re: the end of the 20080s, or ‘hipocalypse soon’
after reading and ranting about recent ‘best albums of 2008’ lists (notably pitchfork’s), i have decided to release my own, personal ‘BEST OF THE 20080s’ list.
a few notes-
1. i’m releasing them 8 at a time. such a thematic opportunity pops up only once a decade. oh and 24 total. i am but one man.
2. i’m starting at the top- the best ones. this way, you’ll get an idea right away of what i really think. further, this allows the later lists, which ordinarily just get glossed over until the top ten, to be something to look forward to. perhaps i will include your favorite band! unless its the fleet foxes. they will not be appearing.
3. my choices are subjective blah blah.
so here we go. this is what i think so far.
THE 8 MOST HUMAN ALT ALBUMS OF 2008
1. Deerhunter – Microcastle
Microcastle reminds me, in the midst of so much dancing, of everything I like about indie rock. Scratch that- not just indie rock but music in general. This album draws upon and, in many ways, surpasses new-classic influences like Pavement, Broken Social Scene, Yo La Tengo, and Sonic Youth in the creation of a musical landscape that, while familiar and comforting in its general distortion, lies somewhere far beyond the tropes of the alternative genre. Bradford Cox’s withdrawn delivery of Microcastle’s authentically lyrical vocals are more than a refreshing break from repetitive dance beats- they are a testament to the value of making music that exceeds its value in BPM. Microcastle stinks of the kind of reflective and vulnerable artistic production that I have thought is at risk in the era of digitized reproduction. Microcastle is unavoidably human, and expresses its message simply and honeslty. Painful and beautiful, this album achieves the kind of sought-after, euphoric musical catharsis made hollow and distant by a decade of hipsterism and irony.
2. Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours is a nearly perfect relic of the 20080s. Infectious and well mixed, the album’s synthesizer-driven rhythms situate Cut Copy’s artful plays at indie-pop vocal formulas in something like a dancehall museum. The facile reproduction of familiar sounds unites such dabbling, allowing an eclectic mix of influences to be woven into a seemingly timeless piece. The first listen already bears this sense of return, and yet throughout the year, this album has continued to comment on the 20080s, relegating many albums to be found further down this list to their positions as inferior versions of In Ghost Colours. This album is the one I’m still surprised people haven’t heard and, more importantly, the one I feel most privileged to introduce someone to.
3. Metronomy – Nights Out
Metronomy has apparently not been well received in the United States. Unlike the Klaxons, Late of the Pier, or the Friendly Fires, this British trio made no U.S. stops on their recent tour and their album, Nights Out is notoriously absent in American charts and end-of-the-year album lists like this one. Some of this anonymity could be attributed to the band’s mysterious sound that, in spite of its incredible oddity, feels natural and organic, harmonious and balanced. Complete with instrumental intro and outro, Nights Out is a true showcase piece, exhibiting musical styles and influences that outwit or, perhaps, are simply lost on listeners looking for yet another volume of electro’s greatest bangers. Though not at all unfamiliar with the beatgrid, Metronomy’s sound is, if not more artful, at least notably different from the latest wave of highly-bloggable music seeking to sample and conquer. Theirs is a niche sound, and Nights Out maintains this essential difference from the groups Metronomy sounds like. More than mere falsetto, what elevates Metronomy’s electro-pop above the rest is its uniqueness- an unyielding complexity and unfamiliarity that remains after the remixes and promises a creative future that is more difficult to imagine for artists whose primary focus is to rock the club, not the headphones.
4. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles makes bangers. Almost nobody does it better. This album begs to be played louder, with more bass, and under the influence of more drugs. Though such intensity can, and has, burned itself out over the course of a whole year, what remains undeniable about this self-titled release is its capacity to make you say ‘fuck it’ and dance. Adding sex to some of the hardest, glitchiest, and most grinding beats around is a formula that Alice Glass and ‘the dude from Crystal Castles’ have perfected, and their music stinks of the sweat, Sparks, and spilled seed characteristic of the club nights of the 20080s. Almost every track on this album has been played in almost every club you’d ever want to go to. Crystal Castles have arrived at a style that, while wholly determined by 2008’s artistic-cultural demands, will nonetheless continue to influence the ever growing number of personal computer users inclined to make music. In short, Crystal Castles got too big, and will likely never escape the hype that surrounded their meteoric rise in popularity in 2008. However, what will remain is a proven formula: make unfamiliar and banging.
