Top 20 of 2009: 20-11

Yeah, I know we're already half a month into 2010 but that's given me ample time to reflect upon the bounty of musical riches that 2009 gave us. This list went through a lot of editing and reflection to get to it's present form and I hope readers get something out of it.

20. Candlemass - Death Magic Doom
Was it really three years ago already that Candlemass announced Solitude Aeturnus vocalist Robert Lowe would be joining their ranks? In that time the band has toured the world (including the U.S. for the first time in seventeen years), put out an EP and this confident, eight-song full-length release. The music is aggressive, dark and intense, probably some of the strongest material this band has ever put out. DMD also finds Lowe coming into his own as Candlemass' mouthpiece, delivering an assured, malevolent and confident vocal performance that outshines 2007's King of the Grey Islands.

Recommended Tracks: Demon of the Deep, House of 1000 Voices, Hammer of Doom

19. Big Business - Mind the Drift
These guys are busy, between touring with the Melvins and as themselves it's a wonder they have any time to write and record new Big Business material. it's a good thing they do, because this record has some of the best material the band has ever written. With the addition of Toshi as a full-time guitarist (rather than just a live player), BB has the opportunity to explore all sorts of textural nuances they never could have otherwise in a duo context. Rather than just play rhythm, Toshi plays screaming lead licks and textures that compliment the already massive wall of distorted bass.

Recommended Tracks: Cats, Mice, The Drift, Theme From Big Business II

18. Wino - Punctuated Equilibrium

As a Wino fan, I bought all of the Hidden Hand's material despite my reservations about its' quality and the horrific vocals of bassist Bruce Falkinburg. I was kinda relieved when the band broke up, knowing that whatever project Mr. Weinrich took part in next would probably have less grating vocal stylings. Lo and behold I was right! January 2009 brought us this colossal gem, an album Wino has been waiting his entire career to unleash on the unsuspecting masses. A lot of why this album works has to do with the fantastic rhythm section of Clutch's Jean-Paul Gaster and Joe Blank (RIP), whose drum and bass stylings add a loose, funky classic rock groove to the proceedings. And those riffs! It's refreshing to hear Wino let rip as only he can, unfettered by the restrictions of a lesser band.

Recomended Tracks: Punctuated Equilibrium, The Woman in the Orange Pants, Secret Realm Devotion

17. Vektor - Black Future
For a great deal of 2007 and 2008 you couldn't swing a vintage pair of 1980s Converse Chuck Taylors without hitting someone holding a neo-thrash album. This cute trend, which attempts to emulate the sounds of such bands as Testament, DRI, old Slayer and Exodus, is full of seventeen-year-old losers writing songs about beating up poseurs, rocking out in the pit and wearing daddy's old patch jackets. Where bands like Municipal Waste were content to create their own visual aesthetic and sound based on the bygone era of eighties thrash, countless other bands swooped in to rip off classic artists in an attempt to cash in. This is not the case with Vektor. At first glance, their artwork (and logo!) paint them as nothing more than Voivod rip-off artists. Musically, this is not the case. Vektor, on their second album, whips together a frenzied cocktail of old Voivod, Coroner, Watchtower and Destruction into a potent blend of sonic destruction. Even the production sounds distinctly late eighties, whereas the music itself points squarely towards the future of the thrash genre.

Recommended Tracks: Black Future, Forests of Legend, Hunger For Violence, Accelerating Universe

16. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post PavillionThis is probably the prettiest sounding album on the list, and with damn good reason. It has hooks like a Japanese whaling boat that sink in and (unlike a ship used to kill innocent sea mammals) won't tear you apart. On this release, the band temporarily abandons some of their more experimental/avant-garde tendencies and makes a shimmering alt-pop masterpiece that leaves its sonic imprint on your brain long after the last listen.

Recommended Tracks: My Girls, Summertime Clothes, Lion in A Coma

15. Eagle Twin - The Unkindness of Crows
The twisted, drunken lovechild of Tom Waits and Scott Kelly has noisy baritone guitar intercourse with the heaviest-hitting drummer this side of Dale Crover. The music itself is dense, noisy, twisting and turning, piling Gentry Densley's whiskey-soaked blues baritone on top of some of the heaviest riffs to see release in 2009. These guys deliver live, too, a rare feat for a two-piece built upon such density.

Recommended Tracks: In The Beginning Was the Scream, Storytelling of Ravens, Crow Hymn

14. Converge - Axe to FallConverge take a step back from their brutal 2006 offering No Heroes and decide to paint outside the lines a little bit. This plays out like a combination of their last three efforts, taking the assured, confident songwriting of No Heroes, the dark experimentation of You Fail Me and the unbridled aggression of Jane Doe and combining them in one effort. Guitar solos and melodic vocals on a Converge album? Hell yes. Never worked better before.

Recommended Tracks: Dark Horse, Reap What You Sow, Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast, Cruel Bloom, Wishing Well

13. Sunn O))) - Monoliths and DimensionsSunn's new album is like the continuation of the steps made forward on Altar and Oracle. The addition of brass instruments and the continued contribution of Attila Csihar on vocals creates a dark, impenetrable atmosphere that envelops the listener. I'd also like to point out the fantastic artwork - this is a record to be experienced in full at 2 AM, under some otherworldly influences with the album art spread out in front of you.

12. Cable - The Failed Convict
A massively underrated band who's broken up countless times and should be as big as their contemporaries Coalesce and Isis, Cable reunited to play some shows in 2008 and then released this album in late August to almost nonexistent reception. This is a shame, because on their sixth full-length release Cable show a great deal of diversity. The Failed Convict is a concept album about, well, a convict. I won't spoil the story but needless to say, he isn't a very good convict. Luckily for us, the music is great, combining southern rock influences, noisy post-hardcore, sludge and other elements into a diverse and potent stew. And the gang vocals! Holy shit, the gang vocals.

