The Top 50 Songs of 2009

by Treble Staff; photo by Candice Eley

12.07.2009



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And that's that. Just a couple more weeks, and we'll be looking into the mouth of 2010, a thought that's a little intimidating and pretty exciting at the same time (unless you believe in that Mayan calendar doomsday stuff). Before we get there, we took inventory, examined the best music of the past year, pitched, debated, swapped, shared, extolled, exclaimed and voted. There certainly was no shortage of great songs in 2009, in addition to a number of newly-coined genres that we're not really going to get into right now. But if there is a common thread between everything here, it's that all of these songs made us feel something, from grief to joy, or perhaps just the overwhelming urge to dance. As the best music should. We probably could have made much longer lists, but we have to draw a line somewhere, so here's our top 50.

"I think I love you, I think I'm mad"

St. Vincent - "Actor Out of Work" (4AD)
[Single; from Actor]

The object of Annie Clark's affection in "Actor Out of Work" is also that of her scorn. He's a supplement, a salve, a crutch, a weakness, a lousy, base guilty pleasure with a heavy emphasis on "guilty." In a far less guilty manner, however, Clark drives the point home by laying her tirade on top of Actor's most scuzzy and distorted rock song, a two-minute banger full of noise and electronically-tweaked saxophone. And yet, in its final 30 seconds, it begins to twinkle and glimmer, and likewise she begins to soften: "I think I love you, I think I'm mad," she laments. Maybe she is, maybe she isn't, but damn does it feel good. – Jeff Terich

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"More, give me more, give me more"

Fever Ray - "If I Had a Heart" (Mute)
[single; from Fever Ray]

"If I Had a Heart" kind of scared the shit out of me on the first couple of listens, and I wasn't sure how much I liked it until I saw the whacked-out, bone-chilling video for the first time. Karin Dreijer is definitely probing the limits of her dark side on this one, mutating her voice into the ominous depths introduced on Silent Shout, but implementing all the more dread by setting it adrift in a desolate landscape of drones and pulsing bass. There is something magnificently off-putting when her girlish, "normal" voice enters the picture, like an Alice in a severely more-fucked-up Wonderland. The rest of the album never really gets all the way out from under the long, ink black shadow issued in its wake, which is part of its allure. Give me more, indeed. – Tyler Parks

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"That's just the devil, come to petrify your soul"

Here We Go Magic - "Fangela" (Western Vinyl)
[single; from Here We Go Magic]

This one gets in your head like sand down a chute, all scratchy and abrasive. Stopping your tongue or your front teeth from dashing out that interlocking percussion, "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida"-style, would thrill Humbert Humbert with its difficulty. So shut up, and don't be thrilling Humbert Humbert okay? Really though, "Fangela"'s wonderful click-clackiness and forest-call choruses are appropriate in cabs and canoes, by yourself or with your worst enemy; there weren't too many better tracks to bond to on first dates or after last drinks. Just don't let that gaunt, terrifying handborn video keep you up at night.
Or your tongue-and-teeth drumming keep up someone else. – Anthony Strain

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"Consider this your debt repaid"

The Decemberists (ft. Shara Worden) - "The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid" (Capitol)
[from The Hazards of Love]

I don't know how many rock bands out there have said in the past, "We need to start this song with a harpsichord," but then again, there aren't many bands that would create a chamber rock opera revolving around an ancient folk tale. This song would rank high on my list in just its pre-slash version, "The Wanting Comes in Waves," but what threw it over the top for me was the post-slash piece, "Repaid." For those who hadn't been exposed to the goddess that is Shara Worden, the Decemberists did the indie world a favor and rectified that situation. Worden DOMINATES this song. In fact, it's fair to say, she dominates the entire album. Her powerhouse of a voice not only overshadows an already great album, it marked, for some, an appearance that shouted out the presence of a considerable talent. Think about the first time people heard Jeff Buckley, or Antony, or Tina Turner. Yeah, she's that good.

Of course, I could go on about the little mini story of the song, in which the central obstacle to the main character's love is presented, his guardian, the Queen (as played by Worden) wanting to protect him from the world, and threatening punishment for his weakness. I could go on about how this fits into the larger allegory, and how it fits into the Decemberists' oeuvre. Truly, on this album, the Decemberists had outdone themselves. But really, it's all about Shara Worden. There, I said it. – Terrance Terich

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"Get `em like Jake the Snake on mescaline"

DOOM - "Gazillion Ear" (Lex)
[from Born Like This]

Hip-hop snobs insist DOOM is done. But diction snobs don't. The valleys and eclipses of that surreal staccato are too contextual to excerpt; it's enough for me that a Ph.D. in indiscreet street hagglin' would seem safely out of reach for the majority. Ditto DOOM, who continues as laureate of this kind of epic speed-rap. Language addicts know there aren't many who can match him. – Anthony Strain

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"Old glasses clinking and a new board is blinking"

Animal Collective - "What Would I Want? Sky" (Domino)
[From Fall Be Kind EP]

