Accidentally swept away by the mainstream?

Some thoughts on the best music of 2008

I have long grown accustomed, when asked what kind of music I listen to (by the majority of casual askers), to muttering something about it being stuff they wouldn’t have heard of. This time every year, I read every single critics’ top-whatever list, in magazines, in newspapers and on-line, and usually find only one or two which I have in my own list, and often experiment by buying the commonly-agreed best album(s), if I did not already have them.



This year, however, much to my surprise, I discovered a startling overlap between every best-of list and my own list, and that in almost every case I owned at least half the relevant top ten. Either I have finally been carried from my own meandering tributaries into the mainstream, or the mighty Nile has altered its course to join my little stream. It’s a bit of a shock, and I am not sure whether to feel comforted in affirmation of my taste, or worried that my tastes are becoming populist (although I have never been a believer in obscurity for the sake of it).

Anyway, here are some thoughts on the top albums of 2008:

Glasvegas, discovered late and downloaded with the Christmas EP based on the reviews of the package, was album of the year without a doubt and led me to the shocking realisation that young guitar bands from my large neighbouring island, which I had ignored for most of the last decade, could make brilliant music occasionally. The combination of sweetness, noise, heavy accents, and beautifully-written words of tender love, sadness and hooliganistic vulgarity, sometimes in the same sentence, were completely new for me and blew my socks off.

TV on the Radio was another startling discovery, as almost everything written about them and ‘Dear Science’ raised my heckles – funk, art rock etc. However, this was simply great stuff, and songs like ‘Halfway Home’, ‘Family Tree’ and the wonderful ‘Dancing Choose’ had me re-evaluating my entire musical belief system, like an agnostic suddenly witnessing an undoubted miracle.

I also mostly loved Vampire Weekend, and ‘Walcott’, ‘M79’, ‘Campus’ and, in particular, the goofily mad ‘Mansard Roof’ never fail to bring a smile to my face when I hear them; it's a pity some of the rest of the album, despite the overall brevity, failed to excite me as much. I also tried hard with Elbow and a weird thing has happened; while, for me, the whole album has not yet lived up to its reputation, some individual songs, particularly ‘Weather to fly’ and ‘One day like this’ keep breaking out of various playlists and grabbing my by the throat, demanding to be worshipped and mostly succeeding. This one seems to be a slow grower, and I fully expect to have to reconsider the whole package from scratch in the future.

Closer to home, Cork’s own Mick Flannery established his own sound on ‘White Lies’ and moved away from his debut’s debt to Tom Waits and, while his noisier moments still do little for me, he wrote his first true pop song in ‘Tomorrow’s papers’ and produced three atmospheric late night classics in 'Safety rope', ‘California’ and ‘Arise now’.

I was less excited than most critics about Nick Cave’s ‘Dig Lazarus Dig’; there is no artist for me in such erratic touch with the better angels of his nature, and more capable of swinging between extremes of darkness and light, and so each album for me must be judged individually on whether he is Jeckel or Hyde on the days of recording. ‘The Boatman’s Call’ is surely one of the most beautiful albums by anyone anywhere, and is at one end of his spectrum; ‘Lazarus’ has arisen at the far end, barely visible from the warm heights of ‘Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for’ and ‘There is a kingdom’, and too far into his noisy place for me.

Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, who between them hovered up a lot of high best-of chart placings, both brought out good debuts, each of which bore a different sound and a couple of really interesting songs, but would not have been at the top of my list. Interestingly, my one-off download of the year was Fleet Foxes and Wilco covering ‘I shall be released’, put out to encourage young voters to come out for Obama in the US Election; this directly or indirectly led to one of my two most emotional TV moments of the year when he was elected, the other being Glen and Marketa winning the Oscar for ‘Falling Slowly’.

Old reliables like REM, Lambchop, The Cure and American Music Club all produced albums which, while in every case comfortingly familiar and reminiscent of their finest hours (all of them having provided me with some particularly fine hours in years gone by), felt somewhat disappointing and not up to former peaks of glory. I did try hard with Portishead, but must admit it scared me more than wowed me. The Killers and Coldplay adhered to the '50% principle' and the 'single song syndrome', respectively, the former producing an album which was half brilliant pop songs, half forgettable filler, and the latter producing an overhyped album with one fantastic song only, the irresistably stirring orchestral pomp of the title track.

The year also produced my favourite line of music journalism in a long time, if not ever, when Brian Boyd of the Irish Times, in his end of year review, described Sigur Ros’ album (another thrilling discovery for me this year) as the music Tolkien would have heard in his head when he was writing The Lord of the Rings – an absolutely perfect description.

Finally, the song of the year has to be the bizarrely-named but utterly beautiful ‘Boobar come back to me’, from Tindersticks’ ‘The Hungry Saw’. The bit near the end where Stuart Staples begins to duet with himself just takes my breath away. The 'irresistibly addictive tune of the year award' goes to the magnificently titled ‘Sequestered in Memphis’ by The Hold Steady (the quiet bit with the horns and handclaps alone would make the most cynical smile).

All in all, a great year for music, and time will tell whether my taste has really changed for good – or just the rest of the world’s!