent, spontaneous human interaction, even if heavily buried in metaphor. After a few spins of Daisy, it seems inevitable in hindsight that their sound would shift toward such dynamics as well. Brand New have become full-on composers of noise, dissonance and bizarre inversions. Rather than writing hooks, the band teases twisted squeals and frenetic shredding out of their instruments, savoring every strange tone. Backing guitars sometimes provide rhythm—and sometimes rumble forward in the mix with a sound like a chainsaw revving. This, in the end, is why Daisy works so well: when Brand New does something, they do it well, and I've heard few other bands that are able to use background instrumentation to such unique effect, or craft unorthodox dissonance with such personality.

Daisy is perfectly produced to capture the whole unsettling unfair, and the compositions are so detailed and well-constructed as to make the madness accessible. It was always atmosphere that drew me to Brand New, after all—a sense of mood and tone that their contemporaries lacked before and utterly abandoned by now. Thanks to a clanky, textured tone and aggressive presence in the mix, the bass guitar ends up being one of the most interesting elements on the album. But all instruments serve two roles—you'll also find that same bass doing epically fuzzy slides through the chorus of "You Stole", creating an effect that sounds not-unlike a whale giving birth. It's but one aspect of the tense unpredictable energy that carries the album. Many reviewers and detractors have made comparisons to The Jesus Lizard (or Modest Mouse) and Nirvana. While Brand New has always admitted inspiration from these (and many other) bands, the differences remain stark: where the previous bands chug away at songs with raucously loose, drunken energy—creating the dynamic instability which evokes these comparisons—Daisy is both more conscious of its unbalanced style and unhinged in its execution, creating more forceful guitar delivery, far tighter song structures and a more textured take on "noise rock" aesthetics.

That a band is able to adapt their style so casually while still retaining the sensibilities that make each album recognizably Brand New is no small accomplishment—but each album has to be good on its own, for its own merits, and Daisy succeeds against all odds (and in spite of its flaws, which are certainly there). It isn't a perfectly executed album, nor a contender for their best, but I found myself listening to Daisy more than any other album in 2009. Brand New is clearly a little bit crazy—enough to piss off the people who buy their albums and thereby ensure that they keep putting out good ones.

TOP X ALBUMS OF MMIX: III

III. From Fathoms (by) Gifts From Enola

Post-Rock / Shoegaze / Post-Hardcore

Gifts From Enola's approach to an over-crowded genre is as subtle as it is interesting. A casual listener might dismiss them as "yet another post-rock band," but that would be a mere knee-jerk response, and a terrible mistake. GFE is another post-rock band, but they're deceptively clever about it. I was bored with most of 2009's post-rock contenders, even many albums from skilled old hands. From Fathoms contains no fancy gimmicks to set it apart, no orchestra or tap-dancing or Egyptian-themed lyrics with 4000 year old chord-progressions. There are hints of electronica, a few sound clips here and there and casually-dispersed vocals. But for the most part, this is upfront no-bullshit post-rock. With emphasis on the rock.

Gifts From Enola's main asset is their directness. Led by clean-toned guitars that explode into the mix, songs wash over you with astonishing freshness, wave upon wave of thick solid riffs. That, I think, is the greatest compliment I can give this album, especially considering its genre: more than half a year after it came out, From Fathoms still sounds incredibly fresh each of the many times I listen to it. There is so much energy here, so much enthusiasm and vigor for their music, GFE washes away all the rote, timid post-rock conventions, the epic build-ups and simmering, stewing guitar haze. Sure, there's reverb and delay and crescendos, and song-structures often lead to a pretty epic conclusion, but they do so much more than that along the way. Too many post-rock bands have discovered that a few choice guitar chords and ponderous effects will evoke certain basic emotions, and they dwell upon this, plucking away at melancholy as if it were a result and not a feeling. From Fathoms deconstructs the formula and reassembles it as something new and interesting. Songs are thick and fluid—if Do Make Say Think creates tidal music, GFE has created oceanic music, a background of beautiful storms led by a refreshingly earnest, unpretentious crash of guitars. Song structures don't follow any particular conventions, simply going where they wish, building up and knocking down, often thicker and deeper than you can see through—a major part of the album's freshness and energy. When they want to drop you into a bit of shoegazey indie rock with light vocals, they make sure you notice, they don't waste space with meaningless interludes. When screams come in and then fade out, there's suddenly space, an open sky and a sense of place, a beautiful Alcest-ian acoustic passage to move you forward into the next storm. From Fathoms is often heavy but never sludgey, and so the music seems to drench you, tugging and pushing and tossing you around instead of simply burying you in the mud.

