The 2009 Longlist Pt. 1 - Missed It By That Much

So after an intense period of re-listening to the longlist and poring over tea leaves, I've finally compiled my Top 20 Albums of 2009, which will be revealed in the fifth annual New Year's Eve special on UMFM (101.5 FM in Winnipeg or streaming live at UMFM.com). That show - which will also feature my Top 20 songs and the selections of co-host and UMFM Station Manager Jared McKetiak should start around 4pm on the 31st and run right up to the big apple plummet in NYC. And if you miss it on the 31st, we'll be rebroadcasting it during the day on the 1st.

I will be posting my Top 20 selections here AFTER January 1st, but as I did last year, I'm going to take some time to run through the worthy contenders that made my longlist for consideration. All told, the longlist ran sixty-nine entries long - meaning after subtracting my Top 20 there were forty-nine 'also-ran's.' I'm going to break the list up into four batches and while the three after this are bundled in no particular order, this first group of twelve albums are the ones that were in very serious consideration for the Top 20, narrowly missing inclusion. They're the records I debated over and their omission weighs heaviest.

Here we go:

Russian Circles - Geneva (Suicide Squeeze)
This one weighed especially heavy on me (no pun intended). Station was my #1 album of 2008 and Geneva was a strong follow-up. I was surprised by how quickly the band put this together after officially adding Brian Cook as bassist and an intense touring schedule for Station, but Geneva didn't sound hurried and was a natural progression for the band. They even incorporated strings into some of the songs that avoided sounding pretentious or superfluous. No small feat.



Dog Day - Concentration (Outside)
This gender-balanced four-piece from Halifax made one of the best straight-up ROCK records of 2009 with Concentration. I've already blogged this album at length, so I'd just encourage you to read my previous entry (and go pick up a copy of the Elder Schoolhouse 12-inch that came out recently).



Tiny Vipers - Life On Earth (Sub Pop)
Here's another one I blogged about earlier in the year (and no, inclusion on Ear To The Sound doesn't necessarily mean inclusion on my longlist...). This was a quiet and unassuming record that stuck with me.



Throw Me The Statue - Creaturesque (Secretly Canadian)
I literally put this one in the Top 20, then pulled it. Twice. I re-listened to Creaturesque more than any other record while compiling my list and think it's a flat out great record, but I still bumped it. In my review of the record for Stylus, I noted that "it doesn’t happen too often, but when it does I can’t help but be impressed. Seattle’s Throw Me The Statue have followed up 2008’s Moonbeams – one of my Top 20 of last year – with an album that has quickly established itself as a contender for this year as well."
I'm still impressed.



Sleep Whale - Houseboat (Western Vinyl)
I wrote about Sleep Whale's Little Brite EP, but of course, it being an EP it was excluded from consideration. Since the release of that EP, the band released a full-length on Western Vinyl that built nicely on the promise and ideas of Little Brite. I think this one was the wife's favourite from the nearly-made-its.



Lightning Dust - Infinite Light (Jagjaguwar)
Amber Webber and Joshua Wells started Lightning Dust as a side-project to chart different musical waters from Black Mountain. While I LOVE me some Black Mountain, the pair could stick to Lightning Dust at this point and I'd be pretty content. Infinite Light was a big step forward from their self-titled debut and a thoroughly captivating listen.



Nomo - Invisible Cities (Ubiquity)
Apparently 2009 was not a good year to release a follow-up to one of my favourite records of 2008. Nomo's Ghost Rock was my #2 record last year and McKetiak was pretty surprised to hear Invisible Cities didn't make the 2009 cut. It was a strong follow-up, but I felt it didn't quite measure up to the prior record in terms of energy or experimentation.



The Lytics - The Lytics (Pipe and Hat)
This was one of the most joyous records of the year and having seen the group perform live, I know they've managed to capture the energy and sound of their live show on their self-title debut. This is the type of positivity-oriented hip-hop that takes me back to the days of the Native Tongues and one of my favourite records of all time: 3 Feet High & Rising. Listen for a cut from this record in my Top 20 songs on the 31st.



Quiet Nights Orchestra - Chapter One (Do Right!)
The tagline for the QNO's website on Google says "New Swedish Jazz with Classic Elements" and that aptly summarizes the sound, but not the scope of Chapter One. While it was released on Toronto's Do Right! label, it could just as easily have found a home at imprints as diverse as Compost or Verve.



