THE FIFTY BEST RECORDS OF 2009: Part #8

(Well so much for the Jan 4th deadline - sorry folks!)

15. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post-Pavilion (Domino)

Well, you knew it was coming at some point, right? Sigh away. Funny, I remember listening to ‘Merriweather’ for the first time almost exactly a year ago, and not being overly impressed. I guess the thing was, every previous Animal Collective album hit like a wonderful slap in the face, a completely unexpected handbrake turn that took the band to the – ahem - ‘next level’ via a path nobody could have anticipated, from the naïve stumble-folk of ‘Sung Tongs’ to the bizarro world psychedelic rock of ‘Feels’ to the sickly, ultra-condensed pop smash-up of ‘Strawberry Jam’. ‘Merriweather’ by contrast offered no sudden surprises – it sounded more than anything like Animal Collective’s first ever collection of generic, Animal Collective-type music, and as such it was a bit disappointing. I was also annoyed that everyone on the interweb seemed to be immediately hailing it as thee greatest triumph since ever, and writing stuff like “after the disjointed mess of ‘Strawberry Jam’…” – hang about, I thought last year you were saying ‘Strawberry Jam’ was thee greatest triumph since yadda yadda? – I still think that album’s great, and I smell a rat. Anyway, having got all that out of my system, I preceded to give ‘Merriweather..’ a bit more time, listening to it blaring on headphones in the winter air rather than at polite volume on my computer speakers, and yes, all those interweb voices were right = it’s pretty bloody fantastic. One of my defining memories of 2009 was walking in circles around the gleaming, hyperreal departure lounge at Heathrow airport at 8am, listening to ‘In The Flowers’ and ‘My Girls’ and ‘Summertime Clothes’ over and over again, and then getting off the plane in Venice a few hours later, and doing the same. I highly recommend making a brief, drunken visit to a beautiful European city halfway through January by the way – it’s a fantastic and slightly surreal way to fight back against the onset of several months of uninterrupted real-fucking-world horror that the new year inevitably brings, and I wish I was doing it again this year. But, er, anyway, yeah – Animal Collective. Boy, they really pulled their finger out songwriting-wise on this one, huh? In addition to the aforementioned future sounds-of-the-‘00s staples, which you probably don’t need to be told about again, ‘Bluish’ and ‘Guy’s Eyes’ are two of the most world-collapsingly beautiful, unconventional love songs I’ve heard this year – a perfect sublimation of everything Animal Collective do at their best, using new techniques and technology to create a whole new kind of psychedelia, so overpoweringly blissful it (temporarily at least) knocks all my coveted guitar FX mangling sludge outta the water. Really something else. On the down-side, this album (like this paragraph) is unavoidably cursed by being TOO LONG. At the risk of sounding like a big-dumb-head philistine, most of the songs here go on a for a good minute or two longer than they need to, and personally I coulda done without ‘Brothersport’ and ‘Lion In A Coma’ entirely – both of them I find kinda irritating (a frequent AC pitfall), and they seem to push the group uncomfortably close to faux-world music jammin’ hippie self-parody, which is bad for them and bad for us. So despite containing and soundtracking some of the awesomest moments of the year, ready to knock our children’s socks off when they rediscover the Greatest Hits, I’m afraid it’s number 15 for you boyo.

Mp3> Bluish


14. Nothing People – Late Night (S-S)

Appropriately enough perhaps, I know nothing about Nothing People – who they are, where they come from, what they’re about – and I’ve never even thought to do a web search on ‘em until now, looking for a scan of the artwork. But I do know the sound of this LP has won me over, leading to many, many, many repeat spins that have served to give a whole new, more enjoyable atmosphere to things as I doss about my room after work or prepare to go to bed. Nothing People are very much a psychedelic rock band, but one that exists outside of any of the musical conventions or clichés such a label would seem to imply, drawing more from the rustbelt other-ness of Midwestern home recorders like Jim Shepard and Mike Rep, and the sinister, druggy bedtime rock that used to exist around the less comfortable peripheries of what ended up being stamped forever as ‘shoegaze’ in the early ‘90s. Nothing People’s songs move slow and simple, like a motorik juggernaut reduced to ‘stalking speed’, and they convey an appreciation of soothing, subterranean rock repetition that few since Spacemen 3 have been able to put into action. These songs seem to seethe their way into existence like the hiss from a leaking gas main, earthed upon grinding, phoneline fuzz and punched into the foreground by crisp, heavy tremolo and repeat echo, left swaying in the gaping void between beats. Somewhere, someone is filming a scene for a Gregg Araki rip-off movie in which two emaciated, greasy-haired teens feed each other tabs of acid and crawl all over each other in a gauze-heavy, regally furnished slacker pad bedroom…. and it will go on and on, and this album is the soundtrack. The scene will have no particular point or artistic merit, but it will be AWESOME, and critics will be leaving the screening preparing to slate it, but still secretly groovin’ on that never-ending guitar hook from ‘It’s Not Your Speakers’ and wishing they were in it.

