My Top 40 Albums of 2008: Numbers 16 Through 9

So, we've come to the second last installment of my Top 40 Albums of 2008. Before plunging into the fray once more, I will attempt to remind you of what music the summer of 2008 brought with it. July kicked off with releases by Beck, The Black Ghosts, Ratatat, The Hold Steady, and an excellent Kitsune remix album by Digitalism. The month ended with albums from post-punk veterans Wire, CSS, Bodies of Water, Little Ones, Friendly Fires, The Black Kids, and The Great Northwest. Of course there was also a rather disappointing new album from Primal Scream and the debut from Ida Maria, whose song Better When You're Naked has drilled a painful hole into the back of my skull.

The latter half of summer, namely August, saw records from Vanilla Swingers, The Faint, Noah and the Whale, Late of the Pier, The Stills, Ra Ra Riot, and Pop Levi. There were also records that have already appeared in this countdown, including those from Van She, The Deer Tracks, and Duchess Says. August also brought the solo debut by Conor Oberst, which I confess confused me since I figured he essentially was Bright Eyes, and The Airbourne Toxic Event released their debut album, culminating in pointless, unwinnable wars with Pitchfork. And there was the seemingly inevitable comeback album from The Verve that I frankly didn't need.

Almost there...

16. We Just Are - The Japanese Popstars

Though this debut from Irish electronic outfit The Japanese Popstars is yet to release in North America, I'm still counting its release as in 2008. It is everything I've been waiting for in an electronic record after the excitement over Justice, Simian Mobile Disco, Boys Noize, and Digitalism last year. There are mind-shattering moments of violent electronics balanced with gentle percolation of synth sound and flashes of laser. In essence, there's a sophistication to the gritty power of the beats - it's a bit like being bloodily taken out by a hitman in a very nice suit.

Sample Whore - The Japanese Popstars

Delboys Revenge - The Japanese Popstars

15. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

I'm not an expert on Nick Cave - I only own some Birthday Party and his From Her to Eternity album. But I like to think I know a fantastic album when I hear one and the latest from Cave and his Bad Seeds is just that. After his Grinderman project, Cave appears to have returned to his older group in fine form with dark, vivid storytelling and his haunting habit of weaving a spell on par with mysterious religions; Cave's rich, raspy voice is that of a worldly preacher who has already seen plenty of fire and brimstone here on Earth, but who has also encountered the ridiculous in humanity's flaws and had a good, smoke-rattled laugh about it. I already included the excellent single that shares its title with the album in a previous mix, but that gives me an opportunity to showcase some of the other great tracks on a record which takes you on a journey through raw rock soundscapes and dusty midnights the colour of loneliness. If anyone can commune with the recently raised from the dead and show them a good time, it's Nick Cave.

Night of the Lotus Eaters - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

More News From Nowhere - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

14. Do You Like Rock Music? - British Sea Power

British Sea Power's third album seemed to crash through the barricades at the start of this year, raising the Brighton-based band's profile around the world. This record fuses the band's trademark arcane wit with heart-fluttering songs that recall the spiritual intensity of artists like The Arcade Fire. Songs like No Lucifer and Waving Flags took unlikely subject matter of impending apocalypses and immigration and created anthems of inspiring beauty, and then songs like Lights Out For Darkier Skies, Atom, and Down on the Ground justified the record's title a thousand times over. A light aura seems to permeate the entire album with a gentle glow that works its way into your blood until every cell in your body is singing.

Waving Flags - British Sea Power

Atom - British Sea Power

13. Limbo, Panto - Wild Beasts

This record was unexpected in that it completely marches to its own drummer. And the drummer is a fey public school boy with a multiple personality disorder and a touch of satyriasis. The Klaus Nomi-inflected vocals with Finn Andrews-like anguished growls paired with the quirky patchwork of musical styles and equally offbeat, though literate, lyrics made for an endlessly interesting listen. Some may hate this album, but I love it. And I suppose, in the end, it's one of those kind of records.