Few bands can pull off the transition from light to dark or beautiful to catastrophic as sublimely as GFE. It's no coincidence that so much of this album mirrors a trip out to sea, and From Fathoms could easily be considered a concept album of sorts, ruthlessly shredding your ship with the colossal "Trieste," stuffing your head in the sink for a while before ending in a trio of surprisingly uplifting, heavy-hitting jams. I have no real qualms with this album, but it should be noted that it is very much an "album"—songs are not meant to stand on their own, and to some (unimportant) extent, they don't. I cannot listen to From Fathoms without listening to the whole thing, a testament to GFE's ability to rush you forward without ever seeming forced or hurried about it. This album covers vast emotional ground (emotional water?), impressively pulling off both sorrow and optimism without ever being manipulative or dull.

TOP X ALBUMS OF MMIX: TOP OF THE LIST

X. Eras (by) Apse
Psych Folk / Ambient / Indie Rock

Imagine that the apocalypse happened tomorrow and the only songs to survive were a few random albums by Radiohead and the Beta Band—random choices, mostly, but that's not important. Now, imagine you could travel 500 years into the future, where you stumbled upon a small society that absorbed and worshiped those albums generations ago, until they fell apart and the only music left was what that nascent society could reproduce and play on its own. If that little tribe somehow had electric guitars, this album is what pop music would sound like by then—filtered through primitive, earthy motifs, bouncy and tribal, colorful and creepy. Most of the surface-layer elements of mainstream rock are washed away, leaving a rough, beautifully textured underbelly. In many ways, Apse's music never feels complete—the vocals are buried in the mix, indistinct and ethereal, like hearing a group of people singing in the distance, hidden by forest. The drums are heavy and tribal, the basslines galloping forward with equal intensity, and the guitar on Eras often does little more than create atmosphere. Many will dismiss this album as half-formed and undeveloped, but if it seems empty, it is only because Eras so perfectly captures a time and place that doesn't quite exist—not yet.

IX. The Other Truths (by) Do Make Say Think
Post-Rock / Jazz Fusion / Folk

Do Make Say Think is one of the longest running post-rock bands in the world right now (that has consistently released albums during the last 10+ years) and so it's rather astonishing that The Other Truths, their sixth, sounds so entirely unlike anything else out there. DMST ignores most of the typical post-rock conventions: reverb and delay pedals aren't used much here, and crescendo-style song narratives are almost nonexistant. The music is tide-like, an aggressive ebb and flow of folky, full-bodied rhythms and jazz-style drums. Song structures go wherever DMST wants them to go, and the music within seems casual, almost lazy—not in the sense that the band isn't trying, but that they've reached a point where they have such command over their compositions that their songs spin airy circles around you with a minimum of effort. This is a band at their creative peak, and there's nothing passive about this music, nothing timid. It's intense, it's soft, it's Westerny, it's spacious, it's jazzy, it's friendly, it's going for a drive and you're along for the ride. With each of the four tracks an ode to the band's own name—Do, Make, Say, Think—one wonders if the members of DMST already realized that they just couldn't ever top a masterpiece like this.

VIII: Axe to Fall (by) Converge
Metal / Hardcore / Punk

Here's the secret to enjoying Converge: drink six cups of coffee first. Axe to Fall is nowhere close to accessible; it's dense and complicated and so aggressive that it's hard to figure out whether you're supposed to bang your head or cower on the floor in fear. But listen to the piece as a whole, let the purposeful pacing and layered intricacies unfold and maybe, maybe you'll be whisked away to the frantic, brutal landscape Converge skillfully paints. Equal parts technical metal showmanship and hardcore mayhem, Converge succeed as much through their delicious array of guitar-tones as by their amazing ability to give such blisteringly-fast songs so much personality. Their sense of tension and relief is masterful, and though the album weighs heavily on the side of tension, it only makes those releases all the more orgasmic. On the few songs where Converge slows things down and expands their sound, one begins to see how all that personality gets wrapped up in these brutal tunes. The Westerny monotone of "Cruel Bloom" is a direct nod to Tom Waits, but that whiskey-soaked, shadow-filled slum is hidden within everything here. Listening to Axe to Fall is like playing Whack-a-Mole... with rattlesnakes instead of moles and a six-string in place of a rubber mallet. Fuck yeah.

