All Is Right In The World

The empire has fallen, and all feels right in the world. How am I celebrating? By obsessively making lists. As usual.

Ladies and gentlemen, here, truncated, is my Top 25 albums of 2009:

25. Orphan Fairytale - Ladybird Labyrinth
24. Zero 7 - Yeah Ghost
23. Broadcast - Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate the Witch Cults of the Radio Age
22. Blk Jks - After Robots
21. A Broken Consort - Box of Birch
20. Passion Pit - Manners
19. Years - s/t
18. Jonsi & Alex - Riceboy Sleeps
17. Dead Man's Bones - s/t
16. Girls - Album
15. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - s/t
14. Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
13. Doves - Kingdom of Rust
12. Mew - No More Stories...
11. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
10. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
9. Anthony & The Johnsons - The Crying Light
8. Engineers - Three Fact Fader
7. The Field - Yesterday and Today
6. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
5. Ducktails - s/t
4. Various - Dark Was The Night
3. Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
2. Dan Deacon - Bromst
1. Animal Collective - Meriweather Post Pavilion


Loses all meaning when not accompanied by a glut of impassioned/aimlessly purple prose, don't you think?


The fun doesn't stop there. Every year I allow for my listening habits to be utterly dictated by the notion that, come the end of the year, I'll put all of my favourite tracks of the year together on a "best of the year" mix CD. I've done the same this year. I'd like to say that this represents a comprehensive "best tracks of 2009", but it doesn't. Favoured tracks are often omitted/suplanted for the sake of running time and/or order. So, here's a mix CD I entitled 2009 - it's not at all available for streaming or download, so I'm just wasting everybody's time, really.

1. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Stay Alive
2.  Ducktails - Pizza Time
3.  Girls - Lust For Life
4. Wild Beasts - Empty Nest
5. Passion Pit - Sleepyhead
6.  The Field - The More That I Do
7.  Dan Deacon - Build Voice
8. Animal Collective - In The Flowers
9. Years - The Major Lift
10.  Doves - Winter Hill
11.  Intricate Machines - Wooden Roof
12.  Yo La Tengo - More Stars Than There Are In Heaven
13.  Andrew Bird - Anonanimal
14.  Anthony & The Johnsons - Another World
15.  Bat For Lashes - Siren Song
16.  Zero 7 - All of Us

It flows beautifully, you know.

Finally, we shall bring this cavalcade of dull to a dusty flumping close with an approximation of my favourite albums of the noughties. With two exceptions they're all guitar driven. Aside from a couple of starring roles, they're dominated by male. And, with no exceptions, they're white, western. This does not make me a racist chauvinist, but it may make me a twat. I don't know. I'm reluctant to expand my horizons for the sake of expansion. That way madness - and ridicule - lies. So, the best of the noughties, then, in pure, unadulterated list form, for I don't have the time for "in depth", nobody will read it anyway and oh god it's all so droll and crass and predictable: 

1. Radiohead - Kid A
2. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
3. Animal Collective - Feels
4. Badly Drawn Boy - Hour of Bewilderbeast
5. Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World
6. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it in People
7. Arcade Fire - Funeral
8. Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump
9. Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel The Illinoise
10. Lou Reed - The Raven
11. The Delgados - The Great Eastern
12. Sigur Ros - ( )
13. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls In America
14. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
15. The Beta Band - Hot Shots II
16. Blur - Think Tank
17. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
18. Guillemots - Through The Window Pane
19. Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
20. British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music


Up next - who cares?