A Music Post for No One's Benefit

Aw man, I totally didn't do an end of the year round-up of my favorite new music for 2008. And now that it's February, that boat has obviously sailed.

So instead, we're going to do a round up entitled Music That I'm Listening to Right Now, Which Suspiciously Looks Like a List of My Top Ten Favorite Albums of 2008, But Whatever, You Can't Prove Anything, Direct All Questions to My Attorney.

It's a pretty good list.

My Top Ten Albums Right Now, All of Which Coincidentally Came Out in 2008

#10 Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs : What a strange CD this is. I'm a self-acknowledged bandwagon jumper here - I was never a Ben Gibbard fan except in the Postal Service sort of way until all the hype swung me over about 2 years ago, so I can't pretend to have some deep understanding of the band. But I liked Transatlanticism approximately 500% more than this album. That said though, it still ranks easily as one of the better things released last year. Sort of haunting and sad, with just the right amount of, um, is bitter-wistfulness even a thing? Whatever, a good-to-great album.

#9 Lykke Li - Youth Novels : Talk about coming out of nowhere - this is one of those albums that someone sort of offhandedly suggested that I might like to try, and now suddenly I cannot stop listening to it. Mostly for the one single, Little Bit, which is inspired and and ungodly amount of catchy. But the whole album is shockingly good too, so long as you ignore the spoken word sections. Try it out.

#8 The 88 - Not Only... But Also : So The 88 album Over and Over is probably the single CD that I've listened to more times in the last two years than anything else. It's endlessly entertaining and so so catchy. Their follow-up is also their first major release and it's... I guess 'really good' is the cheap phrase I'm looking for. It's more refined than Over and Over, but it's also more processed, more commercial, and not as super amazing. Never more evident than when they took one of the songs from Over and Over (Coming Home) and re-recorded it by processing the hell out of it and making it 50% worse than before. But overall, it's a great CD, and has one of my favorite songs of all 2008 on it: No One Here.

#7 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend : I'm pretty sure there has never been a band that has so quickly risen to popularity and then crashed down under the backlash as fast as Vampire Weekend. They were the hip new thing back in the Fall of 2007, before their album ever came out, and by the time it actually hit stores in January '08, they were so overplayed and oversaturated that everyone hated their guts. Me, I still can't get enough of this CD. The crazy vocals, the awesome catchy baselines, the fact that their most famous lyric is "who gives a fuck about an oxford comma," all of it. Why will no one else love this album but me?

#6 Adele - 19 : If this were actually a list of best albums from 2008, I would most certainly be making a comment right here about how it's hard to remember that this CD came out this year, because it feels like I've been listening to this album for half my life now. Seriously, it's so so so good, that it makes my teeth hurt. (Also, here's link to JD, who I begrudgingly acknowledge pointed me to the album. Doesn't it just kill you when someone else finds the best music of the year before you?). By far, the best debut album I've heard in the last couple of years. So polished and smart-sounding, without any of the current standby tricks of new artists. Recommended so hard.

#5 Ben Folds - Way to Normal : Now this is a good way for an iconic band to behave (take note Weezer down there). Despite the fact that it's a very experimental and different sound, it's wholly Ben Folds, and very well done, if wildly uneven. Some of it sounds like old Ben Folds Five stuff, one song sounds like an outtake from Rocking the Suburbs, but overall it still has that grown up feel of Songs for Silverman, all while trying something new. The problems with hte album all stem from the fact that some of the songs are just... (and I don't want to sound mean here but) they're bad. Errant Dog is kinda dumb on its face, and The Frown song is terribly out of place on this album. They're jarring, and mar what is otherwise absolutely brilliant. Not that that really matters to me, because let's be honest: it has a song wherein Regina Spektor and Ben Folds duet. When your two favorite artists in the entire world do a song together, that means you love the CD as if it's your child. It's like a rule.

#4 The Hush Sound - Goodbye Blues : I know I've said it before and I'll continue to say it - I am always shocked that The Hush Sound isn't as popular as I think they should be. I don't get it. Their songs are incredibly catchy, and almost tailor-made for radio airtime. They have two smoking hot lead singers (one girl and one guy to appeal to all demographics). And both of their last two albums have been brilliant and complete, with maybe two bad songs across three CDs. But whatever, Goodbye Blues is excellent, smarter than your average album, and varied enough to constantly keep you guessing. My only complaint is that Robert Morris (the guy lead singer) doesn't get a song until all the way to the middle of CD, which initially scared the crap out of me because the songs he fronts are invariably my favorites.

#3 Noah and the Whale - Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down : Sweet baby Jesus, this album is inhabiting my soul lately. I dunno, usually I am immune to that sort of hippie, melody, ukulele-and-trumpet-included massive troupe band archetype (i.e. Arcade Fire, Polyphonic Spree) but this one not only stuck with me, it won't go away. It's so good, and a little sad, and a little hilarious, then really happy and love-sickening, and then back around to sad again. What I'm saying is that I can't describe how or why, but I love this album.

#2 Kings of Leon - Only by the Night : So it took more than 4 different attempts at getting through this CD before I even came close to liking it. And now it's, no joke my 2nd favorite album that came out in 2008. I don't know where the turnaround came from, but it sticks with me now. I think it must have to do with the lead singer's voice, which I tend to liken now to 'sex of the eardrum variety.' If you can tell, I'm a little bit excited about this band nowadays.

#1 Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer : I know I'm an inveterate over-promoter of music. When something I love gets to me, I become the prophet who won't stop talking about it. But this is totally different - you need this CD. It's amazing, passionate, real, and a little jagged. I will heap mounds of praise on this CD to the ends of the earth.


Also, 5 Runner Up Albums That Barely Missed the List

#11 Jonas Brothers - A Little Bit Longer : How about y'all just leave me alone, okay. I love this CD. At first I thought I did so in a cool, campy-ironic sort of way, and then I realized that, yeah, not so much. Sure, most of it is pop trash, but it's great pop trash. Whatever! At least I didn't put it in the Top 10. Don't look at me like that. Why must you be so hateful?

#12 Dresden Dolls - No, Virginia... : The least hyped CD in the history of CD's - enough so that I didn't know it had come out until a full 3 months after release and I happened to be wandering through the Youtubes and found a mention of a studio-produced version of a song I had only heard live before. It's good, but no where near as cohesive as Yes, Virginia, the companion album from last year.

#13 Weezer - Weezer (Red Album) : This album should not be this low, but because I have such terribly high standards for Weezer these days, and nothing they could do would live up to it, it's graded as such. Also, because I hate Rivers Cuomo's new facial hair with a fiery passion. But there are things here that are great, and catchy, just not as iconic as they once were. That's not a crime, just a little disappointing.

#14 She and Him - Volume One : This one I've been on the fence with since I bought it. On one hand it's a little simplistic. Pretty much as bare-bones accompaniment as possible and nothing but Zooey Deschanel's voice to go on. On the other hand, her voice is pretty much awesome beyond description. I guess the fact that I have had it on my iPod rotation nonstop since I bought it means that I fall on the good side of the fence.

#15 The Cab - Whisper War : Dude, I know, I'm as surprised as you. Chalk it up to my weakness for NSYNC type boybands, or to these two ridiculously catchy singles Bounce and I'll Run. But it's a good CD, and at the end of the year day, they're one my big time new bands to watch.