The Best Records of 2008

In Uncategorized on January 6, 2009 at 10:20 pm

2008 was a year where my musical age really started to pop up like the number of grey hairs around the temple region of my head. Still there was plenty of good music to be had, even if finding them meant sifting through hundreds of records to find an album that didn’t sound like one hundred other bands who would be forgotten about by the end of the year.

These are the ones who rose to the top, my most listened to records of the year, more or less.

1. The Drive By Truckers – Brighter than Creation’s Dark

Expectations were high on this one. Would they be able to live up to the consistency they’ve maintained over the years? What effect would the departure of guitarist/songwriter Jason Isobel have on the rest of the band?

A double album? Aren’t those usually affairs where the strongest stuff could be distilled down to one record?

Well all questions were answered on the first go around. And there were two not-so-good-songs, “Bob”, and “You and Your Crystal Meth.” Bassist Shonna Tucker pens two tracks, the stellar exercise in heartbreak, and a true story based loosely, I think, on her divorce from former band-member Jason Isobel, “I’m sorry Houston” and “Home field Advantage” Patterson Hood continued to create masterworks, centerpieces that showcase his ever expanding musical palate.

Cooley on the other hand, really gives the rest of the band a run for their money by writing some of his best songs ever. Is there a better country song out there then “Checkout time in Vegas”? I don’t think so.Legendary lap steel player Spooner Oldham plays on almost every track on here, and seeing him live really added a sturdy sense of intrigue to every track.

It took months to really hear all the nooks and crannies on this set, but it remained a highlight throughout the year, and their live show, well, I don’t know of another performer who is happier with performing on stage than Patterson Hood and his Drive by Truckers

2. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

I saw both The Hold Steady and the Drive by Truckers on their package tour, and while no one brings it on home live better than the ‘Truckers (OK, maybe My Morning Jacket), The Hold Steady sure did a fine job of gunning for the top spot. Craig Finn had honed his writing skills on the interim between “Boys and Girls in America” and “Stay Positive”, creating these rhyming couplets that absolutely get lodged up in the listener’s brain like an obsessive thought, a loose tooth, a fingernail you absolutely have to pull off.

“Second dates and lipstick tissues, New York is pretty heavy, girl I hope it doesn’t crush you.” The way the words rhyme in a way that tells the story and matches perfectly with the line before it, “Magazines and daddy issues, I guess your pretty pissed, I hope you still let me kiss you”

The songs on Stay Positive were more song oriented, and less story telling was involved, but there was a sense on “Stay Positive”, that the level of momentum from their previous efforts was cresting on a wave of “Born to Run” inspired rock coupled with one of Rock’s most gifted songwriters.

3. Deerhunter – Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.

I didn’t care for Deerhunter’s first record, and did not expect this one to take hold with the sheer ferocity that this double album did. I still prefer the comfortable blanket of fuzz that seems to be cloaked over every song on “Microcastle”, and while it brings to mind the shoe-gazing era of My Bloody Valentine, its shot through with enough of the wide eyed optimism, or maybe drugs, to pull the whole thing off. It takes a few listens, but “Microcastle”, and “Weird Era Cont.”, because I heard them as one album straight through, even in the age of I-tunes, it was hard for me to separate the two, and I prefered the porterhouse meal of fuzz and druggy rock found within both albums, among the ones and zeros of these some twenty five mp3s.

4. Ryan Adams and Cardinals – Cardinology

Ignore the cop-out album title, ignore the fact that Ryan Adams’s image is more tarnished than that of the acting career of Mickey Rourke, forget the tabloid-chasing singer and his compulsive desire to release every song and album he seems to record on a monthly basis, the fact that cannot be ignored is that Ryan Adams has refined his writing skills to a much finer point that before, and the results are nothing more than sparkling.

Within each song there is the soul of someone who has rebuilt their entire life, so as listeners we get the opportunity to see into his new self, and look at the demons that crop up, the band gels so well together on “Go Easy” and “Sink Ships” that instead of a Ryan Adams solo record, it sounds more like the cohesive sound of a band in full control of its powers, who has walked through hell to bring out these songs, these timeless songs, that stayed with me longer than any other record released in 2008. Even for a die-hard Ryan Adams fan like myself, there is relief and joy to be found in the clarity that Ryan Adams has found. Long may he run.

5. Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst

Its no coincidence that this year was more “adult” than any other. I was dealing with first time fatherhood and maybe for the first time in my life, actually feeling like an adult, and coming to terms with all the neurosis that comes along with it. Because of this, my listening habits became more streamlined, and my need for structure and stability led me directly to this record. It’s not enough to say that Conor Oberst is in full command of his talent, so instead of his lines and singing coming across as overwrought, or sounding like he is trying to break the record for number of words in one song, he instead uses his talents and writes in a language that is clear, strong and wrought with symbols, without the structure weighing down the songs.

It’s effortless and timeless and rocks like a monkey, if a monkey could, or would, rock.

6. The Felice Brothers – The Felice Brothers