Right-click and select “Save as…” to make these MP3s your own personal property.

1. Who Could Put a Pricetag On a Dream
2. The Last Great Dinosaur
3. Frozen To the Ground
4. Eyes Wide Open
5. Catapult
6. Scrambled Eggs?
7. Portrait of Stephen
8. Hawaii Bridge
9. Bad Kid
10. All The Time In The World
11. Where’s the Orchestra?

Tom McWatters at Bread & Jam Cafe (zip file)

If you haven’t gotten a copy of atomicwaters yet, head over to the Rev store to get the CD or Band Camp for the MP3s. It’s well worth it, if I do say so.

10. Tom McWatters – atomicwaters
9. Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned – Charles Mingus’ Garbage Pile
8. Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers – Songs In the Night
7. Conor Oberst and Mystic Valley Band – Outer South
6. Yim Yames – Tribute To
5. The Avett Brothers – I And Love And You
4. We are Jeneric – Animals Are People Too
3. Monsters of Folk – Monsters of Folk
2. Mike Doughty - Sad Man Happy Man
1. Ingrid Michaelson – Everybody

1. Private, “My Secret Lover (Diplo Mix)”
2. Phoenix, “Lisztomania”
3. Passion Pit, “Sleepyhead (Wallpaper Mix)”
4. Das Racist, “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper Remix)”
5. St. Vincent, “Actor Out of Work”
6. Dirty Projectors, “Stillness is the Move”
7. The Very Best, “Ntende Uli”
8. Sleigh Bells, “A/B Machines”
9. Neon Indian, “Should Have Taken Acid With You”
10. YACHT – “I’m in Love With a Ripper”
11. Joy Oribson, “Hyph Mngo”
12. Phoenix, “1901”
13. Basement Jaxx, “Raindrops”
14. Royksopp f/ Fever Ray, “This Must Be It”
15. Carl Sagan f/ Stephen Hawking, “A Glorious Dawn”
16. The Field, “Leave It”
17. Gold Panda, “Quitter’s Ragga”
18. Kid Cudi – “Made Her Say”
19. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck, “IRM”
20. Major Lazer, “Hold the Line”
21. Four Tet, “Love Cry”
22. Animal Collective, “Daily Routine (Phaseone Mix)”
23. Volcano Choir, “Island, IS”
24. Vitalic, “Your Disco Song”
25. Fuck Buttons, “Surf Solar”

Top 10 albums of the year

1. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
2. The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa
3. Fever Ray – Fever Ray
4. Omar Souleyman - Highway to Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria
5. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
6. Taken By Trees - East of Eden
7. Neon Indian - Physic Chasms
8. Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You
9. RJD2 - The Tin Foil Hat EP
10. Dan Deacon - Bromst

Thoughts, endnotes, and a bunch more after the jump.

Ongoing Debates

Peter Bjorn and John’s breakthrough album Writer’s Block was pure Nordic ear candy. The follow-up, Living Thing, ditched the whistling and handclaps for a percussion kit made of pots, pans and rusted drums, distorted keyboards and a lead single with more than two dozen uses of the word ‘fuck.’  I would be sold on this if the melodies were there, but with the exception of “Lay It Down” and “It Don’t Move Me,” large portions of the record blend together into one long dirge.

Memory Tapes received quite a bit of buzz for their album, stray b-sides and a 22 minute ambient project that trickled out over the year. I dug the woozy keyboards on a remix or two, but as a project these guys struck me as a hollow imitation of M83. On that note, the Maps album was pretty mediocre.

Yeasayer decided the way forward from the stoner rock + Williamsburg hipster rock of their debut was acid. “Ambling Alp” is a mess – 30 minutes of noodling reduced to a disjointed four minute song. Perhaps the album will be better (or at least as good as the art direction).

Ethnomusicology

Nearly half the music I listened to this year wasn’t eligible for the list because it came from crate digging. I used my limited vacation time to maximum effect and visited five countries around Latin America – Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Honduras. Each place I brought my iPod and keen ear for the music blasting from mercados. My best find was a data CD full of Colombian cumbias purchased on a bus en route to a mountain wool market. No artist names, unfortunately, but there’s a great energy that flows through these 100 tracks.

I heard plenty of griping about Shakiria’s “She Wolf/Loba” in the latter half of the year, that the première Colombian artiste abandoned her roots to ape American slut-hop. But “She Wolf” wasn’t a big hit here, and doesn’t seem particularly obsessed with our country’s current rockist-or-Autotune trends. It’s every bit as idiosyncratic as her other hits, and all the better for it.

Tamizdat, the album we released this year, paid tribute to Bulgarian choral music. The best single disc anthology I could find was Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, a recording of the national company released on a French record label. I also sifted through a Torrent of Bulgarian folk music. My favorites include Voileta Tomovska’s “Oj Devojce, Devojce” and Susana Spasovska’s “Zdravo Zivo Domakini.”

