Top 10 albums I purchased in 2009. They’re not all great, but I didn’t buy that much music this year. I’m still buying albums as opposed to individual songs. I have started buying more digital music as opposed to the physical cd’s. In terms of digital downloads, I’ve been getting most of my downloads from Amazon MP3 Downloads, as opposed to iTunes. As I was gathering images for this post, I noticed that all of the albums I purchased this year have a 4+ star rating out of 5 on Amazon.

The 2009 List, in no particular order:

Wilco, Wilco [The Album]

Slaid Cleaves, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away

Ryan Bingham, Roadhouse Sun

Regina Spektor, Far

Levon Helm, Electric Dirt

Iron And Wine, Around The Well

The Dixie Bee Liners, Susanville

The Dead Weather, Horehound

The Band Of Heathens, One Foot In The Ether

Nolan McKelvey, The Sound of the Crash

The Gourds, Haymaker!

The Tossers, On A Fine Spring Evening

Bob Dylan, Together Through Life

If you want to see all the album art and some additional commentary, please continue reading this post.

Cover Art:

Wilco, Wilco [The Album]

Slaid Cleaves, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away

Ryan Bingham, Roadhouse Sun

Regina Spektor, Far

Levon Helm, Electric Dirt

Iron And Wine, Around The Well

The Dixie Bee Liners, Susanville

The Dead Weather, Horehound

The Band Of Heathens, One Foot In The Ether

Nolan McKelvey, The Sound of the Crash

The Gourds, Haymaker!

The Tossers, On A Fine Spring Evening

Bob Dylan, Together Through Life

Below are a few of the sketches of the type of thing I’m talking about. When actually printed and put on the wall they could be in a single frame with 6 sections, or in 6 separate frames. The exact manifestation is yet to be determined.

The above sketches show two of the three obvious classes of representations. (1) photos of actual letters [ ransom note style], and (2) physical objects that unintentionally represent a given letter. The third class of font that isn’t represented is further removed, showing a photo of an object that begins with the letter you want to represent. So for Cooper, maybe that is a series of 6 photos of a clock, orange, orange, pyramid, elephant, and ring.

What do you think? Any recomendations for directions or options?

I just got Jim White’s new album today, Transnormal Skiperoo, and I’m very excited. I’ve only had a chance to listen to it a few times. So, I’ll give you a more detailed review at a later date.

But for now, the album’s webpage has a great bio of Jim as well as a song by song commentary by Jim about the album, which I’ve cut-and-pasted for your convenience below:

Transnormal Skiperoo is a name I invented to describe a strange new feeling I’ve been experiencing after years of feeling lost and alone and cursed. Now, when everything around me begins to shine, when I find myself dancing around in my back yard for no particular reason other than it feels good to be alive, when I get this deep sense of gratitude that I don’t need drugs or God or doomed romance to fuel myself through the gauntlet of a normal day, I call that feeling ‘Transnormal Skiperoo.’ Jim White

Jim White traveled many a junkyard road to get to Transnormal Skiperoo. Raised in Pensacola, Florida, a town crushed between the church and heroin, Jim’s songs reach deep into the underbelly of the South. One time Pentacostal, fashion model, New York taxi driver, drifter, pro-surfer, photographer, film-maker, his music is the conduit for all the stories he collected along the way. His previous albums ‘Wrong-Eyed Jesus’ [1997], ‘No Such Place’ [2001] and ‘Drill a Hole in That Substrate…’ [2004] were acclaimed as masterpieces of ‘outer space alt.country’ and established Jim as a phenomenal maverick talent. Jim also starred in the BBC4 film ‘Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus’, an award-winning road-movie exploring Southern culture through its music and stories. Now living in an old farmhouse in the backwoods of Georgia, Jim White may have finally reached a place called home, but his other search, for what he calls ‘the gold tooth in God’s crooked smile’ continues in this new set of backyard tales. Transnormal Skiperoo was produced by Joe Pernice and Michael Deming, recorded with the band Ollabelle, and also features tracks with Tucker Martine and Laura Veirs, local Georgia legend Don Chambers & Goat, bluegrass duo Jeff & Vida and percussionist Mauro Refosco.

Jim White is a highly original voice in the immense Southern gothic tradition. When broken humanity aches for grace, music like his may give you a shot at redemption.

