Juice's Top Ten of 2009
I’m going to dedicate the next several entries to a countdown of what I believe are the top ten albums released this past year. Hopefully it’ll be a combination of some obvious choices and a few that you might have overlooked or not gotten around to yet. Obviously the list isn’t all-inclusive, I’ve been incredibly lazy this year and haven’t always kept up to date on new releases. However, I think that I’ve compiled a solid countdown.
Before I start the list off with #10, however, I’m going to take a look at a few albums that I would have predicted to be in the top ten at the beginning of the year, but for whatever reasons were disappointments. Shame, shame, shame on these bands
The 2009 Hall of Shame
Dream Theater
Black Clouds & Silver Linings
6.3/10
Okay, so I probably wouldn’t have predicted this album to make my top ten list. Actually, if Dream Theater hadn’t created
Images & Words, one of my all, all, all time favorite albums, I most likely would have given up on them years ago. After the release of the weird but appreciable
Metropolis II in 1999, these guys have gone largely downhill.
Octavarium had its moments, but
Systematic Chaos was garbage. However, because I listen to
Images & Words at least once a month, every time Labrie & Co. announce a new album, I seem to develop a musical Alzheimer’s.
Black Clouds & Silver Linings is slightly better than
Systematic Chaos, but that’s sort of like winning the tallest dwarf award. It’s bloated and pretentious even by DT standards, and the band doesn’t really cover any new ground.
The Decemberists
The Hazards of Love
6.6/10
When I heard the words “rock opera” mentioned in connection with this album before it was released, I knew it would either be an absolutely brilliant album or else a disappointment. Sadly, it’s the latter. In all actuality it’s not a bad album, it just (for me at least) grows stale about halfway through and is difficult to digest in one sitting. As someone who thought
Picaresque was a solid album and that
The Crane Wife was one of the best releases of 2006, this one fell short.
Porcupine Tree
The Incident
6.8/10
I wanted to like this album. I really did. I was psyched when I heard Steven Wilson announce that the new release would be two discs, with the one being a nearly hour-long thematic concept album. But come on, Steve. You cannot release exceptional gems like
In Absentia and
Fear of a Blank Planet, and then try to pass this off as belonging in the conversation with those, or anywhere near the conversation for that matter. I don’t get it, I really don’t. From the band blatantly ripping themselves off (the title track sounds like a bad remix of Sleep Together) to the cringe-worthy lyrics (I’m drawing the line! I’m drawing the line!) to the completely disjointed nature of the first disc that ruins any flow the album might have by inserting garbage filler tracks after every song that actually works, I’m not even sure where to focus my criticism. I’ll just leave it at that I guess. I really thought that the album was a joke the first time I heard the leak. Biggest disappointment of ’09 for me.