Can You Dig It?'s year-end top 10 lists

Any blogger worth his or her bandwith posts a year-end top 10 list about something, so here's mine.

10 Favorite Albums of 2009

10. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros/Self-titled



Their weird hippie vibe really got in my brain. Not every song on the album is listenable, but the unbelievable opener "40 Day Dream" and the amazingly catchy "Home" make up for the clunkers.

Sample lyric: "She got jumper cable lips/She's got sunset on her breath/I inhaled just a little bit/Now I got no fear of death."

9. Mos Def/The Ecstatic



I guess if you're a white guy who listens to hip-hop and writes a blog, it's required you make some reference to Mos Def, but even so, The Ecstatic is more than deserving of placement here. "Casa Bey," "Quiet Dog" and "Life in Marvelous Times" are just great songs.

8. Monsters of Folk/Self-Titled



An indie folk supergroup doesn't sound like my sort of thing, but I like this one.


7. Coconut Records/Davy



Jason Schwartzman released his second album as Coconut Records way back in January. It's one of those records that gets more enjoyable with every listen. You should check it out.

6. Little Dragon/Machine Dreams



When are you going start listening to me about Little Dragon? It's nasty, new wavey Swedish electro-funk with sweet singing by half Swedish American, half Japanese frontwoman Yukimi Nagano. They really turn up the Prince influences on this one and it works. You must check out "Feather" and "Looking Glass."

5. Bob Dylan/Together Through Life



It wasn't the greatest Bob Dylan album, but it's Bob Dylan.

4. Norah Jones/The Fall

Your mama likes Norah Jones and so do I. The Fall was a free listen on NPR's music site for a couple of weeks and I got hooked. Don't front and you'll like it, too.

Chasing Pirates video

3. Tanya Morgan/Brooklynati



Von Pea, Donwill and Ilyas managed to improve upon their debut, Moonlighting, with more polished productions on this concept album that takes place in the fictional city of Brooklynati. It's Fresh! with an exclamation point.


2.Che Grand/Everything's Good Ugly



Fans of Can You Dig It? have been hearing about Che Grand for a long time and this year we finally got to hear his debut album, Everything's Good Ugly. It was worth waiting for these 18 songs, but if you've only got a couple of bucks left on your iTunes/Amazon gift cards, get yourself a taste with "Swing," "Gold Chains: Part Deux," "People Bowling," "Crash" and "Girls Talk."

Sample line: "And I could never finish watching Gummo, but I saw enough to know that those cats got handled."

Listen to a few tracks here.


1. Maxwell/BlackSummers'Night



I'm not ashamed of my affection for R&B crooner Maxwell.

We have a long history together, dating way back to 1996 when I bought his debut Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite simply because the cover looked cool and Best Buy was selling it for $5.99. I've followed his career ever since and waited patiently during the eight years it took to release BLACKSummers'Night.

The time off was good for Maxwell, as it turned out to be his strongest album yet, with his best song yet ("Pretty Wings"), and earned him six Grammy nominations. BlackSummers'Night achieved the rare feat in 2009 of actually being an artistic, critical and commercial success, debuting as the No. 1 album on the Billboard album chart, and was the 16th highest-rated album of the year on metacritic.com's year-end music list.

But maybe the higest praise for Maxwell came yesterday from my wife, who said, "I wish I knew how to paint, just so I could just paint his face."