I don’t think I’m going to bother with a Top 100 Songs of the 2000s list. Too much work. And you all already know how I feel about “All I Need” and “Kim & Jessie.”

So look in the next few days for a Songs of ‘09 list, double my usually-preferred length, showcasing an unprecedented panoply of artists from Annie to Zombi.

Major calisthenics were demanded before I could arrive at a final order for these twenty gems, but I made it. What a terrific year!

Notes:

Grizzly Bear utterly dominated the competition. I feel strongly about every one of these, but I can’t remember another year—at least not recently—when my #1 towered so high above the rest of the list (maybe 2004?). Veckatimest has purchased real estate next to some of my all-time favorites. Way to go, guys.

It was an unusually strong year for metal, with three albums of undeniable heavitude (four if you count the majestic Monoliths & Dimensions; notice that I balk at the opportunity to put the band’s name in parentheses) moshing their way into the top twenty. Honorable mentions for 2009’s contributions from Isis, Shrinebuilder, Khanate, Skeletonwitch, Baroness, Converge, Coalesce, and, most delightfully, Megadeth’s pummeling Endgame, which is their best in perhaps twenty years.

Many of my favorite rock bands of the nineties, from an array of genres, made strong showings this year, with Yo La Tengo seeming to turn over a new leaf, Dinosaur continuing to roll as confidently as ever in its new (old) incarnation, and Sonic Youth releasing its punkiest album ever. And though I didn’t get quite as swept away by Embryonic as some other folks might have, its ambition and foggy darkness made it more than satisfying. A few other entries in this category deserve an HM: Polvo’s In Prism, Built to Spill’s There Is No Enemy, Wilco’s Wilco (The Album), and, yes, U2’s No Line on the Horizon. I’ll keep my mouth shut about the Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam albums. Oops. Guess I didn’t do a very good job of that.

Finally, as to new sounds: this glo-fi thing? I am over the moon for it. Washed Out didn’t quite make the albums list, and neither did Neon Indian, and Memory Tapes’s inclusion was a veritable squeaker, but all three artists impressed me enormously, and all three will be present on my forthcoming songs list. To the degree that this fledgling sound is in fact a coherent sound, and that these three artists from among certainly many more may be considered its most salient representatives, this sound is deeply moving to me and comes as close as any electronic music I’ve heard to delivering the emotional goods that I expect from the best pop. It’ll either take over indie electropop altogether in the next two years or be forgotten utterly. We’ll see. It might depend entirely on what M.I.A. decides to do next.

And as to the two songs lists I’m working on: they are totally driving me crazy. Wish me luck.

1. The Dismemberment Plan: Change
2. Radiohead: Kid A
3. Joanna Newsom: The Milk-Eyed Mender
4. Jay-Z: The Blueprint
5. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
6. Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
7. Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity
8. Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
9. Radiohead: In Rainbows
10. Modest Mouse: The Moon & Antarctica
11. Joanna Newsom: Ys
12. OutKast: Stankonia
13. Animal Collective: Strawberry Jam
14. Death Cab for Cutie: We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes
15. Elliott Smith: Figure 8
16. Mastodon: Remission
17. The Hold Steady: Boys and Girls in America
18. Arcade Fire: Neon Bible
19. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca
20. Cut Copy: In Ghost Colours
21. Yo La Tengo: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
22. Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP
23. Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights
24. Björk: Vespertine
25. Fugazi: The Argument
26. Burial: Untrue
27. Sonic Youth: Murray Street
28. The Shins: Chutes Too Narrow
29. Interpol: Antics
30. Dirty Projectors: Rise Above
31. Arcade Fire: Funeral
32. Broken Social Scene: You Forgot It in People
33. My Morning Jacket: Z
34. The Joggers: With a Cape and a Cane
35. Coheed and Cambria: In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
36. Panda Bear: Person Pitch
37. The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
38. Menomena: Friend and Foe
39. Deerhoof: The Runners Four
40. M.I.A.: Arular
41. Kanye West: Graduation
42. Deerhunter: Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.
43. TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain
44. Strength: Going Strong
45. Sleater-Kinney: The Woods
46. Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport
47. Mastodon: Leviathan
48. Q and Not U: Different Damage
49. Animal Collective: Feels
50. Battles: Mirrored

The best year for music this decade? As I confidently asserted at the time, it was 2007, all ten of whose Top Ten finalists made this list of fifty.

The artist of the decade? The raw numbers would suggest Radiohead. If we restrict ourselves to artists who first emerged this decade (and we hopefully can agree on a definition of “emerge” without too much back-and-forth), it looks pretty sweet for Joanna Newsom.

No matter the top dog, it was a delightful and consistently surprising ten years for music, and I think the list reflects the diversity of the pearls that this unpronounceable decade had to offer. I don’t know why Change still seems so insuperably brilliant to me all these years later—maybe it’s me—but it’s possible that it really is one of the best albums of all time.

Thinking of slapping some genre-specific sub-lists together (metal, hip hop, etc.). I feel pretty good about this one, though.

So: don’t let my long absence from this blog fool you. I still live. It’s just that the blog was mostly used for movie reviews anyway, and I’ve stopped caring about movies because movies have stopped caring about me. And the trickle of trivial stuff I used to share on here has been relocated to twitter.com/quillh.

