Keep Moving This is the golden rule, far more important than any other, and for good reason. New Yorkers do not stop, do not question where they are going and do not slow down and debate which way to go while they’re approaching an intersection with a WALK sign. If you need to check your iPhone to make sure you’re heading in the right direction, do what everyone else does and duck into a Starbucks or, better yet, a phonebooth. You’ll be out of everyone’s way, and once you rejoin the flow you’ll know exactly where you’re going, giving you the confidence to keep up with the swarm.

If You Can’t Walk Faster, at Least Walk Smarter Contrary to popular fear, fast walkers are generally not opposed to slow walkers on principle; rather, their loathing comes from those instances in which a subpar walker slows a New Yorker down. In these cases the New Yorker may release pent-up frustrations with slow walkers in the past whom he had been lucky to avoid. The unfortunate offending tourist suffers not just for his own sins, but for those of his forebears as well.

Walk Two-Abreast; Three, Max One of the most common ways out-of-towners commit these transgressions is by walking along together with the whole group side-by-side across the whole goddamn sidewalk. Now, one meanderer, two, usually even three is no problem, just scoot around the right side at the next gap in the scaffolding. But you get up to four, five, six people strolling along like Dorothy and friends, and then you get the front lines of Kim Jong Un’s army coming from the other side, it gets harder and harder to wind and sprint yourself through the crush and to your destination.

Umbrella Etiquette Rules about umbrellas are often contentious, contended and controversial. Most agree that the size of the umbrella should be strictly proportional to the size of the person or persons it covers. It should be held straight up, with the holding arm kept tight to the body, unless there is such a wind that the whole block has initiated an incredibly synched and precise universal lean, in which case the chief duty is to the lean. There has been no real progress in the etiquette of the umbrella raise-or-lower. Certain camps claim that while passing each on the other’s left (as in roads in the United States), the taller pedestrian should raise his umbrella, while the shorter of the two kind of tried to squat down a little, or at least pretend to do so that the tall one didn’t feel like he was doing all the work. Others claim that that method is just worthless bullshit and that the authors just sit around sucking each other’s dicks all day.

Bicycles Are you kidding me? Unless you’re Lance Armstrong or Pee-Wee Herman, don’t ride one. Not even if you live in an enlightened, bike-friendly European city like Amsterdam or Copenhagen. You’ll probably get killed if you ride like you’re in Northern Europe.

Cars Why are we even talking about cars? I thought this was a column about walking? This is a much worse decision than bikes, unless you are using them strictly to get out of the city. Driving a car in the city is annoying enough for New Yorkers, and we know where everything is. Chasing down landmarks makes it easy to miss what you’re going through to get there. Opt to take a city bus instead and get a glimpse into the actual transportation experience of the average New Yorker. And you don’t have to worry about getting gas, getting hit, or getting a ticket.

- AYO IT’S ME ANGRY PETE, Y’ALL!

- Hello Angry Pete, how do you do?

- NOT TOO GOOD, I GOT VIENNA SAUSAGES IN MY EARS AND NOSTRILS!

- I’m sorry, Angry Pete, I don’t see any …

- CALL ME HURT BODIEZ!

- Sorry, Hurt Bodies, I …

- WITH A Z, FOOL!

- Listen, Hurt Bodiez, I don’t …

- THAT’S BETTER! HA, HA!

- I don’t really know what you want from me.

- I WANT YOUR GIRL, JIMMY! YOUNG SUSIE IS GONNA BE MY DATE TONIGHT! YOU CAN HAVE THESE VIENNA SAUSAGES THO DAWG!

- What? Now, listen, I don’t think … that’s not something …

- You know what, James, it’s actually okay.

Young Susie took off her begonia corsage and gave it to James.

- I’d actually rather go with Hurt Bodiez. I thought it was pretty mean what you did to him back in elementary school, and I feel like you haven’t really grown up. And also your wiener is pretty small. I can tell.

- But, Young Susie! We were to be a spectacle upon the dance floor! I got my hat blocked!

- I’m sorry, James. Maybe if you hadn’t insisted on wearing those checked pants, things could have been different between us.

At that moment, James felt worse than he had ever felt before, except for the time when he was caught peeing in his fifth-grade teacher’s gas tank. He decided then that he would no longer let the Angry Petes of the world dictate his life to him. He decided then that one day the world would know his name and his deeds, courtesy of some crazy person’s blog. He decided then to become a professional bodybuilder

Even so, something tells me this one is going to be popular with blondes and fifteen-year-olds. I’ll stick with Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, thank you very much.

12. One Life Stand – Hot Chip

11.IRM – Charlotte Gainsbourg

10. Black Noise – Pantha du Prince

9. Broken Bells – Broken Bells

8. Causers of This – Toro y Moi

7. Hippies – Harlem

6. The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night – The Besnard Lakes

5. Gorilla Manor – Local Natives

4. Ambling Alp – Yeasayer

3. Heartland – Owen Pallett

2. Contra – Vampire Weekend

1. Teen Dream – Beach House
We’ll see how the rest of the year shapes up. The new Hornblower EP is supposed to be a masterwork.

