In three weeks Mastodon’s fifth full length album will hit the streets but I don’t feel as though The Hunter has gotten as much attention as Crack The Skye, at least not in my cirlces. Then again, maybe I don’t run in the right circles. Or maybe it’s because it seemed that Mastodon had a pretty well laid out plan for Crack The Skye. Ways that they were going to make that album different than any other heavy metal album out there (and I’m not talking about the concept album that was never conceptualized). It had break the mold track composition, just the right amount of shared vocal responsibility bringing listeners the clean melodic voice from Brann Dailor when it was called for and the more gruff, angry voices of Troy Sanders and Brent Hinds when a kick in the teeth was required.

The Hunter just doesn’t seem that it had the same passion put into it that Crack The Skye did. If you’re looking for something to blow your speakers out then this album will do the job. But if you’re looking to do the math behind each track then you won’t get have to reach much farther than you’re second grade arithmetic book to solve the equations. That’s not to say that the album probably won’t be a decent one from the band but it’s not going to be thinkers metal this time around.

Honestly, I still haven’t recovered from this live performance. And if you think this is bad then check out the live album Live at The Aragon.

“Black Tongue”

“Curl Of The Burl”

So to mark this momentous occasion here are some great songs all about snow.

Damn! what a year.

We lost Michael Jackson and we gained Girls. The Decemberists put out an LP almost as good as Picaresque, but what with the stiff competition you won’t find it on top 50 lists anywhere. Similarly, considering the new relative logic of the last twelve months, Muse and Mars Volta produced two of the top artistic failures of 2009, which were both fairly solid releases on their own. Adam Lambert rose. Chris Brown fell. It all feels like a 52-week fever dream, although that might just be the Fever Ray talking. And while we’re speaking of Girls and Fever Ray, the video seems intent again, for the first time in years, on killing the radio star.

About the blog. Confession time. This year The Muse in Music zigged, even after the rest of the music blogging world announced, in advance, that it would zag. We didn’t feel Dirty Projectors. Grizzly Bear. Wavves. Real Estate. (One of us didn’t exactly feel Phoenix or Loney, Dear, either.) A telling chunk of indie music this year was just too pastel, too chipper, too, well, beep-boop-beep. So when we kept droning on and on about how fantastic 2009 was treating us musically, we weren’t really talking about Animal Collective.

The best live show we saw together — and this is a bit disingenuous, as it is also the only live show we saw together — was Sea Wolf with Port O’Brien and Sarah Lov, an excellent line-up emphasizing textures and songwriting, harmonies and palpable energy. White Water, White Bloom and Threadbare — combined with Fanfarlo’s Reservoir — form a sort of three-way sampler platter for what we anticipate from indie music in the new decade. Sorry, John Taylor, but tomorrow’s frontman is no longer a magician: YouTube and Twitter have seen to that. The insular rock star is dead. Now the true, erudite musician will rise. The chip on his shoulder might remain when he responds to interview questions and Myspace friend requests, but onstage and in the studio, he is a businessman struggling for market share. He knows much more about the world than the dinosaurs of the previous era did, and he is, as Chris Corner of IAMX put it, a traveling salesman and gypsy. He is humbled, even (gasp!) human. And better for it.

It would be convenient if those three LPs formed the first three of our list, but as we said above and have been saying since January, this has been a truly remarkable year musically. Some of our preferences surprised us. Distilling the music of 2009 — the last year of a truly bewildering decade — might read something like this: during these last twelve months, all of the experimentation paid off.  To wit:

10. Summons of Shining Ruins by Shinobu Nemoto. If this isn’t one of your RSS feeds, add one more electron stream to your coffee break and get after it. As the sign says, “This collection hosts complete, freely downloadable/streamable, often Creative Commons-licensed catalogs of ‘virtual record labels’. These ‘netlabels’ are non-profit, community-built entities dedicated to providing high quality, non-commercial, freely distributable MP3/OGG-format music for online download in a multitude of genres.” As you might imagine, these Clinical Archives gave us plenty to talk about this year, and Shinobu Nemoto’s understated transmission rose high above the chatter. (Myspace|Free download)

7. Riceboy Sleeps, by Jonsi & Alex. Conducted by Sigur Rós frontman Jón Þór Birgisson and his partner Alex Somers, Riceboy Sleeps features rich, simple orchestration, tragic imagery, and remarkable beauty. Those who have been paying attention since July know that I fired off a brief review before I realized the connection to Sigur Rós, but that is exactly the point. Music is finally transcending the personalities behind its creation. We can report on the art form instead of the artists, without fear of chasing our readers off. And you may have noticed the toll that it takes on both when media outlets lose sight of this. (Lala|Rhapsody|Myspace|Last.fm)

