The Albums of 2009 - Part Three

10. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca [Domino]

Maybe it’s just me, but 2009 seems like the banner year for a lot of great artists and bands -who’ve been really great for a while now- to finally earn deserved consideration (see: Grizzly Bear, St. Vincent, Animal Collective.) But it seems that with people being hard to please, it takes a solid album or two before someone finally catches on (see: The National, Spoon, Wilco, etc.) Like all of the aforementioned bands and artists, Dirty Projectors’ previous album, Rise Above, is every bit as good as their latest, Bitte Orca.

Right out of the gate, “Cannibal Resource” is a throaty, meticulously driven jam. Outfitted with hand-claps along with Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian’s sweetly child-like singing, it’s very welcoming and joyous. “Temecula Sunrise"’s off-kilter exuberance, paired with Longstreth’s painstakingly complicated guitar, makes for one gripping experience. The guitar buzzes like something out of a Japanese rock show before it rips into an exhilarating piece of soulful jibe. Before you know it, everyone’s singing together: the girls in fine form with breathy delivery and high falsettos support, and Longstreth’s David Byrne-esque delivery combine for something that is amazing. Thoroughly modern, thoroughly mathy tense-and-release.

“No Intention”’s laidback start with a strangely baroque kwassa kwassa guitar teamed with more handclaps, makes for an mighty catchy intro. The albums closer, “Fluorescent Half Dome,” is amazingly composed. Everything from 80’s synths, panicky drums and the interjected vocals lend a hand to deliver another astonishing song.

On previous albums, Longstreth allowed the female singers to chime in and without a doubt; they are everything about what makes Dirty Projectors such a compelling band. But here, they are in the spotlight, for all to behold. “Stillness is the Move” is Coffman’s stomping, jamming showcase and their hottest approximation of a pop jam ever. She belts out notes in such a confident manner and with Longstreth’s noodly guitar playing, it’s a gorgeous track.

The album’s best track is “Two Doves,” and with Deradoorian’s sultry voice, there’s nothing more you can ask for. Softly landscaped with sweeping epic strings that swirl in and out of the picture, the acoustic guitar rustles in the background and she’s left alone, to give it all she has. When she sings, “Kiss me, with your mouth open,” it’s that blunt honesty that seems almost pedestrian in its aesthetic manner but with Deradoorian singing it, it just melts your heart.

There has been expert musicianship and melodic genius throughout their career. Rise Above, a reimagining of Black Flag's Damaged, foreshadowed some of the band's bravery. Ultimately Bitte Orca is definitely a pleasing follow-up. Mostly because it features a lot of the band’s best traits -those wonderful male-female vocals, the lively vibe that it actually feels like it’s being played in your living room and that quirky, off-structure and pace, vibrant musicality.

9. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – White Lunar [Mute]

The current wave of Cavemania follows in the wake of his sophomore novel The Death Of Bunny Munro. White Lunar is a cannily timed compilation of sorts, putting together the highlights of Cave and fellow Bad Seed and Dirty Three lynchpin Warren Ellis' (probably best known for his effortless ability to look violent/dangerous while playing the violin) soundtrack work with some instrumental rarities.

Cave and Ellis have been working with each other for over 15 years, spanning work on Grinderman as well as these soundtracks and the ongoing success of The Bad Seeds. Their venture into scores is relatively recent, leading Cave to carve out yet another career pat. This started with their work on John Hillcoat's Australian western/revenge drama The Proposition, for which Cave also wrote the screenplay. The highlights from this film capture the haunting mood of the story together with an essence of traditional folk.

Afterwards they were commissioned to work on Andrew Dominick's western The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, the score for which has been an undeniable highlight in their careers. Simple yet moving, it mirrors Brad Pitt's slow march towards the inevitable demise promised by the title.

These films take up a third of White Lunar's gargantuan double disc running time. Disc 1 is completed with some music from Hillcoat's next film, an eagerly awaited adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer winner The Road. It feels a natural extension of Jesse James and is no less fascinating. Disc 1 begins with a lovely, tinkling confection of vibraphone, piano and bells from Jesse James. Things proceed in a sombre, expectant mood until Cave starts to sing the odd, whispered dialogue of The Proposition.

