Let It Go!

I'm sure this is not a unique scene right now. But, I can't help but share a Kaleia version.

Brian's Favorite Albums of 2009

Yup, that says 2009.  I'm a little slow with my lists.  I had this one mostly figured out in 2009 but couldn't decide which of my top two was going to be my number one.  I'm still not totally sure but I'll go with the one I listen to more.

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns


Playful drums, earnest vocals more than a little reminiscent of Neutral Milk Hotel, and youthful exuberance in every strum of the guitar could be a recipe for disaster but in this case it all works to make this one of the most fun and listenable records of the year.

The Antlers - Hospice 


I’ve heard that this story of a hospice employee and his terminally ill patient is merely a device to describe an emotionally abusive relationship.  They say it isn’t real.  My emotions don’t care.  I spent many nights alone in a darkened car with this record.  Cathartic.

Noah and the Whale - The First Day of Spring 


If there were going to be a break-up record on this list I thought for most of the year it would be filled by The Swell Season, who did churn out some great songs on a solid record, but this disc swooped in to take it’s place.  Runs the gambit of emotional tumult, which I can only imagine, since my only break-up was 12-year-old style. 

Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy


The deserving winner of Britain’s Mercury prize became the first rap/hip hop album I’ve really loved.  Debelle eschews the egotism and chauvinism that so ubiquitous in hip-hop, instead sharing her hopes, her vulnerability, intimacy.

Alela Diane - To Be Still 


Beautiful wist to be sung during those quiet pauses while the ship is anchored or the horses are hitched.

tUnE-yArDs - BiRd BrAiNs 


Tom Waits and Kimya Dawson locked their baby in the basement and she made this raucous little lo-fi wonder. 

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle 


I’ve heard of speak-singing but I didn’t think it was possible to speak-croon until I heard this lovely batch of orchestrated folk, full of stories ambling through nature.

David Bazan - Curse Your Branches 


Despite a few dull songs, the album, which is an intimate self-portrait of a recovering alcoholic who has lost his faith, is emotionally devastating.  It's capped off with a most tender and heart-breaking finale in which Bazan tells of “long walks with my daughter/ who is lately full of questions about You.”

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Up from Below 


If only they cut half the songs, this could have been in my top three.  Still, as it stands, Up from Below boasts a handful of truly great songs, including my undisputed favorite of the year, "Home," which can’t not make me smile.

Rodrigo y Gabriela - 11:11 


Not quite as good as their debut, these heavy-metallers-turned-flamenco-guitarists nevertheless don’t have a song on here that won’t get your feet stomping. 

The XX - XX


How is it that music so simple can be so fresh.  Turn off the lights and succumb to the sexy, sleepy malaise.

The Twilight Sad - Forget the Night Ahead


Wall-of-sound Guitars + Thick Scottish Vocals = Never Gets Old

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast


I can't imagine this playful logophile and adroit instrumentalist putting out an album that didn't make my top 15.  

 Iron and Wine - Around the Well


This double disc compilation of songs not found on any of his LPs may be the last hurrah for the kind of hushed, poetic lo-fi folk that made me fall in love with Sam Beam.  Push yourself musically Sam, but please, please come back to your bread and butter some day!  Features one of my favorite songs of the decade, "The Trapeze Swinger."

 Dan Deacon - Bromst


This frenetic experimental-leaning electronic record from the man known for making tunes that sound like the Chipmunks on speed, is unexpectedly beautiful.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

I'm still incredulous that pop as catchy as this doesn't have me gagging after 10 songs.

Brian's Top Ten Albums of 2008

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

A moving work of lo-fi introspection. Vernon's layered falsetto, recorded in a wintery cabin in Wisconsin, still gives me shivers.

The Dodos - Visiter

Deep, driving polyrhythms undergird emphatic mandolin and guitar amidst percussive tambourine and a flurry of other instruments on this amazing, slightly off-kilter LP that just might highjack your nervous system. The Dodos take everything immediately lovable about Animal Collective and multiply it.

Damien Jurado - Caught in the Trees

I have always loved Damien Jurado for his ability to evoke the pathos of weary souls and forgotten stories, plunging us into the lives of misfits and anti-heroes who only get noticed if their mugshot makes the news. That's his bread and butter, and there's plenty of it on Caught in the Trees. But it's also his most versatile album to date, showing that his experiments away from straight forward folk have paid off.

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

A really solid indie rock album. Plus, I'm a sucker for Scottish vocals.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes most popular song "White Winter Hymnal"--I was following the, I was following the, I...--annoyed me enough that I gave up on them early despite an otherwise promisingly original sound.  Hearing a second song months later was all it took for this Seattle band to win me back.  Describing their own music (accurately, methinks), they say they play "baroque harmonic pop jams."

Sigur Rós - Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust

While not as strong as most of their soaring, ethereal back catalog Sigur Ros' latest album is an encouraging departure that signals nothing's going stale yet. The opening track, Gobbledigook, is an unexpectedly joyous romp that melds Steve Reich, Animal Collective, and Dave Matthews. Mmmmm.

