When I’m not railing against Israel or otherwise decrying imperialism, sometimes I like to write about music on my blog, Dogs Thought. I’ve combined here a two-part post I published there listing, in no particular order, ten albums I liked from this past year. WFTC does not have as much content about current music as current movies or TV, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to throw in my two cents on the various tra-la-las and boom-boom-baps that emerged from stereos, headphones, tin cans, etc. in 2009. Enjoy.

Lil Wayne – No Ceilings

Weezy’s absolute domination of stadium rap has been one of the big stories of the 00s. This fact is encapsulated no better than on No Ceilings banger “D.O.A.” Here Wayne devours a jazzy No I.D.-produced instrumental that Jay-Z simply whined over originally; the Best Rapper Alive says it better than I can: “I drink verses and eat hooks.” Each verse ends with a sly little dig at Jigga. Verse 1: “Young or old, there ain’t no comparin’ me / I just cleared that up, Moment of Clarity.” Verse two: “It’s Weezy Baby, aka your highness / I just killed this shit, moment of silence.” Verse three: “Loose bowels, this shit so easy / ‘I might send this to the mixtape Weezy.'” That last line is a sample of one of Jay-Z’s weak verses on the original, ripped and put back into service for Wayne’s diabolical purposes. Afterward, he just laughs over No I.D.’s horns. As he should.

I’ve realized lately that part of what makes Lil Wayne the best rapper alive is the fact that he never whines about other rappers or the “state of hip-hop.” He just does it. He just is it. No Ceilings is inspiring: “You coming wit it? We coming for it / Plenty to go around; now watch the money orbit” (“Wasted”). Jay-Z’s pitiful The Blueprint 3 spends way too much time talking about what’s wrong with hip-hop, and it reveals why that was such a common meme among second-rate rappers this decade: ’cause they had nothing to offer themselves. Wayne just reminds us again and again that he has gone post-human with his punchlines, like on the track “Watch My Shoes”, which is so stuffed with lines we should call him Weezy the Taxidermist. My favorite little bit is this: “And pay, they come sooner than later ’round here /And you see my sharks like they got some bait around here / Hey. You better stop the hate around there / before Tommy, Mac, and Nina debate around there.”

You know the way Rice Krispies sizzle in the bowl — how they snap, crackle, and pop? That’s what these beats do when Weezy’s on them, in them, and then done with them. To listen to this mixtape is to walk in the court of the King of Rap — a Michael Jackson for our hypermasculine rapper-obsessed times. Also, it’s fucking hilarious: “I mean a bitch she never met, her best friend or sister / I leave the pussy Microsoft like Windows Vista” (“Swag Surfin”); “Boy, you ain’t did shit, I done said worse / Flip your fitted cap back like Fred Durst” (“D.O.A.”); “Crown fit me good, don’t even gotta try on / My pistol mean business, that bitch should have a tie on” (“Run This Town”). And on and on, and up and up, and out the open-dome of Lil Wayne’s syrup-stupid brain into the stratosphere where he resides, where he convinces us that we all can be too if we only just believe in ourselves. I’m a believer.

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion and Fall Be Kind EP

MPP and FBK is white people music that is just irresistible to me. Which isn’t to say that earlier Animal Collective works weren’t great — Strawberry Jam, Person Pitch, Feels, and Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished each contained hints of the mind-blowing experimental/dance/pop/folk/Afropop that would emerge from Noah, Dave, and Brian in the last year of the 00s. Still, no one could’ve predicted the brilliance of these releases. And despite the critical consensus and a bandwagon that is dragging on the ground from all its new douchebag weight, I can’t help myself from singing along. “What Would I Want? Sky” is one of the most strangely sublime pop songs ever made. “Summertime Clothes” rules. “My Girls” is a dancefloor banger. “Daily Routine” is profound. I am rabidly, insanely excited about the music these guys are making, and fuck you if you’re too hip for it now that the critics and the masses are finally catching up. Just dig it. Listen to “In the Flowers”, and let a shudder run through your body when Porter sings, “if I could just leave my body for the night” and the life-affirming drums and synths rain down on your ears. Every new thing these guys put out makes me goddamn ecstatic to be alive.

