Not of, mind you. IN. Because I didn't exactly listen to every new album this year. Or even all of the ones I was "supposed" to listen to. So it's a mix: new albums from this year that I liked, but also albums that are actually old but are new to me. No particular order on any of these, except Portishead and the Walkmen are probabaly 1 and 2. Album name links to review, song name to YouTube sample.
Superlatives:
Portishead, Third ("The Rip")
Walkmen, You & Me ("In The New Year")
Q-Tip, The Renaissance ("Move" / "Renaissance Rap", this is one track on the album but I think they work better as separate songs)
Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours ("Feel The Love")
Times New Viking, Rip It Off ("The End of All Things")
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig! (listen to MP3 in review)
Spiritualized, Songs in A&E ("You Lie You Cheat")
Black Mountain, In the Future ("Angels", "Tyrants")
Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (scroll down for Christgau's take)
Wale, The Mixtape About Nothing (listen to MP3)
Darn good:
Silver Jews, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea ("Aloyisius, Bluegrass Drummer")
R.E.M., Accelerate ("Man Sized Wreath")
Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster ("Death to Los Campesinos!", but their Pavement cover is the best thing they've ever recorded, unfortunately it's only on the EP)
Tokyo Police Club, Elephant Shell ("Tessellate")
Dungen, 4
Black Milk, Tronic ("Give the Drummer Sum")
Flight of the Conchords, Flight of the Conchords ("Ladies of the World"...the only reason why this album isn't great is because they fucked up some of the songs from their stand up and overproduced them...except this one...seriously, I want a whole album of nothing but songs like this and I'd enjoy it...even if they weren't being ironic, I think I'd love it...that fadeout thing at the end is brilliant, I could chill out for hours to stuff like this)
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Real Emotional Trash
Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark ("The Man I Shot")
Black Keys, Attack and Release ("Psychotic Girl")
Older albums I got into/ back into (only a smattering, these are the notable ones):
Chavez, Better Days Will Haunt You
A Tribe Called Quest, Midnight Maradurs
Uncle Tupelo, Anodyne, Still Feel Gone, No Depression
Wilco, Summerteeth, Being There
Son Volt, Trace
At The Drive-In, The Relationship of Command
Drive-By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera
Nas, Illmatic
Galaxie 500, The Peel Sessions
Superchunk, Here's Where the Strings Come In
Guided By Voices, Do the Collapse
I didn't listen to:
Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer
The Dirtbombs, We Have You Surrounded
The Kills, Midnight Boom
Presidents of the USA, These are the Good Times, People
Local H, Twelve Angry Months
Tapes 'n Tapes, Walk It Off
Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (and not sure I want to in this case)
Anything else I forgot about. Which means that I didn't care enough to listen to it or didn't remember enough about it to remember it came out this year. Or I'm just retarded and forgot something good. Damnit.
Friday, January 09, 2009
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9 comments:
What's your problem with Fleet Foxes?
Tapes 'n Tapes is good and grew on me. Dirtbombs and Presidents were completely passable.
Still torn on Times New Viking.
The post-college music landscape is barren, friend, barren. I'm trying, but I seem to be discovering old things and singles and I'm getting by with mp3 reviews.
Their hype just bugs me, really. And I don't love the three songs I've heard of them enough to actually care about sitting down with an album.
I've increasingly found that most of the "new" music I've been getting into and really liking are things from bands I've already followed or have already been around and I just never happened to get into. Or they're rap artists - for some reason I've had a hunger for some good new hip-hop.
Other than that, though, it's all old. Cut Copy and Vampire Weekend are exceptions to that rule.
I didn't listen to At Mount Zoomer all the way through until 2009. For a long time I was skittish about the Fleet Foxes too, but it finally broke down this week. I recommend.
I find myself very happy anytime FFoxes come on the radio. Same too with the Walkmen (of which the new album I've only heard song-by-song on YouTube). But the Walkmen had only a brief stint on WNRN out here.
As for Wolf Parade, the album is super good, with three songs as good as any by that lineup or S-Rub.
I've been listening to more hip hop lately as well. Specifically more Jurassic 5 and then lots of Del the Funkee Homosapien (featured in some Gorillaz).
When will we get beyond the hype? I mean, just look at Animal Collective, for example, featured today in the Washington Post: "Sampled beats sound like galoshes stomping through puddles, and percussive sizzles evoke maracas filled with syrup-coated seeds. It's a dense, humid listen. At times, you can almost imagine beads of dew seeping from the pinholes of your ear buds."
I want to hear the Animal Collective, actually. For some reason the hype doesn't bother me with them. Maybe because they're established already.
I just feel like I'm getting old or something, and it's taken away my ability to discover new bands.
(Listen: "These fucking whippersnapper Foxes...think they can front on that...back when I was a college freshman we listened to The Hives...AND WE LIKED IT!")
Although, as I think about it, location (army community instead of college town) might have something to do with my indifference to it.
I agree with Tony, Econ, et al. on Fleet Foxes. It's a good fuckin album. Maybe not the best this year, but still, good music. Just because chicks dig it too, Jack, it's okay—you can like it. It's like Fleetwood Mac.
Man Man's new album is better than their last, and is definitely in my top five. But I haven't listened to a lot of the albums that came out this year. I do like the new Wolf Parade album, but I've probably only spun it three times.
Saw Fleet Foxes on SNL this weekend (thanks Chase) and liked them again.
They didn't bother me as much on SNL. Maybe I'll finally break down and listen to the album. I still don't think it's something I'll absolutely love though.
Let me guess - conservative Republican in the midwest. How far off am I?
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