The Best Songs of 2009

Click on the turntable on the left to listen to a continuous stream of music featured on Pretty Much Amazing - updated every day. For more, you can check out the Best Songs of 2011, or our Best Albums of 2011.

Artwork by the talented and generous Adam Sarpalius.

05. Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move

Nothing makes more or less sense than Stillness is the Move. Before their fantastic 2009 album Bitte Orca, Dirty Projectors were the obscure and highly experimental project of onetime Yale composition student Dave Longstreth, delivering reimaginings of Black Flag albums or rock operas about Don Henley, laden with Talking Heads-ish afro-beat guitar churning out impossible riffs that sometimes lacked plausible rhythm. And while Bitte Orca is approximately ten times more accessible than earlier Dirty Projectors work, all the pieces are still there – and the best example of this is Stillness is the Move.

Sticking to Longstreth’s skill with the guitar, love for those inconceivable guitar rhythms, and effortless appropriation of afro-pop melodies, Stillness is like Mariah wailing over a mashup of every song on Remain in Light. Amber Coffman’s voice is an instrument, everywhere at once, as intense as her lyrics. If you have listened to Stillness is the Move as much as I have, you know that there is no greater truth than Amber’s repeatedly wailed insistence that “there is nothing we can’t do.” There is truly nothing Dirty Projectors can’t do. -Genevieve Oliver

04. Animal Collective – What Would I Want? Sky

The song begins with a three minute instrumental, a psychedelic Willy Wonkian boat trip set to a sharp-sounding drum loop in an intriguingly elusive time signature. Animal Collective’s characteristically indiscernible flurry of sampled hypnotic blips makes for a partly fluid, partly static texture that begs for headphones. And just when you think the instrumental is dragging on a bit too long, the track cross-fades into the significantly cleaner second part.

Now, Avey Tare sings a reverby lead while Jerry Garcia does backup on that wonderful Dead sample mentioned above. This, combined with a “My Girls”-type big kick beat, makes for Animal Collective at its faux-poppy best. Tare’s surreal hummed verses are as enigmatic as their samples.

“Old glasses clinking and a new board is blinking/ and I – /I should be floating but I’m weighted by thinking” – beautiful stuff. Call it an extension of their Meriwether Post Pavilion sound, yet different and intriguing enough to show that Animal Collective is still pushing in new directions, maturing their blend of avant-garde and pop aesthetic, showing when it comes to making good music the sky’s the only limit. -Josh Cabrido

03. Grizzly Bear – While You Wait For The Others

Pitchfork, a website that loves to damn with the faint praise of a six or a seven, gave this track a perfect 10. In other circumstances, this sort of exceptional commendation would raise eyebrows. Because, really, can one track ever be a 10/10? Isn’t there always room for improvement?

In other circumstances.

Listen to ‘While You Wait For The Others’, and it’s possible to understand how this, the second single from Veckatimest, could have bewitched the Pitchfork staffers so completely. The track’s sense of space, and its fluid movement with which it veers between sparse and lush textures, is exhilarating. Ed Droste’s voice enters only to the rangy flex of a clean guitar chord and a bass drum, before that angular bass line leads the listener into the billowing chorus, saturated with color and succulent vocal harmonies. Despite its richness, it’s a break-up song (and a biting one, at that: “You’ll only bleed me dry”) – but ‘While You Wait For The Others’ has risen out of Droste’s failed relationship like a phoenix out of the ashes. It’s a shame that not every break-up results in something this beautiful. -Elle Hunt

02. Passion Pit – Sleepyhead

We’ll point it out now, so you don’t have to: Passion Pit’s ‘Sleepyhead’ came out in the fall of 2008, on the band’s Chunk of Change EP. The way that we justify its presence on this list is that Manners was released in May 2009, and ‘Sleepyhead’ was an undeniable musical presence at that time of year. So, now that we’ve got that out of the way – how does ‘Sleepyhead’ deserve its number two spot?

For many, ‘Sleepyhead’ was the standout track of Manners, a fantastic album. Built around an unlikely sample of ‘Oro Mo Bhaidin’, by Irish harpist Mary O’Hara, it’s a lurching, woozy romp that manages to sounds fresh and original, despite belonging to a genre (synth-pop) where it’s hard to do so. ‘Sleepyhead’ glitters: synths stutter in some places and stagger in others, and guitars swirl, anchored throughout by the kick of that bass drum, and Michael Angelakos’ unbridled, shrill vocals. The countless covers (Ellie Goulding, Run Toto Run) and remixes (Kids at the Bar, Max Tundra) that have popped up also serve to validate its position on the list: if imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then certainly – this track deserves every reworking it gets. – Elle Hunt

01. Animal Collective – My Girls

I rarely find myself at a loss for words, but when the layers of “My Girls” wash over me I find it tough to voice my feeling. The best words I can find to describe the track are big, epic, massive. It’s the kind of track, if you listen to it loud enough, that builds up slowly inside you until it’s about to explode, at which point it gracefully excuses itself and leaves you in the rain wondering which way is up. “My Girls” is at once lushly complex and devastatingly simple – an off-rhythm bass drum and light percussion move the track forward, while repetitive vocals and continuously lilting electronic loops take the listener to a state of euphoria.

I can count on one hand the number of songs that completely immobilize me the way “My Girls” does – Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place”, Four Tet’s “She Moves She”, TV On The Radio’s “Staring At The Sun”, and Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”. Judged by the company it keeps, “My Girls” will be echoing in my ears for years to come. -Chris Barth

by Luis Tovar on December 21, 2009 ‡ 296 reactions