Even though there remains roughly a month left, 2008 is straight bodied. So, as we do every year (which is now two years if you can believe it), a rundown of the 50 records we liked best.
50. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)
48. Wire - Object 47 (Pinkflag)
47. Sic Alps - U.S. EZ (Siltbreeze)
45. Nine Inch Nails - The Slip (self-released)
This sad bastard apparently spent a winter holed up in a cabin making this paean to lost love. A certain un-indie like soulfulness, Bon Iver's music sounds bizarrely like an acoustic TV on the Radio. Girl, he misses you.
Whadda year for Harvey Milk: great movie (supposedly), great record...if the man himself had been alive, we might have dodged that Prop 8 bullshit (seriously, California, seriously). HM the band play an amalgam of heavy metal, hardcore, and prog, not merely content with succeeding as an aural assault, but, once you get past the bullshit, a pretty fucking neat classic rock record. "Motown" is damn near My Morning Jacket if you'd a thunk it.
Whadda year for Harvey Milk: great movie (supposedly), great record...if the man himself had been alive, we might have dodged that Prop 8 bullshit (seriously, California, seriously). HM the band play an amalgam of heavy metal, hardcore, and prog, not merely content with succeeding as an aural assault, but, once you get past the bullshit, a pretty fucking neat classic rock record. "Motown" is damn near My Morning Jacket if you'd a thunk it.
48. Wire - Object 47 (Pinkflag)
I seem to recall Greil Marcus's faux Mick Jagger news conference, wherein the rock icon "said" something along the lines of "We do what we do and we're going to do it forever." Certainly, that sentiment does not apply genre-wise to the famously metamorphic Wire, who went from Sex Pistols acolytes to post-punk obscurantists in under three years. From the perspective of how they make their listeners feel - or, more to the point, intend to make their listeners feel - it's spot on. It's not clear why a band that thinks so little of humanity feels compelled to seek an audience, but I guess using misanthropy to attract a paying crowd is a kind of performance art unto itself.
47. Sic Alps - U.S. EZ (Siltbreeze)
I guess I would call what these guys do "garage deconstructionism." Therefore, if you enjoy fuzztone and incompleteness as much as I do, well, meet the Beatles. Or, if you prefer, Pavement trying even less. With ace tunes.
46. Gentleman Jesse & His Men - Gentleman Jesse & His Men (Douchemaster)
The Exploding Hearts pretty much died when their van flipped over, killing three out of four members. They were a brilliant band with a limited output; if you wanted to hear more, and who didn't, Gentleman Jesse is here to pick up the pop punk slack. Mostly fun for games of name that tune ("Black Hole" = "Summertime Blues"), Jesse's s/t record is like Mom's apple pie: it's a recipe but that shit is delicious as hell.
45. Nine Inch Nails - The Slip (self-released)
Far be it from me to stick up for meat-hooked multi-millionaire pretty boys, but Trent Reznor has gotten suspiciously little credit for a) releasing his best album since The Downward Spiral and b) giving it away for free. No tip jar, no "pay what you want" - free. The A-side, if mp3s can have an A-side, is superior industrial mope rock, but the B-side is where it gets supremely interesting: everybody knows Reznor's a Bowie-worshipper, but is it just me or is it fascinating how closely The Slip's latter-half tracks Low's side 2?
44. Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances (Troubleman Unlimited)
Instrumental hip-hop is still mired in back-packer land, cut off from the mainstream by its lack of vocals and preference for outre experimentation. I guess if you don't let a rapper do the talking you've got to let the music do it, and like the brilliant Dilla and DJ Shadow before him, Flying Lotus has carved up a soundscape that does not want for a vocalist because it speaks volumes on its own. Borrowing heavily from the dubstep movement presently flowering on UK shores, FL's jams are somewhat more humanized by his willingness to engage mainstream hip-hop and r&b; it's as if he's holding a dialogue through a one-way mirror. Two EPs (one of remixes) and a great album this year - the choice is yours.
