My Top 40 Albums of 2008: Numbers 32 Through 25

Okay, here's the second installment of my Top 40 Albums of 2008. Before we dive into the countdown, I'll jiggle your memory over some of this year's releases in March and April. March came in like a lion with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Billy Bragg's Mr. Love and Justice, The Boxing Lesson's Wild Streaks & Windy Days, The Young Knives' Superabundance, Supergrass's Diamond Hoo Ha Man and Hercules & Love Affair's debut self-titled album. March seemed to go out like a lion as well with releases from Crystal Castles, Fuck Buttons, We Are Scientists, These New Puritans, Neon Neon, The Kills, The Dodos, Devotchka and The Raconteurs. This was also the month we saw the release of Elbow's Mercury Prize-winning The Seldom Seen Kid and the hugely overrated Foals' Antidotes (what happened to that math rock fad anyway?).

April saw the return of some heavy hitters like REM and Portishead in addition to sophomore albums from Frightened Rabbit, Jim Noir, Cut Copy, The Kooks (why in the name of all that is pure and sacred?) and The Long Blondes ("Couples" being one of my bigger disappointments this year). There were also releases from Clinic, Tindersticks, Polysics, Tokyo Police Club, The Indelicates, M83, The Black Keys, and Moscow Olympics. Lastly, there was also the release of a double disc from Apparat full of remixes by and of the German artist.

And so we forge ahead to the list...

32. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp

This album was one of the surprises of the year when it released in February. Gone were the sleazy glam beats; instead, a gentle, vulnerable psychedelic-folk stood in their place. Perhaps it was a bit of a return to Felt Mountain, and it could seem like a regressive trajectory when most artists have started with psychedelic-folk before leaping headlong into glam, but it is a refreshing rebirth. With Alison Goldfrapp's soaring, spine-tingling vocals and a warm, sensual beauty to the music, Seventh Tree still retains the ambient side of electro. Seventh Tree feels like climbing into an old, dusty wardrobe and finding yourself in a pastoral world full of speaking beasts and dryads or like slipping through the shivering surface of a looking-glass and revelling in a flower garden that can converse with you. It is innocent and frothy, yet it commands like a gypsy circus come to steal you away.

Clowns - Goldfrapp

A&E - Goldfrapp

31. Die Off Songbird - Maps of Norway

This is the Minneapolis band's sophomore album and it is an incredibly efferevescent piece of post-punk, full of propulsive guitars and singer Rebecca Leigh's dynamic vocals awash in a disorienting reverb. Leigh wavers from Debbie Harry to Elizabeth Fraser against an insistent moody background of driven rhythm and glacial accents. Often, Leigh's vocals are exotically incomprehensible, but the cadences and tone make you not want to bog yourself down in lyrical detail. There is a patience to this album, a willingness to submit to a brilliant few bars and repeat them until they build into a monumental payoff of magic spell-like proportions.

Cage the Lions - Maps of Norway

The Runout - Maps of Norway

30. Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair

I was a little perplexed to hear that Antony Hegarty from Antony and the Johnsons would be helping to front a disco band. Then when I heard the result, I was sold. In fact, Blind should be one of the top singles of the year. Hegarty's warbliness, which usually puts me off, transforms into a sorrowful soulfulness that works perfectly with the disco-influenced electronics. The combination of the other two vocalists, Kim Ann Foxman and Nomi, adds a breathier, funkier counterpoint to Hegarty. To me, this album is more about loss than celebration; at the same time, it pulses with a streetwise will to survive and to move on to a retro bassline. Hercules & Love Affair will definitely enter the mythology and pantheon of electronic music.

Time Will - Hercules & Love Affair

Athene - Hercules & Love Affair

29. The Devil, You + Me - The Notwist

It has taken this German band six years to follow up their indie hit Neon Golden, and it was worth the wait. It still has the moody shoegaze atmosphere to it that Neon Golden had, but it has shed the warm quirks for a metallic spinning. The record reminds me of a swiftly tilting planet, a balletic behemoth singing to itself as it makes its way through the vacuum of space. The lyrics seem more haunted and dwell more on the fallibility of people. The wobbly dissonance of songs like Where in This World projects an image of hurtling through frozen space and drifting through the grinding friction caused by the music of the spheres.

