Top 30 Albums of 2009

And to think, Logos didn't almost make it out alive. When early demos for Bradford Cox's second album as Atlas Sound were accidentally spirited off his hard-drive onto the internet's wires, Cox felt so indignant/hurt/betrayed that he wasn't even going to bother releasing the record. Thankfully, that curse ended up a blessing: Cox shrugging off the album-leak blues and steeling himself to make the finished Logos so glorious it obliterated the demo version. Missing accomplished. Boasting guest spots from Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab and Panda Bear of Animal Collective, Logos effortlessly mixes eerie ballads with dreamy drone pieces and krautrock-inspired workouts, making for a career-defining distillation of Cox's discography thus far.

Call it truth in advertising. Luke Temple's debut LP as Here We Go Magic actually has a sense of magic to it, an ineffable, indefinable ‘something.’ Inspired by homebound, layering-based, magnetic-tape alchemists from Arthur Russell to Ariel Pink, Temple casts song-spells heavy on the atmosphere; thick clouds of muffled sound looped into audio incantations, summoning mystery and electricity and the glorious unknown through sheer repetition. After two solo albums of stately, Sufjan-ish pop, it's a revelation hearing Temple plunging his Paul Simon-ish falsetto into an eerie realm of pop-songs fashioned from gaseous, ambient sounds. The result plays like the unlikely offspring of Grizzly Bear and Panda Bear. Now that is magical.

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Dave Longstreth's been making amazing, idiosyncratic albums, as Dirty Projectors, for most of this decade, only to find his astonishing output oft ignored or overlooked. No longer. The seventh DP LP is a grand, irrepressible pop record that marks the culmination of the many varied, particular, peculiar strains of hipster musicology —pointillist orchestration, West African guitar pop, thudding R&B sub-bass— Longstreth has thus far explored. But just bigger, brighter, bolder. More confident and rich, more ridiculous and fun. Pimping compositions that change directions radically, pursue peculiar sonorities, or mismatch competing polyrhythms, Bitte Orca is an album of constant thrills, a joy for longtime Longstreth lovers or neophytes alike.

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