My Favorite Albums of 2008

Here are my ten favorite albums of 2008. As I mentioned before, I really have no business compiling a "Best of 2008" list considering how much I haven't heard (still haven't heard Fleet Foxes, although I at least have the album on order). So this is just a list of some stuff I happened to dig this year.

1. Teddy Thompson - A Piece of What You Need
Last year I was the only blogger to list Teddy Thompson's Up Front And Down Low on their year-end "best of" list. So what does the usually non-prolific Teddy do? He releases an even better album in 2008. A Piece Of What You Need finds Teddy in about as upbeat a mood as you can imagine from the young man for whom "End Of The Rainbow" was written. Producer Marius de Vries (Bjork, Madonna) adds enough pop flourishes (handclaps!) to keep things bright, even if he can't stop Teddy from turning the gun on himself. A Piece Of What You Need is simply a brilliant album that takes Teddy out of his famous parents' shadows once and for all (Richard & Linda who?).

2. Duffy - Rockferry
My wife likes to listen to our local pop music station in the mornings. Because I'm a good husband I only complain about this semi-incessantly. One morning something really weird happened. I actually liked a song they were playing. This was a good song. No, actually it was great. "Who is this?" I asked (they never say who they're playing on pop radio, you're just supposed to know). Soon enough I figured out it was a young British woman known as Duffy. I picked up the CD at Starbucks that very day (remember when Starbucks used to sell music?). Later I picked it up on LP too, not because the CD sounded bad, but because the music was so good I just wanted to own it on LP. As I noted in a previous post, Rockferry (on CD or LP) has lots of dynamic range relative to most contemporary productions, proving that an album can be massively successful in 2008 without having every last bit of life compressed out of it.

3. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
I don't think I need to say much about Vampire Weekend. This will be on every other blogger's list. This might be the most over-hyped album of the year, but that doesn't mean it isn't also good.

4. Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch
Mudcrutch's debut album was already the subject of much discussion on this blog.

It's an iconic story. A rock band torn apart by external forces over thirty years ago reunites to see if they can recapture the old magic. Against all odds they do, and the now middle-aged rockers find their belated debut album on the bestseller charts. It's a story that would carry the force of Greek Mythology were it not for the inconvenient fact that one of the members (a guy named Tom Petty) has a day job as one of the world's most successful rock-stars, and two others (Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) punch the clock as members of his long-running backing band the Heartbreakers. Guitarist Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh haven't kept quite as high a profile over the past thirty odd years, but from the sounds of the album they have lost none of their considerable chops.

If you can still find a copy, it's worth the extra money to pick up the LP with bonus "uncompressed" CD.

5. Neil Diamond - Home Before Dark
Neil Diamond has never made music to impress rock critics, and in return rock critics have never been very impressed by Neil Diamond. But Home Before Dark sounds like a different kind of Neil Diamond album. No, it doesn't sound like it was made with the approval of rock critics in mind (heaven forbid), but it does seem to be an attempt to make a "serious" album in the way that even his previous collaboration with super-producer Rick Rubin, 12 Songs, did not. It's a quiet album intended for intimate listening. I don't see how these songs reach the back rows at a Neil Diamond show. Nevertheless, the songs are full of the kind of drama and showmanship that characterizes Diamond's best work, it's just a quieter, more subtle kind of drama than we're used to from Neil. Unlike Rick Rubin's other big production this year, this album is emphatically not a victim of the "loudness wars." There's oodles of dynamic range on this album, and those shifts in dynamic range really are an essential ingredient in allowing the drama inherent in the songwriting to unfold. Congrats to Neil on the first number one album (and perhaps the best studio album) of his career.

6. Beck - Modern Guilt
This is another album I wrote a bit about already. At the time I was more interested in writing about the novelty of the album being offered on LP with an MP3 download sourced from vinyl than the music itself. Now I'd like to say a few words about the music: it's terrific. (I realize that technically this statement only counts as a few words if you consider the contraction "it's" as two words, but I believe it is legitimate to do so.)

7. She & Him - Volume One
I do not care that "She" is a pretty actress. I do not care that "Him" is M. Ward. This is very enjoyable classic pop music. If you've ever found yourself with a lump in your throat while listening to The Stone Poneys' "Different Drum" you need to add this album in your collection.

