The Best Albums of 2009: 50-41

The time has come to start our official countdown, from 50 to 1, of the definitive best albums of 2009 – according to our industrious, illustrious bank of writers. Click here for how we got to this list – it’s very important that you understand the workings of our musoisms, mathematicalisms and y’know, stuff.

And now, let’s go! Excuse the dissent slipping through…

50) HEALTH – Get Color: This album is the sound of strobes, of a crashing, thrashing apocalypse. I deem it ‘andrgynisco’, a sound that entirely succeeds in its aim to destroy.

49) The Flaming Lips – Embryonic: Wayne Coyne resumes the role of paranoid professor, and his minions follow. A return to form.

48) YACHT – See Mystery Lights: Frenetic, catchy and triangle-obsessed, this lithe and sinewy album stood out from the crowd. Don’t let it slip you by – and it comes from the same ballpark as The Blow.

47) Sonic Youth – The Eternal: Slower-burning than much of their ’00s output, the stop-start stuttering of this album made it a real grower. Special kudos to ‘Sacred Trickster’, the album’s highlight.

46) Atlas Sound – Logos: Featuring Laetitia Sadler and Panda Bear, this album is its own world. Bradford Cox creates human-sounding ambience, wrestling with himself via aid from some damn unusual production.

45) Placebo – Battle for the Sun: Apparently a lot of our writers have nostalgia? I won’t try and explain this. Will I? No, for as I am not their mother, I am not responsible. Read the ruddy disclaimer, yo, and don’t quote this on your billboards, Molko.

44) Slow Club – Yeah So: Back to form, writers! An impressively no-nonsense debut from the duo, full of unique traipses and tales jaunty, anecdotal into the future. Still sounds fresh post-summer, too.

43) Eels – Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire: Primal, howling. You know the sort. Can you tell that this one’s addition is a bit of an, ahem, surprise? Oh writerlets… I don’t understand. This just meanders. But thankfully I totally stand by the remaining 42 albums. PHEW.

42) The Cribs – Ignore The Ignorant: Johnny Marr passed his induction phase, and The Cribs went colossal on the guitars. More righteous and definitively angrier, it saw them go mainstream.

41) Noah And The Whale – First Days of Spring: Beautiful tears were shed by our writers on this second, heartbroken album from the not-so-stiff upper-lip folk-popsters.


Stay tuned for tomorrow’s countdown from 40 to 31, if you can hold your baited breath for long enough… there’ll be more for me to gush about and none for me to get mouse-trapped by. Thank you, karma.