The end of the year is nigh, so our music guru Ben Cohen takes a misty-eyed look over the 20 best albums of the year. This is the first installment, we’ve got ten more gems coming your way tomorrow.
Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend – Their clean, west African inflected sound has been taking over airwaves everywhere in ’08, in much the same way that fellow New Yorkers The Strokes did in 2001. We’re waiting to see whether they can pull it off again with a follow-up album.
Crystal Castles Crystal Castles- Easily the freshest sounding record out in 2008, Crystal Castles captured the imagination of the game-boy hipster generation as they harked back to Atari samples in order to give us an unpredictable look at how damn cool dance music can be.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! – Will this raving Australian mustachioed lunatic ever stop transforming records into solid gold? I’m guessing no.
Q-Tip The Renaissance – If not the renaissance of hip hop, then about as close as we’re gonna get this year.
MGMT Oracular Spectacular – With more hit singles on it than any other album on this list, MGMT just had to make the cut with the aptly named intergalactic odyssey that is Oracular Spectacular.
Lil’ Wayne Tha Carter III – This was the album that made a mainstream audience stand up, and at least take seriously the long-held claim held by none other by Lil’ Wayne himself, that he is in fact the best rapper alive. At the very least, he is probably the hardest working one, and with the Grammy nominated Tha Carter III all that hard work certainly paid off.
Foals Antidotes – A real grower of an album. Foals controversially decided to leave out some of their early hit singles in favour of something truly rare: an album that has to be appreciated when heard from start to finish.
Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes – This is the kind of album that you, your parents, and even your Gran can take pleasure in, such is the variety of trans-generational influences that Fleet Foxes draw upon for this surprisingly enchanting finished product.
Cut Copy In Ghost Colours – As addictive as celebrity rehab clinics of late, In Ghost Colours is the easily the best of the pretentious sounding electro new wave revivalist bunch…if such a bunch even exist.
Frightened Rabbit Midnight Organ Fight – No unique sound here, no persona…in fact Frightened Rabbit don’t sound a whole lot different to a lot of other bands. But what makes this album special is the pure and inescapable talent of songwriting that flows through every single lyric and melody.
