@ZackTeibloom At least we have best-of lists to get us through December. As great as it is to find out about all the music I didn’t get the rest of the year, I wish we could come to a consensus and make it like the all-star game and do lists at the halfway point. It gets to be overwhelming to see all these lists at once. Maybe these aren’t your favorites yet, but if you see an album on a list a few times, get yourself a copy of it. I advise that you take the lists as a to-do list. It’s really not about rankings (though I guess I do get obsessed with them the rest of the year.) Hopefully we’ll all have different lists of ‘09 in a few months. We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.

A little theme music for you. There’s a song for everything. The song for this post is…“My Year in Lists” by Los Campesinos

2009 ALBUMS

Filter staff’s top 10 albums of 2009:

I got the whole idea to do these lists from Filter and their wonderful compilation of artist’s best-of ‘09 lists. Make sure you click through to Filter and see them all. A lot of unique choices in there.

• 1. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
• 2. Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (Glassnote)
• 3. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest (Warp)
• 4. Miike Snow, Miike Snow (Downtown)
• 5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz! (Interscope)
• 6. Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Elvis Perkins in Dearland (XL)
• 7. Cass McCombs, Catacombs (Domino)
• 8. Passion Pit, Manners (Frenchkiss)
• 9. The Antlers, Hospice (Frenchkiss)
• 10. White Rabbits, It’s Frightening (TBD)

Mikela Floyd

Festival Crashers’ favorite rep unveiled her top 10 on Filter . Her inclusion of Dark Was The Night intrigues me as it was certainly one of the best releases of the year, but do compilations count? I almost felt bad putting Monsters of Folk on my list, but screw it. It’s great music. The real point of best-of lists is to check out stuff you haven’t seen.

• 1. Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (Glassnote)
• 2. The Avett Brothers, I And Love And You (Sony)
• 3. Various Artists, Dark Was the Night (4AD)
• 4. M.Ward, Hold Time (Merge)
• 5. The xx, xx (XL)
• 6. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone (Anti)
• 7. Sondre Lerche, Heartbeat Radio (Rounder)
• 8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz! (Interscope)
• 9. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest (Warp)
• 10. Florence + The Machine, Lungs (Universal Republic)

Austinist top 15 albums of ‘09

Rare to see Dirty P’s in the #1 slot, but Paige makes a strong case. I felt compelled to download every album I didn’t have on this list after reading the descriptions. Make sure you click through.

1. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
2. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
3. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
4. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – Elvis Perkins in Dearland
5. Bill Callahan – I Wish We Were an Eagle
6. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Woxy’s top 97 of ‘09

I absolutely loved listening to their countdown where they’d play a song off each album, counting down from 100. They gave Wilco a little too much credit, I couldn’t even squeeze them into my top 10, but a strong list. A lot of overlap with mine and a few I need to spend more time with.

Spin’s top 40 albums of 2009

Happy to see The Dead Weather crack the top 10 of someone’s list besides mine and even though it’s a lot higher than I’d have the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Sorry @den_mom) the Phoenix-Grizzly Bear-Animal Collective trio by the top is pretty standard.

• 1. Merriweather Post Pavilion
• 2. Yeah Yeah Yeah’s-It’s Blitz!
• 3. Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
• 4. Grizzly Bear- Veckatimest
• 5. Girls – Album
• 6. Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
• 7. Mos Def – The Ecstatic
• 8. Florence and the Machine- Lungs
• 9 Drake - So Far Gone
• 10. Dead Weather- Horehound

Sailor Legs

As she so eloquently put it, “Top tens are IMPOSSIBLE, so I’m taking another direction of it. I’m going to give you some top tens that maybe you didn’t get a chance to listen to. Diamonds in the rough, one could say. And i’m giving a big fuck you to the number system.”

• Pretty Lights- Passing By Behind Your Eyes
• Blakroc- self titled
• Little Dragon- Machine Dreams
• Warpaint- Exquisite Corpse
• POS- Never Better
• Florence + The Machine- Lungs
• Dead Man’s Bones- self titled
• Miike Snow- self titled
• Caspa and Rusko- FabricLive 37
• Amanda Blank- I Love You

Zack’s Top 10

It’s hard for me to do a best-of. Come back to me in a month when I’ve had time to go through everyone else’s top 10s and give them the time they deserve. I can only go with what I know. These are the 10 albums I spent the most time with. They stayed in my car stereo for weeks at a time. I saw 7 of them live. Some multiple times. (I already regret not making it to Fanfarlo, Grizzly Bear and Monsters of Folk when they passed through Austin) Anyway, here they are. A mix of indie-rock and hard rock that captures the end of the decade for me. And I didn’t even put Jack White #1. Surprised?

1. Passion Pit Manners
2. Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
3. Dead Weather Horehound
4. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavillion
5. Fanfarlo Resevoir
6. Them Crooked Vultures ST
7. Grizzly Bear Veckatimest
8. Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca
9. Monsters of Folk ST
10. Umphrey’s McGee Mantis

BEST OF THE DECADE

Rolling Stone’s top 100 albums of the 2000s

1. Radiohead Kid A
2. The Strokes Is This It?
3. Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
4. Jay-Z The Blueprint
5. The White Stripes Elephant

NME’s top 100 albums of the 2000s

1. The Strokes Is This It?
2. The Libertines Up The Bracket
3. Primal Scream XTRMNTR
4. Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
5. Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Fever to Tell

Rolling Stones’ top Songs of ‘09

1. Gnarls Barkley – “Crazy”
2. Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
3. Beyonce – “Crazy in Love”
4. Outkast – “Hey Ya!”
5. M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”
6. The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army <—Pretty excited that I can play the highest ranked rock song of the 200’s on guitar. I absolutely destroyed a string while playing it today. Breaking stuff while rocking is fun. Rocking out with your cock out is not as fun as it sounds. It’s cold.

Zack’s Top Albums of the decade

1. The White Stripes DeStijl
2. The Raconteurs Consolers of the Lonely
3. The White Stripes Elephant
4. The White Stripes Icky Tump
5. The Dead Weather Horehound
6. The Rac…just kidding. I can’t wrap my head around this decade yet. This is my way of saying Jack is my artist of the decade though.

*The oughts is ridiculous. Why not the Zero’s? Is the next decade the tens? Either way, bring it on.

Related posts:

1. PItchfork Festival 2009 line-up released
2. Top anticipated ACL Shows #10 – #6
3. Lollapalooza 2009: Sub-par due to Sub-heads
4. Yeah Yeah Yeahs @ Lollapalooza
5. Bonnaroo 2009 Line-up