Welcome back to The Best of 2009 with me, your hose, Da Mazt. Not really, it's The Mast. I never got that, did you? The whole idea of replacing letters in slang terms even though it's the same amount of letters anyway. It's spelled "Skills", not "Skillz". Ya can't type the S?!
...
ANYWAY...welcome back. This part of The Best of 2009 will focus on a few musical things and a somewhat semi-brief run-down of what to expect from comics, music and Welcome to the Mast in 2010. If you're joining me after having read the first part, thanks! If you've never read my blog before, take a seat right over there.
My musical top 10 end-of-year lists are somewhat legendary and have been for a long time. I used to do this every year on my journal (Still may), but now this place takes priority. So, whilst this site is primarily for comics, this music list is probably more awaited and will be more viewed. Hey, more people dig music than comics...I accept this.
Also, seeing as this is the end of a decade for all intents and purpose, I will be doing my Top 10 Albums of the Decade; a first for me. I can't remember having done this before.
I will use this moment to brief you on how this is going down. After I list the Top 10 Albums of 2009 (Obviously including the award for Best Album of 2009), I will then give the list for Top 10 Albums of the Decade (Implicitly including Best Album of the Decade). Now...here's where it may get confusing, so I've simplified it. This is how I'm going to do it:
It makes logical sense that the best 10 of the decade are the 10 previous yearly winners (This year included). However, I want to be 100% accurate, so I will be including any candidates from any year of the decade, regardless of winning. Let me give an example:
Whilst there are going to be 10 specific Album of the Year winners, there is one album that DIDN'T win album of the year, but is still better than all other contenders besides the one it lost to. That is the only exception.
Therefore there are two from the same year and, as a result, I have omitted any entries from 2002, which was somewhat of a weak year compared to others.
Whew, with that in mind, let's get this show going!
Music Awards:
- Worst Song of 2009
- Best Song of 2009
- Worst Album of 2009
- Top 10 Albums of 2009/Best Album of 2009
- Top 10 Albums of the Decade/Best Album of the Decade
I wasn't sure how to pick the winner for this first award, simply because there are so...so many candidates. I thought I had it pegged, but then I remembered a song that is so unconscionable that it HAS to win.
Ladies and gentlemen, here is the winner of the award for Worst Song of 2009...
Down by Jay Sean.
It was going to be Boom, Boom, Pow by The Black Eyed Peas until a week or two ago. The more I heard this song, the more I realised the choice was academic.
What about this song is so bad? EVERYTHING. I literally do not see a redeeming quality in either the music or the aesthetic. The music is terribly and imminently boring, it's par for the course nowadays; a man who is obviously dressed by a stylist in effort to please chicks, singing generic R&B with autotune on his voice.
The fact that he's British is what bothers me. I have no issue with anyone singing in American accents, because it's what most people are used to having been raised on mostly American music. You pick it up when you sing along, like an accent.
However, Jay Sean actually seems to wish he was an American R&B singer.
Oh, and it has Lil Wayne on it.
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The song of the year doesn't actually have any artwork because it's not a single, so you'll just get a picture of who created such a masterpiece. There really was no contest for this award, as far as I'm concerned! The winner of the award for Best Song of 2009 is none other than...
Colonised Mind by Prince.
This was the first song I heard from ONE of his new albums, and I instantly just fell in love with it. It heightened my anticipation for his new work to unprecedented degrees.
You see, Prince always makes good albums, but nowadays he tends to have amazing songs more than amazing albums. His last AMAZING album was probably Musicology back in 2004. However, every year he releases an album, he usually wins Best Song.
This song is everything that the winner of Worst Song is not. Every single aspect of this song, musically, is outstanding. Most notably, Prince's guitar work is flawless. Literally perfect. The tone of the notes, the flow with which he plays and the style he plays in...it's all perfect. Colonised Mind is a tremendously slow, gorgeous piece of soulful music with a solo that could probably part an ocean.