41. Pop Levi - Never Never Love (Ninja Tune)
An adamantly Jersey band, Titus Andronicus do sound like a cowpunk Bright Eyes, a comparison they've attempted to refute a fortiori. Well, sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, as TA themselves freely admit - The Airing of Grievances sounds like Lifted (Bright Eyes' best record) on meth, with rattle, clatter, and outright hysteria tumbling over every inch of plastic. Extra props for nicking "Promised Land" on the opening of "Joset of Nazareth's Blues."
Instrumental hip-hop is still mired in back-packer land, cut off from the mainstream by its lack of vocals and preference for outre experimentation. I guess if you don't let a rapper do the talking you've got to let the music do it, and like the brilliant Dilla and DJ Shadow before him, Flying Lotus has carved up a soundscape that does not want for a vocalist because it speaks volumes on its own. Borrowing heavily from the dubstep movement presently flowering on UK shores, FL's jams are somewhat more humanized by his willingness to engage mainstream hip-hop and r&b; it's as if he's holding a dialogue through a one-way mirror. Two EPs (one of remixes) and a great album this year - the choice is yours.
42. Vetiver - Thing of the Past (Fat Cat)/ More of the Past EP (Gnomonsong)
In retreating to the past with this covers album of semi-obscure folk/psych/etc. from the '60s and '70s Andy Cabic and Vetiver put their most forward foot forward. There's nothing "freak" here, just a meandering album made for fireside listening or listening during whatever you do to relax, like reading the newspaper or something.
41. Pop Levi - Never Never Love (Ninja Tune)
In the pages of The New Yorker, pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones opined that Levi was one iPod commercial from hitting it big on these shores. I don't know about that; after all, the straight-ahead T. Rex-ian glam stomp Levi emulates never really did carve out a foothold on these shores until it was polished-up and married to metal by erstwhile Aquanetted practitioners like Poision and Motley Crue. But given Levi's obvious tunesmithing abilities and pop ambitions, he may one day find himself rocking out in silhouette with a pair of white earbuds, and if Chairlift can move units when so situated, well, we're dumb fish if we don't take better bait.
40. Air France - No Way Down EP (Sincerely Yours)
Ah, Gothenberg, Sweden's twee-pop capital. Air France combine elements of techno, hip-hop, and mostly pop to create the aural equivalent of cotton candy skies on a night in June. Basically, if someone made an EP out of the Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" besides the Orb.
39. Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy (Geffen)
I'm not fucking kidding. After 17 years, Axl Rose emerged with an album that was not only superior to what everyone anticipated, but was actually a legitimate Guns N' Roses album - this is the true heir to the Use Your Illusion records, complicated and messy as they were. Yes, yes, Chinese Democracy has its share of overdubs, overproduction, and hyper-pretension, but if you open your heart, you'll discover that songs like "Shackler's Revenge", "Better", and "There Was a Time" (TWAT, geddit) fulfill the legacy. The return of the king – but where is the throne?
38. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City)
"Come see a legend while it's still bein' made," intones lead Jew Dave Berman on "Party Barge", the straight-up goofiest track on his latest sojourn into the recesses of his...uh...superego? A welcome respite from the creeping depression the lapped at the edges of 2005's Tanglewood Numbers, Berman comes here with, if not his most accomplished, then at least his most accessible set of rock tunes. Presumably, there's a point where functioning rockers, if they intend to have a longish career, can't treat every record as an opportunity for psychic disgorgement; I can't say if that's the case here (or was Berman's case ever), but if it is, disgorge more please. We're happy when you're happy.
37. Jamie Lidell - Jim (Warp)
36. Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (Kranky)
35. Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping (Polyvinyl)
More comfortable in his own skin, and with the idea that Warp won't drop him for being a straight-up r&b horndog, Lidell cuts loose on the aptly-titled Jim, giving his love to everyone. A joyous follow up to the skittering schizophrenia to Multiply, and further proof that constructs like genre and identity ought to be perceived less like boundaries and more like school buses to be jumped over with your nitrous-powered rocketbike.
36. Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (Kranky)
Bradford Cox had a good 2008. So good, in fact, that I bet he must greet people, brandy snifter in hand, with a thick 'n' smarmy "So how was your year?" I won't keep you in suspense; the album with Deerhunter, his main gig, appears further down the list a piece. But with LtBLTWCSBCF (it's even a pain in the ass acronym) Cox has one foot in the land of "can do no wrong", a status he is coming to share in my book with Ryan Adams (who, with this year's lazy daisy Cardinology has one foot out of it). As weirdly self indulgent as the record can be, from the title to the opening recording of Cox as a child telling a ghost story, it's never less the 100% musically captivating, moving closer to the gauzy 4AD sound (incidentally, the label that puts out his recs outside the U.S.) than his main gig. Inviting in its opacity.
35. Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping (Polyvinyl)
I can't figure out the near-venomous reaction to this LP in some quarters. To these ears, it sounds like a funked-up lesser cousin to 2006's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, which is like saying that K2 is a lesser mountain next to Everest. The curse of high expectations, I suppose (I'm guilty as well; see no. 31). Ignore all the "Georgie Fruit" gender-bending psychobabble - note to Kevin Barnes: Prince showed where you tell - and latch onto the rhythm, and you find one of the year's richer indie pop efforts.
Goddamn it, whatever happened to boundaries? Not for purists, this is a metal record that features a saxophone dead smack in the middle of a suite of instrumentals. It's like the Dave Matthews Band or something. These guys' pop instincts are too good to stay underground for too much longer.
Goddamn it, whatever happened to boundaries? Not for purists, this is a metal record that features a saxophone dead smack in the middle of a suite of instrumentals. It's like the Dave Matthews Band or something. These guys' pop instincts are too good to stay underground for too much longer.
33. The Killers - Day & Age (Island)
This motherfucker: "Are we human or are we dancer?" is an execrable lyric. Once you get past the embarrassment of listening to the record that prominently features it, you'll find that the Killers are essentially the genius pop-rock band of our time: there is no earworm they will not exploit, no production trick they will not entertain in order to deliver that shot of dopamine your brain is seeking from the Top 40. Given the death of the monoculture, you may escape this record, but it's many, many future singles will do their damndest to hunt you down.
32. Black Mountain - In the Future (Jagjaguwar)
"RIYL Led Zeppelin" is not something that should be scrawled on a CD's shrinkwrap lightly. Too often, what people mean by that is "RIYL Audioslave". Black Mountian, on the otherhand, while not approaching Zep-like levels of maximum cockrock transcendence, do hook into the mothership's more, well, transcendent side, marrying two ton riffage to a far proggier impulse, akin to - dare I say it? - Pink Floyd's massively-underrated Wish You Were Here. No Page, no Plant, and no Roger Waters, but your weed is going to dry out waiting for that soul train. Worthy of a couple bongloads in the interim.
31. TV on the Radio - Dear Science (Interscope)
Probably the only album that made this list that I would categorize as a disappointment, simply because of past performance. Return to Cookie Mountain was good album that augured greatness; Dear Science doesn't deliver greatness. What it does deliver is TV on the Radio at their loosest and most pop-oriented, which, believe me, is not a demerit in my book. The issue is that TVOTR's "most pop-oriented" should be even more pop-oriented; they should be assaulting the charts like Normandy on D-Day. They make this list because Dear Science is still a very, very good album. The problem is that TVOTR is a band from whom we expect very, very great things.
Listening to this yesterday, I was trying to figure out who Alme sounded like, and crossing Lafayette Street, it hit me: Jonathan Richman. Seeing that Alme is Swedish, the temptation is to plug the 'x' in the "Richman + x = Alme" equation with fellow Swede and indie kingpin Jens Lekman (much like every Icelandic act "sounds like Bjork"). Though such a comparison wouldn't be too far off, it's not too far on either; Alme's music is more like a union between Phil Spector, Gamble and Huff, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Joel, which is to say that it sounds like something you've heard a million times before in the best possible way.
29. Destroyer - Trouble in Dreams (Merge)Listening to this yesterday, I was trying to figure out who Alme sounded like, and crossing Lafayette Street, it hit me: Jonathan Richman. Seeing that Alme is Swedish, the temptation is to plug the 'x' in the "Richman + x = Alme" equation with fellow Swede and indie kingpin Jens Lekman (much like every Icelandic act "sounds like Bjork"). Though such a comparison wouldn't be too far off, it's not too far on either; Alme's music is more like a union between Phil Spector, Gamble and Huff, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Joel, which is to say that it sounds like something you've heard a million times before in the best possible way.
