Put It In Your Pantry With Your Cupcakes

Mark my words, 2009 can be summed up in two ways. The Year in Music: Pet Sounds. The Year in Food: Cupcakes.

Seems like every band these days is drawing inspiration from Pet Sounds (read lots of harmonies, studio trickery). At the same time, the ubiquity of local cupcake dealers has reached the point of madness here in DC. Everywhere you go, it's cupcake this, cupcake that. The 9:30 Club is selling them now. The humble cupcake has officially jumped the shark. As a spurned Potsy wisely said and I'll paraphrase, just because it's mini, doesn't mean it won't fatten your ass.

lick my ear, cupcake

The two trends (Pet Sounds and Cupcakes) collided last Monday night at the sold-out Grizzly Bear show when band member Ed Droste came on stage and passed out cupcakes to the front row audience at the 9:30 Club.

Grizzly Bear's latest album Veckatimest (named for an island near Massachusetts as best I can tell) is the brand of swirling melodies, ethereal sonic landscape I've come to expect out of bands this year (see Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion). This is not a bad thing. It's music to reflect to. It's music to get lost in thought to. But we're going to look back on it, much like the cupcake, as very 09.