Best Albums of 2008: Intro

This was a year of homage’s to the past, to recollections of early modern rock, of punk’s first wave, and of the electro-neon of the 80’s. Nothing here is new. Everything is dedicated to re-creating, though almost anti-nostalgically, a sound that once heralded a major shift in the history of 20th century music. In the space of memory carved and marked by musical legacies, these albums are like doors to the rooms of the past, rooms in which the collective musical conscious lay on its back thinking of pickup trucks and guitar amps, writing powerpop riffs while dreaming of Phil Spector, and where it finally bleached its hair, dyed it blue, tattooed literature onto its body, and came out as charged as its social and political cousins.

I feel like these lists are inevitably autobiographical, and in this case mine is purposefully so. We don’t just connect to music through an objective, neutral vacuum inside of our heads. The albums we return to time and again reflect the affect we feel, the kind that is impossible to really put into words without telling a story about what part it played in making us who we are today. So, what follows is a series of posts, one for each of my top 20 albums, that tells the story of my life in the last year, inasmuch as it highlights albums that I think are fantastic enough to take time out of my busy schedule to write about. In some ways, these albums were my life this year, dear friends that helped me along, expressing things I had not yet figured out that I felt. Some of these choices surprised even me in the end, but I’m happy with the way it worked out.

Related posts:

Best of 2008: #2: The Magnetic Fields: Distortion
Best of 2008: #3: Deerhunter: Microcastle
Best of 2008: #4: The Walkmen: You & Me
Best of 2008: #5: Gentleman Jesse and His Men
Best of 2008: #6: Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
Best of 2008: #7: Okkervil River: The Stand-ins
Best of 2008: #8: MGMT: Oracular Spectacular
Best of 2008: #9: Streetlight Manifesto: Somewhere in the Between
Best of 2008: #10: M83: Saturdays=Youth
Best of 2008: #11: TV On the Radio: Dear Science
Best of 2008: #12: Mount Eerie: Lost Wisdom
Best of 2008: #13: Cloud Cult: Feel Good Ghosts
Best of 2008: #14: Ratatat: LP3
Best of 2008: #15: The Submarines: Honeysuckle Weeks
Best of 2008: #16: Grand Archives: S/T
Best of 2008: #17: Yelle: Pop-up
Best of 2008: #18: Parenthetical Girls: Entanglements
Best of 2008: #19: The Gaslight Anthem- The '59 Sound
Best of 2008: #20: Billy Bragg- Mr. Love and Justice
Best of 2008: Intro