BBO’s Top Ten of 2008

[Email subject line] Best of year post

JKneale: Ere, shall we do this?

Angrybonbon [follow up phone call]: Go on then.

And so it came to pass that BBO had what amounted to an AGM to finalise their top ten albums of 2008.  And as the top five pretty much picked themselves it was straightforward affair with only a minor amount of trading of horses at the tail end.

So in order of merit/scrobbling/lounge, tram and washing up listening, here they are:

1. British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?

A shoe-in. We blogged about this lot four times this year and saw them three or four times as well. Not as off-the-wall as the first or as polished as the second but we have both played this record to death all year long.

No Lucifer (Efrim Menuck Mix)

2. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

Pop, 2008-style, but with added lysergic interludes. Resistance was useless and they seemed to be everywhere.

Weekend Wars

3. Fuck Buttons – Street Horrsing

Pulling off the almost impossible feat of being simultaneously aggressively noisy and soothingly hypnotic, Street Horrsing is probably the most refreshing thing we’ve heard this year. Still haven’t got the first clue what they’re ranting about though.

Race You To My Bedroom/Spirit Rise

4. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

Well, this could have been higher, but that’s the thing about lists. A storming record that sounds like a band still broadening their horizons while keeping the hooks and the stories about hardcore and drugs.

Stay Positive

5. Micah P Hinson – Micah P. Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra

Heartbreaking, passionate, intimate and cinematic, Micah’s latest offering had us staring wistfully and weeping gently. Beautiful.

The Fire Came Up To My Knees

6. Julian Cope – Black Sheep

We like the fact that the Arch-Drude manages to piss off as many people as he pleases. His testimony to outsiders and the transgressive had us smiling, grimacing and tutting. Brilliant.

These Things I Know

7. A Silver Mount Zion – 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons

Apparently people are getting fed up with post-rock because it all sounds the same. Not from this lot it doesn’t. Clever people making frighteningly intense but still essentially simply music.

BlindBlindBlind

8. The Black Dog – Radio Scarecrow

Proving there’s still much life in the IDM dog (ahem), Radio Scarecrow mixed beats, harmonies and EVP to forbidding affect.

Flood v3.9

9. Fucked Up – The Chemistry of Common Life

A relatively late entry, and still not properly reviewed here, but my word what a record. Hardcore for people bored of the usual grind; imaginative arrangements (flutes!) and epic songs, but most of all, poppy hooks and frenetic energy.

Son The Father

10. Kontakte – Soundtracks to Lost Road Movies

Track 2 on Soundtracks to Lost Road Movies is entitled ‘Motorik’, so no prizes where this lot are coming from. Yet the result tingles the marrow and journeys you elsewhere.

Ghosts of Electricity

That’s your lot! Though in the bubbling under category for ‘08 (i.e. we can’t be arsed to do a top 20 or 30), in no particular order we have:

Eine Kleine Nacht Musik – Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, Shout Out Louds – Our Ill Wills, Working For a Nuclear Free City – Businessmen & Ghosts, Steeple Remove – Electric Suite, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Secret Machines – Secret Machines, Adem – Takes, The Indelicates – American Demo, Portishead – Third, The Accidental – There Were Wolves.

A couple of re-issues or re-masters:

The Wonder Stuff: Eight Legged Groove Machine 20^th Anniversary Edition, Stupids – Peruvian Vacation (and others)

Not a bad year then…

Angrybonbon and JKneale