just like sunny day real estate

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any thing in this space, but it’s rolling around to the end of the calendar. What better time to kick off jlsdre’s year-end/decade-end celebration? We’re starting off with 2009, running down the best songs and albums of the year. Monday we’ll start the just like sunny day real estate 500 with the 250 best songs of 2000-2009, and wrap it up Tuesday with the 250 best albums of the decade. Then we’ll be back the following week to put a bow on the decade by counting down some other fun lists (best videos, worst songs/albums/artists, best album covers, etc.). So be sure to check back. Enough talk. More lists. Let’s start it off with the 25 best singles of 2009:

Honorable Mentions:

Dead Man’s Bones, “My Body’s a Zombie For You”, Dead Man’s Bones

DOOM, “Gazzillion Ear”, Born Like This

Jay-Z, “Run This Town (ft. Kanye West & Rihanna)”, The Blueprint 3

LCD Soundsystem, “Bye Bye Bayou”, Bye Bye Bayou –Single

The Thermals, “Now We Can See“, Now We Can See

25) Lady Gaga, “Paparazzi”, The Fame - I know, I know. I’ve done nothing but rip on her for the last year, making dick jokes (You know why she can’t dance like Beyonce? ‘Cause if she did her dick would fall out of her leotard.), and question why she gets extensive commercial radio play and MTV converage while other, more deserving “L”-named artists are mired in obscurity in America (La Roux, Little Boots, Ladyhawke). I certainly wasn’t the only one leveling these charges and, in my defense, “LoveGame” and “Poker Face” did nothing to prove me wrong. That all changed with “Paparazzi”, the first time where it seemed the music and the aesthetic met for the first time, without the aid of nauseating “Haus of Gaga”-like hype. I heard this song described once as the best song Madonna never made this decade, but she’s not alone; there are plenty of pop stars that never made a song this good this decade.

24) Jay-Z, “D.O.A (Death of Auto-Tune)”, The Blueprint 3 / Eminem, “Crack A Bottle (ft. Dr. Dre & 50 Cent)”, Relapse / Drake, “Forever (ft. Kanye West, Lil Wayne & Eminem)”, More Than a Game - These three songs all share the 24^th spot because in my mind they really all represent the same thing. Yeah, new stuff is great, but sometimes familiarity is better. Especially when some of the new stuff is as trite as it has been recently. In each of these songs there exists a moment that suggests we are not on the precipice of the End of hip hop as we know it; that, even if it doesn’t sound new, the old guard can still bring it when it has to. Jay-Z isn’t a crotchety old man. Eminem isn’t washed up. Dr. Dre is still relevant. We know none of this is true, but maybe it ain’t wrong either. We all were glad to hear Dre, Em and Fiddy together on a track. We enjoyed watching Jigga play cards with Harvey Keitel in the back room of an Italian restaurant, in the video for “D.O.A.”. And we definitely all went bananas when Eminem eviscerated Yeezy, Weezy, and Drizzy on his half assedline on “Forever”.

23) Bat For Lashes, “Daniel”, Two Suns

22) HEALTH, “Die Slow”, GET COLOR - There is no doubt in my mind that this track represents the high point for HEALTH this far into their career. It’s the first track they’ve ever made that wouldn’t seem that far out of place on commercial radio. Had this track came out in 1996, it’s a near certainty it would have been on this year’s Buzz Bin comp. Securing a spot as the opening act on Nine Inch Nails farewell tour earlier this year will probably go down in history as this band’s big break. Inspiration from Trent Reznor is evident in abundance on this ominous, dancey mindfuck. The best review I’ve read described the track as having “a hook that could have been fashioned from sheet metal”.

21) Kanye West, “Paranoid”, 808s & Heartbreak

20) Ida Maria, “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked”, Fortress ‘round My Heart

19) Girls, “Lust For Life”, Album [NSFW]

18) No Age, “You’re a Target”, Losing Feeling EP - Another career highlight from an alum of the Smell in Los Angeles. Like “Die Slow” by HEALTH, this song could probably be described as the best they’ve ever done. But while HEALTH mined fresh genres and pushed their music in different directions for new sounds and textures, No Age focused more recontextualizing what they already had. “Die Slow” sounds nothing like anything from their previous albums. “You’re a Target” could have been a bonus track off last year’s Nouns albums. When you’re good at what you’re doing, don’t do something different. Do what you do well better.

