January 7, 2010

This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.

To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.

Let’s check out numbers 10 through 6 and see what made the cut…

10) Fanfarlo – Reservoir

Key Tracks: Good Morning Midnight, The Walls Are Coming Down, Comets

Sounds Like: Arcade Fire, Frightened Rabbit, Andrew Bird

Skinny: Reservoir showed in Fanfarlo a number of immensely talented musicians who swap instruments, successfully incorporate unconventional tackle like the clarinet, trumpet, violin, melodica, even the saw, and write some amazing orchestral indie rock/pop songs. While all of the material comes across easy and beautiful, perhaps the best indication of what’s to come from this young juggernaut band is the album’s instrumental closing lullaby, Good Morning Midnight, which in a mere 1:26, could put both mom and baby to sleep.

READ ON for the next four album in our week long countdown…