I made the decision to not be a total music elitist and put down the 50 albums this year I thought were average or better, and wanted to focus on stuff I thought was truly enjoyable. So I trimmed it down to 30 and really tried to think about why it made the list. No apologies.
1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
It almost feels cheesy to give this number one, but it’s just so so overwhelmingly good. Emotional, musical, sparse - it has to be the best of the year for me.
2. 5ive - Hesperus
Powerful post-rock with doses of metal, I’ve listened to this a ton.
3. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
In all honesty, I won’t be listening to this much in 2009. However, it’s a phenomenal album with tons of hooks, and one that I listened to over and over this year.
4. The Tallest Man on Earth - Shallow Grave
Totally listenable hippy-dippy singer-songwriter beauty.
5. Anoraak - Nightdrive With You
There is no reason I should love this album this much, but I do. I love the 80’s synth-pop, the vocals, the lyrics, everything about it.
6. Peter Broderick - Home
Simply glorious. “And It’s Alright” is one of the best songs of the year, and the rest of the album holds up tremendously. A beautiful work.
7. Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances
There is really no reason an album this loud should be so catchy and enjoyable. A fantastic, energetic album.
8. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
What’s weird is that I downloaded this awhile ago and just never listened to it. A total mistake. It’s one of the most interesting and novel albums I’ve heard in awhile, almost jungle/funk/shoegaze (especially in the choruses), and fantastic.
10. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Not much to be said that hasn’t already. Kind of like the best parts of My Morning Jacket’s older stuff (to me, at least).
11. Jamie Lidell - Jim
I really don’t understand why more people aren’t into his stuff… he’s basically the second coming of Beck, to me. Incredibly fun music in a variety of styles - Lidell is a fantastic showman.
12. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
I don’t care if it’s chiptunes, it’s catchy as all hell. “Untrust Us” is a phenomenal start to the disc and great songs the rest of the way make it an awesome album.
13. Dosh - Wolves And Wishes
People are truly sleeping on this, and I can’t figure out why. It’s an album of wonderful instrumental work, with horns, strings, drums, and sounds creating driving, energetic pieces that never get old.
14. Shed - Shedding The Past
I kept pushing this album farther and farther down my list as I edited it, so I’m not sure if that says something about the album or myself. I really do like it quite a bit, it’s a great work in the minimal “techno” sense, but it’s not consistent enough to be amazing. When it’s on, it’s on, but it’s not a top 10.
15. M83 - Saturdays = Youth
If I truly LOVED shoegaze, this would likely be higher. Still, though, it’s a really great album. When I first listened I was thrown that it was so unlike their earlier stuff (imo), but the more chances I gave it the more I liked it. I think it’s the slight 80’s vibe I get from it.
16. Russian Circles - Station
Some were busting my balls over my liking this album, but fuck ‘em. I think it’s awesome, powerful post-rock, and far more exciting than a lot of the redundant shit on, say, the silent ballet list.
17. The Dodos - Visiter
Quirky and novel, I love the clattering percussion, creative song structure, and intricate guitar work. I’d move it up higher if I found tracks 5-10 stronger.
18. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Supremely dancy, toe-tapping, head-nodding music. A really fun album with some more of the 80’s-esque influences I really dug this year.
19. Sigur Rós - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
My iTunes claims I listened to this album about 5 times, but I really don’t recall this taking place. Anyway, I really enjoyed the new sound Sigur Ros displayed. The first 4 tracks are awesome, but it falls off a bit down the stretch for me, bringing down the rating.
20. Why? - Alopecia
Now THIS surprised me, and in a totally good way. While not a tour de force or perfect in any way, Alopecia is a solid statement by Why? with some great wordplay and head-nodding beats and melodies.
21. Air France - No Way Down
A very cool, unique album. I enjoyed the hazy vocals and instruments, and the song structure was right up my alley.
22. Have a Nice Life - Deathconsciousness
This was a weird one for me. I wish it could have been a bit more consistent, but I love the loudness and anger driving some of the songs. A great disc like nothing else I heard this year.
23. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
Way too many great bits to not put on the list, but way too schizophrenic. I don’t think Girl Talk understands how much smooth transitions can benefit a mashup/mix album like this.
24. My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
While nowhere near the quality of their earlier work, there are enough great songs on Evil Urges to earn a place on my list. They certainly are willing to explore what they are capable of, and remain one of my favorite bands.
