I think that everybody has--in music, books, movies, or anything else a they really like--a few examples of what ideal or near-ideal success in that medium is. These are the music albums by which I rate all others.
A weird start to this list, I know, but if you're like me, you pretty frequently get frustrated with music and wish you could hear something that not only
1) wasn't like what you'd heard before
but also
2) was GOOD
This album isn't quite like anything Eno had done before or since, solo or with other groups or as a producer. It's also not like anything Byrne had done or has done since. But it manages to be interesting, compelling, hypnotic, and even CATCHY, in the absence of any clear melodies, or chord progressions, or anything that you previously thought music needed to have. I don't mean to kick this off by being so pretentious, but really, this album is incredible.
When the dust settles on hip-hop many years into the future, some album is going to end up representing "rap" in its most fully realized, essential form, the way that, say, Exile on Main St. represents "rock 'n roll" or London Calling represents "punk," or Nevermind represents "grunge." None of those are the first in their respective genres or subgenres, but they've come to be something more than just pioneering or excellent--they're emblematic. Maybe I'm a hypocrite for not putting any of those albums on here, but that's just because I don't think any of them are as good as this one.
The production, by DJ Premier and Q-Tip, among others, is about the best example of production matching a rapper's style that exists. Nas's rhymes and flow manage to be just about as technically proficient and complicated as any rapper ever on record as well as being eminently and immediately listenable. And the guy was NINETEEN when he recorded it. This is about the most genuine prodigy story of modern music I have heard. Here's hoping that Illmatic is the album that makes that slot for the admittedly broad category of "rap."
Here's the pitch for this album--the sloppiest, goofiest, most fun band of slackers in the world make a perfect pop record. I don't know if it was magic, or what--and I know it's on the poppy/catchy side for some Pavement fans--but this album strikes one of those balances that you feel like almost never happens, and when you're listening to it, it feels serendipitous. They're more calculated than they seem, I'm sure--but it sure does feel like they just walked into a studio, pounded out 14 absurdly catchy tunes with sometimes-meaningful sometimes-nonsense lyrics, then walked away with the guitars still ringing.
I feel a little guilty for not putting more jazz on here--especially because I used to listen to more jazz than I do now. But in any case--this is my #1 Miles Davis album, and it probably always will be. The Gil Evans/Davis collaborations are my favoite of his albums, and this one is just so perfectly playful when it needs to be and somber when it needs to be and showcases Miles when it can and brings out the ensemble when it can. Just listen to the first track--"Springsville." Isn't that exactly what you always wanted to find in a jazz album?
What's the best way to talk about this album? Do you go track by track through it, stopping on EVERY SINGLE song, all of which are about as purely wonderful nuggets of folk/rock/country/pop ever written (and by that I mean all four genres, not just the meld), or do you talk about how the whole thing ebbs and flows and seems like it has written in it some higher purpose without that purpose being yelled at you? (Okay, it's yelled at you a little in the title track, but it feels right when it is.) All this, and it was made by a CANADIAN? I am so gay for Neil Young.
I know I already said that I hope that Illmatic goes down as the most definitive, pure example of what good rap/hip-hop is. So what is a different album doing higher on this list? Well, 3 Feet High and Rising is in no way a definitive, pure, example of anything, really. It's a collage of tons of different ideas and samples, and somehow, impossibly, it coheres into this big mess of goofy fun, Steely Dan, numerology, transmissions from space, and lyrical brilliance. It's older than Illmatic but certainly younger than hip-hop itself--and it's responsible for a lot of the different directions the genre went in since. And it's a fucking GREAT album.
Let's see. Did I already use my "sloppy heros make incredible pop album" line on something else? Damn. I did. Well Let it Be is like that, but then some. Because Let it Be isn't just about pop perfection, it's also about the most eloquent, poetic, and emotionally compelling narrative of teen years ever put down. One of their songs is here, for that reason exactly. If you've been a teenager, you've felt everything in this album. It's fun and it's wacky and it'll tug ya heartstrings LIKE YA WOULDN'T BUH-LIEVE.