The 2nd disc is of more interest to long time followers. Included here is work done on the documentaries The Girls of Phnom Penh (pieces are humidly atmospheric) & The English Surgeon (unsettling, but remarkably evocative) as well as some tracks dug out for the Cave/Ellis archive. Here the simplistic and effective themes continue, the music continuing to be pregnant with poignancy. As the minimal notes on the disc explain, 2 is “fractured, haunting and sometimes badly behaved”. That’s a reference to the jarring, sinister, industrial noise that shudders into life ten minutes after the ‘end’. There are loops and grooves that inspire dread, heat and cruelty. Cave and Ellis, in the suggestion of small but intense events, truly create an epic sweep.

White Lunar also includes four archive pieces, each a moody instrumental named after a lunar crater. “Magma” is the most interesting, at least since it has Ellis singing/chanting the main riff. Musically it's more akin to a minimised version of the Bad Seeds' most tender album, The Boatman's Call.

A compilation of soundtrack pieces shouldn't work on paper, but these evocative tracks stand up well after being separated from their original context. Cave and Ellis' scores unique is their twin ability to stand alone without the films, while the films largely lean upon these audible landscapes as a means of storytelling.

8. The xx – XX [Label: Young Turks/ XL Recordings]

The ability to be quiet and understated is an undervalued quality in indie-pop, and music in general, so it's refreshing that a resolutely quaint band like They spent their youth at London's Elliott School (fellow alumni: Four Tet, Burial and Hot Chip) obsessively tinkering with instruments. The xx can get signed to Rough Trade with songs that barely rise above a 4 on a 10 point scale of volume.

Not since early Low has a band been this purposefully quiet. Not since Young Marble Giants has a band made music this mechanically sparse. And hardly ever has an indie-pop band taken significant stylistic cues from the futuristic zoom-bip Timbaland and the militaristic synth production of the Neptunes.

Declarations like those above are pretty standard when it comes to The xx, and their exceptional debut, but they’re a rare case of a band that deserves all the hype. In under a year, the band of four London 20-year-olds went from bedroom pop experimenters to NME pages and beyond, thanks not to their haircuts or grandiose statements made to whoever sticks a mic in their face, but to the strength of their music.

The xx cut their teeth covering the likes of Aaliyah. XX might bring to mind indie touchstones, but at its core, fittingly, the album is all modern R&B. As the languorous swirl of “Intro” fades in, you immediately sense you're listening to something seductive. The howling synth washes and dancy chorus of “Crystalised” are ripe for a remix with an R&B songstress. “Heart Skipped a Beat” is a Timbaland beat stripped to its core with sparse synthetic hand claps and melodic guitar. “Shelter,” a song about finding shelter in a lover, a re-write of any number of soul hits?

Lyrically, you can be certain that every song is about a relationship in progress, a relationship that is over, or a relationship that one unrequitedly wants to start up again. Guitarist Romy Madley Croft and bassist Oliver Sim are the vocalists here, often trading verse for verse like they’re a couple working out their problems on wax. They reprimand each other for pushing the other away on “Crystalised,” find what they’re after on “Islands,” contemplate a break-up on “Basic Space,” and long for one another, desperately trying to connect but never quite on “Heart Skipped a Beat.” But those are a warm-up for the album’s longest track, the five-minute “Infinity,” a hazy, prosecuting track about the emotional entanglement that often comes with sexual relationships. For a pair of 20-year-olds, Croft and Sim have something of a unbelievable ability to write cutting songs about love and its scruffiness.

It’s the little moments that takeover on XX. There’s the way the lightning synths play like a whiplash to the brain balance on “Infinity.” The bass grumbles retorts to the verses on “Islands.” How the emptiness on “Basic Space” is as important as the parts that aren’t empty. How they finish each other’s sentences on “Stars.” Throughout its tracks, XX doesn’t so much as demand your devotion as it just slowly and completely takes it.

There is a light touch that gives The xx sophistication beyond their years. It probably means that their dream pop will become the ubiquitous dinner party album. But really, their panicky atmospherics are too strange for that. This is uneasy listening to soundtrack the gentle gnashing of teeth. As a good mate tweeted “As far as arvo slow jams go The xx's debut is pretty damn perfect”.

7. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion [Domino]

The first great record of 2009, and the point at which some people had stopped considering other albums for their #1 of the year. It was massively anticipated, hyped (predictably) in indie circles, and (more predictably) panned by the backlash brigade, but it is fucking as brilliant as beans. Panda Bear's increased influence has smoothed off some of AC's more abrasive edges without blunting their creativity.

AC's classic back catalogue, from the frosty Sung Tongs to the abrasive folk freak out of Strawberry Jam, works on a larger scale than the normal band, but the music is still meant for bumping in your trunk or under the colored lights of a basement venue.

