In lieu of an outright winner… the Best of 2008

So, the best of musics in 2008. The most important thing is that I am in a country with fast internets, meaning I can listen to new musics at will. This has meant I have caught up with a lot of old favourites and sampled a whole host of missed ‘classics’ and the newer fare. Even more so I made it to three concerts in the last few months of 2008, and to be fair, they got progressively better. You Say Party, We Say Die! and Beast were good but both Plants and Animals and Stars were simply superior. To be fair, it’s tough to pick either of them as the better concert. They were very different.

I saw Plants and Animals at the same venue as YSPWSD! and as such it was small, intimate and there was lots of beer. For those who don’t know, the band are from Montreal and they released their first album Parc Avenue earlier this year. I think they’re fantastic, and they are superb live. I am pretty sure they will become bigger and bigger.  Pitchfork seems to concur, but despite giving the album an 8.0 managed to leave it out of their typically farcical top 50 records of the year. If the Montrealers are up and coming, Stars are well and truly established in Canada. As such, their concert was held at a church – larger venue, definitely no beer and lots of singing teens (as an all-ages concert, the runts were in numbers whereas P & A was an over-19 event). Nonetheless, they were extremely tight as a live unit and I had a great time. It was the first snowy night of the year too, and given Stars’ stage show was entirely geared towards winter, it seemed very fitting to see fat snowdrops drop down through the church’s bronzed windows. As such…

Tineh’s Concert of the Year 2008: Stars!

From a performance in Montreal in December 2007.

Anyway, I am going to go watch Land of Talk later this month. Another Montreal band, and another concert I’m looking forward to.

Unlike in other years, I’ve listened to more albums than I can list and that is exactly the way it should be. Instead of giving a top 5 of my favourites, I’m going to categorize the achievements. Pretentious? Moi? Surely not.

Here goes…

Best Comeback Album: More than one contender in this category. The hard rockers may go for Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy but I’m yet to be convinced by Axl Rose’s second coming. The Verve also had their first new album in over a decade with Forth. However, I think the winner in this category has to be a band I was never that fond of – Portishead. Third was an excellent album and a complete departure from their trip-hop past. The first single Machine Gun was good but I’m kinda fond of The Rip (taken from here):

Best Pretentious Shite That Pitchfork Will Love Album: This is a positive award (I think). The award goes to Fleet Foxes, of course. I am completely unconvinced that they deserve all the accolades they’re getting. Nonetheless, they do have their moments. Like this (taken from here):

Best Album Where I Can Listen To Music I’m Not Meant To Listen To (and one of the best albums of the year anyway): Seni’s winner, Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals. It’s easy to dismiss Girl Talk as something of a novelty or bastardizer, seeing as he mixes other people’s musics, but who gives a shit, it’s damned good. Where else can you get Styx, Dr. Dre, Carole King, Birdman, Timbaland, Britney Spears, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Daft Punk, Ice Cube and Tom Petty in the same song (from here):

Best Debut Album: Quite a few again, including aforementioned Beast and Fleet Foxes, but I have to give to another aforementioned band, Plants and Animals. Their Parc Avenue was excellent from start (paradoxically Bye, Bye, Bye) to finish. Quite a few favourites, but Faerie Dance must go down as one of the best (from here):

Kudos are to micro mini marcos for indicating that I will like this band after my rather typical “how can a band called Plants and Animals possibly be any good?”. Nice one, slag.

Best “Ok. It’s Not Our Best But We’re Back” Album: I could give this to The Breeders‘ Mountain Battles but to be honest, I was not overly taken by their album. It had its moments but it’s not as consistently good as either of their first two albums. The Cure had a new album but they don’t really belong in this category because there is apparently always a four year gap between albums these days. Metallica dropped a new one too but I must confess I haven’t yet had a listen. The winner is R.E.M. because while Accelerate comes only four years after their last album, it’s their first ‘real’ R.E.M. album since 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. And while I liked elements of Up and Reveal, their new musical direction was really going nowhere, epitomised by the pile of poo that was Around the Sun. Accelerate is not a masterpiece but it’s a very welcome step in the right direction. My favourite song is Man-Sized Wreath (taken from here):

And by the way, the remastered Murmur double CD is awesome, especially the live album recorded in Toronto in 1984. At a joint named Larry’s Hideaway. Now no more, it seemed quaint: “If it was still standing, they would need to drop a large napalm bomb on it to vaporize all disease.”

Best Continued Resurgence: Black Francis, last year’s winner with Bluefinger, released Svn Fngrs, a mini-album that continues his resurgence. Again, not to say his later Frank Black stuff was not good – it was – but I just love it when he growls like he did in the good old days. I particularly like When They Come to Murder Me and he played it out on the street in Glasgow (from here):

“All you boys got nothing on me. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” Haha. Genius. He also plays Where is My Mind?. Superb!

Favourite Song of the Year: Ooh, I’m sounding like that wanker Grammy nao. Anywho, quite a few possibilities here and I’m not going to mention them all – some are already displayed in video form already. I think I have to go with Dig Lazarus Dig by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (from here):

So yeah, no ‘best album’ award. After all, that’s what all these other ‘awards’ are for. I simply don’t have a ‘best album’ of the year.