Top 10 Songs of 2009 ... So Far

So, last week I know I teased with the fact that I had a put together a list of the 10 Best Songs of '09 so far and I just now realized because of all the BBQ and beers and such, I forgot to share it with the world. How terrible of me. So, anyway, here we are again in the fairest of orders which is alphabetical, here's the Top 10 Songs of 2009 .. so far?

"Brothersport" - Animal Collective
"And The Hazy Sea" - Cymbals Eat Guitars

"Stillness Is The Move" - Dirty Projectors


"Vacationing People" - Foreign Born
"Two Weeks" - Grizzly Bear

"Tunnelvision" - Here We Go Magic


"Lalita" - The Love Language
"Little Secrets" - Passion Pit
"Actor Out Of Work" - St. Vincent

"Awkward Kisser" - Telekinesis

SIS The Best of 2009 ... So Far, Part Two

As we approach the 4th of July weekend, we take a look back at the second half of what we started yesterday: the best albums of 2009 ... so far, that is. These 10 albums, listed in nothing but alphabetical, could be and are the top contenders thus far for the Top 10 of '09, but we still have many months to go, and many albums to come yet to shake things up. But until then, if the year ended today the Top 10 would include these fine albums.

Japandroids / Post-Nothing / Polyvinyl

The first time I heard this record, it was loud and it was abrasive and I couldn't find anything I really liked about it. But with every subsequent listen, I found the melodies hidden beneath the maniacal playing of this Vancouver-based duo. And then on headphones, besides the musical jewels, you listen to the lyrics and you realize this must be a concept record. All this talk of girls and their homeland, getting the sweats and the shits and "x-o-x-o-x" that end letters and text messages. I was listening to it just yesterday and "Sovereignty" and there was one lyric that sealed the deal on this being a great album and a great concept on that I dubbed Teen Angsty Love, Canadian Style: 'It's raining in Vancouver / But I don't give a fuck / Cause I'm in love with you tonight." But their not in love with just girls, but a city, a place far from home that is their hearts.

Peter, Bjorn & John - Living Thing - StarTime / Almost Gold

For their fifth album, the Swedish trio drop their guitars, fire up the samplers and drum machines, and make the best record the 80s just couldn't handle back then. Choruses of kids belt out there's nothing to worry about, and it's true: for those who feared the band wasn't the same band, they still are. All the catchy melodies are there just presented in a different form. The title track with it's nod to Graceland and the first UK single yelling out 'Hey shut the fuck up boy' are just some of the gleaming moments. "I'm Losing My Mind" veers back to what we can now call classic PB&J with a psychadelic guitar riff driving the album, but that's its low point. I much prefer the dark and ominous jams like "4 Out of 5" that will protrude from my car stereo all summer long.

Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer - Jagjaguwar

Those who say this third album from one of Spencer Krug's many guises is his most accessible are truly right in their sayings. But for me, I always thought Sunset Rubdown was accessible and easy to get in to. This album features everything you'd want - epic prog moments ("Dragon's Lair," "Black Swan") and driving, hard hitting anthems ("You Go On Ahead," "Idiot Heart"). For me, what I like most is picking up on subtle nuances or just taking in the things no one else would. Like the swirling keyboard notes that open the record on "Silver Moons" or the way everything starts to collide on the aforementioned "Swan". Hell, even their cover of "Paper Lace" (cover because it was originally done by one of Krug's other outfits, Canadian indie supergroup Swan Lake) is worthy of debating whether their version is better than the original. As prolific and as talented as this band is getting along with a spot in the limelight, makes you wonder if this could become Krug's day job over some Wolf group he plays in.

Telekinesis - Telekinesis! - Merge

It's not just because of my allegiance to the infamous label that turns 20 this year, but every year I feel they always put out a new record from an up and coming up that just resonates with me like no other. This year it Michael Benjamin Lerner, aka the Seattle-based Telekinesis. On this record, Lerner teams up with producer Chris Walla to brings us tales of obsessions with foreign lands and time zones that, while it appears he's visited on the surface, his bio will tell you otherwise. And boy are the songs catchy - we all know my love for "Awkward Kisser," but the acoustic punch of "Great Lakes" and the soaring guitars of "Tokyo" all give way to the 'I'm in love with you, return the favor' serenade of "I Saw Lightning." Dare I say this is a perfect record?

