The Sky Report - Songs of the Year

1. Animal Collective - My Girls
2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero
3. Phoenix - 1901
4. Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
5. Washed Out - Feel It All Around
6. Pure Ecstasy - You're In It Now
7. The XX - Crystalised
8. Radiohead - These Are My Twisted Words
9. Atlas Sound (ft. Laetitia Sadier) - Quick Canals
10. Bat For Lashes - Daniel
11. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
12. St. Vincent - Actor Out of Work
13. Fever Ray - When I Grow Up
14. Girls - Hellhole Ratrace
15. PJ Harvey & John Parish - Black Hearted Love
16. Wavves - So Bored
17. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move
18. Florence + the Machine - You've Got the Love (XX Remix)
19. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll
20. Thom Yorke - Hearing Damage
21. The Flaming Lips - Watching the Planets
22. Gossip - Heavy Cross
23. Julian Casablancas - 11th Dimension
24. Neon Indian - Should Have Taken Acid With You
25. JJ - Ecstasy
26. Memory Tapes - Bicycle
27. Atlas Sound (ft. Noah Lennox) - Walkabout
28. Discovery - Orange Shirt
29. Sharon Van Etten - For You
30. Woods - Rain On
31. Beach Fossils - Vacation
32. Natureboy - Heart to Fool
33. Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You
34. Dirty Projectors & David Byrne - Knotty Pine
35. White Denim - I Start To Run
36. The Antlers - Bear
37. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Home
38. Real Estate - Beach Comber
39. Warpaint - Billie Holiday
40. Taken By Trees - Watch the Waves (Memory Tapes remix)

Pop songs of the year...

1. Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
2. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
3. Jay-Z (ft. Alicia Keys) - Empire State of Mind
4. La Roux - Bulletproof
5. Miike Snow - Animal

FULL YEAR-END COVERAGE HERE

The Sky Report - EP's of the Year

1. Washed Out - Life of Leisure
2. Warpaint - Exquisite Corpse
3. Animal Collective - Fall Be Kind
4. Memory Cassette - Call & Response
5. Pure Ecstasy - Future Nostalgia
6. Small Black - s/t
7. Bullion - Young Heartache
8. No Age - Losing Feeling
9. MillionYoung - Sunndreamm
10. Air Waves - s/t

FULL YEAR-END COVERAGE HERE

The Sky Report - Albums of the Year

1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

2. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

3. The Antlers - Hospice

4. Fever Ray - s/t

5. The Horrors - Primary Colours

6. Atlas Sound - Logos

7. Natureboy - s/t

8. The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away

9. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

10. PJ Harvey & John Parish - A Woman A Man Walked By

11. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport

12. Bat For Lashes - Two Suns

13. The XX - XX

14. Sharon Van Etten - Because I Was In Love

15. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

16. The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control

17. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

18. Nite Jewel - Good Evening

19. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - s/t

20. Real Estate - s/t

21. JJ - n° 2
22. Memory Tapes - Seek Magic
23. Bear In Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth
24. Antony & the Johnsons - The Crying Light
25. Girls - Album
26. Woods - Songs of Shame
27. White Denim - Fits
28. Ganglians - Monster Head Room
29. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
30. Lotus Plaza - The Floodlight Collective
31. Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms
32. Dark Was the Night (compilation) - various artists
33. Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
34. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
35. St. Vincent - Actor
36. Royksopp - Junior
37. Masterface - Freedom Tower
38. DâM-FunK - Toeachizown
39. Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
40. Telepathe - Dance Mother
41. Wavves - Wavvves
42. Gossip - Music For Men
43. The Sandwitches - How To Make Ambient Sadcake
44. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
45. Jeremy Jay - Slow Dance
46. Discovery - LP
47. Here We Go Magic - s/t
48. Micachu - Jewellery
49. Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy
50. Night Control - Death Control

FULL YEAR-END COVERAGE HERE

Best of 2009 - Guest List - NATUREBOY

As a precursor to our impending year-end list, we've asked some of our favorite artists to select their five favorite releases of 2009. Natureboy blew my mind this year. I don't think I've spent more personal, alone time with any other record this year. So, I am humbled and gracious that Sara Kermanshahi, the brainchild, songwriter and vocalist behind the band, would share her favorite recordings of the year with us.

