Looking back through the archives, I see it’s been a few years since I really did a “Best Music I Heard Last Year” article, and that’s a shame, ’cause I really enjoy doing them – almost as much as the music itself. But it takes a lot of time to put something like this together and once I get going on one my editorial instincts go out the window and they become untenable, unfinishable beasts. And thats what you had here in the last few weeks… I started my “Best of 2008″ and realized that I hadn’t done a Best Music I Heard This Year for 2007… and that lead me into a wider discussion of How To (or How I) Criticize Music. Somehow both of those got done and here we are now, 2008…

The year…2008. A year of much car listening for me (and Kelly), travelling to and from races. A lot of personal growth for both Kelly and I eventually culminating in her completing the biggest challenge of her young life and we both taking first big step to the biggest challenge of them all – parenthood. Perhaps viewed relative to those things, the music got lost – dwarfed a bit, but perhaps it was just a down year. I didn’t sense the same profound leaps in sound that I saw in 2007 – just a lot of good-to-great music that was just a step or two removed from the everyday. This band sounded like that band but with just a little twist thrown in. Perhaps it’s just the quiet before a loud and roaring storm?

It was a good year with a number of albums that I dearly loved, but my general feeling was that the market was down from the high that I saw in 2007. And the good news is that the market for sound always rebounds… more after the jump.

Albums
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
“The album that My Morning Jacket should have made,” said Jackson Cooper (check out his 2008 Top 10).

Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
It’s easy to dismiss most “mashup” artists as hacks. Two-bit copy-and-pasters that end up making hamfisted, kludgy (though perhaps novel) concoctions of two songs or artists together into something that is the sonic equivalent of pot roast on top of pancakes. It feels wrong, but it so, so right at that moment. Later, you will regret having been complicit in listening (or eating) it. But take good note: GIRL TALK IS NOT THAT.

Greg Gillis has created something here (and, to a lesser extent in his last album, Night Ripper) that trascends mere “mashup” and celebrates all that is good in pop music. It’s like Cliff Notes for recent pop music turned into some fantastic play – the sonic equivalent of a BLT sandwich where it is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Whereas most “mashups” are one-note novelties that exploit the convergence of two songs or styles together, this is a seamless concoction of countless hooks, lyrics, beats and rhymes that provide much more than just a singular “a-ha” moment, but rather more of a narrative. And lest my gyrations over it make you think this is some dense, cerebral record – it is just plain fun. To hate this record is to hate pop music. You can’t put this on not smile. It was in constant rotation towards the end of 2008 for me, not only because it’s ridiculous pop fun, but because it’s so damned interesting that I’m constantly picking up on it’s twists and turns… and smiling when I do.

Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
Sometime during the cold spring of 2008, Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut broke on me like the sweet heat of a cold-day sunbeam. Echos of The Clash’s poppier jams like “Lost in the Supermarket”, with the delectable rhythms and vocal style of early Police made this an excellent party record. To say “party record” might do it a bit of a disservice, but in this case it’s a badge of honor. That moniker indicates a solid record without speedbumps. Fun stuff with those “flashes of brilliance” that I love to see in new music – I expect good things out of this group and look forward to another album and another summer.

Need to Spend More Time With

TV on the Radio – Dear Science
There is no band like TV On the Radio. They are not merely an extreme of an existing genre. They are not the rebirth of an old one.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Lie Down in the Light
Will Oldham has always been hit-or-miss with me, though I will admit having a bit of a revelation with his Palace release, Viva Last Blues. One of those “my god this is great!” reactions that creates a permanent divot in my otherwise transitory memory. But then some of his material is… so unlistenable to me that it’s a toss up when I retrieve “Oldham, Will” from my brain as to which fact I’ll get. So it happened with this album – I listened to it once and didn’t really “hear”. He is a fascinating character and a local boy with very local habits – he’s part of the woodwork of music in this town and that makes him a person of interest in my book.  Excellent New Yorker article (that mentions the most excellent Backseat Sandbar): The Pretender – Will Oldham transfigures American music.