Letting Up Despite Great Faults - Letting Up Despite Great Faults (New Words)
Here's another record that made a contribution to my Top 20 Songs of 2009. The band name suggests a particularly emo sound, but this LA group make indie-electro that borrows from shoegaze and crests and troughs like the waves near Malibu.



Ohbijou - Beacons (Last Gang)
Here's a group that won me over with their live performance. Thinking about their show had me re-exploring the little treasures on offer on Beacons. And then the group did a little cover of Wham's "Last Christmas" that endeared them even further to me over the holidays. But those factors weren't quite enough to push them into the Top 20.



Jay Reatard - Watch Me Fall (Matador)
Here's a guy who showed up on a LOT of lists last year with Singles 06-07, but since that was a compilation it didn't meet my criteria. Watch Me Fall isn't quite as strong as that comp, but it's still a heck of an album (and I'm of the opinion it's more difficult to assemble a front-to-back album than a collection of singles).

They were never in the running...

By now, you'd have to be living in a cave to have missed the Year-End and Decade's End lists that are being bandied about. While I'm still working my way through the longlist for my Top 20 of 2009 (currently sitting at 60 albums long) in advance of my annual New Year's Eve spectacular on UMFM, I can give a rundown on a list of albums that were never in the running. Which is not to say that they're not good records, just thanks to the list-fascist that lives within, they're disqualified by virtue of being one of the following: a compilation, a reissue, a soundtrack, a live album or an EP. That's right, only original-material individual-artist full-lengths make the Ear To The Sound longlist. Anything else gets a handshake and a hearty 'huzzah.'

Rest assured that once the longlist has been winnowed down to my top 20 I'll be repeating last year's exercise in music-critic-masturbation and detailing each of my picks with the "Also rans" kicking things off.

For now, here are my "fuck I loved these records, if only I'd let myself count them" selections:

Timber Timbre - Timber Timbre [Out Of This Spark / Arts & Crafts]

Taylor Kirk is this year's Justin Vernon. Dude releases one of the best albums of the year AT THE VERY END of the preceding year and totally misses my prior year's Best Of and is disqualified for the current year. Timber Timbre would have had a guaranteed Top 5 placing for 2009 if it hadn't come out in late December 2008. Seriously, I wait until the last possible minute to do my list and stuff like this still happens.

**See comments one through three below to see why I striked this.**

Eau Claire Memorial Jazz 1 feat. Justin Vernon - A Decade with Duke [Jagjaguwar]
Speaking of Justin Vernon, he went back to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to perform with his old high school jazz band and the result is A Decade with Duke which features two Bon Iver songs and a half-dozen jazz standards, including "Miss Otis Regrets" which is a really spooky tune when you listen to the lyrics.

Crush Buildings - Surrender Sleep [Independent]
I know I just wrote about this Ottawa band mere minutes ago, but the album apparently came out in 2008 and only recently made its way outside of the capital city and into my inbox. Still worth a listen. "Ghoul Pounds" remains on heavy rotation 'round these parts.

The Wilderness of Manitoba - Hymns of Love & Spirits [Independent]
Another group I've already written about that finds itself on this here list - but not because it actually came out in '08. No, Hymns of Love & Spirits is on here because it is an EP. I honestly can't remember when exactly I established my criteria, but the gist of not counting an EP is because it's conceivably easier to write a few good songs and release a solid EP than it is to write a strong full-length record. In fact, a few mediocre records could have the fat trimmed from them and be really lean, mean EPs in my mind. Now it may in fact be just as difficult to write a strong EP as LP, but them's the breaks.

Death - For The Whole World To See... [Drag City]
This one took me back to one of my first posts here on Ear To The Sound. They sound totally different, but it's another one of those records I can't believe was canned after it was first recorded and that still sounds as fresh and exciting decades later. The weed must have been really good back then.

Various - Forge Your Own Chains, Vol. 1: Heavy Psychedelic Ballads and Dirges 1968-1974 [Now Again]

Leave it to Egon (he of Stones Throw) to unearth these gems and release them in a gorgeous looking double-LP. Who knew psychedelia was so funky? Some of these are behemoths - like bookends "Song Of A Sinner" and "Somebody's Calling My Name" (by Top Drawer and Baby Grandmothers respectively), but some of them are summer-fling brief. All of them are quality.

