Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Festive Bestuv/Best Of Best ofs 2008



1. Best-Of Roundups

2. 2009 Schedule


1.


Recommended Blogroll Best-Ofs:

Failing the Rorschach Test: The Best Albums of 2008: from #30 to #21; #20; #19 ("and then eventually to #1). Example - "Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life: There was a lot of good hardcore music released this year. This wasn't even in my top ten." Plenty of hardcore/punk/screamo/post-rock/crescendo-core...

Geek Down, Best of 2008: Rock Albums, including Grails, Shooting at Unarmed Men, Mogwai and Have A Nice Life plus one other. Also, Rap and 'Pop Art' albums.

The Prisonship: Bestuv 2008, pt. 1: Haven’t Heards, Haven’t Heard Enoughs, General Trends. Example, 'Haven't Heards' - "No Age: I dunno, Bob Mould likes it". Also including Zomes, Earth, 'shoegaze' - i.e. "lush, rich gtr-blankets draped over sex-vocals with the feet-cymbals peaking out from under them blankets".

Last Train to Cool/Worship and Tribute (Sputnikmusic writers)

Still waiting on: Zen and the Art of Face Punching (his Best of 2007 list, from February 2008!)


Irish blog lists:

Swear I'm Not Paul: Best of 2008: Irish Blogs & Publications, Update 6 - like Largeheartedboy's worldwide aggregate list, but actually manageable.

Nialler9's Irish Albums of 2008 Reader's Poll: Jape and Rarely Seen Above Ground (see HfN: Year End November) at #1 and #2, streets ahead of the rest; Fight Like Apes at #3, Chequerboard at #9, So Cow and Ham Sandwich at #15 and #16 respectively.

Those Geese Were Stupefied: Best of 2008, including Interlude 2: Homemade, stapled-together super-limited EP, So Cow - Wackity Schmackity Doo (Unreleased); and Interlude 3: Free Download, Dublin Duck Dispensary - Luanqibazao, review by Brian Kelly, a.k.a. So Cow - example: "It's been tagged as no-fi. Incorrect. This is fi. It's pop-fi and it's smile-fi. It's gallop-fi and it's fist-fi."


Best Combined Post-Mcluskyite Inclusions in a List:

Gimme Tinnitus - Top 51 Downloadables of 2008 including Future of the Left, 'Adeadmanalwayssmellsgood' - "Award: Best awesomeness of the year" and Shooting At Unarmed Men, 'Boredom Is The Feeling That Everything Is A Waste Of Time' - "Award: Best song that took for fucking ever to be released in the states of the year".


Best/Most Inappropriate Description of Ham Sandwich - Carry The Meek:

Egoeccentric, Evil Bob's Best of 2008: "6. ...Ham Sandwich's first album mixes perfectly the female vocals of surprise preggers Niamh Farrell and fucking mentaller Podge McNamee to make some great pop-rock tunes. Great stuff all round."


(and thus) The Two Best Albums Of The Year That Almost Nobody's Heard (Yet):

Triptych.zip

Carry the Meek.zip

(If you like, buy: Shootingatunarmedmen.com, Eathamsandwich.com)


2.


Best of Albums of 2006*, including:

Envy, Insomniac Doze

Shooting At Unarmed Men, Yes! Tinnitus!

Si Schroeder, Coping Mechanisms

The Bouncing Souls, The Gold Record

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

*because it takes a year to hear about all the really good albums, and another year to appreciate them properly.


Looking forward to in 2009:

Dan Deacon, Bromst

and So Cow Greatest Hits LP

and Bats - split 7" with Fist Fite and forthcoming full-length album.


Happy New Year!

5 comments:

Karl said...

Honoured to be one of Ireland's best best ofs - I'm just shedding light on one the most overlooked formats in music today.

If Egoeccentric waiting a while, they could've said "surprise preggers five-figure cash office thief Niamh Farrell" too.

Karl said...

Or, wait, that was posted afterwards.

Busy year for her, either way.

cretin said...

cool post! I've been wondering about Triptych and Carry the Meek for a while now, as you've been promoting them for the better part of the year, so it'll be nice to check those albums out. plus there should be a good deal of reading material here to look over, so that's great too, considering that this is usually a slow time of year

Joseph said...

Thanks for the links, Gabba. And great idea with the 2006 list, it's true about needing time to discover and process. I used to update my yearly lists on Rate Your Music every so often and I'd be so surprised at my old rankings and how they'd changed.

I'm really enjoying this Vampire Weekend now. The baggage I brought to it has almost disappeared. I might make a revision to my Rock list and throw in in there.

gabbagabbahey said...

karl - I need to link to the latest interlude, if that record is a good as its review it should be pretty great.

er - "five-figure cash thief"? can you elucidate that or are we getting it libel territory here? Or was this major news story borken in Hotpress's stunning “How Irish Women are conquering prejudice and making great Rock ‘N’ Roll” cover feature without me knowing?

cretin - yes, since April to be precise. there were a couple of tracks from each in various mixtapes, but they're such great albums.

joseph - Vampire Weekend probably fits better into 'pop art' than rock. but then again, maybe not.