Give a listen to these discs from 2009

There's no accounting for taste -- or a complete and total lack thereof. With this in mind, here are my favorite discs of 2009:

Mastodon, "Crack the Skye": Twenty-minute song suites, tunes inspired by Rasputin, gnome-worthy facial hair -- these dudes bear hug so many heavy metal conceits, and yet render them something fresh on an album that you don't have to be a hesher to hum along to.

Neko Case, "Middle Cyclone": This self-professed man-man-man-maneater does more than devour dudes on this Americana love letter, she also serves as a centrifuge of longing and lust all distilled in a fire-siren-of-a-voice.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "It's Blitz!": "Dance, dance 'til your dead," Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman/cannonball Karen O. commands on the band's most body rockin' disc, which is every bit as breathless as the drill-sergeant-in-a-dress issuing its marching orders.

Kylesa, "Static Tensions": Two drummers, two singers, one heavy-metal-mountain-range-of-a-sound: On this equally urgent and dense study in tension and release, the only thing truly static is you, the listener, frozen in place.

Mos Def, "The Ecstatic": Mos Def brings new fire to an old soul backdrop here. "For sure, we tougher than tough times," he rhymes on an album that finds the ecstasy in the agony of the modern urban landscape.

Baroness, "The Blue Record": This record seems out to map every last one of metal's genomes: punk's velocity and vigor, prog rock's heft and grandeur, the New Wave of British heavy metal's harmonic guitar leads -- it's all here in this encapsulation of most everything noteworthy about the genre.

Raekwon, "Only Built For Cuban Linx Pt. II": Hip-hop's finest crime scene reporter comes with an album that's like CSI with bone liquefying bass lines. Raekwon's bullet-ridden rhymes are as grisly, explicit and black-and-white as autopsy photos.

Magrudergrind, "Magrudergrind": Primo blood-boiling grindcore fired at point blank range, colored black by relentless blast beats and blinding thrash riffs. This is protest music that actually captures the intensity of true social unrest.

Pissed Jeans, "King of Jeans": First, the Jesus Lizard reunite, then these dudes drop this sweaty, frothing-at-the-mouth tantrum of dissonant guitar detonations and crazy-man-on-the-mic freakouts. See, noise rock fetishists, helping all those little old ladies across the street paid its karmic dividends.

Kris Kristofferson, "Closer to the Bone": One of country's last true mavericks doesn't exactly ride off into the sunset here, but he does shield his eyes a bit against the coming horizon. "Ain't you getting better as you're running out of time," he notes in that 1,000-year-old voice of his, proving those words true with every breath.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.