17) Jay-Z, “Empire State of Mind (ft. Alicia Keys)”, The Blueprint 3

16) Lady Gaga, “Bad Romance”, The Fame - Takes the blueprint for success from “Paparazzi” and tries it again with even more success. It is probably too early to project where things will go from here for Lady Gaga, and there’s a very good chance I will come to regret my next statement, but…after “Paparazzi” and “Bad Romance” I now have faith that the latest Lady Gaga song will be the best. That means we haven’t seen her peak. Not even close. Of course this assumes that songs like “Poker Face” are the exceptions and songs like “Bad Romance” are the rule. Maybe it’s still too early to make that call, but for now, “Bad Romance” is her career highlight.

15) Washed Out, “Feel It All Around”, Life of Leisure - What precisely is chillwave? I’m not sure. What makes it different than, say, glo-fi or dream pop? Is Scandinavian Balearic music technically chillwave? Air France seems pretty chill. Memory Tapes kind of sounds like the Tough Alliance. That’s pretty chill. Do genres even matter? Genre definitions drove music debate as much in ’09 as the actual music did, and I still don’t know what precisely constitutes chillwave, but this track seems to define what I think it means pretty well.

14) Matt and Kim, “Lessons Learned”, Grand - Kind of just an excuse to link to the best music video of 2009.

13) Fuck Buttons, “Surf Solar”, Tarot Sport - What do you think Fuck Buttons means? You’re exactly right. And this song sounds exactly like that. Disco balls hanging from the roof of the thunderdome.

12) Phoenix, “1901”, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Required on this list by law.

11) St. Vincent, “Actor Out Of Work”, Actor

10) Wavves, “So Bored”, Wavvves - I know, I know. It’s not music. And even if it were music, it would be way too overhyped and, really, not that good. He’s a spoiled kid from San Diego, with nothing to do but write songs about having nothing to do. Also, weed. How can he be taken seriously? Honestly, I’m still not sure if he can. But Nathan Williams (aka Wavves) was the Tiger Woods story of indie rock this year. It seemed every other week some unflattering story came out about him. Dude from Psychedelic Horseshit started printing up “Wavves Sux” t-shirts. Wavves makes an ass out of himself as SXSW. Then he flips the fuck out in Barcelona because of a poor soundcheck and gets a shoe thrown at him. Also, Vicodin and ecstasy. The resulting fall out forces his to nix his European tour. What? Wavves barely existed 13 months and he’s already canceling international tours. Fascinating. Also, the music is pretty good, too.

9) Grizzly Bear, “Two Weeks”, Veckatimest - Runner up best video of the year.

8 ) MSTRKFRT, “Heartbreaker (ft. John Legend)”, Fist of God - Third best video of the year.

7) Dirty Projectors, “Stillness Is The Move”, Bitte Orca

6) The Killers, “Spaceman”, Day & Age - This doesn’t make me any happier than it makes you, but this is the best Killers song in years. Especially when you compare it to their previous efforts (“Human”, ugh.) and the tracks that followed it (“White Demon Love Song” from the Twilight OST. Double, ugh.). You know what my favorite part of the whole thing is? The fact that the Killers created this exciting, pulsing power pop powderkeg of a song complete with a sing-it-at-the-top of your lungs chorus and plenty of “oooh, oooh, ooohs”, but still managed to almost, almost, ruin it with a ridiculous spoken word (maybe?) bridge, “They say the Nile used to run from east to west.” Huh? They been doing that shit since, “I got soul but I’m not a soldier” but the ridiculousness of their ridiculous lines never gets old. Again, I said it almost ruins the song. By the time the drums come back in, you remember why you liked the song in the first place.

5) La Roux, “Bulletproof”, La Roux

4) Animal Collective, “My Girls”, Merriweather Post Pavilion - Absolutely beautiful song that echoes the sentiment of the times we’re living in better than any song I’ve heard in a while, “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things, like the social stats/I just want four walls and an adobe slab for my girls”. At least, I think that’s what everyone wishes they thought. After all, rampant materialism was one of the horsemen that carried us to our current predicament. Regardless of sentimentality, the song is amazing: lush synths, head bobbing percussion, and those infectious “ooohs”. The closest thing to a pop song, on the closest thing AC may ever come to a pop album.

