If you shout...
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
So, I remember reading a post in a "Best of 2008" thread, some time ago, saying that we shouldn't be allowed to make our best of lists before the year's out. I happen to support this kind of thinking very, very strongly, which is why I've been sitting around and trying, in my spare time, to figure out exactly how 2008 shook out, for me. Of course, this is an If you shout... post, so things're going to be wordy and grammatically impeccable. Sooner or later, I may even get around to talking about the albums which I really loved.
I have also written, in other threads, about how great a year 2008 was, for music. Not to mention for me, in terms of all I was able to discover! I discovered at least 30 records which I all thought were good enough to land in my top 10, and the only reason that this is going to be a list of my top 15 (or so), rather than a top 90, is because I'm on a dial-up internet connection and away from my regular computer (ie, my iTunes), and can't be bothered tracking down all this album artwork for hours at a time. Really, it was a wonderful year.
It was made all that much more remarkable because of the sheer volume of music which I discovered. Why so remarkable, in the internet age? Well, it's remarkable because I spent the last 4 months of 2008 on a 56k dial-up connection...and I was unemployed! This means that the vast majority of the vast amount of music which I discovered was either A) discovered in the first 2/3 of the year, or B) worth paying for, sound unheard! That's wild!
I was also dealing with an enormous move from Japan to Chicago, for several months, and didn't even spend most of my year listening to 2008 music. Instead, I spent literally months and months researching Caribbean music, for want of a better, less reductive or restrictive term--reggae, rocksteady/rudeboy, Calypso, ska, steel drum, Nyahbinghi, dub...the list literally goes on and on and on for days of nonstop music. I just listened and listened and listened to that stuff, which meant that I didn't have nearly as much time for new music; I was too fucking busy listening to music which was mostly new to me.
You put all of that in a blender and pour it out, and you have one damn-ass tasty mug of 2008. Simply fantabulous. And given the fact that there's still so much to which I haven't satisfactorily been able to listen just means that there's something left for me to sprinkle on top of it all, once it settles. Wonderful!
Also, before everything gets formally underway, I should make note of the following record:
This is Kingdom Shore's ...And All the Dogs to Shark. I think that it may actually have been released in 2007, but I never found it anywhere until early 2008. It sounds literally unlike anything else I have ever heard (maybe Arvo Part is at least a starting point, though). It was not really one of my favorite records of the year, and I don't really listen to it all that often...it's so radically alien that it almost serves to redefine the word, in musical terms. I read, somewhere, that a reviewer thought it sounded like Fugazi for cello, and while I don't know how strongly I agree with that characterization, I also can't really think of anything better, on my own. It is a record arranged for string quartet, it is relentlessly intense and forward-thinking, and it utterly defies any categorization of which I can think. I have honestly never heard anything like it, and I think that it really deserves to be heard by more people. Also, the vinyl packaging is gorgeous, and props are deserved, on that front. You really gotta hear this stuff to believe it, so I hope that you do. Look around for it, and give it a chance.
On we go, then. My top records of 2008.
1) Los Campesinos!: Hold On Now, Youngster...
This band came absolutely out of nowhere and blindsided me, in the summer of 2007. I remember that I was just sort of cruising around on the internet, in Chiba, the night after saying goodbye to one of my best friends, Nick (an Aussie who was leaving Japan to return to Melbourne), at a bar and during a walk home. It was humid and a bit drizzly, and I got home and decided to jump around and see what I could see. There was a link to a YouTube video on one page, and the video was for "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives."
I saw that it was produced by my favorite producer, Dave Newfeld (SFA's Hey Venus!, Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People, Chikita Violenta's The Stars and Suns Sessions), I watched it, I frantically clicked through to the video for "You! Me! Dancing!," and I fell as hard for a band as I ever have. The latter song (which was sadly and poorly rerecorded for this full-length) is one of my least-favorite Los Campesinos! songs. Now, I'm not saying that it's bad...I have to stress least-favorite, here. I'm just saying that in a world of 9.5/10 songs, it's, like, a mere 9. I'm splitting hairs with these guys, because they're so good that I have no choice.