Mos Def – The Ecstatic

Speaking of “ecstatic”, Mos Def’s 2009 album was a really pleasant surprise for me. There’s no denying that Mos peaked early. Black Star and Black on Both Sides were purist hip-hop classics, as great as anything Tribe, The Roots, or Common had ever put out. Then, sadly, Mighty Mos nosedived; The New Danger was a mostly disappointing mess, and True Magic was just boring. It seemed Mos had given up on rapping and gone full-time with the acting stuff. Thankfully, he’s pulled himself together. What The Ecstatic brings rap lovers is Mos at near BoBS levels over production of the more experimental, psychedelic, international variety than what we heard on that album. Songs like “Auditorium (feat. Slick Rick)”, with Madlib (in my view, the greatest living composer other than Panda Bear and Dan Deacon) on the cut, exemplify what makes this union of forces so powerful. The way the sample is cut and chopped slightly off-beat with that knocking drum line, with Mos spitting that wonderfully jazzy hook; it’s just tight.

A couple other standouts are “Priority” and “Life in Marvelous Times”, produced by Preservation and Mr. Flash, respectively. Each one features Mos spilling his damn soul without being didactic or corny; how poetic, for example, is this: “Steer the course, make a wave / And come ashore on a greater day / Homegrown from the greatest grain / Full flavor in the native strain / Now put THAT on your brainy brain” (from “Priority”). Or this, from “Life in Marvelous Times”: “And we are alive in amazing times / Delicate hearts, diabolical minds / Revelations, hatred, love, and war / And more and more and more and more / And more of less than ever before / It’s just too much more for your mind to absorb.” Again, Mos’s distinctly soulful flow makes the words seem to congeal with the instrumental; in that way it’s hard not to call him the producer of these songs as well as the MC. Even if you don’t take it that far, his beat selections prove he’s artistically way ahead of the pack these days, and if you don’t wish you had his voice then you’re not human. He’s hip-hop’s Otis Redding in that regard — and others, actually: both artists showed incredible soul at a very young age, then disappeared from the world. If only the Big O could have resurrected himself the way Mighty Mos did this year.

Girls – Album

The one-two punch of “Lust For Life” and “Laura” at the top of Album is wonderful. The sunny pop of the former, with its sha-la-la backing vocals and Chris Owens’ incredibly distinctive, punk-Costello lead vocal articulating insane things like “I wish I had a sun-tan, I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine / I wish I had a beach house, then we could make a big fire every night” is just shockingly great. The latter slows the pace down a tad, but is no less of a shock; it’s a bittersweet Beach Boys ballad with punk edge in the vocals and lyrics of Owens. Others have commented on the baldness of Owens’ lyrics; I’d agree, and say they’re perfect for this kind of seemingly insincere pop: “Where did it start / We used to be friends / Now when I run into you, I pretend I don’t see you / I know that you hate me.” Owens comes off as actually completely sincere here, and it gives the song a layer of authenticity that is missing from most modern pop.

Owens is really what has endeared me to this band so much; I absolutely hate his dirty, disgusting hipster look, but his voice and lyrics are just so affecting that I can’t help but fall for him. Bassist and producer Chet “JR” White rocks some really awful clothes as well, but his ear for pop music commands respect.

“Ghost Mouth”, “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker”, “Summertime”, “Lauren Marie”, and “Morning Light” are each, in their own way, revelations for indie rock. But “Hellhole Ratrace” just might be one of the best songs of the decade. Owens’ vocal expression on the word “cry” in chorus-line “I don’t wanna cry”, the first time it comes in, is crazy powerful. The whole drifting, seven minute song might make you cry or fill you with energy depending on your mood, and depending on your circumstances. Regardless, it is a formidable track. The way the guitars, background vocals, and sleigh bells build layer upon layer behind Owens’ vocal confession, and the way it all begins to ritardando around the four minute mark, with Owens just repeating that essential poem over and over: “I don’t wanna cry my whole life through / Yeah, I wanna do some laughing too / So come on, come on, come on, come on and laugh with me / And I don’t wanna die without shaking up a leg or two / Yeah, I wanna do some dancing too / So come on, come on, come on, come on and dance with me.” That’s a musical poem that turned out to be pretty important to me this year; the rest of the album followed suit.

