2008

Along with 2004’s Bows & Arrows, The Walkmen quietly created 2 of my favorite albums of the decade. I think of You & Me as this year’s Boxer, a record that surprised a lot of people who must not have been paying very close attention to what came before. Also like Boxer, You & Me is the band’s most cohesive and beautiful collection yet, and features a singer who has developed a pinpoint command of his words and delivery. Its woozy grandeur and nocturnal aura are the perfect soundtrack for headphones, street lights, and city cement. Just don’t say you were surprised. You & Me was meant to be.

Technically speaking, this was released late in 2007, but was picked up by Jagjaguwar in early 2008 after some great online word of mouth. Scattered throughout the history of rock and roll are a handful of classic albums recorded straight to tape in an artist’s self-prescribed isolation - Nebraska and The Creek Drank The Cradle spring to mind immediately. You can add For Emma, Forever Ago, the result of Justin Vernon’s secluded winter in a Wisconsin cabin, to the list. Thank you Emma.

Third must have been simmering for a long, long time - what with over 10 years since the trip-hop legend’s last. Third, though, is so much more than a neo-classic band reuniting to cash in on their past. Like Dummy and Portishead, Third is filled with icy cool electro-torch songs - only now they sound eerily futuristic, with harsh blasts of electric guitar and long, spaced-out instrumental passages to embed Beth Gibbons’ otherworldly vocals. Another truly hypnotic record.

Microcastle, as well the Weird Era Cont. bonus disc, strikes a much greater balance between noise and song than did last year’s more challenging Cryptograms, finally allowing the genius hiding behind Brandon Cox’s often offsetting cyber-persona to shine. “Nothing Ever Happened” may well be the indie-anthem of the year, an “All My Friends” for its disaffected little brother.

Scott Hutchinson, bless his soul, doesn’t try to do anything different than what nearly every other great young rock n’roll singer before him has done - document the broken hearts and sexual frustrations of a 20-something male. But the ways his stories unfold - so incredibly visceral and with such a thick Scottish howl - make them unforgettable. I listened to The Midnight Organ Fight a hell of a lot in 2008 because, quite simply, it’s everything I want in a rock n’ roll record - loud guitars, great songs, and a singer who means it.

The album feels emotionally frantic, full of collapsing piano lines, tangled guitars, and Carey Mercer’s astonishingly expressive voice straining against the songs themselves. The arrangements move unpredictably, but there’s an elegance holding the chaos together underneath. Tracks like “Idle Songs” and “Bushels” sound both triumphant and exhausted.

The album transforms noise, punk, and shoegaze textures into something remarkably warm and melodic. Dean Spunt and Randy Randall make feedback feel emotionally expansive rather than abrasive for its own sake. Songs like “Eraser” and “Teen Creeps” balance youthful urgency with genuine vulnerability. The record sounds chaotic on the surface but emotionally generous underneath.

The album drifts between jagged post-punk, tape-scarred psychedelia, and eerie melodic beauty with complete unpredictability. Patrick Flegel and Matt Flegel create songs that feel unfinished in a compelling way, as though they’re disintegrating while being performed. The lo-fi production gives every guitar scrape and vocal fragment strange emotional intimacy. It’s music haunted by instability, but also energized by it.

Fleet Foxes’ stunning Sub Pop debut does a fairly common thing - it mixes traditional folk sounds with heavenly vocal harmonies and douses them in reverb. But while the method may not be unique, the results are - the album manages to make each of its small, simple songs sound like widescreen epics.

With a mix of bracing, twitchy anthems like “Hard Feelings” and slow building, tension-filled ballads like “Time Can Be Overcome”, Kensington Heights, the fourth straight knockout from Canada’s best rock band, comes together to produce the band’s most accessible album yet.

The album captures the exhilaration of a band playing entirely on instinct. Loose garage-punk rhythms, repetitive riffs, and Brendan Suppression’s conversational vocals create songs that feel spontaneous without sounding careless. Tracks like “Which Way to Go” and “Colour Television” turn everyday confusion into strangely uplifting rock music. The record’s charm comes from how unforced everything feels.

As those thumping first beats and doo-wop “bom-bom-bom-bom-boms” of “Halfway Home” suggest, Dear Science is a terrific art-pop record from a band that is seemingly predestined for greatness.

