Top Ten Albums and Songs of 2009

10. Passion Pit, Manners
This collection of bouyant, shimmering gems is the best example of indie electronic this year.

9. Antlers, Hospice
Combining ambient textures with dark, propulsive anthems, this is certainly one of the best albums of the year. Complex and deeply cinematic.

8. Sunset Rubdown, Dragon Slayer
With this latest album, Sunset Rubdown reaffirms why they are one of the most ambitious, moving, and powerfully idiosyncratic bands of the 21st century.

7. Handsome Furs, Face Control
With this newest release from his Wolf Parade side project Handsome Furs, Dan Boeckner again produces a fantastic album full of gritty, rousing electronic indie rock.

6. Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix's brand of sleek, electro-pop was a major winner this year with this outstanding album, in which seemingly every song is a single.

5. Foreign Born, Person to Person
This album of pristine, scintillating indie rock is the second stunner from the California based Foreign Born; the first being their extraordinary debut, On the Wing Now.

4. WHY?, Eskimo Snow
Not only is the only one of the most sorely underrated albums of the year, but in my opinion it is also one of the best. It shows the band in their intimate and emotionally affecting light.

3. The Middle East, Recordings of the Middle East
Although this is technically only an EP, it's seven songs are as hauntingly beautiful as anything I've heard in a long time.

2. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
This album represents the pinnacle of Neko Case's career in my opinion. At least for now. The songs here are more lush and penetratingly beautiful than anything she's ever done.

1. Dappled Cities, Zounds
This oft-underlooked Australian band releases the best album of their career with this soaring collection of big, bold, emotive indie rock songs.

Top Ten Songs of 2009

10. We Were Promised Jetpacks, Quiet Little Voices

9. The Horrors, Primary Colours


8. Phoenix, Big Sun


7. WHY?, Eskimo Snow


6. John Vanderslice, Too Much Time


5. Handsome Furs, Radio Kaliningrad


4. Neko Case, I'm an Animal


3. Passion Pit, Moth Wings


2. The Middle East, Blood


1. Julian Plenti, Only if You Run

Up in the Air... and Top Ten Films of the Year

There are still plenty of films I want to see before I my top ten is truly complete, but this is what I have so far:

10. Bruno
I'm perfectly comfortable knowing that I'm one of the few who believes this film is better than Borat. Just to be clear, both are spectacularly funny, abrasive comedies, but in my opinion Bruno reaches nearly unprecedented heights of subversive comedy. This Sascha Baron Cohen vehicle satirizes America's homophobic, celebrity-obsessed culture more saliently and bracingly than any other film in recent memory.

9. Up in the Air
This may be Jason Reitman's most self-conscious effort to date. The film, following a corporate job termination specialist's assiduously disconnected lifestyle, doles out heavy-handed lessons on the importance of family. Despite its maudlin predictability and occasional triteness, Jason Reitman's third film is at times deeply moving and always exceptionally well-crafted. In particular, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick are wonderful.

8. Zombieland
While this film doesn't utterly reinvent the zombie movie, it does add a refreshingly spirited and full-fisted spin. Anchored by muscular direction , a surprisingly perceptive script, and great performances from Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson, it's one of the most fun films of the year.

7. Adventureland
Greg Mottolla's follow-up to Superbad is a funny, moving, cringingly honest portrayl of confused youth.

6. Moon
Sam Rockwell delivers a bravura performance in this tale of a Moon miner awaiting relocation back to Earth.

5. District 9
Much has been made of this film as an allegory for South African apartheid, but with it's narrative of a multi-national's domination over an "alien community" this film is truly an indictment of the post-modern marginalization of the third world by international corporatism.

4. (500) Days of Summer
Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordan Levitt both shine in this rich, innovative romantic comedy.

3. Observe and Report
Many found this film to be uncomfortably perverse... I agree with them, but that's what this film is: a portrait of a somewhat disturbed, alienated individual, Ronnie. I consider it a great tribute to Jody Hill and Seth Rogen that I found the treatment of Ronnie to be so vulnerable, disturbing, and hilarious.

2. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wes Anderson's most recent film is also one of his best. Not only is it staggeringly beautiful, but is also one of the funniest films in recent memory.

1. Der Baader Meinhof Complex
Uli Edel's rivetting examination of Germany's radical 1970s group the Red Army Faction is one of the most powerful and incisive studies of terrorism.

The Wonderful World of Coca-Cola

So far, my trip to Atlanta has been marked by a grueling, completely unnecessary hike up a landmark known as "Stone Mountain", which as it turns is partially a time-capsule of Southern Confederate nostalgia--the landmark proudly brandished the Confederate flag, the Confederate state flag, and monuments to Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis--and an equally unnecessary trip to the "World of Coca-Cola".

First, a word about the Confederacy and the Civil War. If Southerners want to emblazon the iconography of the Confederate South on their pickup trucks or trailers, then that's their right. However, they can't simultaneously argue that this iconography doesn't represent a profoundly racist past. And anyone who argues that the Civil War was not about slavery, but rather was a noble struggle over state's rights, is an apologist for one of the most reprehensible parts of human history. Technically, the Civil War was about state's rights... a state's rights to treat human beings as property, and the Confederacy's attempts to obscure the influence of slavery is what would be referred to today as spin.

Now, onto the "World of Coca-Cola". This facility was perfectly emblematic of the rampant corporatization of modern America. According to their presentation, Coca-Cola, which is merely a soft-drink product, has achieved the status of a cultural icon. In addition, I found out that when one opens a can of Coca-Cola, they are in fact opening "happiness". This is what our tour guide actually said--"opening happiness". Not only that, but they referred to the Coke factor as... you guessed it, a "happiness factory". Seriously? If it weren't all so mind-numbingly real, it would be satire.

The Road...

Saw The Road tonight and my initial impression was... Good. But as the night has worn on, I find that the film has conspicuously left my thoughts entirely. And that is not good. For anyone who doesn't know, the film, based on the highly acclaimed Cormac McCarthy novel, follows a father and his young son as they struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The audience is never told how exactly the world became like this. All we know is that almost no animals have survived, there are minor earthquakes that seem to occur in places that geologically don't support such activity, and many people have resorted to cannabilism in order to survive.

This film simply doesn't bring enough to the table. Film audiences have been exposed to far more complex and emotionally gripping post-apocalyptic cinema than this. And for a movie to be so weighted in contextual ambiguities, much has to be done right to compensate. Well, this film does not do everything right. And as a result, the ambiguities that seemingly enriched the novel, detract from the film. If the film had had more creative ambition--and more of a dramtic spine--than ambiguity would not be an issue. Unfortunately, in this film director John Hillcoat, more often than not, plays it safe and lets this world speak for itself TOO MUCH. The problem is there is only so much that a perpetually grey landscape, falling trees, and dirt-caked survivors can evoke before one expects the director to do more. On a positive note, Viggo Mortensen, struggling to do much with little, turns in a very good performance.