Favorite groups of 2009?

[usernamenumber]

(X-posting this from the Jason Webley forums, which, if I do say myself, are now approx 200% less sucky after I finally got around to spending an evening doing a major revamp and migrating from phpbb to forum software that isn't, you know, horrible)

(another, un-related note for emusic users: all the album links here are to amazon's mp3 store, but if you use emusic, like I do, these artists are all there as well)


...not necessarily groups that were formed in 2k9, but that you discovered that year. For me there were three: Sparks, Flipron and The Indelicates.

Sparks have been around since the late 70s, but released one of their best albums (IMO) in 2k8, which is cool all by its self, but they also have one of the most distinctive and unique sounds out there as far as I know. As a friend of mine once described them as, "like if Phillip Glass had written Bohemian Rhapsody". In other words, badass as far as I'm concerned. They do some amazing things with repetition of simple vocal lines and themes, with the singer layering and harmonizing with himself 10+ tracks at a time. I'm a big fan of their albums Hello Young Lovers and Exotic Creatures of the Deep, in particular.

The Indelicates do with cynicism what Webley does with the macabre. That is, they somehow manage to make it beautiful and compelling without watering anything down in the process. If I had to pick a favorite song of 2k9, it would probably be their "We Hate The Kids", which is basically an anthem about the death of idealism in the rock scene. I don't even fully agree with the sentiment, and yet I still find myself getting pulled into the song and wrapping myself up in their "fuck it all" attitude. They also have a beautiful love song that, once one gets partway through and hits lyrics like "we're like Romeo and Juliet... in a bunker, shot through the head", one realizes is written from the perspective of a woman in love with Hitler (it's called Unity Mitford, which wikipedia says was a real woman who is rumored to have borne his illegitimate child). So yeah, this group is not all puppies and flowers, and yet their first full-length album, American Demo, which is currently on sale for $6.99, is ultimately a thing of beauty to me, and never fails to grab me and have me singing along with most of the tracks.

Finally, Flipron. I am ashamed to admit that I am not normally a lyrics guy. It's an adhd thing or something, but I end up listening to the sound of a song as a whole, usually losing specific lyrics in the mix. As a result, what someone says in a song is often less important to me than whether or not they sound like they mean it. Strangely this is not the case when I listen to flipron. Their lyrics and presentation are basically beat poetry. Think somewhere between Bob Dylan and Mike Doughty. There's lots of imagery, which is evocative without being too abstract, and their vocalist sing/speaks in a way that makes him very easy to understand. Plus both the lyrics and the music are, you know, good. On a related note, am I crazy, or is Big Baboon (available for free from their site) the best allegory for the existential crisis of an atheist ever written? My favorite album of theirs overall is Biscuits for Cerberus, but my two favorite songs of theirs, Big Baboon and Vicious Car, are on Fancy Blues and Rustique Novelties

I should also include a shout-out to Amanda Palmer's solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, since it came out in 2k9 and is definitely one of my favorite albums of that year. But then, any of you who are likely to care about that have no doubt already heard it. ;)

So... what were the groups whose discovery made your 2009 worthwhile?

Comments

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recs. I've reached the point where new music is very slow to trickle in. Descriptions from people with known tastes, even if my tastes are radically different, are a nice starting point. Which ties in with my liking spoilers for new shows/movies.

ASIDE: You clearly abandoned your ancient attempt to write fora software. Can I ask what, if anything aside from just time and life crunch, led you to that? While SMF may be better than PHBB, I still find the organizational model frustrating. My only active forum is a PHP reworking of the BeeHive/Delphi model, and even that I find cumbersome (although not nearly as frustrating as phpbb).

I still think there's a better layout and thread organization model than what's common, but I haven't seen much innovation.

PHPBB inherits everything that was clunky about browisng a MaximusBBS, without the benefit of OLMRs.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

I guess I've just come to accept the standard, minimally-threaded approach, for the most part. My old soapbox software was written when I was still learning what I was doing, and sucked on toast at the code level (even though, man, I should check whether I still have the source somewhere...).

The problem with having nested threads, which I assume is what you're pining for, is of course that when conversations get really in-depth, which is generally when you most want threading, nesting the threads becomes problematic because once you start indenting, eventually the indenting doesn't give you enough room to have useful information on the right. It's also a lot easier to scan conversations quickly when they're back to back instead of using a reading pane like my software did (iirc, at least). In short, a non-threaded (past the first level) model plus quoting gets the job done well-enough in my experience. It has its problems, but then so does the alternative.

Then again, that's all fairly obvious, so I assume you've found some subtler approach that you'd champion, and I'm curious what it is.

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

No I'm not a fan of nested threads. The features that Delphi/BeeHive/TheV have that I mess elsewhere are direct replies in thread with links to the source post (which makes parallel conversations in one thread much easier), a permanent thread choice section so I'm not drowning in tabs, and better filter options for whole boards (threads with unread posts, unread posts to me, all new from last N days). With the PhPBB model, if there's more than N threads (n=PageDisplayMax - Stickies - Headers) that get consistent daily posting, then everything else gets pushed into the hinterlands.

My mental test case is a thread that's several hundred or thousand posts long. There's bits on SRK (Vbulletin I think) that run 5-700 pages and are essentially boards unto themselves. I think there's probably a better way to make those still useful for their serious user, but without being a daily obstacle for other readers.

When I watched the Wave preview months ago, I thought the dream they were selling was RSS for fora. Maybe once we get out of the silly limited Beta we can get back to that.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Northern Kings for absolutely sureness.