Review: Recapping 2009's overlooked

Here is a alternative of albums that should accept gotten added absorption than they got in 2009:

"Old Things New," Joe Nichols (Universal South)

Country music traditionalist Joe Nichols's latest release, "Old Things New," slipped in beneath the alarm this fall.

That's too bad.

Nichols has accustomed us an honest anthology that alternates amid acceptable times and bad. There's no bigger archetype of the ups and downs actuality than the aboriginal two tracks. Nichols bounces from the upbeat "Gimme That Girl," a adulation song about the absolute girl, to the melancholy, fiddle-tinged "It's Me I'm Worried About."

He repeats this wave-and-trough access throughout the album, bouncing from the apparent bubbler song, "Cheaper Than a Shrink" to the breakdown lament, "The Shape I'm In."

The anthology has a personal, busy feel. Nichols entered adjust a few years aback and "Old Things New" has the hallmarks of a crumbling artist who's award his way forward, but still acquainted of the accomplished and how brittle activity can be.

• Chris Talbott, AP Writer

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Skyzoo, "The Salvation" (Jamla/Duck Bottomward Records)

After audition all the underground activity about Skyzoo's "The Salvation," it was a auspicious to accept to an absolute anthology and not feel the charge to bound columnist the skip button.

Skyzoo, who appear a alternation of acknowledged mixtapes, absolutely delivers on anniversary of the 16 advance of his admission album, appear in backward September. It was additionally abating to accept apprehend the Brooklyn rapper authority bottomward the absolute anthology with his almighty rhymes after a featured rapper.

Each clue additionally has solid production, best conspicuously from Just Blaze on "Return of the Real" and 9th Wonder on bristles tracks, including the album's single, "The Beautiful Decay."

There are several solid advance like "Dear Whoever," "The Necessary Evils" and "Maintain," authoritative it boxy to aces a admired one. He raps with clarity, painting a account on top of nice beats that'll accumulate the adviser absent to apprentice added about Skyzoo.

• Jonathan Landrum Jr., AP Writer

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Andy Friedman & the Other Failures, "Weary Things" (City Salvage)

Among annual cartoonists who already toured as slideshow poets, aboriginal best up a agreeable apparatus beneath than bristles years ago and begin a alcove in Brooklyn's active country scene, Andy Friedman ability be the best singer-songwriter going.

He's not to be overlooked, that's for sure. As Friedman's aback adventure would suggest, "Weary Things" is a arbitrary record. He portrays his ancestors activity sweetly, yet longs for the canicule back he was young, burst and alone. He sings three songs about the tug of the alley but suggests that addition adumbrate his keys. Best of the anthology is country dejection fit for a folk club, but the afterpiece — "Friedman Holler" — is a alive achievement that creates a bank din and devolves into a boom solo. The words are great, though.

Friedman can address a lyric, and bear it. He's at his best freewheelin' on "Locked Out Of The Building," which he fills with antic non sequiturs and annotation on New Yorkers, New England and the acceptation of life. His singspeak lets the words do best of the work, but he shows the brittle timing of a acceptable banana back he comes to a abundant line. Here's one: "If God is the rock, who is the paper?"

Steven Wine, AP Writer

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Chuck Prophet, "¡Let Freedom Ring!" (Yep Roc)

Chuck Prophet chose a flat in Mexico City to almanac his ninth flat album, and alike from a distance, the bearings on the home advanced looked grim.

"¡Let Freedom Ring!" portrays a acreage of orange alerts and car alarms with claret on the bedding and asbestos in the Kool-Aid. The river's rising, food abandon and dreams don't extend above Saturday night. "Who's activity to absence you back you're gone?" Prophet asks.

Depressing stuff. As an antidote, Prophet offers stabs of guitars to actuate a aggressive Stones-style strut, and gradually the affection improves.

Past the center mark, Prophet turns his absorption to a bistro chat and pairs it with a ball exhausted on "Hot Talk." Two songs later, the abetment choir are singing "Shoo-be-doo-wah" on "Good Time Crowd." The final song is "Leave the Window Open," which finds Prophet affianced in pillow talk, with no acknowledgment of car alarms.

• Steven Wine, AP Writer

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The Clientele, "Bonfires on the Heath" (Merge)

The Clientele latest anthology "Bonfires on the Heath" is pop in it's truest form. Not giving you music of the moment, but rather carrying an upbeat complete that sets (or at atomic upholds) a accepted of attainable excellence.

"Harvest Time" is a mix of buttery guitar reverb and hi-hat boom stuff. A apathetic bass band from James Horsney meanders through the melody as advance accompanist Alasdair MacLean sings "Bats from the bump go algidity by/ Scarecrows watched the verges of light." It's a admirable song about the seasons of man, and not of crops.

All in all it is the babel of active guitar, acute pacing and lyrics with actuality that abstracted acceptable pop from bad. Abiding there's a nod to the backward 1960s Brit pop breeziness that finds a home on "Bonfires on the Heath." But they did it able-bodied again and now, and it has begin a absolute home on this accomplished vinyl release.

• Ron Harris, AP writer

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"Glitter and Doom Live," Tom Waits (Anti-)

For those of you who absent Tom Waits' activation "Glitter and Doom Tour" aftermost year, we're sorry, but you absent article special.

Waits was air-conditioned and creepy, spinning a web fabricated of his mad-hatter music, simple but amazing assuming and his cast whimsy.

Like best alive albums, the two-disc "Glitter and Doom Live" can't abduction those appropriate beheld moments that fabricated the appearance such a treat. But it does abduction the affection and shows Waits manipulating abounding of his fan favorites in new and agitative ways.

Take "Get Behind the Mule," which Waits punches up with a new faculty of timing and a stuttered articulate delivery. And he transforms "Dirt in the Ground" from a falsetto admonishing into a deep-throated lament.

If annihilation else, the anthology is account affairs for the additional disc, blue-blooded "Tom's Tales." It's a accumulating of spoken-word belief Waits alloyed in with his music and, as usual, they are absorbing and insightful, absorbing while giving us a attending central how Waits' apperception works.

• Chris Talbott, AP Writer

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Asobi Seksu, "Hush" (Polyvinyl)

Asobi Seksu performs article the skinny-jeans army cast to alarm dream pop, a abundant cast of bedrock that leans from the beginning to the incomprehensible. On the vinyl absolution of their latest anthology "Hush," Asobi Seksu proves that they're able-bodied advanced of the ambit in this abnormally agreeable genre.

Think Cocteau Twins with hardly added barefaced lyrics and you've appealing abundant called Asobi Seksu. Yuki Chikudate's advance vocals amalgamate accurately with her aerial synth-flavored keyboard assignment and it comes calm on best songs, generally architecture to a final acme afore giving way to some awe-inspiring active guitar assignment from James Hanna.

What vinyl adds to advance like "Familiar Light" is a abundant analog dare, if you will, for the adviser to try to anticipate all the sounds at play. The drove of complete compression begin on agenda downloads and alike some ailing engineered CDs is not a anguish here. Chikudate's voice, the intricate guitar assignment and the ceaseless beating of drums are alloyed altogether on songs like "Gliss" and "Glacially."

The amount of Asobi Seksu's complete is a acceptable pop-rock pace, interspersed with beginning acknowledgment and warbling sounds that assume about alien. It appear through honest, not apish and with a accordant feel that references the bigger offerings from the mid-1980s after burglary aboveboard from them.

"Hush" is an acutely solid album, delivered in 2009 on 180-gram vinyl, that will absolutely angle the analysis of time.

• Ron Harris, AP Writer