Best of 2008

Well, some of you all would've gotten this via e-mail already, but for those of you who I don't have e-mail addresses for and who are remotely interested in my opinion on such matters, here's my take on the Top 10 albums for 2008. As ever, I'm keen on hearing what you all think were the best albums of the year.

Song of the year: In the New Year, The Walkmen

Just missed: Devotchka, Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Doomtree, Girl Talk, The Fireman, Fight Like Apes, Beck, Cold War Kids, MGMT, REM

10. Jolie Holland - The Living and the Dead

Went over and over these last two spots in the list for a good long while as I really wanted to give props to Ireland (Fight Like Apes) and Minneapolis (Doomtree) but in the end I just thought that this was a better album. Plus Jolie seems to be a personal favourite of Tom Waits, which should count for something. She’s brilliant at using her voice like Patsy Cline to somehow simultaneously communicate vulnerability and resolve. It’s albums like these that continue to remind me not to write off country music as a whole. Beyond the lyrics and Jolie’s voice, she’s a really brilliant instrumentalist as well using any amount of homemade and vintage instruments for a really distinct sound.

9. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Who could believe that anything good would ever come out of Wisconsin? The story of this album is well-chronicled (following the break-up of his band, Justin Vernon holed up in his dad’s cabin in Wisconsin in the dead of winter and wrote the whole album), but man I don’t know if there’s ever been an album that so completely reflects the time and location of its writing. It’s bare, stark, simple, emotional. It’s the sort of album that I don’t always go for, because there’s never any rocking-out part on it. But there’s no denying the bare emotions of the album. One of the most emblematic cases in recent memory of an artist totally putting himself into an album.

8. The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound

Let’s see. Working class band from New Jersey that sings about cars and girls named Gail and Janie and Mary and Estella that include lyrics like “I saw taillights last night in dreams about my first wife”. Heck, they even directly reference “I’m on Fire” in one song. You sensing an influence here? No, it’s not Bon Jovi. Yeah, these guys like the Boss quite a bit. Which is good, because you may be aware that I rather like him as well. While they definitely sound like Asbury Park-era Springsteen, don’t mistake the Gaslight Anthem for a tribute band. They’ve taken the best aspects of Springsteen, the working-class ethos, the driving guitar-driven rock, and the complex lyrics about simple themes (the best is “You remind Anna if she asks why that a thief stole my heart while she was making up her mind...But I used to wait up at a diner a million nights without her, praying she won’t cancel again tonight. The waiter’d serve my coffee with a consolation sigh, you remind Anna if she asks why.”), but they also have a harder punk edge than Springsteen has. And, hey, a Springsteen tribute band is just fine with me.

7. Vampire Weekend - S/T

Just really silly, happy, bouncy songs here but ones with really erudite lyrics. They reference Oxford commas, the Khyber Pass, and Jackson Pollack all while setting everything to a punkier version of Paul Simon’s Graceland. Plus they’re able to work the word “Hyannisport” into a song, which is pretty impressive. It’s really hard to be in a bad mood after listening to this album. They score bonus points for making a video clearly referential to Wes Anderson.

6. Atmosphere - When Life Gives you Lemons, Paint That **** Gold

The best concert I went to this year was Leonard Cohen in Manchester. Now, Leonard is just about the best lyricist of all time and was, in fact, the Canadian Poet Laureate back in the 60’s. And it struck me that there’s just not a lot of lyricists like him around any more, but the ones that are seem to be disproportionately hip-hop artists. They’re singing about different topics than Leonard entirely, but the quality of the poetry is still there. Exhibit A is Slug (one half of Atmosphere). He’s a routine entrant on my best-of lists due, in no small regard, to the fact that he’s the standard bearer for Minneapolis hip-hop. He’s a bit lower on the list this year, but that’s due more to the quality of the people ahead of him. You could read “Guarantees” without the solitary guitar behind it and it would still be a brilliant piece of poetry. “No overtime pay, no holidays, months behind on everything but the lottery” is just totally brilliant. It is always refreshing to see the Minneapolis hip-hop artists staying true to the ethos of hip-hop and avoiding the whole self-serving vibe so often seen with modern hip-hop. 

This album features a much subtler production from Slug. Gone are a lot of the guitars, rather much more muted backing tracks. He does feature Tom Waits beatboxing on “The Waitress”, though. 

