I was going to rant a bit here about how horrible lists are. In December it seems like everyone is in a rush to list their top 10 of everything. You know, I used to love this season! But I find myself caring less and less what credible publications regard as their ‘definitive’ best fifty albums of the year, mostly because, if anything, lists serve as a nice way of filling out the slow Christmas season with content. What actual ‘content’ these lists provide, I’m not sure. I don’t trust these arbitrary canon or zeitgeist fabricators though, and they’re godawful boring!
In a climate where mediocrity, fence sitting and retrograde hipsterism are prevailing trends in ‘championed’ or ‘critically acclaimed’ pop music, I find myself looking for the weirdest albums I can lay my hands on. To be honest, this has been my agenda forever – ever since dad showed me Hendrix’s ‘Third Stone From The Sun’ – but nowadays it feels like the tendency is growing and subsuming my tolerance for anything vaguely ‘normal’, much to the frustration of well-adjusted peers eager to share the new Fleet Foxes.
So without further ado, here are the five albums this year that were just stunning, for me. In no particular order. I hope you enjoyed them too.
Vincent Over The Sink – 22 Coloured Bull Terriers
This came completely out of left field. I’ve listened to this album a sickening amount of times this year and I reckon I probably know the lyrics better than Matt or Chris do. I love how lethargic and exhausted this album sounds at times: it’s all lazily blotted melodies, hazy bucket-bong drone, with a hilarious, insomniac inscrutability about it. 22 Coloured Bull Terriers manages to be completely bonkers mad, but still occasionally poignant and touching. I’m still in love with it, some 10 months onwards.
The Bug – London Zoo
I listened to this album during a massive Philip K Dick trip earlier this year. I think this was really hitting home halfway through Dr Bloodmoney, Dick’s post-apocalypse novel set in California, a world away from London. You’d think JG Ballard would be a better literary accompaniment to this album – probably is – but Dick and Kevin Martin both have the art of dread down pact. Listening to this album makes me feel meek sometimes, so colossal is the rage. Warrior Queen says it best: “What’s wrong with this fucking world man?” If there was one album in 2008 that felt important, this would be it. This makes MGMT’s celebration of affluent hedonism seem cancerous.
The Caretaker – Persistent Repetition of Phrases
This album isn’t much different to The Caretaker’s previous excursions – with the possible exception of Pure Anterograde Amnesia, an album that fractured The Caretaker’s ghostly ballroom apparitions until they were completely unrecognizable. Persistent Repetition of Phrases took the opposite route: the source material was right at the forefront here, to the point where you could prosaically regard a track like ‘Lacunar Amnesia’ as ‘catchy’. It’s just so beautiful though, this eminently sad music. It fits perfectly next to William Basinski’s rotted reel tape masterpiece The Garden of Brokenness. I’ve tried to write about this album so many times, but I’ll need to clumsily admit that I can’t properly explain the way this music makes me feel. Apologies.
The Advisory Circle – Other Channels
I love how colourful all the Ghost Box albums are. So melodious! Not afraid to be pretty sometimes, though also quite disposed towards veering into seriously fucked-up territory (catch that guttural “MUUUUUMMMMY” at the end of ‘Eyes Which Are Swelling’ – it scares me every time). This is the type of music I listen to on sunny Saturday mornings. True story.
Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna
Cyclic Defrost’s John Tijha did a great interview with Gang Gang Dance a few years ago, during which Brian DeGraw indicated that the group’s previous LP – God’s Money – didn’t at all turn out the way they wanted it. “We wanted the sound to be more of a bass heavy and sharp percussion oriented thing,” DeGraw said, “Like something that could fit sonically or production wise into the playlist of hip hop radio.” They didn’t quite get it on God’s Money, but they certainly have here, and the payoff is enormous. The internet, as per usual, has a great deal to say about this album: it generated a lot of discussion, especially in regard to Grime MC Tynchy Stryder’s contribution during ‘Princes’. In my eyes, there’s absolutely nothing regrettable about this album. It flows perfectly and even the most unconventional or plain silly ideas somehow work: an amazing feat considering how many seemingly unconsolable elements have been tossed into the mix. I should also mention that ‘House Jam’ works especially well if you listen to it twice in a row. Really hits the spot. Song of the year.
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