2009 Round-Up Part 6 – Best Gigs

Here it is, the final part of my 2009 round-up, and a look at the best gigs throughout the year. There were many gigs deserving of praise, and many artists who narrowly missed the cut (see list at the bottom), however I have restricted the list to my favourite 10 gigs of the year. The top 10 is presented in chronological order, as unlike albums it’s hard to revisit the performance to choose the order, and they’re all winners!

The Acorn – Brixton Windmill (13th March)

One of the most fun small gigs of the year, my first proper glimpse (first headline show) into the brilliance of The Acorn as a live band. Whilst on record their music is beautiful and fairly relaxed on the whole, the live show brings a lot more energy. This gig was small, sweaty, and from what I remember the band played a nice long set. I think it was their first London headlining gig, a warm up for their Elbow support slot at Wembley Arena the following night, which brings me nicely to gig number 2…

2009 Round-Up Part 2 – Best Albums (25-11)

After much deliberating, I’ve put my shortlist of my top 25 albums of the year into some kind of order, and here is a rundown from 25-11. Look out for the top 10 soon. Several albums missed out on this list as I have only streamed them on Spotify and not yet bought them (sorry Flaming Lips!).

Righly or wrongly there are also a number of this year’s albums that I have enjoyed but just not listened to enough (including many that have done well in end of year polls), resulting in them missing out, but could have been included with more listens. Included in that list right now would be The Longcut, Animal Collective, Fever Ray, Grizzly Bear, and many more.

I have bought a lot of music this year and probably not appreciated it all to its full potential. Will my buying habits change next year? I can try but in all honesty it’s unlikely to happen!

Anyhow, without further ado, here are my best albums of the year, from 25-11.