This is why he remains the single greatest songwriter (Not necessarily album-maker) of all time, because he can write songs like Colonised Mind. If you haven't heard it, you seriously need to. I'm not about to outwardly promote illegal downloading, since I don't do that. I'm sure you can get hold of it, though.
The only song that came close this year, individually, was Heads Will Roll by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I'm sad that I can't spend time gushing about how fucking out of this world Heads Will Roll is, because it didn't win. Just...hear it.
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This next award is for Worst Album of 2009. Bearing in mind that there is a lot of music I hate, I opted to interpret this category as an award for the worst album I bought this year. So, with the big categories fast approaching, let's get through this one quickly! I can hardly contain my excitement.
Depart From Me by Cage.
Now, I like Cage.
He's one of the best modern hip hop MCs there is and if you haven't heard his Hell's Winter album, DO SO. I just...can't put my finger on what went wrong on this album.
It seems like he got his head so far stuck up his own ass while trying to be introspective and angsty that he forgot to take it out. Somewhere in between slowly becoming a sellout and letting Shia LeBeouf convince him to do more commercial music, Cage is now the MC with the most appropriate name in hip hop. He's caged, and I fear he'll never break out again.
It's a shame.
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Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. The time has come to unveil, in succession, the Top 10 Albums of 2009/Best Album of 2009 and the Top 10 Albums of the Decade/Best Album of the Decade!
It's been an incredibly hard list to configure. How to arrange them, what albums to include, which to omit etc. It's been killer. I do feel that I am entirely happy with the final list, especially the one covering the decade, and I do think it'll shock you if you know my tastes.
Without further stalling, and with the top five of each list accompanied by a review, here are my Top 10 Albums of 2009 from last to first!
10. Wavering Radiant by Isis.
9. The Great Misdirect by Between the Buried & Me.
8. Journal for Plague Lovers by Manic Street Preachers.
7. Crack the Skye by Mastodon.
6. Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective.
5. Lotus Flow3r by Prince.
This is a very, very good album.
I have to say that I don't necessarily think it would be this high as an album if the year had produced way more competition, album-wise, but it's still a terrific album.
A welcome return to his more funk-infused rock and gospel style sound, Lotus Flow3r came as part of a three album set. The second was MPLSoUND; a good album, but not top 10 material, and Elixer by Bria Valente. The latter isn't a Prince album, it's a Prince-written album for his latest protege (Damn good, considering Prince's proteges are usually throwaway).
Lotus Flow3r has a consistently exciting feel, but nothing that truly blows you away aside from a few songs. Those songs include the likes of Colonised Mind, the cliched-but-beautiful 4Ever and Dreamer. Trust me when I tell you that Dreamer sounds like it could have been written by Hendrix. It's such a raw, gritty guitar monster, and I love that. Prince actually packs quite a punch on that song, vocally. He sounds like he's really angry, I dig it!
Love like Jazz is a very nice, understated little gem and Wall of Berlin is a jittery, innuendo-laden, foot-tapping sing-along.
77 Beverly Park ranks as one of my favourite songs on the album. It begins with an echoey, almost menacing riff that you could put sunglasses on in slow motion to. Only then does it segue into an utterly beautiful piece of acoustic guitar music. It reminds me, quite literally, of a park during blossom season. So, so beautiful and one of my favourite instrumentals of all time.
Prince is the MASTER of the song, he is. He is THE best ever, I feel, at writing songs. Albums? Despite having an album in my top five of ALL TIME, and a few others that rank up there, he doesn't have as much consistency with making stellar albums as a whole. On the flipside, if anyone else wrote these albums as their debut, people would rave. The only reason Lotus Flow3r is only very good as opposed to AMAZING is because of the man writing it.
By anyone else's standards, it would be a lifetime high watermark. By Prince's standards, it's solid to very good.
4. It's Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
I do believe this is their highest ranking album in any list I've ever done!