3) Friendly Fires, “Skeleton Boy”, Friendly Fires - Flashy disco track from the St. Albans trio. Also, the best dance song, or at least my favorite song to dance to, of the past year.

2) Taylor Swift, “You Belong with Me”, Fearless - What can’t she do? She conquers the Billboard charts. Annihilates Miley Cyrus during their duet at the Grammy’s. Gives teenagers a pop star to look up to that writes her own songs and doesn’t work for Disney, that often. Humbles Kanye West. Hosts SNL. And lands a country song on jldre’s best of the year list. Wow. Heck of a year. And that’s all true, except for one. The last one. Yes, Taylor Swift does have the second best single of 2009, but it ain’t country. It’s pure pop. Have you heard the pop remix of this track? How awful is that? You know why it’s so bad? Because the original was already a pop song, no remix necessary. What makes it country? The pickin’ in the intro? That guitar thingy that makes the “wahh, wahh, waaaahhhhh” sound? The banjo? The fiddle? It’s a song about teenage love, about unrequited teenage love. About listening to records in your bedroom and imagining the way things could be. That’s pop. That’s a pop song that’s been done about a million times. This time, the song just happens to be one of the best to ever do it. Also, I bet her hair smells like strawberries.

1) Royksopp, “The Girl And The Robot”, Junior - Enough with this light-hearted fun stuff. This is serious. This is the tale of a scorned lover from a dystopian future. A woman in love with a mechanical man, destined to love him, but simultaneously destined to receive no love in return. On the bright side, she does get MTV on future cable. A tragic story spun across menacing disco synths and skittering percussion. The tension is palpable. I think it’s fair to call this the most emotional song I heard this year. You can almost hear Robyn’s heart breaking, “In the night wait up for you/even though you don’t want me to/Go to bed; leave the lights on/What’s the use?” If disco is destined to return as the defining genre of the next decade (and I think it will, but they’ll never get away with calling it disco) this song may serve as the advance guard. In a decade Royskopp, always an eclectic duo, have successfully transitioned from carefree electro-pop and IDM to sinister disco, and this song is the culmination of that transition. Will it drive the direction of their future work. Who knows, but I suspect it will drive the direction of electronic music for years to come, even if no one knows it.

The 25 Best Albums of 2009

Honorable Mention

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse, Dark Night of the Soul

Dead Man’s Bones, Dead Man’s Bones

Isis, Wavering Radiant

Matt and Kim, Grand

Passion Pit, Manners

25) CFCF, Panesian Nights EP - Montreal based, Michael Mann (see Miami Vice, Heat, et al) inspired, atmospheric electro.

Choice tracks: “Crystal Mines”, “The Explorers”, “Color Dreams”

24) Double Dagger, More - South Baltimore hardcore. It was recorded in a vacant warehouse with no heat in the middle of winter. And it sounds like it. That’s not a bad thing.

Choice tracks: “No Allies”, “The Lie/The Truth”, “Surrealist Composition With Your Face”

23) Royskopp, Junior - The duo’s latest shows a tremendous advance of their electro sound.

Choice tracks: “Happy Up Here”, “The Girl And The Robot”, Vision One”

22) Meanderthals, Desire Lines - Ibiza inspired space disco collaboration between Norwegian group Idjut Boys and Rune Lindbaek.

Choice tracks: “Kunst or Ars”, “Andromeda (Prelude to the Future)”, “1-800-288-Slam”

21) Cymbals Eat Guitars, Why There Are Mountains - Spazzy, Modest Mouse and Pavement inspired, indie rock from the Staten Island (by way of Penn State, for one of the members at least) duo.

Choice tracks: “And the Hazy Sea”, “Some Trees (Merritt Moon)”, “What Dogs See”

20) Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest -

Required by law to be on this list. Choice tracks: “Two Weeks”, “Cheerleader”, “While You Wait for the Others”

19) DOOM, Born Like This - A return to the form that made him the most celebrated underground MC in the game.

