My Favorite Albums of 2009

Well, everyone else is doing it. So, I guess I should weigh in as well. Take these with a grain of salt. I don't get to hear half as much music as I'd like, and I inevitably will find things that came out this year that should be on this list but aren't because I haven't heard them yet. C'est la vie, right? I've included a link to reviews of the albums on my list. I'll do a separate post (hopefully sooner rather than later) of other interesting year-end lists. If I feel inspired, I'll do a decade-end list, though given my track record here, don't hold your breath!

1) Lucero - 1372 Overton Park - Some are complaining about this band having sold out. It's the same thing we always hear when an indie band joins a major label. Sometimes the compaints have merit. Other times, it's just a pile of crap. Major labels can bring the best out of a band. This one is full of punky southern grit that comes straight from the heart of Memphis.

2) Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest - For a relatively unknown band, this album received a lot of hype. It made me skeptical. Then I heard it. And it gets better with age too.

3) Neko Case - Middle Cylcone - I mentioned how much I love Case's voice earlier this year. Her new album is her best yet. The songs are finely crafted, and she sings the hell out of them.

4) U2 - No Line on the Horizon - A terrific set, if I must say so. Bono sings his heart out, and man, can The Edge play guitar or what!

5) Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - This album took a very long time to grow on me. It's bold, operatic, big music. What else could it be with a song called Lisztomania?

6) Moby - Wait for Me - I loved Play, but I haven't liked a thing he has done since. This one took me by surprise, and it still gets me. Moody and thoughtful.

7) The Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca - Indie rock so often misses the mark by sounding too indulgent. The Dirty Projectors get it right with this finely crafted piece of work.

8) Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion - This one wanders all over the musical map, and from the journey, the band creates a rich sonic stew. The Afro-Brazilian hybrid Brother Sport is the song of the year.

9) Cass McCombs - Catacombs - Another one that surprised me. There are some striking Dylan-esque comparisons to be made. It's a warm, alluring album, fitting since it's supposed to be a love letter from McCombs to his wife.

10) Phish - Joy - The best Grateful Dead album not made by the Grateful Dead. Hell, it is even better than many of the albums that Garcia and company did make. Even Phish haters will have to give props for the first few tracks. You just can't resist them.

Odds and Ends

First off, thank goodness we dodged the Olympics. Every city that ever hosts things things gets saddled with mountains of debt. I didn't realize until after the fact that South America had never played host to the Olympics. It's all the more reason why Rio was the right choice. I just hope they manage to do it without bankrupting the city or the country. They really need to find a way of making these things less of a burden on the communities they invade. Having said all this, I'm disappointed that I won't get to see the Olympics in person. It'd be kind of cool.

Second, I can't say I'm surprised at all about what David Letterman did. He has a long history of drooling over his female guests. What I can't believe is that a respected, Emmy-winning producer could be so stupid. Then again, these days people think they can get away with anything. Letterman has always been great under pressure. He's handled interviews with some very important figures better than the people who are supposed to get it right. With this, he's turned a very bad situation into something heartfelt, personal, and funny, yet horribly painful. You can see it in his face as he talks about what happened. He genuinely feels like a buffoon, and he should. He also hasn't tried to brush it off. Instead, he has embraced it right up front, dealing with it on a very human level. What he did was wrong, but in the end, he handled it just right.

I'm not a huge Michael Jackson fan, but I have to say I'm very curious about the upcoming move This Is It. I don't know if the police will ever bring charges against his doctor, but after the autopsy results showed that he was actually pretty healthy when he died, I'm left feeling pretty saddened by the whole thing. I didn't think I'd care, but it just doesn't seem right that the people who were supposed to take care of him wound up killing him, maybe not intentionally, but definitely out of their negligent, misguided actions.

Finally, I can't get enough of Jefferson Airplane's rampaging set at Woodstock. Yes, there are times when they fall into complete disarray. But Wooden Ships is so damn mind-melting I keep coming back.

Great Women Singers

Women vocalists knock me out. I really should do a post on some of the best bands sporting female singers, but in the meantime, here's a few killer CDs that have been issued in the past few months:

Neko Case's Middle Cyclone: Case has come a long way since her debut. She's got this overpowering voice that is hard to support, but she's found ways of doing it. This is her best album yet, and there's no reason to think she won't keep improving. She's gonna be around for a long, long time, which is great for all of us.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs' It's Blitz: Doesn't the egg on the cover look like a weird flower in a punk girl's hand? That just about sums up the disc too. Karen O has pushed her band to the pop-side of punk. It's synthy and disco-dance friendly but it packs a punch. This is the B-52s all over again, but it's made for people who didn't really like the B-52s all that much. Dig the basslines but watch out for those guitars...they bite.

