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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine (usually) publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: it’s just us, and our 10 favorite records and reissues of 2009.
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Listed: Our 2009 Mid-Year Report
New Music
Akron/Family - Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free (Dead Oceans)
Reconfigured from four members to three, shorn of the luminous Beatles pop epiphanies of ex-member Ryan Vanderbilt and without the guiding hand of Michael Gira, Akron/Family re-imagined itself on this fifth album. It’s the best so far, tinged with afro-beat, free-jazz, arena rock and folk, and the first since the split CD with Angels of Light to approximate the band’s raucous live show. - Jennifer Kelly
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Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
You can hardly throw a stone in a record shop without hitting a new album by a band that sounds like Animal Collective. Yes, there are way too many cringe-inducing imitators out there, but you can’t fault a band for being too influential. Merriweather Post Pavilion vastly improves on Animal Collective’s last record, and the album’s cosmic and danceable Panda Bear jams live up to the hype. - Rob Hatch-Miller
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DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues (Mule Musiq)
Terre Thaemlitz’s response to borrowed nostalgia’s hijacking of house culture is as poignant as it is polemical. Disco wasn’t the only dance music to be co-opted and exploited during the past 30 years, and Thaemlitz delivers an impassioned reminder during the album’s introduction. After that, with few exceptions, that passion is internalized and released gradually over nine lengthy rhythm tracks so intimate that the uninitiated can only sit on their hands and watch longingly from the shadows.- Otis Hart
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Group Bombino - Guitars From Agadez, Vol. 2 (Sublime Frequencies)
The second volume in Sublime Frequencies Guitars From Agadez series is largely a similar affair to its first, the smoking Group Inerane album from 2007. Omara Mochtar, the 28-year-old leader of Group Bombino, mines a familiar Taureg sound with a vibrant crackle, splitting the album between acoustic and electric performances. Bombino’s flair dispells any disappointment in predictability, and the album’s loose grooves make for one of the year’s most enjoyable listens. - Adam Strohm
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Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country (Kranky)
At first, it may seem surprisingly clean. Distractingly poppy. Compared to this ‘un, Hecker’s 2006 loud-ambient milestone Harmony In Ultraviolet was practically metal. But beneath the antiseptic exterior of An Imaginary Country lies Hecker’s most harmonically complex, emotionally heavy work. If Ultraviolet broadcast from the airstrip and the factory floor, An Imaginary Country retreats to the pastoral backwoods compound and finds it less filthy, but no safer. - Emerson Dameron
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Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care (Domino)
Begone Dull Care opens with “Parallel Lines,” a song that feels slight at first, but one whose potential expands under repetition. Appropriately enough, it’s a linear growth, with none of the exponential burst of “In The Morning.” Just as well for the JBs: their shtick revolves around teasing the line between pop and patience anyway. In as sense, Begone Dull Care might be a weaker record because of its achievement – it’s refined unto dullness (natch) at points. But for those willing to follow the band’s line of thought to its logical conclusion, the Canadian duo’s MOR pop has plenty of unresolved rough edges. - Brandon Bussolini
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Marked Men - Ghosts (Dirtnap)
The Marked Men’s fourth full-length may end up being this Texas quartet’s swan song. If that’s the way it has to go down, however, then so be it; after all, these 15 songs are the most refined and perfectly executed set of tunes these guys have ever released. And while the merger of buzz saw guitars, soaring vocal harmonies and frantically pounding tempos are nothing new (as well over three decades of punk rock can easily attest), these guys put so much energy into their Ramones-meets-classic-AM pop moves that its almost impossible to deny. Honestly, if punk could have its own comfort food, this right here would be it. - Michael Crumsho
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Alasdair Roberts - Spoils (Drag City)
“We’ve seen the death of wonder,” Alasdair Roberts sings at Spoils’ bleakest turn, but the rest of this marvelous record refutes his nightmare utterance. It’s a catalog of the marvelous - the baffling doings of the divinities, the vain and glorious actions of man and woman, the soul balm of anachronistic language and instrumentation, and the sheer joy of an indelible tune carried by rich voice and nimble fingers. - Bill Meyer
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snd - Atavism (Raster-Noton)
Australian artist Marco Cher-Gibard recently announced that the first two cuts on Atavism compressed the entirety of techno into their nine-minute frame. What’s so special about this process of distillation is the way snd suggest so much through so little - bass patterns like randomized Connect Four; handclaps that slap you sideways; flecks of rhythmelody flashing like Bruce McClure at an aircraft-hanger rave. Much like Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis - initially a strange comparison - snd’s progress is about the pursuit of reduction, the evocative capture of essence, and the further subtilization of detail. - Jon Dale
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Allen Toussaint - The Bright Mississippi (Nonesuch)
Surprisingly, Allen Toussaint’s first solo album since 1996 saw him temporarily leave R&B and turn to jazz for the first time in his career. With a stunning band including Don Byron, Nicholas Payton and Marc Ribot, Toussaint payed homage to jazz legends including Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Ellington and Monk. Without obsessing about period authenticity, the band produced an album on which every track is a gem, with Toussaint’s own piano often in the starring role. - John Eyles
