My Fav Music of 2008
2008 was the year I finally said goodbye to arena rock and heavy metal forever….ok maybe forever is too strong a word but for a long time at least. Instead I started listening to almost exclusively alternative music with the favored subgenres being post rock, shoegaze, electropop and garage rock. The list below is my pick for the best albums released this year.
Of course it doesn’t contain all the amazing bands I started to listening to for the simple reason that they didn’t release records this year with the most notable examples being The Strokes, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Matisyahu, Interpol, The Knife etc etc.
The list also doesn’t contain albums not officially released yet like Franz Ferdinand’s new record which has a smashing single in “Ulyssyes”. There was also some big letdowns from some of my fav bands like Shiny Toy Guns and Snow Patrol. I guess you expect them to blow your mind everytime and when that doesn’t happen it’s a fucking bummer. On a much happier note I’ve shot one spec video of an incredibe yet criminally obscure band this week and will shoot another next week. Will put them up soon. We had no budget, no equipment but the music is so brilliant that hopefully it should smooth over the cracks :-)
Here’s the list in no particular order
MGMT – Oracular Spectacular (Fav Track – Electric Feel)
Moby – Last Night (Fav Track – Disco Lies)
The Tings Tings – We Started Nothing (Fav Track – That’s not my Name)
M83 – Saturdays = Youth (Fav Track – Coleuers)
Santogold- Santogold (Fav Track-LES Artistes)
Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs ( Fav Track -Your Heart is a lonely room)
Katy Perry – One of the Boys (Hot n Cold)
Low vs Diamond – Low vs Diamond (Heart Attack)
Sigur Ros – Me'° su'° ' eyrum vi'° spilum endalaust (Gobbledigook)
Cansei de Ser Sexy – Donkey (Fav Track – Rat is Dead)
The Airborne Toxic Event – The Airborne Toxic Event (Fav Track – Sometime Around Midnight)
Bloc Party – Intimacy (Fav Track – Talons)
The Verve – Forth (Fav Track – Love is Noise)
Coldplay – Viva la Vida (Fav Track – Lost)
Mogwai – The Hawk is Howling (Fav Track – Dracula Family)
My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges (Fav Track – Thank you too)
Cold War Kids – Loyalty to Loyalty (Fav Track – Something is not right with me)
Kings of Leon – Only by the Night (Fav Track – Sex on Fire)
The Killers- Day and Age (Fav Track – Human)
Sneha Khanwalkar – Oye Lucky Lucky Oye (Soundtrack) (Fav Track – Superchor)
AR Rahman – Slumdog Millionaire (Soundtrack) (Fav Track- Jai Ho)
My fav album of the year is Oracular Spectacular by MGMT. When I have my own country then Electric Feel will be the national anthem. I would have provided youtube links to the track but I’m too lazy to deal with html coding. Two songs which I loved but didn’t care much for the rest of the album are “Khwaja” from Jodha Akbar and “Mehfuz” from Aamir.
Hope 2009 is as amazing in terms of music as 2008 was.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Life is going to be so much better now that you have left Arena Rock & Heavy Metal.
Welcome aboard.
We have a lot of music in common. Mine is a bit more electronic. Also this year instead of selecting what i thought was the best songs/albums, I made a list of the songs that played in my car/laptop the most. regardless of what i feel is the best.
I am with you about MGMT.
I don’t get SantaGold at all.
Love these from your list -
Love is Noise
Electric Feel
Human
Sex on Fire
Evil Urges
M83
Talons
Something is not right with me.
My fav song of Moby’s album is I like to move in here. Last year I discovered Sigur Ros in a major way. I was listening to them so much that I completely stayed away from them.
Check out more at my similar post 3 days back
http://passionforcinema.com/discoveries-of-2008
I just checked out the other music.
Really liked
Mogwai’s Dracula Family
Airborne Toxic Event’s Sometime Around Midnight.
Right now checking out Cansei de Ser Sexy. I like it.
Nice list there Mitch.
This year I spent my time listening to my favorite Music genre-Progressive Rock,
Like:
Mr.Bungle
Godspeed you Black Emperor
Fantomas
sigur r'³s
Mars Volta
Muse
-
Indian Bands like:
Motherjane – Insane Biography , Maktub
Avial – Avial
-
And attained “Rock in India” Concert.
