All this is what I listened to in 2009, pt. 1

What's going on right now? "Best of" lists surging on the internet like pyroclastic flow from St. Helens...I'm not fighting it. It's just overwhelming. "Best-of" lists are annoying, sometimes exciting, often arbitrary to the point of madness, and truly addicting as hell. Some days I find myself neck deep in them online, trying to pin-point the method to these lists. It really is exhausting. All of these bands & musicians that have released good, bad, and very disgusting music across the decade (and for this post's purposes, 2009) are different. Their music is original--in that they made it over a period of time, and than a record company put it out. So, really, the date it came out is completely arbitrary. How many writers wrote some of this decade's best music BEFORE this decade? Or on a napkin four years before it actually came out?

For sanity's sake in lists, I am enjoying the hell out of Aquarium Drunkard's "Decade" feature: contributors post albums that meant a lot to them over the past decade. Bands like My Morning Jacket, New Pornographers and the Microphones have come up. It's about sharing and the excitement to discuss music that changed their lives. It's not for ranking, numbers or social marketing.

So my hope is that I can come close to that notion with a mix of music that really changed me, helped me, made me weak, made me strong, angry, and more upset than ever. I'm sure for many people 2009 was a holy-fucking-shit year, new Presidents and falling economy's all abound, but below is a "Lala" mix of what made me a person this year, part one. These are the songs I listened to this year that will stay with me, probably forever, and embed themselves into my daily consciousness from now on. I'm not saying anything my choices are important or worthy of some anthology: I just want to share what means a lot to me. This is the first mix of three (arbitrarily), and, as best as I can do--they're in 19 tracks, no rank or order other than what I thought sounded good.

2009 in Reverse, pt. 1