Old Music
Comet Gain - Broken Record Prayers (What’s Yr Rupture)
Comet Gain has always been a collector’s nightmare. And with two super scarce singles released in the past eight months, it doesn’t look like that’s going to stop anytime soon. Much love, then, to What’s Yr Rupture for collecting some of the brightest moments in Comet Gain’s (and indie rock’s) last decade on Broken Record Prayers. That includes Peel Sessions, old anthems from “Jack Nance Hair” to “You Can Hide Your Love Forever,” new classics like “Books of California,” and a totally badass cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “Hard Times.” Every song is mixtape gold for the “young, free, and single” crowd still living life like it’s a movie. A veritable hit parade. - Evan Hanlon
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Death - ...For the Whole World To See (Drag City)
The initial buzz on these 1974 tracks portrayed Death as prophets of punk. But it’s a lot easier to appreciate them as Detroit rockers, coming out of a region where the rock ‘n’ roll was as ambitious as the rest of the era, but far more ballsy and negative. As paranoid as Funkadelic, as driving as the Stooges, as dramatic as Alice Cooper. (Rotate those adjectives, and they still apply). I love it to death. - Ben Donnelly
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Foetus - Limb (Ectopic Ents)
When you want something done right, do it yourself. That’s a philosophy that Jim Thirlwell, a.k.a. Foetus, is subscribing to now more than ever. While he’s still releasing his more "rock band"-style Foetus albums on labels like Birdman, over the past couple of years he’s self-released various other items on his own Ectopic Ents imprint via the Foetus website. The latest, Limb, is a special reissue package lavished with care and perfectionism from selection and editing to design and packaging. Subtitled "minimal compositions, instrumentals and experiments 1980-1983", the release consists of a CD, a DVD, and a booklet of artwork enclosed in a transparent slipcase. - Mason Jones
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Pisces - A Lovely Sight (The Numero Group)
The Numero Group’s musical archaeologists hit pay dirt when they stumbled upon the tracks to an unreleased album recorded in the ‘60s by Rockford, Ill., natives Pisces. Primary songwriters Jim Krein & Paul DiVenti showcase a love of baroque psychedelia and studio trickery, but it’s the addition of tracks featuring the mega-talented and mysterious Linda Bruner (not originally included on the album) that really propel this release into outer headspace. It may be 35-plus years late and completely out of context, but these songs still burn with the best of them. - Dustin Drase
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The Rats - Intermittent Signals (Mississippi)
This record sounds like it’s mysteriously embedded itself in the DNA of every Pacific Northwest band that ‘s ever yowled or had a dark thought. And fittingly, the Rats’ lineup for this 1981 release featured ex-Wipers drummer Sam Henry playing alongside Fred and Toody Cole (Dead Moon/Pierced Arrows/a million other things). Intermittent Signals finds the Coles at their most Killed By Death-punk, tinged alternately with Wire-ish arty moments and their usual feral country-garage energy. It is a fierce album, impeccably written, and played with that rare passion that marks most of Fred Cole’s efforts. - Talya Cooper
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The Shadow Ring - Life Review (1993-2003) (KYE)
Creating their own private ritual more than any rock or folk music, the Shadow Ring (Graham Lambkin, Daren Harris and Tim Goss) instead made myth, mystery and surreal poetry from deadpan spoken lyrics, detuned acoustic guitars and cheap, jury-rigged synths. On the double-disc Life Review, their decade-long evolution is tracked through album highlights, b-sides and live recordings. For the initiated and uninitiated alike. - Matthew Wuethrich
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Chas Smith - Nakadai (Cold Blue)
Rescued and restored from noisy vinyl, Chas Smith’s 1987 works for steel guitar and percussion are by turns stark or shimmering, spectral or palpable in presence. As powerful explorations of sonic spaciousness and density, they might open up new places, new experiences within the listener. The addition of a major recent work here proves continuity and commitment - along with a deepening - in Smith’s concerns as a composer. - Kevin Macneil Brown
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Spiritual Singers - Ntsamina (Mississippi)
Ntsamina, recorded around 1980, is just flat-out difficult to group with other reissues of raw African roots music. While a few tracks travel well-worn paths of rhythmic bounce and funk scratch guitar, others hint at a uniquely dark brand of soul repetition. The phenomenal closing number, “Come and Save Us,” sounds like a basement gospel version of Electric Light Orchestra’s “Telephone Line,” and the fact that the bare-bones group approach the pure bliss of ELO studio wizardry, the fact that I can even make this comparison, points to something incredibly special. - Brad LaBonte
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Charles Tyler - Saga of the Outlaws (Nessa)
A “concept album” with gumption and grit. Here’s a soundtrack to John Ford’s Western cinema as imagined by an acoustic ‘70s loft jazz ensemble. Tyler’s alto sings, cries, laughs and locutes across a 37-minute slab of music smithed at the legendary Studio Rivbea. Sidemen Earl Cross, John Ore, Ronny Boykins and Steve Reid saddle up for the ride, and it’s a sustained thrill from trailhead to sunset. - Derek Taylor
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V/A - Source Records, Vols. 1-6 (Pogus)
Source was a contemporary classical music journal, founded by Larry Austin and Stanley Lunetta, that ran from 1967-1973. The magazine issued six LPs as companion documents for certain issues, and these heretofore hard-to-find records documented some of the most important composers of the era. Larry Austin, Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvan Lucier, Stanley Lunetta and Annea Lockwood contributed music that still sounds adventurous 40 years later. The music emerges with new clarity, benefitting from the detail of digital production but retaining analog warmth. This set is indespensible for students of the 1960s avant-garde. - Marc Medwin
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