Listomania: 2009 in Review

Another year’s over, this one perhaps overlooked as decade-end lists took precedence over year-end lists.  Speaking of, can we agree to call this new year “twenty ten” instead of “two thousand ten”? Syllables are a precious resource worth conserving.  At the very least, please avoid saying “oh ten.”

Oh yes, back to the year-end lists. For 2009.

Top Books of 2009

Fiction: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
Non-Fiction: Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined by Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists by the A.V. Club

Conveniently enough, these were also the only two 2009 books I read this year.  Also conveniently, they were both excellent.

Top Albums of 2009

Franz Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love

2009 was a tricky year for me for albums, as I didn’t actually spend a lot of time listening to them.  Most of my listening happened earlier in the year, which is probably why those two stood out the most.  I do think Tonight was unjustly overlooked.  It’s actually quite a strong record – song for song, it’s comparable to Franz Ferdinand.

Art Brut vs. Satan seemed to be a letdown at the time, but I might have been too harsh.  I still haven’t formed opinions on Further Complications, Horehound, It’s Frightening, Humbug, Josephine etc.  I only just got Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and Wilco (The Album) for Christmas, so I’m not ready to weigh in on those yet.  I never did buy It’s Not Me, It’s You.  I totally forgot I bought Everything Touches Everything by These United States until I just now saw it listed on my iTunes. I’ve never even listened to it. That’s the trouble with going on used album binges at Academy Records.

Top 10 Movies of 2009

01) A Serious Man
02) Inglourious Basterds
03) Where the Wild Things Are
04) Awaydays
05) Little Dorrit
06) Drag Me to Hell
07) Away We Go
08) Up
09) Funny People
10) Extract

I gave the game away a bit by putting A Serious Man at #4 for my decade list, but it’s just that good.  Speaking of the decade list, you may notice that I swapped the order of Inglourious Basterds and Where the Wild Things Are.  I didn’t change my mind. I’m just being willfully inconsistent.

#4 and #5 are cheating in a way. I saw Awaydays at South by Southwest, and it blew me away. I doubt that it’ll get a U.S. distribution, though, as it’s focused on a very specific element of British culture unfamiliar to most Americans.  Little Dorrit is actually a TV miniseries, not a movie.  Still, it’s probably the best Masterpiece Theatre-type adaptation since the 1995 Pride and Prejudice (which was A&E, not PBS).  It also beats the 1987 Little Dorrit by miles.  (It helps that Arthur’s not a creepy old dude and that Amy has a personality.)

I think Drag Me to Hell is the first movie I’ve seen in theaters twice since the first Pirates of the Caribbean.

Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart” just starting playing on my iTunes. It approves of me ranking Funny People at #9.

Top 25 Tracks of 2009

The first 10 songs are my top 10 of the year in order (that is, “Percussion Gun” is my favorite song of the year).  The following 15 tracks are not ranked.

01) White Rabbits – “Percussion Gun”
02) Franz Ferdinand – “Ulysses”
03) Lily Allen – “The Fear”
04) Handsome Furs – “I’m Confused”
05) Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys – “Empire State of Mind”
06) Flight of the Conchords – “Hurt Feelings”
07) Lady Gaga – “Poker Face”
08) Phoenix – “1901”
09) The Avett Brothers – “I and Love and You”
10) Kelly Clarkson – “My Life Would Suck Without You”
11) Jarvis Cocker – “‘Further Complications.'”
12) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Heads Will Roll”
13) Death Cab for Cutie – “Meet Me on the Equinox”
14) Art Brut – “Alcoholics Unanimous”
15) Brakes – “Crush on You”
16) The Features – “Lions”
17) The Dead Weather – “I Cut Like a Buffalo”
18) Arctic Monkeys – “Cornerstone”
19) Magnolia Electric Co. – “O! Grace”
20) Wilco – “Wilco (The Song)”
21) Miike Snow – “Animal”
22) The Juan MacLean – “One Day”
23) The Bottle Rockets – “The Way It Used to Be”
24) Au Revoir Simone – “All or Nothing”
25) The Decemberists – “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid”

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But didn’t I list “Poker Face” as a 2008 track on Monday? Yes I did. But that’s OK – the Grammys tried to change the rules for Lady Gaga, too.  At any rate, though it may have technically been released in 2008, it didn’t get near the pop charts till this year.

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Best of the 2000s: Day 4 (Books; Odds and Ends)

Year-end (and decade-end) lists that get published at the end of November/beginning of December irk me.  I understand that most publications take off work during the last couple of weeks, but it just seems wrong.  I used to post my lists (on ye olde Livejournal) in January of the following year to make sure that I wouldn’t miss out on some of the big records that I hadn’t lived with yet or on movies that were late to open in wide release.  Problem is, no one cares once you post that late.  So I’m compromising. This week, December 28-31, I’ll focus on the 2000s.  Each day, I’ll post one-quarter of my Top 100 songs (in convenient download format, if I can pull it together) as well as one general decade-end list (probably albums, movies, TV and books).  On January 1, I’ll follow up the decade lists with a post dedicated to 2009.  As always, this is my opinion.  I’m wouldn’t even want to compose some sort of objective list, even if such a thing were possible.  This is simply the pop cultural detritus that I most enjoyed during the past decade/year.

Top 5 Books of the 2000s

01) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
02) Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004)
03) The Areas of My Expertise (2005) / More Information Than You Require (2008) by John Hodgman
04) Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (2000)
05) I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris (2006)

Hodgman’s books are essentially two volumes of the same work, so they get the combo treatment.

I decided to only do five books – not because I don’t read much, but because a) I didn’t read much published this decade, and b) the books that would finish out the top 10 would mostly be the same as on everyone else’s lists (Cloud Atlas, A Heartbreaking Work, etc.) and I like to pretend to have somewhat original opinions.

It seems my tastes run to invented footnotes (#1-3) and Sedarises (#4-5).

Top 100 Songs of the 2000s: Part 4 (Odds and Ends)

(not in any particular order)

01) data Panik – “Cubis (I Love You)” (2005)
02) Justice vs Simian – “We Are Your Friends (Original Mix)” (2006)
03) Klaxons – “Gravity’s Rainbow” (2007)
04) Sister Vanilla – “Down” (2007)
05) Black Box Recorder – “The Facts of Life” (2000)
06) Air – “Playground Love” (2000)
07) Kate Wax – “Catch the Buzz” (2006)
08) Interpol – “Slow Hands (Britt Daniel remix)” (2004)
09) King Creosote – “Klutz” (2005)
10) Saul Williams – “List of Demands (Reparations)” (2004)
11) LCD Soundsystem – “Someone Great” (2007)
12) Teenage Fanclub – “The World’ll Be OK” (2003)
13) Goldfrapp – “Ride a White Horse” (2005)
14) Simian Mobile Disco – “I Believe” (2007)
15) Destroyer – “An Actor’s Revenge” (2004)
16) Broken Social Scene – “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” (2002)
17) Santogold – “L.E.S. Artistes” (2008)
18) I Am Kloot – “To You” (2001)
19) The Streets – “Let’s Push Things Forward” (2002)
20) The Knife – “Heartbeats” (2002)
21) M.I.A. – “Paper Planes” (2007)
22) Electrelane – “To the East” (2007)
23) The Postal Service – “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” (2003)
24) Ladytron – “Playgirl” (2000)
25) Marianne Faithfull – “Last Song” (2005)

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I couldn’t decide on exactly what theme I wanted this last set to be, so you get a little bit of everything.

The decade is officially over (culturally, if not scientifically). So is my decade round-up.  Happy new year/decade!

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