grizzly bear

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 15 through 11 and see what made the cut…

15) Elvis Perkins In Dearland – Elvis Perkins in Dearland

Key Tracks: Hey, Chains Chains Chains, Doomsday

Sounds Like: Part marching band, Part Dylan-esque folk-rock

Skinny: Perkins sophomore effort is more of a complete representation of what he and his band In Dearland sound like. The combo’s “antique music” can best be summed up as equal parts ramshackle folk and Sousa marching band, making it virtually impossible at times to keep you from from tapping your feet along to songs like Hey, I Heard Your Voice In The Dresden and Doomsday with Perkins’ vivid lyrics as the guide.

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