Lal Meri's Lal Meri: Fans of Beth Orton would do themselves a favor by checking out this sterling debut. The group is fronted by Nancy Kaye, a jazz vocalist. Behind her the beats swirl and groove, switching from trip-hop to folk to gentle R& B. You can get completely lost in this seductive music. Perfect for a party, perfect for dreaming the night away.

Sears Centre Struggles to Survive

Hoffman Estates just can't seem to support a concert venue. Poplar Creek was a huge loss for the region, but it was forced to fold when the World Music Theater in Tinley Park was constructed way back around 1990. The World was and always will be a horrible place to hear music. It's not built for music. It's built for capacity. Yes, Poplar Creek wasn't perfect. But it was one of those old-style outdoor music venues with decent sightlines and a reasonably good sound system. It felt intimate, while The World felt corporate.

Logistically, Hoffman Estates and the World are (no pun intended) worlds apart, especially amongst the traffic congestion of an urban center like Chicago. So, there was no reason to think that the region couldn't support both venues. But the developers that owned Sears new headquarters wanted the space and owned the property, so it shut down Poplar Creek.

Cut to 2004, when these same developers were struggling to get anything going in the area. So, they proposed a new concert and sporting venue. It's actually not a bad place -- a mid-size arena, featuring 11,000 seats or so. In a lot of ways, it's akin to UIC Pavilion.

Unfortunately, according to a story in the Daily Herald, the Sears Centre isn't faring very well financially. The economy probably has a ton to do with it, and at least, at this stage of the game, it looks like the venue will remain open and won't be shuttered. The owners of the Sears Centre are buried in a mound of debt, and the village of Hoffman Estates might have to come to their rescue.

Here's the good news. The village of Hoffman Estates thinks that the Sears Centre ought to hold more concerts. The sports teams that play in the venue have been struggling to attract crowds, but music acts are selling tickets by the boatload. So we may actually get more and better shows up here, if they can steal some artist away from the city. Not a bad deal, and hopefully it will work.

The Critics Have Spoken...

Yes, I am alive and well. I've just been busy with work and trying to get my place in order. Not much of interest has been happening, so I haven't had much to write about. You know how it is. Now that summer is here, it's been hard to do much of anything, especially with the sudden onslaught of heat.

One thing I did stumble across recently was a new site (at least to me) called Musebin. It's quite a neat little site that features collections of reviews some of which rival Metacritic in breadth and scope.

It's amazing to me that no one has come up with this idea before. Here's the long story: The thing that has always bugged me about Metacritic is that it's a pretty closed society. They choose a handful of new releases each week, all of the big ones are represented, and then they post short excerpts and scores from a bunch of different sources. The problem, for me, is that they always use the same sources, and only the usual suspects are represented.

This is where Musebin fills a nice niche and improves tons and tons upon the Metacritic formula. Everything on Musebin is added by users. So regular people go out and find the most insightful reviews and then post very short, Twitter-worthy excerpts plus a simple rating categorization. Users can also add their own reviews, too, within the same abbreviated guidelines.

Yes, you get some reviews that are nothing more than totally inept and useless nonsense. But you also get some nice, concise summarizations. I should set up an account, as it would be fun to contribute. Then again, given how off-again, on-again I am with blogging, well...

The Dead at Allstate

The Dead were really good at Allstate, though it wasn't completely satisfying, not in the same way that the good old Grateful Dead was. I'm glad the Chicago shows were near the end of the tour, which gave the boys plenty of time to get it together. It would be great if they made this a regular thing, hitting road two or three times a year. It's the only way they'd fix the few problems that remain. The chemistry is there, it's just not complete. The only way to fix this is to play and play and play together regularly.

I also wish they hadn't wound up the second show with I Know You Rider. It was ridiculously predictable, after they skipped it on the opening night. For me, it kind of ended things on a bum note. I like to be surprised. Once they turned the corner into the song, I knew the show was over, and the Brokedown encore just made it worse. Dancin' and Weather Report Suite were the highlights of the second show. The China Cat/Born Cross-Eyed opener was the highlight of the first night.

All in all, not bad, but not the same. I suppose I need to get over it, but honestly, Ratdog has done more for me than any of the post-Jerry bands. It's not that the post-Jerry Dead is bad. They just don't play together enough to be really great.

Anyway, that's just my opinion. I'm sure there are many many Deadheads who disagree.