5. Duffy - Rockferry

I hated this album for the longest time. Well, I didn’t really hate this album, but the radio stations over here just kept playing “Mercy” over and over and over. And I really, really hate that song. It’s easily the worst song on the album, why record execs insisted on making it the single is beyond me. In any case, during a drive to Wexford, “Mercy” came on the radio yet again and, because I couldn’t tune in any other radio stations, I was forced to sit there and stew and listen to the song in its entirety. And, while I still hated the song, it did occur to me that Duffy is one he11 of a singer. So I did a bit of research and learned that her album was written with Bernard Butler (of Suede fame), which was a definite vote of confidence. Going to YouTube, then, I found this clip from Later with Jools Holland. And that is still the best performance on that show that I’ve ever seen. Around 2:50 of the clip, listen to how she pronounces the word “house”. At that point, she’s belting out the lyrics yet inserts that really shy, almost whispered word into the song. It’s fabulous. And Bernard Butler manages to write songs that suit her very well and are very true to the 60’s soul vibe that they’re going for. But they’re clever enough songs, check out the double meaning of the line “And I wouldn’t write to you, ‘cause I’m not that kind.” Butler also serves up an almost blues standard on Syrup and Honey and the way Duffy enunciates the word “time” is almost heart-breaking. Also I can’t listen to her “baby”s without hearing Ronnie Specter. She really is great with her voice. She’s definitely the best Welsh singer since Tom Jones. Take that Bonnie Tyler!

4. Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust

The album title just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Easily the best band to sing in Icelandic since, um, the Vikings? And there's actually one horribly out-of-place song entirely in English, the sell-outs. No, it's the same really lush sound you've come to expect from Sigur Ros even though they dropped a lot of the instrumentation on the album and went with a more traditional rock-band sound. And, maybe it's making me look all soft, but it's another album that can only put you in a good mood. The first track, Gobbledigook, is not really my favorite song on the album but it's so impossibly happy and Bjork is just about as cute as a button in the clip that I had to include it. 

3. The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement

In the span of about a month,my friend Noel turned me on to Scott Walker and I also stumbled across the Last Shadow Puppets. Scott Walker, for those that don't know him (mostly Americans, I suspect), is essentially the British version of the Velvet Underground, an overseas musician (he's American) of moderate popularity that has had a disproportionate influence on rock acts ever since. Aside from having an impossibly deep voice, Walker's whole deal was to incorporate symphonic elements into music. The Last Shadow Puppets formed out of a collaboration between one dude from the Arctic Monkeys (Alex Turner) and another from the Rascals (Miles Kane) that just wanted to make Scott Walker music. So everything on this album is big. It's like Arcade Fire's sound as interpreted by the English. It's also a bit of a gimmick, but it's a pretty solid gimmick in that Alex and Miles will sometimes switch off vocal parts during a song, sometimes in mid-sentence. It's a subtle change since the two sound so similar, but definitely noticeable. I just happened across them on what may have been the best Later with Jools Holland show ever as they led off a particular show that I was watching to see another band that shows up in a little bit on this list. They didn't steal the show, but they were definitely a huge surprise.

2. The Walkmen - You & Me

Being a huge fan of the Walkmen, I'd downloaded this album as soon as it became available. And, seriously, the first time I heard "In the New Year" I listened to it about 10 consecutive times. There's something about the song that I just love. It's not "Born to Run" good, but it's way up there. I suppose part of it is that, for whatever reason, I like simple things in songs like counting (e.g. Soul Coughing), whistling (Peter, Bjorn, and John), handclaps (the Cure), and Too-Rye-Ays (Dexy's Midnight Runners). "In the New Year" has this 7-note progression repeated over and over in the song that for some reason unknown to science (or at least to me) stimulates some kind of music appreciation center in my brain. It's really a fantastic song and on the strength of that alone it would probably be in the top 10 list, but top to bottom this album's great. It's every bit as good as Bows and Arrows, which made my Top 10 list a few years back. Part of it is definitely that I really love their sound. Hamilton Leithauser has a great rock voice, it's just barely melodic enough to not be categorized as screaming. But it's close. Then you add in one of the best rhythm sections in rock and the tinny organ sound that features in a lot of their songs and it's nearly perfect for me. If only they would add some Too-Rye-Ays one of these days... 

1. Portishead - Third

And this is the band that Iwaited for with bated breath on that Jools Holland show that included the Last Shadow Puppets. I (and countless others) have been waiting for Portishead to play for the last 10 years or so really. There's always the danger in setting expectations as high as I did for this album, but it actually exceeded all my expectations. Perhaps it was just hearing their great mix of jazz, electronica, and "spy music" again. Or maybe it was hearing Beth Gibbon's ethereal voice one more time. I do admit to feeling like I was back in the fraternity house listening to Dummy all over again and feeling all superior compared to everyone else who was listening to Rusted Root. That aside, it's just a phenomenal album. It can go from the lullaby-turned-frenetic track "The Rip" to the ominous, nearly goth "We Carry On". "The Rip" sounds like one of the best Radiohead songs of all time and if you search on YouTube you'll find Thom Yorke doing a version of the song. Even the most maligned track on the album "Machine Gun" (named for its backbeat) is classic Portishead to me. So, top-to-bottom good and if you combine that with how long and how desperately I'd waited for this album, it's a clear #1.