Every now and again, Dan Bejar puts down whatever side-project he's embroiled in - New Pornographers, Swan Lake, Hello Blue Roses - to put out a gorgeous solo record. Since Bejar's average is above-average, this record was a lead-pipe cinch for inclusion the day it was laid to plastic, so allow me to take this opportunity to recommend to you 2004's Your Blues and 2006's Destroyer's Rubies as well. This one's another worthy arabesque of seprentine wordplay, pleasant-buzz rocking, and that voice.
Nothing succeeds like excess: global sound collector/impressario Diplo makes a dancehall-heavy mixtape w/ vocals from Santogold's S/T debut sprinkled about. At home he's a tourist; everywhere else he calls it a career.
27. Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador)
I've already invoked it this year, but "Wish You Were Here + hardcore" is too tempting a description not to set down in writing. It's nice to see a punk band get to that leg-stretching My War phase of their career w/o all of the audience antagonism and angst. No need to engage in the process of weeding out; more like weeding in, this keeps up.
26. Taylor Swift - Fearless (Big Machine)
Much like Miranda Lambert's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend became known as "the token country cross-over album on everyone's year-end list" last year, Fearless seems slated for a similar fate in 2008. Well, you know what? These albums cross over because they're pretty fucking good. In fact, I put it to you that Swift's latest is more of a pop album with country flourishes than the other way around - a claim I would not have made for Lambert. To draw a clumsy analogy, if Tha Carter III is the Purple Rain of 2008, then Fearless is the Born in the U.S.A. Which is to say that 2009 is going to be Swift's year to lose.
25. Lykke Li - Youth Novel (LL)
24. Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair (DFA/Mute)
Brooklyn's Andy Butler has returned sex to disco, which is a lot like saying that someone returned wet to the ocean. Of course, when we say "sex" what we really mean is gay sex, tracing the music back to its true subcultural roots. Normally, I'm not one for cultural politesse or so-called authenticity tropes; erecting barriers is the precise sort of thing music stands irrevocably against. But H&LA aren't about authenticity, but rediscovery - this album is in a sense an excavation of disco for an indie audience who is used to hearing it only as a prefix affixed to "-punk." Thus if we posit former DFAers The Rapture (who themselves went less punk and more disco on 2006's Pieces of the People We Love) as the gateway drug, well, here's the smack. The star here, apart from Butler's widescreen orchestrations, is Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons. Recontextualized from his main act's somber tenor, Antony is recast as a full-blown diva, his characteristic emotionalism drawing upon the music's pulse and simultaneously fortifying it, achieving a kind of symbiosis: unitarian disco, if you will.
23. Jay Reatard - Matador Singles '08 (Matador)
What is the Reatard agenda? Here, we have the most accessible set of songs the man has ever done, a pleasing mixture of power pop, punk, and a tinge of country. In fact, Jay was so kind, that he and his record company decided to free these tracks from the six limited-edition 7-inches they were initially released as, and make them available digitally. Yet the man I saw at the P'fork Fest was the misanthrope's misanthrope: I'd never felt the contempt from a performer towards his audience that Reatard positively radiated during his set. I don't know whether or not it's affected, or the consequence of playing before a couple of thousand people after routinely playing for a couple dozen. At the very least, it's confusing. And intriguing. I imagine this is how Guns n' Roses fans felt circa 1991.
22. The Juan MacLean - Happy House 12" (DFA)
Yes, Happy House is not an album; nor is a tomato a vegetable, technically. Yet at 28:02 (the title track plus two remixes), it's pretty damn close, time-wise. Anyway, if you can argue for the inclusion of EPs on album lists, then this discussion is a moot point; anyway, I'm not going to disadvantage the year's best dance track just because of a little thing like nomenclature. This one's got it all: killer piano loop, funky Stevie Wonderesque bassline, Nancy Wang diva-affected vocal. There's no telling how many discotheques have been leveled in the wake of this track. To quote: "So excellent."
