Favorite Albums You Haven't Seen In The Critics' Polls 08

The Cheap Time debut is a lot more inspired than the Vivian Girls. "London Zoo" and Cheap Time are the only albums this year that I always seem to listen to start-to-finish. More garage rock: "We have you surrounded" is the best thing the Dirtbombs have done. I like Thee Oh Sees wall-of-noise pop on "Master's Bedroom" better than anything else Dwyer's done yet. And I like it better than the Raveonetts, Magnetic Fields and whoever else did that sound this year.

good call on the dirtbombs...i want to get that album, but haven't scrounged up the cash yet, plus the computers in the shop...I saw them at the Blind Pig a couple of weeks ago though...one of the best gig I've ever been to.

are hipsters just over poor ol' Willie, or did I just miss his placements?

Probably has something to do with him releasing 2 or 3 albums year for the past few years.

Atmosphere, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold (Rhymesayers)

What can I say? It's playing in my head constantly nearly a year later, has more great songs than any of my other favorites from this year (i.e. less that I skip), and still strikes me as beautiful, poignant, and funny.

Half Man Half Biscuit - CSI: Ambleside

David Byrne and Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

But oddly not in the order it appears on the finished CD. When I downloaded it, the track-order I got (hard to believe it was random) was so much better:

Life Is Long
I Feel My Stuff
Everything That Happens
The River
The Lighthouse
Strange Overtones
Home
My Big Nurse
One Fine Day
Wanted for Life
Poor Boy

^yes

not to the tracklist, but the record

Come on curmudgeon, reggaeton and salsa mostly suck this year as we've sort of been discussing all year on the appropriate rolling thread. Unless you count those two new Cesar Pedroso albums as salsa (one of them not under his name) in which case it would be nice to see some recognition for them, but it's not too surprising.

RS, I'm always dreaming and hoping that someone else who never bothers with the Rolling thread will appear on these general interest threads naming off Spanish language stuff that will dazzle us both.

yeah, the tape album's great (xp)
the tenniscoats and secai record is one of my top two or three, kinda a slow burner but beautiful. if the record they made with tape was 08 not 07 then that'd be in there too.

marnie stern!

Tobias Froberg-Turn Heads
Correcto-s/t (Domino)

After my disappointment with The Secret Migration I didn't pay much attention to Mercury Rev's Snowflake Midnight when it came out in Sep. It's kind of sleepy but sounds great right now as the temperature plunges outside from 48 to 12 degrees, and rain will turn to snow, appropriately enough, around midnight.