This year in music was great and we’rea gonna let it finish (sorry), but in terms of notable album releases the ship has sailed. No offense, 30 Seconds To Mars. While the Gummys’ virtual poll booth remains open for a few more days (did we mention filling out the ballot enters you to win the 50 Best Albums Of The Decade on vinyl and an Apple TV?), we’re gonna look to the future, Conan. And we like the sound of it! If 2010 is gonna be anything like 2009 — skyrocketing unemployment, a Summer Of Death, flu and vampire pandemics — we’re gonna need a bigger headphones. But today we’ve got 25 reasons why 2010 might even be > 2009. Our list was limited to releases (some of which we’ve even heard) that have been confirmed (or close enough), but don’t stop believin’ in Strokes IV, guys.
FEBRUARY 9 (SECRETLY CANADIAN)
If all we had was the apparent shift from the natural mystic to the infectiously skyward weirdo pop promised by “Ambling Alp” (or its two great remixes) to go on, we’d already be excited about this one. But after previewing half of the new record at the Guggeheim, and based on foreword from all that have laid ears on this one, Odd Blood’s the odds-on favorite to dominate early 2010 discourse.
JANUARY 12 (XL)
How do you followup on one of the most universally acclaimed debuts of the decade? If you’re Vamipre Weekend, you release a free MP3 about a Mexican rice drink, and then a really fun video for a very different sounding song. According to their Progress Report, the Brooklyn and Mexico City-recorded Contra has tracks that are more guitar driven than Vampire Weekend, and others that feature no guitar at all. Ah, now the first two singles make sense. One thing we know, is that Kirsten is not one of their girlfriends, but a stock photo from the ’70s. Good news, ladies.
3. THE AVALANCHES
TBA (MODULAR)
Yes, it’s really been nine years since Since I Left You turned sample-based dance music on its head. The hold up? A news post on the band’s site occupying the top slot for ages has told it best: “Clearing Samples.” Well there’s no confirmed date, but our trusted sources say that the perennial most-requested-Progress Report outfit finally got those samples signed-off and are ready to follow up their classic debut, and that 2010 is the magic number. For now, here’s a teazer for your brains.
FEBRUARY 9 (ASTRALWERKS)
After a year that saw them cover Joy Division, get covered by Lissy Trullie, and pursue various side projects, UK dance crew Hot Chip are set to return with a new LP, the Made In The Dark followup titled One Life Stand. The set features, according to Alexis Taylor, the “anthemic” song “I Feel Better,” a “big, massive Euro club sounding track.” For now, there’s the the gothy then uplifting “Take It In.”
JANUARY 26 (NONESUCH)
After a year that offered a particularly momentous Merritt milestone in the classic 69 Love Songs‘ 10th anniversary, Stephin Merritt and his Mag Fields will return with Realism, 13 tracks that stick to the three-minute pop format. That bathroom-door album art pairs well with their last LP cover: Then it was a blurred male latrine indicator for an album called Distortion; here it’s a straight-lined girl for an album called Realism. Expect much less Jesus & Mary Chain haze this time around. In fact Stephin says he “thought of the two as a pair,” this time “explor[ing] the various genres under the umbrella of folk.” According to the album bio, “Merritt’s work veers between longing and loneliness, desire and dismissal, romance and revenge, though the melancholic musings of his narrators are cut with sardonic humor. At the end of the disc, Merritt literally leaves his characters shipwrecked.” And we’re warned not to think of it as autobiographical. Sign us up.
JANUARY 26 (SUB POP)
We’ve gone on at length about Beach House’s gorgeous third album Teen Dream. You only need to listen to “Norway” and “Used To Be” to know we weren’t lying when we said, “At first listen the songs feel like simple lullabies. There isn’t a shiny facade, really. It’s only after you take your time with it and let the songs sink in that you realize you’ll likely never see the bottom.” We look forward to listening to it all year.
JANUARY 26 (MERGE)
The Got Nuffin’ EP wasn’t just a stopgap between what we’ll assume to be typically terrific LPs — its title track also features on the tracklist to Transference, the band’s first full-length since 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. We’ve heard a bunch of these new songs live, but since “Written In Reverse” is the album’s lead single (in stores 12/1), that’s a good place to start.
