If anything, 2009 gave us good music. This here is (obviously) a list of my favorite tracks from last year. I wish I could put them all in a zip file for you to download and listen to while you hit the treadmills (hrhrhr) or are on your way to work but meh, I’m lazy.

10) The Joy Formidable – The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade

From A Balloon Called Moaning (which according to the band’s Wiki page was released in Japan in December 2008 but was released again in 2009), this song is #7 in my top tracks on lastfm. Harsh and sometimes grating, yet dreamy and hypnotizing. I don’t know how they do it.

9) Dirty Projectors – Temecula Sunrise

Okay, so maybe Stillness Is The Move is the Dirty Projectors song and so maybe their collab with David Byrne, Knotty Pine (from Dark Was The Night), is unbelievably cute and happy and catchy but Temecula Sunrise wins me over because it is pure chaos. When I first heard this, I switched to my music player, checked the title, and thought to myself “What the hell is up with this song?” Keeee <3

8) Death Cab for Cutie – My Mirror Speaks

Oh, Ben. Oh, The Open Door EP.

2009 was a strange strange year for me, with some aspects in my life (parts that I hold dearly) gone haywire. I did not turn to My Mirror Speaks for comfort; I listened to remind myself of what kind of person I do not want to be:

Cause I’m a man who hides from all that binds
In a mess of fading lines
And there’s a tangled thread inside my head
With nothing on either end

I always fall in love with an open door
Or the horizon on an endless sea

Nah-uh, do not want to be like that.

7) Passion Pit – The Reeling

Manners is just so darn fun to listen to! If I recall correctly, I have at least four photos in my Project 365 set titled after Passion Pit songs: The Reeling, Little Secrets, Make Light, and To Kingdom Come. I pick The Reeling because aside from being the first song of theirs I heard and having the most plays in my iTunes library, it’s also deep and shit.

LOL.

(I particularly prefer the Miike Snow remix).

6) Think About Life – Nueva Nueva

Thank you, Canada, for Think About Life! I think more people should listen to them because they are unequivocally excellent. Nueva Nueva (which I find both uplifting and calming) is my favorite song to listen to while walking home at night, after work. Sweet Sixteen is a second favorite from their 2009 album, Family.

5) Grizzly Bear – Foreground

Veckatimest was one of my most anticipated albums of 2009 and while each and every song from it is hauntingly beautiful (I initially gravitated towards Cheerleader, as I found the beat sexy), Foreground gives me goosebumps.

4) Metric – Help I’m Alive

Everytime I listen to this song, I have the urge to get on my feet, jump around, and dance badassedly. It’s also very very quotable; I don’t know how many times I’ve had to stop myself from tweeting “Help I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer” over and over again.

3) Animal Collective – My Girls

I get the hugest girlboner for Merriweather Post Pavilion (I bet my bottom dollar it’s on everyone’s Top 10/20 Albums of 2009 lists) and it was hard picking a favorite track off MPP (Summertime Clothes and Brother Sport are a couple of other superfaves). But because My Girls has the awesommest hook in the history of musics (I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status / I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls *insert animalish woop! in the background here*), I pick this.

2) Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You

This song just blows me away.

1) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Hysteric

It’s like a sobering lullaby, the chorus being words I would whisper into the lover’s ear right before falling asleep.