For both my 2007 and 2008 album-of-the-year countdowns, I did 20 records. It seemed a nice, round number, and it was the plan, again, when coming up with the best discs dished up this year, was to go for 20.
Except, then, well, I couldn't do it. There were almost too many amazing albums released in 2009. Andrew Bird, Antony and the Johnsons, Sharon Van Etten, Le Loup, Fool's Gold... these were just some of the great records that didn't make the cut.
One LP that could not have missed out was Bird-Brains, the astonishing debut work of Merrill Garbus, a 20-something former-puppeteer who splits her time between Vermont and Montréal. Garbus decided to record her first album, under the name Tune-Yards, as an exercise in independence. She recorded it herself, on a hand-held digital recorder. Mixed it herself, on a laptop. And released it herself, on her website. Anything that came thereafter was gravy.
Garbus may've done it for herself, but Bird-Brains has charmed many. And, currently on tour with Dirty Projectors, Garbus is getting to take Tune-Yards to an audience hipped to one of the other records on my best-of-the-year countdown.
And, lo, here it is. On beyond 20, it's the Top 30 Albums of 2009.
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