Best of 2008

An albums of the year list is most usually an inherent exercise in arrogance. This year is a definite derailment from such nonsense. I truly have gotten to the point where music is only important to me because it is. Critics be damned, I love what I love and my list is a true representation of that.

I am not cool.

Do not copy this list down and then buy the albums. Some of them are boring to you. Some of them are stupid to you. I am a professional appreciator of art…and I am in the process of learning how to appreciate anything that is an organic part of the human condition; that is to say I wish to understand why other people love what I do not. During this process, my natural inclination toward the music I love has grown exponentially.

Herein lies the list of albums that I heard that I loved the most in 2008. About 7500 albums were released. I probably heard 300. This means I probably missed a lot. Please let me know if you think that I did. As per Curt’s editing comments last year, I have kept the list to 25.

25. Soundtrack: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Various Artists
While I have never included a Soundtrack in the list before, this set of songs truly hit me in a strong way. I know I am not 17 and I probably shouldn’t be that into movies and music like this…but I just don’t care. The soundtrack escalates in the right places, takes it down a notch…it plays like a mixtape made for lovers.

24. Coco
Colbie Caillat
This album is the female version of a Jack Johnson album. It sounds like everyone who was involved in making the album was sitting on knitted couches smoking weed and smiling a lot while the recording was taking place. This makes for a pleasantly true sound. Caillat has an angelic coo that makes my bones chill. I love this hippie shit.

23. Weezer (The Red Album)
Weezer
I’m not sure how Weezer can justify releasing this with the track listing they did. It hurt my feelings. Now, obviously not so much that I left this album off the list. All the Rivers songs deliver, as always, with punch, promise or purpose. The tracks recorded by each of the other members of the band are silly and boring in comparison to the truly creative Cuomo sound.

22. Fear Before
Fear Before
What? Maybe the boys from Fear Before the March of Flames got as lazy as their fans and were tired of typing out all the words. I am tired of it, and I only had to do it once. I guess a thank you is appropriate. Oh, and I liked the record a lot…because I just did.

21. David Archuleta
David Archuleta
It sounds good in my ears.

20. If Life Gives You Lemons, Paint That Shit Gold
Atmosphere
Worst. Record. Title. Ever. Producer Ant went to a different place with this record. Live drums, guitars and pianos combine with 808 sounds and eerie horror synths to create a truly diverse record. Slug delivers on point lyrics as always. The record did not rank higher on my list simply because I am tired of Atmosphere. Saturation of the market takes hold.

19. Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend
This is that cool record that Jesse would have told me I should like and I would have told him no fucking way and then listened to it three years later and totally loved. (This happened with Band of Horses) Now Jesse lives in Seattle and I can like scenester music without feeling like I need to buy tighter jeans and scoff a whole lot more.

18. Bring Me Your Love
City and Colour
I think this record would make the top 25 list of an autistic Asian child. It’s just loveable. Thanks Curt.

17. Remixes
Headlights
I’m not sure how this record was conceived. It’s great. It’s a whole lot of fun to listen to. It’s songs I’ve heard and loved totally redone by new artists. A weird idea that probably wouldn’t work with a lot of other bands. It works here.

16. A History of Violence
Jedi Mind Tricks
This is the most consistently fantastic hip hop group in music today. Violent, over the top, crazily exaggerated…but terrific.

15. Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings
Counting Crows
Justin said it a long time ago…double albums and concept albums can have the ability to start the downfall of a band. This record is inconsistent and strange. The concept doesn’t work well. However, when it hits, it hits hard. The songwriting is so strong on the majority of the album that it makes up for the misses at the beginning of the record.

14. Selective Wreckage
Crime in Stereo
This is a B sides record. It’s number 14 on the top albums of the year. That’s how good this band is.

13. Red Star E.P.
Third Eye Blind
This is a three song E.P. I have waited six years for a single note from this band. The sheer anticipation is enough to project it into the top 25. Curt will hate it.

12. Lost in the Sound of Separation
Underoath
I just don’t get tired of Underoath. I know that I am in the minority. This is loud, driving, screaming, relentless music. Not for Justin.

11. Some Racing, Some Stopping
Headlights
If they keep releasing music this great, their next release is likely to come close to number one. Just get it.

10. Narrow Stairs
Death Cab for Cutie
One of my favorite bands released a slightly disappointing record. Some songs thrill, others sound like boring representations of what Death Cab might sound like in space. It’s so great at points that I had to put it in the top 10. But not good enough that it needed to go single digits.

9. Agony and Irony
Alkaline Trio
Alkaline will be making great music when they are taking pills to make their limp penises wake up and they are playing the drums with a cane. I just cant believe that they have never totally ruined everything with a shitty album. Every song, every time…almost good enough to get a tattoo of a heart with a skull in it…almost.

8. Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt
Augustana
I enjoyed this record all year. It was my record to the summer and I totally did not see it coming. I remember listening to Augustana while we made French toast for our friends at the 105. That record has nothing on this new sound. It’s produced perfectly. It’s safe music…but it’s done exceptionally well.

