The Best of 2009: Aidan Williamson's Top 10

What’s pink and goes round and round on a carousel?

Stephen Gately's suitcase!

The year of 2009 will likely be best remembered for its musical deaths. Indeed, it has not been a great year for the people behind the scenes. Domestic abuse, mental breakdowns, awards show muggings, divorce, another Creed album. Happily for us, we're not Heat magazine and we don't care for any of that nonsense.

In truth my personal favourite album of the year will not appear on this list, in fact, two of my favoured listening experiences throughout 2009 are absent. La Dispute's Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair would have easily topped any charts, yet despite being released back in 2008, it took a while until I fully learned to appreciate it. In addition to that, Jimmy Eat World's live version of the phenomenal Clarity album has spent the most time resonating through my ears. Quite possibly one of the greatest live albums, it simply manages to capture the complex construction of its studio equivalent while managing to inject the rawness that only a live performance can bring. For the simple reason that it was a 2009 release, but not a 2009 album in spirit it was decided that it'd be best to reserve the charts for new music as opposed to old albums which were technically eligible. Otherwise you might be seeing the re-release of The Get Up Kids on here too. Where would it end?

In terms of geographic spread, it has been hard to argue that any one continent has dominated this year. As always the dominant country is America, yet Scandinavia occupies two spots with Twiggy Frostbite and Jeniferever, Australia secures one spot with Eleventh He Reaches London. Scotland can claim two for My Latest Novel and There Will Be Fireworks and the realisation now strikes that there isn't a single English band on the list. Do better next time hey England!

Japan's Mono came perilously close to securing a top-ten place also, as did Stellastarr*, The Cast Before the Break and Portugal, The Man. When you're being forced to chuck off technically flawless albums like Mono's, you know that no matter what year it is, you'll always have more good music on hand than you can handle.

A place in the heart will also be reserved for the syphilitic abortions which were extracted from broken, diseased wombs this year too. Millionaires and BrokeNCYDE made clear that there are worse things than metalcore with their hilariously abhorrent take on the electro-rock template. Albums like these are a necessary evil for two reasons. (1) They make the great albums ever greater by contrast (2) They're so much more fun to review than yet another album of Kooks-lite spouting scruffy jeans-wearing London boys.

So there, here are my ten choices for best album of 2009, not presented in any kind of order:

Junius: The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist

The latest arrival to the party, Junius' rather extraordinary offering truly lit up the usually drab month of December by pushing the post-rock formula truly beyond its usual spiel of 'ten minutes of reverb, crescendos and pretty arpeggios'. 

Making excellent use of a permanent vocalist, the boys manage to defy convention with surprising key changes, tempo shifts, atonal sections and major-minor transitions all serving to decorate the album with contrast, removing the need for reliance upon quiet-loud crescendos to do so. Any theorems which seek to nail this album down to base patterns will be completely blown apart, for it manages to fulfil, exceed and confound any and all expectations which are laid upon it.

Pianos Become the Teeth: Old Pride

First coming to our attention after the mesmerising début album Saltwater, Pianos Become the Teeth are one part Envy, to one part Explosions in the Sky to one part Funeral Diner. By turns beautiful and chaotic, Old Pride may have sacrificed the sumptuous crescendos of its predecessor, but in its new direction a greater urgency is captured, one which manages to combine the dying genres of screamo and post-rock into something which seems equally fresh yet nostalgic.

Where most bands trip up in this approach is the tinniness and apparent emptiness of their heavier sections. Pianos Become the Teeth neatly side-step this potential obstacle by never seeing music in the terms of black or white, heavy or peaceful, aggressive or sedated. No, a myriad of emotions entwine themselves around the music wherever it may go.

Twiggy Frostbite: Through Fire

We won't lie to you, this bad completely failed to get our attention until we witnessed the harrowing beauty of the promotional video for "Heroes". An animated tale of friendship, love, loyalty, pressure and ultimately betrayal, it hammered home practically every subtle skill which the girls also possess in their musicianship.

Delicate, fragile and presenting an aura of haunting innocence, the album compiles a rich tapestry of breezy emotion via a subdued electronic-indie-shoegaze backdrop.