When I set out to make this list, I knew this would be number one. I think it's a little goofy to have a "favorite" when clearly the albums here on this list are all my favorites--but I think this album provides maybe the best example of setting an artistic goal, then achieving it, then going above and beyond. This album's lyrics have some of the most dense and brilliant turns of phrase ever put to record ("Just before our love got lost you said / I am as constant as a northern star / And I said 'Constantly in the darkness, where's that at?' / If you want me I'll be in the bar"), and at every step of the way you feel like Joni's showing you something that she couldn't possibly show you any other way. And she couldn't--that's what great art is.
But look at me, I'm gettin' all gay over music. Over GIRL music. Seriously, though, if you don't have any of these albums, please get them. If not for yourself, FOR ME.
I don't really wanna talk much, on account of the Philadelphia Eagles ending the Vikes' season, but here is the long and short of this very, very long post. Rob and I wanted to up the ante so we did a team-composed Best of 2008 in albums list. We asked a few folks whose thoughts we think highly of, had them write their own Top 15's, then averaged the lists, and here's what we got. (Tragically unincluded is Los Campesinos' Hold On Now, Youngster..., which has a song on it that should basically be the PaRMLoT National Anthem--"My Year in Lists". In other news, PaRMLoT is it's own nation now. It exists everywhere. And nowhere. Like God.)
Thanks to Shruti Kumar, Phil Primason, Jeff Schwartz, Pitr Strait, and James Williams.
15. Saturdays = Youth – M83
Saturdays=Youth is the soaring soundtrack to the high school drama movie about your teenage years. It uses M83's characteristic cinematic style -- epic synthesizers, vibrant beats, and irresistible melodies -- and points it towards celebrating universal teenage emotions: angst ("Graveyard Girl," "Too Late"), naiveté ("Up!," "Kim and Jessie"), and false immortality ("We Own the Sky", "Highway of Endless Dreams"). All three are conjured up in the album's stunning opener, "You, Appearing" with an elegant piano line, warped synths slowly rising, and, over and over again in beautifully harmonized falsetto, "It's your face / Where are we? / Save me." -- JS
When I worked as a research assistant in a social psych lab, part of my job consisted of coding people's taste in music and movies. If there's one thing I learned with statistical certainty from that job, other than that I will be pursuing other career options (sorry Peter!), it is that country music gets a shitty rap. People love dismissing the entire genre as outdated and corny, but what's great about real country music is how it can be moving and self-consciously funny at the same time. The Silver Jews are definitely not a country band per se, but on Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea David Berman sings like he knows that all the wittiest and most poignant songs were written by guys like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Hank Williams. Even on his darker albums (Lookout Mountain is not one, by the way) Berman has always toed the line between the inventiveness in his writing and the strong roots influence in his music, and what makes this album good is that despite the relative lightness, the band preserves the ratio even as they go further than before into their country roots. -- PP
13. Re-Arrange Us – Mates of State
The danger with Mates of State and their married-couple-rock-duo schtick has always been their potential to become precious and devolve into cutesy romanticism. Their fifth album rises above this by filling out the band's instrumentation, normally more sparse and eccentric, into a powerhouse sound that carries them safely out of precious territory. Their impressionistic songwriting, not quite telling a story and not quite not, effortlessly transform cliche into sincerity. The lyrics are simple because they can afford to be; the energy and honestly behind Mates of State's charged harmonies pack more genuine emotion into a phrase like "He's treating me right" or the word "free" than most bands can muster up for a whole album. The album does occasionally fall prey to a disease that plagues other Nonsense-Lyrics-Over-Stacked-Harmonies acts, aka "New Pornographers Syndrome" (phenomenal hook disrupted by a lackluster bridge), but the occasional misstep is worth it. If nothing else, the album gives us "You Are Free," which captures the sorrow-tinged-triumphalism of 2003's Team Boo without sounding like a retread. Re-Arrange Us may dissatisfy purists with its more polished sound, but if it produces anthems like that, the polish might be a good move. -- PS
12. Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst
This is a really consistent, evocative record that captures what it's like to think about a place when you're at a safe distance from it; the production is great, and there's some really solid country-rock experimentation that never sounds insincere or forced. None of that is the best part of this album, though. The best part of the album are the super-intense, kind-of-overwrought, quivery-voiced tearjerkers that could easily be (probably the best) songs on a Bright Eyes album, but since this isn't a Bright Eyes album I don't have to pretend not to like them. Just kidding, kind of. -- PP
When we were first sending out emails regarding this list, some folks had yet to listen to this fantastic album. That was quickly remedied. And then the list-edits rolled in… These tracks are the very definition of infectious. And yeah, okay, Santi White has toured with M.I.A. and her songs are tight, let’s leave the comparisons there, though, okay? She’s her own woman. (Okay—while writing this, the “L.E.S. Artistes” remix just showed up in that friggin’ Ford commercial. But here’s the deal, nerdos—if this is the kind of music the zeitgeist has chosen to be ubiquitous, I have absolutely no problem with that.) -- PMS
10. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
A scan of the rest of this list will reveal that, as far as music that could genuinely be called "rock and roll," there is only one album above Cave's--the Hold Steady's Stay Positive. So how did a 50-year-old man make the second-rockingest album of 2008? Well, it didn't hurt to be rejuvenated into the rock-and-roll mold by last year's side project Grinderman, which saw Cave return to a guitar-heavy sound like his main band rarely does. Speaking personally, I like the Bad Seeds most when they focus more on guitars and less on pianos and ballads--on the Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus spectrum, I'm much more of an Abbatoir Blues guy. But Lazarus saw Cave bring a level of songwriting to his guitar-based work that was significantly higher than on Abbatoir, keeping that sound and energy but coming up with stuff more memorable than on any album since Let Love In. And his lyrics, as always, are reliably great--taking for the title track the idea that Lazarus has been unwillingly raised from the dead and left to wander in sinful modern America. Poetic, intelligent, and gripping, but most importantly, rocking. -- RT
9. With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly – Sigur Ros
An air of mystery hangs over Sigur Ros records. What is it about Icelandic music that makes it so uniquely beautiful? How is almost operatic post-rock at all vital in 2008? Would these songs sound as heartbreaking beautiful if they were in English? Should the band have gone even deeper into this more concise song-writing direction, or should they have kept their songs further up in the clouds? We'll never know the answers, but Sigur Ros has again proved the questions strikingly relevant. Mystery aside, Sigur Ros's tighter songwriting paired with their signature otherworldly production make With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly possibly the most, in a purely aesthetic sense, beautiful recording of 2008. -- JS
This flashback to glam and late great Brit pop might at first listen scream cliche, but MGMT's self awareness wipes away that impression. The lyrics are sarcastic and, somehow, empowering at the same time-- and if you ever get a chance to see them perform live, their surprisingly earnest delivery translates their catchy pop tracks into anthems for our generation. It's hard to pinpoint the right proportions of synth and electro infusion that still preserve the music underneath, and this band has done a good job of that. MGMT has found a balance between their trippy musical experimentation and their contagious melodies that allows you to respect them as innovators while still fighting to get their four-beat hooks out of your head. Oracular Spectacular is undeniable ear candy. You'll dance to the songs akin to 'time to pretend' and 'electric feel', you'll sing along and (sincerely) raise your lighters to 'the youth' and 'pieces of what', and throughout, you'll assuredly find yourself clicking 'repeat' more times than not. Finally, I think we have a guilty pleasure without any real need for guilt. -- SK