Choice tracks: “Gazzilion Ear”, “Ballskin”, “Still Dope (ft. Empress Sharrh)”

18) Santigold, Southerngold - Unlicensed mash up of Santigold’s debut album and the best southern hip hop of the last five years. Brooklyn does, in fact, go hard.

Choice tracks:“You’ll Find A Way Player (ft. Andre 3000 & Bun B)”, “Shawty Is Starstruck (ft. The Dream)”, “Nann Lady (ft. Trick Daddy & Trina)”

17) The xx, xx - Hype! Hype! Best band of the next decade! Hype! This entry brought to you by the NME.

Choice tracks: “Crystalized”, “Islands”, “Shelter”

16) Lil Wayne, No Ceilings - Lil Wayne can still rap!

Choice tracks: “Ice Cream Paint Job”, “Break Up (ft. Short Dawg & Gudda Gudda)”, “Wetter”

15) Delorean, Ayrton Senna EP - Debut EP as a dream pop/techno outfit for the former emocore band from Barcelona.

Choice tracks: “Deli”, “Big Dipper”, “Monsoon”

14) Neon Indian, Psychic Chasms - Chillwave/glo-fi handbook from the glitchy Austin based outfit. Best description I’ve read: “It doesn’t sound like a cassette. It sounds like what you think a cassette should sound like.” It also kind of sounds like an AM radio playing “A Wonderful Christmas Time” having sex with a feedback pedal. Choice tracks: “Deadbeat Summer”, “6669(I Don’t Know If You Know)”, “Local Joke”

13) Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Pt. 2 - A sequel that is not an embarrassment to the original. Even if it did take almost a decade and a half to put it out. C

hoice tracks: “House of Flying Daggers (ft. Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, Method Man & GZA)”, “The New Wu (ft. Ghostface Killah & Method Man)”, “Kiss the Ring (ft. Inspectah Deck & Masta Killa)”

12) Various Artists, Dark Was The Night - Indie compilation nirvana: Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, The National, My Morning Jacket, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Ben Gibbard & Feist, the Arcade Fire, Dave Sitek, and Beirut. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Choice tracks: “Knotty Pine (Dirty Projectors ft. David Byrne)”, “You Are The Blood (Sufjan Stevens)”, “Lenin (Arcade Fire)”

11) Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion - Possibly the closest this group will ever get to a true pop album and it is a triumph.

Choice tracks: “My Girls”, “Bluish”, “Brother Sport”

10) Blank Dogs, Under and Under - Post punk/’80s goth influenced lo-fi from the Brooklyn based solo project of Mike Sniper.

Choice tracks: “Setting Fire to Your House”, “Blue Lights”, “Tin Birds”

9) The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Post punk/’80s goth influenced no-fi from the Brooklyn based outfit… That last sentence seems so familiar for some reason…

Choice tracks: “Come Saturday”, “This Love Is Fucking Right”, “A Teenager In Love”

8 ) Junior Boys, Begone Dull Care - Electro R&B from the Hamilton, Ontario duo.

Choice tracks: “Parallel Lines”, “Bits & Pieces”, “Hazel”

7) CFCF, Continent - Soundtrack ready electro from the Montreal based knob twiddler.

Choice tracks: “Raining Patterns”, “Invitation To Love”, “You Hear Colours”

6) Girls, Album - Surf rock from the San Francisco quartet.

Choice tracks: “Lust For Life”, “Ghost Mouth”, “Hellhole Ratrace”

5) Wavves, Wavvves - What else can be said at this point? I love this record, whether it’s music or just an elaborate ruse to steal $30k from Woodsist and Fat Possum. When it dropped last January it sounded different than anything else that existed in the no-fi/shitgaze genre. It was more hostile than No Age, more straightforward than HEALTH, and way sunnier than Abe Vigoda. It was noisy, so noisy than on at least one occasion I thought my computer speakers were broken. Over the last year I’ve heard Nathan Williams compared to Brian Wilson and Kurt Cobain and excoriated as a charlatan. I don’t think any of those tags are true, or fair for that matter. But there’s no doubt Wavves made the best album of the last year to listen to at a beach party while high on acid. Also, weed.