Elsewhere, I devoured music from places I could not visit this year. After I heard her music in an echo-y Red Hook art gallery, I treasured a hissy version of Cuban bolero singer La Lupe’s greatest hits. A better version showed up in my Christmas stocking.

I’m slowly making my way through the Sublime Frequencies’ back catalog.  Two releases that stood out were Choubi Choubi! – a collection of Iraqi pop from between the two invasions that proves that Mesopotamians are the original gangsters – and Thai Pop Spectacular 1960s-1980s, a collection of bizarre songs that takes jazz, funk and girl group pop and throws it into an organ-dominated soufflé.

I also discovered the incredible psychedelic jam “Ince Ince Bir Kar Yagar” by Selda, a political track produced in the early 1970s. The singer recently came out of retirement – check out the pictures of a homely middle-aged housewife rocking out to the still-subversive music of her youth.

Endnotes

1. Private – “My Secret Lover (Diplo Mix)”

The original song is mediocre; an undistinguished attempt by a trio of Norwegians to recreate Madonna’s Like A Virgin. Diplo throws the track in the blender, taking six or seven pieces and rearranging them in a banger that should be played at the moment when a gathering becomes a party.

3 + 4. Passion Pit, “Sleepyhead (Wallpaper Mix)” / Das Racist, “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper Remix)”

Wallpaper released an album this year – an O.K. slice of Autotuned hipster R&B called Doodoo Face. Whatever. All of his remixes this year, including a mash up of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” and “D.O.A.” isolated the best elements of the source material and amplified them. More than one person told me they didn’t get Passion Pit. I played them this remix.
9. Carl Sagan f/ Stephen Hawking, “A Glorious Dawn”

The first song to make the list that began as a YouTube video. This eventually “crossed over” and was released on Ryan Adam’s vanity label.

23. Volcano Choir, “Island, IS”

“Island” means Iceland in Icelandic. So are we talking about an island or the country of Iceland? Perhaps both?
1.  Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

I could have put every single song on this album on the best tracks list. At one point I thought about having just “Fences” sit there, then “1901″ crept in. Phoenix have yet to release a bad record, but this is their first great one.

6. Taken By Trees, East of Eden

I would love the budget to record with a full band in Pakistan. Taken by Trees doesn’t waste the opportunity. Rather than pasting the Pakistani musicians onto existing tracks, she weaves native instruments and singers through each composition, to a place where electronic, Western and Pakistani instruments all fit. The big surprise of this record was how much it sounded like The Studio’s Yearbook 1 transported around the world, with the sense of adventure intact.

9. RJD2, The Tin Foil Hat EP

Thirty minutes of funk pulled from the vaults. Miles away from the material leaked from the upcoming The Colossus.

Disappointments of the Year

Rihanna got together with several of the UK’s best dubstep producers, the guy who made “Umbrella” and Justin Timberlake, and only came up with a wan ballad punctuated by gunshots.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Soundtrack featured a number of great bands – St. Vincent, Lykki Li, Grizzy Bear, Bon Iver – at their most boring. Thom Yorke fared best, but Radiohead oscillated from gems such as “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses” (started with the band, finished as a solo piece) to tedious retreads like “Henry Patch: In Memory Of” and “These Are My Twisted Words.” Please release an album.

Simian Mobile Disco apparently hasn’t heard a post-breakthrough record from an electronic music act in the past 15 years, because they make the same freshman mistake on their sophomore album: too many guest stars. The first Simian album had a couple of guests, but the gang kept to people who actually fit their aesthetic. The band admitted they shipped the tracks out to 50 of their closest musical friends and took what came back. It’s apparent.

Things aren’t looking so great for next year as Massive Attack released a just O.K. EP in advance of their seven-years-in-the-making record that comes out in February. “Paradise Circus” – released last week – is a total snoozer. Perhaps Burial can save it with his rumored remix album.

Particularly Terrible Pop Songs (in no real order)
* Flo Rida “Right Round”
* Foo Fighters, “Wheels”
* Anything Glee
* Weezer, “”(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To”

The list of my favorite albums of the year. Favorite tracks and odds and ends after the jump.

I leave you with this, possibly my favorite performance of the year. Unfortunately, it also has a stubborn refusal to embed. Let’s address that in 2k10, whaddaya say? Happy New Year all!

The appropriately titled Murder Ballads and Lies was recorded by fellow the Rev artist Jonathan Krakat and will see the light of day November 19, which is not only the three-year anniversary of Whiskey & Springtime, but also, not coincidentally, the third anniversary of the Rev Records. The Rev will be celebrating both of these auspicious occasions on Saturday, November 21 at Bread and Jam Cafe in Cohoes. Laura will be performing, along with Tom McWatters.

Since we realize you can’t possibly wait that long, we are happy to offer you this in the meantime: Laura’s recent in-studio interview and performance and Albany’s local music haven, WEXT. It is the first in what we hope will be a long and fruitful series of completely free recordings offered in this space. Enjoy, and come join us November 21!

Right-click and select “Save Target As…” to make them yours forever.

