BANG-A-RANG, RUFIO: TOP 11 RECORDS OF '08/A HIATUS

Well, here we go. Some friends and I are days away from leaving for Southeast Asia on a one-way ticket, so it's likely this marks my final post for a long while. I've put off the music-lover's obligatory task of whittling down all the great 2008 releases into a 'best of' list for long enough, so what better way to go out than by writing about my favorite records from the past year?

While many similar lists might prioritize commercial success, artistic merit, or avantgarde-ism, the sole criterion for making my best of 2008 cut is how many times I've returned for another spin. Put simply: these are the records I spent the most time listening to, day after day, week after week, month after month. The records I still love and probably won't really ever get sick of.

A few housekeeping matters: First, in order to keep up uniform appearances, I've limited the length of my list at ten (plus one more because after trying for some time I couldn't excise any of these awesome records). Second, although they are given a hierarchical order, the particular "ranking" assigned to each release is not in stone, but more like plus or minus two; I don't know about you, but the way I feel about a record is often in flux.

Cue the drumroll . . .

1. The Ruby Suns - Sea Lion

The only thing that matched my fondness for these Kiwi polyglot popsters was the level of shock I felt in their absence from countless other year-end lists, so I'm especially proud to fly their flag atop my number one spot. The band's genre-itinerant Sub Pop debut amalgamates an enormous catalog of worldly influences into summery, psychedelic pop songs that arrive brimming with inspired melodies, exuberant percussion, and a restless sense of adventure. The ease with which the album sonically zig zags its globetrotting course is just as impressive, and its speaks to the depth of band leader and multi-instrumentalist Ryan McPhun's pop genius.

There's something universally appealing about Sea Lion: its incredibly fun -- and so long as the Ruby Suns keep that spirit as their amorphous music's common denominator, I've no doubt we can expect more great things to come from these guys. Trying to pick a single song as representative of the entire album is impossible with this peripatetic record, but here's one of my highlights.

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2. The Walkmen - You & Me

Dark and intense, wistful and moving, this incredible album sees the Walkmen as a band fully realized. Their signature combination of cavernous organ, twanging guitar waves, rumbling basement percussion and Hamilton Leithauser's idiosyncratic wailing sounds more developed than ever, as does the vision and command of their songcraft. Like last year's standout The Boxer, the allure of You & Me grows more compelling with each listen. A brilliant, stunning record.

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3. Hilotrons - Happymatic

Talking Heads meets surf-rock. Earlier in the year, I wrote a lengthy post on what a superlative album Happymatic is, so repeating myself here seems kinda unnecessary. But I will put up a different song.

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4. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

I'll agree with those who want to sound the technicality alarm and point out that FE,FA was actually released in 2007. This is the truth. Though, in terms of publicity and record sales and impact, it's hard not to agree that 2008 was the more predestined year for Justin Vernon, which is why I'm going to include him here. His music is so lovely, so rare in its sincere conduit of raw emotion, it's no wonder so many people of different ages and tastes have gravitated towards its glow. Count me in.

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5. Pretty & Nice - Get Young

I'm going to attempt and shave some writing time off by paraphrasing another previous post: this awesome Boston dude-trio takes one part urgent falsetto pop and one part brash post-punk and combines the two with touches of electronic production to create an infectious, breakneck-speed sound that their one sheet aptly describes as 'sharp-toothed, heavily-armed, and snappish'. Their terse debut album for all-star local shingle Hardly Art is packed full of hairpin-turn melodies and tightly-coiled instrumentation. Another great record that's surprisingly still flying under most people's radars.

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6. Deerhunter - Microcastle

At the risk of indie-rock blaspheme, I confess that Cryptograms just never did it for me. I cranked it up on my loudspeakers, tried soaking it in through some headphones while laying on the floor, and listened to it with a more persuaded friend to see if they could unlock its hidden magic -- but nothing seemed to work. The record just came across as indulgent and pretentious noise every time. Thus, imagine my surprise to find Deerhunter's latest record, Microcastle, so full of sing-a-long pop hooks and (relatively) conventional song structures, albeit buried within a thick gauze of distorting lo-fi. The band's mellow-loner tone is still as present as ever, but this album is pop music -- not esoteric hipster-rock. Dreamy and fully engulfing, I can't put this record down.

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7. Jim Noir - Jim Noir

On his second full-length album, the British one-man-plays-all wunderkind merges 60's surfer harmonies and classic rock psychedelia with modern electronic flourishes, making for an incredibly buoyant, charming pop record.