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Showing posts from January, 2010

Best of 2009: My Picks

Once again, I have two albums as my top album of the year because they are both so masterful that I cannot choose between them: Golden Apples of the Sun by Caroline Herring and Give Up the Ghost by Brandi Carlile. These are the two albums of 2009 that anyone who really loves great music (read: that which is most likely not on contemporary mainstream radio) must buy right now. Last year Caroline Herring topped my list (in a tie with Ben Sollee’s Learning to Bend ) with her album Lantana , a record that I believe to be as packed with as many keen observations about humanity and the Gothic South as the best of Flannery O’Connor or Lucinda Williams. The standout track on that album, “Paper Gown,” a modern murder ballad about Susan Smith, is among the best songs I’ve ever heard in my life . I didn’t think she’d ever be able to outdo herself, but then she goes and records the best album of 2009, and a modern masterpiece: Golden Apples of the Sun . If there was any justice