At any rate, I have listened to that song over 130 times, on iTunes, since I first got my hands on Sticking Fingers Into Sockets. It is not my most-played Los Campesinos! song, either. Such is my love. I remember being hopelessly terrified about the album, after having so loved the EP. The songs "The International TWEEXCORE Underground" and "Death to Los Campesinos!" are fucking light years beyond brilliant, but I wasn't really too big a fan of the videos, and they were my first exposure to the actual band--before that, I knew them only by bright, splashy, Lichtensteinian swathes of color. I saw them and the feyness of "TWEEXCORE," rather than just hearing it, and was like, "Oh, fuck. This band is going to suck, isn't it?" Song titles like "This is How You Spell, 'HAHAHA, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux Romantics'" hardly helped matters.
And then I heard the leak, after returning to Japan, in January of 2008, having spent the holidays abroad. And then I surrendered. And I was happy to do so. And now, if I had the choice between hearing No Line on the Horizon right here and right now, or hearing whatever this band is next going to put out, I wouldn't even have to think about it. I would choose the LC! record. Not a doubt in my mind. I haven't felt this way about a band and a record since The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday, a record which came out in 2005 and to which I've listened about 400 times. This is also one of the few records which I own on both CD and vinyl, and for which I also have s. I got the Japanese CD, too! Had to pay more than $25 USD for that shit! It was worth it, too!
This band seems to be capable of so much that it literally terrifies me. At the same time, though, this album (and its follow-up) is so good that if they broke up, tomorrow, I wouldn't even have any regrets. They've already changed me, forever.
2) Los Campesinos!: We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
Again, I tried to temper my expectations for this record, when it was abruptly and stunningly announced less than six months after Hold On Now, Youngster...'s release. It was recorded in hardly two weeks. Newfeld was no longer on board (they instead worked with John Goodmanson, who's produced Sleater-Kinney, amongst other bands). They were releasing some elaborate and pretentious-sounding box set in highly limited numbers. They were producing a 'Zine to go along with the thing. Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) was writing haikus, or something, for them and for it. I figured they'd lost the plot.
Then, though, I heard the record. Nothing to worry about. Still the best band in the world.
The palette has grown, the band is painting with more colors, instrumental passage have been introduced (LC! = Post-Rock...? WTF?), the hooks are just as spectacular as before, and the boys and girls still have a way of making Xanga lyrics sound like the most profound shit in the universe. I almost felt bothered by how much I loved this record, at first. "Perspective," I told myself. "You need perspective. It can't be that good. No band can do this."
I was wrong. They did it. Not just two homers in a year...two grand slams.
3) The Ruby Suns: Sea Lion
This record came absolutely out of nowhere, for me. I remembered what the cover of the band's first album looked like, but I'd never heard as much as a peep from it, nor could I remember much press surrounding it. If memory serves, this particular record came out on the same day as the disappointing Fleet Foxes EP, Sun Giant. I got both records because of the good press which they'd received, but I only kept going back to the Ruby Suns record.
I remember when Panda Bear's Person Pitch came out, and I remember in great detail reading review after review of music which really sounded like something I'd like, when I was reading all those thousands of words and dozens of blurbs. I would put on the record, though, and recoil in horror--I hated that fucking album! Miserable shit, I thought. Still, I would read the reviews and keep giving it another try, every few weeks, hoping that I could finally hear what everybody kept insisting they were hearing. I've since come to the conclusion that either everybody is an idiot, or everybody somehow mistakenly got a copy of Sea Lion a year in advance, for their reviews of Person Pitch. Domino must've messed something up.
