Lisztomania Summer
Phoenix were inescapable in July 2009 in a way that felt earned. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix had come out in May and "Lisztomania" had that quality of a song that sounds like it’s been playing in your life for years before you actually hear it—a rush of bright guitars and Thomas Mars singing about things that didn’t quite cohere as lyrics but landed perfectly as feeling. That summer had a specific texture and that song was most of it.
The National were doing something quieter and more durable. "Mistaken for Strangers" had Matt Berninger’s voice doing what it always does, which is make your failures sound like they have excellent taste. La Roux were sharp and synthetic, all angles, Eleanor Jackson’s voice cutting over electronics that felt cold in a satisfying way. Metric had "Sick Muse" with Emily Haines sounding like she’d been sitting on a complaint for years and had finally decided to do something about it.
Regina Spektor’s "Eet" was the song you put on when you needed to feel the specific tenderness of being temporarily broken—piano and that voice and a sense that sadness, handled right, has a kind of precision to it. Bloc Party’s "Two More Years" belonged to the same emotional register, Kleerup’s "Longing for Lullabies" to a lonelier one.
Amanda Palmer’s "Oasis" deserves separate attention: a deliberately upbeat song about a rape, an abortion, and an Oasis concert, structured as dark comedy, with Palmer performing cheerfulness as a form of defiance or processing or both simultaneously. Still not entirely sure what to do with it. Still think about it.
The Fleetwood Mac entry—"Little Lies," 1987—sat in a 2009 playlist like a bottle of wine someone’s parents left behind. Mid-80s polished heartbreak, completely out of time and entirely at home. It always belongs wherever it ends up.
Putpat was a music discovery platform that launched that summer, one of several promising things in the brief window before streaming collapsed everything into the same few grey rectangles. The platform is long gone. The songs aren’t.