Top 21 Albums of 2008

Sure, they went to an Ivy League school, they wear boat shoes onstage, they give shout-outs to Cape Cod and Hyannis Port, they even hire a harpsichord and string section like a bunch of fops at a wine-tasting. But Vampire Weekend isn't better than you. They went out and made a debut record that's fun and accessible, even to us plebes who haven't the means to relate. Unlike a lot of the other bands that have generated the bulk of their hype over the Internet, Vampire Weekend delivers fully on their more well-known songs — the pogo-inducing "A-Punk" and "Oxford Comma," where lead singer Ezra Koenig's piping voice shines — while finding ways to win you over a little more slowly to tracks like "M79," which evolves from its chamber music opening to giving Paul Simon and The Police classics a run for their money. "Campus," with its highbrow tale set on the quad, will have you scrambling to Google kefir and keffiyah. And while the record's Afro-pop influences, orchestral arrangements and Graceland comparisons can never be overlooked, the record, at its core, is pure pop. Look beneath those embellishments, and you'll still find an album that's refreshing and infectious.

"Suddenly I found myself an innovator," ex-Stiffed singer Santi White sings on "L.E.S. Artistes," the pinging, sullen ode to suburban dreamers who want less scene and more art from their immediate worlds. "Innovator" is an appellation that could easily be transferred over to White's album, which mixes post-punk, hip-hop, downtown skronk and any other mini-genre that's waxed poetic on by the dwindling ranks of record-store clerks out there. Santogold has garnered some mau-maus from church-and-state-obsessed critics thanks to White's willingness to license its songs even more readily than Moby did with Play a few years back, but in an age where the TV advertisement is one of the maybe three ways to get songs out to an audience beyond music provincialists, one can't help but think that White is just trying to make NFL fans realize that there are still people out there making pop music that's soaked in 21st-century relevancy.

In a good year for bands you already know, The Hold Steady continue their run of muscular poetry set to brawny bar rock. More plea than rallying cry, Stay Positive entreats Craig Finn's usual cast of characters — druggies, scene kids, partiers — to "forget where they differ and get big picture/ 'cause the kids at their shows, they'll have kids of their own/ the sing-along songs'll be our scriptures." Is this Finn's acknowledgment of his place in the grand scheme, tacit self-aggrandizement, or in some small way his attempt to take responsibility for the druggy ugly bar band culture he's mythologized/glamorized? Probably a little from columns A, B and C. Far from an intervention, Stay Positive lays out a heavy dose of the Springsteen swagger, with the horn-fed "Sequestered in Memphis" providing the framework for the latest story in what we can safely begin calling the House that Finn Built.

A kind of contemporary counterpart to Prince's Sign O' the Times, Dear Science blends sleek, soulful hooks with a singular worldview. More streamlined and less obstinate than 2006's Return to Cookie Mountain, the whole record has a dark, fractured beauty: Tunde Adebimpe's vocals go up long and languid as smoke rings, curling around stuttering percussion and icy organ beds. But what's most riveting is the way the band consistently transforms darkness into light. In "Stork & Owl," which could be a lost outtake from The Cure's The Head on the Door, Adepimbe asks, "What's this dying for?" only to answer a few lines later: "Death's a door that love walks through." He sings it with such aching conviction it's impossible to argue.

While the album should be enough — and with a stark, complex and haunting sound, it is — the most impressive measure for Portishead's Third isn't this list of 2008's top records. It's the band's own body of work from the mid-1990s: Few bands have crafted a sound as complete and idiosyncratic as the noir-laced trip-hop of those albums. With Third, they accomplish the near-impossible task of delivering a collection of songs immediately recognizable as theirs without relying on old tools or tricks. Portishead's new sonic vocabulary jumps quickly from sweet ukuleles and broken doo-wop backing vocals in "Deep Water" to the rough synthetic drumming dominating the single "Machine Gun." Anchored always by Beth Gibbons' strained, fragile voice, Third shows a band that has stretched and evolved and very clearly aged, proudly showing scars and wrinkles, but remains able to satisfy high expectations even as they confound them.