1. Masterface Freedom Tower
Seamless, new, innovative and irie. "Excuse Me Girl" is one of my favorite songs of all time.

2. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavillion
Seemingly effortless yet brilliant vocal melodies.

3. Discovery LP
Trippy, really catchy electro/pop. Lots of arpeggios.

4. Sharon Van Etten Because I Was In Love
Strong and moving songwriting, very full and realized record. Gorgeous voice.

5. Werewolves Dance Raincoat Glass
Garage/punk/psychedelic converge to create impassioned, muse-driven songs.

FULL YEAR-END COVERAGE HERE

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE End Year on High Note

With the year winding to an end, Animal Collective are poised to sweep most music critics best of lists with their now legendary LP Merriweather Post Pavillion. The Fader magazine are so taken with the psych-rock band, that they've granted them guest editor duties for the final issue of 2009. The issue hits stands on December 15th.

The band also just released a new ep Fall Be Kind, which features the first ever legally licensed Grateful Dead sample. It available now digitally and December 15th physically.

Here is their latest video for "In the Flowers", the opening track from MPP.

PANDA BEAR Talks About New Record

In an interview with Pedestrian, Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear aka one of the Animal Collective dudes talks about the recording process of his new solo/Panda Bear album. His last one, Person Pitch is one of the best albums of the decade, so this is exciting news!

"It’s been a long process. I’ve thought about it for a long time while we were doing the Merriweather stuff, so I had a long gestation process in my mind but only really started cracking on it in September. It’s kind of scary doing something totally different, like I've been working in a sampler zone for five or six years now. It definitely feels like a new zone, its scary but also exciting as well... The rhythms are really basic and kind of raw and simple and are electronic. It's not live instrumentation, I’ve been playing guitar but I feed it through the same thing that the sequences are on. It’s a very electronic sound and very voice heavy. A simple arrangement of drums, the guitar and singing. Really there are only two or three elements to every song. It’s pretty raw sounding for better for worse."

Read the full interview at Pedestrian.

Panda Bear "Comfy in Nautica" from Patrick O'Dell on Vimeo.

BABE, TERROR - Weekend

Babe, Terror is a one man band from Sao Paulo, Brazil who comes across like the neo-tropicalia offspring of Panda Bear and El Guincho. Claudio Szynkier sings in Portuguese and hums in hallucinatory snippets, creating a post Brian Wilson kaleidoscope of sound and beauty - music for dreaming. The perfectly titled new LP Weekend will be released physically in May, but is available digitally now.

You can download the entire album or start with these key tracks...

Babe, Terror - Havai (link)
Babe, Terror - Epicentro (link)

New ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Video "My Girls"

Awesome! A video for my second favorite track on Merriweather Post Pavillion, out now on Domino.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE - Believe the Hype

I've finally had a chance to delve into the new Animal Collective LP Merriweather Post Pavilion, and I have to say it is worthy of the overwhelming buzz surrounding it. At times it sounds like euphoric rave music, executed with real instruments in the psych-rock nature that AC have previously perfected. Check out the Beach Boys-esque standout track "My Girls", now streaming at myspace...

STREAM Animal Collective - My Girls

Also, check out an awesome mash-up of the track with Frankie Knuckles' Chicago House classic "Your Love" over at Gorilla vs. Bear.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is out now on vinyl and will be released on CD and digitally January 20 (Inauguration Day!) via Domino Records.

THE PRESENT - World I See

"The Present is the new music project of legendary New York musician and producer Rusty Santos (Panda Bear ‘Person Pitch’, Born Ruffians ‘Red Yellow & Blue’, Animal Collective ‘Sung Tongs’). Described by one band who worked with him as a hyper boy genius, Rusty has always fixed his attention on producing music that is experimentally rich while remaining accessible. By attempting to create music that arises unconsciously through improvisation, The Present’s debut album ‘World I See’ hauls this ethos over its shoulders as it tramples on musical boundaries and preconceptions, whilst leaving an album that is still capable of relating musically and emotionally to a wide audience."

Some really awesome, experiment tracks are streaming now at myspace. World I See will be released October 7th via LOAF.

The Present - World I See (link removed)

World I See tracklist:

1. Heavens On Ice
2. World I See
3. Love Melody
4. Symbols On High
5. Africanized Beatniks
6. The Hunt