2008 Albums: 16-20

20. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colors

I'm not well-versed in Cut Copy's music, but this album really stuck with me this year. I suppose it's a electronic dance album, which is fine, but dance/house music isn't something I often play repeatedly. Maybe this is because, well, a lot of it takes care of that and more by being incredibly repetitive all on its own. Sure it's great in a club where you want 20 identical measures of the same thing to perfect your robot--but it's not something I often put on at home wearing headphones.

In Ghost Colors has got the beats covered, and is full of shining examples of good electro-synth-pop. But their songs and melodies stand out more than usual. I found myself coming back to it for reasons other than being fun to dance to--because the songs were really good.

19. David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything that Happens Will Happen Today

Who could know what this album would actually sound like. Two 60 year old musical gods casually tell the world they're throwing together a few bits and bobs they've got lying around. One of them just produced the latest commercial rock behemoth for Coldplay, the other rides his bike around Manhattan these days, turning buildings into art exhibits. Would it be landscape-y and dreamy like Eno's Airports? Quirky and quick like Talking Heads albums? Just about the only thing we could count on was that it would sound great on headphones.

The result is a warm, touchingly scattershot affair that is held together only because the two men who made it are very good at what they do. My first couple times through this were pretty rocky. There are a lot of awkward moments, some odd lyrics, and a cohesion was not made a huge priority. You get the sense that each is feeling the other out to see whether this collaboration will work again. But everybody just seems to be in such a good mood, especially Byrne. And of course, it's incredibly fun to, well, listen to this on headphones.

18. Alphabeat - S/T

This album is embarrassingly high on the list for me. But I should refuse to feel bad. With gems of pure sugary pop as satisfying from the first listen to the 40th, even an album as uneven and over-pleasing as this gets credit in my book. iTunes play counts don't lie, and 10,000 Nights of Fire, Fascination and In the Jungle are all in my top ten for the year. The first three songs are almost enough to make the rest of the album work, but it all does begin to wear.

But there were innumberable times when I put on the beginning of this album after a bad day, and it made me indescribably happy, dancing around like a white man never should. And if music that does this isn't good, I don't know what is.

Technically this was released last year, but they came out with a 2008 version that's not as good. So get the original.

17. Bonnie Prince Billy - Lie Down in the Light

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a big fan of Bonnie "Prince" Billy, because, well, I really have a low tolerance for sad bastard music. When Nick told me about this album, he was sure to mention immediately that he didn't much like BPB either. So with this recommendation from a skeptic, I gave it enough time to grow on me.

It's a great, great album. The man is actually sorta happy. Halfway through the first track, when a one-handed little piano ditty comes into the mix and someone hums, I had a good feeling. He's got a few downright uptempo cuts on this, and he just lets the songs be folk songs, shedding the solipsistic singer-songwriter schtick for country twinge and playful arrangements that sound full and lush in comparison to his earlier albums. The album ends with a chorus, for Christ's sake.

16. M83 - Saturdays = Youth

To call M83 cinematic is incredibly obvious, but they're one of the few bands that actually inhabit this over-used adjective with full-on earnestness. The synths are huge, the nostalgia is thick, and there's a girl who looks like Molly Ringwald on the cover. As if I didn't love John Hughs' movies enough -- many of them were filmed in my town or the next one over -- M83's album let me re-live it all again. The big sweeping sounds are expansive and 80s-drenched, yet carefully orchestrated enough to sound modern (but still nicely fuzzed-over into shoegaze). After the dreamy opener, Kim & Jessie is a good enough song to propel me halfway into the album. But the song after song hits home.

In this territory it would be easy to make a saccharine, heavy-handed pile of crap. But everything is kept in balance and the emotions, somehow, never veer too far into sentimental territory. Maybe it's just nice to hear sincere love for the past without irony playing too much of a role--Gonzalez really cares about the 80s. He's not just ripping them off casually. Oscar Wilde described the sentimentalist as someone "who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." This album does not meet that definition.