Favorite Albums of 08

I’m calling this “Favorite Albums” instead of “Best Albums” because I know I’ve probably missed a few of the best ones, in fact I’ve been so busy this year that I’m sure of it. For example, my brother Kevin tells me that there is a really good punk/techno crossover thing going on right now but I haven’t had time to get into it. But from what I’ve heard these are the best albums of 2008.

The Killers, Day and Age. The Killers have demonstrated why they are one of the best things happening in music right now. Day and Age doesn’t quite match the near perfect song writing and pop-craft of Sam’s Town or the overall feel of Hot Fuss, but it’s close. This is a solid album. I like almost every track especially: Loosing Touch, Human, Spaceman, A Dustland Fairy Tale, This Is Your Life, and I Can’t Stay. I heard some early versions of the tracks that were mixed with a lot more techno and I was a little disappointed to find that they took some of that out for the final product but still this is an incredible CD.

Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs: This may be the best Death Cab album ever. If not, it’s a close second to Transatlantacism. I Will Posses Your Heart is probably the best song of the year. I didn’t think that people trying to make hits dared to write songs over 8 minutes anymore and certainly not with five-minute intros. The track is perfect. I love Grapevine Fires it tells a story, paints a picture, and sets a mood with flawless execution, possibly the best lyrics of the year. I also like Your New Twin Sized Bed.

Metallica Death Magnetic: With St. Anger I dismissed Metallica, choosing to instead listen to Ride the Lighting and relive the glory days. I mean St. Anger was an entire Metallica album without a single guitar solo. The whole album was Lars pounding on drums atop a cement floor as hard as he could to prove that he was still hardcore. And then there were the lyrics. Now lyrics have never been Metallica’s strong point. Every album has had its moments where the lyrics make you cringe and a lot of the songs rely on clichés, the most obvious sign of weak writing (there are a couple of Metallica songs with truly great lyrics. I’m thinking of Master of Puppets and Battery). But the lyrics on St. Anger were especially bad “Saint Anger ‘round my neck, he never gets respect” and “my life-style determines my death-style.” Now that’s deep. But the final nail in the Metallica coffin was when I saw them on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show talking about their group therapy sessions in some sort of sob-fest with a bunch of 40-something Oprah-ites. The painful memory still haunts me. Plus they had clearly demonstrated that they were only in it for the money and would sell out for anything and go after their fans for money. I like Robert Trujillo and his prior work but I thought his addition to the band was a mistake (something I have to take back with this album).

But then Death Magnetic came out this year and it kept getting good reviews so I decided to get it. Here was the Metallica I remembered, the one that spent eons in the studio getting things right. Musically Death magnetic is very good, on par with the early alums. Of course there are still a couple of lyrical hiccups like “love is a four-letter word.” But who cares, I like every track on the album.

Paul Jacobsen and the Madison Arm: I still find myself listening to this on a fairly regular basis. See my prior post.

Coldplay, Viva La Vida: A solid release from a great band. The EP Prospekt’s March is also very good.

Ray Lamontange, Gossip In the Grain.

The Mars Volta, The Bedlam In Goliath. A bit of a disappointment compared to their previous work but still worth a mention.

Song Nods
Some of these were ITunes freebies, many of them I got for free off of download.com, and a few are from albums that I bought that aren’t quite good enough to warrant a mention above.

Republic Tigers, Buildings and Mountains. Second best song of the year.
Sam Sparro, Black and Gold
Grupo Fantasma, El Sabio Soy Yo. Possibly the best Latin song ever.
The 88, Go Go Go
MGMT, Kids and Time to Pretend
Dark Captain Light Captain, Jealous Enemies
Belanova, One, Two, three, Go!
Snoop Dogg, My Medicine
Kathleen Edwards, Buffalo
Ludovico Einaudi, Andare. Beautiful and the only new classical piece I found all year.
Cut Copy, Lights and Music
David Hopkins, Amber and Green. My friend Mac used to manage this guy. Seriously, this is a great song I think you can still get it for free on Download.com
Blitzen Trapper, Furr
Adele, Hometown Glory
We the Kings, Check Yes Juliet.
Gran Ronde, Wisdom
RuRu, Elizabeth
The Broken West, Auctioneer

Best Albums of 07

As Promised, here is my “best albums” of 2007 list. I know that it’s late but at least it’s the only one out right now besides. I had to make an all day trip to Amoeba Records now that I have some more free time being that it is spring break (yes, I can spend all day there). So here are my favorite albums of 07, again in no particular order.

