Librarians – Present Passed
Postfact Records (3/9/10)
Indie rock / Pop / Psychedelic

Like some benevolent pop overlord, Animal Collective dominated 2009 with a synth-drenched fist of genius, so it’s unsurprising that their sound has begun to seep into the diets and DNA of those who you might consider downwind of them in the musical food chain.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is Librarians’ biggest problem with their latest release, Present Passed. The considerable influence and sway that hangs over every moment clouds whatever the band are trying to create here and you’re just left thinking you’re listening to a collection of Animal Collective demos and cuts with the occasional brief foray into a mundane indie-rock vein.

The vocal and synth sounds feel like a running sprint to catch up to the flatbed psychedelic pop bandwagon of 2009 as it speeds by and, just when you think the band may have stumbled upon pastures new, they revert to their Merriweather aping in an attempt to forge a build-up, chorus or climax.

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Close Your Eyes – We Will Overcome
Victory Records (2/16/10)
Pop-punk / Hardcore

The debut album by Close Your Eyes has been tagged under the sound-alike banners of Rise Against, New Found Glory and A Day to Remember, and you can hear why from the offset.

Although touted as the big hardcore release of 2010 so far, stay away if you’re expecting something gritty, edgy and, well… hard. This is “hardcore” in the current trend of beat-down, stuffed, riff-infused, heavied-up pop-punk; polished to perfection and sprinkled with chart-friendly melodies and anthemic sing-a-longs.

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KiNDERGARTEN – Small
Self-released (2/10: available on iTunes)
Rock / Funk / Punk

So, apparently, KiNDERGARTEN are the “new” sound of New York, made up of equal parts Talking Heads, Television, Elvis Costello, David Bowie and Lou Reed, with a touch of Prince.

Besides Bowie and Prince, I’m not so sure. The idea that this is the “new” sound of New York when there are bands such as Yeasayer and Vampire Weekend around is just nonsense.

If I were to write this band an ingredient list it would go as follows: Tay Zonday and his “Chocolate Rain”, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, the standard distorted chug of a guitar swaggering through a pop song, the vocal yaps and yelps of Ziggy Stardust and the glammed-up, fabulously operatic tendencies of Queen.

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The Laughing Man – A Palace for Alice
Kotori Studios (2009)
Rock / Blues / Funk / Folk

I say, “fusion,” and your mind probably says, “No.”

That image of the middle-aged men in the awfully loud shirts, trying to cram as much in the way of cheesy latin pastiches and bad bebop into their sweating attempts to make a guitar weep in case it might make them look young or sexy. They do it because they can’t afford a sports car or the maintenance on a gold-digging early twenty-something. Imagine a similar looking man listening to that 27-disk super set of such music, spinning away at his air guitar because the sports car and money-related lady is out of reach and who can’t play anything past “Kum Ba Yah” on a six string. Fusion has a bad rep.

Fortunately, the world has The Laughing Man and their thirteen-track debut full of prefix- and suffix-bending fusion, but without the desperation or pretenses. Or the shirts.

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Creature with the Atom Brain – Transylvania
The End Records (2/2/10)
Rock / Alternative

Chances are you will have heard this album a million times before, under different titles and by different bands. It’s not a terrible release, per se, for this Belgian quartet, but it also never achieves anything above mediocrity.

The vocals and guitar effects are a constant disappointment, sounding uninspired and added in for the sake of it. The songwriting often feels hollow and underdeveloped, dragging down the obvious efforts to project a sense of attitude and brooding charisma, which fall flat at every turn.

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UB40 – Food for Thought [DVD]
Eagle Rock Entertainment (11/10/09)
Unrated
81 minutes

UB40 are the undisputed kings of British reggae, and Food for Thought is another installment from the German television series Rockpalast. Filmed in July 1981, the concert takes place at the Sartory-Sale in Cologne, shortly after the release of the band’s second album, Present Arms. The set is predominately taken from this album and their debut, Signing Off.

Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders is credited with giving the band its first break after witnessing them at a local pub in Birmingham, and signing them up to support for her band on tour. Formed in 1978 by a bunch of friends attending different colleges, the band started promoting their group before any of them could play instruments. After lead singer Ali Campbell received settlement money from a bar fight on his seventeenth birthday, the band was finally able to purchase the much coveted noise makers needed to make sound.

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Thin Lizzy – Are You Ready? [DVD]
Eagle Rock Entertainment (11/10/09)
Unrated
112 minutes

Another historic concert from the German-based Rockpalast television series, Thin Lizzy’s Are you Ready? is a rousing look back at one of the most significant and exciting hard-rock bands to appear out of the mid-’70s. Being one of the first acts to employ a sonic, dual-lead guitar attack, Ireland’s favorite sons have been credited as a major influence on a great number of popular heavy-metal acts as well.

Recorded in 1981, this footage shows quite an energetic display of showmanship, especially since lead singer/bassist Phil Lynott and guitarist Scott Gorham were known heroin users at this time. Hey, at least they waited until the after party to get their junk on and gave the audience a very memorable show. The group’s “guitar player revolving door” was temporarily closed with Snowy White as the second lead player, matching harmonies and trading solos with Gorham. Brian Downey on drums and Darren Wharton on keyboards round out the line-up.

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It was a hectic year, and trying to come up with a top-10 list to close things out seemed like an almost overwhelming task. Where there really 10 albums that stood out to me? Well, when I finally sat down to build and rank a list, I realized there were, and then some. There were obvious picks, happy surprises, and a couple that came out of left field and completely blew me away. At the end of the day, this represented, to me, the best 2009 had to offer.

So, without further ado…

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Roxy Music – The Story of Roxy Music: More Than This
Eagle Records / Fontana (10/20/09)
Unrated
94 minutes

As the early ’70s saw the music world still with the taste of hippies and blues on its tongue, in waltzed Roxy Music. Fresh out of art school, Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno banded together to form the group, which is one of the most influential to come out of the U.K.

The Story Of Roxy Music: More Than This, relives the creation of Roxy in 1971, their debut album Roxy Music, and all the way to the 2006 Dock Rock London reunion performance. Roxy needs a documentary of sorts, as they are as much a visual band as they are musical. Being an initiator of the avant-garde glam-rock scene, the image they portrayed told half, while the music completed the story. More Than This, gives a glimpse into what it may have been like to see or hear Roxy for the first time.

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Mudvayne – Mudvayne
Epic (12/21/09)
Metal

With Mudvayne’s latest opus, the self-titled, fifth studio excursion for the band, people seem a little too wrapped up in the presentation (the packaging was printed in black-light-reactant ink and the band is not doing promotion behind the effort) and are overlooking the most important part: the music.

Mudvayne is a return to form (of sorts) for the group, which had experimented with a more rock-tinged approach on 2008’s The New Game. While not as complex as their debut full-length (L.D. 50) and not as epic as their best offering to date (Lost and Found) the album still has a lot going for it. Besides the bass-heavy, technical dissection of in-your-face beats (tock-tock-tock) that have become a Mudvayne staple, the band seems to have ratcheted up the extremes at each end of the musical spectrum.

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