MUSIC IN THE YEAR 2009

Tarot Sport

Once in a while, an album will materialise from the ether into the real world that is startling, alluring, and wholly unique. Tarot Sport is such an album: an electronic that sets fire to the synapses in your head. Surf Solar opens up the album, sounding quite like how the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack would sound through an 8-bit console, while being listened to by someone on LSD. Space Mountain bounces from every corner of your brain.

Tarot Sport is an absolute masterclass in sonic architecture, and could be the archetype for the new shape of modern electronic music.

Lungs

In 2009 there was a sudden surge of female-fronted experimental indie acts. Of all of them, Florence + The Machine stood at the top of the pile. Lungs is an overwhelmingly mature sounding debut, and sounds like a melée of the otherworldly musicalities of Bjork and Joanne Newsom.

The verses for ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ are cut from the same cloth of Bjork’s Vespertine, and the chorus is a display of soulful cabaret.

‘Drumming Song’ is, as the title would suggest, a very rhythmically driven song with world music influences.

The album closes in style with a cover of 90’s house classic ‘You got the Love’ by Candi Station. It gets a considerable makeover into a synth and guitar driven anthem complete with harp and a mighty vocal performance.

Romantic, intimidating and powerful, Lungs was debut more than deserving of praise, and the United Kingdom had finally found it’s answer to Tori Amos in Florence Welch.

Black Gives Way to Blue

Once Layne Staley tragically died in 2002, it not only saw the demise of a charismatic and unique vocalist, but it also signalled the end of one of the most troubled bands of the 1990’s. An anorexic live archive, dwindling output, and personal problems had burdened the band for many years, but when Staley died, the book of Alice in Chains slammed mercilessly shut: seemingly forever.

And yet, in 2009, Alice in Chains took 7 years of grief and distilled it into a 11-track masterpiece.

Painstaking catharsis comes in the form of “Your Decision” and the title track. The album contains some of the heaviest and bleakest riffs Jerry Cantrell has ever displayed, such as “A Looking In View”. The show stopping ‘Private Hell’ has the band singing from Layne’s perspective in his last days.

While many fans will swear otherwise, but Black Gives Way to Blue is, in truth, the most coherent, heartfelt and accomplished record in the bands career.

An often overwhelming and stark record, Black Gives Way To Blue was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel, and a marvellous tribute to their fallen friend.

The Uprising

The concept album is the crucial milestone in a bands career: while it showcases a bands growing ambition, it can, and often does, fall into the ocean of over pretentious nonsense, where the concept eclipses the music, and the album artwork is complete with naked men.

Muse’s The Uprising, thankfully, showcased that Matt Bellamy and co. were a band of unprecedented talent, by creating an album that surpassed their previous efforts. The Uprising was a concept album about global conspiracies, Orwellian literature, post apocalyptic times, and extraterrestrial life form. Bombastic? Oh, most certainly!

The music however can definitely stand up along side its big themes. ‘Unnatural Selection’ is a mile a minute anthem, much in the same vein as Origin of Symmetry’s ‘New Born’, while the French-tinged ‘I Belong To You’ further displays the influence of world music on Bellamy’s writing.

Topping charts worldwide, and shifting millions of units, the concept album once again became popularised, and Muse once again conquered the world.