Fun never seemed liked an overriding concern for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but that's exactly what they provided on their 14th studio album. The pensive piano of recent releases went into storage. Instead, Cave and his compatriots — clearly influenced by last year's Grinderman offshoot — embraced garage-rock organs, excitable drums and wonderfully unearthly noises. There are wild ruminations on Jesus, drugs and the creative spirit, courtesy of the title track and "We Call upon the Author." And when they come down to a simmer on "Hold on to Yourself" and "More News from Nowhere," the sense of anxious dislocation becomes deeply palpable.

Returning triumphantly to the synthesizers that framed his rise to indie-pop stardom, Stephin Merritt's first Magnetic Fields album since 2004's all-acoustic I eschews theatrical complexity for purer pop pleasures. Merritt's always been game writing for other voices, and Shirley Simms' richly nuanced vocals (especially on "Xavier Says" and "California Girls") meld with the fuzzed-out synths, recalling Susan Anway's work on the Fields' first two albums. Meanwhile, "Too Drunk to Dream" is another five-star entry in Merritt's songbook for the mirthfully misanthropic.

Jay Reatard's deal with Matador to release six limited-run 7-inches throughout 2008 probably seems like a vanity project. It is. But, freed from the confines of a normal album, he still managed to come up with something cohesive. Reatard's got the punk spirit in spades, complete with a snotty teenage Buzzcock's edge and garage fuzz. But he's also growing as a musician, refining his roughness by giving his songs a healthy pop backbone and trying out new instrumentation (acoustic guitar? Holy shit!). Don't worry, kids, he isn't going soft: In album closer "I'm Watching You," Reatard sings, with a stuck-in-your-head catchiness, "You never meant that much to me, I always thought you were a cunt."

The Airing of Grievances is a loose as hell, but completely unified collection of anthems. If the Arcade Fire were drunk, belligerent, deported from Canada and forced to take refuge in New Jersey, The Airing of Grievances is the beautiful yellfest that would result. Even the most optimistic of folks can sing along to these songs of hopelessness ... lovingly.

The first truly dynamic CD of 2008 came with flighty atmospherics and a kinky psychedelic swirl usually found on Flaming Lips records (thanks to Lips producer David Fridmann), epic interplanetary melodies Syd Barrett would've loved, chicken-hypnotizing refrains Bowie could kill for and lost space-boy vocals that take from each of those influences while sounding wholly unique. Combine those things with a gently nasty sense of humor and Brooklyn's psych-electro duo (Ben Goldwasser, Andrew VanWyngarden) made 2008's first best its lasting best. Few debuts could start with a line like "Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives" and get away with it.

While we saw shades of it in the critical reception to 2005's Tha Carter II, 2008 was the year that Weezy F. Baby officially made the transition from white-T'd Hot Boy to genre-non-specific pop demigod. (He even told Blender that Nirvana was one of his biggest influences. What is going on?) This album became a tastemaker's special thanks to the Grammy-nominated layering of DeWayne Michael Carter's biggest selling points: dangerously addictive mainstream club bangers ("Lollipop," "Got Money") and risky, eccentric flows that beget risky, eccentric songs ("Dr. Carter," "Tie My Hands").

Hamilton Leithauser made his declaration from the get-go. "I know that it's true, it's gonna be a good year," he announced on You & Me's first single, "In the New Year." Since half its members took to the turnpike and moved from New York to Philly, The Walkmen have refined their garage rock rawness into a something robust and ripened. You & Me is the sounds of a band maturing without mellowing. Sure, the searing vitriol of "The Rat" has long subsided, but the musical subtlety that's replaced it is still topped off by Leithauser's caustic croon. From the off-kilter "Canadian Girl" to the mournful, horn-adorned "Red Moon," You & Me was a triumph of nuance, texture and rock 'n' roll. Yep, it was a good year.

Despite getting leaked early, Microcastle still snuck in a few surprises. Hidden amongst the ambient collages and instrumental shoegazey soundscapes are bite-size nuggets of righteous clarity. And while the CD does balance precariously on the fulcrum of pop and pretentiousness, Bradford Cox and Co. found a way to meld well-arranged song structures with avant-garde, dream-like ambience. At first it's the pure joy that pulls you in, the pounding of "Never Stops" and the chiming fuzz of "Nothing Ever Happened." But a few immersions and it's actually the unorthodox song structures that draw your mind's eye. The title track is a woozy, smeared camera lens that kicks into focus about two and half minutes in, while "Little Kids" sounds like it was recorded via séance. With Microcastle, Deerhunter created a kaleidoscopic masterpiece — the harder you looked, the more focused and fascinating it all became.

