Best Of The Year?

So the year ends and with the year ending and this being a music blog it is time to look back on the best albums of the year.
Last year if memory serves me I found very little new music much cop, and I think its a similar tale this year, but not particularly out and out bad, music it seems in 2009 is in a better state than it was in 2008, but only marginally.

A band that I did enjoy in 2009, both live and on CD was the second album by Portland band, Hockey, Mind Chaos. I do not like this eighties sound that so many artists are adopting, the eighties were a musical desert and it isn't something that I need to revisit, but Hockey take the best bits of that decade and open a party 7, both live and recorded. On Mind Chaos they prove that the single Song Away wasn't a fluke and produce a remarkably good album. Its new wave with elements of mental as anything, that sounds an awful combination but if any track appeared on the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop it wouldnt seem out of place. Please dont let that put you off.



Song Away by Hockey

Another favourite album was NOFX's Coaster. Their 11th album and one of their strongest, varying between the knock about fun that they are known for on Creeping Out Sara, to more considered and darker material on My Orphan Year. It is perhaps my favourite album of the year all told and re-affirmed my love for all things NOFX, where as there has been a recent glut of Johnny Cash albums on my morning commute, when I get to the N's it is a huge NOFX section. This album though is text book NOFX and thats how I like it.



My Orphan Year by NOFX

Finally Sign No More by Mumford and Sons, a post by Kev made me investigate this album and after much malignment by the current Mrs D it turned out to be an album that soundtracked my work, as the commute was took up by the commute CD's. The Mumford and Sons album reminded me in parts of The Mystery Jets, in part of Arcade Fire but all in all a sound of their own, marvellous stuff.



Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons