My Top 25 Albums of 2008

[Kablizzy]

Words don't describe the elation I have that you're back, but more than that, I'm so, so glad you're doing this. Amazing.

[Myrrhman]

thank you for all the positive reception.

from now on the entries will come with up to 3 mp3's for your listening pleasure.

Onward ho!

[Myrrhman]

10. WOMEN - WOMEN


The most frustrating album to search and download this year is only moreso because it's one of the best. Women are a four piece that hail from Calgary and despite only using a four track make quite the raucous album. Their influences range from all over the place, sometimes delving into This Heat inspired dissonance and cacophony ("Lawncare") to late Velvet Underground detached sing-songs ("Black Rice") to songs that show incredible guitar dexterity all with an ease that belies the tension of the song a la The Joggers ("Shaking Hand"). They could be called lo-fi as well (the last on the list that could qualify as such) but they're interests are far-out. I don't quite understand the statement they're trying to make with this album given it's variety, but it does, somehow, cohere. This mystery of intention keeps me coming back for more as maybe this is just a resume, maybe it's a preview of coming attractions. Either way, it's one of the more fascinating debuts this year that seemingly sounds fresh and like it could come from any time.

Key Tracks:
Lawncare, Black Rice, Group Transport Hall, Shaking Hand, Upstairs

[Myrrhman]

09. HIGH PLACES - 03/07 - 09/07 / HIGH PLACES


Double trouble. I included the first because it's a compilation of their earlier ep's while the latter is their proper album. High Places is a two piece that use and record unconventional percussion and instruments (toys, music boxes), chop it up, and re-assemble them into incredibly well-rounded, dimensionally deep, and increasingly sophisticated sound scapes as the female vocalist's nursery rhyme-esque singing weaves thru the units of sound. Not much to look at live, their music has an elegance unparalleled in the Brooklyn scene in which they are often lumped into. The music evokes such a beautiful sense of space and wonder, like a child's initial curiosity and imagination of the universe.

Initially I shrugged it off as another antique of this generation, an album that could not exist outside of 2008, but that's also it's charm. It's a testament to the constantly creative and thriving music scene. Unlike their counterparts Telepathe, this antique can be looked at in appreciation, not embarrassment. But really, who cares, this is beautiful, expressive, and oft sonically poignant music.

Key Tracks:
Head Spins, Banana Slugs / Cosmonaut, Shared Islands, Jump In (For Gilkey Elementary School); The Storm, Golden Coin, From Stardust to Sentience

[toasters]

High Places sounds promising.

[a happy song]

Women, 'Lawncare' in particular, is wonderfully hypnotic. The intensity of the constant build up of the song in question is an inspired mess.

I like it a lot.

[Myrrhman]

08. DODOS - VISITER


I present the most promising indie rock band this year, The Dodos. Just two guys, guitarist and drummer, they pound out such solid songwriting that they give us too much of a good thing (14 songs, just a few seconds under an hour, 4 songs clocking well over 6 min.) They're strength is their ingenuity, combining passionate strums and a even a flavor of delta blues with rollicking Animal Collective like percussion (and sometimes vocal cadences and shouts) but somehow, it maintains it's identity with it's incredibly strong songwriting and understanding of structure.

Now, this isn't the best debut of the year (but obviously it's pretty damn close), but by seeing how prolific these guys are in this one album, I think they'll be around for a while and producing quality material. What's also fantastic about it is it's utter lack of pretense. These sound like friends you know with inventive means to express themselves, not far-out, out-of-touch artists who can't be accessed. They just have a passion and a voice, and if this is the state of indie rock today, then the kids are alright.

Key Tracks:
Red and Purple, Fools, Joe's Waltz, Ashley, The Season, God?

[Myrrhman]

07. FLEET FOXES - FLEET FOXES


We've all seen this before. Buzz-worthy band releases EP and shortly after critically praised debut. Their next LP is lucky to have half of the strength of the debut, and from there, the quality decreases exponentially. Honestly, I don't expect much from these guys in the future, but none of that matters, as it does not discredit what a refreshing achievement this is. Pastoral and lilting guitars, beautiful vocal harmonies, and strong motifs on the natural world, this transcends Fairview Convention posturing, it really enters into the realm of timeless song writing (a cliche i'm using a lot, but if the glove fits..).