Best song to sing a capella: ‘Two Weeks’ – Grizzly Bear. Gets even better if you have someone else do the “Ooooh-ooh-ooooooh-ooh” to your “Would you always?” and “Maybe sometimes”

Best song that got me to dance alone in my room like a madman: ‘My Girls’ – Animal Collective. Technically, this happened in the last week of 2008, after the album leaked on Christmas Day, but it’s a 2009 song so it still counts.

Best song on an overrated album: ‘Lisztomania’ – Phoenix. The album: good pop, excellent at times. This is one of those times.

Best Elliott Smith song that’s not an Elliott Smith song: ‘New Years Day’ – exlovers. Who the hell are these guys, even?

Most likely to get me funny looks on the D train if I sing it aloud: ‘Lust For Life’ – Girls. Whenever I sing “I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine” I try to sing it just like Christopher Owens, and I totally nail it and Bronxites think I sound a little bit funny. Also, there’s that part about wishing I had a boyfriend/loving man in my life. Sang that inside Borgatti’s Ravioli and Egg Noodle shop and got kicked out. Ouch.

Best transition from live to studio: ‘What Would I Want? Sky” – Animal Collective. Seeing this song performed live (and hearing a rip from some radio show)  I thought this was engaging for a while, but ultimately too unflaggingly repetitive to be a great song. Then, on the Fall Be Kind EP there was this crazy drum beat vocal mishmash intro to this crazy song and then hey it resolved itself into that Grateful Dead-sampling, hypnotic, 7/8 time tune I knew and sort of liked but about which I was ultimately ambivalent. And it was dope.

Most likely maybe to lose me some cred: ‘You Belong With Me,’ ‘Love Story’ – Taylor Swift, ‘Bad Romance’ – Lady GaGa. Umm, I’ll leave it at that.

Some people say the decade doesn’t end until the end of 2010. These people are overzealous and probably think they’re cool because they listen to Cold War Kids.

Hey, here’s a fun activity. Try to find out how many songs in your iTunes library use the opening drumbeat from ‘Be My Baby’ ! I bet it’s like a million. Just over the past few days, the “random” function has brought me to ‘Postcode’ by Orphan Boy, ‘Eighties Fan’ by Camera Obscura and some song by Au Revoir Simone from The Bird of Music the name of which escapes me at the moment.

Anyway, we were talking about decades, which are just periods of ten years, an example of which would be… 2000-2009. Great. Glad that’s cleared up. Let’s see if I can come up with some big things to say about the decade in music.

Best year for music: 2007. From Here We Go Sublime; In Rainbows; For Emma, Forever Ago; Untrue; Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?; Strawberry Jam; Person Pitch; Mirrored; All Hour Cymbals; Kala; Neon Bible, The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse; Sound of Silver; Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever; Myths of the Near Future; Marry Me; We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank; Wincing the Night Away; etc… Even if some of these weren’t as good as previous entries in their creators’ discographies, I still enjoyed them a lot. If someone were new to “indie” music and for some bizarre reason had to start listening only to albums from a single year of the Aughts, 2007 would be the one to pick.

Songs that surprisingly didn’t get some kind of high-profile exposure via t.v. or advertisements or something, or maybe they did and I just didn’t notice but how high-profile could it have been, though? or maybe the fact that I missed it says more about me than about the exposure:

‘Hey Now Now’ – The Cloud Room

‘Coffee’ – Motel Motel.

‘Steady Rollin” – Two Gallants.

My favorite albums:

10. Apologies to the Queen Mary – Wolf Parade

9. From Here We Go Sublime – The Field

8. Alligator – The National

7. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? – of Montreal

6. Funeral – Arcade Fire

5. Feels – Animal Collective

4. Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven – Godspeed You! Black Emperor

3. Yellow House – Grizzly Bear

2. Kid A – Radiohead.

1. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver

My favorite songs:

13. ‘Ignition (Remix)’ – R. Kelly

12. ‘I Won’t Be Found’ – The Tallest Man on Earth

11. ‘Twilight’ – Elliott Smith

10. ‘Avril 14th’ – Aphex Twin

9. ‘I Believe’ – Simian Mobile Disco

8. ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ – Radiohead

7. ‘The Purple Bottle’ – Animal Collective

6.’Neighborhood #4 (Tunnels)’ – Arcade Fire

5. ‘King’s Crossing’ – Elliott Smith

4. ‘Skinny Love’ – Bon Iver

3. ‘Fireworks’ – Animal Collective

2. ‘Maps’ – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

1. ‘Heroes [Aphex Twin Remix]‘ – Philip Glass

Best concert: Leonard Cohen at Radio City Music Hall, 17 May 2009

Artist of the decade: Animal Collective

Just heard another ‘Be My Baby’ drum intro: ‘Lewis Takes Action’ on the new Owen Pallett LP, Heartland.

Let’s get these three out of the way first: Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective, Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear, Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors. These three albums were the subject of more hype than any other “indie” release this year by far, and to be honest there’s not much else to say about them than has already been said a hundred times before. But I will say things anyway!

