Top Albums of 2008

It’s cliché. We admit it.

It would serve us well to try to stand out by not doing a year end list. A writing staff of dozens would lead one to believe that, surely, between so many creative types, we could find out new ways to wrap up a year in music properly. Yet each and every year, every media outlet – print and online – continue to come back to the same trough. Why? Because it’s irresistible (see Fidelity, High).

So without the hipster pretense, our writing staff – with the help of accounting firm Ernst & Young – came to the following conclusions about the Sonic Year 2008. We agreed and disagreed, argued and nodded, scoffed and chided. In the end, what’s presented is the collective opinions of the Staff Writers of Stereo Subversion.

1. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
TVOTR suffer in part because they come at a time when everyone has an audible opinion and most people have different tastes, or at least proclaim to have them. So while Dear Science may be one of the best records in years, few want to claim it as such simply because there is other music out there that may be more daring, more definable and more applicable to identity culture. The drawback to a critical clinging to the fringes is that Dear Science, the most present tense and best album of the year, is as obvious a choice as Beck or Radiohead and seems unexciting sitting at the top, but that’s where it belongs.

Dear Science accurately mirrors the culture of America’s young and anxious. There is no eccentricity for attention; rather, they surround the jaded paranoia of late-capitalist, consumer culture with an urgency that has moved on from slacking to moderate activity. The band went through the mumblings of “the quarter-life crisis” while becoming rock stars in the process and emerged aware, yet unaffected. They inhabit a persona of casualness that few can describe as fictitious and they resist the ambitious nature of the post-breakout album. What started out as an art band in is now the model for contemporary rock, but where lesser bands would either succumb to pressure or lose sight of their creativity, Dear Science retains the band’s cultural wealth without disconnecting from their artistic root. [Mitchell Bandur]

2. Beck – Modern Guilt
Beck has long been our generation’s musical chameleon. As I wrote in my review of his latest masterpiece Modern Guilt, I’ve been following Beck’s music since Mellow Gold hit shelves when I was in the seventh grade. I’ve since grown to respect him over the ensuing decade-and-a-half, as he’s experimented unpredictably with noise rock, experimental fusion, jazz, lounge, psychedelic and even Brazilian music. None of which, I must add, prepared me for the dense, dangerous sounds of Modern Guilt.

We are, as Beck surmises, a generation raised in a world where, in an age of terror, everyone’s watching everyone. There’s no escape. There’s a good deal of truth to this theory, which leads to an album forged in guilt, made by a man who owes his career to the very media he feels are destroying our souls. The first five songs on this album are the strongest he’s ever written, and the rest of the album ties everything together to form something tangible and cohesive.

How you hear the album depends on your initial expectations. If you play the album hoping for another Odelay or Mellow Gold, you’ve set yourself up for disappointment. However, if like me you go into the listening experience with a mind open to the wider musical possibilities, Modern Guilt stands as a brilliant snapshot of our place in the universe. Its stark paranoia matches our nation’s own schizoid mind-state. Clearly Beck is our nation’s most fearless innovator, and Modern Guilt certainly earns its spot among the best albums 2008 has to offer. [Jonathan Sanders]

3. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
With For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver was able to disrupt and re-landscape the meaning of their genre, Folk. Justin Vernon solely produced the album and its multi-layered textures and vocals are woven in with great balance and proportion to its minimalistic feel. For Emma repels the term ear-candy due to its escalating and evolving relationship with the listener thus, ensuring its longevity. On an emotional level, the album profoundly articulates deep-seeded wounds, regrets, angst and frustrations compounded by isolation – the album is brutal and unforgiving. However, a sense of dark beauty and unreasonable hope is found in the tragic themes of the tracks.

2008 has been an emotional year for the world. While the other worthy contenders have had relevance to our world of music, Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago best subscribes to the current subtext of the general audience. The album is a necessary break-down that has to happen before a possible break-through – the album is in the ‘in between’ and that… that is where we, the listeners, the public, the general audience, currently reside. [Jeremy Pair]

4. My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges
Three albums ago, My Morning Jacket was a band of Kentuckian brothers who loved classic rock. If 2005’s Z is a diversion from this sound, then Evil Urges has merged onto a different highway altogether. Musically and lyrically, the band’s fifth studio LP elevate the quintet to another creative plateau. It’s got layers deep enough to dive into and enough words to laugh, cry and think about.

