Favorite Albums of 2008 - Part 2

Oh music. How you fluctuate. While these currently stand as my favorite, as Erik pointed out on the last post, odds are it will fluctuate a lot between now and whenever I think about my favorite albums from this year again. Based off listening to new albums and listening to other albums a few more times, half of this entire list could turn over over the next few months. Just to forewarn you.

Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for...my top 20 albums of 2008 (See here for albums 21 through 30)!

1. Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground - Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground
2. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
3. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
4. Anathallo - Canopy Glow
5. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
6. Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
7. Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell
8. Frightened Rabbit - the Midnight Organ Fight
9. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
10. Portishead - Third
11. Sigur Ros - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
12. Albert Hammond Jr. - Como te Llama?
13. Kanye West - 808's and Heartbreaks
14. Jamie Lidell - Jim
15. The Week That Was - The Week That Was
16. She & Him - Volume One
17. Dr. Dog - Fate
18. Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
19. The Walkmen - You & Me
20. Santogold - Santogold

Favorite Albums of 2008 - Part 1

I love lists so much. Going through them and ranking everything is an awesome time guaranteed for me, even though it's a lot of work typically. As part of the end of the year, I'm provided many list opportunities which I will be rolling out over the next weekend. I'm going to start with my favorite albums of 2008, but before I unveil my top 20 of 2008, I'm going to share the ones that didn't make it.

So see below for my 21st to 50th favorite albums of the year, and yes, I did actually listen to this much music this year. This isn't even the full list, amazingly enough.

This also further closes the gap between myself and Pitchfork's taste in music, which scares me a lot. While they had plenty of music I didn't have (or have ever heard of for that matter), we had a lot of overlap in favorite albums. Which I hate. Kind of.

21. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive
22. TV on the Radio – Dear Science,
23. M83 – Saturdays = Youth
24. Deerhunter - Microcastle
25. Of Montreal – Skeletal Lamping
26. The Stills – Oceans Will Rise
27. David Byrne and Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
28. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
29. Portugal. The Man – Censored Colors
30. Department of Eagles – In Ear Park
31. Nada Surf – Lucky
32. The Slackers – Self Medication
33. The Streets – Everything is Borrowed
34. Islands – Arm’s Way
35. Lykke Li – Youth Novels
36. Flight of the Conchords – Flight of the Conchords
37. Ratatat – LP3
38. Mutyumu – Ilya
39. Los Campesinos! – Hold On Now, Youngster…
40. Styrofoam – A Thousand Words
41. Fleet Foxes – S/T
42. Shearwater – Rook
43. No Age – Nouns
44. Coldplay – Viva La Vida
45. Does It Offend You, Yeah? - You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into
46. Forgive Durden – Razia’s Shadow
47. Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
48. Little Joy – Little Joy
49. AC/DC – Black Ice
50. Kings of Leon – Only by the Night

Times...well, they're a'changin'

For quite some time, I've pretty much hated Pitchfork Media. They love their snide reviews, digs at albums that may or may not deserve it, and seemingly, they live to be the ultimate musical elitists. In short, they stand for everything that's wrong with music, the polar opposite of equally wrong vapid pop stars and emo stars with swooping haircuts paired with too tight jeans.

Yet with every year I become a little more accepting of them as my tastes change. While I may disagree with their hatred of Anathallo and love of Black Kids, we do have a lot of incidental overlap. Today they released their "Top 100 Tracks of 2008" and it was a list which I looked at, scoffed, shook my head, and said "not bad Pitchfork. Not bad at all."

Why's that?

Unbelievably enough, the banes of my musical existence had two songs in their top 10 that are favorites of my own this year, not to mention three others which I really, really enjoy. Their list is loaded with tracks I quite like (or even adore in some situations).

It's just so weird, seeing their list and finding my favorite track this year (M83's "Kim and Jessie") and one of probably my top five favorites (Cut Copy's "Hearts on Fire") cohabiting their top 10. Aren't I supposed to hate everything Pitchfork has to offer?

I'm afraid to find out what is the truth - are they getting more mainstream, or am I getting more elitist?

Ugh.

Best of 2008 coming soon

As I'm sure everyone is excited to hear, this incredibly amateur and overly self important blogger will be rolling out my "best of 2008" lists very soon. I'm thinking about doing comics, TV, movies (although I'm going to wait on this, as there are way too many movies I have yet to see), and music. Mostly excited about music, as I've actually been working on that bad boy for some time now. Expect all of them besides movies before Christmas, with my top 20 of 2008 for music being rolled out on December 26th.

It'll be my special Christmas present to you all!