10) French Miami - s/t
The musical climate of the past few years has been absolutely littered with dance-oriented rock/electronic bands, most of which are mediocre at best. French Miami's debut album could be best described as dance rock, but they manage to separate themselves from their dance rock contemporaries by injecting some interesting qualities into their music - the constant time changes of "God Damn Best" and the technical, Minus the Bear-esque guitar work of "Science Fiction" are good examples of this. However, this is still a very listener-friendly album with shouting vocals and fun songs that will get stuck in your head for days ("Lil' Rabbits," "All on Fire"), and this combination of complexity and exuberance results in one of 2008's most pleasant surprises.
Listen: French Miami
9) Lykke Li - Youth Novels
Swedish songstress Lykke Li begins her debut album with the entrancing "Melodies & Desires," where she sings, "Love is the harmony/Desire is the key/Love is a symphony/Now play it with me." This statement sets the tone for the rest of the album, where Li explores the feelings and complications of love, from noting, "I'm a little bit in love with you/If only you're a little bit in love with me," to later teasing, "I'll let you think that I'm yours when I'm not." Maybe she's just being cruel, but more likely she's just trying to wrap her head around love, and who hasn't ever been confused by that feeling? Besides, who could hate that cooing voice (especially enticing in "This Trumpet in My Head") and those melodies, ranging from cute ("Let it Fall") to driving and aggressive ("Breaking it Up")? From lyrical content to musical arrangements, Youth Novels delivers and is yet another impressive new artist debut.
Listen: Lykke Li
8) Monroe Mustang - Monroe Mustang, the Imaginary Band, Regretfully Declines
If this were a 'Top Ten Relaxing Albums of 2008" list, this album would be king. Several years in the making, slowcore (e.g. Low, early Death Cab, The New Year) artist Monroe Mustang has released the perfect Sunday morning album, calm, lazy and contemplative. That's not to say the album can't be enjoyed during other times: Little moments like the piano outro/intro of "Found Out"/"R.O.W." and the sudden dynamic shift of "Consequence" keep the listener intrigued and provide more incentive to continue listening. As a result, the album is rewarding as well as relaxing.
Listen: Monroe Mustang
7) Tobacco - Fucked Up Friends
2008 was a banner year for the anticon. collective, with Tobacco's (member of Black Moth Super Rainbow) solo debut among one of their best releases. One of 2008's most ridiculous albums, Tobacco creates music that can best be described as the aural equivalent of getting drunk; it's a woozy and somewhat sloppy instrumental hybrid of electronica and hip-hop. As a result, listening to it might elicit drunken dancing behavior despite your sober state during the day, and any album that causes one to lose their inhibitions about dancing so quickly no matter their level of intoxication can't be bad. With the seriousness most artists display toward their work these days, it's refreshing to see an artist just having fun with their music and whose main goal is making people dance and grin uncontrollably.
Listen: Tobacco
6) Miniature Tigers -Tell it to the Volcano
The debut album from Miniature Tigers proudly displays the band's affinity for traditional pop/rock. Singing about the highs and lows of relationships with a sense of humor, the band mixes poppy melodies reminiscent of bands past (The Beach Boys) and present (Fourth of July, The Flaming Lips) with relatable lyrical content about college and twenty-something life ("I don't want to move too fast/I don't want to scare you off/I don't want to move too slow/Someone's gonna snatch you up", "Tell me how you feel about me/Do you like or like like me", and "Washing off last night's fake blood/From an even faker cut" are prime examples). Despite the obvious poppy influences and familiar lyrical content, the melodies remain original and the lyrics (especially in relation to their song title metaphors) are clever enough to warrant multiple listens.
Listen: Miniature Tigers
5) Jessica Lea Mayfield - With Blasphemy So Heartfelt
19 year old Jessica Lea Mayfield first gained national exposure when she provided vocals on the Black Keys' newest album, and her debut has that band's bluesy feel. Though the album lacks some of the Keys' finer musical moments (excepting the guitar in "I Can't Lie to You, Love") it more than makes up for it with Mayfield's incredible, haunting voice. Her singing lends every song, most of which deal with feelings of love, a certain mystical quality that 99% of female singers could only hope to duplicate. When you hear her sing, "Is this it baby, are you out of my life?" on "Is This Love?," you feel as though she's either singing directly to you or on behalf of one of your personal lost loves. Also, the endearing lyrical content, such as "If you want, you can call/I will stay awake for you" and referring to a man's shallow love interests as "girlies" would only turn up on an album from someone so young, another way of separating Mayfield from her contemporaries. A truly unique album from a truly unique singer.