When I listened to this album with the expectation that it'd just be another dose of fine Yeah Yeah Yeahs-esque alternative rock, I figured I was right. What I didn't know was that those two-guys-and-a-girl that comprise the band had decided to throw me a curveball. An apt title, because I did feel blitzed by the onslaught of overwhelmingly soft electronica, pinned down by an unusually docile sounding Karen O.
Far from her maniacal, Karen-Carpenter-on-crack approach to vocals that she adopted on all their work up until Show Your Bones, Karen O really establishes herself on this album as a premier female vocalist in the music world. Everyone has been raving about Zero, and it's an amazing song, but it's definitely nowhere near the best on this album.
Dull Life, Soft Shock, Runaway and Skeletons are all so impeccable, just to name a few. It's a truly lovely, hauntingly beautiful album. Heads Will Roll carries with it an uncannily accurate depiction of early '90s eurodance nostalgia, too. That's a pretty amazing song. When I say it's pretty amazing, consider that an intentionally grand understatement.
This is a truly remarkable, amazing album.
They're one of my most-liked bands, this is probably my favourite of all their work.
I recommend it, highly.
3. Red Light Fever by Hot Leg.
If you remember the extremely awesome band that was The Darkness, then you'll remember their amazing and irrepressable frontman, Justin Hawkins. Hot Leg is his new band. If you're already thinking that you know what to expect, you're probably right.
This wasn't even on my mind until the day before I put this up.
My friend suggested that we both listen to it, and I obliged to crack it out as I still hadn't given it a proper listen.
My, oh my.
The Darkness were blighted by everyone thinking they were a joke band due to their outwardly comedic appearances (Justin, really. Nobody else). What people failed to recognise was the fact that The Darkness contained one of the most legitimately talented songwriters of modern times, and one of the best guitar duos of modern times (Justin Hawkins and his brother Dan).
The band split after one insane album and another very good one. Dan formed the mediocre Stone Gods, and Justin Hawkins formed the diabolically named Hot Leg. It IS one of the worst/best names ever.
Let me cut to the chase. Red Light Fever is extraordinarily camp, it is outrageously bombastic and incomparably over the top.
It's also one of the best slices of balls-out, straight-up rock 'n' roll you'll hear...ever. Justin Hawkins has a falsetto voice that's both monumentally epic and side-splittingly hilarious, putting both to great effect on the album. For an example, see the video for Cocktails on YouTube.
The guitar work, as suspected, is paramount and full of solos. Justin manages to cram so much amazing, sing-along melody into any song he writes that it's almost sickening. Whether it's an audacious keyboard solo, whether it's from his voice or the perfectly-timed harmony vocals, or the creme-de-la-creme string-fiddling of his guitar, there's melody coming from all angles.
I had the good fortune of seeing these guys on their first ever live show and they floored the room. It was a room no bigger than my bedroom, but they floored it. As Hot Leg played every song off their album, plus more, I felt such nostalgia and deja vu. I saw The Darkness on their album release day; they were playing in HMV. They played with such enthusiasm that I truly believed they were the kind of band to give it their all whether there were 10 or 1,000 people watching.
As Justin Hawkins went around this tiny room, soloing, on the shoulders of a fan just as he did at the HMV gig...I realised something. Not only was this going to be another forgotten classic in modern rock 'n' roll, but Justin Hawkins was doomed to forever be that guy from The Darkness.
I've focused on Justin a lot, because it's essentially all him. He has a habit of making instant classics...if they got the fame. I was reminiscing to The Darkness no more than a year after their debut came out. Like that album, Red Light Fever by Hot Leg exudes an undeniable sense of tuneful and instantaneous timelessness.
I'll never, ever forget the experiences I've had with The Darkness and if Hot Leg's insatiable, tooth-achingly enjoyable debut album is anything to go by, then neither will you if you give it a chance.
Do give it a chance, won't you?
2. The B.Q.E. by Sufjan Stevens.
For the longest time, I thought this was going to win the award. Indeed, as objective as I can be, I do think this is the most genius album of the year. The difference between this and the winner is that I enjoyed the winner more.
