Best Albums Of 2009

Excuse us for breaking our own rules again, but we're sneaking in two blogs today, of which this is the second. Over the last ten days we have posted our top ten albums of the year. Some of these crop up on virtually every critics / publications / bloggers list ( The XX and Fuck Buttons in particular). Others seem to be pretty unique to us (Lucky Elephant, The Unthanks, Blue Roses). That’s personal taste for you.

Here’s a summary of those albums.

1. Blue Roses - Blue Roses

2. The XX - XX

3. The Antlers - Hospice

4. Florence and the Machine - Lungs

5. La Roux - La Roux

6. Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More

7. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport

8. The Unthanks - Here’s The Tender Coming

9. Lucky Elephant - Starsign Trampoline

10. The Horrors - Primary Colours

You can read individual blogs on each record in the previous ten posts.

We've rather arrogantly called this list the Best Albums of 2009, but that of course is only our opinion. Maybe the list should have been described as Breaking More Waves Blog Favourite Albums Of The Year. This would have been more accurate. For who are we, or for that matter anyone, to say what really is the best ? We've noticed on a number of other albums of the year polls / threads / articles how passionate and often angry people are when a particular album doesn't make the Top 10 / 50 in a particular list. The number of comments we have read that are along the lines of "You are wrong because you didn't pick so and so, my favourite album, in your list." Or even worse "Call yourself a critic / journalist / blogger and you haven't picked my favourite album. You don't know what you're talking about and should be embarrassed for yourself."

Frankly we find these types of comments a little ridiculous. Music is a vast and wonderful thing, and there is always going to be someone who disagrees with a particular choice. To these people we say, lighten up and get over it. Just because someone has different tastes from you doesn't devalue or increase the value and listening pleasure of a particular album for you as the listener does it ? Our favourite Blue Roses by Blue Roses may not have appeared in any end of year lists (except The Fly who put it in their mid 30's) but for us it is still musical perfection. No end of year list will change our opinion on that, but we're not going to get angry that it didn't appear on any other lists. It would be like getting angry because not every man in the country fancies our girlfriend.

So we are done with lists till next year. We are suffering from list overload, so let’s get back to business as usual until Christmas with just a few more blogs, the first of which we will post tommorow at our standard time of just gone midnight.

Then once Christmas is here, we will take a short break and start reposting from January 1st. Next year is already shaping up to be a good one. Just in the first couple of months there are new releases from Midlake, Delphic, Los Campesinos, Vampire Weekend, First Aid Kit, Hot Chip, Yeasayer, The Tindersticks, The Dawn Chorus, Massive Attack, Marina and the Diamonds as well as gigs by a number of the acts we listed on our Ones To Watch list including Ellie Goulding, Delphic, Mirrors, Hurts, Stornoway and Beth Jeans Houghton.

See you down the front.