Rocky Votolato: The Brag and the Cuss. Ok, it’s not nearly as good as Suicide Medicine but almost as good as Makers and that’s saying a lot.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand. I know this is on every best of list this year so I’m not telling you anything new but this is a really god album. I think My favorite tracks are Killing the Blues and Gone Gone Gone. I liked the version of Please Read The Letter even more than the original as heard on Walking Into Clarksdale (which by the way is the best post-Zeppelin album the guys ever released). I was also presently surprised by the appearance of Allen Toussaint’s Fortune Teller, though the est version of the song still belongs to The Who on Live At Leeds. Raising Sand has Great sound, great feel, and is an album that I listen to over and over again.

Martin Sexton: Seeds. From the first track on it just feels so good. Stream it at http://www.martinsexton.com/discography/seeds.html

Smashing Pumpkins: Zeitgeist. The triumphant return of one of the great bands of my youth

The Cult: Born Into This. The other triumphant return of one of the great bands of my youth.

Radiohead: In Rainbows. This was a truly brilliant move to put more money in the hands of the band by bypassing the label completely. Heck, even those who don’t pay you anything give you enough info to put them on a mailing list so you can get them to go to future shows, buy merch, the next album etc… But is this going to revolutionize the music industry? No. There are tons of bands giving their music away on Myspace and download.com and before that it was mp3.com. But name one big act that was broken by these mediums. Can’t think of one, can you? The problem is the internet is all noise. There are so many bands out there and some of them are good but it is impossible to filter through them on a large scale. Sure individuals can find stuff they really like and small communities can be built up on the web but for a band to make it commercially (this is the music business after all) they need marketing on a massive scale. And that takes money, money that labels happen to have. Labels have been the traditional filter perhaps that will change but not through set your price distribution. The reason it worked for Radiohead is first, they are Radiohead, already a hugely commercial success that stands out above the noise. And second, they got free advertising on the nightly news because what they were doing was so novel. Do you think the media is going to report on every band that is giving its music away especially when no one has ever even heard of the artist before? So it’s a brilliant idea for Radiohead and maybe for other large acts as well but unfortunately it cannot and will not revolutionize the industry. This is because the heart of the record industry is breaking new acts and set your price is not marketing it is only distribution. True the labels are no longer needed for distribution but if you want to make a living doing nothing but music you need someone to put money behind your act to market you to the consumer. Maybe when the big four labels have finally killed themselves off from stupidity and failure to adapt we will find another way. Best track: Reckoner.

Band of Horses: Cease to Begin. Not as good as the first album but still very good though it’s a little short. Is there a Ghost? is a song I listened to over and over again when they first released it on their Myspace page.

Jimmy Eat World: Chase This light. Not as good as Futures but then again it’s not as depressing as futures either. I loved Futures but man was it sad. I certainly can’t put it up there with Clarity either. But this upbeat album from a band that I had feared was just going to get more and more depressing is a welcome relief.

Foo Fighters: Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace. Perhaps I’m still on a high from how great In Your Honor was but this album is still pretty good. Summer’s End is probably the best track. Once and For All is a close second. I also really like The Pretender, Stranger Things Have Happened, and Long Road to Ruin.

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero. I can’t call my self a NIN fan, in fact some of Trent Reznor’s work makes me want to puke but this is a great album. Check out In This Twilight. This song is almost inspirational. I know, it’s hard to believe that I’m talking about a Nine Inch Nails song but I am. Plus the album is mostly free of the shock rock, obscenity, and blasphemy that is characteristic of much of Reznor’s other work. Those of you who think that Nine Inch Nails has nothing to offer, I urge you to at least check this one out.