21. Gang Gang Dance - St. Dymphna (The Social Registry)
Gang Gang Dance suggests a band that makes music for dancing, and so they did previously, in sort of a tribal, drum circle way. For some, that'll cut the mustard, for others there is St. Dymphna (named for a bar on St. Mark's Place), which introduces pop texturing and structure to the mix. So it's a pop album, but a pop album in the way that Animal Collective makes pop albums, and as a wise message board commenter once said, "Some people treat Animal Collective like they're fucking N'Sync or something." How's that for a cryptic warranty?
20. The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound (SideOneDummy)
For some, the idea of pop-punk mixed with blatant Springsteenisms is catnip. For others, it is akin to ingesting ipecac. For those of us in the former category, I give you New Brunswick's own The Gaslight Anthem, who have cooked up twelve songs that fulfill every breakneck promise this putative microgenre could possibly make to each and every Mary (namechecked) and Bobbie Jean (ditto) out there. So yeah, if you're sitting there in the parking lot of the Menlo Park Mall or trying to pick out which chain to wear over your sweater before heading out to Jenkinson's then, yeah, this is your favorite album ever. Except for, you know, Born to Run.
19. Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak (Def Jam)
Kanye West + Junior Boys instrumentals + heartbreak. This proposition does not sound inviting for everyone, and the actual result doesn't exactly throw the gates wide to Kanye's built-in audience, which following 2007's Graduation, seemed to be everyone. 808s is retrospective, introspective, maudlin, self-absorbed, spiteful, and ice cold virtually throughout; following the death of his mother and break-up with his fiancee, West was at an emotional nadir, and it shows. Of course, his ego shows too: that's where the dramatic tension comes into play, and why it pays to listen to Kanye's records. Closest thing to a Kid A in mainstream hip-hop yet.
Sad bastard music. Man, I don't know what a Beach House show is like, and I don't want to know. This is bedsit music in the extreme, made for bedsitters by bedsitters. But if you're going to have a genre, you have to have exemplars, and Devotion, in that sense, is canonical. The Beach Boys to Low's slowcore Stones.
The signature sound of 2008 was sonically-adventurous punk rock and LA's No Age were the vanguard of that movement, dropping the notice-serving EP collection Weirdo Rippers last year and now serving up Nouns, their full-length debut for Seattle's Sub Pop. If this record were "Sleeper Hold"x 12 it woulda made the top 10 if not number one; to paraphrase Judge Ricahrd Posner, my job is to police a range, not a point. This one's a gem, and in a few years (or weeks) I'll look and feel foolish for stuffing it back here closer to the middle of the pack than up front; such is the vagary of the list-making enterprise. Buy w/o reservation.
Sad bastard music. Man, I don't know what a Beach House show is like, and I don't want to know. This is bedsit music in the extreme, made for bedsitters by bedsitters. But if you're going to have a genre, you have to have exemplars, and Devotion, in that sense, is canonical. The Beach Boys to Low's slowcore Stones.
The signature sound of 2008 was sonically-adventurous punk rock and LA's No Age were the vanguard of that movement, dropping the notice-serving EP collection Weirdo Rippers last year and now serving up Nouns, their full-length debut for Seattle's Sub Pop. If this record were "Sleeper Hold"x 12 it woulda made the top 10 if not number one; to paraphrase Judge Ricahrd Posner, my job is to police a range, not a point. This one's a gem, and in a few years (or weeks) I'll look and feel foolish for stuffing it back here closer to the middle of the pack than up front; such is the vagary of the list-making enterprise. Buy w/o reservation.
16. Santogold - Santogold (Downtown)
Santogold, nee Santi White, is having a great, if shamefully under the radar 2008: whoever made the mistake of marketing her to the Pitchfork demographic (are those Converse ads w/ Julian Casablancas fucking serious?) ought to be shot. Fortunately, as M.I.A. has recently proved via "Paper Planes", course correction is available. Not that I want to get into the Santogold vis-a-vis M.I.A. debate, which misses the point a bit, but of the two Santogold is the more Top 40 ready. Indeed, is it that difficult to imagine that with better promotion and different cover art (that spitting gold shit is not moving your Wal-Mart consumer) that this album could float to the upper reaches of the charts based on straight-killers like "L.E.S. Artistes" (ignore the title), "You'll Find a Way", and "I'm a Lady?" I sense a "Maps"/"Paper Planes" type breakthrough down the road a piece.
