We did it!!!! As we near the end of another all-the-way-live 365, I want to do a year-end wrapup post before I enter hibernation for the holidays.
LOOKING BACK…
Using a combination of my Last.fm data and my own memory, I’m going to try to rattle off a list of some of my absolute favourite bangers from 2009. I’m not going to count down a list of my favorite albums of the year, because anybody who knows me can probably guess that I would just say Enter Shikari’s Common Dreads was the best album of 2009, because it was. Hopefully the rest won’t be as predictable or obvious, but this music was crucially important to the success and positivity I enjoyed in 2009. Some of this is off the dome, because I can’t scrobble to lastfm from my car and that’s where a lot of my jamming took place.
Best music videos of 2009
Wale – Chillin’ (feat. Lady Gaga)
I rocked this song in my car too many times to ignore it in this list. Rife with sneakers, BAPE hoodies and outstanding wordplay, Chillin’ set the tone perfectly for Attention: Deficit, Wale’s debut LP and one of my most highly-anticipated albums of 2009.
Kids isn’t a new song this year, but the video just came out in the summer and truthfully I didn’t mess with MGMT when their album was first out, so it’s all new to me in 2009! I like the added instrumental bit at the beginning, and the monsters are too scary for me to want to do any interpretation on the theme of the video. What do you think is going on?
This video perfectly captures the tone of the song, and I actually wasn’t even aware of Fever Ray as a solo artist until I stumbled across this video. One thing led to another and her self-titled debut album wound up being one of my favorites of 2009.
Mr. Hudson – Supernova (feat. Kanye West)
My favorite music video of the year, Supernova starts off with a sound that’s completely different from anything on Mr. Hudson’s previous album, and then Kanye comes in and makes it shine (literally). This crazy special effect is pretty indicative of Mr. West’s production on the “Straight No Chaser” album as a whole – they put out an album that is polished-until-shiny, refined and completely addictive.
Live shows
I got to see some pretty grand concerts this year, which is a fairly new thing that I’m very happy about.
My favorite show of 2009: Girl Talk @ Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom, Sept 2009 with Junk Culture and Brother Reade
I managed to find some clips of the show on Youtube to enrich this single line of text. Fun as hell! What more can I say? Somebody threw a battery at his head and he started bleeding at one point, but he soldiered on and it was a delightful evening.
Honorable mentions: Daega Sound System & Max Ulis @ Element, Cat Empire @ Sugar. Also tons of fun, the Daega concert was actually supposed to be headlined by Rusko but he cancelled at the last minute.
My least favorite show of 2009: Misfits @ Victoria’s Element nightclub, Nov 2009 with Haddonfield and others
Haddonfield was actually really good, but the headliners were a bit of a let down. It wasn’t an awful show by any means but it was too loud, and I was disappointed by the trio with Only on vocals, playing Danzig-era songs at 1.5x speed.
LOOKING FORWARD!
I hope you guys had an outstanding year, musically and otherwise. Weekend Bangers moved to a new host and got its own fancy-schmancy domain name this year and it’s starting to almost look like a real website, haha. I could basically talk about music all night long, and I’m still having a ball posting about it online so I promise we’ll be even bigger and better in 2010 … somehow!
Happy holidays, stay safe!