Dan Deacon – Bromst

Bromst is a worthy follow-up to Spiderman of the Rings — and that’s kind of saying something. “The Crystal Cat” and “Wham City” are untouchable anthems now for a whole set of goofy, whacky, unattractive twenty-something white people now growing beards and getting a little bit fatter, maybe thinking about the possibility of marriage and kids. Nevertheless “Build Voice” opens Bromst with that mix of goofiness and compositional brilliance that Dan Deacon fans expect from the man with the graduate degree in computer music composition. It’s got vocal samples, pretty piano lines, catchy lead vocals, and of course zany lyrics (“hello, my ghost / I’m here, I’m home”). The piano breakdown at 4:20 (what a lot of kids who listen to Dan Deacon like to do while listening to Dan Deacon, coincidentally) is tremendously epic, especially when the horns start building up momentum for the drop. This is an album-opener with a lot of energy and soul.

“Red F” is great too; fuck, just about everything on here is both whacky-adorable and beautifully composed and played. Tons of great vocal sampling, vocoder usage, xylophone playing, and synthesizing on “Padding Ghost”, “Of the Mountains”, and “Surprise Stefani” (which has a pretty nice groove once the beat kicks in). One impressive aspect of this album is the way Dan lets songs breathe, develop, and mutate nice and slowly. Some call it boring, but I think it’s subtle. And each song subtly builds to something climactic and powerful.

The real killer is “Snookered”, though. If this album has a “Wham City”, this is it. When I saw Dan live at Mr. Smalls during the No Deachunter tour, he had us lean into the person behind us’s arms and do a whole meditation exercise during the song’s xylophone/synth/sample/drum buildup. Really emotional experience; it’s just a great, emotional song. It might actually carry more emotional weight than “Wham City”, whose music is evocative but the lyrics are so goofy they’re basically empty. “Snookered”, on the other hand, goes right for the gut, and matches a bittersweet melody with melancholy lyrics: “Been wrong so many times before / but never quite like this”; the song is just unbelievably beautiful. Bromst gives us a Dan Deacon a little wiser, a little quieter, and a little more musically meticulous and ambitious than the Dan Deacon we met on Spiderman of the Rings. As a result, it’s some of the most well-crafted music of this bizarre young century.

NOMO – Invisible Cities

Wikipedia tells me that we are calling what NOMO does “Afro-beat.” I’d call it jazz, funk, and fusion, with elements of psychedelia, noise, and rock. Regardless, the shit grooves. The way the rhythm section and horn section is each stunningly individualist — in that they each stand out by exploring the musical space in their own unique way — and brilliantly collaborative with the other, by mirroring and trading and mimicking musical moments… it makes for a sound that is rich and exciting. On the chorus of “Waiting”, the horns seem to hit as many notes as the drums — part of that process of mirroring that goes on in a lot of these songs — but they also explore the rhythm section’s groove with some absolutely killer improvisation in the song’s second half. Observe the drums on the track “Crescent”: what an odd, almost otherworldly combination of recorded percussion instruments, many of them I cannot begin to identify; meanwhile, three or four flutes sing and dance high above it all — and again it grooves. “Patterns” is a plain and simple jam: again, it’s like the guitar, keyboards, and rhythm section are this badass, slowly mutating backdrop for the horns to act out the coolest, craziest stagecraft in front of. As it climaxes it all gets more and more feedbacky, kind of like the curtains are slowly falling. “Ma” is just funky; the guitar and rhythm is a little unsettling, a little portentous, like catastrophe is occurring and our only chance of understanding it is to try to describe it with these increasingly chaotic horn stabs and vocal harmonies. This is a fantastic jazz album.

DOOM – Born Like This

One of the most brilliant tracks on the really brilliant Born Like This is “Cellz”, which features an extended sample of Charles Bukowski reading poetry, from which DOOM takes the album’s title. Bukowski’s horrific, apocalyptic, and unfortunately very familiar images — “[born] into this; into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die; into lawyers who charge so much, it’s cheaper to plead guilty[…] into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes[….] Explosions will continually shake the Earth; radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men” — bounce over a fucking nasty DOOM-produced instrumental made up of old movie-villain strings and some dastardly, slightly off-tempo break beat drums. After Bukowski’s words fade, the villain comes in and wrecks shit: “Crime pays no dental, nor medical / Unless you catch your time in county, state, or federal,” among other insane bits of free-associative poetry.

