The Final Analysis: Best Albums of 2008

Free Times' Top 10 Albums of 2008, blurb for WHY?'s Alopecia (repeated in individual list)

4. Why?, Alopecia (Anticon)(Two votes, 30 points)
I’ve long thought a successful synthesis of rock and hip-hop impossible. In 2008, Yoni Wolf proved me wrong. Pop’s way with a hook, indie rock’s confessional propensity and hip-hop wordplay come together allowing Wolf to propel his neurotic narratives into universal empathy and sing-along grandeur. You’re not likely to hear anything like this until the next Why? platter drops. - B. Reed

Free Times, 01/07/09

Individual List:
Bryan Reed

7. Harvey Milk, Life…The Best Game In Town (Hydra Head)(10 points)
Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn gave Harvey Milk, the slain San Francisco city supervisor and gay rights activist, a second life in the public conscious this year. Life …The Best Game In Town gave a similar resurrection to Harvey Milk the band. The titanic metal act from Athens delivered one of the year's heaviest albums the right way — digging into riffs so deep they become mudslides, churning deliberately, swallowing everything in its way. The bass rattles the floor, the vocals growl and gurgle, and the guitars alternate lunging ahead in classic-rock worthy solos and squeezing back into the maw of Harvey Milk's slow-rolling melee building power through repeated riffs.

6. Fuck Buttons, Street Horrrsing (ATP)(15 points)
Structured and subtly melodious, English duo Fuck Buttons' debut LP left little else to be desired from accessible noise. Hypnotic washes of static bake the repeated phrases and ideas that tie the album together as a cohesive unit, even as it veers at times into tribal percussion and distorted yelps, or insistent house-like bass thumps. Mostly, though, Street Horrrsing is both engaging and enveloping. It draws the listener in to it time and again, each time revealing a bit more of itself. Experimental, sure, but its attraction is as natural as any 12-bar blues.

5. Mamiffer, Hirror Enniffer (Hydra Head)(15 points)
Perhaps this year's most stirring debut, the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Faith Coloccia, solders post-rock, chamber pop and doom together with her tundra of piano phrases buttressed by abysmally deep bass grooves and martial percussion. She can drop the bottom out and give a song a blackened low-end groove, or hoist a song aloft on gentle piano and atmospheric noise — or, as is her custom, she can pull off both extremes within the course of one track. This dynamic lends the album a multifaceted character, at some times dark and ominous, at others serene and calming. At all times, though, Hirror Enniffer is nothing short of gorgeous.

4. Nomo, Ghost Rock (Ubiquity)(15 points)
Seamlessly blending jazz, Afro-beat and experimental electronics into delirious, danceable fun is Nomo's M.O. on Ghost Rock, and proves the Michigan band is at the top of its funky multi-culti pop potpourri. The band's musical brew is an effortless chemistry, and its product is as singular on today's market as the album is an absolute joy to listen to.

3. Earth, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (Southern Lord)(15 points)
The 13th full-length release from Dylan Carlson's legendary Earth sounds like no other. His pacing remains slow and deliberate, but this is not the heavy, sludgy Earth of old; rather, this a post-millennial hodgepodge of soulful American music. Strains of gospel, country-western and jazz meet amid the hum of the towering amps Carlson and company have made trademark. Here, the drone isn't an end in itself, but returns to its universal role as the foundation from which music is birthed. The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull feels timeless, its elements forming together into something near iconic. Indeed, this might well be a career-defining masterwork for Earth.

2. Why?, Alopecia (Anticon) (15 points)
I've long thought a successful synthesis of rock and hip-hop impossible. In 2008, Yoni Wolf proved me wrong. Under his Why? moniker, Wolf doesn't take the easy way out (rapping over a hard rock riff), but adopts the central elements of his source genres to create something new entirely. It's not a surprise that something this unconventional would be slept on, but it is a damn shame. Here, Wolf has produced a startlingly catchy and ear-friendly sonic blend. But most notable is the songwriting, which ranks easily among the year's best and finds the center of Wolf's successful genre synthesis. Pop's way with a hook, indie rock's confessional propensity and hip-hop wordplay come together allowing Wolf to propel his neurotic narratives into universal empathy and sing-along grandeur. You're not likely to hear anything like this until the next Why? platter drops.

1. Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire, Lost Wisdom (P.W. Elverum & Sun)(15 points)
As bare as wintertime trees in Phil Elverum's native Pacific Northwest, Lost Wisdom is a glowing ember of an album. It creaks and moans and aches; it glows and dims and soon ends. Sparse arrangements and gentle harmonies move as one, fragile wisps of Elverum's creaking tenor and Julie Doiron's velvet croon embracing and separating. Recorded quickly with few takes, we hear the missed notes, the creaking of chair legs on wooden floors, the imperfect nature of the human voice, and the all-too-brief album turns those flaws into assets, and turns a fleeting moment of aural beauty into a quietly profound statement. The music itself is soon over, but the feeling it imparts lasts much, much longer.