FILTER’s Top 10 of 2009, Day 3: Joe D’Agostino and Matt Whipple of Cymbals Eat Guitars

Joe D'Agostino and Matt Whipple of Cymbals Eat Guitars

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

Essential tour listening.  This record remained in our CD player for our entire US run with the Pains of Being Pure At Heart.  The percussion alone is enough to justify a hundred listens.  These dudes are not fucking around.  Too bad Doobie Bro-bro had to go and up the ante with his version of "While You Wait For The Others"...  Also, it's a neat trick to have two songs with passages containing the exact same melodic phrasing ("Our haven on/ the southern point/ is calling us", "The crowds that light/ the carnival/ are calling us"-- or whatever the lyrics are) that would BOTH make my shortlist for songs of the year.  Maybe this was some kind of motif or whatever.  That's what Brian thinks, but he also went to school for music.  –Joe

Pure ear-candy.  I know a lot of praise has been heaped upon it already, but seriously..."Two Weeks"...what a song.  Definitely my favorite song of 2009.  I want to be Chris Taylor's bass line.  Every time I try to revisit just one song I end up listening to the whole thing.  I remember seeing them play some of the songs at All Points West in 2008 and having that disintegrating memory of what the new songs sounded like made hearing the actual record for the first time extra special.  I was very glad to learn my new band mates loved this record as much as I did when I joined CEG.  –Whipple

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Dizzying, intimidating technical proficiency coupled with genuine eccentricity, a true rarity.  We had the privilege of playing with them at Haverford College in Pennsylvania last February.  My guitar amplifier shit out during soundcheck and I was forced to play through a dusty crate bass amp they had laying around in a broom closet.  Everything I played sounded mewling and wimpy; it was possibly the most mortifying forty minutes of my life, but once these guys took the stage my anxiety and intense feelings of inferiority were washed away.  They were working out their new material that would appear on BO, and it sounded godly.  Godly.  I should have felt worse after such a display I guess, but I was healed instead.

Atlas Sound - Logos

This man should make a record a week forever and ever.  We played Rough Trade East in London this past monday where Logos is record of the month, and they had a little blurb that Bradford wrote about how the material came together.  Apparently dude doesn't even remember recording some of the songs.  He shits out music that most people would have to labor for months to create.  He is a BADASS.  –Joe
I didn't find myself thinking I liked this record that much after a first listen, but they played it over the PA after our in-store at Rough Trade the other night and it's a serious grower.  As we cased up our gear I found myself really wanting to hear it on headphones and was glad to have it on my iPod.  "Walkabout" is such a perfect storm of hooks.  It has been in my head this whole tour.  I really like "Sheila" and "Kid Klimax" as well.  The record seems to be more song-oriented and less soundscape-y which I really like, as much as I do enjoy that end of the Bradford Cox spectrum. –Whipple

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

I love the little lilting squeak he makes at the end of every single vocal phrase.  This is something I would normally hate like... a lot?  but everything about Phoenix's music is very thrilling and appealing to me.  GG, Phoenix.  –Joe

If you don't like this record you may need a fun transplant.  "Lisztomania" is a close 2nd to "Two Weeks" as my favorite song of the year.  –Whipple

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Their first "indie" release since 1988? ...NBD.  If Rather Ripped found them tightening and tidying this record goes in the opposite direction...a little bit more deconstructed, a little bit louder, more "Sonic Youth-y".  Not that far left of center for them but it's got everything there is to love about Sonic Youth in it.  Thurston's and Kim's grunts on "Anti-Orgasm", the gorgeous hook melody on "Antenna"...things that make me smile.  And Mark Ibold just destroys.  So perfectly complimentary.  The bass intro to "What We Know" with Steve Shelley's disengaged snare is killer.  –Whipple