Top Ten Addendum, Pt. 2 (2009-2011)
Finishing up what I started in part one, here’s the official addendum to another three year-end top ten lists (2009 2010 2011), with notes concerning the reason for each album’s previous omission.
A last-minute change to this list has resulted in a version of it (the one on my author page) appearing with The Twilight Sad’s Forget The Night Ahead in place of Malkmus’s Mirror Traffic. The former—soundtrack to my dark (which I mean only literally) winter 2009; powerful transmission from its writer’s darker (figurative and real) seasons—was a very notable omission from my list that year, a bit less notable now.
Wye Oak – The Knot
In a strong year, I had to take comfort in the fact that I’d previously listed the band’s sometimes more rewarding, but less thoroughly imposing, debut. That was meaningless, though, since this is the album that announced them as a major band.
The Hidden Cameras – Origin:Orphan
Anyone who knocked this album’s maturity, or even suggested it as a new development, had some growing up to do (myself included). Unlike Joel Gibb, whose pleasures have always been as intelligent as his adult themes.
Atlas Sound – Logos
Love had grown from curiosity and confusion and was in full bloom by the time of Logos, so I hardly needed to hear it to know all it might mean. But, I hadn’t before the end of the year.
Beach House – Teen Dream
I entrusted it to the ages, and still do.
Twin Sister – Color Your Life
I knew no one had made more thoughtful use of 30 minutes that year, but in the end somehow couldn’t convince myself this wasn’t a “small” album. Their smaller, longer official debut, In Heaven, later put it in perspective. (Or maybe Color Your Life plus Twin Shadow’s awesome Forget added up to null, not quadruple.)
Das Racist – Sit Down, Man
It burst my mind apart on the bus ride home in December, but I wondered if I’d still need it once I cracked its jokes. But the jokes are uncrackable. Like Twain, Das Racist celebrate the endlessness of language.
Mary Gauthier – The Foundling
I heard it a year too late, but then, you can never be too late to great music, unless you’re dead. And even then, you probably end up knowing beauty equal to this.
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Mirror Traffic
2008’s Real Emotional Trash was cool but too invulnerable, and after its release I lost sight of the idea that Malkmus could continue to mean tender new things to me. So I was unprepared for Mirror Traffic until its wavy mortal beauty added up listen by listen, lightning-slow in hindsight.
Danny Brown – XXX
The album that got me back into rap music, finally, but it took awhile. I had some trouble with the album’s middle third, but how mean and hypocritical to fail to understand in music what I’d understand in literature. Why must music, alone among the arts, be all about the listener?
Patrick Wolf – Lupercalia
Pretty much my favorite album ever, which continues to seem as good a reason as any to not say much about it.