Mp3> It's Not Your Speakers


13. Dum Dum Girls –12” EP (Captured Tracks)

It may have been a hipster-bait 7”s worth of material needlessly bumped up to 12” to clean up on the collector’s market, and still sounding like a shit pressing, but my copy of the Dum Dum Girls EP will still be one I’ll be waving around in years to come, pathetically proclaiming “I was there!” when the subject of this era’s music comes up. Guess I took the bait. If anything, the four songs herein have grown to sound even BETTER than they did when Dum Dum Girls first entered my consciousness circa March ’09. ‘Catholicked’ and ‘Yours Alone’ are strong enough songs to withstand any whirligigs of hype and backlash and hypelash and pick up bands and record deals and world tours, and god, how I love the roar of those over-saturated garageband guitars when you turn them up loud enough to hurt. But it’s ‘Hey Sis’ that really cements DeeDee Dum Dum Girl as a truly inspired assembler of sound, single-handedly rehabilitating the drum machine as an aide to chaos, and those great, interlocking sheets of pure distortion, and that brilliant shift in melody on the chorus – as perfect a marriage of pop and noise as I’ve ever heard. I’m looking forward to the album and seeing Dum Dum Girls (now with genuine plural) play live this year more than is probably healthy, but whatever happens next, I think I could happily keep on listening to this EP forever. For the moment though, back to searching Hype Machine for a rip of that brilliant cover of ‘Play With Fire’ she put up on Myspace…

Mp3> Hey Sis




12. Gris Gris – Live at the Creamery (Birdman)

Things seem to work strangely in the world of Greg Ashley. This album, recorded in California in 2008, was supposed to commemorate the last ever show from his band The Gris Gris, although it seems they’ve quietly been back in action in ‘09, even if new material or a new Ashley solo record is apparently not forthcoming. Anyway, looking at the line-up for this one – just Greg on vocals and guitar backed up by organ, bass and drums – I figured it might be a rather sedate affair. Those familiar with Gris Gris’ killer rep as a fearsome live act will have known better of course, and verily, this live album is an absolute monster. On stage it turns out, Gris Gris are a flailing beast full of derelict, unwholesome chaos, sounding rather like that perfect Syd-era Pink Floyd bootleg that you’ve always dreamt about hearing, only with all the Brit-psyche tweeness thrown out in favour of a brooding, baroque death-rock ambience more becoming to the deep south feel of the band’s name and background. On their studio albums, things are rather more mannered - in a cool, multi-layered epic psych kinda way - but here we get to listen to the four piece band doing their best to recreate this studio sprawl on the fly, with restraint taking a backseat, as already pretty unnerving, funeral marches of songs like “Skin Mass Cat” and “Big Engine Nazi Kid Daydream” spin themselves out into startling passages of unhinged improv, with shrieking feedback and lunatic shred-guitar crescendos crashing to their doom amid dissonant, stabbing organ notes, while the bassist starts blurting on a clarinet and the drummer pounds out the marching step of an invading army. Holy Shit. Then Ashley is back at the mic, declaiming in ‘Satanic preacher’ mode through some kind of phoneline distortion, his voice sounding rougher and more accusatory than ever; “save your kids / cut their wrists / before they die inside machines”. Set the controls for the heart of the swamp, anyone?

Mp3> Ecks Em Eye


11. Mika Miko – We Be XUXA (Post Present Medium)

MIKA MIKO ARE FUCKING RAD – that’s the truth of the matter, and what future custodians of truth will have to say on the subject of what constitutes ‘rad’. Or rather, “Mika Miko were fucking rad”, for unfortunately it seems they’ve disbanded in the past few months, which is a drag and a half. I’m glad that I finally got to see them play earlier in ’09 though, when they were still very much concerned with being fucking rad in the present tense and turned in perhaps the most exhilarating and fucking raddest set I saw all year. I sorta wish I could’ve seen ‘em with a more comfortable audience of small town punks rather than obnoxious urban trendies, so I could’ve done some jumping up and down, but then if that was my concern I shouldn’t bloody live in London should I? Anyway, ‘We Be XUXA’ is their second full length, and for my money the best thing they’ve ever done. You can probably guess my two word summation already, so let’s get a bit more detailed. ‘XUXA’ sees MM moving away from the post-punk skeleton of their previous work, restricting the syncopated dancefloor stuff to a couple of choice cuts and instead moving into the arena of fantastic, full bore punk rock, taking their early LA hardcore template (think Plugz, Dils, Urinals etc) and stripping it of all the bilious masculinity and grunt, instead aiming at the feet and trying to get the party started, with supremely righteous results – music for striding down the street, feeling like you’re full of energy and on your way to do something really cool. Unfortunately, Mika Miko’s love of ‘80s punk seems to have extended to giving ‘XUXA’ a really muddy, undifferentiated mix that may have harmed the album’s chances in some people’s end-of-year polls, but man, forget that – we’ve got mp3 players and things now precisely so we can turn a record like this up loud and appreciate the many, many things that are to be loved within it. Michelle Suarez’ no-bullshit guitar is a joy throughout, the rhythms are fierce, and Jenna Thornhill and Jennifer Clavins’ vocal tag team in rare form, with loads of great, funny lyrics being thrown back and forth – plus the cemetery photo shoot artwork looks absolutely beautiful on my vinyl copy, probably one my fave covers of the year, and oh, the giant fold-out insert is a joy too! I even enjoyed the totally gratuitous ‘Turkey Sandwich’ remix that closes the album. I seem to recall most reviewers singled out ‘Turkey Sandwich’ as being entirely concerned with turkey sandwiches, but in retrospect the song seems to signal the band’s demise about as clearly as it possibly could; “Jenna I’ll miss you when you go / but don’t think that I don’t know / we’re going in different directions” – such a sentiment could easily get lost in the music’s contagious enthusiasm, but nonetheless: sadface.

Mp3> Blues Not Speed

Labels: Animal Collective, best of 2009, Dum Dum Girls, Greg Ashley, Gris Gris, Mika Miko, Nothing People