25. Bodies of Water - A Certain Feeling
A lot of Talking Heads going on in many of the songs (see “Water Here”) which is probably a big reason I enjoy A Certain Feeling. Lots of energy and strong melodic themes make for a great album.
26. Benoit Pioulard - Temper
Temper is too all over the place for me to place higher, but it’s a really interesting album with some stand out songs. A great album worth giving quite a few listens.
27. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
I think I’ve said that I liked this album more than Cut Copy at one point this year. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it’s still catchy, danceable, and enjoyable.
28. Sam Amidon - All Is Well
Minimal singer/songwriter folk, Sam Amidon (Samamidon?) writes some beautiful songs. He’s being overlooked with stuff like Tallest Man On Earth and other minimal folksy albums coming out this year, but it’s worth seeking out.
29. Torche - Meanderthal
Man, there is so much of this album I love. Thick, thick, stonery guitars, but never really too dull or droney. I wish it was all as fantastic as stuff like “Grenades” and “Fat Waves”, but it’s one of the best metal discs I listened to this year (like that means anything, really).
30. Dr. Dog - Fate
I’m not sold on this album just yet, but the three times I’ve listened to it I’ve enjoyed most of it quite a bit. It’s got some throwback southern rock going on, and the catchy jangly songs are frequently awesome.
Things I enjoy:
I love winter here. I love that there is next to no snow, no ice, no temperatures down into the 20s that require scarves and hats just to walk from my car to the office.
I love the new interstate design on 495 near the exit I take to get home. It has made the mile or two before that exit much, much better.
I love having made some solid younger friends here at work over the past 6 months or so, who I can eat lunch with and not talk about grumpy librarian things, which is apparently what happens once you hit 35.
Upcoming trip to California that should be awesome and a nice break.
After today, I won’t be back in the office until Jan. 3.
Cool weather means I wake up to Basil underneath the covers like a stuffed animal or Mina on my lap, or both.
A good amount of Scrabble with Mike, who is slightly better than me and thus we continually have good games.
Lots of reading about backpacking in preparation for lots of it this year (I hope).
I found The New Yorker and life is better because of it.
Lots of cool Xmas presents to give and hopefully get.
Our apartment is steadily becoming more of our home and I feel very comfortable in it.
Things less enjoyable:
I won’t be going to Cleveland over the break, when a bunch of high school peeps will be getting together, and also I won’t see my few close friends or family still there.
No snow still means rain, though. At least it isn’t the constant freezing rain we had last year (yet).
Our friend Jackie is getting knee surgery possibly AS I TYPE THIS and will probably have a lame recovery over the next few months.
I need like 3 pairs of new shoes and they are my least favorite things to purchase.
I’m feeling really bad about my eating and working out for the past 3-4 weeks, and traveling to CA won’t help much.
I miss all my UIUC peeps.
Well hey there, kind readers! It’s been way too long! In my defense, I was trying to do NaBloPoMo, but then I failed at that, so I guess I really have no defense. That’s neither here nor there.
Since we last checked in, we made our first actual trip to Baltimore - Shane for the SPARC meeting, and me (along with Sipes) to meet Shane to see Iron & Wine at the worst venue in the history of venues (other than the always-stellar Murat Egyptian Room. I’m eager to go back - to Baltimore, not the Ram’s Head LIVE! - when the weather’s nicer so that we can actually explore a bit. I’m also craving more Icelandic yogurt from Carma’s Cafe.
Then! Sonya and Jason came down from Boston for Thanksgiving weekend! They braved a terrible, terrible drive for a couple of days of hanging out, crafting, and excellent food. Shane made an incredible pork shoulder for our non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and then Tina joined us for the first Helpful Paws Collective Crafting Bee, and we prototyped a few things for our Etsy shop. Amidst all of this, we spent quality time with Harper, Sappho, Michigan, and Iko.
And Then! we drove down to Harrisonburg for Thanksgiving dinner number two with the MacDonalds, Andy, Claire, and Dan. Sarah made maybe the best turkey either of us have ever had, as well as a slew of delicious side dishes. Claire tried some meat (her first in years!), and we spent an exceptional amount of time watching YouTube videos, especially:
This week we’ve mostly been catching up - on sleep, on homework (did I mention that I’ve scheduled my defense?), on the mysterious contents of our crisper (which I fixed!), and on the season. We had our first serious bout of snow flurries last night amidst our fun Caturday with Sipes - brunch at Commissary DC, shopping at the Craft Mutiny Holiday Booty Market, Katamari, drinks at Fireflies, and then a serious amount of Planet Earth and music videos (remember those?) with Sipes and Adam. We also managed - OK, it was totally me - to double-book ourselves and so had to miss out on fun with David & Mary Clare.
