Xoxobra's Best Albums of 2008

Xoxobra's Best Albums of 2008
Here we go for the third and final part of the best of 2008: the albums. I had the opportunity to listen to over 100 albums this year (109, to be exact) from many genres and many decades, and these are the ten that I spent the most time with. Release year wasn't a factor in determining this list, so to find out my ten favorite albums that actually came out in 2008, just subtract the older releases in my real top ten and add the albums listed as honorable mention, and there you go.

Unless there's some special circumstance, this will be my final post of the year, and it's been a good one. But I'm going to take a little bit of a break to enjoy the holidays, recharge myself, and make some decisions on where I want to take this blog next year. I'll resume updates in early January. Until then, happy holidays and all that jazz.

10) Nas - Untitled (2008)

This may have fallen short of being the scathing, Curtis Mayfield-style protest album that I was hoping it was going to be, but it was still pretty good. Nas may be one of the more hypocritical rappers to make a conscious album, but if more conscious rappers would follow his example, focus a little more on presentation, and stop falling back on jazz beats and discussions of "real hip-hop", then maybe "conscious" wouldn't be a dirty word in the rap community, continually ignored unless your name is Common, and banished to the doldrums of college radio playlists.

9) Boris - Smile [Japanese version] (2008)

Coming off a somewhat high profile release in Pink, Boris probably recorded with more pressure and anticipation than they ever have. Smile isn't the band's best record by any stretch, but even so, it's still good enough to be one of the best albums of the year. If fellow Japanese noise/post-rockers Envy made this exact album, it would've been the best thing they've ever recorded.

8) Liars - Drum's Not Dead (2006)

This is one of those perplexing albums in which a few weeks or even a few months of listening seems too inadequate a time frame to fully phrase and explain what I'm hearing. All I can state with absolute certainty is that I like this album. How much I like it has yet to be determined. I like it enough for it not to feel right to exclude it from a part of the ten best albums I've heard this year. But I also don't put it past exceeding even those heights. Check back with me in a year or so, I may consider this the greatest album of the decade by then.

7) Bohren & der Club of Gore - Dolores (2008)

After the somewhat disappointing Geisterfaust, Bohren are back on their game with Dolores, their sixth album. While they haven't broken any new ground with this release, they have managed to refine the slightly softer, semi-funeral dirge they attempted with Geisterfaust and presented them in better composed songs with more digestible lengths. I kind of miss the creepy, sax and bass heavy sound of their earlier work, but it's hard to be mad at them when they're still releasing quality material like this.

6) The Bombay Connection Volume 1: Funk from Bollywood Action Thrillers 1977 - 1984 (2006)

James Brown and Sly Stone might have created and innovated the funk music scene, but even they probably couldn't have imagined how India would've interpreted it. The Bombay Connection is a compilation of songs from Bollywood action movies that gives us the answer. This is probably the most I've laughed at music that was taking itself completely seriously and still ended up liking what I was hearing.

5) Exuma - Exuma (1970; 2003 reissue)

I'm not sure how an album that mixes together sounds of freak folk, soul, reggae, African rhythms, and a seance, while an eccentric and slightly insane-sounding Bahamian man sings about zombies and voodoo and other stereotypically cool-sounding shit managed to elude my attention for so many years, but I'm really glad the reissue made it easier for me to stumble upon this. This is lightning in a bottle; the very definition of an underground treasure.

4) The Stooges - Raw Power (1973)

Iggy Pop meets David Bowie, reforms the Stooges, and the band take a long enough break from their persistent heroin addictions to record one of the greatest records of all time; single-handedly fathering punk-rock in the process. The chaos surrounding this recording shows through in the epic guitar riffs of James Williamson, making it seems as if the band are doing all they can to contain the energy -- the raw power, if you will -- that's so potent that it's all the band can do to keep it from spontaneously combusting into a cacophonous clusterfuck. They succeed. Barely. Which is all for the best because, really, have you ever tried getting pieces of raw power out of your hair? It's a bitch.

3) Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full (1987)

It would be a mistake to dismiss Rakim as just another braggadocio rapper who's favorite topic to address is how much better he is than you when it comes to rhymes. Realize that this was 1987 and that kind of thing wasn't yet played out. Also realize that Rakim wasn't just bragging, he was speaking the truth. Before him, it was harder to defend that rap was more than just some dude talking over a beat. But after his complex rhyme schemes, metaphors and Five Percenter allegory, anyone making that claim just sounded increasingly ignorant. His status as the greatest rapper of all-time is well deserved.

2) Nadja - Truth Becomes Death (2005)

The best music to come out of Canada since...Celine Dion, obviously. Truth Becomes Death is one of those albums that makes you understand the potential of a genre. Just like Lightning Bolt's Hypermagic Mountain opened my eyes to the potential of noise rock, Truth Becomes Death has helped me understand what drone doom metal, in all it's heavy, suffocating glory, is capable of.

1) Dungen - 4 (2008)

Four. That was the number of years ago that I discovered an album called Ta Det Lugnt from this Swedish band who were starting to make a little noise. I still consider that album one of my all-time favorites. Dungen topped my best albums list that year, and here they are again with another classic. The essential difference between Dungen and other psychedelic bands is that other bands seem to pay tribute to the heyday of the psychedelic era. Dungen, however, seem to have been born into it. They continue to evolve it and innovate it 40 years later.



Honorable Mention
(subtract the older release from my top ten and add these to get my top ten of 2008 albums that were actually released in 2008)

Ancestors - Neptune With Fire (2008)
Neptune With Fire is a stunning debut by Ancestors. So powerful in execution that not even cheesy lyrical themes and my least favorite Arik Roper cover art can hold it back from greatness. 37-minutes, 2 soaring stoner rock epics, both pretty killer.

Slim Cessna's Auto Club - Cipher (2008)
Slim Cessna's Auto Club are an enigma. Cipher seems to be an analysis of faith in America, possibly a celebration, but shit, you just never know with this band. They often tell stories of salvation and damnation. They praise religious folk before they mock them. Pray to God before cursing him. But listening to that internal struggle is what's so appealing about them. It helps that Jay Munly, one of the most fucked-up and interesting songwriters I've ever heard, is co-leader of the band. He's good enough to make me forget that this is essentially a country/bluegrass album and that my brain had been preconditioned to reject that genre. I'm working on it.

Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard - The Dark Knight (2008)
The best film of the year also has arguably the best soundtrack. The dark, brooding feel of the film owes a great deal to the compositions that Zimmer and Howard created, which make excellent use of aggressive string sections, forceful drumming and, as my fiancèe brilliantly put it, "epic brass". The back-to-back combo of the opening track, "Why So Serious?", and "I'm Not A Hero", is an especially jaw-dropping 15-minutes of music.

Caïna - Temporary Antennae (2008)
There's a new wave of black metal going on, and Caïna is one of the more unsung participants in the movement and evolution of the genre. Maybe that has to do with his increasing level of distance from it. Whereas his previous album, Mourner, was more black metal with the occasional post-rock and folk element, Temporary Antennae is more post-rock with the occasional black metal element. But discussion over where this music belongs (I found it in the pop/rock section in the record store, after a few wasted minutes of looking for it in the metal aisle) shouldn't overshadow the fact that this is a solid release for a young, diverse musician who's maturing at a rapid pace.

Harvey Milk - Life...The Best Game In Town (2008)
Sludge, sludge, sludge.

Grails - Doomsdayer's Holiday (2008)
Post-rock with a little eastern influence.