This is an addendum to the Top Ten Albums of 2008:
The First Things First Award
Guns N Roses, Chinese Democracy (Needs it’s own separate category, too difficult to compare to other albums released this year – it there ever was an album that was in a class of it’s own, it is this one! I have never in my life felt so unprepared to rate an album in my life. I can’t place this – it’s either #1 or not on the list at all).
Just Missed (tough to leave off the top ten)
Atlas Sound, Let the Blind Lead Those That Can See But Cannot Feel (I really, really love this album – it was very difficult to cut from the list).
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (A special mention of Cave’s spectacular soundtrack to ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ - one of the most haunting suites of music I have ever heard – unfortunately I discovered it this year, but it came out in 2007.)
TV on the Radio, Dear Science
Best of the Rest (stuff I really, really like)
Crystal Stilts, Crystal Stilts
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
Spiritualized, Songs In A&E
Solid Contenders That Missed The Cut (strong albums that are noteworthy)
Bon Ivor, For Emma, Forever Ago
Beck, Modern Guilt
Coldplay, Viva La Vida
Also Rans – The Biggest Disappointments of 2008
The Verve, Forth – Overproduced, and as I feared, too much Ashcroft, not enough McCabe. In other words, too much Urban Hymns, not enough Storm In Heaven. As a 15 year fan, I am depressed after the wait.
Kings of Leon, Only By The Night – Badly overproduced, undercooked songwriting, cliché lyrics. A few bright spots (Closer, Cold Desert, Crawl), but this is the first strikeout from a great young band previously batting a thousand. They’ll be back.
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, Cardinology. Not really bad, just two records in a row that are just kind of boring and forgettable.
Songs of the Year
Madagascar, Guns N’ Roses. (I can’t believe I am writing this, but this song is SO good that it almost justifies the project. The album may be flawed, but this is a masterpiece.)
Bag It Up, Oasis. (What a stomp – this album goes from Zak Starkey Caveman drumming to Meg White Cavewoman Drumming, but it’s actually Noel pounding away, who has now played every instrument on an Oasis release.)
Sweet Talk, Spiritualized (The best Spiritualized song since Cool Waves – glad to have you back J. Spaceman.)
Skinny Love, Bon Ivor (So good)
Belles, The Gutter Twins (Gutwrenchingly beautiful in that way only Greg Dulli can be. Strangely, better than anything on Saturnalia. Also the show I am most jealous about not having been at.)
Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket (Great changes, great band).
Time To Pretend, MGMT (I really wanted to put “Kids” on here, but I can’t not have this song – a surprise album to me.)
M79, Vampire Weekend (The best song Paul Simon never wrote, on a really superb debut record.)
Sequestered In Memphis, The Hold Steady (An awesome song on an album chock full of them. A total summer record.)
Vanished, Crystal Castles (Not my normal fair – no guitars! - but this song has infected me totally.)
Lover’s Day, TV on the Radio (Swooning and oddly moving. I couldn't find it, but here's another great track from the record.)
Song For Jo, Scarlett Johansson (The most played song of the year for me – dense, intimate, dreamy – takes me to places I’ve never been – most of all, startlingly mature and immensely beautiful.)
Closer, Kings of Leon (Crushing opener – I would love to see them open live with this).
Sit and Wonder, The Verve (Very A Northern Soul-era, epic and dark).
The Shock of the Lightning, Oasis (Noel’s guitar is incendiary, Liam cuts through time & space).
Goodnight, Travel Well, The Killers. (I don’t want to call Day & Age a disappointment, because it is a good record – it’s just that when only one song is as good as any of the songs on the previous record, then that is a dropoff. Sam’s Town had a heartbeat you could feel, while Day & Age has a digital pulse.)
Geraldine, Glasvegas (50’s doo wop + 60’s girl groups + 80’s Jesus & Mary Chain + looking exactly like Joe Strummer = Awesome. One of the best videos I have seen in ages – youtube it!)
Rich Kid Blues, The Raconteurs (A cover, but one of Jack White’s greatest vocals ever - watch this).
Red Moon by The Walkmen (Summarized the feeling of moving 1000 miles away from your wife to live in a big house alone in the South)
Daddy’s Gone, Glasvegas (The ghosts of Johnny Cash, Joe Stummer, and the walking corpses of Phil Spector and William Reid hover all over this).