Various - Tumbélé! Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds from the French Caribbean, 1663-1974 [Soundway]

Kudos to my boss and friend, Jared McKetiak, for putting me on to this one. Covering some of the same period as Forge Your Own Chains, this is an entirely different sound. Soundway is one of those labels doing fantastic work that goes largely unsung - they dig away at music from the far corners of the world and bring it to ears desperate for new sounds (or at least new to them).

Various - Brownswood Bubblers 4 [Brownswood Recordings]

I'm not wishing I had a different life from the one I'm leading, but if I could have anyone else's career, it would be Gilles Peterson. Dude has a fantastic radio show on the BBC, has run a couple dope labels, digs for records like a fiend, and has been responsible for a whole whack of fantastic compilations, including this one. Vol. 4 in his series of spotlights on the Brownswood label (his own, natch) has some known quantities (Mayer Hawthorne, El Michaels Affair) and some new names that are now on my "ones to watch" list (yU, Souleance, Floating Points). I dropped a couple selections from this album at the UMFM Christmas party last week and it went over like gangbusters.

El Michaels Affair - Walk On By: A Tribute to Black Moses [Truth & Soul]
Speaking of El Michaels Affair, their tribute to Isaac Hayes definitely deserves a spot on the shoulda-been-a-contender list. Taking a break from covering the Wu-Tang Clan, the instrumental group tackle "Bumpy's Lament" and "Shaft" among others. Originally a download-only release, Walk On By is apparently now available on vinyl.


24 Carat Black - Gone: The Promises Of Yesterday [Numero Group]
Another year, another Numero Group release on one of these lists. Those dudes in Chicago know what they're doing when it comes to reissues and compilations and as usual, they put as much care into the packaging and liner notes as they do into the music itself. 24 Carat Black's first record, Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth [Enterprise, 1973] has been sampled by the likes of Jay-Z and Digable Planets and was thought to be the only recording the band put to tape. But it turns out that for "35 years, the sketches for 24-Carat Black’s sophomore release hibernated in keyboardist and session engineer Bruce Thompson’s basement below the south side of Chicago." Some of the recordings were lost to damage, but Numero Group was able to salvage six songs, collected on Gone.

Pax Nicholas & the Netty Family - Na Teef Know De Road Of Teef [Daptone]
Daptone - the label that brought you Sharon Jones - is known primarily for releasing contemporary albums that sound like they could be unearthed treasures from yesteryear. But as they did with the excellent Bob & Gene reissue, with Teef Know De Road Of Teef they're bringing an amazing album recorded decades ago to the attention of current audiences. Nicholas Addo-Nettey was a Ghanian-born artist who performed in Fela Kuti's Africa 70. As it's told in the Daptone annals, Kuti heard Teef... and immediately demanded the record be buried. I guess the dude was threatened by how good a record this is.

Chrush-mas Time...

UMFM, the station where I work and host my radio show, belongs to the National Campus and Community Radio Association (aka the NCRA) and member stations report their weekly charts to a national chart known as Earshot. If you read Exclaim, you’ve likely seen the charts in the back page.
At an NCRA conference a few years back the Music Directors from various stations came up with idea to send out mailers with prime local material for others to check out. When it comes under the banner of another c/c station and not just out of the blue, folks are more inclined to check a record out.

Case in point is today’s album which came from Ottawa via the fine folks at CHUO last week. With the great packaging (which I can’t find a picture of, but trust me, it’s hella cool), I would have checked this album out regardless but with the stamp of approval from Joni Sadler, Surrender Sleep from Crush Buildings was moved to the top of the review pile.

I was totally taken with the album, right from opener “Konstantinos,” and by the third (and best) track, “Ghoul Pounds” I was sold on this two-piece (or is it five-piece?) take on Kid A-esque glitchy rock and started poking around the interweb to find out more about Crush Buildings. Imagine my surprise to discover that Surrender Sleep was actually released in August of 2008! Apparently the ‘neverending delays’ that I Heart Music referred to weren’t limited to the creation of the record but also to getting it out beyond the 613.

Whatever the reason for it taking so long, I’m just glad it’s getting a broader release and hopefully a broader audience.

You can check out the band’s Myspace page and website, but it would appear neither of them has been updated in a while… Crush Buildings, if you’re still out there, what are you up to??