5. Girl Talk- Feed the Animals
Faster and stronger seemed the only route for Girl Talk. Highly anticipated such that it could be hated on, Greg Gillis’ sophomore album, Feed the Animals, was actually pretty excellent. Proving that you don’t always have to ‘evolve’, Gillis’s sequel to Night Ripper sounds like more of the same but doesn’t disappoint. Slightly less schizophrenically mixed, Feed the Animals builds slowly and peaks less often than Night Ripper, and in some ways does suffer from a need to recreate the former album’s dizzying pace and euphoric drops, becoming at times predictable and unimpressive – two things the mash-up album can ill-afford to be. In spite of this essential and, unavoidable, weakness, however, Gillis has created at least another chapter in the mash-up narrative of popular music. Incorporating older, more universal samples enables Gillis to reproduce a kind of nostalgia and reverence that sets up some of Feed the Animals’ most clever drops like ‘I wish that I had Jesse’s girl/ but I’d rather get some head.’ What surprises me most about this album is that in spite of the fact that I never really liked it all that much, I couldn’t stop listening to it. UGK’s ‘play your part’ continues the monologue left off at the end of the album and initiated at its start, invoking the mandate that Gillis has followed- to play his part, to feed the animals that crave it harder, better…
6. King Khan & The Shrines – The Supreme Genius of King Khan & The Shrines
The Supreme Genius of King Khan & The Shrines sounds all the right kinds of old and dusty. The album’s painstakingly unfinished feel reveals some of the deeper, more reflective thought that structures King Khan’s messianic aesthetic: a commitment to doing things the hard way and living a life worthy of chronicling in art. More than a revival group, King Khan and the Shrines are a traveling re-enactment squad, treating those lucky enough to see the group perform to a kind of soulful showmanship that alternately smacks of the Blues Brothers and Lou Reed. King Khan is forcefully crass, loud, and enchanting. He moves fast, with the kind of energy usually only seen in footage of icons who overdosed tragically before their time from the kind of just-say-yes sport tour of drugs one is forced to assume goes on in and out of the van that carries this 10-member wrecking-crew of sound from town to town. I had the privilege of watching the pitchfork.tv “Don’t Look Down” rooftop show in person this summer, and no words can describe the magnitude of King Khan’s presence. What he is doing seems so obviously relevant it defies full articulation. More than a frontman he is a leader, and The Supreme Genius plays like a soundtrack to the biography of a revered figure, evoking emotion and character too authentic to be snarked away.
7. Starfucker – Starfucker
This is another album that I feel was overlooked and underrated by the critical community. Portland-based Starfucker’s self-titled release is playful and lo-fi, but achieves a kind of harmonious droning quality atypical of other lo-fi acts like the Unicorns, for example. The album is a simple, solid, and shabbily produced lamentation of California, consumerism, and celebrity that is insightful and clever. Tracks like German Love and Pop Song stand out as would-be college radio singles for a band by any other name. And here is perhaps the most interesting feature of Starfucker, whose album, in spite of titular vulgarity, sounds incredibly marketable and consistent with the trends of popular indie rock and indie-electro. Similar to the sound of groups like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Wolf Parade, or Architecture in Helsinki, Starfucker has seemingly already made the choice to eschew hipster stardom and the life of medium-pimpin that can be funded by channeling good indie rock into the eardrums of artistically vulnerable tweens and alt-bros. Instead, Starfucker’s integrity and uniqueness stem from the name itself, and protect this album of simple songs from the kind of stadium chorus-singing and lighter-waving that ruins perfectly good shows for those of us for whom the band did not represent an introduction to alternative music.
8. Neon Neon – Stainless Style
This album, though not entirely cohesive or even wholly listenable, contains some of 2008’s absolute best tracks. Following a strange and de-centering introduction that sounds like the soundtrack to a car chase between a Delorean and the bikers from Chips, Neon Neon’s Stainless Style journeys through a landscape of 1980’s nightlife and 20080’s fantasy. ‘Raquel’ is the album’s clear anthem, and, in my opinion, the best track of 2008. A guest appearance by Spank Rock on the cocaine-saga ‘Trick for Treat’ gestures toward Neon Neon’s connection to the hipster-electro scene, but the rest of its tracks could otherwise pass for naive, synthesizery pop ballads. Adored by the hipster-electro scene, however, Neon Neon adds something more to mere synth-pop: that stainless style sought by alts of 2008. Neon Neon’s hip owes partially to foreignness, in that the Welsh accent and seemingly authentic enthusiasm over what are truly the most trite cultural icons of the 1980s (Michael Douglass’s pale blue sunglasses, Raquel, Detroit) portray a kind of accidental, unaware art not quite sure of itself and eager to please. In this way in particular, Neon Neon’s Stainless Style is just like many of its listeners: fearfully awaiting the spectre of 2009, the end of the 20080s.
—-STAY TUNED! MORE TO COME! OMG WHAT ABOUT NO AGE?—-
3 years ago