Choice tracks: “Gun in the Sun”, “So Bored”, “No Hope Kids”

4) Drummer, Feel Good Together - What a strange record this was. Here’s the backstory in a nutshell. Five drummers from eight bands (the Black Keys, Teeth of the Hydra, Beaten Awake, Party of Helicopters, Houseguest , Six Parts Seven, Ghostman and Sandman) get together to make an album. And it’s not going to be some sort of avant garde percussion ensemble. It’s going to be straightforward rock ‘n roll. Amazingly enough, this idea wasn’t a failure. Instead it takes the best from ‘80s hair metal, ‘80s wuss rock, and ‘90s indie/college rock and fuses them into something that sounds sort of like Pavement, maybe, if they listened to a ton of Foreigner growing up.

Choice tracks: “Lottery Dust”, “Mature Fantasy”, “Connect to Lounge”

3) Washed Out, Life of Leisure - There were three big musical movements that came to the fore this year. The top three albums each cover one. The first is chillwave/glo-fi. It’s the kind of music you might listen to as you come down after a rave. It’s also the sort of music you would expect to hear at a really cool beach party, perhaps in Malibu. It takes a lo-fi “feedback is as much an instrument as a guitar” approach to crafting immensely enjoyable, summery pop tunes. This leads to the second crucial element of the album, the unhurried, almost unfeeling aesthetic of the album. That’s not to suggest it isn’t warm; it’s bedroom pop at it’s finest, but it’s really fucking cool too. To the touch even, like condensation on water pipes when it’s really hot outside. Cool enough that it never questions its own very questionable sound quality. If they had pro-tools in 1985, we would have had this album a long time ago.

Choice tracks: “Get Up”, “Feel It All Around”, “You’ll See It”

2) La Roux, La Roux - The second big trend was homemade diva pop. Homemade, suggesting that the music is a clear result of the artist’s and producers own ideas and songs, as opposed to corporate or third party interests. Diva, suggesting a powerful female singer. La Roux creates meticulous pop songs, that sound perfectly at home in a year that will soone be gone, and usher in new and unknown decade. The songs sound as if they’re not so much recorded, as molded from plastic. It is not warm music. It’s a union of the harsh electronics of Kid A era Radiohead, the computer generated beats of Crystal Castles, and the skeletal Scandinavian pop ambitions of Robyn. It’s a declaration of pop independence in the last year of the most technologically advanced decade in history.

Choice tracks: “In For the Kill”, “Bulletproof”, “I’m Not Your Toy”

1) Japandroids, Post-Nothing - The third trend is the reappropriation of the aesthetics of no-fi and shitgaze for pursuits that decidedly do not sound like shit. That’s convoluted, I know, but my basic point is… In ’07 the bands that sounded like shit sounded like shit because they had to, they were broke. In ’08 the bands that sounded like shit sounded like shit because it was thing to do (this went out the window with all the Wavves controversy, or at least, should have gone out the window). In ’09 the bands that sound like shit aren’t really trying. JPNDRDS don’t sound like shit, but they realize that well worn recording equipment and plenty of distortion will give their songs a rawness and intensity that straight-from-the-diary lyrics and over-the-top screaming never could. That was the big fallacy in emo: how do you sound intense and personal when the music you play sounds like it just came through ab audio car wash (complete with undercoating). Nirvana figured this out 20 years ago. You can create meaningful power pop that will resonate far outside the local mall by giving your music a raw and brash sound. I’m not saying JPNDRDS are Nirvana. They have a hell of a long way to get there. But there music certainly shares more than a few familiarities with the alternative rock of Seattle in the late ‘80s. Maybe that’s because they’re from Vancouver. More likely, it’s because they know what it takes to make relevant music that tugs at your heart as much as it encourages you to bang your head.

Choice tracks: “Young Hearts Spark Fire”, “Wet Hair”, “Crazy/Forever”

…

That’s it for ‘09. The best songs and albums of the last 12 months counted down from 25 to 1. Obviously, I didn’t listen to every bit of music released in the last year, so I’m sure there’s something I missed. Let me know what exactly I missed in the comments.

Monday starts the countdown of the best of the oh’s. We’ll start with singles then go to albums. Be sure to check back. Until then, thanks for reading everyone. Bung bung.