PopMatters' Best 60 Albums of 2009

60.

Jónsi & Alex - Riceboy Sleeps
July 21, 2009
Critic Score
64
19 reviews

59.

October 20, 2009
Critic Score
81
13 reviews

Converge’s seventh tortured opus... sees the foursome of vocalist Jacob Bannon, guitarist Kurt Ballou, bassist Nate Newton, and drummer Ben Koller perfecting their style, capping off this decade on a thrilling, shattering, explosive note.

58.

July 14, 2009
Critic Score
71
32 reviews

As if the blues weren’t already dark enough. For the entirety of the Dead Weather’s debut album, Horehound, Jack White—who, in a commendable show of ego control, relegates himself to the drum stool for this, a sure-to-be successful supergroup (dirty word, I know) he somehow managed to cobble together in the downtime between fronting two of the only signs of life in today’s alt-rock landscape—Alison Mosshart and company are visibly determined to imbue an art form which is already obsessed with depression, loss, and all manner of cheerful things with even inkier shades of the human condition.

57.

April 7, 2009
Critic Score
79
34 reviews
While the weaker songs are definitely not throwaways, they miss the mark in more than one way.

56.

July 1, 2009
Critic Score
76
9 reviews

55.

July 21, 2009
Critic Score
76
31 reviews

The album is best appreciated as a pleasurable pop treat from a group whose vision is ever broadening.

54.

August 18, 2009
Critic Score
84
11 reviews

Musically, what impresses about Wind’s Poem are its sonic variety and freshness, even as the lyrics often stick to the corporal fears of Elverum’s prior catalog. Each song has a more or less distinct mode, which leads to a range of effective aural contrasts and interactions.

52.

June 23, 2009
Critic Score
78
22 reviews

Call it surprising/delightful, or call it thrilling/glorious. Either way, Dragonslayer‘s pretty great.

51.

April 14, 2009
Critic Score
74
8 reviews

Each individual track on Songs of Shame manages to develop not only as the album progresses, but with each time the LP is played, with new favourites manifesting themselves with each listen, a sign of a truly great album.

49.

August 18, 2009
Critic Score
78
30 reviews

It’s the perfect summer album: exuberant, lighthearted, with hooks to spare, and plenty of surf rock. It’s just further proof that great things come in strange packages.

48.

September 22, 2009
Critic Score
74
17 reviews

47.

February 17, 2009
Critic Score
77
19 reviews

To Be Still is beautiful and subtly splintered and cathartic in an honestly incomplete way. And it is, finally, that rare kind of album: one worth getting close to.

46.

Meshell Ndegeocello - Devil's Halo
October 6, 2009
Critic Score
79
6 reviews

45.

September 8, 2009
Critic Score
77
23 reviews

Get Color builds on the success of HEALTH in all the right ways, proving the band worthy of an intimidating amount of hype while defying the expectations that come with it.

44.

January 20, 2009
Critic Score
74
30 reviews

Bird probably could have stood to cull a few of the weaker numbers, and with the additional room, might have reworked a few of the selections from Useless Creatures into experimental pop songs, thereby tempering his lack of risk taking on Noble Beast.

43.

February 24, 2009
Critic Score
77
11 reviews

42.

May 15, 2009
Critic Score
67
27 reviews

Such quality care is evident throughout most of Breakdown, and, as such, individual moments positively glisten, even if the widescreen view of Breakdown feels a bit muddled and confused, the whole actually being less than the sum of its parts.

41.

April 14, 2009
Critic Score
80
25 reviews

As if in an attempt to gain the attributes of the album’s namesake bird, the songs on Eagle feel like they’re rising on thermals, shifting and soaring effortlessly where the wind takes them. And occasionally they dive right for your throat.

40.

May 19, 2009
Critic Score
76
29 reviews
It makes you want to dance, and it gets it hooks deep into, so much so that you might be humming the melodies to these songs mindlessly, before you even realize they’re Passion Pit.

38.

September 8, 2009
Critic Score
80
28 reviews
Stylistically sprawling and experimental music can be fantastic in the right hands. As lesser bands come and go in the fickle landscape of indie rock, Yo La Tengo continue to excel.

37.

October 13, 2009
Critic Score
87
9 reviews
Baroness simply lets the songs do their thing, never beating us over the head, never pandering, and in so doing, they’ve created a surprisingly adventurous album, further establishing their position as one of the finest, not to mention likeable bands in America these days.

36.

May 19, 2009
Critic Score
72
27 reviews
It’s a success. Whether he keeps on in this vein or branches out even further, this album proves you can, in fact, teach an old letch new tricks.

35.

April 28, 2009
Critic Score
80
24 reviews
Sure, there’s nothing at all novel about young dudes feeling immortal and wanting to get laid, but Japandroids infuse those well-worn tropes with enough energy and songcraft to make it feel refreshing.

34.

June 23, 2009
Critic Score
75
31 reviews

Although Farm sacrifices some immediacy and fire for expansive emotionalism and nuance, the album is a solid addition to the Dinosaur Jr. catalog and one whose highlights may prove even better with time.

