Top Ten Albums of '09

10. Deastro--Moondagger
9. The Dodos--Time to Die
8. Cass McCombs--Catacombs
7. Animal Collective--Merriweather Post Pavillion
6. Grizzly Bear--Veckatimest
5. Ramona Falls--Intuit
4. The Mountain Goats--The Life of the World to Come
3. Dinosaur Jr.--Farm
2. Polvo--In Prism
1. Mew--No More Stories Are Told Today, I'm Sorry, They Washed Away...

Winner of the best run-on sentence/fused sentence title award goes to Mew. This album is also awesome; they seem to care about both creativity and good songwriting. The first song, "New Terrain," can be played forward and backward and still be a song. "Introducing Palace Players" has a very syncopated, odd rhythm, a creative drum part, and an extremely choppy guitar part that all come together to make a great song. "Hawaii" is one my favorite songs I've heard in a while. You should check out this band if you haven't. Another great thing about Mew is that the rest of their releases are worthwhile as well. I've found "And the Glass Handed Kites" to be just as good as the newest album.

The numbers are fairly meaningless on the rest of this list. The top five are full of great songs, but 6-10 have only a few songs on them that really grabbed me. I know some people will gasp when I say that about Grizzly Bear or Animal Collective but oh well. The song of the year for me was probably "Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear, and I'm guessing if I spent more time with that record, I would come to love it more.

Honorable Mentions:
-Mount Eerie--Wind Songs
-Wild Beasts--Two Dancers
-The Twilight Sad--Forget the Night Ahead
-Dirty Projectors--Bitte Orca

Ah how I love this time of year--the Gap ads that shout at me and the piles of nylon resting on the neighborhood lawns. Beautiful.

Tiny Movie Reviews

Flatliners: A group of young med. students stop their hearts and revive themselves a short time later to get a taste of what the afterlife has in store for them.

I enjoyed this movie, but answer me this question: why doesn't one of the main characters die in this movie? It would have made their actions have that much more gravity to them, especially if they had decided to continue their experiments after someone had died. As a bonus, they could have made William Baldwin's loathsome character the one who kicks the bucket.

Suspension of Disbelief Factor (1 being a Ken Burns documentary and 10 being The Santa Clause 2: The Escape Clause): 7

Away We Go: An expecting, very-much-in-love couple struggle to find their place in the world.

Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski are surprisingly convincing as the directionless couple, and this movie ends up being very witty at times. I laughed out loud several times (which sadly, surprises me when it happens). Krasinski is basically playing Jim from The Office with a little more spine and a little more edge to his humor. I ended up liking this movie, but I had a little problem with its conclusion: A loving couple basically will have no friends and ultimately no place in this hateful world. Or I guess the place for them is a secluded, Walden Pond-esque locale where there will be no meaningful contact with the outside world.

Suspension of Disbelief Factor: 3

The International: An Interpol agent struggles to expose the evil acts and schemes perpetrated across the world by an ubiquitous, international bank.

This movie was quite intriguing and suspenseful from the beginning, only to become more and more hopeless as it went on. This tangle of intrigue and hopelessness ultimately leads to a bleak ending in which Clive Owen's character has to employ evil to defeat an evil that really isn't defeated.

Suspension of Disbelief Factor: 5

The Manchurian Candidate: A brainwashed soldier tries to reclaim his mind and uses his memories to expose a Machiavellian political scheme.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie--it is engaging from beginning to end, and it reminded me of what a great actor Denzel Washington is. I think he has made bad decisions as to what movies to be in, but this movie isn't one of those bad decisions. If you are looking for a good suspenseful movie, check this one out. I believe this movie is based on a book, and there is also a movie from the sixties based on the same novel that stars Frank Sinatra (which I have not seen).

Suspension of Disbelief Factor: 8

To Fill It Up

Have you ever tried drinking water while urinating? It is an odd sensation. I think this is what Enigk of SDRE was saying when he sang "...to fill it up/but spill instead."

Basketball

It is my favorite sport to play, but I also like to watch it... in March. I don't know what it is, but I'm not a huge fan of the regular season like I am with football and baseball. However, yesterday Clemson reminded me of one reason why I like to watch basketball: the full-court press. This type of defense makes the game intense, and you have to respect the tenacity and conditioning of teams that use it. You also have to respect the flailing arms of the tallest and most gangly dude on the court in the face of the poor guy trying to inbound the ball. At one time in my life, I watched Iowa basketball a lot with my grandpa and dad, and I loved it when those Iowa teams from the late eighties and early nineties pressed opponents into submission. It had to have been a Tom Davis thing. I'm not an Iowa fan now, but I think Davis was a great coach.

MMO-Friendly Music

There are bands out there that go really well with epic computer games (WoW, etc.), and Grails is one of them. This marriage of music and cpu game is not meant to be an insult to a band's music; to me it simply means that their music has achieved a narrative and cinematic quality that is a fitting soundtrack for adventure. Some might say, "Waaaaah... WoW has great in-game music; why don't you listen to it?" Yes, WoW does have good in-game music, but I prefer listening to my own playlist when I play. Check out Grails when you have a chance--especially the song "Belgian Wake-up Drill." I've really been enjoying their album Black Tar Prophecies Vols 1,2,& 3.

Not all music works well with adventure games. For instance, I don't want to be hearing "1,2,3,4 tell me that you love me more" when I'm jamming my sword into a dark iron dwarf's ear. I want to hear something with a matching mood. Some of my other favorite bands for this application include Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I still only have one album from Grails, but I plan to check out more of them.