It's funny to think that the past few albums, the ones where John Darnielle spun his personal pains to critical and popular success, were actually what pass for a slump in the long evolution of The Mountain Goats. At least it seems that way after a few spins of Heretic Pride, a record that thrives on adrenaline, darkness and depth. There are drum-pounding rock moments and quiet, string-laden respites. There are fist-in-the-air choruses and simple, blissful verses. Plus that classic interactive nerdiness — name-checking Lovecraft, making you look up "autoclave," raising a glass to the anonymous actor who played Michael Myers. Heretic Pride feels like a milestone, battle cry, a mission statement about the way things are going to be for a while. Get into it, sniffling indie kids.

Lust Lust Lust wraps its knee-buckling synth-pop harmonies in shimmering sheets of glorious distortion. The Danish duo's third full-length is a hopelessly addictive paean to love gone sour, interspersed with the kind of drug-induced come-ons you'd expect to hear slurred into your ear right before last call. "I plowed my way through hell for a sweet sweet love attack," purrs Sharin Foo on the dripping-with-sex "You Want the Candy." On "Expelled from Love," a resigned lover laments, "In a daze of lust do I cling." For the Raveonettes, love is fleeting, but lust is noisy and forever.

Another long drop down into the bleak chasm, Rising Down continues the Roots' sweaty obsession with our broke-down world, trafficking equally in fear, anger and paranoia. What makes the album such a triumph is that it finds the group expanding sonically even further. They whittle songs down to essential elements: the lone thwack of ?uestlove's percussion and twitching, raw-nerve organ. Those bare beds of sound stand like skeletons against the night sky, ominous and imposing. That they're topped with some of the sharpest writing of the group's career is merely a bonus.

A cup of Lauryn Hill, a teaspoon of Floetry, a drop of pre-surgically plastinated Lil' Kim: That's Estelle. The British singer's collaboration with Kanye on the summertime hit "American Boy" fully launched her Stateside fame (and inspired more than a few parodies). The seductive Shine — executively produced by John Legend — climbed every chart and pulled in nominations from BET, MTV, Mercury and Grammy. Since Lauryn dropped off, the world has been aching for new hip-hop/R&B royalty. Too early to call Estelle an heir to the throne, but she's off to a damn good start.

Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug might be the Lennon and McCartney of Canadian indie rock. At Mount Zoomer is an aural feast of songs constructed from the duo's distinctly individual styles. Alternately driven by Boeckner's guitars ("Fine Young Cannibals") or Krug's keyboards ("California Dreamer"), the subtle complementary textures create rich melodies and never fight each other for the spotlight. This collaborative effect throughout the album coalesces most perfectly on "Kissing the Beehive," the co-penned 11-minute grand finale.

But enough about that one song. There are other triumphs on Wagonwheel Blues. Note the hollers through a drumloop haze in "Taking the Farm," or Adam Granduciel's trembling voice amid modest folk guitar arrangements in "Buenos Aires Beach." Dig his fondness for lyrical entrances in media res. The album does the same thing, false-starting on the whir of a dying chord, the tapping of a high hat, the pretty chimes of a song that either just ended or is never going to begin, since we're immediately pulled elsewhere, into a tapestry of accidental art.

Tales of forlorn forest wanderers "graceful in the morning light" make Fleet Foxes a far-out nature study with solid musical foundations. With most members in their early 20s, it's surprising to hear such a mature, weathered sound. Fleet Foxes excels in dynamics: Singer Robin Pecknold carries massive vocal harmonies over shimmering guitars, then reduces them to whispers through the trees.

How does that schlocky ABBA movie make almost $600 million, while an album like Made in the Dark — structured on all the most ideal elements of disco, tuned to the most precise and ebullient levels humanly possible — stays largely ignored? Infuriating. Let's dance to get the rage out. Alexis Taylor and his merry band of merry generic-looking British guys put out their best album to date in 2008, assigning required pre-live-show listening ("Shake a Fist," "Bendable Posable," "In the Privacy of Our Love") for years to come.