Ok, here it is, just in time for digesting as you digest the holiday season: The, for lack of a better name, Best of 2008. So here go the 43 best albums, split into some random categories for easy browsing (but not ranked within):
Debut Full-Lengths:
Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow, Blue
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
The Baseball Project - Volume One
Wild Sweet Orange - We Have Cause To Be Uneasy
The Uglysuit - The Uglysuit
The Dreadful Yawns - Take Shape
The Tallest Man On Earth - Shallow Grave
2nd Efforts:
Tapes N Tapes - Walk It Off
Blitzen Trapper - Furr
Black Mountain - In The Future
The Whigs - Mission Control
The Broken West - Now Or Heaven
Torche - Meanderthal
Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life
Deerhunter - Microcastle
Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart
Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
Bands That Don't Make Bad Albums:
TV on the Radio - Dear Science,
Okkervil River - The Stand-Ins
The Walkmen - You & Me
The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
Nada Surf - Lucky
Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
Sun Kil Moon - April
Sigur Ros - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
Ryan Adams - Cardinology
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs
Alkaline Trio - Agony and Irony
The Sea and Cake - Car Alarm
Shearwater - Rook
The Secret Machines - The Secret Machines
REM - Accelerate
Side Projects:
Department of Eagles - In Ear Park
Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
Etc.:
The Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead
James Blackshaw - Litany of Echoes
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride
Parts and Labor - Receivers
As for the compilation CD that some of you have come to associate with the season more than your family and birth of Christ, this year the decision was made to be more concise and thus, less sprawling. This year is a one-disc effort, comprised of a song from each of the first 19 albums listed above. Obviously a second disc could have been made if the additional effort were there, but it wasn't. As if toting one compact disc around doesn't seem so early 2000s, toting two CDs is almost prehistoric (maybe 1995ish, when Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness came out). Most of the bigger-name acts were left off the CD since most people are already familiar with those. Sorry. Other omissions from the compilation were metal songs, since not everyone is awesome enough to listen to heavy stuff, and really long songs, since even though this compilation is always about quality, sometimes quantity is important also.
3 years ago
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5 comments:
Make sure to save me a copy of this christmas CD gift thing.
I like the breakdown of the list. The *only* grievance I have is that you put Coldplay in a list of bands that don't make bad albums. This is subjective, of course, but I felt that X&Y was a bad album with three good songs. I never even felt that record was even ok or mediocre. But, that's just me.
And for the record, I am giddy over how good the REM record is. I'm feeling regret for not having them on my list.
Thanks for the hard/semi-floppy disc of information in songage disc of the year time birth of Christ.
Coldplay is where it should be...
"X&Y" may be Coldplay's worst album, but it is by no means BAD. Any album with 3 good songs cannot be considered bad as a whole, unless EVERY other song is horrendous. "X&Y" doesn't quite meet this requirement. You love the Johnny Cash cover, so get over it.
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