Barzin’s Notes to an Absent Lover isn’t typically the type of album that would make it onto my short list of favorites, but there is something about the delicate nature of the record’s near-perfect arrangements that really took a hold on me in 2009. Not to say that I shy away from quiet folk, in [...]

Every year or so I stumble upon a somewhat obscure album that I fall completely in love with and spend the next several months trying to force on all of my friends and anyone else who will listen. I become “that guy,” singing the praises of some band that you have never heard of and [...]

Our first mention of Pale Air Singers came way back in May when I dropped a drunken review of their debut album into the Citizen Dick ether. Since then it has been one of a very small handful of albums that I have made a point to squeeze into my regular rotation this year. I [...]

The infectious rhythmic strum of “Two” hit the blogosphere like a wildfire earlier this year, and, fittingly, the rest of the album wandered into the stratosphere just as quickly.  We’re hugely aware that Hospice is on nearly every major year-end list, and our inclusion isn’t obligatory.  The album is simply that good.  The soft underbelly [...]

Hardly Art put up a little stand underneath the tent at The Pitchfork Festival this summer, and while there’s not a lot of time to scurry back and forth between acts on each of the three stages, we were able to stop and talk to Sarah who was peddling all sorts of merchandise and promoting [...]

Bear in Heaven is coming to play for students at Case Western Reserve early in the new year, and even if I have to crawl inside a guitar case to smuggle myself into the show, I’ll somehow manage.  To put it mildly, Brooklyn-based Bear in Heaven’s Beast Rest Forth Mouth was a huge blast of [...]

I just thought I’d tell you.  All the demons have been slain.  Cotton Jones’ Paranoid Cocoon was softly released by Suicide Squeeze records to not a whole lot of fanfare early in 2009, and it holds quite a bit of sentimental value to most of the writers here.  I reviewed this album in late January [...]

The greatest thing about year end reviewing is that nobody sets any sort of rule about how long I’m supposed to spend with an album before I can attest to its value. Nobody’s technically allowed to question or argue my assessment process or evaluation techniques, right? It’s my list, so buzz off (hypothetically). [...]

This is, in effect, something of an elegy. Harlem Shakes’ Technicolor Health got a ton of spins at Citizen Dick’s Eastern Campus over the past twelve months (at least partially because Mrs. Citizen fell in love with it on the first listen); there are a couple of songs on the album that are composed [...]

It makes me proud to put this one on the list. It’s not homerism, but a legitimate endorsement of a really good record that just happens to be a product of Clevelanders. The Modern Electric could be from Topeka and I’d love this record. For what it is, essentially a really distilled [...]

I feel a smidge guilty about it, but this record requires almost no discussion. There’s no lengthy introduction for this one, no psuedo-academic connection to some broader purpose, no detailed discussion of the album track-by track, no deep analysis of the band’s influences. None of it is needed. This record (I think) [...]

Mrs. Citizen got me Hallowed Ground on vinyl for Christmas.  (I know this, even though we’re a few days before Christmas, because we’re bad at keeping secrets.  I’ve managed to keep her gifts under wraps, but this is the first year in memory that I didn’t just hand them over as soon as I got [...]

Fever Ray’s self-titled 2009 album is, hugely, the biggest left turn on my year end list.  However, I emphatically believe that any short list of albums is replete without this album getting mentioned.  It’s masterful, more accessible than Karin Dreijer’s previous standout material (The Knife), and pulsing with darkness and mystique.  It spans multiple genres, [...]

This October album, as crisp as fall leaves, The Clientele have firmly established themselves as the class of the independent music world.  Bonfires on the Heath is, in all actuality, the most impeccably produced and arranged album I’ve heard in quite a few years.  From open to close, the album screams intelligence and production value.  [...]

In my review of Reservoir earlier this year, I immediately referenced Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and David Byrne within the first paragraph, either mildly pointing to my lunacy or, perhaps, marking that I was right on the money.  We’ve seen imitations and reference points to the sound of The Talking Heads for years, and [...]

Full disclosure:  You could lock me in a room and play “The Mercy Wheel” three hundred times in a row and I’ll only grow stronger and more resolute in my already lofty opinions on the beauty of When The Devil’s Loose.  Bondy weaves a wicked web of edgy folk, spanning basic country croons to higher [...]

You know, I’m sure, that Pitchfork is pumping out their best 50 albums of 2009 list this week.  Today, in fact, you can see the records that Pitchfork deemed 25th best through absolute 1st best.  That’s how those cats do things: project an image of certainty and finality through the ascription of meaningless quantifiers to [...]

For a majority of albums on our “Best Albums of 2009 List,” I could determine from the jump that they were going to be on perpetual repeat.  I’m usually pretty good about culling albums categorically within one or two listens.  Vetiver’s Sub Pop release, Tight Knit, defied all logic for me this year.  Without exaggeration, [...]

As we roll through our “Best Albums of 2009” list, inevitably we’re going to have a few albums that aren’t showing up everywhere else.  From what I can gather, Pontiak’s Maker isn’t garnering anywhere near as much praise as it should be at the close of the year.  In my March review of Maker, I [...]

At the tail end of the summer, The Low Anthem rolled through Cleveland, a mere pit stop en route to Lollapalooza in Chicago.  As we’ve mentioned throughout the year, this is pretty typical.  Cleveland hosts the late Tuesday night shows as road weary musicians make the trek across the midwest.  It’s a rare occasion that [...]