Popcraft

They say that hindsight is 20/20, so good news! Everything you are about to read is cold, indisputable fact. Here are more albums that happened in 2009, but were not the best.

I Don’t Get It:
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
I tried, I tried so hard. I want to like Middle Cyclone, you guys, but it’s every bit as nonsensical as its stupid cover. A complete mess of ideas and poorly constructed melodies that have their moments, but mostly just fall short of sounding like anything other than an excuse for Neko Case to sing. Sometimes that’s enough for me, but for the most part even pipes like hers are not enough for me to tolerate songs like “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth,” which is a real title of a real song.

Wilco (The Award):
Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Ha ha I thought that was pretty clever! But this album was just okay. I’m sure it makes for an exciting press release, but I’m always wary of artists saying they are going to “return” to their earlier sound like Wilco did with Wilco (The Album). This never actually happens, and usually just a warning sign that the band is unsure of what they’re doing. Does anyone really want Wilco to return to their (awesome) early straight-up alt-county albums? Does Wilco even want that? After this, I have a feeling that Jeff Tweedy would just wind up feeling bored.

Every Year, I Like Exactly One Metal Or Rap Album, Only One:
Mastodon – Crack The Skye
I sincerely like a metal album, everyone! The problem, though, is that I have no idea how to talk about it. My taste in metal is completely pedestrian and unrefined. I have no idea how to identify the qualities that make good metal “good.” There is no difference between the way I appreciate metal now and the way I appreciated metal when I was fourteen (when metal was all I listened to), so here goes: Crack the Skye literally cracks the sky and calls down the thunder. The guitars are really good, and I like all the songs.

Annual Lady Gaga Award For Excellence:
Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster
As if she wasn’t relevant enough in 2009, Lady Gaga decided to release her album again just to prove that she can destroy the world with a #1 hit whenever she fucking feels like it. Our Twitter accounts are all simply slaves to her bidding.

I’m Sure I’ll Love This Album Next Year, When It’s Too Late:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
Zero is a fantastic single. It’s so good that, for the past year, I couldn’t get past it every time I tried to listen to It’s Blitz! I’m the type of guy that will skip back to a song a dozen times in a row if I’m really into it, and “Zero” is that kind of song. I’m sure the rest of the album is good. I’ve heard it a little bit, when I was too distracted to skip back to “Zero” one time, and it sounded alright!

Immediate Correction To My Top 15:
Air – Love 2
The thing about Air is this:

Imagine a world where every James Bond movie was good. A new installment would come out and you would go see it, and it would be slick and fun and exactly as satisfying as you expected. You would leave the theatre feeling a little bit cooler and sexier every time. You would talk to people throughout the year about how the movie is “really good.” You would probably see it again, if you watched a lot of movies. Then it would be the end of the year, and you would think “hmm, what were the best movies of the year?” and your mind would immediately think about which films stood out, and the James Bond film would not be one of them. You have seen so many James Bond films, and they were all, for the most part, just as good as each other, or at least satisfying in the same ways, and now you don’t even really consider them as moments from the past year of movies. They exist elsewhere. James Bond films are now their own niche, mostly removed from the critical year-end film discussion that happens every year.

Re-read the above paragraph and replace the movie with Love 2 and James Bond with two chic-lookin’ French dudes, and there you go. They’re great, almost untouchable. However, though not formulaic by any stretch, Air albums are such a “sure thing” that I tend to undercut the poor fellows more often than I should. So, if you read my list of the top 15 albums from 2009, just replace anything ranked #15-8 with Love 2 and we’ll call it fair.