You see, this is the album that everybody swore up and down that Panda Bear had made. Washes of gurgling synths, clattery "world"-percussion, cyclical and spiraling songs, ethereal vocals, pronounced African rhythmic and melodic overtones (the unfortunately titled "Kenya Dig It?"), globe-trotting lyrics, and even a song title which sounds like it should've been on Feels--"Blue Penguin." There's even a song, "Tane Mahuta," in native Maori! It's fucking brilliant stuff. The album sounds like heat, humidity, and happiness. I adore it from start to finish. I am furious that there still hasn't been a vinyl release.
4) Johnny Foreigner: Waited Up Til It Was Light
Again, this one was a big surprise. I saw a link to a piece on them in DiS while reading up on Los Campesinos!, last February or March, and watched the video for "Eyes Wide Terrified." I was more or less instantly hooked. The band sounds a bit like a far punkier, far rowdier, far, far, far, far, far more rough-around-the-edges Los Campesinos!
Razor-blade, angular guitars, spiky synths, screamed boy/girl vocals, and hooks big enough to flatten a city. The band seems to have a keen understanding of the joys and heartbreaks of growing up, which reminds me very strongly of the first three The Hold Steady albums--there are faint traces of recurring characters, ideas, themes, and even lyrical snatches (not to mention occasional shout-outs to The Hold Steady by way of quoted lyrics; there were even plans to incorporate a cut-out of THS lead singer Craig Finn into a JoFo video, at one point) which all help to bind the record together. Whereas each song on Waited Up Til It Was Light sounds just about ready to explode from its confines, the record is remarkably cohesive--sonically, lyrically, and thematically. These two sets of lines from two different songs seem to sum it all up best: "But he falls asleep on her shoulder,/Every shift they spend together,/Which is most nights" and "I will wait for you outside carparks,/Outside busy shopping centers./I will wait for you at work,/When all your other shifts run late." Perfection.
It's also got one of my three or four favorite album covers of the year, not to mention a beautiful, honest, and poignant title. Just trust me. You hear the music, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Near-perfect songs include the one-two punch of "DJs Get Doubts" and "Sometimes, In the Bullring," not to mention "Yes! You Talk Too Fast" and "Eyes Wide Terrified." Just check out these lyrics from "DJs," and maybe you'll start to understand where I'm coming from:
I'm happy,
but I'd hardly call this dancing,
as such...
like lovers holding hands
and mostly losing touch.
These little, white lies
drag you through the colder nights.
5) Josh Goldberg: Double Murder Suicide
Yes, that is the correct cover. Yes, this album was self-released (for free) by a college student in Ohio. Yes, he seems like a really nice guy (we've been infrequently in contact since the record came out, and I've done everything in my meager power to get him more coverage). Yes, it is a concept album about the life of the late wrestler Chris Benoit, particularly those with his wife and Eddie Guerrero.
It is fucking amazing. Goldberg is able to overcome his admittedly laughable premise by never once stooping to its level. He never cracks a smile, on this one--not even on songs like "Chris Benoit's Kid Had To Die" and "WrestleMania of Love." Find that latter song, because it will floor you. The pacing and emotional outpourings are resonant as hell, and Goldberg does a brilliant job with the WWF soundbites which forced him either to release the album for free or be sued by WWE lawyers.
Revealed both on record and in our correspondences, Goldberg's intense devotion to his subject matter is undeniable. He is entirely believable and genuine, and his enthusiasm (not to mention his surprising sense of both pathos and fun) is hard to resist. What does it sound like, though?
This record follows along somewhat in the tradition of early lo-fi indie acts, like Beck (circa Fresh Meat and Old Slabs or Banjo Story, minus the difficulty and inaccessibility) or the old-school New Zealand explosion of the '80s and early '90s. Make no mistake--this is not at all a "finished" record. You can at times hear Goldberg unpausing his tapes, so that he can add a soundbite to a song, and the whole thing is basically what sounds like a barely functional drum machine, a guitar, and a young man's voice. It is brutally lo-fi, at times. Seriously, though, this record is dynamite.