What The Wild Things Record

It's been more than a minute since I last posted here on Ear To The Sound. Life outside of the interweb seems to keep interrupting and deadlines for publications that actually have such things weigh heavier than this self-directed exercised.
That said, since it's been a while, this one's a triple-feature like they used to do on holiday weekends at the Odeon drive-in back in the day. The common link between the three disparate sounding acts is that all have nature-inspired names.

First up is Bear In Heaven, who apparently Pitchfork have blessed with a "Best New Music" which means me and the 'Fork have been seeing eye-to-eye on more than a few records of late. Should I be concerned?
Beast Rest Forth Mouth is Bear In Heaven's sophomore album and instead of a slump it finds the Brooklyn band standing ramrod straight. While the music recalls Animal Collective with its expansive - at times chaotic - sound, it is also a more muscular, direct listen. Gauzy vocals and distant toms on opener "Beast In Peace" are abandoned a minute-and-a-half in for piercing, layered guitars and screams.
This is followed by the urgent shuffle of "Wholehearted Mess" with its insistent keyboard lines and "dig out/dig out/dig out" chorus. Look for Beast Rest Forth Mouth amongst the contenders for my favourite albums of 2009.

One album you won't see amongst the contenders is Hymns of Love & Spirits from The Wilderness of Manitoba. Which is not to say it isn't worthy of inclusion - it's just that I have very strict rules about including only full-length original albums and not considering compilations, Best Of's and EP's for my year-end list. Hymns... - while amazing - is an EP and thus ruled ineligible by my inner-fascist-list-maker.
Take a listen to "Bluebirds," the gorgeous opener and then weigh the fact that "Bluebirds" isn't even the best song on the EP. That honour goes to "Crow's Feet" a heartbreaking number that doesn't so much chronicle love lost as love never discovered as vocalist Will Whitwham intones "Love's just a word that he learned how to speak."
While the seven songs included on Hymns... (plus a bonus track, Whitwham's mother's original version of "Evening") are primarily acoustic, calling this a folk record would be a disservice to the band and to the genre. The Wilderness of Manitoba are 'folk' in the way of The Wooden Sky and Evening Hymns, not Pete Seeger and Bruce Cockburn. This is an amazing album - regardless of length. They do get bonus kudos for name-checking my home province.

Our last nature-based artist for today is Sea Wolf who quietly follows up 2007's great Leaves In The River with White Water, White Bloom. This is the third record Alex Church has recorded under his Sea Wolf moniker as well as the third released via the under-appreciated Dangerbird Records label (One AM Radio, Silversun Pickups, Dappled Cities). Church has been Creek Drank The Cradle wispy in the past, but much like Sam Beam's most recent effort, there's a heft to White Water, White Bloom that's evident right from opener "Wicked Blood." It doesn't hurt that the song is also catchy as hell.
Attention to songcraft is evident all over this album and there are numerous tracks that stick in the brain long after the final tune has played.

Check out the video for Sea Wolf's excellent lead-off track, "Wicked Blood" starring (where-the-hell-has-she-been) Shannyn Sossamon.


Visit Bear in Heaven's Myspace and their official website.

The Wilderness of Manitoba can be found on Myspace and on Facebook.

Check out Sea Wolf's Myspace page and official website.

Thanks for reading, now start listening...

Spooky Scary

Just in time for Halloween and all the attendant ghouls and goblins comes Dead Man's Bones, the debut album from Dead Man's Bones (I know, right?). While I would have appreciated a more original title, if the band exhausted their creative efforts coming up with the material on the album then I'm fine with that. There's even a song called "Dead Man's Bones" putting the group on a even footing with Wilco right now.

The album also features song titles including "Buried In Water," "Flowers Grow Out Of My Grave" and "Lose Your Soul" which should give you a bit of a hint about how macabre the material is. Add in the fact that the band is accompanied by a choir of schoolchildren and it becomes particularly creepy. It's like a Langley Schools Music Project record if Dario Argento was the choirmaster. Despite the creepy vibe, there's still a sunniness that can't be masked as the children take great delight in belting out lyrics like "my body's a zombie for you" which can be heard below:


If Dead Man's Bones was just creepy lyrics delivered by kids, this would be a novelty act quickly forgotten after November 1st, but there's great musicality and a gentleness to the record as well. The first part of "Name In Stone," for instance, brings to mind Devendra Banhart's light touch.



