Uncut came along as a more postmodern younger brother to Mojo’s starry-eyed ’60s fetishism, so it makes sense that its album of the year honors go not to Fleet Foxes, which places second, but an album whose sonic coordinates date a little later: Portishead’s Third. Of course, the mag’s already awarded a “best album” prize (decided by a panel of mag folk and biz insiders) to Seattle’s scruff-folk darlings. But since 2002 or so, Uncut has flown the Americana flag even harder than its competing Britmags, so this victory is at least a little surprising, even if the list proper isn’t: The Top 5 is as concentrated an ur-template for lists to come as any.
THE GOOD: Portishead–good choice. And hey, I like the Vampire Weekend and the DBT and the Hold Steady, sometimes a lot.
THE BAD: It’s odd. Like most people I’ve been reading on this topic, I’ve felt 2008 to be pretty lackluster overall–until I go back and consolidate the stuff I’ve enjoyed, which is a pretty large amount. But if I wanted to attach a grand overarching narrative to the year, I’d feel pretty bad if it was the one suggested by this Uncut list. So much of it is stuff I’m basically indifferent to: TVOTR, Nick Cave, Goldfrapp, Weller, Hot Chip, MMJ, even that Malkmus record I never listen to. I’m not mad at these acts, but there’s not a tremendous amount of impulsive pleasure to be had from this list. It’s very boys-and-their-statements. I have a lot of room for that, lord knows, but it’s also harder to hear it as something new, and while I realize that as a nostalgia-driven mag Uncut doesn’t need to be about anything new, I wish their selections had a little more give to them. As it is, they feel in aggregate like polished woodcuts rather than living, breathing things.
THE WHAAAA?: Does Paul Weller (No. 10) have incriminating photos of most of the British rock press? Just wondering. And isn’t it kind of universal that Goldfrapp’s album (No. 17) was a giant disappointment? Oh wait, I forgot, this is the one where she started dressing all freak-folk, isn’t it? Grrrreat.
1. Third - Portishead
2. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
3. Dear Science - TV On The Radio
4. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
5. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
6. The Seldom Seen Kid - Elbow
7. Stainless Style – Neon Neon
8. Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
9. Only By The Night - Kings Of Leon
10 22 Dreams - Paul Weller
11. Brighter Than Creation’s Dark - Drive-by Truckers
12. Stay Positive - The Hold Steady
13. Litany of Echoes - James Blackshaw
14. Harps and Angels - Randy Newman
15. Made In The Dark - Hot Chip
16. Limbo, Panto - Wild Beasts
17. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp
18. Real Emotional Trash - Stephen Malkmus
19. Rook - Shearwater
20. Evil Urges - My Morning Jacket
[via ILM]
“there’s not a tremendous amount of impulsive pleasure to be had from this list”
AGREED!
Impulsive pleasure? The Hold Steady, TVotR, Portishead, DBT, Bon Iver - well, maybe not Bon Iver - are as impulsively pleasurable as it gets. I think the problem is that dividing music into 12-month periods is a mug’s game. Add Fucked Up, Flying Lotus, Benga, Disfear, Taylor Swift, Hercules & L.A., Girl Talk, Ashton Shepherd, Of Montreal, Wetnurse, Raphael Saadiq, Erykah Badu, Dungen, DJ/rupture — &, shit, there’s nothing lackluster about 2008. Or any other year, really, if one listens closely.
I liked Seventh Tree… sorry!
Seventh Tree was the best Kate Bush meets ELO album ever. And I mean that in a good way.
I like the new Weller LP….
But that’s me…an old fart…(well not really old…just thinking like an old fart…and liking music by old farts…now where is that Foghat record again?)
I believe that a lot of music was good in 2008, but as a whole it didn’t really seem satisfying. Nothing really overwhelmed me like it has in past years. I don’t really feel that there’s an album that really says “2008,” and so it seems that 2008 was a year of disappointing music. That might just be my need to define everything clearly, though.
That is one shitty top five. I’ve long since ground out all my axes with those acts but Jesus. We’ve got a legacy album that I can’t even remember if I’ve heard or not, a half-dozen guys who’ve probably ruined the masculine connontations of having a beard for my entire generation, the blackest mediocre white band on earth, and one of the most insufferable cultural forces this decade has seen.
Side note; Should I check out Nick Cave?
@RaptorAvatar: I for one cannot wait to see your Top 5. Seriously.
Weller will be in the top 10 of every UK list until he dies(or every critic in the UK dies), the same way Dylan, Springsteen, or Young always does in the US. 22 Dreams happens to be far from his worst. The shock is that Oasis is not on that top 20. Just wait until Noel Gallagher officially crosses over to elder statesman.
That Hot Chip album is alright. I mean, it’s dominated by a fantastic single (”Ready for the Floor”) and nothing else on the record is as good.
And Paul Weller? He is essentially god to alternative/indie rock fans over there. You are not aloud to talk ill of the Jam or his solo work. The Style Council you can take or leave (as long as you at least admit that “Walls Come Tumbling Down!” is OK).
@RaptorAvatar: I disagree with you so much but your descriptions had me doubled over with laughter. Nice.
I love Nick Cave, but if you feel this way about the others, I’m afraid to hear your impression.
Why be afraid of what some random dude on internet thinks of yr taste? Especially when dude decides an album’s “shitty” without knowing whether he’s heard it. Next.
@Murk: I haven’t heard Disfear, Swift, Wetnurse, or Shepherd, but every one of the other artists/albums you name are in my Top 40-or-so thus far. And yeah, many of those are reasons I don’t feel the year was as lackluster as other people do.
