Music Under Fire: Top 30 Albums for 2008
What a year its been, we feel practically spoiled with the music we’ve discovered.
Its a wonder our favorite album of the year came out at the end of January, and had been bypassed on so many other lists – topped by groups we didn’t list, such as TV on the Radio, Crystal Stilts, Death and Cab For Cutie to name a few. The Helio Sequence’s Keep Your Eyes Ahead was a shoo-in after their performance in May and although the group is composed of only two, they still have all of the guitar, drums and background instrumentation done via computer to make a great, diversified album able to be reproduced in live format.
Not to shun our other top choices, Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours was a close second, as was Tokyo Police Club’s Elephant Shell. Both albums carried a different appeal, yet made for many repeat listens. All of our 11-20 picks had some of the best singles we’ve heard all year, and also had great album flow. Despite much criticism, we believe Coldplay’s VLV was their second best album yet for the band (behind Parachutes of course), which says quite a bit about the over-critiqued foursome. As you go through our list, you will see many of these guys again in our top 50 songs of the year, which will be a complete list worthy of making several mix tapes to look back at 2008.
MP3: Coldplay – Strawberry Swing (live from Philadelphia) (buy)
MP3: Tokyo Police Club – Juno (buy)
MP3: The Helio Sequence – Back To This (buy)
MP3: Cut Copy – Hearts on Fire (buy)
MP3: Fleet Foxes – Your Protector (buy)
Although we could have done a top 40 or even 50, we wanted our list to be solid, so we cut down many of the albums we didn’t feel were up to par with the ones listed below. Afterall, we don’t have the abililty to listen to every album out there, and we didn’t want to list every single album we listened to this year, so this list was considerably cut down to represent an accurate list according to our tastes. Our top 30 was decided by the two of us and if you’ve been following us throughout the year, some of these picks may come as no surprise. Please share your comments on our list, we’d like to say that nobody’s opinion is wrong when it comes down to your personal tastes. These are ours:
30
The Seldom Seen Kid (Polydor)
29
Pictures and Sound (Vangard)
28
Modern Guilt (DGC)
27
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Perishing (Polyvinyl)
26
Fast Times at Barrington High (Atlantic)
25
Glasvegas (Sony)
24
This Will Destroy You (Magic Bullet)
23
You & Me (Gigantic)
22
Oceans Will Rise (Arts & Crafts)
21
In Ear Park (4AD)
20
Alpinisms (Ghostly)
19
Fractures (Revolver)
18
Fate (Park the Van)
17
Oracular Spectacular (Sony)
16
Swimming (Vagrant)
15
Velocifero (Nettwerk)
14
Saturdays = Youth (Virgin)
13
Furr (Sub Pop)
12
Parc Avenue (Secret City)
11
The Rhumb Line (Barsuk)
10
Low vs Diamond (Sony)
9
Fractured Life (EMI)
8
Light Years (Weather Machine)
7
Ode To Sunshine (Rounder)
6
A Town and Two Cities (Universal Republic)
5
Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)
4
Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends (EMI)
3
In Ghost Colours (Modular)
2
Elephant Shell (Saddle Creek)
1
Keep Your Eyes Ahead
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