December 2009
25 posts
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
- Here’s Linus, Wham, and The Kinks for good measure. Merry Christmas everyone!
The Kinks - Father Christmas
Watch- What English sounds like to Italians who can’t speak it.
- The Mysterious Voicemail, brought to you by...
Wrapping Things Up Nicely.
Honorable Mentions:
Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
Islands - Vapours
Washed Out - Life of Leisure
Passion Pit - Manners
Mayer Hawthorne - A Strange Arrangement
A Note On Animal Collective, or The Lack Thereof.
- So you may be wondering, “What’s the deal, no ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’!?”, but personally the album didn’t really impress or connect with me in...
#1: Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
- Enough said. This is without a doubt the most creative, enduring, inspiring, and best album of the year.
#2: Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
- There is a certain characteristic that Phoenix has been able to hone to perfection, culminating with their latest album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”. That characteristic is simplicity. I’ve spent the entire list explaining the layers and complexities of each band and their influences, the abstract nature present in the hard work these bands have gathered together, and the...
#3: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains...
- They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, and though it’s usually taken in a negative context I would say that it is a driving strength behind the fantastic indie pop of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. Most of the time people mix up imitation and influence with something that is derivative, settling on the fact that such similarities between bands is a type of inexcusable...
#4: Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
- Another year, another Spencer Krug concoction, another amazing album from the prolific member of five different bands. “Dragonslayer” is a welcome addition to the long list of albums that Krug has contributed, yet this album seems to bring with it a more accessible angle to his onetime side project. “Random Spirit Lover” was mired in an almost too challenging mantra...
#5: Real Estate - Real Estate
- When a piece of music can instantly transport you somewhere, without the cheesiness of reminding you that a piece of music is transporting you somewhere, the experience adds up to a perfect blend of the senses. For me, Real Estate’s debut album manages to do that- to remind of me of summertime people and places that I would otherwise only be able to have flashes of in my memory. Somehow it...
#6: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
- When I first heard “It’s Blitz!” the first thing I thought was, “What is this shit?”. How could a band who came to be known for a sound of absolute sweaty disorder change to this sound of processed electronic dance rock? I wrote it off and thought that they had completely dropped the ball with the transformation, but when I continued to listen to it and actually...
#7: Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
- David Longstreth’s voice can be a soothing tool to initially lead you into the music that the Dirty Projectors play, but more times than not he ends up stretching his vocal chords to tumble and shriek along to the angelic backing vocals and barely held together melody that make this band so inexplicably appealing. They take the conventional song as it were, and push it in different...
#8: The xx - XX
- Much has been said about these early twentysomethings from South London from their age to their hairdos, but rightly so - they’ve made one of the most technically nuanced and effectively minimalist albums of the decade. It’s frightening how mature this album sounds, as if it could have been the third or fourth album from a less talented group of musicians, but each sampled beat and...
#9: Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
- Back when I first moved to London and had six months ahead of me to make the most of, I couldn’t help but feel homesick and kind of latched on to different things that would give me any inkling of a happy memory to take the mope away. Musically, “Why There Are Mountains”, did just that. The 45 minutes their album takes to listen to acted as a type of amalgamation of different...
#10: HEALTH - Get Color
- HEALTH is a very divisive band. On their first album you either gave in to their nihilistic and tribal brand of noise metal or you turned around and wondered why you ever let your eardrums be subjected to such a pointless racket. Personally I belonged to the former, but I was not without my hesitations because let’s face it, you need to be in the mood to actually listen to that album....
Ev'rybody's Do N'it - My Top Ten of Two-Thousand +...
- So it begins…or continues, yeah, so it continues would be more to the point because this marks the second top ten best of list on PIZZA + OJ. You can find my list for 2008 here if you want to brush up on my musical tastes (or biases). Last year I just up and wrote one post with all ten picks featuring, ahem, beautifully written summaries for each, but this year I figured I would add...
Joy Division - Atmosphere
- The Mope-track of my...
Watch- Phoenix has managed to make one of the catchiest and altogether best albums of the year, and to cap it off they managed to go back to their home country to record a Take Away show for La Blogotheque. All three videos are phenomenal (If you know what’s good for you you’d click this and watch the rest), and the electronic elements of the songs seem to adapt well to the free-roaming and...