@Matos: Don’t know how you feel about country & metal, but judging from our overlap & your reviews I’ve read, I’d guess they’re not your go-to genres. I’m more likely to be listening to hip-hop or pop or, uh, indie (or whatever) myself. But I try to check out the metal releases that get a lot of attention (which means I’m not tr00; am digesting Decibel’s album of the year, Troche’s Meanderthal, at present), & I think right now country is doing the most exciting things with popular song form. At least give the Swift a spin; it’s fantastic.
Speaking of Flying Lotus, what did you think of SFJ’s NYer piece - esp. his preference for the EPs over Los Angeles?
Troche? Torche. So very not metal, me.
@Murk: I haven’t heard the EPs yet–drowning in stuff, as you’d imagine, but I should pick them up. I do listen a little bit to country (need to do some catching up there) and not very much metal–last year I did some year-end buying, primarily off the Decibel list, and liked plenty from that, but never really followed up. 2008 is the year I decided I didn’t feel bad for not following metal; only so much time, though I’ll try a couple things again if I can. (I played Torche when a copy showed up in the mail; didn’t really care for it.)
Flying Lotus is soooooo in the Top 5 of 2008. Big time.
and this could be fun: KXTX 88.1-FM in Texas just posted their ten most disappointing albums of 2008:
10. Weezer - The Red Album
9. The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
8. Mars Volta - The Bedlam In Goliath
7. Black Kids - Partie Traumatic
6. CSS - Donkey
5. Ghostland Observatory - Robotique Majestique
4. Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
3. Beck - Modern Guilt
2. Cold War Kids - Loyalty to Loyalty
1. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Cardinology
@T’Challa:
What nonsense; the new Raveonettes album is their best yet, miles beyond anything they’d put out prior.
The rest…meh.
@T’Challa:
This is actually a pretty good list.
Uncut was just a greedy knock-off of Mojo. But their list isn’t bad. Sticking to 20 choices really helps, especially this year.
haha man, it’s like 1996 all over again
Third is absolutely the best album of this year, unless something comes along and surprises me with one month to go.
I’m amazed that so many people on the internet assume anyone cares what they think the best albums of the year are.
@RaptorAvatar:
As a matter of principle, you should always check out Nick Cave.
Agree. Please check out early 70s band Fox. I only just discovered them and it’s uncanny how Goldfrappy they were. Especially songs like Imagine Me Imagine You and He’s Got Magic. You’re in for a real surprise.
You need to spend some time in the UK to understand how deeply Weller’s hold on the male imagination is over there. What do British men love more than anything else?: sing alongs in which one doesn’t actually have to know how to sing (see also, Weller worshippers Oasis). But my God, Elbow is possibly the dullest band I’ve ever heard. Which must be why they ring up the critical accolades. They’re even duller than the Hold Steady, though in a very different manner.
As I’ve said before, I’m always stumped that people worry themselves at all about what shows up on these random best-of lists (honestly, if they coincide more than 1 percent with my own best-of list for the year, I’m usually presently surprised), and personally I’ve always been approximately equally bored by Portishead and Goldfrapp (and also had no idea the latter’s album this year was considered a downturn — actually knew somebody at Billboard who said it was good!), but I did write this about a 45 by that band Fox last year (see menyc’s post two posts up), and wanted to share:
“Fox - “He’s Got Magic”/”The Juggler” (GTO, 1975) Eh, this is okay, but just barely. Passable Top 40 pop/soft-rock, with a girl singer plus five guys in the band and false endings. Both songs about how great some guy is — he is apparently a magician and a juggler. Actually, the vaguely reggae rhythmed B-side sounds kind of ominous I guess, thanks to the scat singing by the lady singer (who is actually pretty good). I dunno. I’ll come back to this later to decide whether I should keep it. (The magic song says he has magic and his lips and in his fingertips, and he can turn some kind of other animal into a whale. But why would you want somebody to do that? Heart’s magic man was more interesting.)”
a response from Frank Kogan:
“Fox’s “Only You Can” showed up last May on the League Of Pop over in Poptimists, which means we were listening to it blindfolded. Daddino, who was the judge that week, guessed it was J-pop. It sounded vaguely familiar to me; I wondered if it was by latter-day art bohemians going for ’70s naff, but I cheated and did a lyrics search and found out it was actually ’70s naff shooting for ’70s naff and hitting the bullseye. Also found out that this was a top five hit in the UK, from whence Fox originated, though I suggested that if the singer had actually been raised in the UK she must have been hidden in a basement and denied human contact through age 13, since I was damned if I could work out how her pronunciation originated in social interplay on the British Isles. (A thought: perhaps as a wee’un she’d been left in the forest to die but was adapted by a pack of foxes, hence the group name.) William Bloody Swygart, who’d supplied the track, then informed us that the woman was originally Australian, “and this is by no means the oddest she ever sounded.” Anyway, the reason I first thought “Only You Can” might have been recreated rather than original ’70s naff was that its ’70s naffness was scarily precise, and I figured that actual ’70s naff wouldn’t try to be ’70s naff so precisely (since why would it need to?). I got caught up in my own convoluted reasoning, I guess. Song comes off as a teen girl with speech impediment and a drive towards infantilism doing a countryish tuba two-step accompanied on keyboards by Captain of Captain & Tennille. “You can fly my heart like a bamboo kite/Make it twirl and gyrate just like a tribal delight.” Tribal? “You can see as far as an eagle bird/See right through my head to my every word.” An eagle bird! About perfect of its type. “Sssingle Bed” sounds on first listen a bit funkier (relatively speaking) and more stuttery; concept seems to be that the evening is promising but the bed’s not big enough for the both of them.”