Gloomy Planets - The Notwist

Gravity - The Notwist

28. The Jade Motel - Zeigeist

Despite the fact Zeigeist has been rumoured to be connected to fellow Swedish electronic act The Knife, this album seemed to come out of nowhere for me, and it smacked me in the face. Pretty hard. It is just one of those perfect electro albums that mixes caustic, but sexy vocals with hard-hitting beats and buzzy synths. The unhinged performance of tracks like Tar Heart runs up and down your body like fizzy electricity, and tracks like Bunny make you feel like you're trying to keep your balance in a funhouse. There's a hint of violence and insanity about this record - something JG Ballard about it - and it makes you want to spend the night.

Tar Heart - Zeigeist

Wrecked Metal - Zeigeist

27. The Stand-Ins - Okkervil River

I hadn't really gotten into Okkervil River until this year, but I'm so thankful that I have. They aren't just straight-ahead folk - there's an unexpected wit and propensity for expansive pop-rock sensibilities. Their latest album is just as amazing with its variety of bitter ballads and humourous upbeat tracks. The itchy impatience of Lost Coastlines is a fantastic piece of storytelling, depicting the mental state of someone unsure of the future. Its music canters about in unpredictable, yet familiar, ways as vocals switch back and forth. And songs like Singer Songwriter are worthy of Morrissey or Luke Haines in their articulate barbs: "You come from wealth/Yeah, you got wealth/What a bitch, they didn't give you much else/I heard cuts by The Kinks on your speakers/I saw Poe and Artaud on your shelves/While The Last Laugh's first scene on your flat panel screen/Lit Chanel that you've wrapped around yourself/You've got outsider art by an artist you arguably kidnapped to pin on the wall/Your designers have slyly directed the eye down pink lines here and your well lit pawn." It speaks for itself really.

Lost Coastlines - Okkervil River

Singer Songwriter - Okkervil River

26. Evolutionary Sunset Call - stanleylucasrevolution

I was thrown off guard by this truly independent album from California-based Sean Robertson's enigmatic project stanleylucasrevolution. It manages to compress self-loathing, self-belief, courage and fear into an uncomprising, truly experimental album. It's difficult to pin down the style as Evolutionary Sunset Call blends elements from country, spaghetti western, electro, trip hop, glam rock and psychedelia while adding vocal samples. Expertly stitched together with musical interludes, it tells the story of living in the shadows, but longing for change and a way out without succumbing to the safety of sliding back in. It's a bit like witnessing someone come to terms with him/herself after several bouts with the broken mirror.

Insatiable - stanleylucasrevolution

Sacred Sons - stanleylucasrevolution

25. Oracular Spectacular - MGMT

I tried to ignore MGMT for a very long time - the hipster hype behind them was overwhelming (already beginning last year), which always sets off warning bells for me. After an inadvertent listen to Time to Pretend, I had to admit they had one good song. Then after a begrudging listen to Electric Feel, I had to acknowledge they had two really good songs. Then after a more open listen to Kids, I came to see that they had three great songs. Finally, later this year, I realized they had a rather splendid album. There's something both wide-eyed technicolour dreamer and prococious glam slut about Oracular Spectacular. At the same time, it struts along with a self-assured funky falsetto and a hippie LSD sway. It's an album that the youth of 2008 will look back at and remember with fondness.

The Youth - MGMT

Kids - MGMT

The honourable mention for this post is Midnight Boom by The Kills. It's a punchy, raw album with short blasts of bolshy, fuzzed-out songs and minimalist ticking tracks. While Alison Mosshart's vocals range from tough to breathless, the yelps on one of the best songs of Midnight Boom, Tape Song, are interestingly reminiscent of Tegan and Sara. With this record, The Kills are everything The Ting Tings wish they could be.

What New York Used to Be - The Kills

Stay tuned for next Friday's rundown of numbers 24 through 17. And thank you for all of your comments thus far.