Recommended Tracks: Be the Wolf (holy southern chain gang vocals, Batman!), The Smashing Machine, Men on Mountains, Running Out of Roads to Ride

11. Gnaw Their Tongues - All the Dread Magnificence of PerversityThis is one of those albums that made me feel like taking a shower after listening to it. It's kinda like the audio equivalent of Lars Von Trier's fantastic Antichrist. At first I felt as though I needed a really good reason to justify liking something like this. My familiarity with noise is very limited - I'm not quite sure at times how to judge the genre on its own merits beyond "this doesn't annoy me." The more I listen to this, the more I hear the various layers and sounds Mories has deliberately laid down for the listener to discover. The atmosphere is thick, disquieting and creates an aura of repulsion and sickness that few recordings managed to get across in 2009.

Coming soon: 10-1, Top Movies of 2009 and the Top Films of the Decade!!!!

Stoner by John Williams

If you're like me, you probably spend more time browsing at Borders than you do actually shopping there. Because books are so readily available cheaply it's much easier to treat a visit to Borders as research - find out what books are out and then go to your nearest secondhand store or library book sale and get them for a fraction of the cost.

One day many months ago I was browsing the fiction/literature section of my local mall's Borders when I came across a title that caught my eye. I saw the title Stoner and had a good laugh. Huhuhu, "Stoner." Like a pothead. Someone who gets high recreationally. I then picked up the book and was surprised to see that the cover was not, in fact, a white guy with dreadlocks and a bong, but a painting of a stoic, dignified-looking man set against a drab tan background. Intrigued further, I read the description on the back of the book and found it was first published in 1965, before the word "stoner" became popular vernacular for marijuana user. In fact, "Stoner" is the title character's last name!

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when my town library has their annual book sale. Books are dirt cheap ($1 for trade paperbacks? hell yes!) and in large amounts. I had the great fortune of finding a copy of Stoner there and quickly dug into it.

The book focuses on one William Stoner, the son of poor farmers who in 1910 at the age of nineteen goes off to Columbia University to study soil chemistry, hopefully to one day return home and allow the family farm to prosper. He lives with distant cousins, doing farm work to pay for his room and board. Stoner quickly discovers that he is not destined to till the earth like his father - rather he takes a sophomore year literature course that changes his life and begins a life-long love affair with the written word. From there Stoner graduates, becoming a student teacher and eventually pursuing a doctorate.

Set against the backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century, the perpetual late bloomer finds himself falling in and out of love, fathering a child, having a late-in-life affair and discovering that the two constants in his life - literature and the love of his daughter are the two things that keep life worth living. Although he endures many tragedies throughout the novel, Williams does not paint Stoner as a tragic character. Instead, Stoner endures and perseveres almost heroically, turning what would be an otherwise mediocre existence into an inspiring one.

Williams takes a character whose life should be by all accounts boring and transforms him into someone fascinating and lifelike through the simplicity and emotive qualities of his writing. The way he describes Stoner's blooming love of literature is evocative of a first love. He describes the hero's lone walks through the library as

"...he wandered through the stacks, among the thousands of books, inhaling the musty odor of leather, cloth and drying page as if it were an exotic incense. Sometimes he would pause, remove a volume from the shelves, and hold it for a moment in his large hands, which tingled at the still unfamiliar feel of the spine and board and unresisting page. Then he would leaf through the book, reading a paragraph here and there, his stiff fingers careful as they turned the pages, as if in their clumsiness they might tear and destroy what they took such pains to uncover."

Stoner displays a similar awkwardness when he first meets Edith, his future wife. Her character is fascinating. She is a proper lady, brought up to play piano delicately and keep house in a moderately wealthy family. Initially their relationship plays out in a "love at first sight" manner where the two are clearly enamored of one another, but as the relationship progresses both find they have very little in common.

Much of the couple's relationship deals with the large amount of sexual repression and inexperience both have, which ends up being one of the key ingredients that makes their marriage so damning. Nowhere is this summed up as best as it is on their honeymoon night, where Stoner is consumed with desire but finds

"...Edith was in bed with the covers pulled to her chin, her face turned upward, her eyes closed, a thin frown creasing her forehead. ...Stoner undressed and got into bed beside her. For several moments he lay with his desire, which had become an impersonal thing, belonging to himself alone. He spoke to Edith, as if to find a haven for what he felt; she did not answer. He put his hand upon her and felt beneath the thin cloth of her nightgown the flesh he had longed for. He moved his hand upon her; she did not stir; her frown deepened. Again he spoke, saying her name to silence; then he moved his body upon her, gentle in his clumsiness. When he touched the softness of her thighs she turned her head sharply away and lifted her arm to cover her eyes. She made no sound."

In fact, the only time her character shows any sort of sexual desire is when she finally decides she wants to conceive, during which time she spends the day at home in the dark, awaiting her husband's return so they can have lustful, animalistic sex. Their relationship is incredibly unhealthy - it exists in extremes without any sort of love or communication to balance them out.

I feel as if I could go on all day about this book. I actually stayed up until 5 AM the other night finishing it because I couldn't put it down. The subtle and moving qualities of Williams' writing, the sharpness of his characterizations and the almost existential tone of Stoner's life wove a spell over me from which I had no escape. This criminally overlooked novel was reprinted in 2007 by the New York Review of Books, hopefully giving countless other readers the opportunity to discover it for the first time as I have. It paints a picture of a man who stands like a sturdy redwood tree in the middle of a tornado: alone against the forces that would otherwise tear him down.