Album Reviews: The Best Music of 2008 – Part One (January – April)

In an effort to make our obligatory end-of-the-year music lists easier to compile, and because we’re music-obsessed to a synapse collapsing degree, Web in Front has compiled a guide to our favorite sounds of 2008 (so far).

Unlike 2007, in which most rock critics seemed to be struggling to fill out their top ten lists after Radiohead, M.I.A., Arcade Fire, and The National took their rightful places, the first third of 2008 has already delivered a massive constellation of great albums, EPs, and singles from both major label artists as well as indie-rockers surrounded by the nebulae of html-generated hype.

So this is the music that moved us to dance in our homes or awkwardly headbob at live shows, and this is this music that just moved us.

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The Airborne Toxic Event- “Sometime Around Midnight” (single)
Rock ‘n roll as rebellion, though not against anything as arbitrary as an elected authority or political body, but a revolt against endings—of love, life, and innocence. The song’s futility lies within the fact that we all still hurt, die, and break in two. Its triumph (and Airborne’s) is the unwillingness to budge in the face of that futility, and to keep dancing anyway.
Listen to “Sometime Around Midnight” at the Airborne Toxic Event’s Myspace page

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Atlas Sound- Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Winding, beautiful, cathartic; it’s post-post-post-something music from Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, whose songs mandelbrott into a collection of swirling fractal noise and buzzing shoegaze melodrama the likes of which haven’t been heard since Kevin Shields nearly imploded Creation Records’ bank accounts.
Listen to “Bite Marks”

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Black Kids- “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You” (single- 2008 rerecording)
The sound of new new wavers sleeping around with ‘60s pop while engaged to ‘80s dance rock, this is the best pop single this side of, well, anything in recent memory. Stylistically promiscuous and ridiculously catchy, the band has all blogs hot on their tail(s), but you know how we always want who we can’t have. Expect the bloggetry backlash to kick in when they find out the Kids have been talking to Spin behind their backs.
Listen to “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You”

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Bon Iver- For Emma, Forever Ago
Cobwebbed acoustic melancholy punctured by falsetto howls, a songwriter (Justin Vernon) isolated in a cabin for four months, chilly production iceflows slicked over roiling emotional turbulence—this would be the clichéd marquee LP for college-breakup angst if it wasn’t such a depth-charge blast of quiet maturity and startling, haunted beauty.
Listen to “Skinny Love”

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The Breeders- Mountain Battles
The full-on return that Title TK fell just shy of reaching, this disc features Kim Deal’s impossibly sexy voice being ‘engineered’ once again by Steve Albini. Miss Surfer Rosa and Pod? Try this disc and spin it (yeah).
Listen to “Overglazed”

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The Brian Jonestown Massacre- My Bloody Underground
A fuzzed-out closed-circuit loop that brings Anton’s ever-shifting group back to the gloriously recycled drone music that made up BJM’s debut. The first half, which features the more traditional Jonestown-ragas-vs.-Stones-riffs approach, is great; the second, which flowers into a feedback-swathed collection of sinusoid rhythms and dopplergraph soundscapes, is even better.
Listen to “Just Like Kicking Jesus”

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British Sea Power- Do You Like Rock Music?
If it sounds like this, then yes, yes we do.
Listen to “No Lucifer”

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Cat Power- Jukebox
The slow, curled smile of a woman hipswaying next to a glowing Wurlitzer, Chan Marshall’s Jukebox finds her a.k.a. finally mastering the Stax simmer that overwhelmed The Greatest.
Listen to “Lost Someone”

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
Cave returns to the Seeds to record some of his most unhinged music in ten years. Though not quite the raw power epic of Grinderman, Dig!!! still manages to inject more sex, sleaze, and neurosis into the modern listener’s head than he or she deserves.
Listen to “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”

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DeVotchKa- A Mad and Faithful Telling
A widescreen panorama of searching, string-swelled eclecticism and experimentation, with the indie-rock gypsies riding off into a theremin twilight.
Listen to “Along the Way”

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Foals- Antidotes
Dancey post-punk revivalism that actually earns a right to exist by separating itself from the pack with enough melody, riffs, and rhythm to make you think twice about listening to Gang of Four instead. Plus, Pitchfork didn’t like it. What else do you want?
Listen to “Balloons”

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The Henry Clay People- Working Part Time EP
The sound of Paul Westerberg getting roughed up by a Stephen Malkmus & Crazy Horse supergroup, the HCP’s WPT is a smog-clearing blast of rock at its finest, with the crooked rain of Andy Siara’s jagged guitar slicing through big brother Joey’s slanted and enchanted vocals until every “whoo hoo hoo” chorus becomes a rallying call for the best of L.A. indie.
Listen to “Andy Sings!”

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The Kills- Midnight Boom
Dripping with sly come-ons and nicotine sweat, this nocturnal disc of slow, sensual sludge-riffs slithering between throbbing uptempo beats is the best soundtrack to backseat sex since Elastica ripped off Wire.
Listen to “U.R.A. Fever”

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Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks- Real Emotional Trash
Without playing the “best-since” game, we’ll say that the Indie Bard’s return features some of the weirdest (and poppiest) fractured jams he’s recorded since a certain other band was rattled by the rush back in ’95. Wowee.
Listen to “Gardenia”

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Man Man- Rabbits Habits
Though they’ll never be able to totally shed the Beefheart and Waits comparisons (Mark Lanegan’s message to Man Man: Get used to it), their artsy stomp and carnie clattering continues to foster some of the most enjoyable “difficult” music of the ‘00s.
Listen to “Whale Bones”

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She and Him- Volume One
In which Z. and M. spin the dial through the last half-century of AM radio, stopping to look around at ‘50s soul, ‘60s pop, and ‘70s country-rock, all of which refract through Deschanel’s prism of heartbreak and yearning.
Listen to “Sentimental Heart”

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Sun Kil Moon- April
With a ten minute opener and 73:44 running time, April misses being Mark Kozelek’s finest hour by about fifteen minutes. That being said, the album finds him doing what he does best—beautiful, introspective journeys through the sepia haze of memory and time.
Listen to “Unlit Hallway”

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Vampire Weekend- Vampire Weekend
A collegiate tour through Graceland (Rhymin’ Simon’s, not the King’s), Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut is yet another in the growing line of blog-fueled young bands to seemingly come from nowhere. Their onstage attire of polo shirts and natty sweaters might be a bit much, but their winning combination of mannered indie pop and light African polyrhythms still leaves you charmed enough to ask that they remain in light a little longer.
Listen to “Walcott”

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The Weather Underground- Bird in the Hand EP
Earthy, barnburning indie rock from a Los Angeles band named after a doc on ‘60s revolutionaries, Bird in the Hand is the group’s third EP in what seems like as many months. A dizzyingly soulful and raucous live act, the Weather Underground have been bathing in buzz since the end of last year, and show no signs of slowing. The revolution will not be televised—it’s onstage at the Troubadour.
Listen to “Trainwreck”

April 21, 2008 | Filed Under Album Reviews, Exclusive Features 

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