The album has nary a dull moment, and constantly impresses with it's range of vocals and evocations. The production gives everything such a beautiful and full quality. If nothing else, this band will be remembered for "White Winter Hymnal", one of those simple but perfect songs that enter into the collective conscious of everyone. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Key Tracks:
White Winter Hymnal, Ragged Wood, He Doesn't Know Why, Your Protector, Blue Ridge Mountains

[Myrrhman]

06. VARIOUS ARTISTS - HEALTH // DISCO


I'm not a remix guy, usually. Given the thousands of variables on any given song, finding all the right components to make a song good again or even better seems like searching for a needle in a haystack. However, given material from the ruthlessly noisy, wildly arty, and all around fractured sounds from the band HEALTH, something good would have to come out. What I appreciate more than anything about this album is his cohesion and overall tone. It keeps the creepiness and tension of the band, but adds cold synths and beats to make you tap your feet.

Its range in remixes is also quite impressive, and almost akin to what you expect from a regular album; the club-banger, the slower-tempo'd driving songs, the epic. It's all here. What's also great is the remixers are talented and throw in elements that go beyond the obligatory 4 to the floor beats and simple synth work, but really communicate their identity as artists in their own right (like CFCF's interpretation of "Triceratops" as Italian horror film soundtrack, or Thrust Labs "Problem Is" as 80's teen gang drama). The album can be just as challenging as the source, it's not just here to make you dance, but to make you re-evaluate just how malleable music can be in different hands. Also, check out the HEALTH's self-titled debut from 2007: these guys have some promise.

Key Tracks:
Triceratops (Acid Girls Rmx A), Lost Time (Pictureplane Rmx), Crimewave (Crystal Castles Vs Health), Problem Is (Thrust Lab Rmx), Triceratops (Cfcf Rmx)

[Myrrhman]

I'm glad you guys are liking the tunes!

[Myrrhman]

Great Songs From Albums That Did Not Make The List:

Constantines - Our Age
The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer
Jeremy Jay - Beautiful Rebel
Kanye West - Coldest Winter
Lykke Li - Little Bit
M83 - Graveyard Girl
Morgan Geist - Detroit
Nico Muhly - Mothertongue III: Hress
Of Montreal - Wicked Wisdom
Ponytail - Celebrate the Body Electric (It Came From an Angel)
TV On The Radio - Crying
Wolf Parade - Language City
Xiu Xiu - No Friend, Oh!

[Myrrhman]

05. LINDSTRØM - WHERE YOU GO I GO TOO


The epic. This is a vision so precisely articulated and right that the instant I heard it's atmospheric open, all distant bells, cymbal taps, and deep desert like soundscapes, I knew I was in for Lindstrøm's prog space disco masterstroke. This thing is a powerhouse, start to finish. 3 tracks, nearly an hour, this is more than just a concept album, this is a Lindstrøm declaring is supremacy. So many parts and suites can be used to make amazing short tracks, but instead, like a virtuoso he weaves them all in to craft something so grand it's difficult not to at least appreciate all the effort.

As mentioned before, this is disco remade through inter-galactic travel. And if that sounds cheesy, I can guarantee that this is the classiest album of the year. It's subtle and all-encompassing simultaneously, needing several listens to discern all the masterful details, but also always able to deliver satisfaction if just on in the background. A close and far listen, mannered as well as bold. The cover presents the man himself, modestly letting you into his marvel. The music needs no visual introduction, it stands so tall and monumental on it's own and really casts a shadow on everything in the genre.

Key Tracks:*
Where You Go I Go Too, Grand Ideas

* a little silly for this album, but I offer the shortest track, "Grand Ideas" which clocks in at 10 min.

[Myrrhman]

04. GANG GANG DANCE - SAINT DYMPHNA


Gang Gang Dance, one of the weirder bands of the Brooklyn scene, turn their interests to making a dance album? This news boggled me when I first heard it, trying to imagine their Eastern fetish, at times terrifying vocals, and all around experimentalist approach to be reconciled with some 4 to the floor backing beat. Of course, they do something stranger and far more interesting. The album goes in so many strange directions and turns that by the end you're not quite sure what you heard, but you know it's not your typical "dance record". "Bebey" opens with the album with an oriental guitar, some clattering drums, and beautiful synths climbing over each other like ants. Could be a club banger if they replaced the synth line in the chorus with a voice. The track lead us into "First Communion" a highlight that sounds like a possessed M.I.A. or Santogold singing for some sort of distant, future ritual with cascading guitars and synth arpeggios. "Vacuum" sees them deconstruct My Bloody Valentine shoegaze into a whirlpool of loops, more rattling drums, and pretty much make real an aspect of an altered state. Once the rapper Tinchy Stryder makes his jarring introduction on the track "Princes" you know to expect the unexpected.