DOOM, under his various monikers, has revealed himself to be the king of the tongue-twister this decade. “Gazzillion Ear” is full of them: “Tut-tut, he bout to change the price again / It go up each time he blow up like hydrogen”; “For your info, when he’s not practicing Jim Crow / or actressin’ some nympho bimbo…”; “Elixir for the dry throat, tried to hit the high-note / Villain sits a itsy-bitsy zygote.” He entertains with his words but of course they seem to communicate very few clear ideas, and of course that’s probably the point. DOOM is a surrealist — what self-respecting villain would say exactly what he or she means all the time? His opacity is part of what makes him so diabolical. On the other hand, the song “Absolutely” (which uses asoulful instrumental produced by the always inspired Madlib) takes real, subversive aim at the police, and seems to have some real statements to make: “Send copies to those singin’ the blues / Mothers and fathers of those unjustly accused”; “Gotta let them fools know / And send ’em a message to let them P.O.W.’s go.” The song is an elaborate, bizarre, borderline terroristic explication of DOOM’s plan for thugs to channel their energies into a war against the police: “A new way to let the shots spray / A few drops a day; double expresso D.A. latte.” It’s dissident as all fuck.

DOOM’s style has always been odd, but on Born Like This he pushes it farther; he touches on deeper, more frightening aspects of American life and culture. It’s odd with a touch of subversive, of revolutionary, of social criticism. “Cellz”, by juxtaposing that Bukowski sample, which has numerous connotations for contemporary listeners, with that bizzaro instrumental, is a funhouse mirror for our post-modern society; and that’s actually what the whole album is. From “Gazillion Ear”: “Once sold a inbred skinhead a n***a joke / Plus a brand new chrome smoker with the triggers broke / I thought I told him firing pins was separate / He’ll find out later when he tries to go and rep it / Took a Jehovah money for a Arabic Torah / Charged in advance to translate it and ignored her sorta / One monkey don’t stop no slaughter / A junkie wanna cop a quarter-ton, run for the border.” DOOM’s discontent makes for some really mind-boggling music here; it’s psychedelic, it’s poetic, and it’s phat as fuck. The Dark Knight last year in cinema and Born Like This this year in music have proven that supervillains are way more compelling than superheroes. Maybe that’s because we’re watching our ideal of America as the world’s benevolent super power crumble, and these cultural artifacts seem to reflect that reality. Highfalutin ideas aside, DOOM’s slurred ramble is sicker than ever on this album, and the beats knock.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Beware

Will Oldham is an expert at crafting soulful, stirring, subtly-arranged country ballads as his on-stage persona Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Which isn’t to say that these songs feel artificial — I’m just pointing out that Oldham is becoming one of the most consistent artists in indie music today. Bonnie “Prince” Billy albums are like Madden games, only way better; there’s a new one every year, but Oldham does seriously diversify his sound each time — this album is noticeably louder and more electric, and way more instrumentally diverse (making use of horns, for instance), than last year’s — and he’s seriously not doing it just for the money.

Beware picks up right where last year’s Lie Down in the Light left off. It’s evocative, slow, and deep. Songs like “Beware Your Only Friend”, “You Can’t Hurt Me Now”, “I Won’t Ask Again”, and “I Don’t Belong to Anyone” are brilliant in their simplicity and their heart. This guy is just so honest that it gives you chills. And he has a lot of fun, too. The song “You Don’t Love Me”, with its refrain of, “But you don’t love me, and that’s all right / ‘Cause you cling to me / All through the night”, with four part harmony on the last line, is a devilish and funny campfire jam. I also like the bit, “You say my kissing rates a six on a scale of one to ten / And you wouldn’t pass the time with me ‘cept you’re tired of all your friends.” Oldham is a clever lyricist, and often a poetic one as well. My favorite song on the album is “I Am Goodbye”, which clocks in at just 2:21. It’s rural American poetry, and it’s wonderfully abstract: “I’ll likely never know the answer why / You are hello, I am goodbye / I am goodbye, like the end of something wonderful sometimes / Like the way that a wound up toy top unwinds / I am goodbye, I am goodbye.” It rocks out, and it’s fun to sing along to. Oldham’s Bonnie “Prince” Billy sings with power and conviction, with country western wisdom that doesn’t feel forced or anachronistic. I hope Oldham keeps playing this character for years to come.