This album is relatively different where Sufjan Stevens is concerned. It's quite different where most albums are concerned! The B.Q.E. is actually a soundtrack to a movie written by Stevens himself, as an artistic exploration of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Let it not be said that the guy isn't ambitious.
For as long as I've been listening to the guy, that's one of his greatest hallmarks, his ambition. He doesn't seem to be bound by perceptions of: "Wow, I can't do that!". Mike Patton is the same way, so is Prince. Great musicians do not assume they cannot do anything; they just do it. Of course, this is thanks to the fact that Sufjan Stevens can play pretty much any instrument, thus not requiring him to hire any musicians unless it's necessary.
The B.Q.E. is a glorious, wonderfully-conceived and executed piece of orchestra beauty. It delicately and seamlessly mixes neo-classical orchestration with Stevens' trademark folk style, blended with lumps of electronica. This is no more evident than on Movement IV: Traffic Shock, which is a very stuttery piece of classical electronica. It's also very evocative! It really does sound like what it's called...whatever a traffic shock is.
The album is definitely meant to be listened to as a whole, and as such I can't really pick out highlights. I just feel that it's an album of such genius, but not only in conception, in accessibility.
Anyone, I think, with a relatively good understanding and appreciation of the arts should invest in this album/film package. You will not regret it.
Now we come to the moment most people I've spoken to have been waiting for. What is the Best Album of 2009? Who wins this award?!
The winner of the award for Best Album of 2009 is...
WAIT FOR IT...BECAUSE I'M HAPPY THIS WON AND I'M BUILDING SUSPENSE WITH CAPS AND OVER-USE OF THE ENTER KEY!
1. Liebe ist für Alle Da by Rammstein.
Yes! Fucking yes!
I BADLY wanted Rammstein to end this decade with an Album of the Year award. They barely missed out with Mutter in 2001 (Coming 3rd to what would eventually become my two best albums of the decade) and I thought they'd win in 2005 with the amazing Reise, Reise and its sister album, Rosenrot; but they missed out to the album that's 4th on the decade list.
Let me just say that Rammstein won this because this is my favourite album of 2009, I think it's the best one to come out. They beat Sufjan Stevens to the top spot and I think he's one of the greatest songwriters EVER. Do not be convinced that they won this because it was a weak-ish year, because they did not.
Liebe ist für Alle Da is the answer to a question that my friend and I have always asked: Can Rammstein write an album or a song that ISN'T epic? The answer is no.
From the very opening song - as is customary for these epic bastards - you are just overwhelmed by intimidating grandiosity. When the opening vocal of an album is a big, German man shouting: "RAMM...STEIN!" whilst backed by an orchestra that God would commission to soundtrack the end times, you KNOW you're in for a treat.
Everything that makes Rammstein one of the most consistent, enjoyable and creatively talented bands of all time is here with the dial turned up to over 9,000. Rammlied is the gigantic, metal-chugger that opens the album and it's all go from then onward.
Ich Tu De Wih is a song with a chorus so epic that you'll learn German just to sing the fucking thing. I say this, but that element of Rammstein is not new, it's just much better this time around!
I knew they meant business this year when the first single off the album - the minimal powerhouse that is Pussy - had a video that was essentially just porn. I didn't know that the immense ambition of that video and that song would filter over onto the entire album. What's amazing is that Rammstein shed the only problem they've ever had, and that's the ability to keep up the pace of the former half of their albums in the latter half of their albums.
Herzeleid, Sehnsucht, Mutter; Reise, Reise and Rosenrot all have truly amazing first halfs. They just slightly tail off toward the end. Liebe ist für Alle Da does not.
The tradition of having slow songs as a closer is still here, but it doesn't detract from the album at all. When I heard the song Spring, from Rosenrot, I got to thinking that if they could just apply as much audacity and evocative simplicity to the songs they choose to close their albums, they would be better off.
