I absolutely hate rating music. I hate dating it too, but rating… That’s just wrong. I mean, how can you compare the minimalist beauty of Taylor Deupree to the pounding beats of Chris Clark? What’s the scale here? Last year, in Headphone Commute’s Best of 2008, I attempted to tier my favorites into “Absolute Must“, “The Very Best“, and “The Essentials“, and even that, of course, is rating music. This year, I wanted to select my favorite releases from each category – but then I was faced with another dilemma – lumping music into genres is probably even worse than rating it! All this negativity has been clouding over me until in a bout of frustration I came out with the answer!
And so, I present you with 15 lists of 10 favorite releases unified by a unique theme in alphabetical order by artist. That’s 150 albums of the year! You will see that these entries tend to fall within similar styles anyway, but I will avoid pronouncing those out loud. Can you guess the genre behind “Music For Vibrating Your Neighbors’ Dusty China“? The selections are limited to only full length albums. See the bottom of this page for links to EPs, Singles and Mini Albums, as well as Mixes and Compilations of 2009.
Think of these as “playlists” of my favorite albums of the year. Choose your mood, the weather, or the time of day, and you shall find my recommendations for the year. There is probably enough music in here to get you through yet another year! I will reveal the winners of each list with one post at a time, one per day. And yes… They are all winners. They truly are…