Albums of 2009 Part III

5.‘Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle’ – Bill Callahan
Containing 2009’s most beautiful song – opener ‘Jim Cain’ – Bill Callahan produced this, his first wonderful post-Smog record, early in 2009. It’s both intimate and lush and it’s bookended by two of Callahan’s finest songs – the aforementioned ‘Jim Cain’ and the overly long yet strangely compelling ‘Faith/Void’. ‘Eagle’ juxtaposes Callahan’s gravelly croon with the most judicious choice of strings throughout, not least on ‘Too Many Birds’ when it seems all Callahan can do is to sing – in spite of himself - the words ‘If you could only stop your heartbeat for one heartbeat’. ‘Eagle’ is a beautifully crafted record and hopefully a signpost for records to come.


4. ‘Hospice’ – The Antlers
'Hospice’ was both a victim of and benefited from the same blog-inspired mythologizing as Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma’ in 2008. Whilst Justin Vernon retreated to a Wisconsinite cabin to compose his lovelorn paean to the fictional Emma, The Antlers’ Pete Silberman similarly withdrew from the outside world (or so the legend has it) to compose the relentlessly desolate narrative that runs through this record. It resulted in the most emotionally raw and frequently harrowing record of 2009. Yet somehow, in the midst of the unrelenting gloom there lies a quite beautiful, if uneven, collection of songs.


3. ‘Season of the Sparks’ – Adrian Crowley
It has been another disappointingly one-dimensional year in terms of Irish albums in 2009. And yet, to little fanfare, back in March Adrian Crowley released both the best Irish record of 2009 and the finest album of his career. From the lilting, almost lullaby-like ‘Summer Haze Parade’ to quiet grace of ‘Pay No Mind (To The Dawn Cryer)’, it’s a wonderfully complete record. Its trick lies in the effortless way Crowley poetically invokes a pastoral idyll - ‘gathering kindling’, ‘dewy thistles’, ‘woodpiles and smoke plumes’ – and marries this to some utterly beautiful instrumentation. At first glance there’s little to separate Crowley and his oeuvre from the slew of similar singer-songwriters but ‘Season’ is a record which has stayed with me all year long, its quiet charms resonating to the end.


2. 'Riceboy Sleeps' – Jonssi & Alex
There have been many times in the recent past when you got the feeling that Sigur Ros had bought into their own myth as pioneering musical savants, to the detriment of their frequently sublime canon of work. Witness the overblown folly of ‘Ara Batur’ on last year’s ‘Med Sud’ – a song so frighteningly overcooked it would have made Andrew Lloyd Webber blush. And yet there is clearly a magic at work here as evidenced by this side-project. It could so easily have gone the way of 'Ara Batur' – the pair choosing to eschew all traditional instrumentation in favour of lushly dense arrangements backed with deeply embedded choral accompaniment - but somehow the duo manage to create a series of breathtaking ambient doodles which sound like nothing else released this year. There are no choruses here, few hooks, no discernible melody – just one of the most affecting records of 2009.


1. ‘Fever Ray’ – Fever Ray
By taking up the template laid down by The Knife, slowing it down and investing it – if this is possible – with still more menace, Karin Dreijer Andersson released this blog’s most played, and by default, finest record of 2009. Managing to bury melody deep beneath its dystopian surface, Andersson perfectly distilled the best parts of The Knife to make a record which wore its unease on its sleeve throughout. If ‘Seven’, ‘When I Grow Up’ and ‘If I Had a Heart’ were some of the more unusual sounding singles of the year, each of them, particularly ‘Seven’ gave a hint of where Andersson’s musical vision is headed, either under the Fever Ray banner or the next record by The Knife.

Seven from Fever Ray on Vimeo.