It's also the only record featuring a song called "Wolverine Party in Heaven," which features raggedy, sloppy rhythm guitar, a fluid guitar solo, and a breakdown which incorporates Pink's "Get This Party Started." Without a trace of irony, either. It fucking works, and it fucking sounds great.
I have also written, in other threads, about how great a year 2008 was, for music. Not to mention for me, in terms of all I was able to discover! I discovered at least 30 records which I all thought were good enough to land in my top 10, and the only reason that this is going to be a list of my top 15 (or so), rather than a top 90, is because I'm on a dial-up internet connection and away from my regular computer (ie, my iTunes), and can't be bothered tracking down all this album artwork for hours at a time. Really, it was a wonderful year.
It was made all that much more remarkable because of the sheer volume of music which I discovered. Why so remarkable, in the internet age? Well, it's remarkable because I spent the last 4 months of 2008 on a 56k dial-up connection...and I was unemployed! This means that the vast majority of the vast amount of music which I discovered was either A) discovered in the first 2/3 of the year, or B) worth paying for, sound unheard! That's wild!
I was also dealing with an enormous move from Japan to Chicago, for several months, and didn't even spend most of my year listening to 2008 music. Instead, I spent literally months and months researching Caribbean music, for want of a better, less reductive or restrictive term--reggae, rocksteady/rudeboy, Calypso, ska, steel drum, Nyahbinghi, dub...the list literally goes on and on and on for days of nonstop music. I just listened and listened and listened to that stuff, which meant that I didn't have nearly as much time for new music; I was too fucking busy listening to music which was mostly new to me.
You put all of that in a blender and pour it out, and you have one damn-ass tasty mug of 2008. Simply fantabulous. And given the fact that there's still so much to which I haven't satisfactorily been able to listen just means that there's something left for me to sprinkle on top of it all, once it settles. Wonderful!
Also, before everything gets formally underway, I should make note of the following record:
This is Kingdom Shore's ...And All the Dogs to Shark. I think that it may actually have been released in 2007, but I never found it anywhere until early 2008. It sounds literally unlike anything else I have ever heard (maybe Arvo Part is at least a starting point, though). It was not really one of my favorite records of the year, and I don't really listen to it all that often...it's so radically alien that it almost serves to redefine the word, in musical terms. I read, somewhere, that a reviewer thought it sounded like Fugazi for cello, and while I don't know how strongly I agree with that characterization, I also can't really think of anything better, on my own. It is a record arranged for string quartet, it is relentlessly intense and forward-thinking, and it utterly defies any categorization of which I can think. I have honestly never heard anything like it, and I think that it really deserves to be heard by more people. Also, the vinyl packaging is gorgeous, and props are deserved, on that front. You really gotta hear this stuff to believe it, so I hope that you do. Look around for it, and give it a chance.
On we go, then. My top records of 2008.
1) Los Campesinos!: Hold On Now, Youngster...
This band came absolutely out of nowhere and blindsided me, in the summer of 2007. I remember that I was just sort of cruising around on the internet, in Chiba, the night after saying goodbye to one of my best friends, Nick (an Aussie who was leaving Japan to return to Melbourne), at a bar and during a walk home. It was humid and a bit drizzly, and I got home and decided to jump around and see what I could see. There was a link to a YouTube video on one page, and the video was for "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives."
I saw that it was produced by my favorite producer, Dave Newfeld (SFA's Hey Venus!, Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People, Chikita Violenta's The Stars and Suns Sessions), I watched it, I frantically clicked through to the video for "You! Me! Dancing!," and I fell as hard for a band as I ever have. The latter song (which was sadly and poorly rerecorded for this full-length) is one of my least-favorite Los Campesinos! songs. Now, I'm not saying that it's bad...I have to stress least-favorite, here. I'm just saying that in a world of 9.5/10 songs, it's, like, a mere 9. I'm splitting hairs with these guys, because they're so good that I have no choice.