8. Orchestra Baobab - Made In Dakar
Hey kids, are you interested in checking out the roots of Vampire Weekend's Afro-Pop influenced sounds? Well, you won't find them here (for that check out Paul Simon's Graceland). Senegal's Orchestra Baobab came roaring back to life in 2002 with the release of Specialist In All Styles, and Made In Dakar suggests they are back to stay. Orchestra Baobab present a potent mix of Afro-Pop and Afro-Cuban sounds. Honestly, I'm not knowledgeable about this kind of music to say anything intelligent about it (that never stopped me before), but I really enjoyed this skillfully played and passionate album.

9. Mudhoney - The Lucky Ones
Twenty years into their career and Mudhoney are still the loudest thing going on. The secret to their longevity? Clean living. Mudhoney doesn't offer anything groundbreaking with their latest album; maybe their primal fuzz sounds a little wiser with age ("the lucky ones have already gone down"), but never sounds grown up. Mudhoney still offers retrograde, knuckle-dragging, loud fun. When Mudhoney debuted twenty years ago, few would have predicted they'd still be going strong in 2008. Even fewer would have predicted the long playing record album would still be going strong as well. But here it is 2008 and I bought Mudhoney's new album on LP with a code for a free MP3 download and a bonus 7" single that includes covers of Pere Ubu's "Street Waves" and The Troggs' "Gonna Make You." This is almost as much fun as collecting limited-edition, colored vinyl Sub-Pop 7" singles circa 1989.

10. R.E.M. - Accelerate
R.E.M.'s most exciting music in years was definitely a victim of the "loudness wars." On CD Accelerate sounds like total crap. Eric Zimmerman at REMring diagnosed the problem with this album quite effectively. The expensive 45 RPM double LP sounds better than the CD, but the relative lack of dynamic range (while made worse by CD mastering) seems to have been a choice made at the recording and mixing stage of this production. Pity, because there are some really good songs here. Personally, I think they would have sounded better with a little more room to breathe.

My Favorite Albums of 2007

As I mentioned in my previous post, few people are less qualified than me to declare what the 10 best albums of 2007 were. My focus on this blog is on music of the past, and I don't keep up with new releases the way I once did. Nevertheless, any idiot can have an opinion, and I certainly have a lot of them. So without further ado, here are my favorite albums of 2007.

1. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
I wanted to be a little more contrarian in my top choice, but there is just no getting around the fact that this was my favorite album released in 2007. I opted for the fantastic sounding two-LP vinyl release that is packaged with a bonus CD of the whole album. The quality of the pressing is outstanding, and I urge anyone who has yet to buy this album to pick it up on vinyl--it just sounds so good.

Perhaps I am showing my age by picking an album derided as "dad-rock" by the young whippersnappers at Pitchfork as the best of 2007. I suppose I can understand why fans who discovered Jeff Tweedy and company through Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (an album that alienated many of the bands older, alt-country fans as much as this one alienated their younger, post-rock fans). Compared to YHF, Sky Blue Sky sounds like classic rock, or perhaps the kind of music that might show up in a Volkswagon commercial. One can either hear this as a retreat into musical conservatism, or as paring the music down to it's essentials. I hear the later more than the former. Yes, there are elements of 70s soft-rock abundantly in evidence here. But the brilliant guitar interplay between Tweedy and Nels Cline recalls Television more than The Eagles. Whatever, I don't have to defend my choice--I just loved this album.

2. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog
My friend Peter had this to say about this album: "Funny to think that many people saw Sam Bean as a Will Oldham bedroom-tape knock-off. It seems to me he's probably been way more successful in his maturity and growth than Oldham has in all of the 25 records or so he's released." I couldn't have said it any better, Sam Beam has shown remarkable artistic growth over the past few years. From the start it was clear that Beam was a gifted songwriter, but his early, lo-fi, acoustic recordings--lovely as they were--are no preparation for the intricate, fully developed music found in the grooves of this album. The sound of The Shepard's Dog is at once lush and inviting while also being challenging and difficult. Beam incorporates unexpected elements from juju and dub into his melodic, folky, psychedelia, and somehow it works. The effect is mesmerizing.

