20 Best Albums of 2008

Around this time of the year, for the last few years, I've had the privilege of writing an end-of-year best-of list for mX newspaper. Usually this consists of ten albums ranked in order (though this year it's five albums and five songs), but this year I thought I'd try something different, and lay down my favourite albums, songs, album covers, and bands, all in no particular order. Enjoy!

20 Best Albums of 2008 (in no particular order)

A heap of people I've spoken to have whinged about 2008 being a shit year for music, but I would have to disagree - I guess they were just looking in the wrong places. These albums impressed me in 2008 ...

You & Me
The Walkmen
Fuck this guy can sing. I didn't really get into their last album, or the strange Pussycats cover thing they did, but You & Me is great. And In The New Year is probably the most exciting thing these guys've done, like, ever.

Kes Band
Kes Band
I loved Kes' last album, but I'll admit it: it was a little hard to get into it. This one, however, is pure pop. Rock, folk and experimental influences, strange vocal styles, and a real Aussie bush aesthetic. Ripper.

Love Is Overtaking Me
Arthur Russell
If Arthur Russell made an album of spoken-word reflections on Chinese democracy (who knows, he might've) I would probably buy it - I'm an unashamed fanatic. But this album, a collection of country-tinged and folk tracks, is really, really good. This was a good year for Arthur Russell fans, with the doco Wild Combination coming out too (well worth hunting down for the archival footage alone).

Lost Wisdom
Mount Eerie
Alone, Phil Elverum is a one-man folk-machine. Together with a couple of mates, he's ... a three-man (or, two-man, one-woman) folk machine! Get out!

Devotion
Beach House
These guys came to Melbourne this year and blew my mind. I don't know how to explain it properly, but it's like make-out music for tropical shellfish ... Sorry, that's all I've got.

Paradise
My Disco
It was getting too easy to love My Disco after debut Cancer, stories of the band members' personal struggles, and their constant, ever-reliable live shows, so the Melbourne three-piece decided to shake things up, by removing most of the melodies from their new album. Surprise surprise, it still rocked.

Rook
Shearwater
Shearwater must be the classiest bunch of hippies going around. Rook is a masterpiece, and for me to try an describe it beyond the word 'masterpiece' would be embarrasing.

Skeleton
Abe Vigoda
In the middle of the year I was listening to this album (and No Age and Times New Viking) a lot -as, I asume, was the rest of the Pitchfork-reading world. These guys have their guitars strung so tight they sound like Casio keys.

Nouns
No Age
As I said, this album spent a lot of time in the player this year. No doubt you've read all about them already, and it's all true - Nouns is a great, noisy, mess of an album. If you don't own it, or just have it as twelve MP3s on your iPod, get out and buy a copy now - it's worth it for the album artwork alone.

For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver
This might qualify as a Best Of 2007, but who cares - it was a staple in my after-hours musical diet in 2008. Prince playing folk songs, who knew it would work.

Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.
Deerhunter
I gave this the No.1 spot in my mX best-of, and deservedly so. Bradford Cox had a tough year, but when you come out of it with an album (well, two albums really) this polished and full of fantastic noisy pop songs, it must feel like it was all worth it ...

Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Atlas Sound
... But before Microcastle stole the spotlight, Cox had already wowed us with this, his Atlas Sound debut LP. It seems like it was released so long ago now (he's even recorded and subsequently binned a follow-up since), but Let The Blind (...) was, and is, a great atmospheric trip.

Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes
Everyone was talking about this album a couple of months ago ... that was, until the tall poppy backlash kicked in. Thing is, the reason everyone likes it is because - stop the press - it's actually a really, really good album! Amazing, I know!

Limbo, Panto
Wild Beasts
Easily the strangest album I listened to this year (apart from that re-released New Kids On The Block Christmas album), but it totally grew on me. From listening to his vocals you'd assume the singer was a 45-year-old trans-sexual cabaret artist, but no - he's a young, normal-looking white dude.

The Chemistry Of Common Life
Fucked Up
It's loud, it's fast, and it has those gruff Cookie Monster vocals. Yes, in the name of musical diversity, it's a metal record! But hang on, no, this is different - underneath the tough exterior it's actually just a bunch of really good rock songs.

High Places
High Places
One of the many neo-psych groups to emerge in 2008, these guys are better than most, and their debut LP is a winner. Sweet vocals, trippy samples and instrumentation, and a beat you can dance (awkwardly) to.

Death
Grand Salvo
This album is based around a sad, fable-like children's story about a bunch of animals, but don't let that put you off - it's really beautiful, and quite stunning in parts, such as my favourite track, Death. One of those albums that you need to lie down with and concentrate on for a good 45 minutes, but it's well worth the investment.

Make The Road By Walking
Menahan Street Band
I'm in New York! Actually, no, I'm in Melbourne. But listening to this I might as well be John Shaft, it's that fuckin' cool.

All The Way
Growing
Patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns. I like patterns. I like this album.

