Tuesday, May 19, 2009

New Music

Is it just me, or has this year been particularly lackluster in regards to new music? There have been a few good things to come out in the past five months but the ones that have the most staying power aren't really spectacular.
For instance, the albums that I would call the 'best' so far have been Noble Beast by Andrew Bird and The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists. To be honest, these albums are not great, they are not the best in either artists repertoire and certainly not anything like what we saw in 2008.
Last year brought us Vampire Weekend, Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit, Fleet Foxes, Dear Science by TV on the Radio, new Sigur Rós and Death Cab just to name a few. It was a stellar year for indie music, I'm still catching up to it.
This year, however, I feel like the quality of music that has been declared "Best New Music" is not the same. For instance, Pitchfork recommends St. Vincent, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Deerhunter and Animal Collective as the best music that has come out this year. Even Dark Was The Night made their list. I'm sorry, though each of those artists does have some decent tunes, it's not on the same level as what we saw last year, I mean DWTN is a compilation of one-off songs that most of the bands determined not good enough for a full length. Conor Oberst siply re-did an old Bright Eyes song, and though it was good, I don't think that deserves the 'Best New Music' title.
Of course, hindsight is 20-20, and at this time next year I might be proclaiming 2009 the best year ever for music. I hope so, I'd like to get some new tunes spinning soon. Wilco (The Album) is due out in five weeks now, so there is hope (at least for my personal collection). For the time being I'm going to let the needle drop on something from the past.

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