The Definitive Kris Kristofferson

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been insanely busy with work, trying to hold onto a job that sometimes drives me nuts, but at least pays the bills. Overall I like it but with all the cutbacks and cost-cutting measures of late, it's been difficult trying to pick up the slack for the missing bodies.

Enough about that, though. I was catching up on my magazines last night, and I ran across an absolutely amazing piece on Kris Kristofferson that appeared in Rolling Stone a few issues back. Unfortunately, only a portion of the article is online, but you get the drift. It's worth seeking out the full article. It's written by Ethan Hawke, no less, who turns his super-fandom into a wonderfully entertaining article. It's great, too, that Rolling Stone saw fit to publish the piece, considering that Kristofferson, while still highly respected in some circles, has fallen back into the counterculture.

Bruce Springsteen, Alice Russell, and Escaping the Cold!

Next week, I will get to go to San Francisco at the expense of my company. I haven't been west in awhile, and it will be great to go back to the greatest city in the world. It isn't the ideal time to go. I'd rather head to the Bay Area in the fall, when it's nice and warm and rarely rains. But it still beats Chicago. An ice storm is predicted for later this week, and next week the temperature isn't supposed to rise much past the mid-30s. Although it is going to rain in San Francisco all week next week, it at least won't be so cold. It's supposed to be in the mid-5os next week, which ought to be nice. Hopefully, I can get some sightseeing in, and hopefully, the showers will stop long enough so I can roam through Golden Gate park. I might do it anyway. Unlike those on the west coast, who seem to head inside when it rains, I'm not averse to bad weather. And there are enough places to duck into that it usually doesn't bother me too much if it rains. I want to see the ocean again too. How does the song go: "It's been so long since I've seen the ocean..." Anyway, if the weather did bother me, I certainly wouldn't live here where it's been particularly cold and snowy, the way it always used to be before global warming started messing things up.

Let's do a quick rundown of some music stories of interest:

- Springsteen used his website to lambaste Ticketmaster after fans in New Jersey were treated shabbily. Some were sent to TicketsNow where the cost was up to 50 times higher! TicketMaster is making amends to his fans, and Springsteen has since removed the note, but why did he and the state of New Jersey have to get involved in order for action to be taken? It's one more reason why TicketMaster and Live Nation should not be allowed to merge. TicketMaster already has a monopoly and does whatever it wants. Remember the whole Pearl Jam incident? Pearl Jam had to abandon its fight because TicketMaster was going to kill off the band's ability to earn a living since it controlled access to all of the good venues! That was more than a decade ago!

- For fans of classic soul music, Alice Russell may be the next saving grace. Her latest CD Pot of Gold is right on the money in terms of capturing the mood, the feeling, and the sound of the olden, golden days of R&B. I think The Music Box was right in that she hasn't really found her own voice yet, but I also think they were a little hard on the album. It's better than a lot of these types of CDs.

- I guess while we're on a Springsteen roll, I should point out the latest interview with him in Rolling Stone. Springsteen is notoriously shy, though he has found was of overcoming it. In a way, the early tales of how he wouldn't make eye contact and would struggle to talk about himself and his music is refreshing. So many artists have huge egos long before they deserve them. He talks about himself and his work a little more now, but Springsteen still retains his shyness. David Fricke put together a good interview with The Boss for the latest issue of Rolling Stone, though I wish Springsteen would open up just a little bit more. He sounds so reserved.

- Springsteen's latest album is Working on a Dream. Liking this album has not come easily for me. It's too polished and produced. Some songs don't even sound like anything Springsteen typically would have written and recorded. I suppose it's nice that he is trying new things, but I'll take Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town over anything he's done in the past 27 years (since Nebraska). The Music Box makes some good points about it, so I might have to give it another whirl. I know I plug this site a lot, but I think their commentary is frequently insightful.

Dumbest Band Name....Ever?

This morning I was looking over an e-mail I received that lists some of the concerts coming to town and the on-sale dates for tickets. With apologies to the band, I had to just burst out laughing. Supporting Lily Allen, apparently on all or most of her upcoming tour dates, is a group from Washington that calls itself:

Natalie Portman's Shaved Head

No joke. You read that correctly. The band calls itself Natalie Portman's Shaved Head.

Now, I'm not sure how far they expected to get when they picked this name, but I'm guessing it was some kind of joke that got out of hand. The name makes them sound like a novelty act, though in an attempt to move past it, they have taken to using an abbreviation (NPSH) to identify themselves. Incidentally, their music sounds like it was plucked from the '80s, which is another thing I thought we had moved past. Oh well.