Bad Vibrations
Panel Of Judges
Melbourne is going nuts for these guys at the moment, and rightly so - Bad Vibrations is an awesome fuzzy slacker-pop record.

Kicking Back

Bad Vibrations
Panel of Judges
Mistletone, 2008
4 stars

Slacker rock had its heyday back in the early ’90s, when Lou Barlow and J Mascis were still young men, networking actually meant “talking”, and kids scribbled on each other’s pencil cases and not their Facebook walls. Bad Vibrations, by Melbourne low-fi three-piece Panel of Judges, takes us right back to those heady days, with 10 short, sweet, and loose guitar-pop tunes. Paul Williams’ steady percussion forms the basic frame for the songs, with Dion Nania and Alison Bolger’s jangly, melodic guitar chords wrapping themselves around and around like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Vocal duties skip between Nania and Bolger, who also plays in local guitar-girl supergroup Beaches. Bolger sings on the more upbeat, kraut-ish tracks, while Nania’s laconic musings litter the laid-back, poppier tunes, such as the brilliant Perk Me Up, and sarcastic opener All This Could Be Yours, the album’s hazy high-point and a song for underdogs (with excellent musical taste) everywhere. These guys have been keeping a low profile for near on a decade now, all the while gathering a string of positive reviews - Bad Vibrations proves it’s still not too late to get on the band-wagon.

Artwork: B
I like the cover artwork - witches and palm trees, what a combo - and the band photo on the inside cover is a ripper.

Published in mX, Thursday December 11, 2008.

Dazed

Motion To Rejoin
Brightblack Morning Light
Matador, 2008
3 stars

Could this album be any more chilled-out? This Californian duo have taken their unique brand of trippy, blues-infused stoner folk and, somehow, made it sound even more laid-back with this album. True hippies, Nathan ‘Nabob’ Shineywater and Rachael ‘Rabob’ Hughes recorded the album in the Mexican desert using only solar power, but they were clearly getting their energy from somewhere “higher’”. An arsenal of vintage instruments, including a Rhodes Piano and Silvertone guitar, and the duo’s slow, breathy chants give Brightblack their distinct sound – a sound that hasn’t changed much over the years (except slowed down), and doesn’t seem like it’s going to either. The thing is, though consistent, Motion to Rejoin isn’t half as engaging as their self-titled 2006 effort. It’s more like slow-pulsing, hypnotic background music than pop music. That said, it’s still enough to make you want to quit your desk job, grow your hair long and live in the bush under a sheet of corrugated iron.

Artwork: C
Like, woah man. Trippy. I think we need some more feathers and shit ... And while you're at it, get some Doritos.

Published in mX, Thursday December 11, 2008.

A Book By Its Cover

The Chemistry of Common Life
Fucked Up
Matador, 2008
4.5 stars

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's a post-hardcore record with punk, traditional rock, shoegaze, classical and experimental elements. Seriously, this album bends all of the rules. Lead singer Pink Eyes sounds like he's been gargling razorblades, but far from being harsh or overly 'tough'-sounding (I don't know - how else do you describe hardcore music?) his screamed rants compliment the band's meticulously layered electric/acoustic guitars and rapid-fire percussion perfectly, creating a thoroughly-listenable, blatantly intelligent, fist-pumping wall of sound. With a band name like Fucked Up these guys clearly aren't chasing commercial success, though behind the 'hardcore' rep, the growls and the heavy guitars lie some genuinely catchy songs. Don't judge this book by its cover.

Artwork: A
Far from the post-hippy artwork of their last LP Hidden World, Common Life takes a more straight-forward approach, with neat photography and some tidy serif type. It's simple, but it doesn't need to be anything else - the record itself does the shouting.

Published in mX, Thursday December 4, 2008.

Saltwater Sounds

Ron & Val Taylor's Inner Space
(Original TV Series Soundtrack)
Sven Libaek
Aztec, 2008 (Votary Disk, 2006)
4 stars

Anchorman may have done its best to take the piss out of ‘jazz flute’, but in the early ‘70s Norwegian-born Sydney-based composer Sven Libaek was making it sound genuinely cool. Originally produced as the soundtrack to Inner Space, a 13-part TV series filmed in 1972-73 by Australia’s original shark-chasing film couple Ron and Valerie Taylor, this set of amazing, watery jazz tracks was dipped into for Wes Anderson’s 2004 film The Life Aquatic, generating a whole new swell of interest in Libaek’s already legendary body of work. Brimming with soulful guitars, soft horns, distant keys and gentle percussion, this Votary reissue has been carefully restored from vinyl and is as crystal clear as the waters which – to this day – Ron and Val have call home. It’s an easy listen, but it has to be - when you’re trying to get up close and personal with a Great White, sans cage, you don’t exactly want to be whipping up a frenzy.

Artwork: A+
Votary haven't left a post-'70s mark on the original artwork, accompanying it with some interesting liner notes and undeniably cool file photos of Ron and Val.

Published in mX, Thursday December 4, 2008.