Merriweather Post Pavilion just proves Avey Tare and Panda Bear are expert songwriters, turning in a mountain of production and editing. They achieve this feat, perfecting a sound they’ve been honing over 9 studio albums, and it explodes with the sky its intention.

Merriweather has the breakout appeal which none of AC’s albums could reach before, bridging a collection of standard-sized pop tunes that never sharpen or step out of line. It all coagulates into a modern force of psych pop, tribal folk, sonic electronic and whatever else.

It begins with a rumble that ripples right through to the African pop stampede, “Brothersport.” “In the Flowers” begins with strings pulsing in water, dripping in textures before the sloshing/slurping water gives way to an earthquake tribal pulse, Avey Tare’s distinct bubbly persona breaks through to deliver each smile-inducing lyric lick of imaginative nonsense (“She walked up with a flower and I cared”).

“My Girls” takes it further, building a waterfall of synths and distancing of vocals as the song leaps into its uniting verse and chorus, scattered with handclaps and domestic commentary. Maturing, the lyrics on Merriweather touch upon all the corners of domestic life. On “Summertime Clothes,” offset by cheers, an asphalt synth that breaks down into space-electro-pop, Avey Tare enjoys the tender surprises of exploring a familiar terrain (“It doesn’t really matter; I’ll go where you feel / hunt for the breeze, get a midnight meal / I point in the windows, you point out the parks / rip off your sleeves and I’ll ditch my socks”).

“Daily Routine” recognizes the mundane ins-and-outs of an everyday cycle taking care of the brat in the backseat. “Guy’s Eyes,” the urges not satisfied in the lion’s den.

Which brings us to “Lion in a Coma,” an elastic didgeridoo sets the tone for the folklore of Panda Bear’s campfire chants, sparking an irresistible urge to move when his show stopping “lion in a coma” becomes, creepily, “lying in a coma.”

Merriweather is an experience; an interactive pop album marrying every envelope AC has been pushing and opens them all at once. Merriweather Post Pavilion is heartbreaking and heart-warming, and you can either disregard what is one of the most pleasing, enjoyably rich and rewarding releases of the past decade or rally with the rest of us, and clap, sing and continue to blare it through the headphones because, as “Taste” so elegantly points out, "we are still all the things outside of us."

6. St. Vincent – Actor [4AD]

Annie Clark is a Margaret Keane painting come to life, with a voice seemingly crafted of caramelized sugar, but don’t be fooled: she bites. Rich and almost impossibly lush, Annie Clark's 2nd full length as St. Vincent, Actor, continues the vibrant precocity of Marry Me, exhibiting a boundless creativity that still manages to be surprising. But Actor goes even further than her debut in revealing a vicious inner life.

Her second album is rowdier and less well-behaved, and thus better, although the template is the same: breathy coos and lush strings intermittently blown apart by distorted guitar blasts. She's always juxtaposed the cruel and the kind, and here, the elaborate arrangements are even more complex and her voice even sweeter, with both only underlining the dark stream running through her songs.

"What do I share / What do I keep?" she muses on "The Strangers," then promises to "paint the black hole blacker." It possesses a misty and involving tone, setting the scene for later material, which plunges unpredictably into open spaces."You're a liar / You're an extra lost in the scene," she taunts on "Actor Out of Work," behind searing keyboards and twinkling chimes. The natural follow-up: "I think I love you."

Suddenly, a title like "Laughing With a Mouth of Blood" becomes a question: is it her blood or yours? "Save Me from What I Want" rings beautifully, with Clark's voice assisted with her own backing vocals. Her voice seems small and fragile, but it's her most effective instrument, and it affixes a lynchpin to the album's broad creative themes, leaving it glistening with elegance The twist is she’s actually her own worst enemy, most dangerous when she turns her guns on herself - a willowy ode to self-destruction

Even when showing her softer side on the simple, sinuous "The Party," Clark is overwhelmed, lingering over the details of an after-hours crush: "I sit transfixed by a hole in your T-shirt". The flesh behind the hole isn't mentioned, But Clark's ability to tantalize with what remains just out of view keeps us looking.

“Black Rainbow” she watches a bird fight his own reflection in a window. “What’s he gonna win when he wins?” Clark wonders. She doesn’t answer because she knows there isn’t one.

By the end, Actor has proven itself so bristlingly bold and inventive. At this rate of progress, Clark's third album should be an utter masterpiece. For nothing draws attention to the artifice of performance —nothing says 'acting'— like grand reinvention.