Blind Pilot - 3 Rounds and a Sound

Portland keeps pumping out great music.  And, as a whole album, this debut from the duo known as Blind Pilot was the best of the bunch last year.  Packed full of simple indie-folk-pop songs that get better the more you listen. 

Juana Molina - Un Día

This Argentine ex-soap star's hushed vocals over gentle tribal rhythms and strange aural juxtapositions will either have you dancing in a trance or hallucinating vaguely sinister claymation music videos.

Jacaszek - Treny

Chained to his laptop, Polish composer Michal Jacaszek sits in a cavernous dungeon with a partial symphony of ghosts and a forgotten angel singing lonely lamentations. Dark and beautiful. And dark.

Max Richter - 24 Post Cards in Full Color

What sounds like a terrible idea for a concept album--to create neo-classical cellular ringtones--turns out to be, in Max Richter's able hands, a beautiful collection of wordless short stories, or story fragments.  With most of the songs lasting only a minute or so, it is amazing he is able to conjure such vividness of place, evoke such poignancy of emotion, and intimate the reality of an imagined narrative. This is the audio cure for melancholy novelists with writer's block.

Cardiff in Surrey

If you're anywhere near Surrey, BC in the next few days go see the Janet Cardiff show at the Surrey Art Gallery before it closes on Sunday.

From the website:

Forty-Part Motet is a sublimely beautiful sound installation created by one of Canada’s most significant contemporary artists.

Janet Cardiff recorded members of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir
performing Spem in Alium, by 16th century English composer
Thomas Tallis, one of the most complex pieces of polyphonic
choral music ever written.

Separate voices emanate from forty speakers. As visitors stroll
past they can single out individual singers. Standing at the
centre, the combined choral harmonies wash over listeners.

Previously shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
and at the Tate Gallery in England, the Surrey Art Gallery will
host its first exhibition in British Columbia.

This was one of the most beautiful, goose-bump inducing aural experiences I've ever had. Go alone, close your eyes and get lost in the rapturous polyphony or bring the kids and enjoy a unique--and free!--experience together. If you aren't moved by this you might be dead.

8 Albums From 2007 That I'll Still Be Listening To In 2009

This time of year every literate chump with access to the internet posts a Best Of... list. It's overdone but I love it. I discover a lot of great films, music and miscellany from critics and enthusiasts who do a wonderful job of enumerating worthwhile cultural offerings.

I should just leave it to them, but since I've got you here I just can't resist giving MY opinion and pretending you care.

So, without further ado, 8 albums from this year that I can confidently predict I will still be listening to in a couple years:


Beirut - The Flying Club Cup

On his second full length, Zach Condon, has added a full band and a French twist to his previous Balkan appropriations. The result is a glorious but accessible melange that, despite its exotic influences, won't be banished to the obscurity of the World music rack.


The National - Boxer

Growing up in North America I've grown weary of the suffocating ubiquity of guitars-bass-drums-male singer. So The National had a strong prejudice to overcome, but overcome they did. It's not my favorite disc of the year but it's definitely the one I'd recommend to the most people.


Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha

Pop? Jazz? Folk? Bird writes smart lyrics and vaguely familiar, but un-pigeonhole-able music. Occasionally, the literate and witty prose lends the music a little too much emotional detachment but, quibbles aside, I'm never disappointed when I give this album a spin.


The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters

With a squall of guitars thicker than the lead singer's Scottish accent, it's a wonder The Twilight Sad are able to retain so much nuance, wistfulness and even tenderness. Proof that loud music can have a heart.


Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild Soundtrack

I'm not a huge fan of Pearl Jam but I'm a sucker for Vedder's voice, which works perfectly here in these mostly quiet, acoustic numbers accompanied by mandolin, banjo, or acoustic guitar. This solo effort is, in my opinion, Vedder's best work. It worked really well with the movie (which is also great, by the way) but it also stands alone very nicely.


Amiina - Kurr

These ladies from Iceland play saws and other unusual instruments to weave the kind of spacious, ethereal songs that have come to define the Icelandic aural soundscape. But, while the similarities are definitely there, this is not the same otherworld of their compatriots and tour mates Sigur Ros. Rather than conjuring images of weightless astral ballets, these songs are more like lullabies from the alien homeland of a mother's womb.


Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

This collective emerged out of Montreal a few years ago to rescue indie rock from cynical irony and mandatory naval gazing. They take on big issues with a big sound and the gusto of U2 or Bruce Springsteen (though they don't sound like either of those). This is their second disc and it's almost as good as the first. If you like rock and you haven't heard, check them out!


Radiohead - In Rainbows

This album deserves mention not only for the band's cavalier and visionary marketing of it but also because it's just a really good album. I like Radiohead, but the excessive hype and their musical experimentalism usual keep them from heavy rotation in my CD player. So, since they gave me the choice, I only paid a couple bucks for In Rainbows. I feel a little guilty now though because I think I've already listened to this one more than any other Radiohead album.