33.

Khaled - Liberté
March 31, 2009
Critic Score
83
3 reviews

32.

May 5, 2009
Critic Score
74
21 reviews

Both Meek Warrior and Love Is Simple are strong albums, but there’s a sense of unfulfillment in them — Akron/Family seems to be testing itself in new areas rather than completing a task. On new album Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, though, that changes, as the band delivers a masterpiece.

31.

September 22, 2009
Critic Score
72
23 reviews

This is Pearl Jam’s "fun" record, a disc that was likely just as exciting to record as it is to listen to.

30.

November 17, 2009
Critic Score
75
15 reviews
Cynics be damned: however the hype machine happens to play this one out, Real Estate have overcome the critics and released one of the most refreshing, satisfying and richly rewarding albums of 2009.

29.

March 24, 2009
Critic Score
79
25 reviews

Sure, Bromst is a terrific album — it largely builds on Spiderman of the Rings, injecting Deacon’s manic compositions with a depth and complexity that challenge lazy readings of his work. However, it still feels more like a transition piece than a destination.

28.

September 22, 2009
Critic Score
79
11 reviews
This album is so near-flawless it would be easy to go on and on about how you need to hear it as soon as possible.

27.

Buddy & Julie Miller - Written in Chalk
March 3, 2009
Critic Score
75
9 reviews

26.

May 5, 2009
Critic Score
80
30 reviews

Actor marks no huge departures her work on Marry Me, but it still manages to constantly surprise, always meshing the earthen with the industrial in strange and compelling ways.

25.

March 24, 2009
Critic Score
72
33 reviews

Listening to The Hazards of Love is thrilling, both because of the music itself and because the disc was such a sheer gamble from the first. Improbable as it seems, they just might pull it off.

24.

June 30, 2009
Critic Score
75
33 reviews

Wilco’s success is largely due to their ability to continually surprise, if not outright confound, their audience. Their first five albums saw the band transform from alt-country torchbearers to Wall-of-Sound sculptors to post-rock deconstructionists. Facilitating this transformation was a steady rotation of band members, moving both into and then out of the ranks, eventually leaving frontman Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt as the only two orig inal members. Looking back over their career, it’s easy to see that this constant shuffling of members propelled Wilco’s sonic evolution.

23.

March 3, 2009
Critic Score
82
27 reviews

Hospice is a fully-realized and fully-functional concept album.

22.

Maxwell - BLACKsummers'night
July 7, 2009
Critic Score
80
12 reviews
Maxwell might be delivering one course at a time, but for now, delivering one of the best albums of 2009 will sate your appetite just fine.

21.

October 20, 2009
Critic Score
81
27 reviews

There are ... occasional stumbles that suggest that some lessons cannot be learned quickly, and that melody is an essential component of their sound that needs more attention. For now, though, this is much better.

20.

February 3, 2009
Critic Score
75
24 reviews
It is a love song to the bands they grew up on, at times purely imitation as flattery, and, in those modest goals, it succeeds.

19.

Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses - Roadhouse Sun
June 2, 2009
Critic Score
71
6 reviews

This is country music the way God intended it to be. On his second set for Lost Highway, this Texas-reared singer-songwriter delivers a dozen tunes full of hard living, hard drinking and hard rocking. The album could just as well have been called Roadhouse Son as Bingham’s biography reads like the lyrics of a country song, the tale of a young talent nurtured by roughnecks and raised on rough times.

18.

October 6, 2009
Critic Score
77
22 reviews

What makes The Life of the World to Come one of 2009's best albums, and the Mountain Goats' studio albums maybe the single greatest second act in modern American rock/indie/whatever music, is that he never assumes those groups are, at the heart of it all, different from each other or less deserving of our attention and compassion.

17.

April 21, 2009
Critic Score
76
30 reviews

The band’s finest work, My Maudlin Career continues the pop rush we’ve come to expect from Camera Obscura but also develops the band’s sound and identity in significant ways.

16.

January 12, 2009
Critic Score
82
26 reviews

Fever Ray makes up for the lack of highs by being an even more all-enveloping experience than the last few Knife records.

15.

June 9, 2009
Critic Score
78
30 reviews

The Ecstatic feels like the album Mos has always wanted and intended to make. It’s experimental and progressive without being too left-field and isolating. It’s hip-hop without being a photocopy of what he’s released in the past. Simply put, it’s Mos being Mos: Equal parts oddball and genius, even with his flaws.

14.

Goran Bregović - Alkohol
May 19, 2009
Critic Score
83
4 reviews

12.

August 17, 2009
Critic Score
84
28 reviews

xx is a thoroughly cohesive, moving and accessible album. This young band of Londoners exhibits a level of maturity, artistry and potential that far exceeds their years.

11.

March 31, 2009
Critic Score
80
35 reviews
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as you knew them, are dead. Just don’t be surprised if you like new version a little more.
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