Don't forget to check out Dead Man's Bones Myspace page and website, which are both creepy as fuck - check the dude digging the grave on the official website (although admittedly the disembodied head on Myspace kinda makes me think of this)

Oh, if you're wondering how long it would take me to mention the fact that actor Ryan Gosling is in this band, here's your answer. But to be honest, I listened to this album and was captivated before I learned that fact. That first listen was prompted only because it's on one of my favourite labels; Anti-. Look past the 'vanity project' / 'actor band' epithets likely to be slung by those who haven't really listened. Speaking of which...

Thanks for reading, now start listening...

It's Not The Band I Hate, It's Their Name...

Seriously, what is in the water in Sweden. Is there some secret experiment going on where the drinking water has been mixed (or outright replaced) with Coca-Cola? How else to explain their proficiency at writing incredible pop songs.
For decades now there have been a string of absolute pop marvels produced by Swedes and I'm officially adding The Mary Onettes to a list that includes ABBA, the Cardigans, Robyn, the Acid House Kings, Peter Bjorn & John and Jens Lekman.

Hailing from Torpa, Jönköping, this quartet is about to release their second full-length album, Islands, on November 4th on Labrador Records. While I enjoyed their 2007 self-titled debut album, they take a great step forward here with both the production and the songwriting.

Album highlight "Dare" features an epic intro that swells with guitars and electronic strings before receding when Philip Ekström's impassioned vocals come in. They come back on the chorus - which is epic without screaming "EPIC" - and then dissipate again on the verses, simmering in the background. The best part is that the band chooses to match the accompaniment to the melodic line as Ekström climbs the register on "now I know / turning here / ain't that hard / despite my fear" [**I may be wrong about that second line - I can't find the official lyrics anywhere**]. It's always a risk for the entire focus to be on the melody and abandon harmony but damned if The Mary Onettes don't pull it off.

Their sound is a bit more muscular on lead-off single "Puzzles," a keyboard-driven tune reminiscent of New Order's work and another slice of pop perfection, where lyrics that express ennui and searching are dressed up in catchy melodies. This is where fans of The Smiths ears perk up like mine did.

Now about the band's name and my title for this post... maybe 'hate' is too strong a word, but I certainly don't like it. Why not The Marionettes? Or something altogether different. The 'cleverness' of Mary Onettes just makes me think of the movie That Thing You Do where the band want to call themselves the Oneders and people pronounce it oh-nee-ders instead of won-ders. Ah well, I'm not in the band so it wasn't my decision.

While the rest of the material on Islands is uniformly solid, take a listen to my favourite song from the album, "Dare" as well as "Puzzles," both courtesy of Magnum PR.

And be sure to check out the Mary Onettes Myspace page and their Labrador Records artists' page while their official website is under construction.

Thanks for reading, now start listening...

Old Friends, Back Again...

A brief post on some past Ear To The Sound favourites that have recently released new records worth a listen:

I guess we'll take this alphabetically and start with the Bowerbirds.
Upper Air was released on Dead Oceans July 7th and it is a strong follow-up to Hymns For A Dark Horse. None of the songs have stuck in my head the way "Bur Oak" did, but it's still a solid collection with the same blending of folk and indie as on the prior record.

Have a listen to "Northern Lights"


Next up is Victoria, B.C. band the Paper Cranes who followed up Halcyon Days with Chivalry's Dead - an album that came out on my birthday this August. When I spoke to Ryan McCullagh from the band recently, he explained that the title isn't a statement about the state of manners in contemporary society or the impact of feminism on notions of chivalry. "[The phrase] just stuck in my head from Archie comics when I was a kid. Archie wouldn't hold a door open for Veronica and she would say "oh, chivalry's dead." I wish I could say there was some deeper meaning to it than that, or I had some sort of social commentary but it was Archie comics."

You can listen to the title track, and many other Paper Cranes songs here.

Lastly, we've got Geneva - the follow-up to Station from Chicago's Russian Circles. Still with Suicide Squeeze, they have grown from a duo to a trio adding bassist Brian Cook to the official lineup after he guested all over Station. The album will be released on October 20th, but I've had a couple listens to an advance copy that just landed at the station and Geneva is every bit as monstrously beautiful and punishing as my #1 record of 2008. Good god - could they repeat the feat in 2009??!!

Feast your ears on the Suicide Squeeze stream of the entire album while I go watch my Twins feast on the Tigers.

Thanks for reading, now start listening...