top of the year-music

So it's the end of the year and that means a barrage of "top of 2008" lists.

KnifeFight's top 15 albums of 2008.
(Please comment with your own lists)

1. TV On The Radio- Dear Science (Interscope)
This band of Brooklyn art-rockers have always taken a while to grow on me. Sure, I liked Return to Cookie Mountain, but only after numerous listens. With Science, something just clicked for TV. Maybe it was their jaded New York Lens, or that they just really wanted something different. Who knows? Add in the America’s political climate from 2008, the fact that an African American was running against a dinosaur of a man that no doubt prayed “Dear Science…” every night to “keep me alive,” a seemingly never-ending war, a recession and a feeling that something just wasn’t right in the world and you’ve got the perfect groundwork for an albums’ worth of songs becoming fantastically hopeful, relevant (“Golden Age,” Science’s best track) and melancholy (“Family Tree”) at the same time. Hell, the band even makes their first step into disco territory on “Dancing Choose.” From the moment Tunde Adebimpe sings “Go on throw this stone, Into this halfway home!,” on opener “Halfway Home,” (just around the 4:15 mark) the guitar cranks up, fuzz-blaring and the drums shift into a marching-band-esque pound, you know maybe we should all just start praying “Dear Science, lets hope the next four years are better than the last.”

2. Cut Copy- In Ghost Colours (Modular)
I have always loved Cut Copy. When I first heard dancefloor anthem “Hearts on Fire,” on the Aussie band’s So Cosmic mixtape, back in early January, I hoped the bands sophomore effort would come sooner than later. Synth pop is one of the easiest and hardest genres to figure out. You can easily grab a Korg, set up some drum beats and start singing about technology and love, sounding like Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan. Or you can do what Cut Copy did. Enlist one of the best current disco-house producers in the land, the DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, fly halfway across the world, to New York, hole up in a studio tinkering with any synth, programmer or sequencer you can get your hands on and make a magical album worth of anthems (“Lights and Music”, “So Haunted”) dreamy Giorgio Moroder-obsessed tracks (Hearts on Fire) and straight-up 1980’s Top 40 worthy love songs. It took four years for Cut Copy to make In Ghost Colours, I really hope it doesn’t take four more for the follow up.

3. Lil Wayne- Tha Carter III- Deluxe Edition (Ca$h Money)
Weezy returned in full force with TCIII, confessing he was the greatest rapper alive, giving Kanye a run for his money and featuring more guest singing and producing spots than you can handle. Tracks like “A Milli” and “Lollipop” are pop-radio gems, while tracks like “Whip it” and “Got Money” are straight ass-on-the floor synth rap. Listening to both the way he flows, his simplified style and word choice, you get the feeling that Weezy actually knew TCIII would sell a million plus copies. I will admit I got into this record way late, so I am guessing Weezy and I have many more months of listening to look forward to.


4. No Age- Nouns (Sub Pop)
Wow. This Los Angeles duo really know what their doing. I wasn’t all that into their first album Wierdo Rippers, and so, the first time I popped Nouns into the player, my ears thanked me. For me, the album really starts with the beautiful, fuzz-filled jangle that opens the second track, “Eraser.” The guitar and drums swim with each other, as if off in the clouds somewhere, waiting for the day to break. The minute that the drums speed up and the guitar breaks character, the song launches into the perfect soundtrack for a rocky suburban teenage love affair, a beer-soaked, steal-your-parents-car night on the town. The next track, “Teen Creeps,” offers the one-two punch. Nouns is fantastic a group of beautifully relentless songs that would make both Kevin Shields, Thurston Moore and Geniuses P-Orridge all stand up and applaud, one could only hope.

5. Fleet Foxes- ST (Sub Pop)
Seattle label Sub Pop had a great 2008. After No Age, Fleet Foxes come in second for the label’s best offerings of 2008. A debut album worth of delicate folk ditty’s oozing with Americana. The songs are like, what one other reviewer said, when Natalie Portman first hears The Shins in Garden State. They are fresh-faced, immensely talented and able to create tracks that seem to almost transform you to some sun drenched clearing in the Appalachian Mountains, alone, joyfully hiking around as if in some perfectly relaxed state. Don’t forget your beard a flannel shirt.

Here’s the other last ten-

6. Crystal Castles- ST (Last Gang)
7. James Murphy and Pat Mahoney- FabricLive 37 (Fabric London)
8. The Cool Kids- The Bake Sale EP (Chocolate Industries)
9. Lindstrom- Where You Go I Go Too (Smalltown Supersound)
10. Hercules and Love Affair- ST (DFA/Astralwerks)
11. Foals- Antidotes (Domino)
12. Hot Chip- Made in The Dark (DFA/Astralwerks)
13. Vampire Weekend- ST (XL)
14. Lykke Li- Youth Novels- (LL/Atlantic)
15. Various Artists- Calypsoul 70 (Strut)