At any rate, I have listened to that song over 130 times, on iTunes, since I first got my hands on Sticking Fingers Into Sockets. It is not my most-played Los Campesinos! song, either. Such is my love. I remember being hopelessly terrified about the album, after having so loved the EP. The songs "The International TWEEXCORE Underground" and "Death to Los Campesinos!" are fucking light years beyond brilliant, but I wasn't really too big a fan of the videos, and they were my first exposure to the actual band--before that, I knew them only by bright, splashy, Lichtensteinian swathes of color. I saw them and the feyness of "TWEEXCORE," rather than just hearing it, and was like, "Oh, fuck. This band is going to suck, isn't it?" Song titles like "This is How You Spell, 'HAHAHA, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux Romantics'" hardly helped matters.
And then I heard the leak, after returning to Japan, in January of 2008, having spent the holidays abroad. And then I surrendered. And I was happy to do so. And now, if I had the choice between hearing No Line on the Horizon right here and right now, or hearing whatever this band is next going to put out, I wouldn't even have to think about it. I would choose the LC! record. Not a doubt in my mind. I haven't felt this way about a band and a record since The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday, a record which came out in 2005 and to which I've listened about 400 times. This is also one of the few records which I own on both CD and vinyl, and for which I also have s. I got the Japanese CD, too! Had to pay more than $25 USD for that shit! It was worth it, too!
This band seems to be capable of so much that it literally terrifies me. At the same time, though, this album (and its follow-up) is so good that if they broke up, tomorrow, I wouldn't even have any regrets. They've already changed me, forever.
2) Los Campesinos!: We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
Again, I tried to temper my expectations for this record, when it was abruptly and stunningly announced less than six months after Hold On Now, Youngster...'s release. It was recorded in hardly two weeks. Newfeld was no longer on board (they instead worked with John Goodmanson, who's produced Sleater-Kinney, amongst other bands). They were releasing some elaborate and pretentious-sounding box set in highly limited numbers. They were producing a 'Zine to go along with the thing. Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) was writing haikus, or something, for them and for it. I figured they'd lost the plot.
Then, though, I heard the record. Nothing to worry about. Still the best band in the world.
The palette has grown, the band is painting with more colors, instrumental passage have been introduced (LC! = Post-Rock...? WTF?), the hooks are just as spectacular as before, and the boys and girls still have a way of making Xanga lyrics sound like the most profound shit in the universe. I almost felt bothered by how much I loved this record, at first. "Perspective," I told myself. "You need perspective. It can't be that good. No band can do this."
I was wrong. They did it. Not just two homers in a year...two grand slams.
3) The Ruby Suns: Sea Lion
This record came absolutely out of nowhere, for me. I remembered what the cover of the band's first album looked like, but I'd never heard as much as a peep from it, nor could I remember much press surrounding it. If memory serves, this particular record came out on the same day as the disappointing Fleet Foxes EP, Sun Giant. I got both records because of the good press which they'd received, but I only kept going back to the Ruby Suns record.
I remember when Panda Bear's Person Pitch came out, and I remember in great detail reading review after review of music which really sounded like something I'd like, when I was reading all those thousands of words and dozens of blurbs. I would put on the record, though, and recoil in horror--I hated that fucking album! Miserable shit, I thought. Still, I would read the reviews and keep giving it another try, every few weeks, hoping that I could finally hear what everybody kept insisting they were hearing. I've since come to the conclusion that either everybody is an idiot, or everybody somehow mistakenly got a copy of Sea Lion a year in advance, for their reviews of Person Pitch. Domino must've messed something up.
You see, this is the album that everybody swore up and down that Panda Bear had made. Washes of gurgling synths, clattery "world"-percussion, cyclical and spiraling songs, ethereal vocals, pronounced African rhythmic and melodic overtones (the unfortunately titled "Kenya Dig It?"), globe-trotting lyrics, and even a song title which sounds like it should've been on Feels--"Blue Penguin." There's even a song, "Tane Mahuta," in native Maori! It's fucking brilliant stuff. The album sounds like heat, humidity, and happiness. I adore it from start to finish. I am furious that there still hasn't been a vinyl release.