Although this all seems weird, and even self-parodying, Gang Gang Dance make it fascinating and sonically interesting. Texturally, this is the best album of the year, hands down. They use so many interesting contrasts and sounds that each song has a sort of inner conflict, battling the pretty with the harsh and abrasive. But when they do decide to make something accessible, they give us "House Jam" an 8o's synth ballad a la Madonna, but with their signature all over it. The album finishes with the contemplative "Dust" a pleasant wisp of a track in which it all slows down, giving you time to digest what you just heard. It's certainly a grower, but each listen yields new rewards.

Key Tracks:
Bebey, First Communion, Vacuum, House Jam, Desert Storm

[Myrrhman]

03. HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR - HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR


The disco revival has come full swing in considering this entry. As seen by last year's critically acclaimed After Dark, a compilation of modern disco acts, and the increasing theme of disco in remixes and on the dance floor, here comes another angle often not considered: the perspective of the fringe groups that popularized the genre: the LGBT community and the minorities. The album opens with Antony Hagerty (from Antony and The Johnson's) familiar gender bending voice, and proceeds to get funky and fresh, using all the tricks in the book to turn out disco infused numbers that have a relative coolness to them.

What makes this great however is just how well they pull it off. This record is not so much a textbook but a loving tribute to the genre. This is a celebration, not raucous and chest-pounding, but cool, precise, and even-handed. This album exudes a professional sharpness in the genre and can be mellow ("Iris") as it can be star-eyed on the dance floor ("Blind"). This thing is just so damn smooth and well done, and for that hats off.

Key Tracks:
Hercules Theme, Athene, Blind, Iris, True False, Fake Real

[Myrrhman]

02. DEERHUNTER - MICROCASTLE / WEIRD ERA CONT.


My most anticipated album of this year made good on my expectations, but in a way I didn't expect. When this initially leaked, Microcastle, I found it pleasent, but I was a little disappointed that they scaled back their wild, creepy, and ambient side that was so captivating on their album from 2007 "Cryptograms". It wasn't bad, it was just tame. Sure it had "Agoraphobia" one of the best songs of the year that from right off the bat sounded like an instant classic with it's distant yearning and milky guitar textures, but the rest was just so unadventerous. Knowing how much of a music geek lead man Bradford Cox was, it seemed like his attempt to craft, in his mind, a perfect little indie pop/rock album, using song structure's from the 50's and 60's. Another band shrugging off it's identity to retreat to a safe place where critics can't harm you as much.

However, when Weird Era Cont. leaked, it was a revelation. This was the Deerhunter I knew and loved. Scrappy, brash, loud, juvenile fascination with sound and ambient, and all around just having fun. There's a certain breeziness and just-recorded-to-tape quality about the album, but it in no way compromises their songwriting ability, but in fact, enables the best sequence of songs this band has ever written. "Vox Celeste" -> "Cicadas" -> "Vox Humana" stuns me every time, starting with joyous shoegaze where guitars climb to the heavens, to the plaintive last-days-of-summer ambiant aftermath, to a beautiful little ditty that conjures such deep nostalgia and innocence that you can't help but to smile. This was enough to cement the deal that this was the best rock album of the year.

Weird Era Cont also made me reconsider my initial judgments on Microcastle, and I realized that they're perfect complements. Microcastle appealing more to solid pop hooks, and Weird Era for something a little dirtier, something more raw. All in all, together they are an unstoppable force, and a great addition into the indie rock canon.

Key Tracks:
Agoraphobia, Never Stops, Nothing Ever Happens, Neither of Us, Uncertainly; Backspace Century, Vox Celeste, Cicadas, Vox Humana*, Calvary Scars II/ Aux Out


* - I suggest you download and listen to these three back to back in this order. My favorite musical moment in 2008.

[Myrrhman]

01. CUT COPY - IN GHOST COLOURS


Completely out of left-field, this once low key electronic outfit explode onto the main stage with the best crafted pop album of the year. Only it's disguised as dance album. From the get-go of "Feel The Love" you can read the confidence this band has in its new sound and on this record. You can tell this is supposed to be "the album" by just looking at the tracks and observing the little interludes in between. They're proud and they have every right to be; like The Avalanches landmark s/t'd opener "Since I Left You", "Feel the Love" invites you in, pops the champagne and "welcomes you to paradise". The song is immaculately structured, from the call-and-response verses, to the bouncy doo-wop bridge, to the funky guitar and voxed out chorus. This is all channeled through a production that cast a hazy fog over the analog and non-analog instruments to equalize them in perfect harmony. And the album only gets better.

Again, the main criticism of this is that it could easily be labeled pastiche, combining New Order and Daft Punk to create an empty product. But I have to stress not only how well they do it, but how substantive it is. There is so much craft and love put into this album that reveals itself it ways not only melodic, but heart-rendering (e.g. the short respite of "Midnight Runner" or full on come-down ballad "Strangers In The Wind"). It's not just a facsimile, its an accomplishment that should not be short-changed.

