13th
2008 Music List
I’ve decided to publish this now because I’m in the midst of sifting through my music library, finding stuff i haven’t listened to in over a year and listening to it, deleting it if I don’t want it anymore. Numbering among the casualties is The Beatles (aka the White Album), because I honestly think it’s their worst release after Get Back, and the sheer fact that I would delete something by the Beatles should indicate I’m taking this process pretty seriously. I started this process in October and am only now getting to the ‘M’s. Currently playing is Medúlla by Björk, which I last listened to on 29 August 2006, and am likely going to delete it too.
So I have a script that will find the most popular albums in my iTunes library, by playcount adjusted for length of the album and how long I’ve had it, and filter out anything added before a particular number of weeks ago. The only opinion informing this list are my listening habits. So, here’s the top 25 for this year:
- Black Holes and Revelations by Muse
- Wolfmother by Wolfmother
- Felt Mountain by Goldfrapp
- The Bedlam in Goliath by The Mars Volta
- Ghosts by Nine Inch Nails
- The Slip by Nine Inch Nails
- Absolution by Muse
- St Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley
- The Odd Couple by Gnarls Barkley
- LP3 by Ratatat
- Showbiz by Muse
- The Class of 73 Bells by Prefuse 73
- Third by Portishead
- Death of an Aura by Ochre
- Here Comes Everyone by Reverbaphon
- One Cello x 16: Natoma by Zoe Keating
- Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By by Lovage
- The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack by Sixx AM
- Bombay the Hard Way: Guns, Cars and Sitars by DJ Shadow & Dan the Automator
- A Mad and Faithful Telling by Devotchka
- Fever to Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp
- Blood, Looms & Blooms by Leila
- Cyclonic Steel by KJ Sawka
- Holy Fuck by Holy Fuck
I don’t know quite what it says about me that only like seven or eight of those albums were actually released this year. Maybe that I’m so unhip I’ve only this year discovered Muse, Goldfrapp, Gnarls Barkley and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?
Personally what I find more intersting about this list is what is missing, and the reasons for that:
The Inevitable Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust by Saul Williams. This album came out late last year and did not make last year’s list because it took me a few months to get into it, and yet it’s probably my favorite album of the last three or four years. It’s such a deep and personal album I’ve remarked multiple times that “I’m too white to be listening to this”. I have seen Saul perform twice and both shows rank up there among the best I’ve been to this year (alongside !!! at the Doug Fir, Portishead at Coachella, and Nine Inch Nails at the Rose Garden), despite that at the first show at the Aladdin Theater in March I was sick as a dog with the flu.
Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails. When this album was released last year I gave it a few listens and moved on. I didn’t care for The Fragile and absoultely hated With Teeth and I think I wrote Trent off. Which was a huge mistake on my part, obviously since both Ghosts and The Slip made this year’s top ten. The thing about Year Zero is that I didn’t really get into it until after I read about the alternate reality game about the time I put together last year’s list. It really is a concept album and knowing the backstory of the concept helps a lot. Taken in the context of the last two years, Year Zero is number 6.
10,000 Days by Tool. I’m not sure why, but I had decided to ignore Tool sometime around when Ænima was released. I’ve heard people go on about how great both this album and Lateralus is, but it wasn’t until a late night of drinking and talking philosophy and music that I was convinced to give this album a shot, knowing that I’d be entering into a dense, multi-layered epic that would take a while to appreciate. That was in October, after I both acquired a new Macbook and decided not to move my iTunes library to it until I finished the purging I mentioned at the start. So this album isn’t in my main library to be rated yet. If it were I’m pretty sure it’d be in the top ten — it’s an excellent album that I have no excuse for missing out on when it was released.
