LPTJ Best of 2008 Thread

[davy]

Which year is/was it?

And is there a rule about a 2008 release date?

I'm confused.

What everybody else said. As for myself, I'm going by the date printed in the liner notes. (I didn't hear it until probably Feb. or March this year.)

Still can't decide if I'm going to include the Pogues rarities box set...it was all unreleased, but it doesn't feel right somehow.

[hannah]

What I've listened to from 2008 in ABC order, to be refined later:

Death Vessel, Nothing is Precious Enough for Us
Destroyer, Trouble in Dreams
Robert Forster, The Evangelist
Fucked Up, The Chemistry of Common Life
Magik Markers,  Gucci Rapidshare Download
Magnetic Fields, Distortion
Sloan, Parallel Play
Stephen Malkmus, Real Emotional Trash
The Sea and Cake, Car Alarm
Times New Viking, Rip It Off

[davy]

Uncertainty reigns, but I can't resist posting a rough draft to get my bearings. In no real order:


Beck - Modern Guilt
Mason Jennings - In the Ever
The OaKs - Songs for Waiting
Drive-By Truckers - Brighter than, etc
Old Crow Medicine Show - Tenn Pusher
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
Liam Finn - I'll be Lightning
The Pogues - Just Look Them Straight in the Eye and Say...Poguemahone!
Nick Cave - Dig Lazurus Dig
Avett Brothers - Gleam 2
Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
Old 97's - Blame It on Gravity
The Walkmen - You & Me
Black Crowes - Warpaint
Weezer - The Red Album
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Lie Down in the Light
Stephen Malkmus - Real Emotional Trash
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Plants and Animals - Parc Avenue
Blitzen Trapper - Furr

The top 3 slots are pretty rock solid at this point.

I'm definintely holding out for Amadou & Mariam.

Still say it's a pretty shitty year. I can't remember the last time I had a hard time filling a top 10 with albums I absolutely loved.

[edison]

Magik Markers,  Gucci Rapidshare Download

This reminds me that I still don't know the name of the Magic Markers CD-R that we bought off the Six Organs of Admittance merch table months ago. I should investigate again (It's completely undecipherable on the record itself)

[YojimboMonkey]

just a note that I updated my previous post with some sample links

http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/forums/index.php/topic,11295.msg544958.html#msg544958

[ellaguru]

Thanks, Jim.

The second link is broken - there's an "l" after the ".mp3" that needs to be removed.

[YojimboMonkey]

Thanks for the heads up!

[alistarr*]

7. Akimbo - Jersey Shores
Big glacially-paced epic hardcore, reminiscent of Oceanic-era Isis
Akimbo - Great White Bull
Akimbo - Matawan

is this the same akimbo who put out elephantine in 2006? because that was an awesome record. i thought their new one had a different title though...

anyway, i guess i'll be listening later and finding out.

[coldforge]

Can somebody make a list of all the metal albums that came out this year? I find it hard to remember.

[narlus]

try that decibel top 40 list if you haven't seen it.

[dieblucasdie]

just a note that I updated my previous post with some sample links

http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/forums/index.php/topic,11295.msg544958.html#msg544958

Thanks Jim!

I went back and did the same thing in my OP, 'cause I'm OCD like that.  A lot of mine are well-known enough that that's kinda pointless, but whatevs, it was a transparent bid to get more votes for the RAA.

[Nick Ink]

Either it's been a bad year or I haven't been paying as much attention. Perhaps a bit of both. Usually, I have trouble whittling my list down to 50, but this year, I have 20-25 albums maximum.

I have a bit of a problem though, in the shape of Machinefabriek. He's had about 8 album-length releases this year and they're all excellent. Obviously it would be a bit stupid to have them all in the top 10, so, I don't know. I think I'm just going to pick one and have it there as a kind of representation of the whole. An ambient synecdoche of my soul. Let's face it, he's not going to trouble the scorers, to borrow a cricketing phrase, as far as blucas' stats are concerned!

On which point, I am very sorry to say that not a single one of my top 25 has been mentioned in this thread yet. 

[davy]

I'm relistening to the Beck album right now and I'm digging it. It's not what it could be, but it's better than I remembered.

[narlus]

so are reissues and live records included?  i got a 20 release list, but that doesn't include any of those types of records.

[dieblucasdie]

I mean, you can if want, but things like that probably don't have a chance at making the final list, so I'd use my votes for 2008 releases.

[Doctor Bob]

On which point, I am very sorry to say that not a single one of my top 25 has been mentioned in this thread yet. 

Ha- me too.  We are the long tail!

[narlus]

I mean, you can if want, but things like that probably don't have a chance at making the final list, so I'd use my votes for 2008 releases.

i don't think that's going to be an issue.   

[davy]

so are reissues and live records included?  i got a 20 release list, but that doesn't include any of those types of records.

I think reissues would be better served in a separate list. My general opinion is that if it's never bene released domestically before this year, then it counts. Using that logic, The Pogues box set would count, since it was practically all unreleased rarities, but something like the Pavement reissue would not.

