Top Five Albums of 2008

Justin Vernon (who is Bon Iver) self-released this album in 2007, but I didn't get around to listening until this year (when it also got picked up by Jagjaguwar and re-released) so it goes on this year's list. Besides, how embarrassing would it be to only manage a year-end Top Four list?

Considering that "Bon Iver" is an approximation of the French for "Good Winter", it seems strange that this is the kind of music I can only really listen to and appreciate in summer (Sigur Rós are another good example of this odd phenomenon), but on reflection I suppose it is not so surprising. The atmospheric chilliness and claustrophobia¹ would threaten to stifle life altogether in winter, but in the lethargy of summer it's as welcome as a fresh breeze.

For Emma, Forever Ago is a contemplative, beautiful album, at once simple (a guy and his acoustic guitar, additional instrumentation sparse and unintrusive) - and gorgeously rich (Vernon's voice overdubbed so many times, sometimes, that you wonder how he can possibly perform these songs live). Never belabouring grief or sorrow, Bon Iver paints an intimate picture of time spent sitting alone, waiting for the thaw.

My love affair with Scottish indie rock began last year with The Twilight Sad (if you don't count Mogwai as indie rock, which I don't), and continued blissfully this year with Frightened Rabbit. Their previous album Sing the Greys was uneven and unremarkable enough that even the delectable Scottish accent on display couldn't get me to like it. Fortunately, The Midnight Organ Fight is much more cohesive, assured and just plain rockin'.

Scott Hutchison's lyrics have copped some flak for being clunky and "turgid", but they work for me (and I am usually super-picky when it comes to lyrics that sound naff). The album is blunt and honest - thematically centred around a breakup, it doesn't take the expected route of having the narrator play victim to an evil woman, instead frankly exploring the highs and lows of muddling through modern relationships. And it's not above being crude, either, most memorably in the immortal line You're the shit, and I'm knee deep in it.²

This was a 2008 release for me, because I didn't download the pay-what-you-like 168kbps version (I probably wouldn't have even had I not been travelling at the time), opting to wait for the delicious physical release. Even though I didn't have a turntable, listening to the CDs at a slightly more reasonable bitrate seemed worth the wait. It had been four or five years since Hail to the Thief, after all.

In Rainbows did not disappoint. Commenting further on any Radiohead album, but especially one as hyped and dissected as this one, would be superfluous.

If you have looked at this blog in the last couple of weeks, you may be aware that I love (love love love) the Mountain Goats. Three out of their previous four albums were absolute knockouts³, so to say that I was excited to hear Heretic Pride would be a gross understatement.

In some ways it is a departure from previous Mountain Goats material, in that the outcasts who populate the album aren't always regular, struggling people messing up their own lives anymore; John Darnielle has laid down an extra layer of metaphor along with the full-band sound and polished studio production, so that now we have actual monsters in amongst the emotionally troubled loners and desperately clinging couples. On the other hand, Darnielle's minutely-detailed lyrics and all of his esoteric references to weird culture reassure longtime fans that nothing has really changed, in the end.

Until Heretic Pride, all of the Mountain Goats albums since 2002's All Hail West Texas have been tightly held together by overarching themes and subjects, even those that were not explicitly autobiographical. The fact that this comes across more as a collection of songs, closely connected but still quite distinct, is probably the only reason why Heretic Pride doesn't take the number one spot for me this year; for all that I love every song on the album, it can't boast the strength of personality that my absolute favourite albums always have.

Rook is my album of the year. Flawless from beginning to end, it defies rational description. Some words that I have thought about in connection with this album and then failed to string into sentences: apocalyptic, swoop, majestic, dread, transcendent. Transcendent dread, apocalyptic swoop. Jonathan Meiburg, recent escapee from Okkervil River, sounds like a choirboy exploding and that is just the right thing for him to sound like.

1. Vernon recorded much of the album in an isolated cabin, having retreated from the wider world [↩]
2. If there exists a more brilliantly schizophrenic nine words in pop music, I have yet to encounter them. [↩]
3. I haven't been able to really get into Get Lonely. Someday, maybe. [↩]