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Here's a clever listicle for you: the top albums from 2008. And because it's 2008, I've made it a top eight list. And to make it even cooler, I'm only going to name the number one album, because really, that's the only one you care about, yes? The rest will just be left up for you to discuss what number they should be. And they’ll only be seven, so you can wonder if the eighth was just left out by accident. I've also included this link to Allmusic, so you can debate over which albums on Allmusic should be on this list, and where they should be on the list, if it were an actual list with numbers.
Still it is a list. However clever, it’s nothing more than everyone else is doing: rating their favorites from this years' music.
And we've had a few bright lights this year. We heard the debut of two bands that will be integral parts of our lives for years to come: Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes. We've seen the reemergence of Brooklyn as the locus of what’s happening in music, despite Rolling Stone's citing
So the list . . .
#1: Vampire Weekend--S/T
Every article about this band's debut addresses three things before they get to the music. One, Blogger's fueling their rise to popularity. Two, their preppy clothes. Three, people hating on them.
They should get to the music first.
Vampire Weekend has made a classic pop album. Spin it for the first time, you'll be dancing. Spin it 20 years from now, you'll be fondly remembering when you were 20-years younger and dancing to Vampire Weekend for the first time. Each song is a 3-minute collision of prep school ennui, the Gossip Girl-culture of privileged
The lyrics capture, with wit and poetry, the lives of Midwest-bred students whose bus has crashed into the top-crust of the New York Ivy League. The music captures it too, its form a symbol of trying on various stances to please their peers: the classical figures of their music appreciation course in the first-year Humanities curriculum, the exotica of their classmate's safari in Kenya with Mother and Father, the urgency of punk rock tempered with dinner party politesse.
It's the tension between all these ingredients that makes this album brilliant conceptually. It's the perfect execution that makes it fucking brilliant.
As for the clothes, they’re part of the performance package people. Indie-rock kids dressing like preps. Each dressed in an outfit that doesn't fit the scene, but tries to fit, and somehow ultimately fits. Like the music. Like them.
Because despite their not fitting, we like them. They make us kids dance. It's the music of us kids generation. It’s Cape Cod Kwaasa Kwaasa. It's the best album of the year.
#2-8
Fleet Foxes--S/T
Any list that doesn't have this album in its top three is not a list. “Fleet Foxes” is truly original piece of work from a young, reclusive genius. Is their anything better than that? Channeling every essential piece of
Portishead--Third
Improbably, the dormant Portishead have created an album that rises from the genre they pioneered as it transcends that genre. And now there is no need for anyone to ever explore trip-hop again. It’d be beating the dead. Note, you won't hear the cliche of the genre, the DJ beat slowed to a sad crawl, the spaghetti western guitars, the alien Theremin. You can still feel trip-hop’s weary soul in every tortured guitar and random burst of industrial noise. And Beth Gibbons has never sounded more desperate and longing--if that's possible. Actually, taken as a whole—and that’s the only way this album should be experienced—the music of "Third" is desperation and longing. Me like.
Vivian Girls—S/T
Some albums contain music that is the spawn of a particular scene; they define a place and time and group of people, like the Strokes defined the
The Dodos—Visitor
The Dodos debut album contains all the elements that make their live shows electric. Somehow each track feels completely spontaneous and unhinged, like a great show. On killer track “The Ball,” Meric Long’s pure croon and tuneful writing recalls previous indie-anthem. That is, until his finger-picked guitar breaks down of angry, indie-bluegrass over the persistent tribal beat of the drums. It’s unexpected combinations like this that make “Visitor” the best album by a duo since the last White Stripes’ record.
She & Him—Volume One
WTF? The quirky, indie-chick from Elf can write music that sounds like you’ve been listening to it—and loving it—for years? Yeah. She can. And she can tear your heart out with her singing voice. And that and M. Ward is why “Volume One” is the most shockingly best-est album of the year.
The
“Alight of Night” sounds as ominous and cool as Trash & Vaudeville back in the