Top 10 Albums of 2008

How important are bands like The Replacements and the Clash? 2008’s album highlights will certainly reinforce their place in music’s history as two bands that continue to live on despite the lack recognition they received during their actual careers. American rock seems to have saved itself from falling victim to the late 90s/early 2000s mediocrity of MTV heavyweights like Incubus and Nickelback, and bands such as the Constantines and The Hold Steady have deservedly stepped into the limelight. Even radio friendly pop music is staking a claim for its own redemption with the likes of MGMT and Santogold rising from the ashes of the last ten years of awful hip hop inspired pop music. The rise of hipsterism showed the indie genre up for what we’ve always expected: a passing fad more about the fashion than the passion, but two bands took a stand and produced two of the most inspired albums of the year, namely Kings of Leon and Foals. In fact, the year was marked by something that has been missing from the decade so far: the maturity to be able to learn from the past, from the forerunners of rock ‘n roll. Perhaps it’s the heightened gloom promised by times ahead, the environment, the economy, war, or maybe the fading afterglow of the new millennium, that has allowed artists to look past the anxious paranoia of the nineties and eighties – past grunge and pop punk and hair metal – and rediscover a history of pop music that is inspiring and still relevant today.

10: Foals – Antidotes

Challengers to Bloc Party's indie throne provided everything except a hit single to guarantee themselves the crown. With a lyrical content similar to that of Kele Okereke set against a backdrop of painstakingly precise guitar work, dance beats and even horn sections, this debut album from Oxford's Foals is the sound of a band caught in the emotional vacuum that many introspective hipsters wish they could find themselves in to provide the angst required to justify their pathetic existence shrugging themselves into oblivion on a dancefloor near you.

9: Flight of the Conchords – Self Titled

‘Hanging out at the 7 Eleven/From a quarter past six to a quarter to seven/The manager Lenny starts to abuse me/Hey man, I just want some muesli.’ Pure genius? I think so.

8: MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

2008 saw this Brooklyn duo single-handedly put an end to the camp smugness of the likes of Mika and the Scissor Sisters, offering instead a neo-hippy, psychedelic adventure into the future possibilities of pop music, all with their tongues firmly in their cheeks and their influences (retro 80s electro, David Bowie) firmly on their sleeves.

7: The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

L.A. Times said it best: ‘Thick, humid, arena rock, a high pressure system of cresting guitars and pianos that injects these dramas with tension and embraces all their contradictions and ambiguities.’

6: Kings of Leon – Only By The Night

Jumping off the indie-train they expertly string simple pop songs out along astral, stadium-sized – and sometimes sparse – classic rock architecture and the result is both heartfelt and brilliant.

5: Underoath – Lost In The Sound Of Separation

Thirty seconds into the second track (entitled ‘Anyone Can Dig A Hole But It Takes a Man to Call It Home’) the chaos eases up and vocalist Spencer Chamberlain yells above a lone background riff, ‘Oh how the plot thickens!’ Goosebumps ensue and the album descends into a journey through a mind at war with itself. Post-hardcore at its best, they flawlessly capture the raw energy and emotion of their famous live shows.

4: Santogold – Self Titled

The songwriter for pop starlets worldwide has a hand at it herself and the results are near perfect. Combining elements of dub, hip hop, new wave and electro with the greatest of ease, Santogold is redefining pop music but don’t expect pretenders (to be able) to follow suit.

3: Contantines – Kensington Heights

Although much subtler and moodier than the Canadian band’s previous efforts it is clear that they still drink from that same fountain of traditional rock energy. Deliberately walking the line between slowed down introspection and rousing anthemic choruses, Kensington Heights is an album full of hope and overcoming, something we all at least want to relate to, surely?

2: Chris Wollard and the Ship Thieves – Self Titled

Even paced country songs that could well owe as much of their inspiration to Sonic Youth as they do to Johnny Cash, Chris Wollard’s rough-as-silk vocals glide along an endless stream of hook-laden melodies and guitar solos like a steam train through the punk rock town of Gainesville, Florida. I love this album and I can’t even imagine how someone can come up with music this inspired and this easy to listen to.

1: The Gaslight Anthem – The ’59 Sound

Music never lost its romance, but it might need this New Jersey quartet to remind us. Brian Fallon’s nostalgic forays into life, love and everything in between have struck a chord around the world and reinvented the wheel of classic American rock ‘n roll. Despite the huge doses of blues and soul and the complete lack of guitar distortion, The ’59 Sound is nevertheless somehow still a punk album, more by way of its tempo and blue collar sentiment than any trace of three-chord anti-authority sloganeering. Its maturity has rescued punk from the malls, and rock ‘n roll from all that terrible teenage alternative rock, and Brian Fallon could very well be the next Bruce Springsteen.

Hey Hipster!

I found this in the the latest Adbusters in an article by Douglas Haddow entitled Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization:

The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html (especially if you live in Cape Town).

The Gaslight Anthem

When an album covers subject matter like resigning to a life of working class heroism as a failed musician, or of love found and lost, clichés are not hard to come by. But when that album is called Sink or Swim, and when you can hear that in each note the future of a real life behind an instrument hangs in the balance, the clichés aren’t clichéd anymore – they’re art. Where other bands are content to bridge the gap between themselves and what they write about with manufactured angst, The Gaslight Anthem let their sincerity and honesty do the trick. Whether it’s Brian Fallon’s vocals that walk the line between Bruce Springsteen and Tim McIlrath (of Rise Against) in their rough-edged vulnerability, or the actual music steeped in classic American rock (with lyrical references to Tom Petty, Miles Davis, The Boss and even Counting Crows), it’s good to have four guys from Jersey remind you that life is both far more complicated and far more thrilling than anything less than music this good can explain. Their new album The ’59 Sound is out in two weeks.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ng9mnt1j2jz