Music of 2009

End of the line... of the "ought" years. Twenty-ought-nine sounded awesome. So Goodbye, ought-nine: what will we call this decade? The big teens

Out of interest to see how full of shit Pitchfork is, I've taken the time to go through their list of the top 100 tracks of this year. No Scumbag Blues = fail, yet some of their so-called indie glory = total yawn. No JEFF the brotherhood either. And of course they wouldn't know about Bikes... yet.

That's not to say there wasn't good stuff. Of course there was. Most of it I hadn't heard, so I compiled my takeaway here. Ahem.

I've tried to denote songs of the year for given categories where applicable.



98. Future of the Left "Arming Eritrea". Love me some crunchy vacuum cleaner guitar. Lyrics reminded me of the Maxass rant Onion-O: "Eric, get off the roof!"

91. HEALTH "Die Slow". Sheet metal rock. Incidentally, I caught the tail end of their live set but didn't really care.

85. Wavves "No Hope Kids". Loser rock. I like writing songs like this and then drinking some more.

84. Junior Boys "Parallel Lines". Spark it up brutha, and let's head out to Long Island. I like the snare sound a lot, sounds a lot like the Konami snare from old NES games. There's some cool synth bursts here as well.

71. A Sunny Day in Glasgow "Close Chorus" Good use of texture.

68. Röyksopp [ft. Robyn] "The Girl and the Robot" Dance song of the year I've never heard at a club because I don't follow that scene?

61. Atlas Sound [ft. Lætitia Sadier] "Quick Canal" Atmosphere runner-up award.

58. Fever Ray "If I Had a Heart" Darkest song of the year. Alien chick vocals. And a sweet video.

56. John Talabot "Sunshine" Now we're getting to some serious beats. Love the tribal rhythms. Bit crusher curtain flusher.

54. Joker & Ginz "Purple City" Fat rubbery synth lines. Kinda like the Satanic Turd demo from Fruity Loops 3.

53. The xx "Islands" Late night bar music. Last call, then find your shoes.



50. Matias Aguayo "Rollerskate" Inspiring. Want to build a scary castle with legos now.

49. Yo La Tengo "Here to Fall" - Drums. Sound. Great.

42. The Big Pink "Velvet" - Computer beats



35. Micachu and the Shapes "Golden Phone" - was this the sound of nonsense in 2009? if so, very tastefully done. love the keyboard browness and the 8-bit tone banks. Skid marks at the end. Now don't forget to wipe.

27. Four Tet "Love Cry" - Need to pick this up on vinyl. This is the kind of music designed for record players, sending radio transmissions, and building a secret door to a hidden room.

19. Joker "Digidesign" - 8-bit synth rubber bee rolls. And the "doing~!" spoon-like hits spread throughout? win. and the synth part that sounds like "No no no no no no no no!". Brilliant.

16. The xx "Crystalised" - another groove for late night chilled pears.

13. Neon Indian "Deadbeat Summer" - brown beat of the year?

10. Washed Out "Feel It All Around" - pull down your pants song of the year.

And there you have it. None of their top labeled tracks seemed to do it for me.