Vigil For a Fuddy Duddy - Wild Beasts

Woebegone Wanderers - Wild Beasts

12. Surreal Auteur - Allegories

While I may not listen to all that much ambient music on a regular basis, Canadian duo Allegories transcends this particular genre, and all other genres for that matter. The intricate tapestry of this debut album is composed of three major movements that wash over you with unknowable yet familiar sounds, connecting with parts of you that you didn't know existed until its gauzy web tapped into your nervous system. This record reaches inside you and plants roots, ensuring your imagination will blossom with your own narratives.

Grass Toboggan - Allegories

Acro(nym) - Allegories

11. Everything/Everything - Simon Bookish

This album defines the current Information Age where everything comes at you all of the time, and classically-trained songwriter/musician Simon Bookish (real name: Leo Chadburn) has the skills to communicate the hubbub and overload via music perfectly. The jumble of musical styles and tempos convey urgency and apathy in equal turns as it bounds from brass clarion calls to vaudeville chamber pop to electronic whizzbangs. Bookish's hushed baritone is the voice of our times as he ruminates from what sounds like a fortress designed by Roald Dahl.

The Flood - Simon Bookish

Victorinox - Simon Bookish


10. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke

And so the parade from Modular continues - their A&R people deserve many an accolade. Ladyhawke AKA Pip Brown had been skipping about my radar a long time before her debut album actually released. She has managed to glean and utilize all that was good about 80s electronic music without sounding passé or ironic. The high drama of Magic mingles with the streetwise cool of Manipulating Woman, the disco inferno of Paris is Burning and the driving shimmer of Back of the Van. Her voice has just the right amount of laidback distance and husky attitude and her music is like the solidification of all your favourite, but ephemeral, musical memories.

Magic - Ladyhawke

Professional Suicide - Ladyhawke

9. Velocifero - Ladytron

Another lady, so to speak. This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and thankfully, it delivered brilliantly. It will always be difficult to top Destroy Everything You Touch, but this record battles towards that territory with self-assured, measured steps. The fuzzy beats, crisp drum machines and austere synthesizers circle each other in an emotionally taut dance. Highlights include the glam stomp and celtic chant of Ghosts, the clipped rhythm and haughty chords of Deep Blue, and the incessant pulse and infectious groove of Runaway. Named after a stylish Italian scooter, this album projects an atmosphere of clandestine meetings and daring escape. Absolutely mesmerizing.

Ghosts - Ladytron

Deep Blue - Ladytron


The honourable mention this time is the self-titled album from Eugene McGuinness (perhaps I should have made this a countdown of my top albums from slightly eccentric wordy people). This album is full of gleeful jabs of repartee and impish rapiers of drollery while also including melodies bristling with energy and invention. I first became aware of McGuinness via my friend, Lisa, who found a music video on YouTube; his songs about being down a rabbit hole define both of our lives most of the time, so it figures she's the one who found him first. Life is strange and so is this album, which suits me fine.

Moscow State Circus - Eugene McGuinness

Next week the upper echelons of my countdown will be revealed - from what I can tell, I'm not really converging too well with anyone else's list, but you probably already noticed that. Considering there haven't been any more comments for this series one way or another, I will take the silence as agreement, or at the very least, tolerance. Or perhaps indifference. No matter. This weekend also brings the second part of my weekly mix year-end round-up.

Babbling Beauty: Allegories' Surreal Auteur

Though the Hamilton band Allegories has apparently been popping up on various blogs and on CBC Radio 3 many months ago, I only just discovered them and their debut album Surreal Auteur, and I'm thoroughly impressed. The band, which consists of Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell, have created a sonic epic that is naturally human in its myriad unnatural sounds. Like their name, Allegories can be so many things at once, whole yet apart. Surreal Auteur's twelve tracks are split into three movements: Grand Ascension (Curtains), Marvellous Man & Mouse and Worthy Conclusion for Zanglust Our Hero. According to Allegories' MySpace, the narrative of the album begins thusly:

The story of Zanglust has persevered through the ages to become a legend of downy softness proportions. His life became an inspiration to over a million ants. Our story begins at the Crustacean Circus, with the most renowned antcrobats of the time. The tragedy opens with Zip and Zap Lust letting their obsession with public fornication accidentally destroy their lives.

