An Ear For An Era: 2008

Oh hello there.

These are coming out so spread out that I kind of forget how to do them. Not that there's a way to do them. Just write about it, show you guys some clips for stuff that is cool, and do whatever I want. I answer to nobody but me here.

2008 was an...eventful year. Let's say that. Very early in the year I lost my job, and it was the head end of the big recession. Luckily I kind of managed to avoid the worst of it and got myself a job in July (which I've had ever since). So all of that means that most of the music I had, at least early in the year, was stuff that was offered for free. Mixtapes and whatnot. So keep that in mind.

And of course it was the year of that one election. That was referenced a lot. Remember all the hope and excitement about that election? Remember when Sarah Palin was a scary prospect? Simpler times.

Sorry, I don't mean to scare people off with political talk. But it was a big thing in 2008.

And that was the year I moved to the suburbs for a brief period. That sucked.

Oh! Starting with this entry, this very blog has my thoughts on 2008 FROM 2008! Whoa. Various lists, some thoughts I've repeated here, some things that I still agree with...

http://quietbrandon.blogspot.com/2008/12/its-all-in-one-post-here-because-it.html

NOTE: I got tired of trying to find youtube videos for the hip hop songs I wanted to share. Most were not there. That's the only reason there's such a big break without videos...check spotify or whatever you use to check out these artists.

Okay, let's start here. Hip hop. It was a year where there were some great mixtapes and somehow less great official releases. Nas had The N**** Tape, a highly political album from what I consider a kind of resurgence period of his. Or maybe it was just because that's when I took notice. But he had the pro-Obama song "Black President," which was so inspiring...oh, to be 2008 again. (note: I am being kind of sarcastic but it WAS a huge deal and still is, in ways we haven't even seen yet). Anyway, then he put out his official album that was supposed to be called N**** but he ended up just making it self titled (with still very provocative album artwork), which seemed slightly copout-ish. Make us uncomfortable!

Big Boi released a couple songs purportedly from his forthcoming album (which wouldn't be out until 2010), but they didn't end up on there even though they are amazing. Kind of an Outkast reunion, "Royal Flush" stands as one of my favorites from his first solo album, even if it wasn't actually on it. I was going to post the song here but apparently it's not on youtube. Oh well. Look it up.

Old favorite Del the Funky Homosapien had a smallish comeback with Eleventh Hour, his first album in quite some time. It was just so refreshing to hear a new Del album that there was no way I wouldn't love this album. But shortly after this he got really prolific and I stopped caring so much about his new material. However, revisiting Eleventh Hour, it still holds up very well. I'll gladly throw it on any time.

Another great mixtape came from Rhymefest and Mark Ronson, who put out a Michael Jackson tribute mixtape called Man in the Mirror. Some brilliant mashups of Michael Jackson songs and Rhymefest rappin' along. Some dumb chopped up interview skits were on there as well, but when it hits, it hits just right.

And the other another great mixtape...Wale. Mixtape About Nothing. He's been chasing this high for the past 8 years, I feel. Just brilliant wordsmithing and flow and relating everything to Seinfeld for whatever reason. He was a rapper that could just keep going and going and going (check out the "Roc Boys" freestyle!) and if you were to actually catch everything that comes out of his mouth you would find some really complex internal rhymes and poetry and probably some meaning too.

The most annoying mixtape I got was Ludacris' The Preview. I think it's pretty common on those free mixtapes, but every time the snippet "gangsta grizzills" comes up I want to pull my ears out of my head. Fortunately, his actual official album that it was a preview of was quite good. I liked it more then than I do now, but it has some highlights such as a song bringing Jay-Z and Nas together.

The Roots put out a highly confrontational and brilliant album in Rising Down. I obsessed over this one in 2008, and when it came back on I loved it just as much. Just a great reflection of where we were at in 2008 as a society. If youtube had it, I would have posted the song "Singing Man" so track that one down.

I really appreciated the anti-pop Kool Keith brought to Dr. Dooom 2, in which he needs to repeatedly kill Dr. Octagon AGAIN because some fools thought he should be resurrected. There's a lot of goofiness here but also a lot of genuine justified anger. And creepiness. Of course creepiness.

But don't you just want the FUN? People Under The Stairs put out an album that was just pure fun called Fun D.M.C. Just old school hip hop with a lot of skills and a lot of fun. Track down the song "Enjoy" and enjoy.

Next time you have to go on a run and it's around 66 minutes, do yourself a favor and put on White Van Music by Jake One. Those beats will keep you going for 66 minutes and 26 seconds. With a great assortment of guest vocalists (lots of the best rappers around), it doesn't get old or boring, and those beats man. Those beats.

