One Year-End List: 2008’s Top Albums
And only three weeks late on this one. The next one…man, I don’t know when I’ll get that one published.
Anyway, every year KEXP asks its listeners to send in their top ten albums for the year and then lists the top 91 vote getters as it counts them down on the air. Surprisingly, I actually reviewed more than 10 CDs from 2008 so I went over and voted.
It was a completely onerous process as their write-in functionality didn’t work very well and, despite them listing gobs and gobs and gobs of albums, I had to write in seven of my ten votes. Come on, KEXP, aren’t you supposed to be diverse? Okay, I’ll forgive you for not including Terramara, Tom Gabel, and the unreleased pre-master demos of Malfunkshun, but no Rick Springfield, Gutter Twins, or Chinese Democracy? Get off your high horse, you ass munchers.
Anyway, choosing my top ten was easy because when I sorted the 2008 albums I had reviewed I found that exactly ten received (or would have received) four or more lunchboxes, so there was a nice cut-off there.
You can see KEXP’s list here. I wouldn’t go look at it, though, as Gutter Twins don’t make the list entirely because they weren’t even on the ballot, I’m sure, because while I can see how they’d look down on such listenable enjoyment as Guns N’ Roses or Rick Springfield and would avoid visceral, no-indie-weenies-allowed rock like Melvins, Gutter Twins fits their sweet spot of huge among young people and obscure to adults that they seem to troll in. How completely retarded. Furthermore, KEXP’s #1, Fleet Foxes, doesn’t even break my top ten because it got 3.5 lunchboxes.
Anyway, here are my top ten CDs of 2008:
5 lunchboxes:
1) Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend (This was on the ballot and slots on KEXP’s list at number two.)
4.5 lunchboxes:
2) Rick Springfield: Venus In Overdrive
4 lunchboxes (or would have received at least 4 if I’d rated them) (in no particular order):
3) Terramara: Dust & Fiction
4) Melvins: Nude With Boots
5) Black Keys: Attack & Release (This was on the ballot and slots on KEXP’s list at number 34.)
6) Malfunkshun: Friendship Ring
7) The Gutter Twins: Saturnalia
8) Guns N’ Roses: Chinese Democracy
9) Tom Gabel: Heart Burns
10) Mudhoney: The Lucky Ones (I think this was on the ballot but didn’t make KEXP’s list.)
Tags: 2008, CD reviews, music, Seattle, year in review
January 26th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Dude, Vampire Weekend does rule. I’m so glad I saw it on your list. Are they big out there? I ask people here if they know them, and all I get are stares like I just asked to give them a massage.
January 26th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
They are big out here. KEXP was one of the first radio stations, if not the first, in the country to start playing them. They headlined the Capitol Hill Block Party, where they block off a few blocks of the city for a weekend and have bands rock three stages, but they were pretty awful live.
January 29th, 2010 at 9:26 am
[...] is the second annual MPL’s top ten CD list. 2009, however, was relatively light on the CD reviews, due mostly to busy spring and fall [...]