It seems they heard me, because Roter Sand is an achingly lonely piece that seems to have been blown through the roof. The whistled tune that repeats throughout most of the song is such a genius touch, because it makes the song. Somehow.
I seriously cannot pick out highlights, because I'd end up naming all of the songs contained on the album. That's a first for me with Rammstein, it's why they have been getting progressively better with each album and it's why this album is so fucking critical.
Liebe ist für Alle Da is one of my favourites ever, it's also the winner of the award for Best Album of 2009.
About fucking time.
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We're down to the nitty gritty, folks. We're through the looking glass. We're beyond the threshold. If these lines aren't doing anything for you, my bad.
Here we are, end of the line and end of a decade. I'm not going to speak on it, I'm just gonna let the list speak for itself. Here are my Top 10 Albums of the Decade (2000-2009)!
10. Delìrivm Còrdia by Fantômas.
Album of the Year: 2004.
9. Liebe ist für Alle Da by Rammstein.
Album of the Year: 2009.
8. In Rainbows by Radiohead.
Album of the Year: 2007.
7. Untrue by Burial.
Album of the Year: 2008.
6. Hail to the Thief by Radiohead.
Album of the Year: 2003.
5. Come On Feel the Illinoise! by Sufjan Stevens.
Album of the Year: 2005.
4. Ys by Joanna Newsom.
Album of the Year: 2006.
3. Kid A by Radiohead.
Album of the Year: 2000.
2. Lateralus by Tool.
Album of the Year Runner-Up: 2001.
I didn't do reviews for those albums because I wanted to save all my effort in gushing over the album that won this very important contest.
Lateralus was the album that EVERYONE has been guessing would be number 1, and would you look at that...it's not! Also, it WAS Album of the Year 2001 until I had the massive revelation that caused me to amend my list.
This album changed my life, truly. Were it not for the album that won, it would be top...and it had been for eight years. That is until an epiphany happened and I was floored by a surprise entrant.
Which surprise entrant? Let me introduce you to what is, in my opinion, the very best album of the past 10 years. The winner of Best Album of the Decade is...
IS...?!
1. Blackwater Park by Opeth.
Album of the Year: 2001.
I never saw it coming either, and I've had this album since its release day.
I listened to it recently on my friend's ridiculously expensive mega-earphones and experienced an epiphany I'd not felt since...(Get the reference and win a comic).
For the first time, I was rocked to the core by an album I'd always held in unbelievably high regard. It felt like the first time I had heard Lateralus, that feeling that you'd never look at music the same way again, that the album you are listening to has just changed how you perceive music.
There are so many reasons that it shocks me to say Blackwater Park by Opeth is the best album of the decade, but the fact is...I believe it to be.
Albums like this don't happen often, they just don't.
It's one of the few albums that I like to call "Beamed". I refer to Blackwater Park as "Beamed" because it's essentially so good that I don't believe Opeth wrote it. I believe it was beamed down from the far reaches of Space, by aliens far greater than ourselves. Like Lateralus, like Ys, like Kid A beneath it; Blackwater Park has just, for some reason, stolen the top spot and locked me in a stranglehold whereby I see it and hear it unlike I ever have before.
It's the weirdest thing.
What I will say, without trying to pick highlights, is that it is the ONLY album to combine all the possible elements that makes something musically epic, and time it perfectly. What am I referring to? The album closer.
An album closer should always be epic, like the opener should always be something to hook you in, and Blackwater Park's closing title-track isn't an exception. The song itself ends with the most epic crescendoed sound I've ever heard, with the most epic lyric and with the most fitting title...after an album's worth of wormhole busting epic had come before it.
There really hasn't been a better album over the past 10 years, in my opinion.
Blackwater Park by Opeth, the very best that music has had to offer from 2000 to now. The scariest part? I wouldn't bet against it making a top five appearance if I were to do this in 2020, you shouldn't either.
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Honourable Mentions and Post-List Sum-Up:
With so many amazing albums this decade, you simply cannot offer them all a winning place, but you can acknowledge them. Here is a list of the albums that didn't make it, but still rank as some of the best this decade has offered us.
