Friday, November 20, 2009

my favourite albums of the decade

truthfully i don't know how ppl can really do this at all or atleast when they say "the" best albums of a decade. that statemnet encompasses something i and my pockets could never fathom over the years.
but i can definitely live with listing my favourite albums for the decade that i listened to, most that i remember skipping lunch and collecting single dollar bills in one large roll that would thud when it was time to give it away in place of music packages in the mail .

My favourite albums of the decade:































1.
Merryweather Post Pavillion
Animal Collective

is it hearing these songs live? it's definitely that, that just makes the album priceless for me; flooding tons of memories, sounds smells, and experiences. no group of songs have touched me more, allowed me to make new dancing friends, inspire me to actually go to different cities by myself, make my eyes go wide and scared from seeing open drugs users, and watching a lil avey tare jump around like a crazy mischievious pan. OH AND DUDE GET A FREE VIP PASS AND SEE PANDA BEAR JAM UP CLOSE. all these spectacular things is on the basis of these being really amazing songs making an unbelievable album!















2
fevors and mirror
bright eyes

when i first picked up this album i just felt a turning of events, the cd in my hand was going to be a ticket to a new style of music (to me) that i can definitely feel cool about knowing. not a second later i would be stopped by a '01 hipster couple the guy stopping telling me " that will be the best album you ever listened to it's so good, get it" and get it i did. i can remember so many moments croaking and belting out "haligh haligh a lie haligh" in shopping marts, my backyards in the summer. or sitting on my rooftop wondering who arrienette is and the deeper meanings behind the repetition of clocks calanders mirrors and scales. it was just the best stuff to listen to as a teenager.















3
slgtm s/t
Saturday looks good to me

haha oh saturday looks good to me. i was in west orange HS the worst HS ever. it seemingly came straight out of the movies with cliques and each person being catgorized into a certain group and those groups sticking to themselves. i didn't understand it at all, spending my last couple of years in good ol S.O.M.A. (south orange / maplewood) where most of us were brooklyn natives or hatian natives and we all just blurred into a group of kids that all talked and knew eachother. where maybe the only different groups were two: popular or not popular and those even blended and mingled. anyways one good thing did come from WOHS the kids were more devoted to their music listening and introduced me to saturday looks good to me (not purposely). there was a clique that i just named the Saves the day crew. they were FREAKING CRAZY they wore their patches all over the place and sang their songs down the hall, like every alternative kid was part of this clique. alternative meant you loved saves the day. except me, i wasn't in my stage of killing flies with honey yet and was like "saves the day freaking sux bright eyes is so much better, UGH!" yet somehow i made friends with one of the kids. one day after being very excited of the practically school trip to pa to see saves the day he showed me all the treats he bought. one was of a band that he said was good enough live that he bought the album but they sucked on album. he let me have it, oh thanks haha, but dude i had no idea what a gift he gave me! it was filled with lo fi amazingness and girl boy call and responses. it was dreamy and simply fantastic. it was a fitting escape from the hallways walking down the wooden baracks and maze of a school that was awful W.O.H.S.















4
republic of two
nedelle

OH NEDELLE! PLEASE COME BACK AND MAKE A NEW ALBUM! this album was the soundtrack to my only on again off again (somewhat) relationship (or just friends as he may say). anyways i think magic happens whenever this album is put on, something happens with the weather and my heart and thoughts and they all meld together, and i end up singing and crying in sorrow and happiness. once i put it on after aforemention boy called me while he was away for school or africa or NC or something and a crazy snow storm started. outside was just sheets of fluttering white flakes and grayness it was beautiful. just as the storm was seemingly at its worst and that winter was going to have a longer stay that year THE SUN BURSTS out! the layers of snow all melt and the trees and streets become bare again, water dripping from everything that it sounds and looks like a sunshower. and all this happens during this lovely sad jazz like album which is all but 30 minutes. seeeeeeee MAGIC!















