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Best of 2008: The Sword

 

We asked some of our favorite musicians to tell us about some of their favorite artists, songs and moments from 2008. Here's what the Austin metal band the Sword had to say about the year in music.

Favorite album
I'm gonna have to go with Torche, Meanderthal on that one. Torche is really one of my favorite bands.  They satisfy the seemingly impossible qualification of being "as heavy as the Melvins." Sorry, no other band in the world is that heavy. AND they understand how to use melodies to really engage you and demonstrate a pop sensibility that hardly anyone can match. They are like an elegant Giant that has turned total destruction into a breathtakingly beautiful form of art.

Singling Out 2008: Ponytail, Be Your Own Pet, The Bug, more

My tastes and Pitchfork's generally tend to reside on opposite polar extremes (never did forgive that stupid 0.8 those humorless twits gave Northern State's debut six years ago, or the equally dumb 4.0 they gave Electric Six's first album, but the bigger problem is that a good lifetime has passed since their beloved indie college rock was anywhere near the most happening musical milieu out there.) Still thought it'd be fair to find out whether a few tracks on the site's 100 Best Tracks of 2008 list don't actually stink, though. (Same basic task I attempted here, and here, and so on.) Cross your fingers!

Atlanta Mall Goths The Swear Strive For Suburban Success

 

The Swear are Atlanta young people (three boys, one girl) who have every intention of making it big. Their press bio looks like a frigging resumé – long boring lists of TV shows they’ve landed their songs on ( Rescue Me, Roswell, Smallville); movies they’ve ditto (Surreal, Cross Country, By Chance); endorsements (Gretsch, Gibson, Marshall); contest successes (“Rolling Stone/Ray-Ban ‘Never Hide Your Music’ finalist”); web stuff (“#1 track In All Genres and a Featured Artist on NumberOneMusic.com”); radio stuff (“Arizona Jeans Radio Free Arizona featured artist”); “Noteworthy Performances and Conferences” (who the heck cares); you name it. Ambitious little strivers trying to impress the gatekeepers of a dying biz – that’s pretty much what rock music has come to these days, right? Maybe it’s the economy’s fault; it’s not like bohemian messing-around is all that viable an option anymore, at least not for provincial tykes not born with silver trust funds in their mouths.  Still -- do bands like this actually have fun, or is it just a job? The Swear’s music is not especially joyful, to my ears. Odd thing is, I kind of like it anyway.

Ex-Torche Guitarist Speaks About Deal-Breaking Fist Fight

Before it was announced that metal it-band Torche's guitarist Juan Montoya would be playing his final show with the band at All Tomorrow's Parties' Nightmare Before Christmas Festival in England, Rhapsody spoke with an unaware Montoya about some of his best and worst moments and memories of 2008. In what became his last interview as a member of Torche, we learned about an altercation that took place between Montoya and singer/ guitarist Steve Brooks. As Brooks releases a statement saying "[Montoya is] no longer with us due to ongoing personal reasons," it seems the black-eye inducing altercation Montoya spoke of was the final deal-breaker.

Singling Out 2008: Glasvegas, F*ck*d Up, Sam Sparro, more

Once upon a time -- like, two decades ago -- jolly old England's New Musical Express used to come up with incredibly diverse, educational and intriguing best-of-the-year lists as a matter of course. But for years now, the venerable paper has tried to pass off the silly lie that the best music comes from pasty and undernourished white lads who can neither sing nor rock. Though their best-of-'08 lists seem to fall firmly in the latter tradition, that's not going to stop me from bravely trolling through a few mysterious titles from this year's Top 50 Singles to see if any might be worthy, just as I've previously done with several Best-Singles-of-08 lists from other places. To wit:

Dig This! School of Seven Bells

FREE DOWNLOAD: School of Seven Bells, "Connjur"

Rhythm and harmony! They’re the first things you hear on “Iamundernodisguise,” the opening track on School of Seven Bells’ debut, Alpinisms: a rolling drumbeat marshals a hint of rhumba in the bassline, while sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza speak-sing the word-sounds like a two-part Eastern Orthodox choir. Soon enough, the chorus brings the hook and the result is left-field electronic pop; but it’s the confident mix of beats and voices that defines the song.

[Click the "Continue Reading..." link to listen to a playlist featuring the music discussed in this post.]

Singling Out 2008: Jaguar Love, Kings of Leon, Rev Theory, more

     

The new January 2009 issue of Blender includes, among many other things, a list of "the top 144 songs of 2008," as presumably selected by the editors. (Though I write for the magazine some, my own input was not requested.) Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the list at blender.com, so maybe you'll just have to turn to page 66 at your neighborhood newsstand. Regardless, I still wanted to check the trustworthiness of some of their song choices that I'd somehow survived almost 11 months of the year without hearing (not unlike what I did with other '08 best-singles lists here, etc.). So, that's what I'm gonna do.

Live Video: F*ck*d Up With Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend)

F*ck*d Up w/ Ezra Koenig, "Someone's Gonna Die Tonight" and "Parents"

We've got more video from the 12-hour F*ck*d Up show from this past October. In the above video, Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig performs "Someone's Gonna Die Tonight" by the legendary Oi band Blitz, as well as "Parents" by the Descendants. After the jump, check out F*ck*d Up's take on Black Flag classic "Nervous Breakdown."

John Norris Interviews ... Vivian Girls

In the latest installment of John Norris Interviews... our intrepid reporter ventures to the far off lands of Brooklyn to talk to the reverb-punk gals in Vivian Girls. John talks to the trio about the scarce availability of their early recordings, the facts and fictions of being in an all-gal band and much more.

Further Viewing:
Previous installments of John Norris Interviews...

Dig This! Curumin

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD: Curumin, "Compacto"

Curumin is the Quannum artist who shouldn't be. On a Bay Area label of underground rappers, the young man born Luciano Nakata Albuquerque is a Brazilian multi-instrumentalist who doesn't rap and is, in many ways, an old-fashioned songwriter. But when Quannum co-founders Blackalicious toured Brazil in 2004, Curumin's manager slipped his first album, Achados e Perdidos, into their hands, and the group listened. What they heard seriously impressed them: a young man who had Stevie Wonder on the brain, James Brown in the beats and Jorge Ben in the melodies. Shortly after, they signed him.

Two things drive Curumin: a powerful nostalgia for the simplicity of childhood and a voracious appetite for new sounds. JapanPopShow, his second album, is a vintage-era masterpiece. But, for all its diverse influences -- Brazilian pop, soul, funk and reggae  -- it's also a complete musical universe. There are no loose threads. And given how beautifully textured the album is, perhaps it's not surprising he's a Quannum artist -- any hip-hop producer would want to sample these songs. (In fact, several rappers guest on the album.) We caught up with Rhapsody's Dig This! artist in early November, and asked him about all the usual stuff -- the album's name, his inspirations -- but we got a lot more: meditations on youth, our modern world, and what tradition means in the age of globalization.

[Click the "Continue Reading..." link to listen to a playlist featuring the music discussed in this post.]