What about that indie or whatever stuff? Should we talk about that? How about The Magnetic Fields? I kind of consider Distortion the kickoff of their "latter era" (that I hope just lasts forever!)  that has been going on ever since. It was supposed to be a highly distorted sound reminiscent of The Jesus And Mary Chain, but I felt like it had a very similar sound to their own classic 90s albums. Which is a very good thing. The songs can be hit or miss, but mostly hit still. Particularly "Too Drunk to Dream."

The Magnetic Fields "Too Drunk to Dream"

What else was there? Why, The Mountain Goats of course!Heretic Pride was when I was officially a fan going into a new album, and I loved it. It still might be my favorite, although I do need to spend more time with their older material. Quiet songs, brilliant lyrics, passionate louder songs, perfection.

She & Him took me a bit by surprise with their first album Volume One. When I heard about it, I didn't really have any interest in hearing the songs. Then I heard one on a Merge compilation and I enjoyed the girl-group stylings. So eventually I got the album. And it turned out to be completely charming. And they've put out a few albums since then and I always enjoy them, but coming back to Volume One, it does have an amateurish sounding charm about it that will probably make it my favorite of theirs no matter what they do going forward.

Cat Power put out her second covers album Jukebox, which was decent. My favorite two songs were the one original ("Song to Bobby") and the Roberta Flack song found on the bonus disc ("Angelitos Negros" showed me that Cat Power can really wail when necessary!).

The Breeders had a comebackish album Mountain Battles. They have a song in German. And one in Spanish. But I'll need to listen to the German song just to help me learn the language ahead of my trip...hey man, I can write whatever I want on this thing. But I like the Breeders' warm sound and it was all over this album.

Ladytron kind of killed it with Velocifero. Years after people stopped caring about electroclash, they put out this album. Not that it's particularly electroclash. I can never get my electronic music subgenres straight anyway. But there's just so much feeling and energy. This came on while I was running and it just made it so much better.

And then of Montreal followed up the brilliant Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer. Anything they would do would not live up to that. But Skeletal Lamping is a part of Hissing Fauna. It is a continuing saga of Georgie Fruit, the character of Kevin Barnes' id come to life. So on the surface this album is just a bunch of dirty sexy party songs, but beneath you can feel some misery breathing its hot breath, encapsulating everything and giving it a certain unease. I was worried about revisiting this one because at the time I felt like I was the only one who appreciated it, and maybe I was seeing something that wasn't there because I wanted to like it so much. But I can still feel what he put into this album, and it's still a lot of fun but also contains that dread that is more subtle than what Hissing Fauna achieved because the party songs are even more outrageous.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. I'm glad Grinderman was a thing because it properly got me on track to get more interested in Nick Cave projects. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is a great rock and roll album that continues down the track of Grinderman to just punch you in the gut and then keep its fist there, in your gut, while it electrocutes you. Maybe instead of a fist punching your gut it's a guitar. I don't know.

Another great songwriter from that era but in a completely different vein, Jonathan Richman had a great album "Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild," which is indeed in quotation marks. It's just a heartbreaking album, which has two versions of the same song about how we can't block heartbreak. He hits an interesting intersection of funny and sad and thoughtful.

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists put out a quickie EP to raise money for something, I forget what. Related to the election though. I actually saw them play in town with Eugene Mirman (!) because the DNC was in Denver. Anyway. the EP is great and intense.

One of my favorite combinations was KatJonBand, who put out a self-titled album. This album reminds me of walking my dog around our apartment complex in the suburbs. I must have listened to it a lot then to forget I was living in the suburbs. But it was Kat Ex from The Ex (maybe my favorite drummer??) and Jon Langford from The Mekons (and other things). Which makes for a cool combination of folky and driving rhythm.

KatJonBand "Limbo"

Carried to Dust might be my favorite Calexico album. Particularly the three songs in a row that I gave four stars to, which sum up all of my favorite things about this band: "Inspiracion" (upbeat song in Spanish), "House of Valparaiso" (midtempo song featuring Sam Beam), and "Slowness" (countrified slow jam that hits me right in the heart). Can't be beat.

Okkervil River followed up their excellent The Stage Names with the equally excellent sequel album The Stand Ins. More clever lyrics, more of that Okkervil energy, and the best opening song they have (after the previous album closed on the best closing song they have!).

And finally, album of the year obviously went to TV on the Radio for Dear Science. I wrote a lot of hyperbole about this one (I always do!) in that best of 2008 post linked above, if you would like to read that. What can I add that time has changed about this album? None of my love for it has left over the past 8 years. It is an amazing experience to listen to this with some immersive headphones. Just let it wash over you. The production is perfection. It might be the band's crowning achievement, as they built up to this for a couple albums and the ones since then have been more of a denouement as they have scaled back their ambition a bit. So this might be the peak for who I consider the peak band of the past decade. Just the way all the pieces fall into place. The harmonies, the different instruments, the beats, the passion, the chaos, the lyrics, the everything. My two favorite tracks ("Shout Me Out" and "Family Tree") are polar opposites in style, and I love them for completely different reasons. This album hits everything.