1. Stay
2. Interview 1
3. Ohio
4. Interview 2
5. November
6. Interview 3
7. Dreaming

Well you’re in luck! Two great Albany radio stations are playing two great TRR artists! And, for your convenience, you can access them from right where you’re sitting.

Tom McWatters’s excellent rock and roll outfit The Sense Offenders are being featured on WRVE.com, web home of the River 99.5. Three of the songs on the site are from Tom’s solo release, atomicwaters, available through the Rev.

As you all heard, Laura Boggs in the studio working on her new album, Murder Ballads and Lies. She took a break to record a live session and interview at WEXT, and you can hear it tonight (Thursday, July 15) at 9 pm and again this Sunday at 11 am. You’ll get hear three new songs that will appear on the album this fall!

We’re still somewhat reeling from the news here at the Rev offices. First thing yesterday morning I received an email from Laura, who had previously declared that her quickly impending nuptiuals (Oh god I still haven’t RSVPed. I wonder if I missed the deadline?) would prevent her from making an album this summer. Well, she apparently changed her mind. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity. Before I even knew what hit me, she’s recruiting people to be on the record, sending out a request for album art, and having me look up the licensing rights for a cover that I certainly wouldn’t want to ruin but am willing to tell you will knock your damn socks off.

The thing about Laura is that she has initiative. When I first asked to put out her album in the summer of 2006, she was by far not the first I had recruited into the Rev collective. But she was the first to actually call the next morning and say “Alright, album. Let’s do this.” She essentially birthed the Rev; I was forced to launch with my ducks arguably in the same room but surely not in a row due to the simple fact that a record was done and we needed to put it out.

Laura is attacking this new record with that same ferocity, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all  if we were ready to announce a release date in the next few weeks. Watch this space.

Scientific Maps – Hold On Whoever You Are
Written and recorded by songwriter/mastermind Aaron Smith in February 2009 for the RPM Challenge, Hold On is, like all things Scientific Maps, a wonderful pop music achievement. The album loosely tells the story of a man who is captured (By pirates? It’s hard to say.) and transported by ship before cunningly escaping. Equal parts surf-rock and acoustic indie-pop, with beautifully layered harmonies, dancy grooves, and the occasional atmospheric sound effects (no Maps record would be complete without them), Hold On is just as good as Get Off The Moon, and the fact that that’s true even though it was made in one month is a testament to Smith’s seemingly effortless songwriting talent.
Standout tracks: “Wherein We Are Introduced to the Author…,” “With Renewed Vigor…”
(FREE Download)

Matthew Loiacono – Penny Riddle
The Penny Riddle EP continues on the road paved by last year’s Kentucky, which was a dramatic departure from Loiacono’s previous work. This record, like the last one, is the result of a recording challenge Loiacono gave himself; while the many and varied sounds on Kentucky were all made by the mandolin, here the object was to make a collection of exactly-one-minute-long songs. While some leaked over slightly (the EP clocks in at 8:08), Loiacono has succeeded in creating some very affecting and exciting tunes, despite or perhaps thanks to their succinctness. His continued explorations into sound manipulation and sampling are yielding some really beautiful results, and on top of it, you can use this record as a unit of measure. (Ex: writing this blurb took exactly two Penny Riddles.)
Standout tracks: Penny Riddle is decidedly best listened to straight through, and repeatedly. It’s 8 minutes long, guys. You can do it.
(But it – Limited run, move fast!)

Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned – Charles Mingus’ Garbage Pile
Those that have followed Sgt. Dunbar since their beginnings will be awed by their rapid and amazing progress. The differences between this new EP and their previous recording, 2007′s The Thing About Time, are tangible and thorough. Their trademark sound, sort of a skyward-pointing frantic cacophony, has expanded from its freak-folk roots to include New Orleans jazz, stomping rhythms, and gang sing-alongs. The result is more well-formed than ever, the arrangements lush and tight, the execution focused and exuberant. These kids have always lived up to their hype, and the fact that they’re only getting better is at once inevitable and sort of unbelievable.
Standout tracks: “A March Through Charles Mingus’ Garbage Pile,”  “Goin’ Nowhere”
(Buy it!)

Now, I’m not one of these people who begrudge an artist his inclusion in a video game — I believe strongly that you should be able to make a living off your art, and kids playing along to a song certainly doesn’t change its meaning or effect. Quite the opposite, actually; a whole new audience is going to be exposed to some of the most exciting and underrated music out there. I just wonder how this came about. Did the developers at RedOctane, now armed with a best-selling title, use their stature to slip in some of their favorite indie artists? Or did the artists reach out to the developers?

If it was the latter, and RedOctane is open to suggestions, I can think of some Albany artists I would love to rock out to on my next game night: Kamikaze Hearts’ “Defender,” We are Jeneric’s “Deeper Than Our Love,” and any number of the Sense Offenders songs jump immediately to mind. And, I would be remiss not to humbly mention, there are some The Rev artists who wouldn’t be too bad, either. So, if there’s anyone from Activision out there, I can be reached by email.

[via i guess i'm floating]