VII. Dyad 1909 / Found Songs (by) Ólafur Arnalds
Neo-Classical / Electronica / Ambient

Ólafur Arnalds released two stunning albums in 2009, and though it may be cheating to include both (or either, since neither is a true album in the strictest sense), this young Icelandic composer is just too talented not to be on my list. Dyad 1909 is easily my favorite of these two releases, though I felt it would be unfair to include it on its own. Compiled as the soundtrack for an experimental ballet of the same name, it contains three new songs, two old songs and one astonishing remix. Despite being part greatest-hits, the album is Arnald's most forward and heavy-hitting so far, overlaying booming electronica beats on top of his exquisitely minimalist violin and piano compositions. "Brotsjor" and "Til Enda" absolutely destroy, and since they're new, they're well worth the price of admission on their own. Like a glacier breaking apart and smearing you across the ice, Dyad is haunting, devastating, severe, desolate... and of course, heartrendingly beautiful. Lost Songs was a project conceived by Arnalds earlier in the year, in which he wrote, recorded and released a song every day straight for a week. The songs are short and focused, beautiful for all their simplicity, proving that Arnalds has a better mastery of space, atmosphere and emotional depth than perhaps any other composer working today.

VI. Sunden (by) The Waters Deep Here
Instrumental Metal / Post-Rock

This year's most random pick is also the album probably doomed to perpetual under-appreciation. Self-produced, self-released and almost totally unnoticed by anyone anywhere, Sunden didn't have me expecting much. And yet, in spite of the off-putting band name and barebones MySpace, this album's a total knockout. TWDH writes metal, and pretty straightforward metal at that. That's fine. Post-metal has been stale almost since the day it was born, and Isis-style sludge is getting extremely cliche by now. There may be only one guitar here, but the riffs are all over the place, tearing apart your face like a pack of rabid, unfed bears. The ass-kicking riffs never really stop coming, but instead of looping each or layering simple structures into a dense cloud of atmosphere, the guitarist bounces from one idea to the next, building a basic theme along the way. Songs wander into jazz-like labyrinths of rich, carefully-unfolding jams, meandering and smashing and crashing about without apparent direction before suddenly, satisfyingly hurling you back to the song's center. Though relatively straightforward and sometimes poorly-paced, Sunden proves that crushing, relentless metal can still contain plenty of flavor without resorting to scene cliches and rigid structural dogmas. The Waters Deep Here shows astonishing promise—now they just need to add an apostrophe to their name.

V. Hollow Be My Name (by) Eleventh He Reaches London
Post-Hardcore / Indie Rock / Progressive

Eleventh He Reaches London, like many bands on this list, knows how to combine disingenuous genres into a sound that flows from your speakers as a cohesive, tightly-composed musical personality. A concept album about 1800's Australian colonists who are pissed off at God and the Queen (or something), Hollow Be My Name presents something like a post-hardcore version of The Decemberists. The experimental mindset is there, but the songs are tight, focused and extremely forward, while intricate guitar work, unexpected tempo shifts and angry, rabble-rousing vocals keep the music from ever growing stale. That the album remains so fluid is merely a testament to the skill with which this Australian band composes. The clever, aggressive guitar-work carries most of the weight here, while the vocalist gives an equally incredible performance, showing as much versatility and energy as the rest of the band. Songs bounce along, perfectly paced and wonderfully detailed, unleashing just enough screamed rage, spoken-word growl and raw post-punk grit to make this far more interesting than mere rock'n'roll.