15. Blood on the Wall - Liferz (The Social Registry)
If the Pixies impregnated Sonic Youth, the resulting offspring would probably sound like Blood on the Wall. (Needless to say, using the Google image search for this band proved nauseating.) Liferz is perhaps the best of a crop of undersung indie rock albums this year that put the rock before the indie. 2008 was a year that saw aggression - or at least loudness - return as virtue on the indie circuit, and Blood on the Wall's destructive musical impulses deliver impeccably dissolute tunes on the crest of a wave of distortion. Probably the least-feted essential album of the year.
It's true that I've not heard everything put out by the former Replacements front man since that group's unhappy denouement, but I daresay that of what I have heard, 49:00 is his best since 1987's Pleased to Meet Me. Sold as a single, 49¢ mp3 on Amazon, 49:00 is an entire album, programmed to run like a schizophrenic car radio: song fragments, mostly in Westerberg's favored country/punk/classic rock mold, blur into one another in a haze of distortion, or just snap into place instantaneously. The effect is brilliant - a pirate transmission from inside the mind of America's foremost rock and roll never-was. The coup de grace: despite the title, the whole things only runs 43 minutes and change.
13. Deerhunter - Microcastle/New Weird Era Cont. (Kranky)
There is entirely the possibility that Deerhunter may end up being one of those bands with seemingly impenetrable beginnings that spends two or three albums barrel-rolling its way towards the mainstream and Radiohead (or at lest Decemberist) sized audiences. Last year's Cryptograms was gauzy out-pop gem, wherein the songs seemed to eclose from their electronic pupae the longer the album went on. Microcastle starts out in the alternative sweet-spot and stays there for all twelve of its tracks, sounding like the next step on the way to a universally-renowned classic third album. Plus an album length bonus "EP" of pretty much the same quality! The best band in the world whose name starts with "Deerh–".
12. Okkervil River - The Stand-Ins (Jagjaguwar)
Will Sheff and his band are a rambling, emotional wreck, constantly in search of purchase, which only seems to last until the next song, and sometimes not even that long. 2005's Black Sheep Boy was brilliant but slept on; last year's The Stage Names, shorn of a clear concept (though I'm told there was one) seemed to clue more folks in. The Stand-Ins plays Amnesiac to that record's Kid A (check the interlocking cover art): complementary, contemporaneous, but far from afterbirth. "Pop Lie" says it all: "All sweetly sung and succinctly stated/Words and music you calculated/To make you sing along/With your stereo on." Sounds like a plan.
At the beginning of the year, Vampire Weekend were a battleground in the class war, with Ezra Konig's taste in ridiculous dog sweaters as potent an evaluative tool as actually listening to the record. Most infamous, to my mind at least, was Julianne Sheppard's tart dismissal in the Voice: "Trust-funded or not, VW's music, lyrically and sonically, emits the putrescent stench of old money, of old politics, of old-guard high society." Yes, it's true that VW's brew of bleached out afro-pop and Lacoste communicates a kind of cloistered, naive elitism. ("Old politics" though? Dudes rock for Obama.) But it's also true that to criticize VW on this point alone is to recapitulate tired rockist cliches about "authenticity" - that somehow deprivation breeds "realer" art than wealth. Which may well be true, but I don't think this record is masquerading as art. It's a pop record fueled by a bright, literary energy that manages to avoid pretension by eschewing ponderousness in favor of, well, fun. Yeah, it's polite, but it's not like you're always going around swinging on chandeliers and shit.
Well, this one won't be soundtracking any yuppie dinner parties. Before Third's release early this year, Portishead, like their triphop contemporaries, appeared set to fade into the footnotes of pop history; maybe people would recall "Sour Times", but that's about it. Yet absence seems to have made their hearts grow colder. Third is a more direct effort than its two predecessors, less interested in creating a mood than assaulting the listener, as if to suggest that audiences missed the point during the '90s. Whereas back then the form was perhaps a little too sedate to match the emotional content, a song like "Machine Gun", which concludes with an almost-Suicide-esque barrage of hissing percussion, is unlikely to be misunderstood as a mere signifier of good taste. Attention must be paid.