It is pretty much a given that if you talk to a music fan geeking out on For Emma, they will geek twice as hard for the mythology that spawned the album. “Aw crap, you know how he wrote that shit, right? Dude broke up with his former band and then he hiked up to Wisconsin, holed up in a cabin for a winter, and composed that glory!” I mean, yeah. That’s the story. And it’s affecting. But not anywhere near as affecting as the music itself. I’m a sucker for boy-and-his-guitar stuff and these melodies and musings do not disappoint. Justin Vernon positively loses himself in his musical and lyrical thought, then, without warning, he emerges from under waves of emotion with a sing-a-long worthy chorus or line that simultaneously gives you hope and tears you apart (like, “Come on, skinny love, just last the year”). Am I guilty of geeking on this? Certainly. Am I alone? Not a chance. Are we alone? In moments, yes. Ultimately, never. -- PMS
After concept, auto-biography, and theme, John Darnielle circles back around to basics on Heretic Pride, and while the man does have a shocking talent for composing entire albums around one idea or story, it's great to have another record from him devoted to balance and variety. We get quite arguably the best opening track of the year in "Sax Rohmer #1," a horrifying vision of summer in the city from America's leading pioneer of horrifying visions in "Lovecraft in Brooklyn," and a crushing oh-jesus-is-this-song-triumphant-or-devastating-oh-wait-it-is-the-Mountain-Goats-it-is-obviously-both anthem in "Michael Myers Resplendent." Far from the emotional rut of Get Lonely, this album shows off Darnielle's storytelling range in style, each vignette propelled by his never-failing sincerity. People looking for a widescreen, overarching idea that binds the album together will be disappointed, but ever since he discarded the bedroom studio sound and retired the prefix "Going To" this is the closest we're going to get to old-school Goats: a collection of stories delivered with heart, sometimes broken, sometimes on fire, always full. He is coming home to you, with his own blood in his mouth. -- PS
When the mash-up culture, long a feature of the DJ scene, began to take cohesive form on the internet, its complexity typically topped out at Beyonce+Nirvana or Interpol+50 Cent, more complicated mash-ups tending to sound bloated and cacophonous. Girl Talk's 2006 Night Ripper raised the bar by making Mariah+Ludacris+Pixies+Oh Snap What Is That Song I Remember Hearing That On The Radio In '93+Nas a completely viable format, effectively rewriting the expectations for anyone looking to make their mark on the mashup map. Even though similar sounds are more common now, like DJ Earworm's annual "United State of Pop" or E-603's manic Something For Everyone, Feed the Animals proves that Girl Talk is still the best at what he does. His impeccable sense of humor allows him to make new jokes out of old lyrics, his blue-balls approach to denying you the hook keeps the tension taut, and the album as a whole is nothing so much as a reminder that music is great, plain and simple. Cramming nineteen dance parties into 54 minutes, Greg Gillis proves himself again as the custodian of pop and the king of ADD audiophiles everywhere. -- PS
You know that feeling of coming home after a long time and being reunited with the sofa, now probably relocated to the basement, that essentially raised you? Well, the rich four-part harmonies woven throughout Fleet Foxes flood you with that feeling over and over again. Though the five guys from Seattle are complete strangers to most of us, their album provides the comfort of people you've known your whole life. For many of us, these songs might take us back to the music that our parents played in the house or during road trips when we were growing up. But while they invoke all sorts of rural, countryside ghosts of folk music past, the band still somehow maintains a strong sense of originality-- the way in which they brought the bits and pieces of their influences together results in something entirely new. Above or embedded in the harmonies are chilling melodies; the lyrics are great, but this album is the first in a long time that clearly showcases good music and musicians more than anything else. And wraps you up in fleece and makes time seem completely irrelevant. Seriously. Fleet Foxes pretty much makes everything in the world okay. -- SK