To Be Where There’s Life, Oasis. (The Wembley Version is a monster – epic, original, and a word that describes the entire record it comes from – sexy – which is not a word I would ever attach to an Oasis record previously!).
Best opening line: “Me & my friends are like/the drums on ‘Lust For Life’/We pound it out on floor toms/Our songs are singalong songs” – Craig Finn, “Constructive Summer”, The Hold Steady.
Best line: “Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer/I think he might have been our only decent teacher” – Craig Finn, “Constructive Summer”, The Hold Steady.
Single of the Year
The Shock of the Lightning, Oasis.
The last great singles band also has the best lead singles by any band in history:
Definitely Maybe – Supersonic
What’s The Story – Some Might Say
Be Here Now – Do You Know What I Mean?
Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants – Go Let It Out
Heathen Chemistry – The Hindu Times
Don’t Believe The Truth – Lyla
Dig Out Your Soul – The Shock of the Lightning
Even their comps have great lead singles:
The Masterplan – Acquiesce
Stop The Clocks – Lord Don’t Slow Me Down
Best Rock n Roll Movie of the Year:
Control – The Ian Curtis and Joy Division Story (this was a good year for Joy Division on film; the documentary Joy Division is one of the best rocdoc’s ever made).
Best “Album” of the Year (Or the “The Times, They Are A Changin’ Award”)
Hands down, the best musical entity I heard all year is the British band Exit Calm. However, they don’t have a record out; they aren’t even signed to a label. The “album” that I speak of is only a clutch of demos (8 to be exact) that are featured on their myspace page. Had this been released commercially, it would have, hands down, without question, been my album of the year. I really needed to mention them, as We’re On Our Own, Awake, Reference, Higher Learning, Before Tomorrow, Hope, and All On You would be on my songs of the year list. To me, these have already become classics, and they were played at least twice as much as anything else was this year on my various musical devices.
Fear not true believers, word on the street (or the web, as it were) is that the debut album from Exit Calm will be in stores (at least British ones) sometime in 2009.
The First Things First Award
Guns N Roses, Chinese Democracy (Needs it’s own separate category, too difficult to compare to other albums released this year – it there ever was an album that was in a class of it’s own, it is this one! I have never in my life felt so unprepared to rate an album in my life. I can’t place this – it’s either #1 or not on the list at all).
Just Missed (tough to leave off the top ten)
Atlas Sound, Let the Blind Lead Those That Can See But Cannot Feel (I really, really love this album – it was very difficult to cut from the list).
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (A special mention of Cave’s spectacular soundtrack to ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ - one of the most haunting suites of music I have ever heard – unfortunately I discovered it this year, but it came out in 2007.)
TV on the Radio, Dear Science
Best of the Rest (stuff I really, really like)
Crystal Stilts, Crystal Stilts
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
Spiritualized, Songs In A&E
Solid Contenders That Missed The Cut (strong albums that are noteworthy)
Bon Ivor, For Emma, Forever Ago
Beck, Modern Guilt
Coldplay, Viva La Vida
Also Rans – The Biggest Disappointments of 2008
The Verve, Forth – Overproduced, and as I feared, too much Ashcroft, not enough McCabe. In other words, too much Urban Hymns, not enough Storm In Heaven. As a 15 year fan, I am depressed after the wait.
Kings of Leon, Only By The Night – Badly overproduced, undercooked songwriting, cliché lyrics. A few bright spots (Closer, Cold Desert, Crawl), but this is the first strikeout from a great young band previously batting a thousand. They’ll be back.
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, Cardinology. Not really bad, just two records in a row that are just kind of boring and forgettable.
Songs of the Year
Madagascar, Guns N’ Roses. (I can’t believe I am writing this, but this song is SO good that it almost justifies the project. The album may be flawed, but this is a masterpiece.)
Bag It Up, Oasis. (What a stomp – this album goes from Zak Starkey Caveman drumming to Meg White Cavewoman Drumming, but it’s actually Noel pounding away, who has now played every instrument on an Oasis release.)
Sweet Talk, Spiritualized (The best Spiritualized song since Cool Waves – glad to have you back J. Spaceman.)