The Black Keys – Attack & Release
God, what was wrong with me that I missed this album? I remember listening to a couple of tracks from it but fast forward from the April release date and it pops up on Jackson’s list and it sinks in to me that I never listened to it all the way through. Since Jackson released his list, I’ve listened to this quite a bit and I like it a lot. It’s definitely a growth album for The Black Keys – owing quite a bit from Danger Mouse’s production. But at the heart the songs are still the clanking, loud, ragged blues with which they came to prominence. I love that music – that hard, simple garage blues, but I’m surprised that The Black Keys have gone as far as they have with it. This album hints at something bigger and broader in the mix. A gamble, perhaps – a want to move things forward with a genre like the rock blues that sometimes leads to greatness (The Who, The Rolling Stones) but also leads to countless other bands that either stagnated into “extended hiatus”… or died all together. And them’s the blues, ain’t it? It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Favorite Late-to-the-Party Album(s)
Baroness – Red Album (2007)
The venerable Charlie Dillon turned me onto this – claiming something about not being able to NOT listen to it, and imploring me to use the headphones. He told me it was metal – heavy metal, and yet it wasn’t all that dark and even a little jubilant at times. This, somehow, did not deter me and I am a better man for it. Baroness is good metal, and while this album isn’t perfect it’s got those much-coveted flashes of brilliance that tell me that good, if not great, things are in store for Baroness in the future. The Red Album is ultimately re-listenable because it’s so varied and interesting, but retains a mud-thick Southern sound. The occassional prog-rock frippery is deftly, mercifully, counterbalanced with just plain good rock – hooks and turns of phrase that stick in my brain like metal peanut butter.
Baroness – Wanderlust

The Budos Band – The Budos Band II (2007)
When I originally heard the strains of Chicago Falcon, it was in one of those hippie shops down in the Highlands, crackling from an eons-old turntable. The crash of a nasty cymbal and the brass soaring in from above. Jamaican funk? Afro-pop? It had to be from the 70′s. I wasn’t sure – but it was…. good. I inquired and was told it was The Budos Band. I scribbled a note and hustled out the door. Later I was surprised to find the Middle-Eastern-influenced funk rhythms were from this century. It’s funk, and what’s more is that it’s interesting. It’s excellent movie trailer music. It’s excellent music to get you in a mood to commit a caper. Kelly and I listened to it on the way to run the 2008 Muncie Endurathon and it felt like the opening to a Guy Ritchie film.

From the Archives
Sam Cooke – Portrait of a Legend

Otis Redding – Monterrey Pop

Neil Young – Time Fades Away (1973) / Live at Massey Hall 1971 (2007)
Neil Young, always the contrarian, released a live album consisting of nothing but previously-unreleased material in 1973 – Time Fades Away. It has never been re-released on CD, and remains the “Holy Grail” of Neil Young records for that reason. My mom, a huge Neil Young fan, had this along with Harvest, After the Gold Rush and a couple others, which I probably all destroyed playing them over and over – but I never played Time Fades Away that much because it mostly songs that you couldn’t hear on the radio. So, while I might have missed out on this raw nugget in my youth, it probably saved the quality of the vinyl album that sits in a box in my basement now. It’s raw, ragged and Neil Young hates it (“it makes me so nervous”). Can’t say the same thing for myself – it’s rough and nasty and serves as a wonderful bridge between his dark, soft, introspective Harvest period and his rocking Crazy Horse days. Whereas Harvest might be the perfect autumn album, Time Fades Away is a late spring/early summer ramble in a storm.

Yonder Stands the Sinner – Neil Young, Time Fades Away

Live at Massey Hall, 1971 is an excellent recording of Harvest-era material that is bright, jubilant and early Neil Young in his prime. Neil Young is one of the few “rock” artists that really comes alive on the stage – his frail tenor takes on a exquisite, brittle immediacy.

Guilty Pleasure
Beyonce’ – Single Ladies

My love for this song and the video really knows no bounds. Hunter tells me that he doesn’t care for it – says that Xtina’s Ain’t No Other Man is a better song. But I… I disagree. What we’ve got here, behind the fairly transparent lyricism is a forward-looking, forward-sounding single-de-force. Whereas the over-produced videos and vocoded voices currently drown out the artist, Beyonce has chosen rather to cut through it all like a knife. A knife of pop. The stark white set the blankness of space, the all-black unitards reduce all to one. The golden gauntlet both an allusion to the “ring” of which she sings – but also a statement of power – and of the mechanized future that we all hurtle towards. Combine it all and you have the pop equivalent of an EMP weapon. POW. Your mind is BLOWN.

Or, perhaps, it’s just a great video to a great pop song.