Best of 2008!

I can't help but feel like the year was sort of a flop. I mean, they can't all be good. It will be remembered as the year we elected our first black president, as well as the year somebody finally threw a shoe at our current one. And those are both hopeful things. So instead of focusing on the more foreboding (REVENGE OF THE COLDPLAY!), let's focus on hope. Hope that Wolf Parade will snap out of it. Hope that Nick Thorburn will learn to concentrate. Hope that Foals figures it out (you're almost there guys). Hope that future best band ever Clues won't spontaneously combust before coming to fruition (which it almost certainly will). Hope that She & Him becomes more Him & She. Hope that we don't have to abide Broken Social Scene Presents: That Guy Who Played Xylophone on a track I think...what was his name? What are there like forty of us? Hope that the Strokes take Albert Hammond back now that we're through with him. Hope that the Black Kids get why they're awesome (which seems unlikely). And lastly, hope that Alphabeat don't get discouraged (which also seems unlikely).

So here now friends, for the first time publicly (I think this can be legally defined as publically right? I mean it's sort of a tree falling in the woods situation, anyway) MY BEST OF 2008! AVAILABLE NOW FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF WHATEVER DOWNLOADING ALL OF THESE TRACKS FROM ITUNES OR WHATEVER YOUR PROVIDER HAPPENS TO BE WITH DOUBLE MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. They're all cool with it. I asked. Or get it here

The Best of 2008: Pop Lie Disc One
1. Okkervil River's Pop Lie
2. Islands' The Arm
3. Plants and Animals' Feedback in the Field
4. The Stills' Rooibos/ Palm Wine Drinkard
5. Sebastian Granger's Who Do We Care For?
6. Broken Social Scene Presents: Brendan Canning's Churches Under the Stairs
7. Apollo Sunshine's 666: The Coming of the New World Government
8. Tokyo Police Club's Your English is Good
9. Cold War Kids' Something is Not Right With Me
10. The Walkmen's In the New Year
11. Fleet Foxes' Ragged Wood
12. The Raconteurs' Carolina Drama
13. The Magnetic Fields' Too Drunk To Dream
14. Fonda 500's Jenny #1
15. Elf Power's Spiral Stairs
16. Foals' Cassius
17. The Animal Collective's Water Curses
18. White Denim's Sitting
19. The Notwist's Boneless
20. Little Joy's The Next Time Around

Disc Two

1. The Ruby Suns' Kenya Dig It?
2. Man Man's Top Drawer
3. The Faint's Machine in the Ghost
4. TV on the Radio's Red Dress
5. Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You)
6. Black Kids' Partie Traumatic
7. Cut Copy's So Haunted
8. Hot Chip's Out at the Pictures
9. Beck's Walls
10. Tilly and the Wall's Jumbler
11. Mates of State's Help Help
12. The Spinto Band's Needlepoint
13. Wild Sweet Orange's An Atlas to Follow
14. Conor Oberst's I Don't Wanna Die (In the Hospital)
15. Sleepercar's Stumble In
16. James Jackson Toth's Beulah the Good
17. Vampire Weekend's M79
18. Human Highway's The Sound
19. Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin's Dead Right
20. Rogue Wave's Like I Needed
21. The Mountain Goats' How to Embrace a Swamp Creature
22. The Dodo's Winter


The deliberation is ongoing for best albums. It was not easy sifting through all the let downs and mediocrity. Usually I have the most trouble with the top of the list, but it seemed rather obvious this year. Isn't it just like a bad year to really make you notice the good things?