And now it’s the end of the weekend, and we’re both wiped, but we did manage to put up our tree and wrap our presents and listen to Christmas music.
This weekend a few friends were in town - Amanda up from Richmond for a undergrad alumni function, and Piotr and Jess down from NYC for something Piotr was attending and staying for fun. We met for brunch at the always reliable Kramerbooks, and after that walked around a bit. One thing I appreciate about DC is that you never know what you are going to encounter. We’ve run into religious-themed concerts on the mall, numerous protests relating to China’s presence in Tibet, parades, motorcades, etc. The G20 summit meeting took place this week, and protesters took advantage of the media coverage to come out and do their thing. This, combined with the extra-huge motorcade from the various countries who were present, made for an interesting long stroll around the area. Ultimately we ended up across the street from the Newseum, but unable to even cross the street due to the police presence.
This morning, Jess and Piotr came over for brunch, and E and I discussed how we really enjoyed living in the DC area. While street closings and such aren’t always convenient, one of the things I always say about living here is that I feel like I’m part of some larger human community, with policy being developed and people making their opinions known. I think it says something that a large group of people communed near the White House on election night - the physical environment of the capitol makes for interesting opportunities.
While there are a number of other things I enjoy about living here - the value placed on the arts, cultural diversity, neighborhoods, farmers markets, good people - I’m rarely disappointed with heading down to the capitol.
After having been craving some outdoorsy adventures for a bit, Elizabeth, myself, our new friend Jackie, and my work buddy Andrew went hiking in Shenandoah national park. If you aren’t aware, Shenandoah is a beautiful area in western Virginia, just over an hour from DC. Skyline Drive is a beautiful two-lane road that cuts through the entire length of the park - 100 miles! It also features over 500 miles of trails, 101 of which are the famous Appalachian Trail. So it was definitely something we needed to check out.
We left fairly early in order to take advantage of the weather and avoid losing daylight too quickly, and entered Front Royal about 11am. Front Royal was surprising to me, as I didn’t really expect such a developed little city out there, just the park itself. By all appearances, Front Royal would be a great day trip in and of itself, so I can likely suggest it for a weekend trip with some hiking in the park. After making our way through Front Royal, we bought an annual pass and entered the park at it’s northern end.
We headed south on Skyline drive and made a few quick pitstops at a scenic overlook and the restroom to fill up water bottles. Our goal was a trail about 10 miles down Skyline, to hike a fairly short and moderately difficult trail that would fork off to two peaks with supposedly awesome views of the area (I had borrowed a book about hiking in Shenandoah from a workmate, which a LOT of trails in the park). After parking the car, we headed into the woods, immediately on the Appalachian Trail itself.
The cool weather had made most of the trees shed their leaves, but the woods still felt quite dense simply from all the trunks and branches. The trail was covered in crunchy leaves and we took much pleasure in stomping and kicking them, even though we knew the noise would make seeing a bear even less likely. Things were quiet and nice. As we made our way down the trail I began to think that it had certainly felt like more than a mile, which was when we were supposed to come to the branch that led to the two peaks, but just came to the conclusion that maybe hiking was harder than I thought.
We eventually came to a rock face that seemed to match up with what we were supposed to find on the trail, and sat for a bit and shot some photos. The trail led down the rock face and then onto a more difficult rocky path through trees. We reached a 3-sided camping shelter, something I really wanted to see after having to mentally picture it from Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods. We rested a bit and turned around, hiking back up the rocks and back through the forest.
About the time we were back to a wayfinding post, I realized we couldn’t possibly be on the trail I thought we were. I then checked the little compass I had in my bag, and realized we were going South, when we should have been going North if we were where I thought we were. After double (triple, quadruple?) checking my book, I realized we had gone onto an entirely separate trail with a moderately similar map. The trail we SHOULD have gone on was across the street from the parking lot… Well at least the trail was nice in its own right.
Now certain where we were, we took a branch to a volcanic rock formation and walked up on top of them. The views were quite nice, and E and I scaled a little rock for an even better look at things. We then had to start heading back to the car so we could grab some food and head back home in time for Andrew to make a Halloween party. On the way back, Jackie fell to the ground in pain - she had hurt her knee, which I understand is a fairly chronic issue for her. After resting up a bit, we slowly made our way back to the car and back into town.