Bands Including
-
Foreign bands:
Megadeth
Machinhead
-
Indian Bands:
Motherjane
Millennium
Pentagram
Junkyard Groove
Movie Soundtrack:
Hellboy 2 Golden Army – Danny Elfman
Shimpiji
Aapka music kuch bhari bhaari sa lag raha hai:)
mainak bhai!!!
aapka Music bhi kuch kam bhaari nahi hai
Mera matlab literally tha!
Lot of Heavy Metal.
Didn;t you read – this post is a celebration of kicking on Megadeth’s redneck ass.
Fuck all fuckers who want to kick the ass of metal/heavy metal..!! Metal \m/ :P
@ Tejas
ha ha, Now that is what I called “heavy metal” attitude
-
@mainak
he he
“Bhari Loha” ke baareme!!!
hey that Concert was fantastic man, 10 Indian Bands were there, and they kick the ass of foreign Bands
REM-Accelerate
How can you leave heavy metal? That’s like violating the code of a Metalhead… I don’t know why I’m saying this
I still need to revisit lots of titles as it was music overload year for me, but here is a quick recall from my playlist:
My Morning Jacket
Death Cab for Cutie
Once -OST
Gnarls Barkley
Lil Wayne
The Killers – just started Day & Age today
Mates of State
David Gilmour – the new Live record
REM – Accelerate
Snow Patrol
Sonic Youth
I’m not there – OST
The Ting Tings
The White Stripes
For all the metalheads out there, I’ve been listening to that stuff since I was 12 years old. It’s a natural progression to listen to more subtle stuff. I didn’t even feel like listening to the new AC/DC album despite owning all of their stuff back home on CD. Don’t even listen to Queen and U2 much now despite growing up on them. I think the only one who has survived the teen years is Springsteen and that’s coz he’s constantly reinventing himself. His new track “The Wrestler” gives me gooseflesh. So looking fwd to his album this month and his halftime show at the Superbowl.
I seriously reccomend to start listening to post rock/ambient music coz I really find it inspirational. Here’s a local indie LA band who rock my pants off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWpHt0cGzVw
@Mainak
Two MGMT anecdotes which you will enjoy.
1) A friend of mine made a spec video for Kids which has got 5 million hits on youtube and even the band liked it when they saw it. So they didn’t make an offical video despite the single being out for months and now its almost the official version.
2) One of the girls in the house where I’m staying in Brooklyn went on tour with them as an supporting act. It’s crazy how so many of many of my fav bands are based in 3 places ie LA, Brooklyn and Austin.
Dude let’s go to Coachella this year. It’s 80 bucks a day but lets fucking save up and do it. Check out this set by Arcade Fire a coupla years ago. Its insane….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V41qkhU-98
hmmmmmmmm I moved out of my Children of Bodom/In Flames phase to Bach/Vivaldi(!) phase… Slowly discovering the wonders of Western Classical (especially Violin). Though to be honest, not really delved DEEP into it, I guess… Would love to though. Saala limited download (piracy zindabad!) ka locha.
and some Old Bolly stuff (Rafi/Manna Dey) as well. Though for the past 2-3 weeks its been OLLO and now Dev.D…
@tushar – sonic youth! i have been listening to them since 96! awesome!
for me, porcupine tree is the band i “discovered” this year. i heard a few of their songs in 2007, but this year i have pretty much exhausted their catalog. can’t classify them as metal or progressive rock or whatever, check out some of the first few songs of theirs i had heard:
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=jsJE6czq1e8 (Sound of Muzak)
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=aHFnh2EcdGA (Lazarus)
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0hgIis2o88&feature=related (the start of something beautiful)
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=yEQeCmxfYF8 (arriving somewhere but not here – live version)
And some collaboration stuff of Steven Wilson (the guy behind PT)
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=X7aa_eT_H_Y – Blackfield – Pain
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=8jzqHZcHA88 (Blackfield – Blackfield)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpEw-UfLlkg (Opeth – Harvest)
Opeth is another band I have really liked in the last year or so.
Steven Wilson is GOD!
Wow Ravi, this is really cool. Checking out the videos now. Thanks man.
last year i was very much in favor of English songs to be played at parties but in 2008 this all changed. Hindi songs rock.