At the beginning of the year, Vampire Weekend were a battleground in the class war, with Ezra Konig's taste in ridiculous dog sweaters as potent an evaluative tool as actually listening to the record. Most infamous, to my mind at least, was Julianne Sheppard's tart dismissal in the Voice: "Trust-funded or not, VW's music, lyrically and sonically, emits the putrescent stench of old money, of old politics, of old-guard high society." Yes, it's true that VW's brew of bleached out afro-pop and Lacoste communicates a kind of cloistered, naive elitism. ("Old politics" though? Dudes rock for Obama.) But it's also true that to criticize VW on this point alone is to recapitulate tired rockist cliches about "authenticity" - that somehow deprivation breeds "realer" art than wealth. Which may well be true, but I don't think this record is masquerading as art. It's a pop record fueled by a bright, literary energy that manages to avoid pretension by eschewing ponderousness in favor of, well, fun. Yeah, it's polite, but it's not like you're always going around swinging on chandeliers and shit.
Well, this one won't be soundtracking any yuppie dinner parties. Before Third's release early this year, Portishead, like their triphop contemporaries, appeared set to fade into the footnotes of pop history; maybe people would recall "Sour Times", but that's about it. Yet absence seems to have made their hearts grow colder. Third is a more direct effort than its two predecessors, less interested in creating a mood than assaulting the listener, as if to suggest that audiences missed the point during the '90s. Whereas back then the form was perhaps a little too sedate to match the emotional content, a song like "Machine Gun", which concludes with an almost-Suicide-esque barrage of hissing percussion, is unlikely to be misunderstood as a mere signifier of good taste. Attention must be paid.
9. The Magnetic Fields - Distortion (Nonesuch)
Its dolorousness and pith are characteristic of creator Stephin Merritt; what makes Distortion special is, well, the distortion and the prominent return of singer Shirley Simms, who was sidelined on the band's last proper effort, 2004's i. Simms is given the album's flat-out best moments - the jauntily vindictive "California Girls" (not a cover), the sacreligeous "The Nun's Littany", and aching album closer "Courtesans" - and she makes the most of her star turns, delivering the everygirl emotionalism that has turned her into Merritt's foremost interpreter. This is not, of course, to detract from Merritt himself, who wrote these wonderful songs, and conceived of the titular conceit - smothering his standard compositions under layers of feedback, an homage to the Jesus and Mary Chain's epochal Psychocandy. Interestingly, Merritt, a tinnitus sufferer, was unable to mix the disc at high volume. Hence, perhaps, the happy accident that Distortion is Merritt's most sonically adventurous release to date without relinquishing any of his typical listenability.
8. Lindstrøm - Where You Go I Go Too (Smalltown Supersound)
I like to listen to this album while food-shopping at the Morton-Williams by school. It makes the supermarket feel like the future, which it kind of is.
7. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III (Cash Money)
I will be the first to admit that I do not enjoy TC3 as much as last year's Da Drought 3: legitimate product inevitably sheds that illicit, ad hoc flavor that keeps hip-hop bound to the streets in a good way. Still, there was no more glorious moment for rap in 2008 (a bleak proposition, but still) that Wayne's ecstatic precognition on "3peat" that "You watch me!/ You watch me!/Cause I be Weezy/Must see TV!" before selling over a million in week one. He should consider it back pay for the truckload of free music he dropped on fans leading up to TC3, and record labels should consider it an instructive lesson on how to treat their customers.
A couple of slots ago, we reached the point on the list where you could hit "shuffle" and whatever the result, I don't think I'd have a problem. Placing the Hold Steady here, as opposed to the pole position, was an act of calculating cowardice on my part - after all, 2009 could be the year the band release an even better, more worthy album. Consistency, they say, is the hobgoblin of small minds; perhaps even more so, it is the hobgoblin of bands who do what they do so well that the audience takes their craftsmanship for granted. So allow me to say that Stay Positive is a brilliant, biting record from a band that does nothing but release brilliant, biting records. I worship at the alter of Craig Finn. And undoubtedly, I will be back here this time next year, or in 2010, or 2011, telling you the same shit on a different day.
5. Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (Motown/Universal)
New Amerykah is the epitome of difficult art, sonically dense and lyrically complex, part of a rich tradition of avant-garde black political pop traceable to Sly Stone, Miles Davis, George Clinton, and Public Enemy. Badu is widely regarded as one of the progenitors of neo-soul - that is, soul updated with hip-hop signifiers - and New Amerykah persists in that vein, probing at its outer boundaries in search of something ineffably new; tracks that begin as straightforward songs end as sound collages, riven by expropriated dialogue ("Twinkle" concludes with a near-straight lift of Peter Finch's famous monologue from Network) and meditations on the religious philosophy of Clarence 13X Smith, the leader of a Nation of Islam splinter group assassinated in 1969. It's an imposing-sounding work, but thanks to Badu's ear for pop, which here doesn't necessarily translate into hooks, it remains an engaging, satisfying listen throughout.
4. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (Modular)
New Order did not release a new record in 2008, and if they did, it probably would have sucked ass anyhow. Cut Copy got tired of waiting for the return of the kings and decided to do it themselves, and frankly, given that NO were never a tremendous album act, In Ghost Colours might just sidle its way up to a Technique or a Low-Life without anyone batting an eye. Surely no one else this year is connecting on a heart-ass level like these guys. Case in point: I stood in the pit at the P'fork Fest this summer through all manner of insane noise band offenders - HEALTH, No Age, King Khan - but not until Cut Copy showed up to play a truncated set (customs issues) did I fear for my life. It was as if someone had set off a 100 megaton groove bomb and the kinetic energy of 5,000 sweaty, tired kids was unleashed in one sustained pulse. Messianic, in a good way.
3. Fennesz - Black Sea (Touch)
Christian Fennesz seems to drop by every few years to shit out a game-changing electronic album. 2001's Endless Summer, 2004's Venice, and now Black Sea - these are not merely great records, but genre-defining signposts. Yet Fennesz is not some kind of enigmatic Madonna acting as a subcultural curator; he's not Columbus, "discovering" a continent were millions of people were already living. He's by himself on another planet, occasionally sending burst transmissions containing his coordinates back to Earth. Not that anyone appears capable of following him. We don't have the technology.
2. The Dutchess and the Duke - She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke (Hardly Art)
A list like this is plainly the product of personal preference, and there's no denying that The Dutchess and the Duke hit a very personal sweet-spot of mine. In this case, they approximate the Rolling Stones circa "Playing With Fire", when they telegraphed menace and sex before trying to distill the concept into a formula a la Windex. So, yes TD&TD practice transparently louche revivalism; then again, so did the White Stripes. So do Cut Copy. Fuck, this is the 21st century! Recycling is good. Especially if you're good at it. So I invite you to think of TD&TD as Andy Warhol silkscreening Campbell's soup cans, as opposed to Snow Patrol photocopying The Joshua Tree. If you require further convincing, head over to their MySpace and listen to "Reservoir Park". If you don't like it, well, you just wasted your time reading the previous 48 blurbs and should close this tab before getting to no. 1.
1. M83 - Saturdays = Youth (Mute)
The truth is there was no true no. 1 album in 2008. Not because it was a bad year for music - which it certainly wasn't - but because unlike (some) previous years where there was a consensus pick (or consensus picks) - 2008 seemed slightly interstitial. A ton of bands came out with ton of great albums suited to the lineage of great albums they'd previously released; newcomers served notice that they had arrived and that even greater goods were on the way. Saturday = Youth is an apt choice because, in a way, it's strangely understated. It's not M83's best album (Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts holds that mantle), and though it's still hyperemotional, it's a step back from the histrionic pyrotechnica of 2005's Before the Dawn Heals Us. Allegedly inspired by the gauzy melodrama of John Hughes' '80s teen flicks, Saturdays = Youth seems a futuristic piece of nostalgia; like Cut Copy, M83 seemed to be reaching for the New Order brass ring, but from a different angle. Where Cut Copy wanted to move your ass, M83, not to be too corny about it, wanted to move you. So where the former made a record of great NO singles, M83 cut to the emotional core of what made its chief influence a great band: humanity co-equal to technology, not subsumed by it.