6. Crack The Skye, by Mastodon. Low Fruit Alert, but the band name really suits them: stinking, gigantic, stampeding, prehistoric. Sometimes plinka plink plinka isn’t quite enough, and, well, if you buy one metal album this year…. Admittedly it was hard to forgive both band and the co-blogger for this post, but only because I had forgotten the first rule of music appreciation: a work must stand alone on its own merits. (Lala|Rhapsody|Myspace|Last.fm)

5. Climb Up, by Apse. This is alien terrain, and not only because of the heavy space rock flavoring. Beats are tribal and muddled, vocals are distant and baroque. The music is universal. And driven. And weird. And sparse. And familiar. You could ask mom for a no-interest loan to this stuff, or you could summit K2. The opening track absolutely begs a naked beach bacchanal, but for PhD’s only. “Rook” declares checkmate. “Closure” is anything but. (Lala|Rhapsody|Myspace|Last.fm)

4. Kingdom of Welcome Addiction, by IAMX. You paying attention, Mr. Glambert? This is how you do oversexed, oversized, homoerotic, arena rock electronica. The title track’s counterintuitive thesis and disarmingly positive outlook belong on every playlist, and power ballad “I Am Terrified” seeks to define at least one mathematical term more clearly. It stands as one of the finest tracks of the year. (Lala|Rhapsody|Myspace)

3. Bird-Brains, by Tune-Yards. Go back to ’08 and revisit the buzz over Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut, then apply the whole They’re Rubber, She’s Glue mandate: “Afro-pop,” “infectious,” even “bookish:” all of it applies to this crazy cool (and just plain “crazy”) debut. A month ago we wrote, “This is the second track from her bewildering, heady Bird-Brains, which by March or April we’ll likely all realize was the album of the year in 2009. We just haven’t had enough time to piece through it yet.” By now we’ve had a bit more time. Tick tock tick tock tick tock… (Lala|Rhapsody|Myspace|Last.fm|Free download)

2. Embryonic, by The Flaming Lips. The okies deserve shortlisting based on effort alone. A bizarre and unflagging double album in October, a Dark Side of the Moon remake in December — to say nothing of a spontaneous dick-measuring contest with Arcade Fire in March — someone ought to pour the Lips a drink. And give them the afternoon off. Embryonic is a curious title for a well-established ensemble’s twelfth studio album. Nevertheless it plays: this is their finest and most cohesive work in at least seven years, which for many circles will earn them nothing less than the grade of “comeback.” (Lala|Rhapsody|Myspace)

For several reasons — all of which are arbitrary and subjective — nothing would please me more than to award Wayne Coyne & Company the album of the year. For starters, I’ve been aware of them for years and they’ve scarcely recorded a note that I haven’t liked. Even more capricious, since Evangelicals took the prize last year and surely might next year, it would put a three-year-long stick in the eye of every city in the world but Norman, Oklahoma. But more than anything, music — like any other creative endeavor — is a young man’s game. At 41, I’d like to think the 48-year-old Coyne is still capable of the top slot. But fate had other plans.  Pandora led us to A Hawk And A Hacksaw, which led us to The Leaf Label, which led us to…

1. The Snake, by Wildbirds and Peacedrums. The appellate judge has made it clear that my posting any more reviews of this LP would constitute a violation of the restraining order. (That must be one of the reasons the current tour doesn’t stop at Texas or the surrounding states.) Scroll through our previous work here. Give the album a spin at one of the following links, or just buy the thing. You’ve heard nothing else quite like it. (Lala|Rhapsody|Myspace)

(Postscript: the attentive reader will note that this dispatch skipped listings #9 and #8, which interestingly enough are, respectively, White Water, White Bloom (Lala) and Reservoir (Lala). Sea Wolf and Fanfarlo have a gaggle of last-minute editing room floor additions to thank for that, so hoorays all around!)

Dear John was the first album I heard this year that made it onto this potential list. It also opened a great year for Sweden and all the amazing acts that are calling it home. Emil Svanangen turns a bit more to his darker and depressed side on this album in comparison to 2007′s Loney Noir with lines like “all the times I make it worse with all the devils in my head” and “Tell me I’m good enough, that I could change”. Even with these lyrics the album is welcoming with it’s atmospheric textures.

09. The Mars Volta – Octahedron

When Octahedron was released I sat at my desk and stared at Rhapsody for about twenty minutes before I pushed play. There was potential for this album to go either way. After hearing the first single I must say that I was a bit frightened but in the end Octahedron turned into one of my favorite Mars Volta albums just due to the fact they pulled in the reigns a little bit. There is still the psychedelic instrumentation but at the same time everything sounds well thought out and not completely chaotic as they have been known to do in the past.