5
wild like children
tilly and the wall
CUZ I KNOW IN MY HEART I WILL NEVER LET YOU TUMBLE TO THE GROUND!
the songs to this album are the songs i heard to the first show i ever went to, which probably was the best and purest of fun shows i ever went to in my life. i don't know it's so perfect i don't even have words for the albums greatness, just memories. like whenever i hear reckless i think about at the bright eyes show and stomping to it with one of the best ppl in the world. and jamies face lighting up when i did my shocking bit. and shaking it out to shake it out. the ice storm big gust and you, my friend getting excited when he saw ppl jumping on stage and him literally pushing me up to dance on the stage at bowery like FTW?! dude they were the best for me ever back then and this album triumphed over everything and just broguht smiles




















6 .
my mothers hand (album sleeve is from "handsom danny", couldn't find "my mothers hand")
ben + bruno
never been much for folk music but this album is just too much. it's too much for my heart with its beauty sometimes. ben and bruno is about a guy named ben and his dog bruno and the events that occur in their life: being abducted by a religious fanatic, getting a divorce, loving his daughters, being cheated on, being taken away by flocks of blue birds, watching his wife give birth, and when his death comes. though i shouldn't put it that way cuz it not chronological, so one song will be about his 100 grim reapers and the next will be about him telling his daughter what to do about friend problems, though neither of those are in my mothers hand. for my mother hands there are simple angelic folk songs that just melt my heart, so much prettines that just comes from a strike at a (probably toy) xylophone (it was light) and simple chords but with such touching lyrics (o sweet lung). i just don't know how it's not in everyones ipod in the fall winter spring and summer.

















7
a new chance
the tough alliance
AYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
just so much glee comes to me when i listen to these two swedes songs. it just makes me think of a bunch of cute scrappy reckless swedish boys in gangs swinging baseball bats at eachother and robbing and looting and wearing masks over their faces, and then all convening together at night in a basement converting their energy of rumpous acts to dancing crazily around with eachother with their two fellow brethren THE TOUGH ALLIANCE, makes me want to be a swedish boy. oh yeah it also makes me think that all their songs are to eachother and about their amazing bromance, sharing motorcycle rides together and sleeping in bed together and letting one slip their hand in the others pants while sleeping cuz they miss their girlfriend and they're asleep and they're just like "oh jeez are you missing your girlfriend again, get your hands out my pants, wake up, i'm not her!"














8
I heard the angels sing
fred thomas

dude this album shattered me when i got it. just shattered me. the songs are so strong but delicate at the same time. they were so delicate with feeling and missed loves and sometimes just saying oh well but then saying you can't hide all the sadness with others kisses or bottles of wines or scattered records that you relate to in the summer, cuz that one, oh that one, will always be there.

















9
psychic chasms
neon indian
everyone i get a chance to, i make them listen to deadbeat summer. "oh yeah you're sick? that's awful! yo but speaking of sick... listen to this SICK song by neon indian". ok i know this choice might be rash and yes he is a newcomer, and like the album just came out a month or two ago. but dude this is SUMMER, this is my favourite season. this is what i wait for all year around. this is what i want to hear and feel like on those hot sunny days that melt together with the break of some air to breath when the sun goes down. with too many boys on the mind that they're all fuzzy, and you can't make them out for the life of you. the feeling of hot slow sticky happiness that if you look a lil deeper and form some lines on the nebulous clouds that there's probably a slight unhappiness or mornful feeling to it. but no matter cuz on the grander scale it's amazing/confusing and hot and you feel good and want to drunkinly dance and drop it down in time to the beat.













10
gorillaz S/T
gorrilaz
You remember freshmen year you remember when the box was canceled and mtv2 came on instead? i do it was when i was introduced to gorillaz. this album is just a medley of so many genres and backgrounds of music. but it was still always gorrilaz. it was ingenious i loved it, plus they were cartoons that i thought were cute. like word i wanted 2-D's 2D baby.















11
read music / speak spanish
desaparecidos
i still can't pernounce their name correctly! and i like it that way. closest i've ever got to music with a cause. god knows though i didn't care at all about the message, conor oberst just made it sound so good and powerful to sing along to!



















12
deep geems
glass candy
this is what i want my dance music to sound like!

















13
good evening
nite jewel
another newcomer that i just can't help but add. she was the first i remember ever hearing with that glo-fi sound thats so popular this year that i'm so excited about. anyway her album i only have on record, no cd or ipod and i don't think i'd have it any other way. pretty much only being able to listen to it when i'm about to go to bed. i love this being the sound track to my sleep, like tripping on cough syrup, certain that it's slowing down these beats. but you remember "no i don't even have cough syrup in my system" and then you're happy cuz someone is smart enough to know sometimes you have to slow it down and chop it up.
