Eddie Vedder: Into The Wild Soundtrack. Didn’t catch the film. I liked the book despite the fact that Krakauer has an annoying tendency to mix fact with fiction in his “histories.” It was cool when Wallace Stegner did it (not to mention the fact that he did it much better, his histories also qualify as literary masterpieces on par with is fiction) but the discipline of history has changed. It has become a much more serious enterprise with a rigorous attention to citations and a new insistence that historians should shun speculation. So I get annoyed when people try to present their works as histories when they don’t live up to the high standards of the profession. Krakauer spends most of the book speculating on McCandless’ motives even ascribing the author’s own motivations to his subject. Those who are not familiar with the tradition of mixing literature with history, as perfected by DeVoto and Stegner, may be confused when they read something that does not live up to the documentation that is expected of historians today and may even simply accept these literary liberties to be fact. But I digress. Hard Sun is a great song.

Ben Kweller: Live & Solo at The Artist’s Den. Typical Ben Kweller performance his shows are always a lot of fun. Ben is also a first rate songwriter. I really like this version of Thirteen.

Norah Jones: Not Too Late. Love Thinking About You, also the music video for Sinking Soon is great. I like Little Room as well.

Best Films of 2007

I know most people do their “best of the year” movie reviews at the end of the year, but I see most of my movies on DVD. Blockbuster online is such a bargain and it’s not exactly comfortable to snuggle with my wife in those theater seats but my couch works just fine. Besides, everyone else does their reviews at the end of the year so perhaps this one will be at least a little more interesting by virtue of its novel timing. In fact it’s such a good idea (if I do say so myself) that I may do a best of the year music blog in a later addition.
So here are my favorite flicks of last year in no particular order.

I Am Legend: Kind of like Cast Away but with zombies and explosions. I also loved how the Bob Marley music broke up the tension. “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Seriously, something about his music just slows your heart rate the second it comes on.

Rescue Dawn: Werner Herzog’s films have this overwhelming sense of reality and this one is no exception. There’s this one scene I can’t get out of my head. It’s where one of the characters is sitting there playing with these plants that close up when you touch them. So natural, so real.

Enchanted: Amy Adams was great.

The Simpsons: I laughed a lot. Plus it was a whole event in and of itself. They even converted the 7-Eleven down the street into a KWIKI MART.

As you can see April was very exited to be there. Here I am as a Simpsons' charachter. You can try it yourself at
http://simpsonizeme.com/

The Company: My brother and his wife gave me the DVD’s of this movie/mini series. It’s a great spy thriller with a lot of accurate and some inaccurate history that follows some fictional and some historical figures through almost the entire history of the CIA. Well acted (especially by Michael Keaton who plays James Jesus Angleton the real life “spy hunter”), extremely well written, and historically accurate. I also happen to be reading Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, a very well written informative albeit somewhat biased history/op ed piece of the CIA.

Ratatouille: Great animation, great voice acting, great story.

The Bourne Ultimatum: I liked the first Bourne but I didn’t think it was anything special but the second and third installments have had a lot of depth as spy thrillers and have done so somehow without sacrificing any action.

In the Shadow of the Moon: I was absolutely fascinated with the in depth personal descriptions of what it was like visit the moon. I felt as if I somehow experienced the trip myself. Also the collection of foottage is fantastic.

Breach: I know this the third spy movie on the list but it was a good year for spy movies (The Good Shepard almost made the list as well but not quite). This one is a true story.

Live free or die hard: A lot of fun, as always.

Spider man 3: Liked way it was solved. The protagonist and antagonist actually worked their differences out instead of settling them in some abandoned factory.

Harry Potter 5: Not as good as #4, but still had a good time. April and I saw it Imax 3-d, Fun.

Dan in Real Life: A great little comedy.

Rocky Balboa: Redemption for the series after #5.


No Country For Old Men: I've liked every film the Coen brothers have made. The scenery was stunning, the villain was a modern classic, and the suspense level was up to eleven for much of the movie.

Juno: There were a few things that bugged me about this film but it was cleverly written and I laughed a lot.