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Post by strawman on Jan 1, 2009 16:10:55 GMT -5
some albums that rocked my year......really it was a year of twee indie pop and discovering sweden has the coolest indie!!
getting to the point is beside it...i love math
...yeah this was my pic of the year...i dunno why, but i just liked it
and my best of the rest (in alphabetical order).....
body125...body125 ep..
..hey its my sons band and i had to endure the practice sessions
secrets don't make friends (and apparently i don't either)..the life and times of william shakespeare
the secret of the loveninjas...lovenijas
distortion...the magnetic fields
talking through tin cans...the morning benders
for clouds and tornadoes...the music tapes
skeletal lamping...of montreal
...i want some of their drugs
the wishes and the glitch...say hi to your mom
a picture of the three of us at the gate...these united states
vorn and the......vorn
anyway thats some albums i liked in 2008.....
the biggest joy however was discovering how cool the swedish indie scene is though....you seek it out all you indie kids!!!!!
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Post by maarts on Jan 2, 2009 5:02:27 GMT -5
...and just listening to what I would like to add to my 2008 list:  Bow- you make me happy!!! I just put this album on and am just enjoying Robert tributing Grant: And a river ran, and a train ran, and a dream ran through everything that he did." Brings a tear to the eye. |
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Post by ScottsyII on Jan 2, 2009 7:50:36 GMT -5
I gotta get me a copy of that album.... it sounds like its amazing! It feels funny to see just him on the cover and know that alot of the music on that album was meant to be a group album with Grant - kinda sets the tone for the album a bit, methinks...
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Post by bowiglou on Jan 2, 2009 17:04:56 GMT -5
indeed Maarts and Straw, an amazing album..I don't know if you had similar sentiments, but though the recording is often sad (given the obvious ensuing events), it is not really depressing...does that make any sense? ...and just listening to what I would like to add to my 2008 list: Bow- you make me happy!!! I just put this album on and am just enjoying Robert tributing Grant: And a river ran, and a train ran, and a dream ran through everything that he did." Brings a tear to the eye. |
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Post by bowiglou on Jan 2, 2009 17:06:26 GMT -5
Straw, I loved the prior Of Montreal LP (forget the name) but I was wholly unimpressed with this years' release...but with the mention of it on your list, I need to give it a re-listen with 2009 ears!!!
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Post by RocDoc on Dec 27, 2009 15:23:40 GMT -5
i love reading them, but this explains pretty well in a very reasonable way why i simply cannot DO them: The most unfortunate time of the year: Why 'best of' lists fail
Critics waffle over yesterday's desiresBy Julia Keller
CULTURAL CRITIC
December 20, 2009
Despite what the song says, this is not the most wonderful time of the year. It is, in fact, a most unfortunate time of the year.
Please understand: I have nothing against holiday traditions, be they retail, religious or secular. I don't grit my teeth at the constant repetition of Christmas carols or harbor any dark, seething hatred of commercialism.
What, then, makes me dread the final few weeks of the year, every year? I'll tell you what. The infamous, diabolical, excruciating yet unavoidable tradition of selecting the year's best offerings in various categories of the arts: books, movies, plays, TV shows, music, video games.
The basic rationale makes perfect sense, of course: No one can read or see or listen to or think about everything, thus we critics rush into the room and wave our arms over our heads and shout, "Stand back, everyone, we've got this covered! Listen up!" As a critic, I can attest to the voluptuous pleasure of watching as several faces in that metaphorical room turn my way, however briefly, waiting for my pronouncement — perhaps only to ridicule it, granted, but I'll take the attention any way I can get it.
Another part of me, though, fiercely and irrationally despises the "Best" lists that appear at year's end. I confess that I do read a great many of them, and I further confess that I sometimes enjoy arguing silently with them. What annoys and disappoints me, though, is the chilly retrospective nature of such lists. They drain all of the blood from the critic's job. They require a cold, methodical calculation of passions long past. They're about yesterday's yearning. Compiling them is a bit like trying to remember why you used to be in love with so-and-so.
When I go into year-end list-making mode, many of the aspects of reading that make it such a special, even spiritual, adventure for me — the play of language, the splash of new facts, the forking path of a beautifully controlled and steadily unfolding narrative — go right out the window. I turn into a show-off. I want to make sure that you know how smart I am, based on the books I pick. And I become a hedger too. And a waffler. I grow overly cautious. I find myself a lot more worried about balance and diversity than about naming the books that really moved me, instructed me, surprised me, infuriated me, shook me up and turned me round — even though, invariably, the books that actually do all of those things end up being a naturally diverse, effortlessly inclusive lot.
Does that mean I think critics are lying about their picks? No, of course not. But it means that in the giant echo chamber of criticism in all genres, consensus is a warm and comfortable and safe place to be, and we all like being warm, comfortable and safe. "Best of" lists function as little engines of consensus. Every critic is looking around to make sure her selections — at least a few of them, anyway — are on other people's lists, too. Going it alone is scary and dangerous.
I am, to be sure, vitally interested in what my favorite literary critics think about the year's books. Yet if these critics are truly my favorites, then I already know. I've been reading them throughout the year — which means, in effect, that I've been reading right along with them, book by book. I should be able to write their "Best of 2009" list myself, instead of waiting for them to do it.
It's the high-risk passion I miss in those year-end lists. The passion of the nervous, risky, itchy present. The fresh-off-the-presses, can't-wait-another-minute, you-gotta-know-this urgency of extolling the virtues of something that's still warm from your clutches.
But if you back me into a corner and threaten to confiscate my Chicago Public Library card unless I come clean, I'll spill my guts. I'll tell you that the best book of 2009 is "Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives" (Pantheon) by David Eagleman, a collection of pungent, lyrical fictions about what might follow our short sojourns here on Earth. In one scenario, it turns out that only scoundrels go to heaven; there, they suffer alongside a deity grown stale and bitter. "Nothing continues to satisfy. Time drowns him. He envies man his brief twinkling of a life, and those He dislikes are condemned to suffer immortality with Him."
The best criticism has the shelf life of a snowflake — and fills the world with the scary, exhilarating news that when it comes to appreciating certain works of art, it's now or never.
jikeller@tribune.com
www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-091220-lit-life-best,0,2092727.column
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Post by Ayinger on Dec 28, 2009 13:02:42 GMT -5
Lot of truth in some of that!
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Post by RocDoc on Dec 28, 2009 14:49:24 GMT -5
i thought so...she's the trib's book critic but her descriptions can definitely be applied to music.
They require a cold, methodical calculation of passions long past.
that's the thing, there definitely IS a continuum of being able to say 'well, did i really like this BETTER than this?', but more than anything it's the rush you get right THEN right at the moment you first hear something (or read or see) that just can't be quantified at a later time.
or at least not quantified WELL.
then you sorta start looking around the room, like she said...
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