IV. Gin (by) Cobalt
Metal / Metal / Metal

With their third full-length release, two-man Cobalt has shifted the sound of their brooding pagan bonfire hymns from experimental black-metal to something more song-based but equally unorthodox. Gin is an homage to Ernest Hemmingway and Hunter S. Thompson, and the album certainly sounds like a drowned and dreary downward spiral to hell. Lyricist and vocalist Phil McSorley is a Sergeant in the US Army who served in Iraq, and the experience shows, even down to his voice, which rushes over the mix like wind bursting through a broken window. Cobalt has always struck me as one of the most sincere and yet disturbing metal bands out there, wasting little time on dick-wagging showmanship. Their heaviness never sounds like it's there just for the sake of being "metal," while their chilling ambiance, acoustic accompaniments and pulverizing guitarwork remain effortless. It should be noted that genius multi-instrumentalist Eric Wunder plays and/or writes—from what I understand—almost everything but the lyrics, and brings a coherency and energy that few five person bands can match, sculpting a sound that's both straightforward and yet crushingly morose. Every glimpse into pagan darkness makes Cobalt's music no less infectious—these men know how to write an absorbing, haunting song.

2009 FALL BEER REVIEW

With the style's surging popularity in recent years, it seems almost every micro is now trying their hand at a pumpkin ale. Unlike other "fruit/vegetable" beers, pumpkin beers aren't as much of a gimmick, as the style was common in Colonial times (other beer ingredients, which had to be shipped to the colonies, were more expensive than native pumpkins). Many American breweries often treat "fruit" beers as a trick to entice non-beer-drinkers, and the results rarely hold up. This is still the case with many pumpkin beers, but there are those brave few prepared to craft this fine style as it deserves, demonstrating yet again why beer is the only drink befitting a Civilized Man.

Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale - Coors Brewing Co. (CO)
Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale - Anheuser-Busch (MO)
VERDICT: No
Danger, Will Robinson!

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale - Smuttynose Brewing Company (NH)
Post Road Pumpkin Ale - Brooklyn Brewery (NY)
Pumpkinhead Ale - Shipyard Brewing Co. (ME)
Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale - Buffalo Bill's Brewery (CA)
VERDICT: Meh; meh; meh; meh
All bland, generic ales with some vaguely autumnal spices thrown in. These are otherwise great breweries, and I'm really disappointed how little effort they seemed to put into these seasonal beers.  I do not believe any use actual pumpkin in the brewing process, so they're kind of gimmicks, but yet they're some of the most common found in grocery stores during autumn.  Too bitter or too watery, too bland, barely any pumpkin taste. There are worse beers out there, and these remain (mostly) drinkable, but they give the concept of pumpkin beer a bad face for the general public.

Saranac Pumpkin Ale - The Matt Brewing Company (NY)
VERDICT: Drinkable
Saranac usually makes very fine beers, in my experience — not daring, unique or mindblowing, but consistent, reliable and drinkable. Saranac Pumpkin is unsurprisingly the best of the commonly available six pack pumpkins, and cheap too. The pumpkin taste comes in clear here, and right up-front. There are slight bitter notes, but nothing odd, and the aftertaste is of a pleasant, smooth vanilla that remains until the taste is gone altogether. You can savor this beer or guzzle it, and it works either way. Granted, the pumpkin flavor is never strong, and as it's upfront, it's not wholly memorable or lingering. As the beer sits and you reach the bottom of the bottle, the vanilla becomes far more prominent, all but drowning out the spices. Still, given its price and taste, this is one of the best session pumpkin beers.

Pumpkin Ale - Captain Lawrence (NY)
VERDICT: Good
The Cap'n's pumpkin attempt isn't really the most anything, but it's a bit smoother and richer than the Saranac, and holds its flavor well throughout. The pumpkin taste is never strong, and though you get a bit of that usual bitter-spiciness up front, the overall mouthfeel is very sweet without any exact source that stands out — for good or bad. The taste levels quickly, and the smoothness of this ale means quite a lot of it can go down quickly. Still, for a brewery like this, and a beer that's not even available in bottles, I would have expected and enjoyed a much stronger, bolder flavor.

