The A.V. Club's favorite Milwaukee music moments of 2009

Here we are at the end of another year, and The A.V. Club is getting sentimental over all the wonderful times we had following local music in 2009. It was a year when local acts made big impressions on the national music scene while only getting noisier and more uncompromising here at home. To help make sense of what happened in this town musically over the past 12 months, we asked our music writers to share what they’ll remember most when they look back on the year. The impressions might differ, but there’s no doubt that 2009 won’t be forgotten any time soon.

Kings Go Forth take over the city
The members of Milwaukee’s hottest band were downright prescient when they decided to call themselves Kings Go Forth. In seemingly no time at all this sprawling retro-soul outfit took over the city, practically sweeping the Radio Milwaukee local music awards in February on the strength of a handful of songs, and then setting off to take over the rest of the world. KGF has a way to go before it’s as popular outside of Milwaukee as it is here, but the group is definitely on its way after getting a deal with David Byrne’s Luaka Bop Records in May. Now DJ Shadow is a fan, and legendary DJ Tom Moulton contributed a remix of the song “Don’t Take My Shadow” to the group’s new 12-inch. To say that the band’s full-length 2010 debut album is eagerly anticipated would be an understatement—the Milwaukee music scene hasn’t been this close to having a legitimate breakout act on its hands in quite some time. (Steven Hyden)

Call Me LightningTravis AuclairRock on, Milwaukee
It was a year of contrasts for Milwaukee music, with seemingly no middle ground between “let’s be precious” and “let’s tear shit up!” Personally, I just want to be entertained, and preciousness doesn’t leave much to be entertained by. I began going to basement shows a few years ago—it was after the first body-slam against a concrete wall that I began to equate rowdiness with good times. Although I didn’t get to as many basement shows this year, 2009 definitely dished out the intensity at above-ground venues: the Speedfreaks CD-release show at Club Garibaldi in January, the Chinese Telephones’ final show at the Borg Ward in February, and the insane dance party that Quintron And Miss Pussycat inspired at the Cactus Club in April. The year’s biggest local musical adrenaline rush was undoubtedly Call Me Lightning at Frank’s Power Plant in March, where the crowd danced, jumped, slammed, and shouted its way through a stellar set of Milwaukee-style post-punk. Fuck sleepy-eyed preciousness. The best Milwaukee music this year was wide-awake and alive. (Erin Wolf)

All hail Volcano Choir
For the first time maybe ever, a Milwaukee-made record is contending for my best album of the year honor. Right now, it’s a dogfight between Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and Unmap by Volcano Choir. The latter is the collaboration between Eau Claire’s ice-folk auteur Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and his old buddies, Milwaukee post-rock veterans Collections Of Colonies Of Bees. Released on Jagjaguwar to great acclaim in September, Unmap is a righteous marriage of the experimental and the traditional: Vernon’s croon makes the CoCoBees’ swirling, crashing instrumentals accessible for melody-hungry folk audiences, and likewise, the dramatic, spacey instrumentals give prog fans a reason to get excited about Vernon. Everybody wins. Though there aren’t any official plans to take Volcano Choir on the road, surely a live performance of this material would place in my top Milwaukee music moments of 2010 list. Hint, hint, fellas. (Adam Lovinus)

Bring the noise
When Freight played its final show at a packed Cactus Club last March, one more band followed in the seemingly endless cycle that has long plagued Milwaukee music: band forms, band generates excitement, band releases CD, band promptly breaks up. Still, there was something different about this breakup. A throng of drunken Milwaukeeans paying final respects to a loud, abrasive, Jesus Lizard-inspired noise-rock band that, to me at least, signaled a comeback of sorts for smart, noisy indie rock in Brew City. Sure, bands like Aluminum Knot Eye and China Pig have crept around Milwaukee for years, but they’ve mostly lurked in half-empty bars and basements. Seeing Freight briefly erupt like a supernova gives every fan of early Touch And Go and AmRep bands hope that there’s room for them among the city’s freak-folk and garage-punk scenes. Hopefully newer noisy bands like White Problems and Death Dream (both of which, coincidentally, feature Freight’s David Yow understudy, Brian Rogers) can capitalize. (DJ Hostettler)