14
euphemystic
son ambulance
this album was such a favourite in my teens. i would go out for drives with my parents and when we'd finally get to the destination i would stay in the car just so i could play this album and listen to it in good stereo sound. unfortunately one day my sister ruined it for me right during my favourite song "violet" and confessing awfulness to me. i just remember both of us in a home depot parking lot in the back seat both crying our eyes out like we were 1 and 3 again it was very sad with violet developing and crashing in cresendos matching precisely with our conversations exasperation. haven't really been able to listen to that album again since. it was just too much for my innocent 16 yr old heart.

















15
nite drive
chromatics
i always dream of this perfect ideal atmosphere for after hours dancing. when you're actually dancing with your partner and not just some random boy trying to grind on you (ewwwww) and it's dark with slightly glowing lights. and everyone around you seems really tired and probably just getting off a high and if they were normal and if you were normal and if your partner were normal you would all be home sleeping or feeling eachother. but you're not normal and everytime you wipe the sweat off your face you find a slight glittering glow now smeared on your hands that frightens you till you remember that you rubbed florescent glitter all over your face and now its smeared on your partners cheeks and shoulders and neck. and then theres this music playing, this pervasive, slightly throbbing music that somehow has become background music and though you had forgot about it mentally you know it was what was carrying and moving your body all this time. and it stops all of a sudden and just when you feel your body is going to give out you see the producer hunch over and play the rythmic blitzed keys and a voice coolly coo and your partner smiles and lifts you and spins you around and you're ready to dance some more, glitter and all. with this album i have atleast found that pervasive music in the background.
















16
3/07 - 9/07
high places
have you ever heard such lovely drifting tropical songs in your life?! but still with a pounding beat that drops you right back to the earth, but then enough lightness to carry you back up?

















17
night falls on kortdella
jens lekman

i fear i will never see this man play live... EVER
















18
transient
david dondero
i once actually compared him to bright eyes, at the height of my bright eyes craze















19
person pitch
panda bear

it was one of those cds that i just didn't get at all when it first came out besides just one song. but it has really grown on me quietly and passively. (i'm kind of wondering why it's so high up on my list, just something about it makes me want to put it above the ones below)












20
tout gache tout perdu (ruined everything lost everything)
francois virot

this album is so beautiful and tender. just a few hand claps and taps at guitar but it's one of the lushest albums to ever hit my ears. the songs are pretty timeless to me. i would just spend my dreary train rides back home from school listening to this and feeling better even though it was raining and leaves were falling, and my mind didn't want to stop thinking of awful boiled eggs. but the songs of francois virot took that away for a lovely sing along for two (my ipod and i).

21
faces down
sondre lerche

22
dear catastrophe waitress
belle and sebastian

23
rise above
dirty projectors

24
wavvves
wavves

25
ugly organ
cursive

26
danse macabre
the faint

27
where the humans eat
willy mason
28
september girl
kelly jean caldwell

29
mvp
nat baldwin

30
smoke
white williams

31
boy life
lo-fi fnk

32
nutones
nomo

33
relationship of command
at the drive-in

34
black out
the good life

35
weirdo rippers
no age

36
alphabetical
pheonix

37
forever heavy
black moth super rainbow
38
sing out america
decibully

39
a place where we can go
jeremy jay
















40
who will cut our hair when we're gone
the unicorns
though it'd not in top twenty i still have to write about this album:
it was a dark and gloomy night on halloween. i was forgotten by parents and was sitting outside my job hopeless with no cellphone at the time and way to scared to ask any passing cars for a ride on the night that it was. 1 am finally came and i lost all hope of my parents remembering me at all. so i mustered up my courage and began my track from route 10 to the woods and mountaineous reservations of new jersey. i almost fell down a cliff, my lil ballerina flats fell apart, my messanger bag broke, i had to squat in the open to pee (and of course got some on my pants) with no tissue, walked a mile the wrong way, met eye to eye with glowing green eyes, and then worst of all my cd players batteries died in the middle of the trip! but before the cd player died carrying me through half my journey was this album. don't know why cuz its so spooky to listen to! thank god for those drunken teenagers coming from their halloween party that gave me a ride. finally got home at 6.
dude also i had a pretty crazy experience recently, where i was like "when did stuff like this started happening to me?" i just totally shared drinks with one of the dudes from the unicorns thanks to a friend who invited me to come. it was kind of hilarious and he was a funny mischevious instigator now that i think about it.
41
bring it back
mates of state