08. A.C. Newman – Get Guilty

Taking a break from his primary group, The New Pornographers, Carl Newman found in him the ability to separate himself and write songs that are distinctly all his . Neko Case definitely gets more of the public eye as a side project from the band but in a more fair world Newman would have found himself on far more top ten lists this year.

07. Other Lives – S/T

This goes down as one of the most beautiful and well written albums I’ve heard all year. The tone never really rises above a whisper but the layering of instruments is orchestrated perfectly to comprise an album that from beginning to end won’t let you down. Occasionally it can fall into the background and be forgotten but it also reels you back in to demand your full attention.

06. Beirut – March of The Zapotec & Realpeople Holland

Technically this is a maxi EP but since all the songs are written by Condon I consider it to be a Beirut album just with a side A and a side B. Side A features a mixture of many different countries from Mexican funeral processions, Eastern European/Balkan influences to early 20′s jazz. While side B dabbles in the electronic arrangements a la Postal Service. Between The Flying Cup Club and this years release Zach Condon will have to go down as one of the most under appreciated and brilliant artist that we have today.

05. Mastodon – Crack The Skye

Every top ten list needs a surprise entrant and this year it’s Mastodon. I haven’t enjoyed a metal album in a very long time but one thing that I can’t deny is that I love a talented band with great harmonizing. Stepping aside from the scream riddled songs of Blood Mountain we learn in Crack The Skye that each has a great ability to sing and harmonize with one another

04. BLK JKS – After Robots

I kept hearing about BLK JKS over and over again but for some reason I continually blew them off without even the slightest listen. I’m glad that I finally came to my sense and gave the album a spin and then another spin. The album is rich with culture and the group let’s their South African roots show through. It’s nice to hear a true afro-pop group that doesn’t wear Polo’s.

03. Fanfarlo – Reservoir

I initially picked up this album for $1 when they put it on sale around the fourth of July and since then it has been a staple of mine from day to day. The privilege to see them live last month also helped catapult Reservoir to the #3 slot. The multiple layers that each song is built on only prove the true talent of this bands multi-instrumental skills.

02. Brendan Benson – My Old Familiar Friend

It’s a shame that it took the success of the Racontuers to give Brendan Benson the boost that he needed into a spotlight that is well deserved. Benson is an extremely talented musician with the ability to write and perform songs from all different genres without making it seem awkward or forced.

01. Silversun Pickups – Swoon

An album hasn’t transfixed me the way that Swoon has in a long time. I nearly wore out my copy keeping it on constant replay. Each song comes in around five minutes and not a single minute is one that I would want to omit. The gruff and often strained voice of Brian Aubert is a welcome relief from all the pitch perfect singers that we are told is the way singing should be.

Below are my contenders for album of the year and at this point they are in no particular order. This gives record labels enough time to start buying my influence.

Taking a break from the New Pornographers, Carl Newman, released his long over due  follow up to 2004′s The Slow Wonder. It’s been difficult separating AC Newman from the New Pornographers as Newman takes lead vocals in both acts. So if you’re a fan of one you will more than likely be a fan of the other.

It is a bit of a faux pas to put Barcelona’s Absolutes on the top ten list for 2009 seeing as it is a re-release from 2007 but this is my list so my rules. My only concern with this band is that they are going to turn into the next Fray and end up on all the tween drama shows. Then I’ll have to stop listening and say that they are too main stream for me in order to keep my indie snobbery and that will be a sad day.

I don’t say this very often but Other Lives S/T album is just beautiful music. Definitely not road trip music but it is the perfect soundtrack to a lazy Sunday afternoon. You can watch an intimate live performance over at Hear Ya Sessions.

Mastodon’s Crack The Skye is my surprise album of the year. I am not fond of their previous releases but on their latest release they seemed to have brought the crunch down a little in order to make some great prog-metal.

It’s no secret to anyone that knows me that I am smitten by Silversun Pickup’s Swoon. It has been on continuous play in my car for the past few months and there is no sign of wearing out it’s welcome any time soon.

Loney, Dears’ Dear John was the first album to make the list this year which really ends up putting it at a disadvantage as I have been listening to it the longest so the excitement might wear off by the end of the year.

And we still have some great releases expected through the end of the year from The Dead Weather, Imogen Heap, Muse, Arctic Monkeys and Mew just to name a few.

Here is a better performance from Spinner.com

I have these five symbols that I’ve come up with that I think are the downfall of man. And each symbol is going to have a couple songs about it and go through in order, and then a couple songs about how they are all tied together. That’s just my general brainstorm right now. I’ll get more into it when I hear the songs and start writing the lyrics.