The Flaming Lips – Embryonic

From the opening sounds of Embryonic — effected guitar picking slamming the right speaker, reverby keyboard hitting the left, studio chatter and bursts of guitar feedback in both — you know you’re in for something a little more psychedelic than Yoshimi or The Soft Bulletin. Things steady themselves pretty quickly on opener “Convinced of the Hex”, but the mood is still reminiscent of, like, a looser, more Hendrix-y Pink Floyd, with the sense of apocalyptic darkness one gets from Cannibal Ox or Fuck Buttons. Track three “Evil” is beautiful and brooding; Coyne’s vocal is soulful, and the arrangement is a gorgeous and sparing combination of synths, samples, and bass. More than anything this is the Lips’ most arabesque album yet; it hits you with its fluidity, its use of effects, noise, and feedback, and the diversity of its distorted drum patterns. It is extremely challenging music. Coming from a band that mastered endlessly catchy pop-rock with songs like “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1”, “Do You Realize??”, and “Race for the Prize”, Embryonic is a revelation. See tracks “See the Leaves”, “Worm Mountain”, and “Watching the Planets” for more examples of challenging, complex, soulful psychedelia. But it’s honestly kind of dumb to talk about specific tracks as being better than others on this album; it’s really an album, not a collection of songs — part of why it’s on this list. It’s a piece of art which demands and commands attention for its entire duration. And it gets better every time you listen to it.

With its emphasis on continuity and fluidity, Embryonic reflects reality as one experiences it in the embryonic state of life, in early childhood; when things are not so sharply delineated, so dualistic. Accordingly, it contains a track called “The Ego’s Last Stand”, and final track “Watching the Planets” contains the lyric “yes, yes, yes / killin’ the ego tonight.” Being something of a Buddhist myself, I love when any piece of art attempts to enlighten in this way. Embryonic is 2009’s most non-dualistic album, which easily enshrines it as one of 2009’s best, and certainly one of its best to get high to.

xx – xx

The self-titled debut from South London kids The xx — who went to school with Four Tet, Burial, and Hot Chip — has a remarkable sense of rhythm, just like those bands do. The drum loops, the bass, the use of doubling/background vocals, and the use of vamps — total silence — is just fucking crackin’ (to borrow UK terminology). This is such a consistently sexy, chilled out album that it’s quite hard to pick favorite tracks; certainly “Crystallised”, “Heart Skipped a Beat”, “Basic Space”, and “Infinity” stand out, but that doesn’t make them any better than the others. The girl/boy vocal combination of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim is like a British post-punk version of Womack & Womack. Certainly there are elements of soul and disco to these songs, although with far less kitsch than disco and far more electronics than soul. But Croft and Sim work incredibly well together; their sexuality is on full display; they both sing so quietly, so effortlessly, yet with so much feeling.

This is a near-perfect album; the only song that doesn’t completely take control of your body and soul is “Fantasy”, but even that develops an incredible bass groove about halfway through. The rest is absolute fucking brilliance. Take the final two minutes of the album as exemplary: in this last part of “Stars”, Sim and Croft kick vocal footballs back and forth first, then Sim takes over and does a re-take of his opening verse (a song-structure choice also used to brilliant effect on “Basic Space”), with only beautiful, reverby piano, and dramatic bass drum thumps every four beats or so accompanying him; each breathtaking line ends with a beat or two of total silence, each line collecting more and more drums, bass, and finally electric guitar strumming and Croft’s doubling soprano, all that accumulated sickness finishing off the song and the album. It’s such minimalist, subtle, meticulous pop songwriting, with beats and grooves so infectious that it’s really hard to say no to; you’ll find yourself playing the album over and over and over again. As a whole, xx champions sex and sexuality, love and lovers; it suggests that maybe the only thing certain anymore, in a year that tested many of our dearest philosophical assumptions, is that we ought to find someone to talk about it — and sing about it — with. Sim and Croft found each other, and if their disarming duets don’t make you want to find someone for yourself, then you should probably just go fuck yourself.

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