In a strange way, Dear Science sounds like 2008. It's aggressively hopeful and ambitious, but it feels like it's on the verge of falling apart at any second. You can hear it in the album's first ten seconds -- it opens with a melody of Beach Boys-esque ba-ba-ba's, but over a sonic landscape of what sounds like blaring sirens. Sirens that somehow are musically exciting and un-abrasive, and that's what makes Dear Science so extraordinary -- within all of the tension, chaos, and revolutionary hybrid of musical genres, lies an incredibly listenable pop music record. Some have difficulty classifying TVOTR's fiercely original sound, I say it sounds like 2008 in pop music form. -- JS
Earlier this year, I was reading a New Yorker review of the surprisingly tolerable, nay possibly enjoyable You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. In this review, David Denby used a phrase I have become obsessed with: “un texte obamiste”. Although I’m not totally certain of what those three words mean precisely, I can say without a doubt that Stay Positive fits the same mold. Kinda. It is way, way, way, way more than an album about aging Minnesotans who still wanna rock-slash-party all-night and/or everyday, even though their fans have started having kids. It’s an album about the upheaval of cynicism, it’s an album that yearns to be part of something—whether it’s a movement or a mosh-pit. It’s also an album that knows it’s own history—the “four corners” approach (treat the album as a record—your four best songs should be the side A and B openers and closers) hasn’t been used this well since Springsteen. From the triumphant blast of “Constructive Summer” (“We’re gonna build something this summer!”) to the cinematic bombast of “Slapped Actress” (“We are the actors / The cameras are rolling / I'll be Ben Gazarra / You'll be Gena Rowlands”), this is the most open-armed, optimistic album of 2008. (And frankly, Ben Gazarra doesn’t get name-checked enough.) -- PMS
I put off listening to the band Vampire Weekend until after they had already generated a good amount of Columbia buzz. I kind of refused to believe not only was a band from Columbia good (you just like them because they're from your school, right?), but also that a band with the odious label "indie rock" was any good (honestly, I don't think a band since Franz Ferdinand in that "genre" hasn't made me want to kill myself). But a few months after everyone else, around when the actual album came out, I listened. And what I heard wasn't a mediocre "indie rock" album, it was a great album, and a great pop album. Honestly, pop music hasn't had melodies this good since sometime in the 80s, the era of Michael Jackson, good Madonna, and yes, because everyone's so keen to point it out, Paul Simon. But really, it's the melodic sensibilities of Paul Simon that carry over most strongly, not just the African guitar and percussion (which yeah, okay, are there if you listen hard enough). Eleven songs, and every single one of them has been stuck in my head without me wanting to get it out at least once. Name me a pop album that good in the last ten years and I'll eat something I don't want to eat. This is the album I've listened to most in 2008. This is the album of 2008. -- RT
I think this time I'm just going to let other, wiser people do the talking for me. A special commentary-free edition of PaRMLoT! (We are still totally calling this PaRMLoT, PS.)
30. “Eli’s coming, girl, you better hide your heart” – Three Dog Night, Eli’s Coming
29. “She serves him mashed potatoes / And she serves him peppered steak, with corn / Pulls her dress up over her head / Lets it fall to the floor / But does she ever whisper in his ear all her favorite fruit?” – Camper Van Beethoven, All Her Favorite Fruit
28. “I want to make a million dollars / I want to live out by the sea / Have a husband and some children / Yeah, I guess I want a family” – Tina Turner, Private Dancer
27. “Soco in bed, a sunny sunday watching John McLaughlin / And having sex again and again / I'd stopped by 'cause Ellen had my copy of Nebraska / They never even put on their clothes” – The Dismemberment Plan, Ellen and Ben
26. “He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day / When the New York times said God is dead / And the war's begun / Alvin Tostig has a son today” – Elton John, Levon
25. “She said that she was working for the ABC News / It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use” - Elvis Costello, Brilliant Mistake
