If it’s snowing in December, it must mean year-end lists. In addition to recess’ own which ran a couple weeks ago, millions of others have surfaced across the interweb, but below are a few especially noteworthy ones. Check it out:
Everyone and Mac McCaughan’s mother at Merge Records has dropped a list over at their blog
The good folks over at Trekky Records have compiled some really stellar lists in the form of “TRK Best of 2k9″ (My biased favorites: Will Hackney, Clare Connolly, Martin Anderson — Bill Callahan and Mount Eerie!)
A bunch of people dropped guests lists on Pitchfork, among them lots of Merge Artists (Jeremy Gara, Dan Bejar, etc.) and rising star Chaz Bundick who we caught up with earlier this year
Karen Mann has her five favorite local releases on her blog
Megafaun recount some of their favorite things of the year (and release a cover of “I Saw Three Ships”) on Hometapes’ blog as part of the label’s 8 Days of Hometapes
All Songs Considered (and NPR music) always puts together smart pieces and their year-end list is good, but this map is possibly better
Finally, I just want to throw in Freddy Ruppert’s year-end list because he has some great picks on there, but also because the Former Ghosts’ debut album was really spectacular.
You should be really excited right now because Troika 2009 starts today. What looks like the best iteration of the Troika Music Festival tonight kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. at Durham Central Park with the Beast and Megafaun. We previewed some of the shows you should definitely check out (the aforementioned one among them) in today’s recess. You can check it out here:
Also noteworthy (I could go on about all the shows–Pipe!–but Trekky has a good guide here) is the Rock Paper Scissors art/music event Saturday afternoon. If nothing else, you can be a humanitarian and buy some of Red Collar drummer Jonathan Truesdale photos to help him work out some medical bills caused by CMJ (see the story for clarification).
See you at Troika.
[Photo of Bowerbirds in Paris by Oliver Peel. Courtesy Flickr.]
Megafaun just released the video for “Impressions of the Past” from Gather, Form and Fly, which, to anyone who was at the Arts Center show in August, will seem pretty familiar. Nonetheless, it’s pretty great and an excellent song. Also, be sure to catch them Thursday in downtown Durham for the Troika kick-off (the Beast opens.)
Midtown Dickens celebrated the release of their second LP, Lanterns, Friday at the Duke Coffeehouse. The band–augmented by a quartet of horns and Megafaun’s Brad and Phil Cook–spent the time between songs thanking all their friends and those who enabled the album–it was like a bearable Oscars acceptance speech with great metaphors about babies. But a grateful Midtown Dickens was matched by an audience even more grateful for the energetic, joyful performance. Check out the three videos below of Midtown Dickens performing some of the tracks from Lanterns. (And if you are wondering about the head that occasionally pops on screen–that’s Kym Registers mom standing front row-center.)
This year’s Troika Music Festival just got a lot better and there are 15 reasons why. The lineup now includes 15 more bands, among them Megafaun, the Love Language, Red Collar, Pipe (!) and Butterflies. The schedule for this year’s festival will be released later this week. Ticket sales for Durham’s November 5-7 music festival will also begin later this week. Check back her for further updates and below for the new additions to Troika.