Deeply moving, heroic biopic about Harvey Milk (Penn), who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, holding the office of San Francisco City Supervisor for the better part of a year before his assassination in November of 1978. Penn’s beautifully openhearted performance lends the film the kind of rich humanity that movies of its ilk too often lack; first-time 29-year-old writer Dustin Lance Black also deserves kudos for having interwoven the events and themes of Milk’s political and personal lives so elegantly, making the necessary point that the gay rights issue is of course deeply personal to those fighting on its frontline. A very strong drama in a year sorely wanting for one. Penn and Black won well-deserved Oscars.

(2008) C-128m. D: Gus Van Sant. W: Dustin Lance Black. DP: Harris Savides. SEAN PENN, EMILE HIRSCH, JOSH BROLIN, DIEGO LUNA, JAMES FRANCO, ALLISON PILL, VICTOR GARBER, DENIS O’HARE. [R]

The usual apologies for not having been able to include literally every song I liked last year are in order. Had the list been allowed (by the gods) to run a little longer, such diverse and talented artists as Hercules and Love Affair, Crystal Castles, Sigur Rós, Frightened Rabbit, Dodos, and Amadou & Mariam might have enjoyed inclusion. It was not to be, alas. Here are the real winners.

1. M83: Kim & Jessie
2. Cut Copy: Out There on the Ice
3. Vampire Weekend: M79
4. Deerhunter: Nothing Ever Happened
5. Fleet Foxes: Drops in the River
6. Vampire Weekend: Oxford Comma
7. Femi Kuti: Tell Me
8. Beyoncé: Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)
9. Jay Reatard: Always Wanting More
10. Portishead: Silence
11. TV on the Radio: Golden Age
12. Q-Tip: Gettin’ Up
13. No Age: Teen Creeps
14. Santogold: L.E.S. Artistes
15. Women: Shaking Hand
16. David Byrne and Brian Eno: Strange Overtones
17. Gang Gang Dance: House Jam
18. Bon Iver: Re: Stacks
19. No Age: Cappo
20. Beach House: Gila
21. M83: Couleurs
22. Deerhunter: Never Stops
23. Fuck Buttons: Sweet Love for Planet Earth
24. Dragging an Ox Through Water: Houses and Homunculi
25. School of Seven Bells: Half Asleep
26. TV on the Radio: Love Dog
27. Fucked Up: Black Albino Bones
28. Fleet Foxes: Blue Ridge Mountains
29. High Places: From Stardust to Sentience
30. Lil Wayne: Shoot Me Down
31. Beach House: You Came to Me
32. The Walkmen: In the New Year
33. Deerhoof: Offend Maggie
34. Harvey Milk: Motown
35. No Age: Sleeper Hold
36. Empire of the Sun: Walking on a Dream
37. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Night of the Lotus Eaters
38. Cut Copy: Lights and Music
39. Passion Pit: Sleepyhead
40. Telepathe: I Can’t Stand It
41. The Laughing: Canopy
42. Death Cab for Cutie: Cath…
43. Lykke Li: Little Bit
44. Fleet Foxes: Ragged Wood
45. M83: We Own the Sky
46. Jay Reatard: See/Saw
47. Kanye West: Love Lockdown
48. Atlas Sound: River Card
49. Max Tundra: Number Our Days
50. Crystal Antlers: A Thousand Eyes

Now I can go get the new Animal Collective!

The big story is how many first-timers there are on here. I can hardly believe it myself, but the only artists on this list ever to appear on one of my previous Albums of the Year lists are TVotR and Portishead (who snuck Dummy in at #20 back in ‘94; yes, I have been doing this for that long). Firstly, there are five debut LPs on the list—Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver, Fuck Buttons, Fleet Foxes, and High Places—all of them knockouts. [If last year's singles-comp Weirdo Rippers doesn't count as an LP, then No Age's is the sixth. Last year's list, as a point of contrast, had one debut.] Then there are Deerhunter and M83—both of whom I formerly had had no better than a passing, rootless interest in—who impressed the shit out of me with albums that constituted quantum leaps in each group’s artistic maturation. Cut Copy utterly dominated my iPod all summer, and I had literally never heard of them before IGC dropped; same deal with The Mae Shi and GGD, who each broke out in spectacular fashion after toiling too long in obscurity. Local faves PJWA finally put out their magnum opus, two years in the making, and it was worth the wait. And finally, there were heartwarming comebacks in 2008 as well, most memorably from the aforementioned Portishead, but also from Q-Tip, who put out a record that actually challenges the Tribe back catalog, and Nick Cave, whose Bad Seeds’ release of this year sounds fresher than anything he’s done in a decade.

Also, props to Jay Reatard, whose Matador Singles ‘08 tragically fails to qualify for consideration on the same grounds on which Weirdo Rippers was excluded last year (i.e. it’s a compilation of singles, not an LP). Format classification aside, it (MS’08) is one of the most sublimely perfect punk rock collections to be released in years, and it will be well-represented on my Songs list.

That about sums it up. Hopefully I won’t regret any of my placements this year as badly as I regret last year’s placement of Burial’s Untrue and Arcade Fire’s colossal Neon Bible. [Both should've been higher.]

Said Songs list will follow soon; that one’s much tougher to get together.