The Best Albums of 2009 List: One Year On.

I enjoy making and reading lists just like any guy who regards ‘High Fidelity’ as one of his favourite books / films. End of the year lists are great fun, they are a great way of discovering new music, seeing what other people have put as their favourite albums of the year and countless times you end up discovering something you'd previously missed, with so much new music available it’s so easy to miss out on wonderful albums.
As a means of discovery is one of the reasons why I maintain this blog when there are countless other things I could be doing.

So being that way inclined I’ve drawn up a few end-of-year lists for 2010, the best albums, favourite tracks and some tips/hopes for 2011 which I shall start posting in December.
Before that, I thought I’d revisit my Best album of 2009 list and see what has changed one year down the line. This is the list I compiled last year:

1. Editors ~ In This Light and on This Evening
2. The Joy Formidable ~ A Balloon Called Moaning
3. The Boxer Rebellion ~ Union
4. Slow Club ~ Yeah So
5. The Airborne Toxic Event ~ S/T
6. Emmy the Great ~ First Love
7. Fanfarlo ~ Reservoir
8. The Horrors ~Primary Colours
9. Grammatics ~ S/T
10. Jarvis Cocker ~ Further Complications
11. Franz Ferdinand ~ Tonight
12. Metric ~ Fantasies
13. The Joy Formidable ~ First You Have To Get Mad
14. White Lies ~ To Lose This Life
15. New Rhodes ~ Everybody Loves A Scene
16. She Keep Bees ~ Nests
17. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart ~ S/T
18. Codes ~ Trees Dream In Algebra
19. Jeniferver ~ Spring Tides
20. Manic Street Preachers ~ Journal for Plague Lovers
21. Gliss ~ Devotion Implosion
22. Esben and the Witch ~ 33
23. Crocodiles ~ S/T
24. Loverman ~ Human Nurture
25. Regina Spektor ~ Far

Twelve months on I’m not looking at that and thinking “holy shit, that list is plain awful”. On the whole, I still think most of those are good albums that I enjoy but over the past twelve months I’ve discovered some brilliant albums released in 2009. Some you just "go off". One definite change is White Lies. The new song sounds too big for its own good and I think that’s rubbed me up the wrong way towards some of the older songs. Some of those on my list are probably in hind-sight 7/10 albums and some just aren’t as strong as albums that I’ve discovered afterwards.
I’m sure there are still some hidden gems from 2009 I’m yet to discover / listen to.

Okay, enough rambling. This is my new list for my favourite albums of 2009:

1. Editors ~ In This Light and on This Evening
2. The Joy Formidable ~ A Balloon Called Moaning
3. Warpaint ~ Exquisite Corpses
4. Soap&Skin ~ Lovetune for Vacuum
5. The Boxer Rebellion ~ Union
6. Cold Cave ~ Love Comes Close
7. Fever Ray ~ Fever Ray
8. The Airborne Toxic Event ~ S/T
9. Dirty Projectors ~ Bitte Orca
10. Emmy the Great ~ First Love
11. The Horrors ~Primary Colours
12. St Vincent ~ Actor
13. Fanfarlo ~ Reservoir
14. She Keep Bees ~ Nests
15. Jarvis Cocker ~ Further Complications
16. Slow Club ~ Yeah So
17. Bat for Lashes ~ Two Suns
18. Esben and the Witch ~ 33
19. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart ~ S/T
20. Metric ~ Fantasies
21. xx ~ xx
22. Jeniferver ~ Spring Tides
23. Crocodiles ~ S/T
24. Japandriods ~ Post Nothing
25. Regina Spektor ~ Far

I’m not going to give a massive waffling synopsis here like I could but that’s nine new additions out of twenty-five and five of them I’d put in the top ten. Quite a considerable change but I definitely think that with more time to digest and allowing for the late discovery of some material, it’s a stronger list of albums.

Editors still keeps the number one slot. I listened to ITLAOTE just yesterday on the way home from the Still Corners gig (where I got the idea of this post) and was blown away by it after a few months off. It’s such a strong, deep and powerful album.
Perhaps the only real conclusion I can come up with is that all the sites who rush to post their ‘top albums of the year’ lists could perhaps do better holding off a little while.

Here is one of my favourites on the album:
Editors - The Boxer by morrisday