We headed towards Wynn’s, a diner we had read about that supposedly had amazing biscuits and gravy. However, they had closed a half hour before we got there. Disappointed, we went to a perfectly nice little place that had a good looking menu and was playing reggae, got some beers and some food and chowed down. Strangely, as we were eating they appeared to be switching to their dinner menu, which involved putting fancy tablecloths on the tables, servers showing up in black shirts and pants, and the reggae turning into something far less interesting. The drive home involved us all crashing, except for E who thankfully drove.
All in all, Shenandoah was beautiful and huge, which just makes me want to go back as much as possible to explore and enjoy it. I’m already thinking about when I can hike the entire Shenandoah portion of the AT over the course of a week or two. No matter what, I’ll be there this coming weekend with some friends for camping and hiking. It’s great to be close to this national treasure, and I really can’t believe it took us this long to get there.
Whatever your political persuasion, I hope that by now you realize that this is a critically important election, and that your vote is important. I voted in person absentee last week, which was tremendously exciting! The election judges said that they’d had 50-100 people through in the previous hour - which is pretty remarkable, given that it was still two weeks before the election, and it was the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday.
It’s been exciting living in a swing state this year, though it looks pretty clear which way VA will be swinging this time around. We’ve had at least two canvassers come by when we were home, and SB has gotten LOTS of calls from the Obama campaign looking for volunteers. The other side’s been leaving us alone, and that’s just fine with me, though I did laugh at the little dog at the farmers’ market wearing a McCainine shirt.
Last weekend we decided to do our part to support Obama and spent some time phone-banking at an Arlington volunteer center. I hate - HATE - cold-calling, but I sucked it up and war-dialed 90 people in an hour and a half. Of that 90 people, I actually spoke with maybe 10 - but SB had better luck, and on the whole it was a rewarding experience. Towards the end of our shift, the vice chair of the DNC and MANDY PATINKIN showed up to thank the volunteers, which was super random but also a neat surprise:
But seriously, folks. Go vote on Tuesday. It’s really, really important. And then let’s stop talking about the election because while I’m excited, I’m also really sick of it.
SB was out of town for the weekend, so on Saturday, Jackie and I took off for Stribling Orchard. In coming up with Something Fun To Do, we decided it needed to be Outdoorsy, but not Too Outdoorsy, and should preferably end with beer. Apple-picking fit our requirements to a T.
Stribling Orchard is a nice day-trip length drive from DC - about an 75 minutes total, though our drive was broken up by me driving to Fairfax, then Jackie driving the rest of the way. Her GPS apparently thought we needed church more than apples, so we made a brief side trip to a tiny, tiny Baptist church at the end of something that could only dubiously be called a road. Nice try, GPS.
Upon arrival, we were given maps, offered bags, and pointed in the direction of parking - but only after witnessing the spectacle of people trying to fit the very long apple pickers in their cars. I think I’d completely forgotten about apple pickers until that moment - we would fight over them at my grandparents’ house when we helped pick the Lodi apples for early summer applesauce.
Thusly armed, we set to work on the Serious Business of apple picking. Stribling has a variety of apples spread out over 30 acres, including Red and Golden Delicious, Macintosh, Jonathan, Rome, York, and Granny Smith. There were apples up high:
and apples down low:
The Granny Smiths seemed pretty well picked over, but we found an abundance of other things to fill up our bags.
In case you’ve ever wondered what 30+ pounds of apples looks like, wonder no more! We also found some pigs:
We did not, however, find any bears - to our great dismay. When looking for an orchard to visit, we stumbled upon this tantalizing tidbit on the “rules” page of Stribling’s website:
Are there bears here? Yes. Bears live in the woods and love to eat peaches. If you see a bear in the orchard, leave the area immediately.
I won’t deny that a large part of the appeal was the possibility of seeing a bear and having to leave the area immediately. Unfortunately, the only bear we saw was a wooly one:
All told, it was an excellent day of being Outdoorsy.
After a combined six years in a Midwest college town, we've made the move to Arlington, Virginia, to start new library jobs in the DC Metro area. We're into adventures, good food, good beer, dance parties, music, board games, bikes, protein powder, Trader Joe's, our ridiculous cats and imaginary (future) corgi, and getting stuck in the occasional elevator. This blog chronicles our adventures and observations in our new home!