TV on the Radio "Family Tree"

Other noteworthy notes:

• I wanted Miss Kittin to outlive the electroclash movement in popularity, but Batbox didn't end up being as successful as it should have been. Still, when I listened again a good 8 years later it held up quite well. Check out the song "Barefoot Tonight."
• Raconteurs' second (and last?) album Consolers of the Lonely came out. Enjoyable stuff.
• And The Kills. Randomly they popped up right after Raconteurs. Before The Dead Weather was even a thing!
• Crystal Antlers rocked so hard!
• Thao with the Get Down Stay Down put out the awesome We Brave Bee Stings and All, which is quite enjoyable.
• And Adele, with 19. Way back when!
• Similarly, I did like Duffy.
• Remember when Lykke Li was a new thing? Youth Novels has so much more of a twee sound than her recent albums, kind of a poppier El Perro del Mar. But I like it.
• And of course El Perro del Mar. From the Valley to the Stars takes the sadness of the first album and puts it through an AM radio of pop.
• Why? put out what I think was their first non-hip-hop album Alopecia. Just a lot of cleverness that I appreciated.
• I wanted to like Emmylou Harris' All I Intended to Be more than I did, but it's still worthwhile for a few choice cuts and always worthwhile for her amazing voice.
• Al Green with a late career stunner produced by ?uestlove!
• The first Titus Andronicus album was pretty great, but really just a preview of things to come.
• Santogold! That used to be what she went by! 
• Momofuku was the first Elvis Costello album I was slightly less jazzed about. I'm not sure why. There are still a couple stunners, and as I look over the track listing more than just a couple, but after The Delivery Man I don't know what I was expecting...
• Those Flight of the Conchords guys are hilarious! I'm going to see them this July at Red Rocks!!
• Neat, Beck produced by Danger Mouse!
• That Girl Talk album Feed the Animals is some mashup magic, and the best thing for running (aside from White Van Music).
• Little Jackie had some fun sass, I remember discovering them when they played on Conan (whichever show was on at the time!)
• Randy Newman hit a similar place to Jonathan Richman.
• Fleet Foxes. I dig it. Their next one ended up being my favorite of that year. But I don't remember the first one (and preceding EP) well enough to write about it properly at all.
• Nada Surf is pleasant always.
• Smoking Popes came back to this world and Stay Down was a quite good return.
• DeVotchKa was quite great on A Mad and Faithful Telling.
• According to my entry from 2008, I loved The Odd Couple by Gnarls Barkley. I still enjoy a couple songs, but I don't know what that was about. I don't dislike it, but it didn't stick out to me on the revisit.
• Oh, and Kanye did that 808s & Heartbreak album. People on the Internet seem to like/love that album for some reason. Any of my friends I talk to (who like Kanye otherwise!) agree that it is not good. I don't know what we're missing. I thought revisiting it would be a revelation but instead I just kind of hated it again. I get it, you want to create a crying robot or something. But the songwriting itself is sub par, I'd much rather listen to some actual singing, and pop has been done so much better by so many others. I mean, if this is what it took to get Kanye where he needed to be to put out My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, so be it. It's worth it and everything. But I still do not like 808s and Heartbreak and I don't suspect I ever will.

(EDITED TO ADD: I forgot to include the playlist for my mix! here it is!)
Nothing We've Actually Seen Has Been Mapped or Outlined
1. Fleet Foxes "White Winter Hymnal"
2. Gnarls Barkley "Blind Mary"
3. She & Him "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"
4. Jonathan Richman "When We Refuse to Suffer"
5. Frida Hyvonen "Birds"
6. Okkervil River "Lost Coastlines"
7. TV On The Radio "Shout Me Out"
8. Miss Kittin "Barefoot Tonight"
9. Ladytron "They Gave You A Heart, They Gave You A Name"
10. Bill O'Reilly "DO IT LIIIIVE!!!!!!!!1111 (DiscoTech Mix Version 2)"
11. KatJonBand "Crackheads Beware"
12. The Magnetic Fields "Too Drunk to Dream"
13. of Montreal "Gallery Piece"
14. The Roots featuring Truck North, Dice Raw & Porn "Singing Man"
15. Atmosphere "Yesterday"
16. Calexico "Slowness"
17. The Mountain Goats "Lovecraft in Brooklyn"
18. Ludacris featuring Nas & Jay-Z "I Do It for Hip Hop"
19. Wale "The Freestyle (Roc Boys)
20. Rhymefest "Can't Make it"
21. Big Boi featuring Andre 3000 & Raekwon "Royal Flush"
22. The Breeders "Here No More"

Next Time:

What comes after 2008? 2009. That means Dirty Projectors, Mos Def, and The xx. Lots of other stuff. Sonic Youth, St. Vincent, The Antlers, Yo La Tengo, Japandroids, and even more other stuff. It actually looks pretty good!