Finally...

Anyone who knows me, or has known me over the course of the last five or six years or so, knows that I'm notoriously late when it comes to just about everything. Setting deadlines for myself, I've realized, is entirely useless. That said, I'm actually not doing too bad on this one considering that I'm only four or five weeks behind virtually every other music blogger that wrote about their favorite music from the past year. Initially I was contemplating not even compiling a best-of-2008 list at all, for a variety of reasons. The most foremost of which has to do with my perpetual indecisiveness. I have no doubt that I'm going to type up this list and then in a day or two, or a week or a month, I'm going to want to make more than just a couple of changes to it. But I won't. I mean, I could but it wouldn't count if I did something like that.

As for what my criteria was for the list, well, it consisted of a lot of things. What I considered the most in rating these records was how well written I thought the entirety of each record was, how creative it was, the music's ability to span across genres (though this may not have always been relevant), how it compared to previous records from the artist, and lastly, how frequently I listened to each record. There are probably a lot of other things that factored into my opinions that I'm not really mentioning here (for example, how underrated I think some of these artists are) but I'll spare you most of that and let you figure out some of these things on your own.

By no means was the last year an especially exceptional year for music (comparatively speaking, at least) but that's not to say that there wasn't some really incredible music put out over the past twelve months. So, yeah, here are what I thought were the best records of 2008:

10. Peter Broderick - Home

9. Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow & Blue

8. M83 - Saturdays = Youth

7. Hauschka - Ferndorf

6. Horse Feathers - House With No Home

5. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

4. This Will Destroy You - This Will Destroy You

3. Hammock - Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow

2. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

1. Sam Amidon - All Is Well


Ten more great records from '08:

Beach House - Devotion
Nico Muhly - Mothertongue
Goldmund - The Malady of Elegance
Mount Eerie & Julie Doiron - Lost Wisdom
The Mae Shi - Hillyh
Tape - Luminarium
Helios - Caesura
Xiu Xiu - Women As Lovers
Joan of Arc - Boo Human
The Notwist - The Devil, You + Me
Hot Chip - Made In The Dark

note: for the record, I'm not including Radiohead's "In Rainbows" in this list. While it technically came out on January 1st, 2008, many of us already had it before then and therefore, included it in our best-of lists from last year. I am, on the other hand, including Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago" because although it was independently released in 2007, the full record wasn't widely available to the masses until Jagjaguwar re-released it earlier on this past year (yeah, as hard as I tried, I couldn't actually get a copy of it until this past February or so). Finally, you probably noticed that there was no Fleet Foxes or TV on the Radio on this list. That's intentional. While I really enjoyed seeing both bands live this past year and have enjoyed both of their latest efforts, I didn't think either deserved anywhere near as much praise as most critics gave the two this past year. On one hand, TV On the Radio has been established as a relative "mainstay" by now and though they put out a quite interesting record with "Dear Science", I'm reluctant to call it their best yet. Fleet Foxes, on the other hand, were probably the most hyped band of the year. They're still very young and while they put out two great recordings this past year, again, I didn't feel that either deserved as much praise as most critics gave them. Maybe in a year or two, I'll feel differently. Speaking of hype, it might not be such a bad idea to include another section in which I elaborate on my feelings about Vampire Weekend, Deerhunter, and No Age, three more of the critics favorites from the past year but if I started that, I'd have to take it a step further with some type of "Records I'm Most Sick Of Hearing About From 2008" list. I won't do that though. No, I'd rather write about glass-is-half-full type of things tonight.

Feel free to leave a note with your own list(s), criticism/praise of mine, and/or any other comment(s) you may have.