Listen: Jessica Lea Mayfield
4) Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngster
Welsh septet Los Campesinos! released two albums in 2008, both of which were gloriously loud and unrestrained. However, it's their debut full-length, Hold On Now, Youngster, that proves to be superior. Full of poppy singalongs such as opener "Death to Los Campesinos!," one can't help but shake their feet to the rhythm of these twelve songs. It's these melodies along with the band's clever, relatable lyrics (especially to those privy to the current technological age, which most likely includes you if you're reading this) and unabashed enthusiasm so seemingly rare in music these days that keep listeners coming back for more.
Listen: Los Campesinos!
3) We Versus the Shark -Dirty Versions
Simply put, this album (We Versus the Shark's second) slays. From the opening sonic onslaught of "Hello Blood," where both guitars seem to be racing to an unknown finish line, to the ever-changing structure of "Practical Animals," each song possesses razor-sharp guitar parts and a punishing rhythm section. However, there's more charm to the album than the raw, powerful musicianship. The varying lyrical content (from war and the economy in "I am the President of the World" to a friend's foray into the wild world of werewolves in "Keep it Wolf") keeps things interesting on multiple fronts, and like the album title (make no mistake, these songs are gloriously dirty), some song titles manage to accurately depict its contents. For example, "Mountaineering" slowly builds to a very epic climax, making the listener feel as though they are participating in the titular hobby. This is the rock album of 2008.
Listen: We Versus the Shark
2) Why? - Alopecia
Despite the plentiful amazing releases of anticon. in 2008, none were as compelling as Why?'s third full-length, Alopecia. The album is lyrically puzzling, including the absurd refrain of opener "The Vowels pt. 2" ("Cheeri-a, cheeri-e, cheeri-i, cherri-o, cherri-u"? What?) and really all the lyrics in general (it's impossible not to laugh or balk at some of the lines in "Good Friday"). The album is musically puzzling as well, a goofy mix of hip-hop and indie rock with Yoni Wolf's slightly nasally vocals at the foreground. However, the strange lyrics and music work together exceptionally well, especially in "By Torpedo or Crohn's," where Yoni laments puking behind Whole Foods, and "Fatalist Palmistry," the closest thing the album has to an instantly accessible song (and also lyrically the album's best, with clever lines like "I know a psychic who reads her own palms and her findings are personal"). The most interesting thing about the album, however, is its many moods and feelings; from the utter depression of "Song of the Sad Assassin" and the frustration of "The Fall of Mr. Fifths" to the hopeful unrequited love of "Simeon's Dilemma," the album's fourteen songs all have a different, unique feel. This will be an album put on repeat for years to come.
Listen: Why?
1) Pattern Is Movement - All Together
Chalk this one up to consistency. All ten songs are not only good, but standouts; "Right Away" was chosen as the first single, but any other song would have served just as well. Each track consists of several repeated movements (staying true to the band's moniker), with the impressive musical talents of the band's two members creating a full, lush, orchestrated sound. Simple lyrical declarations such as, "How I just love the sound of your voice," accompany these complex arrangements; musically precise like Pinback but with a bizarre mixture of almost opera-style singing and pop that mostly sounds like it was created in a dark dungeon, the album isn't instantly welcoming. However, after a couple listens, an appreciation for these unique musical stylings, from the wistful, longing atmostphere of "Peach Trees" to the bounding, enthused feel of "Jenny Ono," develops. In addition to this, unlike the other albums of 2008 (which are all to some degree hit-or-miss), this album is consistently great and inventive, features often prominent when discussing great albums, All Together being part of that class.
Listen: Pattern Is Movement
Honorable mention:
Talkdemonic - Eyes at Half Mast
The Walkmen - You and Me
Alias - Resurgam
Pegasuses-XL - The Antiphon
Appomattox - AO
We Versus the Shark - Murmurmur (the pure rock of Dirty Versions in the form of cover songs. Download it for free from Quote Unquote Records.)
Some anticipated albums of 2009:
So Many Dynamos - The Loud Wars (recorded with Chris Walla way back in July 2007 and finally getting released on April 7th by Vagrant Records. This will be one of the year's best albums; look for them to get the same sort of exposure the Hold Steady got upon releasing their first album on Vagrant)
Bomb the Music Industry! - Scrambles (finished recording, no info on a release date but it probably won't be too long now. Looking forward to see how the full band setup introduced on Get Warmer is developed)
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (comes out next month. Always curious about whatever Animal Collective comes up with)
Charles Spearin - The Happiness Project (comes out in February. Do Make Say Think/Broken Social Scene member creates an album in hopes to answer the question: What is happiness? Listen to a song and learn more here)
