THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2008
1. Gnarls Barkley, “The Odd Couple”: The first collaboration between singer Cee-Lo Green and master producer Danger Mouse, 2006’s “St. Elsewhere,” was a playful, jokey romp of nostalgia that spawned the unanimously admired megahit “Crazy.” Their follow up, “The Odd Couple,” didn’t generate anything that came close to that single. That’s the most common complaint about the album and, in fact, perhaps the only valid one. “The Odd Couple” is not only a matured improvement, it’s loaded with more imagination than anything else this year. Blitzing through totally different musical landscapes on every song with unlimited vividness, the duo not only grows exponentially on “The Odd Couple,” they prove themselves the rarest kind of great artists – the ones with enough creativity to perfect anything they choose to.
2. City and Colour, “Bring Me Your Love”: For the second time, Dallas Green steps away from Alexisonfire to deliver straight-up acoustic bliss-driven by raw, painstaking emotion, performed with considerable proficiency. If you happen to have the album with you during hard times, the thing plays like a gift from the heavens.
3. Jaguar Love, “Take Me to the Sea”: Two-thirds of the Blood Brothers, the brilliant hard-core band that happened to be making the greatest music of the century, team up with a stray member of Pretty Girls Make Graves for the year’s best new band, one that truly honors the singularity of its creators’ roots. Compared to almost universally misunderstood music of the Blood Brothers, the band’s dabbling in glam, doo-wop, and synth pop show a slight new lenience towards accessibility. But make no mistake: There’s hardly anything out there right now that sounds like Jaguar Love.
4. Beck, “Modern Guilt”: There’s a few things about Beck’s eighth album that are uncharacteristic. The songs are often grounded to conventional song structures rather than going in nearly as many places as a Beck song can; the topical lyrics are grimmer than anything he’s written since “Sea Change; and at 34 minutes, it’s about half as long as a typical Beck outing. But then again, the 10 songs on “Modern Guilt” are all more inspired, more original, and more fun than what most any lone songwriter could execute with such ease.
5. The Last Shadow Puppets, “The Age of the Understatement”: Arctic Monkey frontman Alex Turner teams up with soundalike pal Miles Kane for a side project that unexpectedly puts rock almost completely on the backburner for a blast of retro revivalism, Spaghetti western and 007 anthems, and theatrical grandeur, all performed with an impressive maturity well beyond their young ages.
6. Nine Inch Nails, “The Slip”: Trent Reznor’s eighth NIN release, and the second one of the year, features more anger – I’m talking pure, put-on-the-album-and-hate-the-entire-world-anger –than anything he’s done in about a decade. Ah, it’s such a good feeling. And just to add insult to injury, Reznor, freed of the record company constrictions he battled for years, gave the whole thing away for free on the Internet, paving the way for him to become rock’s independent maverick of the digital music era.
7. Guns N’ Roses, “Chinese Democracy”: Yes, Axl Rose’s 14-years-in-the-making pet project is every bit as overstuffed and bombastic as any casual music fan could have guessed it would be. But it’s also really good. Hard to listen to, sure, and it definitely isn’t real Guns N’ Roses. But no matter how afraid I was that the album’s novelty would wear out after one more listen, Axl’s obsession triumphed: The songs always held up.
8. People in Planes, “Beyond the Horizon”: After two albums, this Welsh quintet remains one of the most overlooked new bands of the last few years. But longtime fans, rejoice: Where the band could have dulled itself down to grab more people the second time around, People in Planes’ music remains as forceful and outstanding as ever.
9. Vampire Weekend, “Vampire Weekend”: This New York band’s cheery debut was fresh and universally enjoyable enough to instantly make them the biggest in-die act of the year. The album’s just extremely fun to listen to over and over.
10. Brian Eno & David Byrne, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”: In 1981, these two geniuses paired up for the uneven classic, “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” which crafted songs entirely from found sound clips long before the age of sampling. They re-team 27 years later for something completely different: A kind of techno-influenced gospel record, ingenious in its craft and often heavenly in its execution.
Jason Silverstein is a senior at Williamsville North.
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