Top albums & songs of 2009 (June edition)

Here's a rundown on my year in music:

Best/favorite albums:

Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come
Philippians 3:20-21.mp3


A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
Falling Over.mp3


Andrew Bird - Noble Beast/Useless Creatures (Deluxe Edition)
You Woke Me Up!.mp3


Flaming Lips - Embryonic
The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine.mp3


Various Artists - Weezer: The 8-bit Album
OxygenStar - In the Garage.mp3


Islands - Vapours
Disarming the Car Bomb.mp3


Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster
Teeth.mp3


Morrissey - Years of Refusal
Morrissey - I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris.mp3


Sufjan Stevens - The BQE
.mp3


The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Higher Than The Stars EP
.mp3

Perhaps no surprises here, but it's been such a busy year for me that I've barely had time for my ears to catch much more than this.

Contestants for the Annual "Sincey" Award:
Jeremih - Birthday Sex.m4a
Lily Allen - 22.mp3
Soulja Boy - Gucci Bandanna.mp3
Shakira - Loba.mp3
Spanish versions are ALWAYS better than the English versions.

"Party in the U.S.A." will instead be represented in the category of "best mash-ups of 2009":
Hathbanger - Party and Bullshit (In the USA) (Notorious B.I.G. vs. Miley Cyrus).mp3
Tor - I Like The Tallest Man (Grad Puba vs. Sufjan Stevens).mp3

Excited for upcoming:
Peter Peter Hughes' "Fangio, Juan Fangio" album
Sufjan's new album to be out "early next year." (Nope, not a state album!)
Whatever Jens Lekman can do with two turntables and a microphone

I love Wayne's hair!

This is a real jewel. Here's a 40 minute-long video interview with a 26 year old Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips from 1988. I was 3 years old then and as cool a toddler as I was, I was too busy with Big Bird to care about the Lips. Whodathunk that 21 years later this band is STILL chugging along just as vital as ever and releasing epic, highly relevant albums. Enjoy!

Wayne Coyne Interview 1988 from Chris Buly on Vimeo.

Your christmas tree isn't complete without a fetus

Deck your tree with this silver trembling fetus. A christmas-sweatered Wanye impores you in the video below.
Can the lips please host a holiday special with confetti canons and dudes dressed as rabbits? On Mars of course.

Silver Trembling Hands - The Flaming Lips

No, Thank you!

This cat macro is lovingly dedicated to fellow blogger Jess and her poor terrified cat, Mudpie

Happy Thanksgiving to all our U.S. readers! Here's a grab-bag of songs from some very thankful musicians:

Dido - Thank You.mp3

The Flaming Lips - Thank You Jack White.mp3

Alanis Moressette - Thank U.mp3

the Mountain Goats - Thanks For The Dress.mp3

Neil Diamond - Thank the Lord for the Night Time.mp3

ZZ Top - I Thank You.mp3

And finally, a very thankful Sufjan takes time to appreciate the audience and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden in this clip from a live show in 2006:
Sufjan Stevens - "Thank You!".mp3

2 best albums of the past 2 weeks

One choice should be obvious: The Life of the World to Come by the Mountain Goats. Just a warning: some of these songs are said, especially the one about his mother-in-law dying of cancer. If you have ever lost a loved one to a terminal illness, or even just to anything you will be paralyzed with sadness after just one listen, like I sobbed on the train on the way home from my daily commute. John Darnielle is right, you sure can't brace yourself.

Read my full review up here on Crawdaddy!

And listen to the aforementioned very sad song:
tMG - Matthew 25:21.mp3


As for the other album, it's the Flaming Lips' Embryonic. It's a real doozy. SO MUCH NOISE. But good noise with a thrashing, alien-like energy. If you're looking for the melodicism of Yoshimi, look elsewhere.

Read my fuller thoughts on it here, again, on Crawdaddy!

And listen to a track too:
Flaming Lips - The Sparrow Looks Up At the Machine.mp3

No, really you can be a frog

At about age 4, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I responded "Miss Piggy". Now that I'm grown up I'm sadly not a pig. Or a muppet. But not so in the Flaming Lips eyes. Nothing can stop them from imaging all the wild possibilities of what we can be. A frog! A bear! A helicopter! Anything is possible. Rainbows and ponies for everyone! And it's that whimsical spirit that makes me love "I Can Be a Frog" off the upcoming double-album Embryonic. Also mad props to Karen O for contributing kooky animal noises. Check out the vid: The Flaming Lips "I Can Be A Frog"

Dear Lord, Let's hope this is the new Flaming Lips cover art

The image appeared on the F-lips MySpace page, though there's no confirmation as of yet as to whether or not it will grace the cover ofEmbryonic. For the record, I'd let Wayne baptize any of my future children into his church of fearless freakish awesomeness.

Can't Get You Out of My Head - The Flaming Lips (Kylie Minogue cover)

The Flaming Lips go over the borderline

The Flaming Lips covering Madonna's "Borderline" makes me happy. First off, the original is one helluva song. Smothered in 80s pop goodness, the chorus bursts with hearts and stars and whatever else is it that lust at first sight is made of. But then the Lips come along and imbue it with their undeniable stamp of psychedelia. Spacey and percussive, it sounds like it could have been their own all along. And that's the mark of damn a good cover.

Listen and watch the video on Amazon

New Feud Alert!

Don't you just love a good indie rock beef? Well, then have I got a good one for you. Psychedelic troubadour, lead Flaming Lip and songwriter of Oklahoma's state anthem Wayne Coyne hates Arcade Fire. No--more then hates, more like viscerally loathes and passionately despises Arcade Fire. According to an interview in Rolling Stone, Coyne says:

I'm a fan of them on one level, but on another level I get really tired of their pompousness. We've played some shows with them and they really treat people like shit. Whenever I've been around them, I've found that they not only treated their crew like shit, they treated the audience like shit. They treated everybody in their vicinity like shit. I thought, "Who do they think they are?" I don't know why people put up with it. I wouldn't put up with it. I don't care if it's Arcade Fire or Brian Eno. If either of them walked into a room and treated people like shit I'd be like, "Fuck you, get outta here."

(Read the rest of the article here)

Ohhh BURN. I can't wait to see how/if Win and company respond to allegations of their pompousness.

Oh wait they (sorta) did: AF collaborator and Final Fantasy dude Owen Pallett just tweeted, "Win might not be all hugs and rainbows and kittens, but neither is he drug culture, confetti, pot paraphernalia and bullshit." Ohhh Double BURN. BUT he just removed the tweet.

This has the making of a great feud right up there with the Bloods and the Crips, the Hatfields and the McCoys, or East/West coast gangsta rap. Without the senseless violence of course. Or maybe we could replace the violence with a giant hamster ball relay race. Because Wayne would kick Win's ass.

The Flaming Lips - Fight Test.mp3
Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies).m4a