Tuesday, January 27, 2009

...after these messages



The month of January is always a bit of a joy-suck. The holidays are over, New York is silent and gray, work hits hard after slowing down a bit at the end of December, and it takes something really special like Terry Pratchett receiving a well-deserved Printz Honor to really get the spirits up. At the same time, January's chronological placement allows for procrastination from said work by compiling Tops Of the Year lists. For me, that means going through the stacks of great books and records and movies that came out last year and whittling them down to a personal best-of. And so before resuming regularly scheduled programming as we move out of January, I figured I'd take a break from the typical purview of this blog and post my fifteen favorite (not necessarily "the best") records from 2008. These are the albums I had on repeat while reading or editing manuscripts at home or on the train, so I suppose you could say that there's a bit of these in each of the books I've worked on this year.

15. Feed the Animals, Girl Talk
14. In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy
13. Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust, Sigur Rós
12. In Her Gentle Jaws, The Depreciation Guild
11. Stainless Style, Neon Neon
10. Jim, Jamie Lidell
09. Los Angeles, Flying Lotus
08. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
07. Made In the Dark, Hot Chip
06. Chunk Of Change EP, Passion Pit
05. April, Sun Kil Moon
04. Elephant Shell, Tokyo Police Club
03. Dear Science, TV On the Radio
01. For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver* (tie)
01. Saturdays = Youth, M83 (tie)

Anyone else have favorites that they want to share?

*For Emma, Forever Ago was self-released in 2007 but didn't see wide release until this year, so I'm not sure if it ought to be included, but, frankly, it's got enough great stuff on it for two years of best-of lists anyway.

3 comments:

Brenda Bowen said...

I am downloading all of these so I can be as hip as Jordan. (Predictably, I'll download them leagally, which will make me not as hip as Jordan.)

Jordan Brown said...

Just for the record, I don't download anything illegally. In fact, I don't download anything at all. I'm an old-fashioned purchaser of compact discs. I love to own the actual object, I love to read the liner notes, I love to run my fingers of the spines of the albums in my rack. I think I might have been born in the wrong era - I would have been a great collector of vinyl.

Not sure how hip this is. In any case, I'm pretty sure that Brenda is more hip than I am.

Truth Serum said...

I found that Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's CD "Raising Sand" was on my top 25 songs. I also really the new album the The Winterpills just put out.