4) Johnny Foreigner: Waited Up Til It Was Light
Again, this one was a big surprise. I saw a link to a piece on them in DiS while reading up on Los Campesinos!, last February or March, and watched the video for "Eyes Wide Terrified." I was more or less instantly hooked. The band sounds a bit like a far punkier, far rowdier, far, far, far, far, far more rough-around-the-edges Los Campesinos!
Razor-blade, angular guitars, spiky synths, screamed boy/girl vocals, and hooks big enough to flatten a city. The band seems to have a keen understanding of the joys and heartbreaks of growing up, which reminds me very strongly of the first three The Hold Steady albums--there are faint traces of recurring characters, ideas, themes, and even lyrical snatches (not to mention occasional shout-outs to The Hold Steady by way of quoted lyrics; there were even plans to incorporate a cut-out of THS lead singer Craig Finn into a JoFo video, at one point) which all help to bind the record together. Whereas each song on Waited Up Til It Was Light sounds just about ready to explode from its confines, the record is remarkably cohesive--sonically, lyrically, and thematically. These two sets of lines from two different songs seem to sum it all up best: "But he falls asleep on her shoulder,/Every shift they spend together,/Which is most nights" and "I will wait for you outside carparks,/Outside busy shopping centers./I will wait for you at work,/When all your other shifts run late." Perfection.
It's also got one of my three or four favorite album covers of the year, not to mention a beautiful, honest, and poignant title. Just trust me. You hear the music, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Near-perfect songs include the one-two punch of "DJs Get Doubts" and "Sometimes, In the Bullring," not to mention "Yes! You Talk Too Fast" and "Eyes Wide Terrified." Just check out these lyrics from "DJs," and maybe you'll start to understand where I'm coming from:
I'm happy,
but I'd hardly call this dancing,
as such...
like lovers holding hands
and mostly losing touch.
These little, white lies
drag you through the colder nights.
5) Josh Goldberg: Double Murder Suicide
Yes, that is the correct cover. Yes, this album was self-released (for free) by a college student in Ohio. Yes, he seems like a really nice guy (we've been infrequently in contact since the record came out, and I've done everything in my meager power to get him more coverage). Yes, it is a concept album about the life of the late wrestler Chris Benoit, particularly those with his wife and Eddie Guerrero.
It is fucking amazing. Goldberg is able to overcome his admittedly laughable premise by never once stooping to its level. He never cracks a smile, on this one--not even on songs like "Chris Benoit's Kid Had To Die" and "WrestleMania of Love." Find that latter song, because it will floor you. The pacing and emotional outpourings are resonant as hell, and Goldberg does a brilliant job with the WWF soundbites which forced him either to release the album for free or be sued by WWE lawyers.
Revealed both on record and in our correspondences, Goldberg's intense devotion to his subject matter is undeniable. He is entirely believable and genuine, and his enthusiasm (not to mention his surprising sense of both pathos and fun) is hard to resist. What does it sound like, though?
This record follows along somewhat in the tradition of early lo-fi indie acts, like Beck (circa Fresh Meat and Old Slabs or Banjo Story, minus the difficulty and inaccessibility) or the old-school New Zealand explosion of the '80s and early '90s. Make no mistake--this is not at all a "finished" record. You can at times hear Goldberg unpausing his tapes, so that he can add a soundbite to a song, and the whole thing is basically what sounds like a barely functional drum machine, a guitar, and a young man's voice. It is brutally lo-fi, at times. Seriously, though, this record is dynamite.
It's also the only record featuring a song called "Wolverine Party in Heaven," which features raggedy, sloppy rhythm guitar, a fluid guitar solo, and a breakdown which incorporates Pink's "Get This Party Started." Without a trace of irony, either. It fucking works, and it fucking sounds great.
Love it though.