The opening title track, “Evil Urges,” showcases Jim James’s falsetto capabilities laid on a mellow but loaded instrumental background. You can anticipate the way the song explodes into a classic rock guitar solo, letting us know the boys are still there and so are their roots. You might not be able to detect the flavor of Custard Pie as easily in the third cut on the album, Highly Suspicious. It comes in with the dirtiest of dirty bass lines that’s slinky and chunky at the same time and James’s falsetto moves into Artist-Formerly-Known-As territory. The background vox growls the chorus line giving a surreal and intoxicating tone complimented perfectly by the lyrics “wasting time alone dotting your ‘i’s’. Peanut butter pudding surprise!” I’ve never encountered a better-placed exclamation mark. Hell yes, we’re surprised.

Evil Urges is the mature presentation of a hard working, Southern rock band that never gave in to the idea that they had “made it,” but rather, in the true meaning of Prog-rock, have progressed. [Sarah Porter]

5. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut LP is a bountiful oasis deep in the heart of the uncultivated desert of independent music being released this year. Among the wretched piles of ironic rip-offs, nu-wave-punk-funk quartets, and university popsters is one band that shines like the shirt on your messy bedroom floor that, for months, you’ve been looking for. Fleet Foxes has a touch of life that independent music has been missing all year.

The thing about Fleet Foxes is that they have a strong formula working for them. They pay homage to a genre that many bands have been unsuccessfully hinting at for the past 5 years: Appalachian Folk. But, the great part is that they have completely made it their own. Sure, everyone can hear the blatant use of Crosby, Stills, and Nash (maybe Young) harmonies, but I don’t think anyone can say the songs sound like their forefathers. They have looked backward at an aging style and have successfully added their own branch to it. Their use of modal melodic material and reverberated harmonies seems so natural that you can’t help but be enthralled with the interesting timbres they get with their voices and folksy instrumentation.

Without a doubt, Fleet Foxes came out of nowhere and delivered something to music lovers across the nation that we’ve needed all year: something with life! [Andrew Camp]

6. Sigur Rós – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Sigur Rós certainly has a handle on splitting the difference between two extremes. After three albums of glacial, but momentous post-rock, the Icelandic group recorded a song “Gobbledigook” – a bizarre mix of Animal Collective and oddly – and perhaps controversially – Dave Matthews Band. It worked, despite the song’s influences.

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust was by no means a radical departure from the Sigur Rós sound. But the band found a way to infuse their minimalist post-rock with something far more joyous, entertaining and exuberant. As the textures that lay dormant beneath Sigur Rós’ often startling minimal sound emerged, this band came to life. In the process they delivered a record as consistent as anything they’ve done. [Matt Erler]

7. Sun Kil Moon – April
Red wine gets better with age and apparently so does Mark Kozelek. While some may wax nostalgic over the Rollercoaster days of Red House Painters, there’s no denying that his evolution as a musician, now some 16 odd years in the making, has run a course that’s produced some damn fine music and it’s fair to list April among his best albums to date. “Heron Blue” and “Blue Orchids” display some of the most intricately detailed and overtly complicated guitar work Kozelek’s ever accomplished. “Like The River” and “Moorestown” are examples of how masterful Kozelek has been and can be when it comes to writing lyrics. “Harper Road” is hinged upon Kozelek’s whisper falsetto which features a chorus of him hitting registers higher than he’s ever gone.

