Wait, why is this guy so happy? Oh, hmmm – what’s that you say?

Ahhh, he must have already posted his favorite albums of 2009.

Curses! Jealousy! Mustache! There’s only 16 days left in the year?! Oh gosh, oh buttons. No time!

So, the question’s been posed…what are your favorite studio albums of the year?

If you don’t know, now you know.

Choruses are unwilling. Her lyrics appear one by one, like flat stones set on a table.

It’s not a very catchy music, and outside of her work with Herman Dune, The Wooden Stars or Eric’s Trip, it lacks any real instrumental sparkle. Unlike with Cat Power or Songs:Ohia, her voice doesn’t feel like the manifestation of a platonic misery: a throat finally expressing what sadness feels like. No, what makes Julie Doiron among my favourite artists is the feeling of honesty in her songs. For those of us who value this (the impression that an artist “really means it”), Doiron is extraordinary. She does not say too much, or too little. She sings with great care. And she always seems to be telling the truth.

And so her love-songs (particularly in french, on Desormais) are breathtaking: rose-and-dusk pleasures strung together on a melody. Her songs of heartbreak or indecision resonate long, long, long, when played on the right afternoons. And the songs that began to appear in the past four years or so, songs of motherhood & children & family, they are so unadorned in their sweetness that it’s very hard not to, well, melt.

Julie Doiron mp3s and write-up on saidthegramophone.com

* the secret machines’ show this past monday was excellent. next time they come to town, we all must take a field trip. maybe even steal a school bus for the occasion. they are the anti-twee; they are the power trio that will save increasingly boring indie rock from itself.
* califone’s newest record, Roots and Crowns, is the best record that has been released this year. hyperbole? i’m the LEAST likely guy to resort to hyperbole. ha ha. but it is really excellent, especially when juxtaposed against beck’s newest, The Information. it hops around styles and sounds without seeming stale or annoying and never makes you think “this is why white people shouldn’t rap”. oh, and i don’t like califone, usually. they’re too boring. maybe i’ve become more boring.
* beck should stop rapping. when he shuts the hell up or (gasp) sings, The Information doesn’t suck at all. the two previous Beck/Nigel Godrich records, Mutations and Sea Change, are my two favorites from beck’s back catalog. this is almost solely due to the strength of the production and arrangements and The Information continues in this vein. there’s a lot to hear here, and i’m still digesting it. it’s way better than that sack of crap Guero he released last (?) year.
* if you gave up on at war with the mystics, try it again. no, louder. it finally worked for me.

Also: 50 most influential albums

and have been listening to their first record, prompts/miscues, for a bit.

they’re nice. they remind me of built to spill a little, and they arrange their songs a lot like grandaddy might with the occasional fuzz and ROCK chord changes (and dude sings up there like jason lytle on sedatives), but there’s a bit of shoegaze in there as well…and most songs have really great atmosphere and feel comfortable. but i’m not totally sold on them as a band. there’s no abundance of great ideas here, or even an abundance of ideas in general, only great execution of the few ideas they have. and that works here. i’m already interested to hear their second record, and the evil/currently dominant part of me is sure it’s gonna suck. but check out prompts/miscues. catch a band on their way up. it’s exciting.