For my 3rd annual best-of list I’ve decided to give metal and electronic music their own lists.
BEST ROCK ALBUMS OF 2008*
20. Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
19. Deerhunter - Microcastle
18. Mogwai - The Hawk Is Howling
17. Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid
16. Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
15. Black Keys - Attack & Release
14. Dodos - The Visiter
13. Eagles of Death Metal - Heart On
12. American Music Club - The Golden Age
11. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
10. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
9. Blitzen Trapper - Furr
8. Devotchka - A Mad and Faithful Telling
7. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
6. Beck - Modern Guilt
5. MGMT - Occular Spectacular
4. Calexico - Carried To Dust
3. TV On The Radio - Dear Science
2. Shearwater - Rook
1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
* Ranking albums is nearly impossible - I mean, how can I say that the Black Keys album is 1 better than the Dodos album? It doesn’t make any sense. I prefer to look at the rankings as tiers. The #1 album stands alone, the next 9 are tier 2, the next 10 are tier 3… but even that has it’s pitfalls. Saying that the Fleet Foxes album is tier 3 seems wrong.
BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2008
10. Veil of Maya - Common Man’s Collapse
9. In Flames - A Sense of Purpose
8. Testament - Formation of Damnation
7. Sculptured - Emodiment
6. Meshuggah - Ozben
5. Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder Gods
4. Sword - Gods of the Earth
3. Metallica - Death Magnetic
2. Cynic - Traced In Air
1. Opeth - Watershed
BEST ELECTRONIC ALBUMS OF 2008
5. Matmos - Supreme Balloon
4. Bug - London Zoo
3. Venetian Snares - Detrementalist
2. Squarepusher - Just a Souvenir
1. Autechre - Quaristice
American Music Club
The Golden Age
Merge Records (2008)
[Indie Rock]
“I wish that we were always high, I wish that we could swim in the sky,” is the opening line of The Golden Age. The way singer-songwriter Mark Eitzel sings it, you really believe him. He really would like nothing more than to spend his days basking in a halcyon glow of drug and/or alcohol-induced euphoria and oblivion. He longs to escape the sadness and disappointment of this life and “rise above it all.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t get his wish and most of the rest of the songs wallow in exploring this imperfect world with a dispiriting mixture of longing and resignation.
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Hot Chip
Made In The Dark
EMI/Astralwerks (2008)
[Indie Rock]
The electro-nerd band from London made a big impression in 2006 when they released their sophomore album, The Warning. It was named Mixmag’s album of the year for 2006 and had two singles in the UK Top 40. Hot Chip managed to create a style of electro-pop that was smart, danceable, and cerebral… well, maybe just a little geeky. The result was a charming and addictive album. Happily, Hot Chip manages to expand their sonic landscape on Made In The Dark while retaining the basic elements that made their previous album such a success.
Hot Chip has grown considerably in the past two years, it seems - and not just musically. The songs here are generally much darker (as the album title would suggest) and more mature here than on their previous efforts. The band manages to do melancholy without hiding behind their normal sheen of irony and cynicism (see “Were Looking For A Lot of Love”).
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Tapes ‘n Tapes
Walk It Off
XL Recordings (2008)
[Indie Rock]
Part of the charm of Tapes ‘n Tapes debut, The Loon (2006), was its post-punk leanings and its sparse production. The song writing was unique, tight, and catchy. The band sounded raw and real. There was no filler on that release and it spent quite a long time on my daily playlist.
However, it appears that the producers of Walk It Off wanted to fill up the space that made The Loon so appealing. If you listen carefully, you can still hear TnT’s unique songwriting style but it is buried beneath excessive distortion and reverb.
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Shearwater
Rook
Matador Records (2008)
[Indie Rock]
The first thing you hear on Rook is Jonathan Meiberg’s haunting, somber voice backed by a distant piano… “from the wreck of the ark to the fading day of our star, the light races, the light drags, the moon rises, the moon sags…” and with that you are off on a 36-minute journey into one of the best albums of 2008.
Meiberg’s voice can fluidly transition from a strong and full-throated tenor to a sweet and chilling falsetto and back again within the same vocal line which gives the songs a sense of urgency despite the understated backing music. Each song is carefully crafted and contains an impressive array of instruments but the songs never sound overly produced. The success of Rook owes a great deal to the orchestral arrangements of Mark Sonnabaum - there is not a wasted note on the album.
Rook can almost be seen as an homage to the 1988 Talk Talk album Spirit of Eden. In fact, both albums work well next to each other in the same playlist. Both are somber affairs full of emotionally charged, experimental music while being exercises in tasteful restraint.
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