Otherwise, I'd feel pretty confident about putting Brighten the Corners at #1 right now, before I've even heard it. But I mean, that album has nothing to do with 2008. It is 1997 all the way through.

[YojimboMonkey]

On which point, I am very sorry to say that not a single one of my top 25 has been mentioned in this thread yet. 

Ha- me too.  We are the long tail!

Why don't you guys post your lists, then maybe other people will check out your picks and you'll see some more discussion of them!

[Nick Ink]

On which point, I am very sorry to say that not a single one of my top 25 has been mentioned in this thread yet. 

Ha- me too.  We are the long tail!

Why don't you guys post your lists, then maybe other people will check out your picks and you'll see some more discussion of them!

Okay then!

Mine is something like this :

1. Jacaszek - Treny
2. Machinefabriek - Ranonkel 
3. Half Man Half Biscuit - CSI:Ambleside
4. Rameses III - Basilica
5. Windy And Carl - Songs For The Broken Hearted
6. Autechre - Quaristice
7. Excepter - Debt Dept.
8. Goldmund - The Malady Of Elegance
9. Aleph-1 - Aleph-1
10. Christopher Willits & Ryuichi Sakamoto - Ocean Fire
11. Grouper - Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
12. Wouter van Veldhoven - Four Simple Songs For Five Dead Bumblebees
13. Library Tapes - A Summer Beneath The Trees
14. Growing - All The Way
15. Lawrence English - Kiri No Oto
16. Cloudland Canyon - Lie In Light
17. Christina Carter - Original Darkness
18. Jasper TX - Black Sleep
19. Benoit Pioulard - Temper
20. Lau Nau - Nukkuu
21. Claro Intelecto - Metanarrative
22. 2562 - Aerial
23. Richard Skelton - Marking Time
24. Max Richter - 24 Postcards
25. Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing

[narlus]

ok....

1 - mogwai - the hawk is howling
2 - james blackshaw - litany of echoes
3 - grails - doomsdayer's holiday/take refuge in clean living
4 - bar kokhba sextet - lucifer book of angels vol 10
5 - religious knives - resin
6 - drive-by truckers - brighter than creation's dark
7 - endless boogie - focus level
8 - ulaan khol - I
9 - baby charles - baby charles
10 - barn owl - raft of serpents
11 - melvins - nude with boots
12 - giant sand - proVISIONS
13 - natural snow buildings - the snowbringer cult
14 - howlin' rain - magnificent fiend
15 - crystal antlers - EP
16 - minisnap - bounce around
17 - destroyer - trouble in dreams
18 - earth - bees made honey
19 - mudhoney - the lucky ones
20 - cat power - jukebox

[slow west vultures]

Uncertainty reigns, but I can't resist posting a rough draft to get my bearings...

Neon Neon - Stainless Style

i'm definitely gonna rep for this too.  awesome album

[ellaguru]

EDIT #2: Superseded again by my final draft here.

EDIT: Superseded by my second draft, here.

OK, I think I'll post 10 now, with YSIs, and post the rest/finalize later:

1.Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet - Abigal Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet
(Two banjos, a fiddle, a cello and a beautiful voice. Some sort of post-bluegrass, sung in English and Chinese)
The Captain
Sugar & Pie

2.Camille – Music Hole
(Pop singer from France, although this album is in English. Mostly a cappella with a little piano, basically everything is her overdubbing herself singing & beatboxing. The main benefit of English lyrics (for the non-French audience) is that it is much clearer how funny she is.)
Sanges Sweet
The Money Note

3.Entire Cities – Deep River
(Local unsigned Toronto band #1. I picked the second YSI because it revels in the previously unguessed joy of yelling “I am my brother's SNAKESKIN MOTHERFUCKER!” I don't know what it means, but they sure have fun shouting it.)
The Cop Song
Dancing With My Brother

4.Gaslight Anthem – The '59 Sound
(Springsteen shouldn't sound so fresh in 2008.)
High Lonesom

5.The Dodos – Visiter
(1 guitar 1 drumkit, in the Animal Collective-Akron/Family vein.)
Undeclared

6.Veda Hille – This Riot Life
(Fantastic songwriter from Vancouver. I picked this song to post because the Zoilus guy wrote a really long blog entry about why it should win some prize for Canadian songwriting. I don't think it won, though.)
Lucklucky

7.Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One (fourth world war)
Me

8.Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
(Like blucas, I sort of feel like this should go in the 2007 list and not here, because it's the same as the self-release. But here it is, for now, anyways.)
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

9.Plants and Animals – Parc Avenue
Faerie Dance

10.The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns
Local unsigned Toronto band #2. Toronto's got some good bands right now.
Sleep All Day

[ellaguru]

Also, thanks Jim and blucas for the songs. I listened to the dieblucasdie stuff and am on the Yojimbo stuff now. Some pretty great stuff.

[YojimboMonkey]

most of the way into this RAA album and yeah, I think it'll displace something from my top 10.  Not a 100% slam dunk for me but soooooo many great moments.