Wilco - Wilco ( The Album) - Nonesuch

So, yeah, everyone's favorite band from Chicago caught a lot of flack for the Dad-rock infused Sky Blue Sky. I know back upon its release two years ago I wasn't a big fan of it; I never even blogged about it once! But their new album, it just immediately stuck with me. It's not this mid-tempo 70s record like Sky, and it definitely veers from their meandering ways of A Ghost Is Born. It's not Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, though - but it's on par with the now legendary album. "Bull Black Nova" builds and build over repetitions before exploding. "You Never Know" is driven by a clanging honky tonk piano. "Sonny Feeling" is just that and essentially tells the entire tale of an album full of upbeat moments, and tongue-in-cheek-ism's down to the title track and band theme song.

New Telekinesis Video: "Awkward Kisser"

As we're closing in on the halfway point of this year, it seems that the word awkward is becoming an important part of my 2009. While I can't discuss the most of it, what I can say is that Telekinesis' "Awkward Kisser" is in the running for Best Song of '09, yes even better than that "Two Weeks" song I like so much.

So maybe you've read about the non-stop-spinning-life of Telekinesis! (it's being played through my headphones as we speak) and the song in question. Well now, Michael Benjamin Lerner has made his first video and it's for said song. In the awkward clip, we are split between Lerner playing the song on the piano in his living room and a rather awkward date. I don't want to give any of it away, but my favorite part is when he is sitting on the bench and laughing. Maybe I just like weird humor

Can't Stop Spinning: Telekinesis! by Telekinesis

You know a record is good when after having one song on repeat all day, you eventually start drifting away towards other songs to only come back to that first one and it still holds up good. And with every new favorite song you realize that it is no longer about ranking a song as a favorite but ranking an entire collection, a scrapbook of portraits, an entire album as one of your favorites of the year and if not all-time. And when the songs are just chock full of imagery and optimism in both lyric and chord, you too can start to feel better about your own life, especially when each song starts to hold just as much meaning to your own young life as it does to its writer. And 31 minutes the record ends and you just go back to the beginning. One revolution down, and a lifetime to go.

Michael Benjamin Lerner, he is Telekinesis on record. Along with some guy named Chris Walla, they went in to a studio in their native Seattle and pieced together a strange and happy tale of innocence and love one song by one song at a time. It is one of most honest, one of the happiest records I have heard in a long time. Lerner keeps talking of Japan, and not just in the first single "Tokyo", but in the bookings of a flight to a foreign land in "Awkward Kisser" to moments later being whisked away to said "Foreign Room". He is a man obsessed with a land like I and am sure many others have been obsessed with girls they always wanted to be with but never got to be with. I say that because for all of his musings of the far away land, he has never been. Not even once.

"Awkward Kisser" was that song I mentioned at the very first sentence, the song that was on repeat for an entire day. Outside of its immediate hooks and beat that you think you'd be better hearing at a sock hop then a modern day club, it's just so short, all of 105 seconds long. Like the great Bob Pollard before him, he is able to capture an entire moment in the formula of verse-chorus-verse-chorus and end scene. And that chorus is so perfect to me: Lerner's vocals and bass drum freshly full of reverb sounding epic and glorious. The melody ever so catchy as he declares the simple line "And when I woke up / you were by my side". I could play that part on repeat for hours and sure that's just the hopeless romantic in me coming out but it does sound dreamy all-in-all.

With this self-titled debut, Lerner has made not only an album that could be about his everyday escapes and daydreams in some kind of Orwellian Brazil type of way, but an album each and every one of its listeners can identify themselves with. After many repeated listens when I started to pay attention to his words, I realized he wrote in a way more people need to just forward and up front. No metaphors, no allegories, no hidden meanings. Blunt. Honest. Real. It's that album that for me we'll always carry a special place in my heart because of the people (er, person) in my life and how it just reminds me of them and how it is an album that will resonate with many people in that demograpic of "I remember the first time I heard/played/saw Telekinesis!" How I can place myself in their kitchen as I played it for them for the very first time and how when the closing number "I Saw Lightning" came on I, too, became honest and blunt. I told them this song, just Lerner barring his soul stripped to his voice and an acoustic guitar, was a dedication from me and that the words pretty much summed up the way I felt about them.

I wanna care for you when you are all alone
Sit inside our house and unplug all our phones
Watching raindrops stream down on our windowsill
Let's be in love

At least I've got this record to be in love with, yes?

Download: "Awkward Kisser" [mp3] // [Buy Here]