Jeniferever: Spring Tides

Whatever the national sport of Sweden may be, insert the winning strike into a regional transliteration of 'knocking it for six' or 'hitting a home run' or 'dingo ate the baby. We should stop being surprised that Scandinavia can keep surpassing itself in artfully fracturable musical exports. 

If Jeniferever don't have you convinced by the second track of this album that they are one of the most achingly beautiful bands around today, may we respectfully ask for bagsies on your heart donor-ship, since you clearly are not using it anymore. There might come a time when we need a replacement, since each listen to Spring Tides tends to break ours at least six-dozen times.

Banner Pilot: Collapser

Last year, The Gaslight Anthem nailed the punk formula with perfection. Oddly, punk remains one of the few genres where if it's done right, you have no need to reinvent sliced bread or push the envelope, or any number of annoying office-speak for stretching the boundaries of contemporary expectation within genre confines.

Banner Pilot do this through a simple truth: the simple truth. Wrapping up twelve songs about the complications of growing up in a world with so many conflicting expectations and emotional depth-charges within the sheer power of grippingly raucous melodies. Four chords and a heart for all to see and an intellect for all to feel can still take a band so very far.

Brand New: Daisy

After the rather dull The Devil and God Are Raging Inside of Me, it was natural to conclude that Brand New had written themselves into a rut. The songs had become formulaic, the vocals were comprised of precisely two modes and the average song had all the surprise of a Tiger Woods mistress reveal.

Then came Daisy, opening with a song so damn un-Brand New-ish that it took fans the act of actually hearing the song on an official CD before some would believe that it wasn't an elaborate hoax. Regaining a tremendous edge, the entire album teeters along like a runaway mine-train. With its densely lyricism, it will likely be one which people pore over for years to come. All of the technical promise of Deja Entendu and unabated passion of Your Favourite Weapon finally bore fruit.

Eleventh He Reaches London: Hollow Be My Name

Distinctly odd in every conceivable way, Hollow Be My Name is possibly the hardest to classify album we've come across in a long time. Alternating between serene, sumptuous passages and flashes of sheer violence, progressive instrumentation, simplistic arrangements and complex rhythms it is certainly one never to rest for even a second.

With the title track and introduction whipping a restrained melody into a tumultuous whiplash before unleashing the catharsis by way of a gorgeous lead guitar melody it's an amazing start to an album which promises much and delivers almost the same amount. Suddenly Australia seems like a very interesting musical region once more.

There Will Be Fireworks: S/T

Glasvegas may have received all of the mainstream media attention, Frightened Rabbit the underground adulation, We Were Promised Jetpacks the up and comer gold star and Twilight Sad the choice of the sad and the lonely, yet There Will Be Fireworks managed to surpass them all with an incredible self-titled album.

Clearly in the surging genre of Scottish-accented-indie, TWBF deliver the un-repressed rage which Jetpacks only hint at, offering the aching emotion which Glasvegas are too cool for. Through all of this though, the same delicate approach to tremendously dense composition is still evident. Each song a supernova of sounds to gradually unfurl and dissect.The only comparison which genuinely holds water is if you wish to start dropping the Hope of the States name.

Kittens Ablaze: The Monstrous Vanguard

Easily the funnest album of 2009, Kittens Ablaze started in our consciousness as a funny band name in a rare lull at this year's SxSW Festival in Austin Texas. One performance later and the desolationless version of The Arcade Fire had captured a place in our metaphorical heart.

The sound of the best party you've never been to, the band capture the spirit of a rollicking hootenanny and deliver it through string-laden baroque filter always spurred on by the promise of a merry jig.

My Latest Novel: Death & Entrances

Significantly more doleful than their country-mates There Will Be Fireworks' entry, Deaths & Entrances is no less entrancing. Built upon saddened ruminations against a chameleonic musical frame the experiences leaps from pleasingly maudlin to surgingly powerful.

First track "All In All In All Is All" commences the fifty-minutes with incredible power, giving to us one of the catchiest vocal refrains of the year. Actually, two of the catchiest, which are then delivered by two separate vocalists over each other as a shining example of the point-counterpoint dynamic in music. While scaling back the level of hooks, the rest of the album reveals its charms with perfect pace, giving you something new to appreciate everytime you think the treasure chest has been fully excavated.