10,000 Days by Tool.
Damnation/Deliverance/Watershed by Opeth.
The Creek Drank the Cradle/Our Endless Numbered Days/The Shepherd's Dog by Iron & Wine.
Relationship of Command by At the Drive-In.
Permission to Land/One Way Ticket to Hell...and Back! by The Darkness.
In Absentia/Deadwing by Porcupine Tree.
Tomahawk/Mit Gas/Anonymous by Tomahawk.
The Rainbow Children/Musicology/3121/Planet Earth by Prince.
Ideas Above Our Station/Shatterproof Is Not a Challenge/Kill Your Own by Hundred Reasons.
Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven by Jimmy Eat World.
The Eraser by Thom Yorke.
Myths of the Near Future by Klaxons.
Toxicity/Mezmerize/Hypnotize by System of a Down.
Peeping Tom by Peeping Tom.
Mutter/Reise, Reise/Rosenrot by Rammstein.
The Adversary by Ihsahn.
Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire and Demise by Emperor.
Jane Doe/You Fail Me/No Heroes/Axe to Fall by Converge.
God Hates Us All by Slayer.
Remission/Leviathan/Blood Mountain by Mastodon.
White Blood Cells/Elephant/Get Behind Me, Satan/Icky Thump by The White Stripes.
The Cold Vein by Cannibal Ox.
Hell's Winter by Cage.
The Green Album/Maladroit/Make Believe/The Red Album/Raditude by Weezer.
Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State by Sufjan Stevens.
Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age.
Plus many more!
Delìrivm Còrdia by Fantômas is also an album I want to pay special mention to. While this album is 10th on the decade's 10 best, I actually feel it is the most genius album of all time. I truly believe there is not a more out-there, amazingly genius or otherworldly conceived album in existence.
The only reason it's 10th is because, in spite of that, there are other albums I enjoy more on a listen-to-listen basis. I cannot begin to describe this album. It contains no single songs. Instead, it is one hour and 15 minutes of nightmarish, terrifying and skin-tingling soundscape that is the stuff of bad dreams made real.
Even now, listening to it, I feel tinges of terror and foreboding. The fact that Mike Patton wrote it all by himself is another incomprehensible point. Listen to it from start to finish, with earphones in and the lights off. Prepare yourself. That's all I can say.
With that said, there you have it! My comprehensive musical bible for the past 10 years.
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I want to take the time to thank everyone who read part of this, all of this or any of it. I don't see reading as a chore, but with people less and less willing to sit down and read, having a blog can be a difficult hobby. So, from me to anyone reading this, a sincere thank you.
Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting and thank you for the support.
What's to Come in 2010.
2010 looks like it's going to be a big year for Welcome to the Mast. I have ideas for a few interviews in the pipeline, people have been contacted so we'll see how that shapes up.
There are some very promising albums on the horizon, too. New efforts from the likes of Killing Joke, Jimmy Eat World, Sigur Rós and Mike Patton are slated for 2010 and that'll give me something to review here. Not to mention the fact that I'm seeing Rammstein in February and the legendary Ennio Morricone in April.
Iron Man 2 is coming out, I can't wait to see it and review it on here. Don't forget to go out and see this on opening day! Let's smash New Moon's record!
Obviously, the big deal for me and for this blog will be Siege. I'm madly looking forward to this event as you all know, and I really hope that it lives up to my expectations. I'm anticipating seeing how all my favourite characters develop and what 2010 holds for them all, and for comics.
As for the blog itself, I have plans. If I'm still doing this by next December and if it's gained more success and traffic, I will be purchasing a proper domain name and revamping my ENTIRE page to look like a legitimately professional website. Blogspot's layout is lovely and I can't really complain, but if I wanna make the leap, then I need to leap big.
That remains uncertain, but as of now I don't plan to go anywhere.
So, from The Mast to the readers; thank you.
See you all in 2010 and have a brilliant New Year.
-The Mast