JIM WHITE on TRANSNORMAL SKIPEROO

A Town Called Amen is a song about growing old and settling into a sort of tender acceptance of life. There’s a film by Ingmar Bergman called The Wild Strawberries that reminds me of what I was trying to get at in that song.

Blindly We Go is an unusual song for me musically, although the lyrics deal with a familiar preoccupation of mine—-the (for lack of a better term) unknowability of God. It’s something I find myself thinking about a lot. There’s that old Zen saying, “If you meet God on the road, kill him.” In the South everyone is always telling me about how God told them this and God told them that, and their recitations of divine contact always feel like constructs of hubris. I have little trust for people who tell me they talk to God and God replies in strangely anthropomorphic, culturally precise ways that exactly mirror the person’s mindset.

Jailbird is an old song from the days when I had to run from my problems

Crash Into The Sun is my message song. Since it was so preachy I wanted it to be musically adventurous, so I talked my good friend Tucker Martine into producing it. I flew to Seattle, all excited at the prospect of finally getting to work with Tucker with his stable of incredible musicians – Karl Blau, Steve Moore, Laura Veirs, Eyvind Kang.

Fruit Of The Vine is a song that was prompted by thinking about that movie I did with BBC 4 [Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus] The images and characters in the film returned to me a lot, particularly the meth dealer who was doing life in prison. I thought about all my friends in similar situations and how their lives carried them to points of desperation and wanted to put some of those sad stories and cultural elements into a song.

Take Me Away is a story song, a hillbilly stomper, loosely based on the life and times of a friend of mine who’s daddy was a preacher and who married a woman who’s daddy was a preacher. He was surrounded by Jesus on every side and there was lots of pressure put on him to be a preacher as well. But he just didn’t have it in him. In his heart of hearts he was a deeply creative, intuitive artistic person, but in the church he had no outlet for his profound talents (he was my musical inspiration when I was in my teens) so he slowly but surely lost his mind. I took him as a character and created a context with the train and the men from the asylum that I thought symbolically represented his plight.

Turquoise House is a corn ball homage to misfits. Every album I put out has some goofy song on there that seems to contradict my perceived personality–this sensitive, suffering lost soul.

Diamonds To Coal was a real challenge, both to write and produce. I’ve always relied on dramatic situations—crimes and murder and betrayal and terrible loss—to convey my feelings about life. This is sort of a juvenile mindset. Sooner or later you have to move on from those dramatic archetypes and talk about the meaning that can be found in the quotidian realm. This is my first attempt to do that. Musically I was shooting for Tony Joe White and never quite hit the target. It makes me appreciate all the more what he does.

Counting Numbers In The Air is a question song. It asks “how did we get in the mess of being grown up and disconnected from what is essential in life? Musically I’ve very proud of this song–I feel like I went to an exotic sonic club med on this song.

Plywood Superman started out as an observational song, (a song about imagined others), and slowly came around to being a song about an aspect of my personality that I used to struggle with, but that of late I’ve learned to disregard. For years that side of me held a lot of sway with my sensibilities and choices. I was always a fingertip away from something that I could never quite reach. I quit reaching a while back and what I craved found me, instead of the other way around.

Pieces Of Heaven is a song I wrote to my two daughters. It’s my way of wishing them well on their way and hoping that they will remember me with the love that I daily feel for them.

Long Long Day – I collaborated on this with a buegrass outfit called Jeff & Vida. They’re a husband and wife duo that have great musical skills and really understand how to compliment each other. Vida really nailed the wistful bucolic feeling that I was hoping for in the vocals. She a great singer and Jeff can play the hell out of anything with string on it (bathing suits excluded, so far as I know, anyway)

If it sounds interesting to you, you can grab it at Amazon like I did, either as a physical disc or an mp3 download:

I was very excited to find out this morning that Jim White is going to be playing at Club Cafe in Pittsburgh, PA a week from today on Friday, May 16th. Its also going to be broadcast live on WYEP. Jim White is probably one of my all time favorite living musicians. If you don’t have plans Friday night, and enjoy some good metaphysical alt-country, then this show is not to be missed. I’ve got my tickets. I’ll see you there.

When Jim White’s Luaka Bop debut Wrong-Eyed Jesus appeared in 1997, the unique blend of alt country and metaphysics startled many with its idiosyncratic freshness. It was instantly acclaimed as a classic of the newly burgeoning “sadcore” scene, a point which amused the Florida-based songwriter to no end. “For 20 years I’d written these dark little songs,” he notes dryly, “Every once in a while I’d play them for someone and they’d shout, ‘Stop! That sucks so bad it makes my ears pop!’, then a thing called alt country came along and, boom, all of a sudden everyone’s hollering ‘Jim, you’re a friggin’ genius!’ I mean, what happened???”