Skinny Love, Bon Ivor (So good)
Belles, The Gutter Twins (Gutwrenchingly beautiful in that way only Greg Dulli can be. Strangely, better than anything on Saturnalia. Also the show I am most jealous about not having been at.)
Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket (Great changes, great band).
Time To Pretend, MGMT (I really wanted to put “Kids” on here, but I can’t not have this song – a surprise album to me.)
M79, Vampire Weekend (The best song Paul Simon never wrote, on a really superb debut record.)
Sequestered In Memphis, The Hold Steady (An awesome song on an album chock full of them. A total summer record.)
Vanished, Crystal Castles (Not my normal fair – no guitars! - but this song has infected me totally.)
Lover’s Day, TV on the Radio (Swooning and oddly moving. I couldn't find it, but here's another great track from the record.)
Song For Jo, Scarlett Johansson (The most played song of the year for me – dense, intimate, dreamy – takes me to places I’ve never been – most of all, startlingly mature and immensely beautiful.)
Closer, Kings of Leon (Crushing opener – I would love to see them open live with this).
Sit and Wonder, The Verve (Very A Northern Soul-era, epic and dark).
The Shock of the Lightning, Oasis (Noel’s guitar is incendiary, Liam cuts through time & space).
Goodnight, Travel Well, The Killers. (I don’t want to call Day & Age a disappointment, because it is a good record – it’s just that when only one song is as good as any of the songs on the previous record, then that is a dropoff. Sam’s Town had a heartbeat you could feel, while Day & Age has a digital pulse.)
Geraldine, Glasvegas (50’s doo wop + 60’s girl groups + 80’s Jesus & Mary Chain + looking exactly like Joe Strummer = Awesome. One of the best videos I have seen in ages – youtube it!)
Rich Kid Blues, The Raconteurs (A cover, but one of Jack White’s greatest vocals ever - watch this).
Red Moon by The Walkmen (Summarized the feeling of moving 1000 miles away from your wife to live in a big house alone in the South)
Daddy’s Gone, Glasvegas (The ghosts of Johnny Cash, Joe Stummer, and the walking corpses of Phil Spector and William Reid hover all over this).
To Be Where There’s Life, Oasis. (The Wembley Version is a monster – epic, original, and a word that describes the entire record it comes from – sexy – which is not a word I would ever attach to an Oasis record previously!).
Best opening line: “Me & my friends are like/the drums on ‘Lust For Life’/We pound it out on floor toms/Our songs are singalong songs” – Craig Finn, “Constructive Summer”, The Hold Steady.
Best line: “Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer/I think he might have been our only decent teacher” – Craig Finn, “Constructive Summer”, The Hold Steady.
Single of the Year
The Shock of the Lightning, Oasis.
The last great singles band also has the best lead singles by any band in history:
Definitely Maybe – Supersonic
What’s The Story – Some Might Say
Be Here Now – Do You Know What I Mean?
Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants – Go Let It Out
Heathen Chemistry – The Hindu Times
Don’t Believe The Truth – Lyla
Dig Out Your Soul – The Shock of the Lightning
Even their comps have great lead singles:
The Masterplan – Acquiesce
Stop The Clocks – Lord Don’t Slow Me Down
Best Rock n Roll Movie of the Year:
Control – The Ian Curtis and Joy Division Story (this was a good year for Joy Division on film; the documentary Joy Division is one of the best rocdoc’s ever made).
Best “Album” of the Year (Or the “The Times, They Are A Changin’ Award”)
Hands down, the best musical entity I heard all year is the British band Exit Calm. However, they don’t have a record out; they aren’t even signed to a label. The “album” that I speak of is only a clutch of demos (8 to be exact) that are featured on their myspace page. Had this been released commercially, it would have, hands down, without question, been my album of the year. I really needed to mention them, as We’re On Our Own, Awake, Reference, Higher Learning, Before Tomorrow, Hope, and All On You would be on my songs of the year list. To me, these have already become classics, and they were played at least twice as much as anything else was this year on my various musical devices.
Fear not true believers, word on the street (or the web, as it were) is that the debut album from Exit Calm will be in stores (at least British ones) sometime in 2009.