Is it just a coincidence that my two favorite purchases of 2007 were on vinyl? Sub-Pop includes a free MP3 download with purchase of the vinyl. Who needs CDs anyway?

3. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights
Sharon Jones has been performing since the seventies, but has flown under my (and just about everyone else's) radar until recently. Damn, we've been missing out. On 100 Days, 100 Nights (and her other Daptone releases) this former corrections officer and her backing band, The Dap-Kings, deliver some of the most soulful and funky performances in recent memory. While the music sounds like it could have been recorded for Stax in 1966, it also sounds entirely fresh for 2007. Music this good is simply timeless.

4. Teddy Thompson - Upfront & Down Low
It should come as a shock to no one that the infant for whom "End of the Rainbow" was written would grow up to have a strong melancholy streak. While one might expect Thompson's voice to be a bit too light and airy to pull off these covers of hard-core honky-tonk classics, he finds a way to cut to the emotional core of the songs without replicating their rough-hewn, distinctively American twang. And Thompson's sole songwriting contribution, "Down Low" is a stunner that lyrically recalls his father's best (and darkest) work. Fans of Nick Drake will be happy to learn the brilliant Robert Kirby contributes some beautiful arrangements. This is an overlooked gem.

5. Glenn Mercer - Wheels In Motion
Glen Mercer has been pretty quiet since the break-up of his underwhelming post-Feelies band Wake Ooloo. This is by far his strongest outing since the Feelies' demise. The album is heavy on the atmospheric quality that characterized the best Feelies albums, but sounds altogether more mellow, relaxed and mature. If you wrote Mercer off after one too many mediocre Wake Ooloo records, you're missing out. This is a strong return to form.

6. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Magic
This is another strong album from Bruce Springsteen, who has been on something of a roll since releasing The Rising. "Living In The Future" sounds like classic Springsteen but speaks directly to 2007.

My only beef with this album is that the sound is too compressed. I like Phil Spector's "wall of sound" as much as the next guy, but the mix here is just too in-your-face and lacking in dynamics and subtlety. Does anyone know if the LP features a less compressed mix (as is sometimes the case)? If so, I'd buy it again, because the songs are really, really strong.

7. Linda Thompson - Versatile Heart
I'm glad we only had to wait five years for Linda's third solo album (rather than seventeen years we had to wait for her second).

8. Peter Case - Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John
If, like me, you lost track of Peter Case's music sometime after The Man with the Blue Post-Modern Fragmented Neo-Traditional Guitar, now is a good time to rediscover him. Case's voice and songwriting are as strong as ever, and the simple folk-blues settings for these songs work very well, better in fact than the slicked up Americana of his major label days.

9. Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
I admit it. I figured this band was nothing more than the latest great white hype when their debut album received all the glowing over-the-top praise in the British press. But this is a very good album, it sounds a bit like Wire circa 1978 if that band knew how to cut loose and party (which, granted, is hard to imagine).

10. The Innocence Mission - We Walked In Song
Thanks to Peter for alerting me to this lovely album that I would have otherwise ignored. He wrote very eloquently about this release on this blog earlier this year.

Honorable mention: Amy Winehouse - Back To Black, Bruce Springsteen - Live In Dublin, David Kilgour - The Far Now, Dean & Britta - Back Numbers, Feist - The Reminder, Kristin Hersh - Learn To Sing Like A Star, Meat Puppets - Rise To Your Knees, The National - Boxer, Nick Lowe - At My Age, Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full, Richard Thompson - Sweet Warrior, Robyn Hitchcock - Sex, Food, Death... and Tarantulas (EP).

There is one more 2007 release I wanted to draw your attention to. It's called Song Poem Hits Of 2007 by The David Dubowski One Man Band. David--an eBay entrepreneur who sets other people's poems or lyrics to music in the grand song-poem tradition--gathered together some of his favorite song-poems that he recorded over the past couple years and released them on CD. Unlike most song-poems of the past, David actually put in a lot of work on these songs, and it shows in the music.

My own song-poem (previously featured on this blog) was among the songs included.

The David Dubowski One Man Band - Ballad of the Boy in the Plastic Bubble [right click to download]