Music In 2008
If you haven’t noticed how superb music has been this year then you haven’t listened to a lot of it.
Things started off well, with Mars Volta releasing Bedlam in Goliath to high acclaim. It doesn’t top their 2005 opus France the Mute but…Well…France the Mute is the best musical work in history, so we can forgive them that. Goliath contains their typical proggish glory, but constitutes a development insofar as they demonstrate their ability to write a song that lasts less than ten minutes. Indeed, the results are so good that they got nominated for a Grammy:
Dan le Sac versus Scroobius Pip released the hip-hop album of the decade, Angles:
But that wasn’t enough to get them onto the X Factor:
An interesting development in this years music is the total disintegration of the division between dance and rock. Always a flimsy one it has now dissolved entirely, as the following videos should demonstrate:
Dance bands playing rock? Rock bands playing dance? Nobody can tell, nobody important still thinks it matters.
Another remarkable phenomenon is the sheer weight of fantastic albums released. All of the videos above come from strong albums, with large amounts of great songs instead of the tiresome strong single/filler set-up. Especially worthy of mention here are Late Of The Pier, who with Fantasy Black Channel made one of the most playful and exploratory albums I’ve heard in a long time. It also manages to stage a sonic approximation of an orgasm:
Foals put out quite magnificently, with Antidotes a well crafted, inter-connected piece of tightness which didn’t disappoint despite the (in hindsight not so) absurd expectations built up around it:
Speaking of which, Portishead. How were they supposed to impress after having been away for that long? By released an album like Third.
An even greater surprise than Portishead finally putting out was Mr. Trent Reznor going from “That guy that takes a decade to perfect one drum loop” to “Prolific” in the space of a year. How? Releasing five albums.
Admittedly much of this could have been a consequence of Ghosts not exactly being what the majority of his fanbase wanted (although I for one adore the ambient, abstract moments on Downward Spiral, see them as the highlight and wish that there had been more) but frankly…He’s releasing this stuff for free now. We are in no position to complain.
Slipknot didn’t release their best album by a long shot, but ooh, new masks:
The Kills, however, did:
And then of course there’s Crystal Castles, the band that add further evidence to the theory that Canada must be the origin of the best new band every year, without fail (see also: Arcade Fire, DFA 1979, etc…)