music

Top 20 Albums of 2008

As I was struggling to rank my top albums of 2008, I read Roger Ebert's top twenty films of 2008, where, finally giving up winnowing his choices down to just ten, he wrote:

If you must have a Top 10 List, find a coin in your pocket. Heads, the odd-numbered movies are your 10. Tails, the even-numbered.

This served as a moment of inspiration. Rather than ordering twenty albums, I thought, I would put them into two tiers and then write a bit of code to randomize their ordering within the tiers with each page refresh.

Perhaps luckily for my readers, in the end I decided against this. As I started to write my little blurbs, momentary preferences started to sink in. But I admit they are just that: momentary preferences. I still like my number one album from last year, but man that Spoon album, which I ranked #16, sure has been getting a lot of play this year.

So here it is: a snapshot of what I currently think are my top twenty albums of 2008. Last year, some of the recommendations in the comments became new favorites, so please tell me where I went astray.

Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak
20. Kanye West -- 808s & Heartbreak

When I heard the first singles coming from this percussively stripped-down and AutoTune-obsessed breakup album, I was expecting throwaway tracks, some filler before his next proper album. But it turns out that this is a proper album, with only the live freestyle on the final track meriting the skip button. It isn't quite Kanye at his finest, but it just goes to show that we all benefit by his persistent sincerity.

Favorite tracks: Paranoid; RoboCop


El Guincho - Alegranza
19. El Guincho -- Alegranza

Yes, it sounds like it was produced in exactly the same way as an Animal Collective album, but on Alegranza the loop components come almost strictly from the tropical realm (think steel drums and maracas). But it's never exhausting in the way Animal Collective can be, and it's surprisingly danceable throughout.

Favorite tracks: Antillas; Fata Morgana


Coldplay - Viva la Vida
18. Coldplay -- Viva la Vida

While I've always had a guilty pleasure like of Coldplay's singles, their past albums have been filled with aimless, tiresome songs. On Viva la Vida, they still wear their influences on their sleeves (along with colored ribbons), but the songs are rarely boring and benefit from Brian Eno's light touch.

Favorite tracks: 42; Death and All His Friends


Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna
17. Gang Gang Dance -- Saint Dymphna

How to describe this eclectic album? I could say Pure Moods meets Battles, but that really only describes a few tracks on here, and doesn't manage to explain the electronic touches or dancefloor moments. I guess I'll give up and say this is the best compilation album of 2008 by one band.

Favorite tracks: First Communion; House Jam


Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
16. Hercules and Love Affair -- Hercules and Love Affair

Yes, 2008 was the breakout year of new-wave/disco (see also Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours). And it's not even "retro-influenced" anymore -- much of this album sounds straight out of the 70's, with the exception of Antony's voice, which has finally found a comfortable home. It started with the Junior Boys a few years ago, but I've been a sucker for this stuff ever since.

Favorite tracks: Hercules Theme; Blind

Thu, 12/11/2008 - 12:31am
  • A video demonstrating what I can only describe as "electronic face dancing." (0) #
    12/3/2008
  • The Flaming Lips have been working on Christmas on Mars since 2001, making it sort of the Chinese Democracy of the film world (if you were to add 7 more years of production). It's finally coming out this month, and here is the trailer. (2) #
    10/9/2008
  • Boards of Canada are coming out of hiding, sort of, producing a few tracks by Scottish band The Sexual Objects. You can listen to one of the tracks, "Here Come the Rubber Cops," on MySpace. It's the first track in the list, labeled as "The Sexual Objects" -- the one with the The-Man-Who-Sold-the-World riff. (thx, endepth08) (3) #
    9/22/2008
  • David Byrne and Brian Eno's second collaborative album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, has just been released digitally. You can purchase the downloads for $8.99, or an assortment of other digital + physical options, or just listen to the live stream of the whole album. (5) #
    8/17/2008
  • The making of Darren Aronofsky's next film, The Wrestler, keeps getting more interesting, to the point where I can't imagine what to expect: Aronofsky blogs that Slash participated in the recording of Clint Mansell's score. (Mansell did the music for Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain, the last of which with Mogwai.) (0) #
    8/8/2008

Disco Demolition Night

I was born during Disco Demolition Night, a Chicago White Sox home game in 1979 where unwanted disco records were collected and blown up in center field, causing a near-riot.

When it exploded, the bomb tore a hole in the outfield grass surface and thousands of fans immediately rushed the field. Some lit fires and started small-scale riots. The batting cage was pulled down and wrecked and the bases literally stolen, along with chunks of the field itself.

The police broke it up and the game was forfeited to the Detroit Tigers. It is considered a symbolic marker of the beginning of the decline of the musical fad -- I was born on The Night Disco Died.

Sat, 07/12/2008 - 10:44am
  • Two guys programmed The Rocka-fire Explosion, the animatronic band for Showbiz Pizza (later Chuck E Cheese's), to perform Usher's "Love in this Club." Here's a video of their performance. As a kid, I used to go the Showbiz in southwest Michigan all the time -- the gorilla keyboardist was my favorite. (thx, jesse) (5) #
    7/1/2008
  • According to Al Billings, who received an advanced reader copy of Anathem, Neal Stephenson's upcoming new novel, the book came with a CD of seven musical tracks with titles like "Proof Using Finite Projective Geometry" and "Sixteen Color Prime Generating Automation." Writes Al:
    [F]rankly, this is some weird shit... The musical styles are all over the map except that they all only use human voices (and occasionally hands).
    I wonder if they are algorithmic compositions of some sort. I'm once again anxious to read the next 1,000 page Stephenson novel. (6) #
    6/24/2008

2007 albums I overlooked

At the end of last year, I posted a list of my top 20 albums of 2007. Today, nearly six months after I posted the list, I want to mention three albums that I hadn't yet heard when I made the list, but should have been on there.

*Of Montreal -- Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
With melodies that are catchy as hell, great production, and a Bowie influence that doesn't detract, I can't believe I missed this one. There's something fascinating about upbeat and poppy music coupled with depressing lyrics. "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" is an awesome centerpiece. (thx, matt)

*Stars of the Lid -- And Their Refinement of the Decline
Probably the best ambient album I've heard in nearly a decade.

*St. Vincent -- Marry Me
I had heard a track or two from this before making the list, but it didn't sink in enough for me to try the album. Eventually I got to it, and instantly dug her constant inventiveness and poppy aesthetic.

So what would I lose from my original list? Probably The Arcade Fire, Iron and Wine, and Okkervil River, the last of which hasn't held up well to multiple listens.

Fri, 06/06/2008 - 11:44am
  • Music video for "Mirando," a track off Ratatat's upcoming LP3. For those of you who have fond nostalgia for jungle action movies of the 1980's. (0) #
    5/23/2008
  • "The Rip" -- from Portishead's new album coming out next week -- is my favorite track in recent memory:

     Portishead – The Rip

    (3) #
    4/24/2008
  • Only 18.3% have chosen to pay the $5 for Saul Williams's Niggy Tardust so far, a disheartened Trent Reznor reveals on his blog. Williams, on the other hand, is more optimistic in this CNET interview, explaining the reason they released the numbers:
    But really [Reznor's] whole purpose of releasing that statement was that we could avoid some of the pretentiousness of some of the other groups that have perhaps done something similar, like Radiohead keeping numbers to themselves and us wanting to say, 'Hey, look this is an open experiment that all artists should know.' I think that this information is essential for all artists trying to do what we're doing and figuring out whether this is something that will work.
    (5) #
    1/11/2008
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