The Life Trajectory of a Pendulum: stanleylucasrevolution's Evolutionary Sunset Call

It begins with some feedback and vocal samples and loops intermingled with a rollicking Old West beat like some psychotic, schizophonic Ennio Morricone. The track is called Wasteful Youth and it builds the faithless foundation for the rest of the LP. This fantastically experimental, existential album is the sophomore effort from yet another musical project shrouded in mystery: stanleylucasrevolution (SLR) from California. Released on Stroboscopic, the record is titled Evolutionary Sunset Call (which keeps reminding me linguistically of Sister Feelings Call) and these songs are ostensibly created by a terminally ill, fictional character called Stanley Lucas. Both the enigmatic set-up and the dark material refract from the heart of this album to create a 21st century world completely bent out of shape, but in doing so, it finds redemption and safety in the darkness. Mixing fuzzed out beats, glam rock, warped psychedelia, country-blues, and electronic effects, Evolutionary Sunset Call is like a pendulum, heavy with self-doubt and fear, being driven by inevitable laws of perpetual motion and futilely knocking its battered essence against other identical pendulums, all the while hypnotizing you with its incessant tell-tale heart.

After the opening track, the first song with proper lyrics included in the liner notes, Brand New Way, swaggers in with a bit of old-time glam fashion and brash piano. As the narrator sings "I'll find a way to a brand new way," you get the feeling that it's a lot like what an alcoholic person would tell him/herself when he/she is drunk. The following song, We Still Love Them, is the song most explicitly about the state of today's world: "a new suit, desk, shave and a handshake/you give your money to the company/we stand divided and the nation's hollow/everyone knows that dying's free." To accompany the articulation of the barrel rolls of emotion, blues bass and electric organ push the pendulum back and forth in its suspended rut. The first of many musical interludes, Le Batteur is a propulsive font to refresh you for further grit and disturbed mental states that come with New Stone 40. When the narrator sings "won't you change my life?," there's a fantastic slide into a minor tone that connotes a resigned desperation, and the chorus swings along as the voice reminds you of both Ziggy Stardust and Bon Jovi's cowboy wanted dead or alive. Consultation Valley Ruse begins with fantastic electronic beats and the vocals take on a rich deepness over a disco falsetto backing, which end up sounding more eerie than funky. Conversely, interlude (Intro in C) sneaks in sideways with squeaks and hesitant rhythms before giving way to Insatiable and its tanoy-inflected vocals addressing a female character with further expression of forward motion that goes nowhere: "maybe will you finally change your life?/and come out at night/doing all those things though they don't even amuse you."

With its tribal rhythms and swirling, spinning pinwheels of sound, I'm Trusted in the Sea (Outro) takes you over the rickety bridge to Two Ways, which repeats the vocal sample "What's the matter with you, thought you were asleep" as though someone left the TV on late at night while an old film was on and the picture is rolling through infinite static, slowly driving you mad in some wakeful nightmare. The track continues in a subdued manner that smooths the frayed nerves created by the sample. The music takes a more upbeat, vindictive tone with Sacred Sons and the strong anthemic tones break through and smother the chattering feedback for a moment of triumph and peace. The narrator declares, "I need to hold the flames, I love to see the light/the darkness comes berating the sunset turning it back to night...I want to touch the skin of everyone whose failing inside/I'd love to be the one there that comforts you in the middle of the night," becoming a messiah to the nighttime underworld. But the pendulum swings back with the quiet bluesy guitar in Mourning Star (Outro). With the coming of morning, the manic self-importance withers under the sun's glare as the narrator recognizes his reality anew, taking you into the next track called Downhearted. The wobbly, muffled vocal effects in Downhearted makes it sound like the narrator is drowning in his own sorrow and self-pity, but at the same time he's fighting with the breath he has left, leaving his own Rock 'n Roll Suicide note. The album concludes with the instrumental Happy Sun Day, which uses violin-like sounds to rouse you from the mire of the previous breakdown, only you don't know if it's to wake you or to serve as a wake.

As a whole concept, Evolutionary Sunset Call, tells the story of hiding in a darkness that you come to despise, where you wait out life changes and wish you could be brave enough to live after the sun rises. You can and should buy Evolutionary Sunset Call at Cd Baby. This one-man revolution is perfect for those who have ever regarded one of those perpetual motion toys in someone's office and felt an infinite sadness.

We Still Love Them - stanleylucasrevolution

Sacred Sons - stanleylucasrevolution

Downhearted - stanleylucasrevolution