So the album of this year is the sister album to probably my favourite album of last year, Okkervil River's 'The Stage Names'. As for my other 10 albums well Bon Iver's was the newcomer of the year to my ears showing that three months spent alone in a cabin in Wisconsin can be very productive (though it is probably my idea of hell.) Mark Stewart's first album in 12 years never quite scaled the heights and originality of his previous work, but maybe the world is just finally catching up with him. The Felice Brothers do Dylan and the Band very well, shut your eyes and pretend you are in the Big Pink in 1967. One of three new Lee Perry albums released in 2008 'The Mighty Upsetter' finds him teaming up with Adrian Sherwood again for the first time since 1990.Portishead never really moved me until this album and I think it was down to the sound being more 'dirty' than on previous releases and 'Machine Gun' could well be my track of the year. Christian Fennesz continues to make astonishing records that I get the feeling that only a small amount of people are hearing, why don't cafes play this sort of music in the background instead of the crap that gets served with my coffee?
Dig!!! Lazurus Dig!!! is hilarious. In fact Nick Cave has been hilarious since the beginning. As for Spiritualized, well they never let me down. Too hip to admit liking CSN & Y well just namedrop Fleet Foxes instead and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is someone else who just doesn't do a thing wrong as far as I am concerned, but it is to the wonderful Okkervil River that I keep returning to.
EP of the year award goes to Four Tet's 'Ringers' and my gigs of the year were Low at the East Brunswick Club, Sonic Youth doing 'Daydream Nation' and Wilco at The Palace.
Packaging of the year goes to the Grateful Dead's 'Rocking The Cradle' and my rediscovery of the year was the electric era of Miles Davis between 1969 and 1974. I last listened to 'Bitches Brew' 33 years ago and HATED it. (Maybe I just matured - hah!)
A couple of albums that only just missed out on the best list were 'Stainless Style' from Neon Neon and 'Los Angeles' by Flying Lotus.
Biggest disappointment was Primal Scream's 'Beautiful Future'.
Finally 'the band that everyone seems to get apart from me' award goes to The Hold Steady.
Thanks for the post Mona. I still haven't checked out the new Okkervil River, but I plan to. I'm not a fan of their early work, but the the Stage Names was quite good and made my Top 25 last year.
ReplyDelete"Finally 'the band that everyone seems to get apart from me' award goes to The Hold Steady."
For me this award goes to TV on the Radio. Not a big fan of the Hold Steady either, but they've got a couple songs I kinda like.
I was totally unaware that there was a new Primal Scream album this year. Are they doing the Stones sounding thing or the techno thing for this album?
Jeff
Well agree about TV on the Radio...Primal Scream is a bit of both but is just pretty duff apart from a version of Fleetwood Mac's 'Over & Over' featuring Linda Thompson (as in Richard) which is amazing and made me realize how underated that 'Tusk' era was. However live they are doing Evil Heat/ XTRMNTR stuff at the moment (there are 3 good gigs at Dime at the moment.) But the last two Okkervil albums...
ReplyDeleteThanx for checking out the blog.