24.“Hey, pretty baby get high with me, / We can go to my sisters if we say we'll watch the baby" – Neko Case, Star Witness
23. “You’d never know it / But buddy, I’m a kind of poet / And I’ve got a lot of things I wanna say / And when I’m gloomy, won’t you listen to me / ‘Til it’s talked away” – Johnny Mercer/Harold Arlen, One For My Baby
22. “I'm aching for you baby / I can't pretend I'm not / I need to see you naked / In your body and your thought” – Leonard Cohen, Ain’t No Cure For Love
21. “I was out late the other night / Fear and whiskey kept me going” – The Mekons, Chivalry
20.“Got a curse we cannot lift / shines when the sunset shifts / there's a cure comes with a kiss / the bite that binds the gift that gives” – TV On the Radio, Wolf Like Me
19. “Greener grasses fade from where you wind up / everyone choose sides / I’m back! I’m back! So sing to raise the blind up” – The Wrens, Everyone Choose Sides
18.“Well a person can work up a mean mean thirst / after a hard day of nothin' much at all / Summer's passed, it's too late to cut the grass / There ain't much to rake anyway in the fall” – The Replacements, Here Comes a Regular
17. “It’s time to fight back, that’s what Huey said / Two shots in the dark, now Huey’s dead” – 2Pac, Changes
16.“Pick out some Brazilian nuts for your engagement / Check that expiration date, man / It’s later than you think” – Pavement, We Dance
15. “You know that chick that used to dance a lot?” – Thin Lizzy, The Boys are Back in Town
14. “Just before our love got lost you said, / 'I am as constant as the Northern Star' / Constant in the darkness / Where’s that at? / If you want me, I’ll be at the bar” – Joni Mitchell, A Case of You
13. “Styles upon styles upon styles is what I have” – Tribe Called Quest, Buggin’ Out
12. “Her heart is as big as this whole goddamn jail / She’s sweeter than saccharine at a drug store sale” – John Prine, Christmas in Prison
11. “Then she cries out / Oh my goodness, I'm about to climax / And I said cool, / “Climax!” / Just let go of my leg” – R. Kelly, Trapped in the Closet
10. “So if you don't want me I promise not to linger / But before I go I've gotta ask you, dear, about the tan line on your ring finger” – Silver Jews, Random Rules
9. “Everybody in the world, you have dandruff” – De La Soul, Can U Keep a Secret
8. “Here I go, deep type flow / Jacques Cousteau could never get this low” – Wu-Tang Clan, Da Mystery of the Chessboxin’
7.“If I ever want to drive myself insane, / all I have to do is watch you breathing” – The Mountain Goats, There Will Be No Divorce
6. “I just wanna use your love tonight / I don’t wanna lose your love tonight” – The Outfield, Your Love
Okay, so I know I'm going to get shit for that one (and I totally said no commentary), but come on, it's the most succinct encapsulation of that singularly difficult moment, the simultaneous experience of two directly opposing emotions: a) I want to use you for sexual gratification and b) I truly care about you and don't want to lose the affection we have for each other. What's brilliant is that there isn't even a "but" separating the two sentiments; they are inextricably intertwined. And the two lines are so phonically similar! It's like you're almost lulled into the impression that, yeah, maybe sleeping with this person IS the best way to express my friendly affection. (Of course, if you're really in love with someone and you want to sleep with them, you should probably just do it. However, if your girlfriend Josie is on vacation, as is the case in the song, and you feel that she might have something to say about this... maybe hold up on the sleeping-with.) Anyway, I would not be shocked if the members of The Outfield were currently respected sociologists.
5. “I'm just an animal looking for a home/ Share the same space for a minute or two / And you love me till my heart stops / Love me till I'm dead” – Talking Heads, Naïve Melody
4. “It may be you / It could be me / It's not enough / To wait and see / And when we all / Lock arms and sing / Then bells of freedom / Ring ding ding!” – Some scientists, The Most Unwanted Song
3. “Is a dream a lie that don’t come true, or is it something worse?” – Bruce Springsteen, The River
2. “Everyone I used to know is either dead or in prison” – Tom Waits, Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis
1. “Your debutante knows what you need, but I know what you want” – Bob Dylan, Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