Kozelek’s first full length release under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, 2003’s Ghosts Of The Great Highway, was a pleasant surprise in terms of how great it ended up being. Its quality set an unspoken precedent for what was to follow through his then fresh penname. 2005’s Sun Kil Moon output, Tiny Cities, didn’t quite meet the standards that had been set by Ghosts Of The Great Highway. April, on the other hand, not only met the standards, but surpassed them. With April, Kozelek took a risk that could have easily missed, but managed to hit; five out of April’s 11 songs surpass the seven minute mark. Songs that long tend to have a self indulgent feel and as a result can create an alienated feel with the listener. However, April’s opener, “Lost Verses”, is nine minutes 43 seconds long, but passes like a song a third its length. Another bright spot on April was the addition of Will Oldham as a backing vocalist. It’d be great to hear more of Oldham on the next Sun Kil Moon if Kozelek dare to top this one. [Steve Schusler]

8. She & Him – Volume One
The shallow reason to like She & Him is because Zooey Deschanel is damned cute and she has the backing of the masterful musicianship of M. Ward. The truth of the matter is, it really doesn’t run much deeper than that, and that this pair is aware of this is probably why it has made it into the Top 10 for the year. Objectively, it’s an odd pairing. How do you get an introspective and melodically masterful singer-songwriter to collaborate with the co-star of Will Ferrell’s Elf? The answer to that question is inconsequential. For whatever reason, the pairing works. Deschanel brings a mainstream movie star sensibility and Ward pulls it down with some sweet and old-fashioned vibes that create something precious, enjoyable, and accessible.

What works is really the sincerity of the delivery, though. Ward doesn’t sing too much on the album, but it sounds like he enjoyed taking a back seat, just playing guitar lines that suit him perfectly. Deschanel brings a child-like joy to the work. Her voice is a little girl enamored with the sound-proofed recording room in which she’s found herself. It’s hard to imagine someone flat out disliking this album. Not being your thing I can imagine… but hating? Come on now, lighten up. [Tommy Lawler]

9. Portishead – Third
Portishead’s albums have never been simple. Instead, they’re complex orchestrations that dig deep into dark soundscapes and tales of sorrow. Third continues the tradition 11 years after their last self-titled studio album. Their most musically diverse to date, Third marks a new turn for the band by stripping down the Bristol-sound they helped make famous and rebuilding it with more avenues of instrumentation. The opening track “Silence” maintains a tempo faster than anything Portishead has ever done, while the acoustic snippet “Deep Water” breaks all previous barriers but is not at all out of place. Then of course there is the drumbeat behind “Machine Gun” that puts every hip-hop producer of the last year to shame.

Throughout the album, it’s Beth Gibbons that continues to hypnotize. Her haunting vocals exude an agony that most vocalists will never know; “I can’t deny what I’ve become/ I’m just emotionally undone,” she sings on “Magic Door.” The production so perfectly mixes the vocals with layers of music it’s almost impossible to imagine one without the other. Third was another trip into the gothic mastery of Portishead and it was well worth the wait. [William Trinity]

10. Nick Cave – Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
If Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! sends one message rather loudly, it’s that Nick Cave not only greatly enjoyed the skuzzy thrills of Grinderman, but that he has decided that Grinderman provided him with a completely satisfying new career trajectory. Obviously, Cave has never been tame, never risked approaching anything anywhere near tame, and god willing, will never be tame, but Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! confirms that Cave has found a fresh outlet for his literary brand of sleaze by simply ignoring his piano and picking up the electric guitar. Cave may not be reinventing the wheel, but his days as rock’s preeminent filthy old man are already in full swing and show no signs of abating.

Then again, forget about comparing this album to his other work. Doing so deprives Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! of the credit it deserves. It’s not on this list because it’s one of Nick Cave’s best albums. It’s here because it’s one of 2008’s best. Just realize that whoever can sling together lyrical highlight after lyrical highlight about the intertwining of death, sex, religion, and depravity with a backing band that perfectly matches the lecherous vocals move for lascivious move is one incontrovertibly badass motherfucker. It just so happens that in this case, the man is Nick Cave, who hasn’t needed to prove his badass motherfucker credibility in a long time.
[Daniel Kirschenbaum]

The Best of the Rest:
11. Okkervil River – The Stand Ins
12. Hold Steady – Stay Positive
13. Hot Chip – Made in the Dark
14. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
15. Lil’ Wayne – Tha Carter III
16. Rachael Yamagata – Elephants…
17. Dandy Warhols – Earth to the Dandy Warhols
18. Matthew Ryan – Vs. The Silver State
19. Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer
20. Roots – Rising Down
21. Why? – Alopecia
22. Josh Garrels – Jacaranda
23. Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line
24. Marnie Stern – This Is It and I Am It…
25. The Walkmen – You & Me

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