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Chuck Eddy's Best Albums of the Year Countdown, Part 3: Numbers 1 - 50

   

George Jones once called 1970 "a good year for the roses," and though the fellow who made my very favorite album this year accurately suggested that his records be alphabetically filed "somewhere between Jennings and Jones," he apparently thought 2008 was a good year for mowin' down his ex-wife's roses with a tractor instead. Another hint is that, though legend has it he created his highly introspective current album in quiet seclusion after a life-changing breakup while letting his beard grow, he is amazingly not Bon Iver! Also, he and the fellow who made my second-favorite album of the year both have the same last name! Which last name somehow appears nowhere among my 51st-to-100th or 101st-to-150th favorite albums of 2008! Guess I've just got a thing for Johnsons. Not to mention grumpy old white guys who mess up their lives a lot. Psychoanalyze that how you will. And Happy New Year!

Chuck Eddy's Best Albums of the Year Countdown, Part 2: Numbers 51 - 100

 

So, all I want to say is the same thing I've said every year this decade: If you think hardly any good albums came out this year, you weren't looking very hard. Period. Otherwise, the main thing I realized while compiling the list below is what a really good year 2008 was for rock from Australia (which is where numbers 51 and 52 come from, plus at least four others -- five if New Zealand counts.) Otherwise otherwise, see numbers 101 to 150. And for numbers 1 to 50, wait a couple days. Those'll be even better, I promise!

Chuck Eddy's Best Albums Of The Year Countdown, Part 1: Numbers 101 - 150

     

Ground rules: (1) Only albums I actually listened to were eligible. Which means I didn't include albums that I didn't hear. Pretty obvious, right? But worth noting, even if nobody making lists like this ever does, given the thousands upon thousands of albums I didn't hear (the overwhelming majority of which I have no interest in, and wouldn't have liked even if I did hear them, but what the heck.) (2) I included reissues, but not ones that merely repackaged old albums that've always existed. (3) I also included a few albums that came out in late 2007, but nobody noticed until 2008. That said, on with the show!

Canada's Road Hammers Keep On Truckin'

 

The Road Hammers are four guys from Alberta and Ontario -- led by Jason McCoy, a great white north star in his own right -- who pretty much only sing about driving trucks and all that entails, often with a chugging road rhythm underneath and compact guitar solos and sundry ignition noises on top.

Singling Out 2008: Tricky, Brad Paisley, Mike Doughty, more

So, if you've been paying attention, I've spent lots of time in the past two months listening to singles from other people's and publications' Best Singles of 2008 lists, in order to determine whether such accolades were deserved. This time out, I'm tackling lists published in Slate by Jody Rosen (a Top 25) and Robert Christgau (a Top 10) as part of an often intriguing and just as often infuriating now-apparently-annual three-way discussion on the year in music (also featuring Ann Powers, whose list has yet to be included). I've got thoughts about what they wrote, too. But I'll procrastinate on those.

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!

Metal Ketchup # 14: Mortiis, Metal Church, Municipal Waste, more

More possible stinky-stocking-stuffers for headbangers on your holiday list (though a couple of these, admittedly, might not necessarily be preferable to a lump of a coal):

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.

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:

Trace Adkins Peaks While Toby Keith Phones It In

Pundits who anticipate that a Democratic administration in Washington will somehow necessitate an upheaval in commercial country music are showing their hand, if not their ignorance, about all sorts of things. Genres have never particularly changed face that way in the past, as far as I can tell, and country was never anywhere near as intrinsically symbiotic with the Bushies as liberals who don't listen to it much seem to think. For every John Rich or Hank Jr., there’s a Tim McGraw (who’s reportedly said in the past that he’d like to run for Congress sometime as a Democrat) or Dixie Chicks. And it’s been several years since Nashville even seemed particularly triumphalist about, say, Iraq. These days, when manly bohunks like Toby Keith or Trace Adkins sing about the war – as they both do, at least obliquely, on their new albums – there’s nothing rah-rah about it; the message is no more concretely right-wing than, say, Army Wives. And though it’s ridiculous I even have to point this out, that’s hardly the main thing they do. By now, both Toby and Trace are at least as interested in presenting themselves as grown-up love men.