8. THE NATIONAL
TBA (4AD)
Matt Berninger kept it quieter on Boxer than he did on Alligator (i.e. no shout songs like “Mr. November”), but the band deepened their instrumentation, wrote some of their most subtly addictive songs, and had their biggest year to date (both in the National and in ambitious side projects like The Long Count). Curious what kind of mood they’re in now? Matt tells us: “We started out trying to make a fun pop record. I had the word HAPPINESS taped to my wall. We veered off that course immediately. We’ve narrowed it down to about 15 songs now and it’s going to be our best record (one song you can dance to) but it can’t be described as happy.” They’ve been recording for almost a year and as Aaron Dessner put it to us “[are] emerging from that black hole to start mixing in two weeks.” Bryce adds, “There are a ton of songs and we have been working for a year, but as always with us it’s the last couple months that change everything so it’s too early to say what the overall direction [will be].”
MARCH 8 (MUTE)
Liars’ Tom Biller-produced fifth album, the follow-up to 2007’s Liars and the first recorded Stateside since the unfairly derided They Were Wrong, So We Drowned looks at “alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like LA … where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society.” The results? A focused post-punk riot mixing paranoia, cynicism, humor, dirt, and love wrapped into songs with titles like “The Overachievers,” “Scarecrows On A Killer Slant,” “I Still Can See An Outside World,” and “Goodnight Everything.” It’s sorta like Liars and Drum’s Not Dead colliding over Route 47. You can hear samples of “Drip” and “Proud Evolution” set to cryptic footage at thesisterworld.com.
MARCH 9 (MATADOR)
When Ted Leo stopped by for a Progress Report he suggested that the new album comes with a hardcore influence and gave us a listen to “Last Days.” (We’ve also heard an acoustic take on “One Polaroid A Day“). We checked in with Leo last night who let us in on the above title, The Brutalist Bricks, and that “it’s 13 songs, some of which we’ve been playing for a little while, and some of which are completely new. There’s some overflow, too, so I’m sure we’ll try and find something to do with extra tracks.”
FEBRUARY 23 (CARPARK)
Toro Y Moi, aka multi-instrumental Columbia, South Carolina bedroom recordist Chaz Bundick, aka the bedroom psychedelicist with the biggest R&B swing, started buzzing after Carpark signed him up to release two full-lengths in 2010 and then leaked two MP3s, “Blessa” and “109,” one from each collection. We’ll be getting Causers Of This first, which opens with the aforementioned “Blessa” and closes out with the title track. (You may already be familiar with another cut, “Talamak.)”
JANUARY 26 (BECAUSE)
Gainsbourg teemed up with Beck who, as she told Jessica in a Progress Report, “tried very different things” for her third studio album, whose name was inspired by the MRI machine (IRM in French) she experienced first hand after having a brain hemorrhage after a skiing accident. It’s hard to get a complete feel for the collection after hearing the Kraut rock-lined title track and “Heaven Can Wait,” a duet with Hansen, two very different tracks. Then again, looks like we’ll just have to wait. As Gainsbourg told us, “[The songs are] all in different styles but one proper album.”
JANUARY 26 (DOMINO)
Kieran Hebden’s fifth album, his first proper full-length in over four years, sounds extremely promising after listens to the ghostly dance track “Love Cry” and the crystalline downcast “Plastic People.” Looking forward to the closer “She Just Likes To Fight.”
14. MGMT – CONGRATULATIONS
SPRING (SONY/COLUMBIA)
We know recent Flaming Lips, Kid Cudi, and Jay-Z collaborators Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden recorded their second album with ex-Spacemen 3 member Pete Kember, that it’s being mixed by David Fridmann, and that it features vocals from charismatically disengaged Royal Trux vocalist Jennifer Herrema. Supposedly the guys working on something with Paul McCartney: We’re unsure if the fruits of the latter will appear on Congratulations, but clearly, congratulations anyhow.
JANUARY 26 (ARTS & CRAFTS)
The Cardiff septet’s third album was recorded and mixed in Seattle, Connecticut, and Monmouthsire with John Goodmanson and features guest spots by Jamie Stewart, Parenthetical Girls’ Zach Pennington, and Jherek Bischoff of Dead Science. It also features first single “These Are Listed Buildings,” which suggests the group is still worthy of that exclamation mark.
16. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM
MARCH (DFA)
After scoring Greenberg James Murphy is finalizing LCD’s third album, which drummer Pat Mahoney told goldcost.com.au is “different than Sound Of Silver and certainly different than the first one … It still sounds very much like us, like James. It’s maybe slower and it has kind of got some more rock stuff back in it. It also has a bunch of disco influences.”
17. PANDA BEAR
TBA
We don’t have a time frame or a title, but in an interview with Pedestrian.tv Noah Lennox talks about the “darker,” “raw” new material that’s “outside the sample zone” and “totally different” than MPP. Of course, we imagine this so-called “simple arrangement of drums, the guitar and singing” will sound anything but simple. Look for solo dates, too.
