Mix tapes used to look like this. I've made a gazillion of 'em in my time, and spent untold hours meticulously placing needles on the grooves of record albums and pushing the Play and Record buttons at just the precise moment to avoid having to record the sound of the needle hitting the grooves.Now I have that wondrous iPod, and creating mixes is a breeze. I do this every year, although I've now expanded the operations so that what started out as a single tape, and then became a single CD, is now a 3-CD set. And since I'm now receiving new music that will be released in January and February of 2009, it's probably a fairly safe time to compile the Best of 2008 edition. So here it is. If you'd like copies, send me an email message at whitmana (at) hotmail (dot) com with your snail mail address. I'll be happy to mail off the set to you, although it may take me a while to get around to doing so.
In no implied order other than alphabetical, this is my favorite music from 2008:
Disc 1
Adele – Hometown Glory
Alabama 3 – Mao Tse Tung Said
Amos Lee – Won’t Let Me Go
Anathallo – The River
Beaujolais – Contemptual You
Black Francis – When They Come to Murder Me
The Black Keys – I Got Mine
Blind Pilot – Ovieto
Bob Dylan -- Cross the Green Mountain
Bon Iver – Re: Stacks
The Botticellis – Up Against the Glass
Centro Matic – The Rat Patrol and DJs
Chris Knight – Crooked Road
Damien Dempsey and The Dubliners – Rainy Night in Soho
Darrell Scott – American Tune
Dewey Cox – Royal Jelly
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons – We Should Fight
Disc 2
Firewater -- Borneo
Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
The Fleshtones – First Date (Are You Coming On To Me?)
Frightened Rabbit – Floating in the Forth
The Frontier Brothers – Technical Electronic Personic Robot (T.E.S.S.)
Gretel – Can I Still Come Over?
The Grip Weeds – Salad Days
Hacienda Brothers – A Lot of Days Are Gone
Hayes Carll – She Left Me For Jesus
Hayseed – God Shaped Hole
Headlights – Get Your Head Around It
Jacob Golden – Out Come the Wolves
Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit – Tickle Me Pink
Jolie Hollard – Palmyra
Josh Garrels – Jacaranda Tree
Kasey Anderson – Hometown Boys
Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson – Sweetest Waste of Time
Disc 3
Lambchop – National Talk Like a Pirate Day
Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello – Jailhouse Tears
Marco Benevento – Atari
Matthew Ryan – It Could’ve Been Worse
MGMT – Time to Pretend
Old 97’s – No Baby I
Ray LaMontagne – Let It Be Me
Scott Kempner – Beyond the Pale
Sloan – Emergency 911
The Spinto Band – Later On
Sun Kil Moon – Harper Road
The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name
TV on the Radio – Halfway Home
Unbunny – Water and the Spanish Tongue
Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma
Waco Brothers – Harm’s Way
Watermelon Slim – Archetypal Blues No. 2
10 comments:
have you heard the new "house of heroes" album Andy? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.
Where's your Son Lux song?
Michael, I have not heard the new House of Heroes album, so I have no opinion. But I'd love to hear it.
Fred, that's a good point about Son Lux. Honestly, I've had the music ("At War With Walls and Mazes") for almost two years now, and it's easy to forget that it's a 2008 album. But it is. And I dearly love it, and it's likely to end up as my favorite album of the year. So I should certainly add a Son Lux song to my mix.
Disc Two rocks!
*wink*
do you want to mail me a copy of your boxset? Some stuff here that I hadn't heard yet but will definitely look into. The Fleet Foxes disc gets constant Ipod play. Might be my favorite of the year.
andy
you can stream the house of heroes album here:
http://relevantmagazine.com/thedrop.php
great compilation, andy.
now i am hankering to hear that dylan song. someday, i hope i can make your list.
love and respect,
john
No Hold Steady songs?
Nope, no Hold Steady songs. It's not that I don't love the album. I do. And "Constructive Summer," in particular, would easily rank as one of the best songs I've heard this year. But my advance copy of the album contains some serious anti-piracy warnings, and some of sort of copy protection that doesn't even allow me to burn the album to iTunes. I'm assured that the FBI will be after me if I try to do so. So ... no Hold Steady for you. No FBI investigation for me. It's a tradeoff I can live with.
I burned my Hold Steady to my iPod anyway, so I guess I'm a criminal.
No love for Lindsey Buckingham from anyone I've read online. I'll do it, then. The song "Love Runs Deeper" from "Gift Of Screws" is one of the most joyous pop songs of the year. The chorus erupts in a wall of sound that Phil Spector would envy, and Buckingham's guitar still sounds two people are playing it at once.
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