Daves Faves 2009

There's such a love hate relationship with this ritual. Those of you who partake in this annual exercise know the struggle. With so much great music this past year, where, who, what, when, how to begin? Well, fortunately with the help of Rhapsody (yes, another plug) I've been dropping my faves into a playlist throughout the year. So, here in December, it just comes down to taking a look back, arranging and pairing it down to a CD length mix. 80 minutes of music; easy enough right? Not so much with roughly 100 tunes that made it into the 2009 "drop box" of faves. But in the end I made some compromises and came up with a mix that I think represents my year in music pretty well. There's a bit of everything in there. Some highs, some lows, but that's how the story goes. So, now, without further ado, Daves Faves 2009...

(Download Here)

Album art: 2009 was the year of the black cat. (R.I.P. Lucy / Welcome little Louie)

1---Black & Blue--------Miike Snow

2---Smile Upon Me-------Passion Pit
3---1901----------------Phoenix
4---Psychic City--------Yacht
5---Set You On Fire-----Think About Life
6---Deadbeat Summer-----Neon Indian
7---Walking On A Dream--Empire Of The Sun
8---Bluish--------------Animal Collective
9---Dear God------------Monsters Of Folk
10--Gotta Cheer Up------Cotton Jones
11--Blood Bank----------Bon Iver
12--Blue Skies----------Noah and the Whale
13--Evil----------------Beads
14--Until We Bleed------Kleerup (Feat. Lykke Li)
15--Never Never---------Little Dragon
16--Islands-------------The xx
17--Leap----------------The Cave Singers
18--Hysteric------------Yeah Yeah Yeahs
19--Sweet Disposition---The Temper Trap

Rhapsody Commercial

So the final Rhapsody commercials I'm featured in will start airing tonight on MTV networks. It was a memorable process to go through and it's been fun to see how they all turned out. The Rhapsody team, and MTV film crew were excellent. Director Brennan Stasiewicz did a great job capturing the "moments" and maintaining a sense of authenticity other such "reality" spots often lack.
If your interested, check out more of my thoughts on the commercial spot and music in general on the real networks blog.
Also, you can look for my Daves Faves 2009 playlist on Rhapsody Playlist Central next week!




A little background on this one. This is the spot where they'd give me a song to look up and describe a moment it would be perfect for. The reason I look so confused at first is because, well, I am. Just before the Lamb of God song shown, I was listening to and describing mellow, sentimental stuff like Bon Iver, etc. So the sound of shredding metal was a shocker no doubt! The only thing I could think of was the guy at the corner store we call Heavy Metal. Every time we walk into the store he's blasting some hard core death metal that gives a good jolt to the system; just like this moment! I hope Metal don't mind the reference!

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Found out they were playing last night at Neumo's so we decided to stick around and see if we could get into the show. With the help of my cardboard sign and Colleen's sweet Southern charm the lady in the box office granted us a few extra tickets after selling out of the extra tickets to the already sold out show. So we made it in and the show was great!
First, the opener Local Natives was fantastic. (Kind of like Yeasayer.) The next band Fools Gold was really high energy with a afro-latin flavor that got the crowd movin. Then all 11 of ES & the MZs filled the stage. Definitely worth the trouble to see them. With such a big arrangement it of course is visually a great show, but they got into the crowd as well. It's been a while since I've seen an entire Seattle crowd doing the bounce dance in unison. Much fun. They got this Neo Hippie AM Gold thing going on that is super fun. Kinda of a fusion of Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Karen Dalton, and the Polyphonic Spree. Or maybe what Arcade Fire would sound like if they were to record an album from a 1970s California hippie commune. I don't know, its just good.

Take Me Home Love

If this song don't make ya wanna get up and swing around the living room then you's a hopeless soul. The album version is great, but seeing their performance makes it even more better; love is infectious man, isn't life rad?

Think About Life

More 80's inspired synth-pop to make your day a little more gay. (like thsuper happy, duh.)

Aye Ya Ya Ya

We spent this Thanksgiving weekend (Wednesday night till Monday morning) up at Lake Wenatchee with our dear friends Chris and Mere. Most of the time was spent eating, lounging, playing dominoes, and of course, listening to music. The song I will forever associate with this memorable weekend is Yacht's Psychic City. The perfect song for havin fun doin nuthin with your people...

Constant Surprises

Little Dragon is one of those groups that has been lingering in my mind for a while, but for whatever reason hadn't got the play they deserve, until now. I first fell in love with Swedish-Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano's voice on Koop's Koop Island record. Her smokey-smooth vocal stylings over Koop's sophisticated electro jazz were instant faves (she's easy on the eyes as well). Unfortunately, at the time, I didn't know much more about her until my dear friend and fellow music nut Ann turned me on to the Little Dragon album. Still, I hadn't given it the attention it deserves until the new release Machine Dreams came out recently. Listening to it I was inspired to revisit their debut and now I have both albums in heavy rotation where they should be. Constant surprises...