What I really admire about the album is not just its cohesion and lack of filler, but how they try so many different ranges and nail every single one of them. So often when bands sit down to write the obligatory ballad or radio-friendly track, they slip into cliches, compromising their sound for something more universal. The slower tracks on this album could have been disastrous, but they crafted each song so well and uniquely, that there is no filler, each song stands on it's own. They nailed all of the components so that you have your summer jam ("Unforgettable Season"), your club bangers ("Lights and Music", "Hearts on Fire"), your rocker ("So Haunted"), and even your come-down ("Strangers In The Wind") all wrapped up in a perfect and solid package.

I never expected this to be my no. 1, but it's so perfectly crafted and at the end of the day, transcends year-end lists. This is something I can see myself returning to often as it's just one of the perfect albums, where skill and inspiration collide, that come every once in awhile,regardless of genre. Enjoy.

Key Tracks:
The whole damn thing, but here are some tracks to listen to: Feel The Love, Hearts On Fire, Strangers In The Wind, Nobody Lost, Nobody Found

[KinGAleX]

Myrrhman ~/~ ~ Pitchfork.

[Myrrhman]

*shrug*

i haven't been in awhile, but i do read dusted and cokemachineglow

[KinGAleX]

Just being a bit silly. Not the kind of music I appreciate anymore. I'm sure your feelings are more well-grounded than those of Pitchfork reviewers. Thanks for going to the effort of doing this up. Definitely an enjoyable read.

[Myrrhman]

Just being a bit silly. Not the kind of music I appreciate anymore. I'm sure your feelings are more well-grounded than those of Pitchfork reviewers. Thanks for going to the effort of doing this up. Definitely an enjoyable read.

Thanks, it was my pleasure.

If I remember correctly you enjoy Stars of the Lid, right? What aspect? the drone-y ambiance or the classical intuitions?

I ask because you might enjoy this Jacaszek album from this year, or, stretching it, the Kingdom Shore album on this list (but it's fairly obtuse, but I know you like progressive music and the best way I could describe it is progressive classical.)

[toasters]

The addition of Fleet Foxes and Cut Copy brings up the total of bands I knew to 3. I was pleasantly surprised to find In Ghost Colors at the top of the list, I also really enjoyed it. It's one of those CD's I never would have listened to had not my friend put me on to it, but I found myself bobbing my head after the first listen. I'm still a little wary of Gang Gang Dance, the singer seems off to me but I'll give her a chance. And as for High Places, I listened for a while, but I'm not really into it after all.

[Clovic]

Stars in the Lid is fucking fantastic, but I fail to see how it resembles this kingdom shore album. I must admit I had never heard of them, but I listened to the album you named. It was good, I liked it, not the best after one listen through, but good enough that I will be coming back to check em out again.

Basically, good band and good suggestion, but I don't see how those two bands resemble each other. Jacaszek eh? May have to check em out.

Also, I think The Crystal Antlers EP is my favorite from your list. I have not heard of many of these bands so I had to try out a bunch of em. There are still like 3 or 4 on your list that I am interested in, but even after that I think the Crystal Antlers cd will reign supreme in my mind. It is an awesome cd.

I also can't find the rap album you listed, I am curious about that one.

[Myrrhman]

Stars in the Lid is fucking fantastic, but I fail to see how it resembles this kingdom shore album. I must admit I had never heard of them, but I listened to the album you named. It was good, I liked it, not the best after one listen through, but good enough that I will be coming back to check em out again.

Basically, good band and good suggestion, but I don't see how those two bands resemble each other. Jacaszek eh? May have to check em out.

Also, I think The Crystal Antlers EP is my favorite from your list. I have not heard of many of these bands so I had to try out a bunch of em. There are still like 3 or 4 on your list that I am interested in, but even after that I think the Crystal Antlers cd will reign supreme in my mind. It is an awesome cd.

I also can't find the rap album you listed, I am curious about that one.

It was a little silly to suggest that kingdom shore and stars of the lid are similar, Jacaszek is a little more like it (drone-y ambiance, but broken up a little more rhythmically).

The Crystal Antlers album absolutely slays. It's just so loud and fun and sloppy while also showing incredible talent. I look forward to their future.

[Tanner]

Myrrhman ~/~ ~ Pitchfork.

Myrrhman ~/~ ~ Jeph Jacques.

[Myrrhman]

Myrrhman ~/~ ~ Pitchfork.

Myrrhman ~/~ ~ Jeph Jacques.

whoa, i loathe this guys comic but that list isn't half bad.