Music: The best (and worst) of 2009

The year that was: Otago Daily Times reviewers offer an opinion on the best and worst CDs.

Jeff Harford's picks

1: The Flaming Lips - Embryonic (pictured)

Had the Flaming Lips delivered another album of psychedelic lush-pop, continuing the run that began with Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, the results would likely have been underwhelming.

Instead, they gave us a more measured double album that better contrasts the light and dark shades in their music, and more convincingly presents evidence of the duality of human nature - a recurring theme through several works.

Distorted bass and drums, spacey synths and heavily processed vocals abound in this sprawling, oft-abrasive release, but an undercurrent of groove holds it all together nicely.

2: Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Getting in just ahead of the critical backlash against the recent flood of albums to feature angelic male voices singing in unison, Brooklyn quartet Grizzly Bear's third is the defining work in chamber pop, the Pet Sounds of baroque rock.

Spooky, melancholic but also uplifting in its old-meets-new style, it creates a dreamworld of luxurious musical landscapes that undulate over a bedrock of imaginative percussion, holding its otherworldly spell to the last note.

3: Wilco - Wilco (The Album)

Jeff Tweedy and company play it straight down the middle on this one, turning in a faultless set of restrained, neatly constructed rock tunes.

As engaging lyrically and as relaxed musically as anything Tweedy has produced, this is where surviving the many ups and downs of personal and professional life pays off, and this is why Wilco is one of today's must-see bands.

One to avoid: Bob Dylan - Christmas In The Heart

Why would you buy this? If being charitable is your aim, a donation direct to the Feeding America project will save you the trouble of having to listen to Dylan croak his way through this bizarre collection of Yuletide ditties.

Bob was either poorly advised or is taking the proverbial.

Mark Orton's picks

1: Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Putting a seven-track, 50-minute prog-rock epic at the top of the list is a big call . . . but then Crack the Skye is no ordinary album.

Mastodon might be called the thinking-man's metal band.

Not content with stereotypical hardcore lyrics, the 'Don take listeners on a mystical astro trip to Czarist Russia, via some of the most inventive heavy interplay ever devised for two guitars, bass and drums.

Not only are the quartet masters of their respective instruments, they achieve an almost transcendental level of cohesiveness that is mind blowing.

2: The Black Crowes - Before the Frost

Who would have thought, that 19 years after their Faces-inspired debut, Atlanta's favourite sons would release an album that should cement them as one of rock's most important acts.

After countless line-up changes, the nucleus of the Robinson Brothers still holds sway.

Chris's soulful southern drawl perfectly supplanted by Rich's driving rootsy riffs; Before the Frost is as good a dose of rock-blues-funk-folk as you will hear this year or any other.

3: Cassette - The Jingle King

One of the best albums you will hear in years, local or otherwise, is also one that by and large got overlooked.

If Nick Bollinger's hefty praise didn't prick up ears, then let it be said that this, the second release from Cassette, is sublime.

Still based around the duo of Tom Watson and Craig Terris, Cassette do something that is not considered cool in our dub-obsessed land; they play an alt-country infused lo-fi type of thing and they do it darn well.

One to avoid: Kittie - In the Black

If In the Black is being hyped as the best Kittie album yet, then I'll count myself lucky I haven't had to sit through the previous four.

Not only are Kittie's formulaic Metallica meets Godsmack riffs more tedious than an economists' conference, Morgan Lander's forced death-metal wail is just plain wrong.

Factor in a paint-by-numbers structure with the monotonous barrage from Mercedes Lander's kick pedals; and In the Black is at best a curio for anyone intrigued by all-gal metal bands.

Shane Gilchrist's picks

1: Van Morrison - Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Recorded over two nights in November 2008 at concerts that marked the 40th anniversary of the original's release, the live album of the Astral Weeks set, released early in 2009, is a remarkable reworking of material some regard as among popular music's benchmarks.

Just like his 1968 mixture of blues, jazz, rock, Celtic and folk strains, Van Morrison continues to push boundaries.

Song structures are stretched (take title track and opener Astral Weeks, which segues into I Believe I've Transcended; his collection of gifted musicians float or punch their way through beloved material; and his voice is both elastic and electrifying.

2: Alison Krauss - Essential

This collection from the bluegrass-country crossover star goes back to Krauss' early-'90s work with Union Station, features a few live tracks to prove her soaring vocal ability has nothing to do with studio trickery, and includes an update on her career by way of her Raising Sand collaboration with Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant a few years back.

Such great singing deserves accompaniment of a similar standard and Essential doesn't disappoint: dobro, slide, fiddle and other "traditional" instruments are in good hands here.

3: Don McGlashan and the Seven Sisters - Marvellous Year

The former Mutton Bird metamorphosises into a musical magpie on his second solo album.

Three years since he released Warm Hand , McGlashan assembled a new band, the Seven Sisters, and enlisted the services of Sean Donnelly (aka SJD), who co-produced songs, skewing a few that might otherwise have remained on the straight and narrow of verse-chorus-bridge.

It's a dynamic trip through a wide range of styles, capped off by McGlashan's classy falsetto delivery on the re-recorded Bathe In The River.

One to avoid: Robbie Williams - Reality Killed The Video Star

Given Bodies, the first single off Williams' latest collection, sold close to 90,000 copies in its debut week in the UK, it might be hard to avoid any follow-up releases off this album, yet it doesn't do him any favours, other than financial.

Back-to-the-future synthesisers and sequencers, production values that make Justin Timberlake seem underdone and cringeable lyricism reduce a voice capable of filling stadia to mere wallpaper.

If only someone had left that auto-tune programme alone.