Have you ever seen that one SNL skit where there was this recurring character who'd been on the show five times before doing the same exact thing, except this time they were doing the same exact thing in a department store or a family dinner or something, and the guest host was in the skit playing a character extremely similar or identical to the one that they were famous for playing, and the whole thing went on at least three minutes longer than was really necessary, and then there was a commercial break that was actually longer than the preceding skit?
Man, that was great. I hope that show stays on the air for another 35 years!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tom's favorite music of 2008
Christ, is it February already? I've been planning, apparently for 2 full months now, to post this, and give a good in-depth write-up of everything, but the thought of doing so is off-putting, and really, I don't have the interest in this that I once did. I'm sure that comment is going to be great for the prospect of future readership here. Oh well.
What I'm doing now is the lazy version of a Top 10 list. This is in the same format as it would have appeared in the more labor-intensive version (i.e., the version where I actually wrote a lot about why I like any of these), it's just arranged as it is because the idea of a "competition" every year for Best Album or whatever seems increasingly pointless and irrelevant.
These are my Very Favorite albums of 2008 (in alphabetical order):
- Deerhunter - Microcastle - Also getting this year's "Most Improved" award (this is 1000% better than 2007's Cryptograms), Deerhunter have created an atmospheric masterpiece combining their usual shoegaze style with an increased emphasis on melody and ambiance.
- Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping - After a career making wacky lo-fi Beatlesque indie-pop, Kevin Barnes has spent the last few years skewing into a unique world of electronic disco funk rock, or something like that. Taking the sound of 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer to its most extreme endpoint, Barnes (and his alter-ego Georgie Fruit) has created a kaleidoscopic and dizzying ode to the human libido.
- Portishead - Third - With one fell swoop, Portishead threw out any notion of them being bound to the idea and sound of "trip-hop", while still being immediately identifiable as Portishead. If it took them 11 years to make an album this good, I'd like to urge them to take another decade to make the next one.
- Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun - Brian Wilson's still got it. This is the best album of new material he's put out since 1977's The Beach Boys Love You (since Smile was mostly written in 1966-67), and it certainly serves as a nice bookend to his career. More importantly, it's a strong, unified album that works well as a whole. It makes me wish I lived in Los Angeles. That's how good it is.
There are some other Very Good albums (by my standards) from 2008 (in roughly descending order, with one sentence write-ups):
- Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak - The lyrics are questionable at times, but they are as consistent as the always-compelling music at creating a mood of regret and grief, a lament to good times never had.
- TV on the Radio - Dear Science - Melody comes to the fore, and TV on the Radio hit a new career peak with an amazing hybrid of funk, disco, and Radiohead.
- M83 - Saturdays = Youth - The devotion to the sound of the 1980s here is almost disturbingly thorough, but it works, but mostly because M83's flair for the dramatic (and melodramatic) remains fully intact.
- The Week That Was - The Week That Was - I downloaded this on a whim based on a single positive review, and I don't really know the first thing about whoever is making this music, but I've come up with the formula for these guys: early XTC + Steve Reich + Talking Heads + Peter Gabriel, and if that sounds like an awesome combination, you're right, it totally is.
- The Hold Steady - Stay Positive - Craig Finn's lyrics over the four Hold Steady albums have created a dense weave of recurring characters, stories, and themes, a web as intriguingly byzantine as their music is (and has always been) straightforward and immediately engaging.
- Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash - Lifelong indie kid blasphemy: I honestly prefer the exploratory but never masturbatory jams of Real Emotional Trash to any Pavement album.
- Stereolab - Chemical Chords - These guys have been wringing unpredictable results from the same old formula for so long that it should go without saying that Chemical Chords is yet another variation of 60s pop + 70s Krautrock + 90s post-rock, this time with the emphasis on concision and directness.
- Hot Chip - Made in the Dark - Hot Chip make most downright goofy dance music that can still be legitimately called dance music, with bonus points awarded this time around for the total music-geek Todd Rundgren sample and the lyric "half nelson, full nelson, Willie Nelson."
- Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling - Mogwai have been making more or less the same album since 2003's Rock Action, but this one, with its extended song structures and devastating climaxes, comes closest to that holy grail of all post-rock, their debut Young Team, while still retaining the subtlety and texture of their work in the last decade.
- Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends - See earlier review.
- Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago - An album of mopey, bitchy breakup songs redeemed by an unstoppable wave of gorgeous melodies and harmonies.
- Beach House - Devotion - Every one of these songs is pretty much the same, but they're all unspeakably beautiful.
