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Top Ten Albums of 2009

December 29, 2009
Chipped Hip
As promised, the year-end madness continues with my top ten albums of 2009. In the next couple days, I’ll be writing about a change of format here at Chipped Hip. In the mean time, here’s what rocked my stereo/laptop/iPod over the past year.

Japandroids got all of the glory, but there were lots of great albums released this year in Vancouver. And although only three managed to make the top ten cut, there are plenty of other amazing releases that were highlights of the last twelve months (Prairie Cat, Lightning Dust, Dan Mangan, the Zolas, etc.).

10. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic

Sprawling chaos, with distorted drums competing for space with barbed guitars and spiky keyboards. The album could have fit onto a single CD, but by spreading it over two, the Flaming Lips show that there’s a method to the mayhem.


9. Atlas Sound – Logos

Logos has all of Bradford Cox’s usual tricks: swirling guitar fuzz, looping synth ambience and echoed, alien vocals. But this time around, there’s enough straightforward songwriting to remind us that, behind the atmospherics, he’s just another dude with a guitar.


Matt & Kim Grand8. Matt & Kim – Grand

As well as referring to a street in Manhattan, the title acknowledges the album’s lush production and weighty arrangements. Of course, with Matt & Kim, such terms are all relative, since they still sound like a couple of kids thrashing away in their living room.


Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love7. Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love

Stephen McBean has a reputation as Vancouver’s preeminent Sabbath-loving riffmonger, but Outside Love favours acoustic guitars and baroque strings over bombastic hard rock workouts. It turns out that he’s just as good at chamber folk as he is at ’70s rock.


Apollo Ghosts - Hastings Sunrise6. Hastings Sunrise – Hastings Sunrise

A 27-minute sugar rush that sounds like it was written on the spot, without rehearsals or second takes. In the case of Apollo Ghosts, that’s a compliment. Slapdash brilliance and buoyant energy made this one of the most instantly likeable albums of the year.


Little Girls - Concepts5. Little Girls – Concepts

In a year of reverb-heavy, lo-fi fuzz pop, Concepts is the grimiest of the lot. Distortion reduces the vocals to a distant, robotic moan while guitars crash against tinny drum loops. And yet, the whole mess sounds completely beautiful.


4. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Once a cult band enjoyed almost exclusively by bloggers and record store employees, Merriweather turned Animal Collective into the everyman’s indie band. And it’s not hard to see why, with its plentiful hooks and universal themes of love and domesticity.


3. Said the Whale – Islands Disappear

A boat whirs as Islands Disappear kicks off with a gentle tour ballad followed by a rocker with shouted group vocals. Half an hour later, it’s bookended with more group vocals and another tour ballad. The year’s most symmetrical album then ends with the whirring of a boat.


2. Hollerado – Record in a Bag

Now we can all stop complaining about how Weezer has gone to shit, since Hollerado has taken up the power pop torch, delivering timeless hooks with party rock gusto. The bad news is that, if the comparison holds, Hollerado is going to suck in fifteen years.


1. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The grit of the Jesus and Mary Chain. The big-hearted wit of Belle & Sebastian. The soporific sheen of My Bloody Valentine. And the pop quirks of a legion of obscure cult icons (the Pastels, Rocketship, etc.). With songwriting this good, no style ever sounds played out.
 

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Top Ten Songs of 2009

December 28, 2009
Chipped Hip
2009 is the year everyone ran out of adjectives to describe fuzzy, reverb-soaked pop. To compensate, we started describing it using a bunch of obscure sub-genres—glo-fi, shitgaze, chillwave, hypnagogic pop—and tried to ignore the fact that two years ago, we would have probably called it all “dream pop.” But who cares? I was a sucker for it as much as anyone, and many of the years best releases fell under the dream pop umbrella.

I’ll be changing the format of Chipped Hip in the new year, which will allow me to offer more downloads as well as update a little more frequently. But just to wipe the slate clean for this past year, here are my top ten songs of 2009. My top ten albums will follow tomorrow. Interestingly, the two lists are fairly different, as some of the top songs came from albums that I didn’t otherwise care for.

Washed Out - Feel It All Around10. Washed Out – “Feel It All Around”

With sighing harmonies and woozy synth bliss, “Feel It All Around” is the sonic equivalent to a slow motion montage (or, as I previously wrote, a Polaroid picture). If you know of a song that better evokes hazy summer nostalgia than this, I’d like to hear it.


9. Matt & Kim – “Lessons Learned”

Matt & Kim scale back the usual piano punk madness for a delicate, textured song that could be a ballad if only the drums weren’t moving in double time. The centrepiece of Grand, its droning synths and layered vocals sound positively, er, grand.


The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Young Adult Friction8. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – “Young Adult Friction”

It turns out that this Brooklyn outfit is just as good at jangle pop as it is at fuzz rock. “Young Adult Friction” is a punny ’80s throwback that’s the second best library-based love song of 2009 (spoiler alert!).


Atlas Sound - Logos7. Atlas Sound – “Quick Canal”

Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier offers sublime, echoing vocals to this dreamy nine-minute electro vamp. I still can’t tell if she’s singing “wisdom is love” or “wisdom is learned,” but either way, it sounds like a revelation.


Hannah Georgas - The Beat Stuff6. Hannah Georgas – “The National”

I find the National fucking boring, but this song is folk pop at its most affecting. Over a plucking banjo and barely-there harmonies, Georgas reminisces about a defunct relationship, half-hoping and half-fearing that she’ll run into him at a National concert.


Girls - Hellhole Ratrace5. Girls – “Hellhole Ratrace”

The song that plays after the lights have been turned on and everyone’s gone home, while the bartender stacks chairs and mops up beer. Mopey self-pity gives way to sublime euphoria, repeating on and on into infinity (okay, actually for about seven minutes).


4. Said the Whale – “Camilo (The Magician)”

Between the version that appeared on The Magician EP and the one from Islands Disappear a few months later, I listened to “Camilo” more than any other song in 2009. And still I never tire of the grungy guitar riffs and stuttering chorus of this power pop gem.


3. God Help the Girl – “God Help the Girl”

This portrait of a reclusive romantic is so vivid that it provided songwriter Stuart Murdoch with the inspiration for an entire musical based on the same character. And although it describes a girl going into reclusion, witty lyrics mean that it’s as funny as it is poignant.


2. Animal Collective – “My Girls”

My friend Colin invented a dance to this song, which involved lots of clapping and hopping from side to side. Now try imaging him doing that same dance to anything off Here Comes the Indian. That’s how far this band has come.


1. Camera Obscura – “French Navy”

Swooning, orchestral soul pop with a timeless complaint: “I wanted to control it / But love, I couldn’t hold it.” But it’s the details that really make it come alive—the “dusty library,” the “dietary restriction”—and gives it the personal touch needed to become a breakup classic.
 

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