Its good to see another Pensacola boy make it good in this world. If you’ve ever spent any time in the deep south, or below the deep south in the area around Pensacola, FL (what I lovingly call “occupied Alabama”) you will feel right at home with Jim White on stage. If haven’t spent anytime in this area of the country, then this show will be an opportunity to peer into the soul of the south. Don’t be scared.

as an aside: I wonder what it says about me that my favorite musician is Jim White and my favorite author is George Saunders?

Ah, beautiful! Here’s another album from the prolific Bow Thayer. He’s recently released his new album Driftwood Periodicals II, which is a great album that is a mix of classic Bow and ethereal transcendence. It definitely reflects its roots in Belize, and the recording is truly authentic.

According to Bow’s website:

This album follows Driftwood I in a series of recordings I am making in accordance with my surroundings. This album was recorded mostly in a little grass hut jutting off a tiny atoll fifty miles off the coast of Belize, some was done in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport at terminal C9, some was done in the village of Hopkins, Belize at a folk drumming center.

All of the music and most of the lyrics were composed on this trip and recorded on a Sony Walkman Minidisk with one condenser microphone and a handful of batteries, (the atoll had no running water or electricity) and played on either a resonator ukulele or a tiny octave guitar. A close listen will reveal birds, the ocean lapping its waves up through the floor, the wind, and the sounds of cooking over our gas hotplate.

Upon arriving home I realized the songs were recorded well enough to continue with. So I had my band overdub their parts at Pete Weiss’ Verdant Studio in Athens, Vermont. Each player was given only one take to ensure the original spontaneity, and their interpretations are pure magic.

The cover photo of the bare feet was taken looking down into the Setee River and the inside photo is a shot of the hut where this album was conceived.

Check out Bow’s website for some sample songs from the album.

Here’s a taste of what they had to say:

1. “Fawn”

(Taken from Tom Waits’ 2002 album, Alice)

A bit of a cheat, this, as it’s an instrumental track. But, it does efficiently set out the album’s sonic template – loosely, late period Cocteau Twins, with touches of Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs and Marianne Faithfull. A gentle organ intro before a wave of brass comes crashing in, then straight into…

2. “Town With No Cheer”

(Swordfishtrombones, 1983)

Scarlett privileges the storytelling aspect of Waits’ original, recalling here Marianne Faithfull as she half-sings, half-speaks the lyrics. Waits’ version is pretty sparse – just his voice recounting the lyrics accompanied by keyboard and accordion. Initially, this version doesn’t stray too much from that: the backing is organ, and keyboards with the occasional burst of guitar, but gradually Sitek layers on sax and drums and pushes the organ further up in the mix.

3. “Falling Down”

(Big Time, 1988)

This was the only studio cut on Waits’ ’88 live album. Here, Scarlett sounds very like Liz Frazer, which is effectively the vocal setting she operates in for much of the album. Her voice is perhaps deeper and less sharp than Frazer, but it works convincingly in the musical context, which Sitek describes as a “cough medicine tinker bell vibe.” And, yes, her voice sits surprisingly well with Bowie’s harmonies. There’s sleigh bells and a xylophone, while a haunting guitar motif towards the end recalls Mercury Rev’s “Endlessly”.

4. “Anywhere I Lay My Head”

(Rain Dogs, 1985)

Instead of the opening drunken trumpet reverie of Waits’ original, we get a soft, drum pattern intro and the swish of a keyboard and accordion. Scarlett sings defiantly “I don’t need anybody because I learned to be alone” against a stunning church organ crescendo.

…

According to Amazon, “Anywhere I lay my head” will be released May 20th on Rhino.

As an attempt at full disclosure, I know Bow from my Boston days when I lived with a bunch of musicians in the local Boston folk-rock scene. So my review of the music might be a little biased, because it has the secondary result of reminding me of those free-wheeling Boston days.

You can check out some of Bow’s music on his myspace page as well as some videos of live performances that are up on YouTube.

If you live in New England or find yourself in Boston or Vermont, don’t miss an opportunity to see Bow Thayer live. I promise you will not be disappointed.