Jeremy of Vagrant Records Best Albums of ’09

Best Albums of ’09

Jeremy Maciak is Vagrant’s resident publicist and he would like to share with you some albums he really enjoyed this past year from his label and others.

Favorite Vagrant Releases:

Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros – Up From Below

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ debut album, “Up From Below,” is full of thumping, pounding rhythms and folksy arrangements that mingle with falsetto vocals, rich melodies and a just about anything else you can think of. Add to that a dozen or so other musicians which make up The Magnetic Zeros and you have a recipe for success.

2009 release, the seventh studio album from the ever-changing project led by singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mark Oliver Everett (aka E). Hombre Lobo was recorded entirely at E’s studio in Los Angeles with Koool G Murder (bass, keyboards and guitar) and Knuckles (drums and percussion). Features the first single ‘Fresh Blood’.

School of Seven Bells’ music is full of tensions—Curtis’ gentle guitars wrap around jagged beats; silky vocals hide behind grumpy, alien synthesizers—but the resulting songs are effortlessly cohesive, and insidiously catchy. Elements of dream-pop, Afrobeat, IDM, and 4AD’s gauzier moments provide a constantly shifting frame for the Dehezas’ lyrics, which they write as mysterious missives between the School’s imaginary seven members. On their Ghostly debut, Alpinisms, we get the impression that the three seasoned musicians have taken up full-time residence in a dizzying fantasy world; they move freely within the realm of pickpockets and dreamers, composing a soundtrack according to their own odd, beautiful logic.

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