Xoxobra's Best Other Stuff of 2008

Xoxobra's Best Other Stuff of 2008
In part two of the Best of 2008, I'll focus on the random categories. Tomorrow, I'll post my picks for the Best Albums.


Best Cover Art
Boris - Smile
A metal band makes an album with a bright yellow foam package encased in soft plastic with the front cut out in the shape of a heart. Nothing else even had a chance to top this. Not even close.



Best Music Video
"Toe Jam" by The BPA (Brighton Port Authority) [dir. Keith Schofield]
It may not be the most dynamic music video but the concept is pretty genius. Get a bunch of hot, young people to run around naked in a shag-carpeted house reminiscent of a 70's porn flick and make such creative and funny use of the censor bars that it actually makes you forget that a bunch of hot, young people are running around naked (kinda not safe for work, of course).



Best Debut
Ancestors - Neptune With Fire
They wore their Kyuss influence on their sleeves a bit, but that doesn't mean the album didn't rock. They managed to combine equal parts psychedelic rock, stoner metal, and post-rock. I'm anxious to see how many genres I like they can cram into their sophomore release. Bollywood, maybe?

Best Concert
Sigur Ros - 9/30/2008 at the Marquee Theatre (Tempe, AZ)
Yeah, so this was one of only three concerts I went to this year, but that doesn't mean it wasn't awesome. It was good enough to reestablish my faith in the band, which was wavering a bit as I had begun to realize that their last truly great album came out six years ago. They're still a good band on album, but when it comes to the live show, they're better than they've ever been. Three cheers for gratuitous confetti.



Most Disappointing Album
TV On The Radio - Dear Science
The fact that this album produced two of my favorite songs of the year shows how good TVOTR can be when they go out of their comfort zone. Unfortunately, for the majority of Dear Science and their previous album (Return to Cookie Mountain), they didn't stray from that zone often. This band annoys me, because they're so fucking talented and they've got what it takes to truly innovate music, bust through genre's at will, and dominate any form of music they attempt, but instead they waste their time pigeonholing themselves within the fickle realm of indie rock. They can be so much more than that.

Worst Album
Scott Walker - The Drift
I didn't pay money for this. It was actually at my local library and I checked it out because I remember it being one of the more acclaimed albums of 2006. I'm glad that I heard this under those circumstances, because that means I didn't have to waste anything but my time to listen to it. I'm not sure if there exists an analogy that properly explains how shitty this is. It's just one pathetic failed experiment. When it tries to be brooding and atmospheric it ends up being boring. When it tries to be dramatic and scary it ends up being utterly laughable, like some prepubescent crackly-voiced teenager in a cheap mask that jumps out at you and growls during any number of shoddy "haunted house" productions that go up around town during Halloween, except I have no incentive to hold in my laughter so as not to make the kid feel bad. I mean, at least he tried. I'm not sure if I could even say that much for Walker.

Weirdest Album
Scott Walker - The Drift
Did I mention the part in the middle where it sounds like someone's beating a piece of partially thawed meat with a stick? I think it's supposed to be artistic or some shit, making me contemplate the fragility of life. Or maybe aggressive masturbation, I don't know.

Best Movie
The Dark Knight
I guess if this movie proves anything, it's that I'm way less indie than I thought I was, and also that my Batman fanboy phase is determined to last well into adulthood thanks to Chris Nolan. But who cares if this was the biggest, most hyped movie of the year when it so emphatically lived up to the hype? Even the introduction and brief, awkward ending to the Two Face saga wasn't enough to derail it, and Two Face is one of my favorite villains.
Runner up: Milk
This could've been a really sappy tearjerker but it wasn't. The saddest thing about this movie is that I didn't know that Harvey Milk was an actual person until I heard this was coming out (I was familiar with the band, obviously, but I never thought to look up the origin of their name). He's pretty much the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the gay rights movement. It's baffling to me why gay rights advocates don't use his image to their advantage.

Best Book
Hokkaido Highway Blues (re-released in the US as Hitching Rides With Buddha)
A travel writing book by a Canadian-born writer who made a living teaching English in Japanese high schools, and later, inspired by Alan Booth, decided to hitchhike the country from one end to the other and document his travels. Very funny, insightful and well-written. I read a number of books on Japan this year, and this was one of the few written by a Westerner that analyzed the culture without making broad generalizations or portraying the Japanese in a condescending manner, as if the writer were viewing some sociological experiment featuring some lesser species. As a result, I feel like I learned more about the culture than anything Lonely Planet has ever put out. And on top of that, I laughed out loud more times than I can count; more than any book has managed to do in recent memory. This was one of my favorite passages, when he's reflecting upon the origin of the sometimes perplexing use of English in Japanese pop culture:

"My students in Japan were determined to reduce English to mathematical dictums that could then be reassembled...When I ran into one [of them] out of uniform in a t-shirt that read ENJOY MY BROTHER!, I challenged him to explain the phrase. It was a wager, really, because I promised him ten thousand yen if he could do it. This young man was our top student, destined for one of Japan's finest universities, and he took up the challenge with confidence. "Enjoy is the verb," he said, "my is a possessive pronoun and brother is the object. The subject is understood to be you, which makes the sentence a command phrase. The exclamation mark adds urgency." He then held out his hand for the money. "But what does it mean?" I said. He looked at me, utterly baffled, and said "Enjoy is the verb, my is a possessive pronoun, brother is the--" Needless to say, I didn't pay him the ten thousand yen and he is still bitter about it. In his mind, he did explain it and all I did was welsh on a bet."

Best Website
Rate Your Music (www.rateyourmusic.com)
The design might not be attractive, and it's not going to drop recommendations into your lap à la LastFM or Pandora, but those people who really like to dig for music will find no better tool than this user-supported database. If it's not the place where I find out about a new artist, it's the first place I go to learn more about them.


Stay tuned for the best albums list!