Will Stevens' Pumpkin Ale - Wolaver's / Otter Creek Brewing (VT)
VERDICT: Decent
Similar to the Captain Lawrence entry, this exuberantly-titled pumpkin is actually fairly plain. A smooth, medium-body ale, this one isn't too spicy, and the pumpkin flavor was subtle but enjoyable. There's also a pleasant lack of bitterness, and the flavoring and mouthfeel are consistent, so it has that going for it. Nothing remarkable, but not bad, so I won't argue with another pumpkin beer to choose from.

Fisherman's Pumpkin Stout - Cape Ann Brewing Company (MA)
VERDICT: Good, though surprisingly unremarkable
Well, this is different. A pumpkin stout. It looks like a stout, certainly the darkest I've seen any pumpkin beer. It mostly tastes like a stout, too, but I wasn't expecting the most pumpkiny thing since the Charlie Brown Halloween Special, either. The pumpkin surges through the mouth as a sort of overtone, never really feeling present but nonetheless adding a tasty character to the beer. Well balanced. This is fairly creamy and smooth as stouts go, definitely an easy-drinker. You miss out on the spicy-sweet flavors that make other good pumpkin beers appealing, but the combo of slightly-bitter pumpkin flavoring and a rich stout mouthfeel go surprisingly well together. The aftertaste is almost sweet. I wouldn't say this is notable as a pumpkin beer, and probably wouldn't appeal to stout-snobs, but for a fan of both styles with an open mind, this is actually a quite solid entry.

Punkin' Ale - Dogfish Head (DE)
VERDICT: Slightly misleading, but good
Dogfish Head is reliable as always, though with so much competition in this area, not as innovate as with their other offerings. Their Punkin Ale is a rich brown ale, somewhat darker and richer than many other pumpkins. Instead of strong spices or strong pumpkin flavor, they've gone with more of a caramelized brown sugary taste and heavy malts. The pumpkin comes in, but thoroughly blended with all the other flavors, which are hard to tell apart. Very drinkable, and the flavors never become unpleasant, despite the richness.

Night Owl Pumpkin - Elysian Brewing Company (WA)
VERDICT: Debatable
I would wager that few micros have created so many varieties of pumpkin beer as Elysian — a holyshit six, maybe more. Night Owl is a solid entry, though still reliant on spices more than pumpkin, which hits mostly in the aftertaste. The wallop of spices isn't unpleasant, but overall I am reminded of poorly-baked pumpkin bread rather than well-spiced pumpkin pie. I would recommend this on taste, but given the price and quantity (8 dollars for a 22 ounce bottle) there are almost certainly going to be better options.

The Great Pumpkin - Elysian Brewing Company (WA)
VERDICT: Perfect
Now we're getting to what pumpkin beer should be. This would rank in my Top 10 of beers alone, and is the second best pumpkin beer I've had — possibly tied for first depending on my mood. I had this at Blind Tiger in the West Village, so I can't vouch for availability in bottles, but its 7 dollar per-glass price point conveniently discouraged me from sitting there and literally bathing myself in this holy nectar all night, as I otherwise would have done. The pumpkin taste here is strong, finally resembling a thick creamy slice of pumpkin pie, but what made this notable for me is the even leveling of the spices, which never became overwhelming and fade nicely in the aftertaste. This is an incredibly consistent beer. The mouthfeel is neither thin nor overly rich, which makes it go down all-the-more easily. Even at 8% ABV, this beer is dangerously drinkable, and puts Elysian on my list of breweries to keep track of. Delicious.

Pumking Ale - Southern Tier Brewing Company (NY)
VERDICT: Perfect
I really can't say a lot about this beer, it's just... good.  I mean: amazing.  9% ABV that you'll never notice. Insane pumpkin-pie mouthfeel. Thick and rewarding but not syrupy, satisfying from initial onset to the last note, never once timid. Pleasant, lingering aftertaste. What sets this apart from The Great Pumpkin is the complex, shifting pallet of flavors — enough to keep you guessing until the 22 ounce bottle is gone, whereas the former retains a very consistent flavor from beginning to end, top to bottom. This is a daring, adventurous beer, and highly rewarding. When you open Pumking, choirs of angels surge forth from the heavens. Scantily clad women throw themselves upon you because of your remarkable good taste. Probably, at this moment, my all-time favorite beer.  So please don't drink it.  It's only available for about a month of the year, and I want it all.