On top of the waves of critical praise, a significantly expanded fanbase, and a fairly massive world tour, experimental pop wizards Animal Collective decided to cap off 2009 with yet another stunning achievement. Fall Be Kind collects some leftovers from the Merriweather Post Pavilion sessions as well as some newer material, and while all of it is excellent, the breezy "What Would I Want? Sky" is perhaps the most impressive offering. Noteworthy for containing the first ever Grateful Dead sample to be officially licensed, this track first unfolds patiently with a three-minute crescendo of lethargic gurgles of electronics, ethereal ambient noise, gallops of percussive clanks, booming bass, and richly layered vocals. The tension is ultimately pushed to a breaking point before the song transitions into the chopped and flipped "Unbroken Chain" loop. Original lyric "Willow sky / Whoa I walk and wonder why" is shortened to "sky, whoa I walk" and, through the power of suggestion, sleekly transformed into "What would I want? Sky." The next half of this transcendent anthem is (appropriately) like a brief trip through the clouds, floating along with help from Avey and Panda's beautiful vocal interplay, tender, moving melodies, and some of the best lyrics in this band's entire catalogue. A truly perfect sendoff at the end of what has been a monumental year for Animal Collective. – Derek Emery

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"Nature Makes Us All Complete"

Flaming Lips - "Silver Trembling Hands" (Warner Bros.)
[from Embryonic]

Thump thump thump thump—the locked-down drum and bass groove; the hootin' and hollerin'; those found sounds: with "Silver Trembling Hands," one of the first three tracks to surface from Embryonic, The Flaming Lips announced a return to the acid-fried weirdness of their early years—albeit with a new knack for plundering krautrock's hypnotic rhythms—after a decade long detour into blissful symphonic pop. After 2006's disappointing At War With the Mystics, a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas and the Lips' first misstep in almost 20 years, here was proof that the band had no intention of drifting off into ELO territory. Sonically ominous and lyrically opaque, "Hands" functions as a link between the acid-taking punk rockers the group once proclaimed themselves as, and the quirky songwriting geniuses my generation has grown up with. "She forgets about the fear/When she's high." We do, too. – Eric Friedman

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"We will never stop"

El Perro del Mar - "Change of Heart" (The Control Group)
[single; from Love Is Not Pop]

The guys from Studio lent their production talents to three of Sweden's most sublime songstresses this year. Dan Lissvik produced Victoria Bergsman's Taken By Trees album, East of Eden, as well as putting down a punchy Balearic remix for Fever Ray that pulled Karin Dreijer out of the droning gloom and dropped her squarely on a well-sunned beach. But the best of their work came out of the auspicious collaboration between Lissvik's partner, Rasmus Hägg, and Sarah Assbring, that soulful and windswept dog of the sea. "Change of Heart" was the high-water mark on Love is Not Pop, an album that found Hägg creating just the right atmosphere for Assbring's voice to float through. "Change" is a mesmeric little nugget of melancholy, spare but dressed up with all the right flourishes, its reverb-carved depths set off nicely by a buoyant bassline which pulls it ever-forward into a long night of confusion. Sweet and sorrow in perfect measure. – Tyler Parks

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"Sign up all your relatives"

Volcano Choir - "Island, IS" (Jagjaguwar)
[single; from Unmap]

Like much of Unmap, "Island, IS" is far from perfect. For one, Justin Vernon's incomprehensible lyrics veer further off the map, so to speak, from the cryptic musings found in his work as Bon Iver. In For Emma, Forever Ago, they brimmed with meaning and felt enigmatic even when at their most puzzled, while here, they come off as but obtuse lyrical exercises. But if the song trips over itself at times, it uses that rampant momentum to gather fresh speed, not so much regaining its composure as discovering new strides all the more inspired because of their awkwardness. Rather than particular substance, the lyrics were chosen for how they roll of the tongue or break that momentum through glottal pauses, enjambment or simply alliteration. Jangling guitar samples collide with one another, all kept in pace by skewed percussion and then given lift by Vernon's feathery falsetto. Volcano Choir may not have the gloss that Bon Iver did, but it seems that Vernon has found his perfect foil with bandmates A Collection of Colony of Bees, and "Island, IS" marks the pinnacle of that partnership. – Dustin Allen

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"Let's get to France so we can French kiss some French girls"

Japandroids - "Wet Hair" (Polyvinyl)
[from Post Nothing]

I almost didn't know what the rest of Post-Nothing sounded like because I was tempted to repeat this little gem infinitely. This song doesn't have a hook. This song is a hook, boiled down to its very essence and delivered with two unspoken yet unmistakably clear instructions:

1) Shout along with this fucker as loud as you can.
2) Repeat.

When a melody is this undeniable, it doesn't matter if it sounds like it was recorded to cassette in your parents' basement, and it's all the better for its juvenile lyrics about bikinis and French-kissing French girls. Despite this year's abundance of perfect pop morsels ("My Girls," "1901"), this song may emerge as my most-played track of 2009. I mean, for Christ's sake, I have a playlist on iTunes consisting of "Wet Hair" alone, set to repeat. I guarantee you I'm listening to it right now, as you read this. – Eric Friedman

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