2008 Election and Other Housekeeping Items

It's about time an election swings the right way. Don't get me wrong -- those who know me also know that 8 years ago I thought John McCain deserved a shot at the White House. He was more of a maverick then. There really was a point where even if you didn't agree with his position on something, you had to respect his point of view, which is more than I can say for most politicians these days. It's amazing how he has spent the last 8 years squandering the respect that he had earned. I am happy he lost. He would have been so very wrong for this country.

Those who are worried about Barack Obama ought to read the New Yorker's endorsement of him from their October 13 issue. I meant to post that link before the election, and I forgot. It still is a good description of what we can expect from him, and it certainly made me feel better about him. Perhaps it will do the same for those of you who remain skeptical.

Obama still doesn't excite me when he speaks, but he has a lot of fresh ideas, which is something we desperately need, and the way he has managed to inspire so many people in this country is refreshing. When was the last time we had a President who did that? Some would cite Bill Clinton, but his personal problems undermined his ability to accomplish much, and it wound up dividing the country. So, that leaves JFK, which is the type of leader we need right now. We need someone to challenge us to get off an oil-based economy and move to other sources of energy. Obama is the guy to do it, and he really has to be. We can't afford not to make the switch, and the investment that would be needed would spur our economy and our sense of innovation, which has been missing for a long time. I really believe that any bailout of the auto industry ought to be tied completely to developing cars that do not use gasoline. It really is a lot like JFK's challenge to go to the moon in the early 1960s, and it is a matter of national security.

Speaking of the '60s, The Music Box, one of my favorite hangouts online, has been stuck in the 1960s lately. They've been working their way through the recent Creedence reissues, starting with their debut, Bayou Country, and Green River. They also recently reviewed Richie Havens' Nobody Left to Crown, which is an album I want to like, but lose interest in about halfway through.

This same issue has dogged Bruce Springsteen lately, at least for me. Speaking of which, Rolling Stone let the cat out of the bag regarding a new album from Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. It is encouraging to read about how the album came together so quickly. It just might help him rediscover a sense of urgency, which he still has in concert but has lost in the studio. Working on a Dream is due on January 27. Although Magic and The Rising were disappointing to me, I'll still be in line to pick this one up.

Last but not least, as we wait for Neil Young's Archives series, which doesn't seem as if it ever will come out, he has found another live album to release. Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House, from 1968, is coming out next week. I hope it's good, and I can't imagine that it won't be. But you never know what you're going to get with Neil.

Grateful Dead Return...

The Grateful Dead are back...sort of. The surviving members of the group (Bobby, Phil, Mickey, and Billy) are going to give performing together another shot at an upcoming benefit for Barack Obama on October 13 in State College, PA. Keeping college students involved in the process is critical to Obama's chances in the fall. Warren Haynes will join the band, too, as will Jeff Chimenti from Ratdog. The Allman Brothers Band will also perform at the gig. Sounds like a blockbuster night, though this version of the Grateful Dead has yet to find anywhere near the chemistry of the original group. Apparently, if it goes well, they might consider a spring tour. In my opinion, they should have tapped Mark Karan instead, but that's probably too close to Ratdog for everyone else's tastes. Oh well.

The World of Marty Stuart

I'm becoming more and more impressed with the world of Marty Stuart. Most people haven't a clue who he is, but he's been involved in a ridiculous number of recordings over the years. He's played with Johnny Cash and Lester Flatt. He even helped to turn Billy Bob Thornton's Private Radio into a half-way decent effort. He really is an understated presence. I mention this because I just picked up a copy of Merle Haggard's The Bluegrass Sessions, and guess who was on it...Marty Stuart. He plays a mean mandolin, and he's positively brilliant on it -- as is Haggard who has really come back from nowhere land in the past year or two. According to the All Music Guide, Stuart w'll turn 50 in September, which means he has a lot more time to make great music, and hopefully obtain more recognition for his work.

Police to Make a New Album?

So, the big buzz of the music world today is Andy Sumner's dropping hints that (perhaps, maybe, if you read between the lines and actually believe they can stay together) the Police might make a new album. In a statement to the Associated Press, Sumner said, "It's sort of like living with the elephant in the room. I would see it as a challenge, to make an absolutely brilliant pop album at this stage of our career, and that would be something quite remarkable."

Personally, I can't see it happening, and even if it did, I can't imagine it would be any good. Even before they hit the road, they sounded tired. Their appearance at the Grammy Awards should have been exhilarating, but instead, it fell flat. Believe me, I'm a huge fan of the Police. I'd love to see them make an absolutely brilliant pop album. I just don't think they have it in them anymore.