7. 808s and Heartbreak
Kanye West
You probably won’t see this on too many best of lists this year. But that’s ok with me. I’m used to liking stuff that people hate. It makes me feel all lame inside.

6. The Glass Passenger
Jack’s Mannequin
Never in a million years did I think that anything having to do with Something Corporate would be involved in my top 10 anything. But, hey, I love when music surprises me. I just love this sound.

5. Feed the Animals
Girl Talk
Let’s try it. Let’s make music that a lot of people can love. Let’s call it something cool. Let’s hope for the best…and then let’s make everyone’s top albums list everywhere. A perfect record for the people who sell records and buy records and listen to records.

4. The ’59 Sound
The Gaslight Anthem
Perfect for anyone who loves men talking about man stuff and being real sensitive about it in a tough voice. If Bruce Springsteen sang a little off key and Lucero had sex with Benton Falls while the Gin Blossoms watched from the corner…this c.d. would be the baby.

3. Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Sigur Ros
The best of Sigur Ros is edited down into pop songs with shortened whining and cooing sessions. I can actually listen to this record and love my life instantly.

2.Tha Carter III
Lil Wayne
From Rolling Stone:
OK, it's true: he really is the best rapper alive. Lil Wayne made that claim on his last official CD, in 2005, and since then, he's unleashed an astonishing torrent of mixtapes, leaks and guest appearances to back up the boast. So his long-anticipated "legit" album follow-up feels a bit gratuitous. Still, Tha Carter III is useful as an exclamation point. It establishes beyond a doubt that the zeitgeist in 2008 belongs to one artist: a dreadlocked dadaist poet from New Orleans with a bad weed habit and a voice like a bullfrog. As Wayne croaks in the woozy "3Peat," "Get on my level/You can't get on my level/You will need a space shuttle/Or a ladder that's forever."

Wayne has taken the task of album-making seriously: This isn't a mixtape, it's a suite of songs, paced and sequenced for maxaqimum impact. He's collected sleek, powerful beats from top producers (Kanye West, Swizz Beatz), enlisted A-list guest stars (Jay-Z, T-Pain) and served up a range of textures and moods, from the elegiac Hurricane Katrina protest "Tie My Hands" to the bubblegum bumper "Lollipop," in which Weezy has a laugh at selling out by creating the most outrageously pumped-up sellout single in history. Thematically, Carter III is a victory lap. In the hilarious "Dr Carter," he boasts about resuscitating hip-hop: "As I put the light down his throat/I can only see flow/His blood's starting to flow/His lungs starting to grow."

As usual, Wayne's tumbling freestyle rhymes are full of imagination and surprise, but his voice itself is half the fun. He shouts, gasps, tries a Caribbean patois, sings snatches of "Umbrella" and "Irreplaceable," and impersonates E.T. He loves that brother-from-another-planet stuff —"I am a Martian," he raps —but it's clear he's also thinking about his worldly legacy. The album cover links Carter III to Biggie's Ready to Die and Nas' Illmatic, and he makes no bones about coveting a spot in hip-hop's pantheon. "Next time you mention Pac, Biggie or Jay-Z/Don't forget Weezy Baby," he advises on "Mr Carter." It's sound advice.

1.Only by the Night
Kings of Leon
Believe me, I’m as confused as you are. How this band has become one of my favorites is part of Jesse’s little maniacal plan to make me love him. Christian Hoard writes, “But when the Kings find a gussied-up groove with teeth — like the effects-laden Zeppelin stomp of "Crawl" or the pulsating, New Wave "Sex on Fire" — they sound like rock heroes experiencing the joy of well-manicured sound.”

Duh I like this. That sounds like my explanation of why I like stuff.




But like I said…I’m probably mostly wrong.

Found

I was looking through my old notebooks and found a random poem written in tiny cursive on a random page from my Fantastic Novels class in '04. There are no edits, no mistakes. I never ever write in cursive when I'm writing poetry, and I always edit my poems while I write them.

It creeps me out when I find stuff in my handwriting that I don't remember writing. I might have been high or drunk because of the odd sizing of the font and the lack of edits.

Herein lies
"The Mystery Poem"

in a rose garden or buried below your own house
the flowers will grow up bold and tall
and you will show yourself for years after
you have left us all here
without you

thoughts in a note we read aloud
and you make sense to me
I almost want to follow you
to those elysium fields
and forget about all the small
things we worried about.

as we fall down further
it all becomes more serious.
(flattered by life)
we forget about our own.

A Look Back to 2005

Resolved:

We made this clear decision
to run nightly into crowded homes
on darkened city streets.
And our hearts were filled
with an uninspired sense of belonging.

Only to awaken in unnatural convalescence,
While peach-colored faces
blur into one;
They hover over,
watching us kneel down
clutching our stomachs,
screaming for
someone,
anyone,
to help us.

Each day we stay alone
waiting for answers to our calls;
finding a way to survive and work through our daily reticence.
We try to make everyone believe in each
disposable countenance
as a separate representative
of our vulnerability
in these nightly sick spirals
disguised as something much more simple.