And what are these symbols:

First one is drugs, the pharmacy side — a person who is not medicated or medicating themselves some way to deal with life. Second (is) religion, organized religion. I don’t mean spirituality but religion in general, where people are controlled and believe their god is better than another god. Third one is the power symbol — most all humans are power hungry. Fourth is the money sign. People will do anything for money. Money — just the concept of it is stupid, and it’s a pretty f*cked-up thing. The fifth one is time. It’s our biggest enemy of all. Everyone is always battling time; people don’t have time to do this, people don’t have time to do that. They spend millions of dollars to buy Botox trying to buy time. I think it’s a killer of all of us.

I look forward to the next Korn album as much as the next guy but at this point it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this album never happens. There has been no speculated release date as of yet.

I’m probably older than the typical tMiM reader; hopefully my insight will be worth the read. By September 9, 1991, the art form formerly known as “hard rock” lay in shambles. The innovators were either disbanded or ridiculous: Led Zeppelin was eleven years passed. Black Sabbath was two decades past its prime. Judas Priest mocked itself regularly and still does. Korn, Slipknot, and System of a Down were still fermenting. The hard rock landscape was dominated by absurdities like Winger, Warrant, and Cinderella. Indeed, three years earlier, when Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden had moaned “here comes the guitar solo” toward the midpoint of “Black Bart Blues,” it was clear that the genre was unraveling. That was March 20, 1988.

In school, metal heads were quite literally beaten up by the jocks, and promptly shunned by the cheerleaders. In the world at large, even the finest acts — Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Ministry — were either ridiculed or ignored by critics. Keith Richards famously drew comparisons between hard rock and a defective air bomber: both made a lot of noise getting down the runway, but neither achieved lift-off. My 1982 purchase of Judas Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance inspired my immediate departure from country music, but by 1991 we had all suffered at the hands of glam metal long enough. By then I had mostly abandoned hard rock for industrial dance.

The next day, September 10, 1991, an altogether unknown Nirvana released a cut from their second LP, Nevermind. I remember where I was, the car I was driving, where I was headed, and practically what I was wearing when I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” By the end of the track I was singing along (shouting, really); guessing of course at the lyrics. At once the legions of metal fans cut their hair to shoulder length and bought flannel shirts; we even did in Texas, where flannel is unbearably hot except for about twenty minutes once every year. The locker room beatings may have gone on, but as for the cheerleaders … suffice to say we should all remember the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video. At long last, hard rock was finally cool again. And all it took was one expertly-written five-minute track.

Or rather “expertly” is the wrong word. There is only one word for the driving force behind such a reversal of fortunes, only one way to describe a man who invents a new musical genre from scratch and paves the way for scores of other bands to follow, and that word is “genius.”

So at the beginning of this dispatch we posed two questions:

1. Where would music be today had Kurt Cobain not recorded anything? We can answer that question with a question: in what other universe would the follow-up to Nevermind — the fantastic, but not as fantastic In Utero — actually be considered a disappointment? Forget whether Soundgarden or Pearl Jam would have met with such incredible success without Kurt Cobain first paving the way. It is self evident that they would not have. A more interesting question is this: would Mastodon have? Or Lamb of God? We submit that not only did Cobain wrestle control of hard rock from the spandex and hairspray crowd, he rescued it from them. They would otherwise have ruined it. Trust me, the likes of Skinny Puppy and Front 242 were waiting to pick up the market share.

2. Where would music be today if he had not killed himself? The answer to that question is irrelevant, frankly. The revolution had already begun.

All of the songs that matter, all of my Arcade Fire, Beirut, and Flaming Lips? Safely tucked away in MP3 format. What was your first CD? And your first legal MP3 purchase? In my case those are Ministry and (…let’s say…) Pete Yorn.

Recently I searched Google’s vaults for “song written in a dream” and was largely disappointed. I write probably 10 songs in dreams every year, and I must boast that the material is absolutely ready for prime time, although normally I forget the tune within minutes. But if I could refine the skill — to say nothing of leaving a recorder near the bed — the LP would be good. You’re hearing it here. So you would think the men and women whom are paid to create music would mine the resources that an amateur would. Or maybe that’s what makes me an amateur.

Yet Barry Manilow once stated on American Idol that such-and-such track was a song he dreamt into existence. I believe the track to be “Looks Like We Made It,” but for all I know it was “I Haven’t Changed the Room.”

Patrick thinks the last track on the new Mastodon LP sounds like Dream Theater. I think it sounds more like Voivod. Either way, I’m formally nominating Crack the Skye for Best of 2009. It’s dreamy!

So we pick our spades back up and look for foreclosed lots on which to dig. And we find Machinist from Vicoria, British Columbia. Machinist is as yet unsigned. I especially like the track, “All Nights.” The self-description “Alternative / Industrial / Electronica” is apt enough.