Day Four (A Sad Man in a Song)

I absorb records. I tend to consume so much music that record release dates all blur together. **SNOB ALERT** I spent much of this year consuming psychedelic world music from Turkey and Latin America to be bothered keeping up with whether Vampire Weekend put a new record out. I only loosely follow musical trends and I have completely turned my back on the pathetic joke known as American Radio.

Because of all that I rarely take the time at year's end to figure out what my favorite record was for the last 365 days. But this morning, in the shower, it dawned on me what my favorite record of '09 was: Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present Dark Night of the Soul.







Dig if you will a record produced and performed by Danger Mouse and Mark Linkous and featuring 11 various guests ranging from the Flaming Lips to Nina Persson of the Cardigans to the late Vic Chesnutt and even David Lynch himself on two tracks and hovering over the entire production as its chief influence. Now, house that record in a lavish book of Lynch photographs and then, to top it all off, have EMI step in and prevent the music from ever being publicly released. Thankfully, it streamed on a blog a few days before the injunction, and someone was nice enough to rip it. It wasn't too hard to find.

Why is it my favorite record of 2009? Because it plays like a really dark compilation of the best songs you've heard by a bunch of bands you really, really like.

And because it didn't really come out.

Score!