18. INTERPOL
EARLY 2010 (CAPITOL)
After a post-Our Love To Admire time that’s seen Paul Banks masquerading as Julian Plenti amongst other Interpol side-projects, the well-heeled NYC post-punk crew is ready to release LP4, and promise that it’ll trump their admittedly flat-feeling major label debut. Drummer Sam Fogarino told PASTE, “The new record falls back towards the first … In trying to move forward, there was an unspoken realization that you can’t let go of your sonic-defining tag.” On that point, Sam added: “That big wash of reverb? It’s back. I personally brought two reverb tanks to the studio that our engineer fell in love with.”
FEBRUARY 1 (BELLA UNION)
We’ve been excited for this one for awhile now. In fact, Midlake’s forthcoming third LP was the subject of our inaugural Progress Report, wherein the band explained the delay: “We didn’t know exactly what we wanted, but we know we didn’t want to make the same album as last time. We could have made 10 albums with the amount of time we’ve spent, but that doesn’t mean they’d be saying anything great.” Instead they committed to 40-hour work weeks in order to move away from the last record’s “Fleetwood Mac-y America” with a shift toward, at least in part, “British folk scene of late ’60s stuff.” You’ve waited three years for a listen. For now, there’s a tracklist.
20. THE HOLD STEADY
TBA (VAGRANT)
The band’s toured steadily and Craig Finn’s been adapting Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City for the big screen, but we’re going to Stay Positive for a new album in 2010. After all, they’ve debuted new tracks here/there and — important for a band this dependable — they’ve never made us wait so long for more of their loquacious barroom anthems.
JANUARY 12 (DOMINO)
One man symphony Owen Pallett has moved to a new label for his forthcoming followup to the Polaris Prize winning gem He Poos Clouds. It’s more than a one-man-band this time around: In his Progress Report, Pallett mentioned working with a 50-piece orchestra in Prague, and has since revealed assists from Nico Muhly, Gentleman Reg, and Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara. According to Mr. Fantasy, “The songs themselves form a narrative concerning a farmer named Lewis and the fictional world of Spectrum. The songs are one-sided dialogues with Lewis, a young, ultra-violent farmer, speaking to his creator.” Sounds biblical! And at least at one point, Lewis takes off his shirt. So, biblical and hott. Also check out Owen’s “Keep The Dog Quiet” and cooking tips.
22. JOANNA NEWSOM
TBA (DRAG CITY)
The rumor mill has begun. Joanna’s made a shift from the forests to the fashion set, complete with Armani modeling. So if you’re looking for hints about the new record, you’re probably reading the wrong magazines. Vogue caught up with Joanna at a fashion botique-opening afterparty in Tokyo, where she told the mag she was in town working on a new album. Why Japan? Probably because Ys recorder Jim O’Rourke pays rent there. And later she told W work on the record is done. Might wanna subscribe to Glamour’s RSS for the MP3 premiere.
23. FRIGHTENED RABBIT – THE WINTER OF MIXED DRINKS
MARCH 9 (FATCAT)
Glaswegian warm-hearted rockers Frightened Rabbit are four-and-a-half minutes into the best album review of their careers with “Swim Until You Can’t See Land,” the expansively intimate teaser track (and video) from their forthcoming Midnight Organ Flight followup. The song was billed as a “perfect … first indicator of the new album,” which is a reason The Winter Of Mixed Drinks is making this list. Other reasons: that awesome album title, and this live session of more new tunes.
FEBRUARY 9 (VIRGIN)
Grant Marshall laid it out in Massive Attack’s Progress Report: “After 1000th Window, which was tied up with trying to be too clever, we just wanted to get back to sparse, lovely songs with simple production. We wanted to get back to the minimalist thing where you don’t have to fill the song up with shit.” That may mean sparser tunes, but definitely not a sparser cameo list: The band’s first record in five years boasts guest vocals from Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval, Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Martina Topley-Bird, Horace Andy, and Tunde Adibempe’s “Pray For Rain,” from the Splitting The Atom EP released as a tease to the forthcoming full-length.
JANUARY 19 (KANINE)
Playing 12 times during CMJ is one way to stand out from the packed dancecard. Another is to make each of those shows net ferocious word-of-mouth praise, and that’s where Surfer Blood found themselves at the end of this year’s industry schmooze fest. In concert the band pulls back from the epically raucous end of things for something more visceral and punchy with their surf-Afro-power-pop, bar-room dropkick hooks in place of big-room reverberated clamor. The record promises to hit on both ends of the spectrum though, promising a good year for these young Floridians.