How could that not grab my attention? The story continues with equal measures absurdity and whimsy, a mixture that reminds me a bit of The Mighty Boosh. You can read the entire story here. In regards to the music: while there is definite homage paid to the prominent shoegazers and dreampoppers, including My Bloody Valentine, Sigur Ros and Cocteau Twins, the way this album flows seamlessly into itself and its sense of sonic storytelling reminds me of Mew's And the Glass Handed Kites. Because of this seamlessness, I'm not going to discuss each track individually; rather, I will go by each major section.

The album's first section, including Acro(bat)/When I Hold My Breath, Like This; Shaking Like a Leaf; Surf's Out/The Tumult; and Stage Fright, begins with a swell of violins and liquified noise, soon to be joined by gentle, cooing vocals that reverberate like whale communication in the placid depths. The mood gradually shifts into sunny piano and cymbal flourishes like someone pushing and propelling him/herself to the surface. The atmosphere becomes darker as small clicks of feedback occur over a backdrop of low tones and surges before expanding into clarity and majesty once more. About fourteen minutes into the album, a militant dirge starts up, which is intermittently disturbed by dissonant guitar chords and draped with haunting voices before descending into a void.

The second section, which includes Summer Market, Winter Racket; Aww, Ooo, and Others/The Orchid and The Epiphyte/The Burying of the Hatchet (Mike Love's Back); Killed a Carrot; and Peaches, begins with another surge, frosted with bells and laced with dreamy vocals, and the airiness is supported by the earthiness of strummed guitar. The music eddies and swirls until it feels like you're being drawn into whirlpool of otherwise dark, brackish water. And the chorus of voices sound like they are celebrating before distilling themselves into an acapella bridge. Then the music slows down and a low, knocking rhythm pulses beneath the surface like violet veins. As the music comes down again, buzzes and clicks step to the foreground only to be superceded by the serene plinking of strings - this particular portion makes me think of a verdant rainforest, pregnant with moisture and the subtle movement of fauna. The sonic landscape then collapses in on itself in chaotic gasps and unsettling, garbled noise until flatlining into a faint buzz.

The final section, which consists of Grass Toboggan; Zanglust/Tom's a Ladder; Fish Water Desert Trapeze; and Acro(nym), vibrates to life with frenzied hums and calming vocal tones. As the impatient, tapping of snares pushes the rhythm along, the music bursts into bloom in flashes of sonic watercolour. Then, like the tuning in of a radio dial, snatches of voices and squeals of different songs, stitched together by static, converge into a postmodern symphony of sorts. While vocals murmur to themselves, beeps and whizzes creep in over top of broader, cavernous echoes - scrambled signals across a universe as black as a dilated pupil. Just as metal clanks of what sounds like tools edges in, the music abruptly changes tack into a gliding lullaby. Breathy vocals careen about the stratosphere, unfurling themselves like feathery wings. Entering into the final phase of the album, the music hovers low like mist in a valley. Voices of different tones compete with each other in a euphoric cacophony before drifting into pulses and white-hot feedback.

You can stream the entire album here and then buy it here. Many of those who have already reviewed this album have compared it to being in the womb, and I can definitely see their point; there is something distinctly alive about this album. It seethes with natural sounds that are run through a prism that simultaneously divides and conjoins in an imperfect symmetry. There's a method and harmony to the nonsense. Surreal Auteur speaks a primordial language as beautiful as the first strains of people finding their tongues at the Tower of Babel.

Summer Market, Winter Racket - Allegories

Shaking Like a Leaf - Allegories