So there you go. If you'd like some of my favorite individual songs of 2008, here's a list, in the order I thought of them, with their own individual awards listed next to them:
Vampire Weekend - "Oxford Comma" - Most Cheerful Pop/Rock Song
Mogwai - "I'm Jim Morrison I'm Dead" - Most Devastatingly Majestic Song
Hot Chip - "Bendable Posable" - Weirdest Danceable Song
Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal" - Prettiest Crosby, Stills & Nash style harmonies
Animal Collective - "Water Curses" - Purest Expression of Joy
Goldfrapp - "Clowns" - Most Heartwrenching Song About Breast Implants
M83 - "Kim and Jessie" - Most Devastatingly Majestic 80s Throwback Song
Portishead - "Machine Gun" - Most Brutally Rhythmic Song
What I'm doing now is the lazy version of a Top 10 list. This is in the same format as it would have appeared in the more labor-intensive version (i.e., the version where I actually wrote a lot about why I like any of these), it's just arranged as it is because the idea of a "competition" every year for Best Album or whatever seems increasingly pointless and irrelevant.
These are my Very Favorite albums of 2008 (in alphabetical order):
- Deerhunter - Microcastle - Also getting this year's "Most Improved" award (this is 1000% better than 2007's Cryptograms), Deerhunter have created an atmospheric masterpiece combining their usual shoegaze style with an increased emphasis on melody and ambiance.
- Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping - After a career making wacky lo-fi Beatlesque indie-pop, Kevin Barnes has spent the last few years skewing into a unique world of electronic disco funk rock, or something like that. Taking the sound of 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer to its most extreme endpoint, Barnes (and his alter-ego Georgie Fruit) has created a kaleidoscopic and dizzying ode to the human libido.
- Portishead - Third - With one fell swoop, Portishead threw out any notion of them being bound to the idea and sound of "trip-hop", while still being immediately identifiable as Portishead. If it took them 11 years to make an album this good, I'd like to urge them to take another decade to make the next one.
- Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun - Brian Wilson's still got it. This is the best album of new material he's put out since 1977's The Beach Boys Love You (since Smile was mostly written in 1966-67), and it certainly serves as a nice bookend to his career. More importantly, it's a strong, unified album that works well as a whole. It makes me wish I lived in Los Angeles. That's how good it is.
There are some other Very Good albums (by my standards) from 2008 (in roughly descending order, with one sentence write-ups):
- Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak - The lyrics are questionable at times, but they are as consistent as the always-compelling music at creating a mood of regret and grief, a lament to good times never had.
- TV on the Radio - Dear Science - Melody comes to the fore, and TV on the Radio hit a new career peak with an amazing hybrid of funk, disco, and Radiohead.
- M83 - Saturdays = Youth - The devotion to the sound of the 1980s here is almost disturbingly thorough, but it works, but mostly because M83's flair for the dramatic (and melodramatic) remains fully intact.
- The Week That Was - The Week That Was - I downloaded this on a whim based on a single positive review, and I don't really know the first thing about whoever is making this music, but I've come up with the formula for these guys: early XTC + Steve Reich + Talking Heads + Peter Gabriel, and if that sounds like an awesome combination, you're right, it totally is.
- The Hold Steady - Stay Positive - Craig Finn's lyrics over the four Hold Steady albums have created a dense weave of recurring characters, stories, and themes, a web as intriguingly byzantine as their music is (and has always been) straightforward and immediately engaging.
- Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash - Lifelong indie kid blasphemy: I honestly prefer the exploratory but never masturbatory jams of Real Emotional Trash to any Pavement album.
- Stereolab - Chemical Chords - These guys have been wringing unpredictable results from the same old formula for so long that it should go without saying that Chemical Chords is yet another variation of 60s pop + 70s Krautrock + 90s post-rock, this time with the emphasis on concision and directness.
- Hot Chip - Made in the Dark - Hot Chip make most downright goofy dance music that can still be legitimately called dance music, with bonus points awarded this time around for the total music-geek Todd Rundgren sample and the lyric "half nelson, full nelson, Willie Nelson."
- Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling - Mogwai have been making more or less the same album since 2003's Rock Action, but this one, with its extended song structures and devastating climaxes, comes closest to that holy grail of all post-rock, their debut Young Team, while still retaining the subtlety and texture of their work in the last decade.
- Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends - See earlier review.
- Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago - An album of mopey, bitchy breakup songs redeemed by an unstoppable wave of gorgeous melodies and harmonies.
- Beach House - Devotion - Every one of these songs is pretty much the same, but they're all unspeakably beautiful.
So there you go. If you'd like some of my favorite individual songs of 2008, here's a list, in the order I thought of them, with their own individual awards listed next to them:
Vampire Weekend - "Oxford Comma" - Most Cheerful Pop/Rock Song
Mogwai - "I'm Jim Morrison I'm Dead" - Most Devastatingly Majestic Song
Hot Chip - "Bendable Posable" - Weirdest Danceable Song
Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal" - Prettiest Crosby, Stills & Nash style harmonies
Animal Collective - "Water Curses" - Purest Expression of Joy
Goldfrapp - "Clowns" - Most Heartwrenching Song About Breast Implants
M83 - "Kim and Jessie" - Most Devastatingly Majestic 80s Throwback Song
Portishead - "Machine Gun" - Most Brutally Rhythmic Song
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