MPP – the most influential album since Kid A, maturation and culmination of Animal Collective’s sound, instant classic, blah blah blah. Yeah, it is really good. I do believe that this probably the most unique and important band of my musically-mature years (the past five or six years). I don’t know if this is their best album, though. “Also Frightened” does not engage me, and the albums drags a bit with perhaps a little too much reverb and too little percussion at times (but when they drop that beat, oh man… finally hearing “In the Flowers” live the third time I saw them this year was wonderful), but overall it has one of the strongest claims on album of the year.
Veckatimest – perfectly, painstakingly composed and arranged, impeccable melodies & harmonies, everybody in the band can sing like Andrea Bocelli and dress like Beau Brummell, &c, &c. Though as a silly high-schooler I couldn’t always explain why, I always liked Grizzly Bear, eventually growing to love Yellow House like a brother. It took a while for me to get used to the new album, but it’s damn good. The drummer, Christopher Bear, gets love mostly just from music nerds, but anyone privileged enough to see him play right in front of you, the very definition of “controlled intensity,” would be able to see why he’s such an essential part of the band. Honestly, I’ve never been so happy watching a drummer’s performance.
Bitte Orca-Dave Longstreth finally makes his crazy genius accessible for a wider audience,  three excellent singers + 12-hr rehearsals = spectacular vocal tracks, each track stuffed full of ideas and brilliance, boopity boop boop. It’s all true. The “easiest” Dirty Projectors album, and arguably the best, it definitely rewards repeat listens, defies categorization and, hey, is pretty damn catchy. If there’s one guy who deserves to hang around with David Byrne it’s Longstreth.

There was, of course, more to the music scene this year than these three releases. A few albums, then, that I also have deemed worthy of mention, either because I think they’re one of the best of the year, or else a lot of other people did and I want to talk about that. We’ve got some top-ten material, some honorable mentions, some bop bop-a-do-bop. They’re not in any particular order, mind you. Well, they’re kind of grouped together, some of them. Like Motel Motel and The Rural Alberta Advantage. That was intentional.

Family – Le Loup. Sounds a bit like old Animal Collective, with more “folk” in their freak-folk — including banjo. Frontman Sam Simkoff sounds like Panda Bear sometimes, but when the tempo picks up his vocals and phrasing style are entirely his own.

Album – Girls. I downloaded this album during the latter half of the year, while I was trying to isolate myself from the hype storm that any regular reader of music blogs weathers (and even embraces). Word eventually spread to me, though, about the praises being sung to this release. So I listened with critical ear and, looking down my critical nose, couldn’t really find too much to criticize. I told the Good King Martinslas a while ago that the fifties were going to be the new hot revival decade and he said some fool thing about blues making a comeback in the indie world. This is why he’s the king and I write about music. If you can deal with singer Christopher Owens’s somewhat affected (some might say whiny) delivery, you’ll have a good time with this one, whoooo.

The xx – The xx. Here’s another band that rode the hype wave all the way to Bombay this year. They’re good, I like them, but 3rd best album of the year? I wouldn’t go that far.

Gorilla Manor – Local Natives. I think this album is only out in Europe now, but I’m not going to wait, because by this time next year they’re going to be too famous for me to mention them on here without risking losing big-time credibility. And, let’s face it, I have precious little credibility to begin with, here. So yeah, this is a big old pop record, really, with big old voices using big old reverb on big old catchy choruses. Think Fleet Foxes, Annuals, maybe some Arcade Fire without Régine. This record might not stand up to ubiquity like Fleet Foxes — we’ll see — but for now it’s great to listen to straight through once in a while. If only I had the same restraint with Danish butter cookies — I overindulged and now I can’t stand them. HA! Just kidding. That could never happen.

Hometowns – The Rural Alberta Advantage. This album was released last year, but was re-released this summer on Saddle Creek, so let’s go ahead and count it, hey. Singer Nils Edenloff has a bit of a Jeff Mangum thing going on and I hear a little Billy Corgan in there, too (no offense, Nils. I’m sure the similarities don’t extend to being really wack and doing really wack things). The songs are plaintive, honest (I hope!) and since Neil Young is a little busy right now doing his electric car thing and releasing everything he’s ever recorded, it’s nice to see some Canadians doing what would probably be called Americana except yeah right, you wish, these colors don’t bleed, why don’t you go back to where you came from foreigners? take your socialism back to the Arctic, tea party, SP2012. So maybe we’ll just call it “music for white people.”

New Denver – Motel Motel. Another record that technically debuted in 2008 but saw re-release this past summer (on 7 July, weirdly enough the same day as Hometowns), this time by the Rebel Group, which may explain why it hasn’t seen even the modest acclaim afforded to the RAA record. If only for showstopper “Coffee” this album would be worth your time, but you should go ahead and give the rest of it a shot, because there’s a lot of good Americana going on, here. And they’re actually Americans.

If I were you I’d be looking forward to seeing another post later with some more thoughts on some other albums, possibly including Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, The Antlers’ Hospice and maybe even a little record I like to call Celebrity, by *NSYNC.