Here they are! The Top 8 albums of 2008!

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 Laurel Canyon as the it-spot. Have they ever heard of Vivian Girls or Yeasayer or Crystal Stilts or, etcetera, etcetera? We even had an iconic band come back from the dead to produce their best album and one of the best albums of the year. Not bad.

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 New York, (yes) Peter Gabriel Afro-pop and Masterpiece Theater's string and harpsichord quintet.

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 Americana--Brian Wilson, Appalachia, hippie-folk, hymnals—and remixing the lot of them, "Fleet Foxes" is a teenage symphony to a hopeful America.

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 New York music scene of 2000, or as the Velvet Underground did in 1969, or as the Grateful Dead was the Haight. For today’s Brooklyn-based noise-pop scene, Vivian Girls are the apotheosis. The album comes on strong with the raw gawkiness of the Ramones. The music shows the same’s appreciation for Phil Spector girl groups and a melody that you can’t stop humming. What really makes “Vivian Girls” unique is how they process those elements through shoegaze fuzz till it becomes awkward, loud, pent-up, innocent and sweet--all at the same time. Check out “Where Do you Run To” and you’ll get what I mean.

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 Crystal Stilts—Alight of Night

“Alight of Night” sounds as ominous and cool as Trash & Vaudeville back in the East Village’s goth-punk day. Heck there’s even a bit of dark, surf-guitar on “Crystal Stilts.” Spin the disc and jangled guitars sloppily play in minor keys. Synthesizers lay down fuzzy pads. And then the voice kicks in, disaffected as a ghost. Yes, as everyone says, you can definitely hear the Joy Division. The vocals sound like Ian Curtis washed with reverb and heroin. But that’s where the comparison ends. Joy Division was essentially great dance music. Crystal Stilts is a soundtrack for laying on the couch and watching a decaying film—likely on two benzo’s. And don’t even try to compare The Crystal Stilts to Interpol. Where Interpol picked every note from someone’s back catalog, Crystal Stilts finds theirs in their own hands like they invented the wheel without ever knowing there was this thing called a wheel that was invented like a thousand years ago. It might not be something new, but it’s authentic to them. It’s their wheel and a wheel’s a pretty awesome thing to invent on your own.

And I thought they were my friends

By now, everyone knows how well Obama exploited the social media landscape to put together a grassroots movement that helped him turnout the vote 2.0 style.  But what happens when politicians join the social media revolution and then perform a major fail? Your friends quickly turn on you, or simply add you to hate on your wall. 

Today, what once was dinner table hating, suddenly becomes the public record, and the friends that once helped bring your digital body to life, suddenly rewrite you a whole new persona, public dick. 

So be prepared, if you're going to enter the conversation, and make friends, expect that they can turn on you in any second.  Especially if you, like Rod, decide to use a Senate seat as your personal bargaining chip. 

Gawker

If a tree falls

It's been a while since I visited my own blog, let alone posted an entry to it.  I have no guilt.  Does anyone read these words anyway? And if a tree falls in the forest, is anyone around to hear it? Likely not.  The Internet though is like a dense forest.  So many trees, so many paths, so many words falling down onto blogs, what is actually the likelihood that someone will happen to choose the path to your tree?

That's the way it is when you're promoting something without any marketing dollars.  It's the holy grail of marketing to figure out exactly how to take that little bit that you dropped somewhere in the dense network, and make it the center of attention, without even calling attention to it. 

Some have figured it out.  Most brands which have offered an incredibly valuable service that was discovered and utilized by a particularly influential group.  Facebook had its Harvard students and their Ivy League breathen.  MySpace its San Francisco music scene, Friendster expats.  Google its Stamford computer geeks and designers.  Each brand had no marketing whatsoever, beyond a press release here and there, and some of those about VC financing (advertising in and of itself).  Most you mention, or visit, at least once a day--at least.  They are a part of your life.  They are a part of mine too.

The difference between a utility and my little musings, are the difference between the effectiveness of tools drawing a crowd v. content doing the same.  While some content has succeeded in breaking that barrier, very few have consistently produced content capable of doing that, no matter the content's quality.  Tools face a similar challenge, but if executed properly, if they truly solve a problem, help you make life a little bit better, a little brighter, they are far more likely to succeed. 

If I had a hammer, instead of a pen.