"Best Albums of 2008"
The best albums released in 2008.
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This record caught a bad rap for producer Dave Fridmann's production lopping off all the rough edges of Tapes n' Tapes' sound, but to me, it lent Tapes some muscle and made the album's songs more immediate (like album highlight "The Dirty Dirty"). -
One of my live highlights of the year was seeing Jay Reatard open for the Black Keys in Minneapolis: his punk thrashing and two-minute songs grabbed listeners and never let go. This singles collection was Reatard's best moment of 2008: It captured him in stasis, perfecting and moving on from his garage punk roots. -
This album probably should have remained in Kanye's vault as a personal item he did as a way to cope with a break-up and his mom's passing, but instead it hit the number one spot. But that owes as much to the strength of most of this album ("Love Lockdown and "Heartless" particularly), as it does Kanye's magnetism. -
Stay Positive finds the Hold Steady growing up in a sense-- they're no longer just singing about getting loaded in the bar-- they've got growing old, love and other adult topics on their mind. But that's not to say they have lost their edge-- they're still the best bar band in America. -
The year's best tropical-punk album (and probably only) honors go to Abe Vigoda (who are not dead), and their excellent debut Skeleton. Perhaps the most likely to succeed from the L.A. Smell scene, their three minutes of crackling wires and terse energy provided one of the year's most pleasant surprises. -
Former music journo Rollie Pemberton delivered one of the year's better left-field hip-hop albums with Afterparty Babies, an album about those few hours after a party where many mistakes have been created (baby and otherwise). -
A kinder, more pop-friendly Deerhunter seemed unlikely in the lead-up to Microcastle, but with new songs like "It Never Stops" Deerhunter proved they had more to offer than ambient noise and a frontman dressed as a ghastly woman. -
High Places' mix of ambience, found sounds, and general sonic murkiness finally found its perfect delivery system in their self-titled debut. Their early singles collections only hinted at the greatness they had in store on High Places. -
Beach House autumnal sound gets a new-found confidence on Devotion with songs like the slithering "Gila," and the epic sounding "Heart of Chambers." While the album might not be as immediate as the Baltimore band's self-titled debut, it is ultimately more rewarding. -
After the untimely death of drummer John Pike to a drowning accident (Pike died right as Ra Ra Riot were climbing the blogs), Ra Ra Riot settled down and recorded one of the year's best indie-pop debuts: a delicate, wistful album that sounds like it was recorded by a group of energetic 35-year-olds who have experienced a lot of loss than a group of recent college grads. -
Wolf Parade's At Mount Zoomer isn't the masterpiece that everyone hoped for following the greatness of their debut, but At Mount Zoomer had a few undeniably great songs (like "Fine Young Cannibals," "Call It A Ritual," "The grey Estates") even before the guitar epic "Kissing the Beehive" steals the show. -
This year's best genre smash, Santogold's self-titled debut sounded like M.I.A. if she had concerned herself with '80s New Wave instead of hip-hop, and wanted to write songs that could hit the Top 40. The songs ended up being too weird for that, but songs like "Shove It," "L.E.S. Artistes," "Anne," and "Creator" are some of 2008's finest pop homages. -
13.Be Your Own PetGet AwkwardEcstatic Peace/UniversalMarch 18, 2008Imagine the craziest kids you knew from high school starting an abrasive punk band, and then recording two great albums, and you'd get Be Your Own Pet. 2008 proved to be the band's last year together (they broke up this Summer), but Get Awkward is as fine a sign-off as any: it's loose, aggressive, and abrasive-- the three things any punk album should be. -
Q-Tip's The Renaissance was overshadowed by the presence of another nearly mythical album that saw release this November (Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy) but it actually managed to live up to the hype: It's a return to the Native Tongues hip-hop that Q-Tip had an integral part in starting with A Tribe Called Quest. -
Perhaps the most depressing Roots album to date, Rising Down is like a social studies lesson tied within a really great hip-hop album-- it had songs about criminals, terrorists, and drugs, but also songs about getting busy (uh, "Get Busy"). This is the album that should have launched the Roots into the stratosphere, but instead it found the band retreating into their own psyches, refusing to go for hits, and making a better album in the process. -
Born Ruffians could have been this year's vaguely African-influenced indie-rock heroes if it wasn't for those guys in Vampire Weekend: their debut crackles with enough sexual tension, bouncing bass lines, and anthems to power two albums. Red, Yellow and Blue is perhaps the year's most chronically, and unjustly, overlooked album. -
By leaps and bounds, Wild Beasts' Limbo, Panto is the year's most unique debut, it owes nothing to any musical genre or single band. Like a dream mixture of Orange Juice (the band), Antony and the Johnsons, and Nina Simone, Limbo, Panto presents Wild Beasts as a unique voice in British music today. -
Eau Claire, Wisc. represent: Justin Vernon ventured into a cabin in late 2006 at recorded For Emma, Forever Ago, an lilting, beautiful album about a break-up. There were albums in 2008 that were louder than this, but not many were this affecting and from the heart. -
The immense amount of buzz around the Cool Kids built to even bigger proportions thanks to this superb EP, which provided the most cohesive and complete artistic message from the Cool Kids to date. With the Bake Sale they establish themselves as the vanguard of the "hipster rap" contingent. -
5.Los Campesinos!Hold on Now, YoungsterWichita; Arts and CraftsApril 1, 2008No band worked harder this year than the hyper-literate Welsh band Los Campesinos! who released not one but two great LPs in 2008: Their debut, Hold On Now, Youngster, an album about indie fandom for indie fans, and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, an album about relationships in the time of Web 2.0. -
Hip-hop albums traditionally have to be a handful of songs capable of cross-over success, with the rest of the album left to the rapper to fill up with whatever catches their fancy during the recording. Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III is almost entirely composed of the latter-- one-off ideas that Wayne probably should have thrown out-- but radio and the mainstream came around to Wayne's music, instead of Wayne concerning himself with making hits. -
Listening to Fleet Foxes debut the first time was like a revelation: I'm not sure who the hell these guys are, or what the hell this is, but I have to listen again. When another band devoted to classic rock tropes had an album end up be a total turd (My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges), Fleet Foxes proved to be more than adequate stand-ins-- with the exception of Vampire Weekend, there was no other band who was on everyone's lips in 2008, as people the world fell in love with their debut. -
Forget all the talk of African rip-offs, hype, New York bias, and realize this: Vampire Weekend's debut is a hell of a pop record. Every song works as a single, and every song opens itself up on repeated listens. They might not have been worth the greatest band alive hosannas, but their album is one of 2008's most rewarding. -
After delivering 2006's best album in Return to Cookie Mountain, TV on the Radio opted to turn their back on the art rock focus that they inherited from Brian Eno and focused on creating "pop" songs about how the world is falling apart. That led to amazing songs like "Crying," "Golden Age," "DLZ," and "Shout Me Out," and incredibly delicate songs like "Family Tree." Dear Science doesn't have the arty pedigree as their past album, but it is perhaps their most complete and coherent album to date.
3 Responses
December 9, 2008 at 5:24 p.m.
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Where is Tokio Hotel? You blog about how hot they are every other day and then they don't even show up here?????? |
December 9, 2008 at 5:48 p.m.
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How come everybody is commenting on your list? Are you the new arbiter of taste? If so, where's MMJ? |
No AC/DC or GNR?? Come on here.