Trouble In Dreams doesn’t quite equal the career defining epic that was 2006’s masterful Destroyer’s Rubies, but for me it found its legs as the year progressed. Chalk it up to Dan Bejar’s ability to make his surrealistic poetry endlessly compelling (“it's not that I quit/ it's not that my poems are shit/ In the light of the privilege of dreams/ alive she cried once now alive she screams”), and for his band’s ability to frame those words in such grandiose, elegant folk music.

The impossibly beautiful voice of Jón Þór Birgisson is one of the most divine instruments in modern music, sort of like a child-alien singing in a cathedral choir. On the Icelandic band’s latest album his vocals soar as high as ever, but it’s the new pop-rock direction the band employs on its first half that excites just as much. The translation of the album’s title, With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly, couldn’t be more appropriate.

Gentlemen Jesse is one of those bands that doesn’t play a single innovative note, but does the same old same old so freakin’ well that it doesn’t even come close to mattering. In this case it’s late 70’s styled power punk that sounds like it’s coming from straight out of a broken down garage on the wrong side of the tracks.

The album arrived with a lightness and precision that immediately separated it from much of late-2000s indie rock. Afro-pop rhythms, chamber-pop arrangements, and sharply detailed songwriting give tracks like “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” and “Oxford Comma” enormous replay value. Ezra Koenig writes about privilege, anxiety, travel, and youth with enough humor and self-awareness to keep the songs emotionally alive. The record feels meticulously crafted without losing spontaneity.

The album turns beat music into a dense, flickering emotional environment where jazz, hip-hop, electronic abstraction, and psychedelic drift constantly overlap. Flying Lotus makes the city itself feel present in the music—fragmented, overstimulating, lonely, and strangely beautiful. Rhythms often seem to dissolve before fully settling into place. The album’s restless movement becomes its emotional core.

The album layers guitar, digital processing, and ambient texture into music that feels simultaneously warm and disorienting. Christian Fennesz blurs the line between melody and atmosphere so completely that songs seem to hover rather than unfold traditionally. Even the most abstract passages carry emotional weight through texture alone. It’s ambient music that feels deeply human.

The album fills stories of damaged outsiders and emotional survival with unusual warmth and compassion. John Darnielle writes with vivid specificity while allowing his characters real dignity amid failure, loneliness, or violence. The fuller arrangements give songs like “Sax Rohmer #1” and “Autoclave” dramatic sweep without overwhelming the writing. It’s music deeply interested in how people endure difficult lives.

The album moves effortlessly between new wave, dub, punk, hip-hop, and pop without sounding like an exercise in eclecticism. Santigold approaches genre as fluid emotional language rather than fixed category. Songs like “L.E.S. Artistes” and “Creator” feel playful and confrontational simultaneously. The record’s confidence comes from how naturally all its influences coexist.

Wagonwheel Blues is an exciting mix of sounds and styles - with elements of pure Americana, the 80s American underground, psyche-rock, and electronic flourishes providing a perfect match for Adam Granduciel’s expressive vocals. A truly promising debut rock record.

Dual Hawks is a rare breed - a split LP released in conjunction from Will Johnson’s two primary songwriting outlets, Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel. The 11 songs that comprise the Centro-Matic half don’t so much employ a unique brand of rock ’n roll as absolutely own a very well-worn form of it - the feedback heavy, Crazy Horse-like sound the band has been perfecting for over a decade now.

The album balances sweetness and abrasion in ways that constantly keep the listener slightly off balance. Satomi Matsuzaki’s soft vocals float through jagged rhythms, fractured guitar lines, and sudden structural shifts that somehow remain playful rather than alienating. Deerhoof’s experimental instincts never overshadow their gift for hooks and momentum, and Offend Maggie could be their most "straightforward" rock record.

The album deepens the duo’s dream-pop into something richer, sadder, and more emotionally immersive than the sketches of their debut. Victoria Legrand sings with calm intensity while organs, guitars, and drum-machine rhythms blur together into slow-moving emotional weather. A very good record, but Beach House would soon be great.

The album feels submerged in memory, with acoustic guitars, tape hiss, and blurred vocals drifting together. Liz Harris turns lo-fi recording limitations into emotional atmosphere, making the songs feel distant without becoming emotionally cold. Tracks like “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping” and “Invisible” seem to dissolve as they play, as though they’re slipping away in real time. The record captures loneliness as a permanent emotional climate.