Plumbiferous Media

2008 is over, and what bet­ter way to cel­e­brate the new year and the launch of Plumb­if­er­ous Media than reviews? As a sort of intro­duc­tion, we’re Plumb­if­er­ous Media, a small music review site com­posed of a few friends with strong opin­ions about music. We’ve decided to start off our (hope­fully) long tenure as music review­ers with a quick ret­ro­spec­tive of the last year in rock music. It’s been an inter­est­ing year, but, after a good bit of dis­cus­sion (argu­ment) we’ve man­aged to choose what we think are the best 10 albums released this year.

#10: HLLLYH - The Mae Shi

If you asked most peo­ple whether spas­tic gui­tar, plenty of synth, and slightly out of tune scream­ing would make for good music, they would prob­a­bly just look at you funny. But the mem­bers of The Mae Shi aren’t most peo­ple, and some­how they’ve man­aged to make quite a suc­cess­ful album out of those com­po­nents. While it’s easy to think of HLLLYH as just that, it has quite a lot more to it. Take “Pwnd”: yes, it has the occa­sional scream­ing inter­jec­tion, but the entire track is care­fully thought out, with intri­cate inter­lac­ing of synth, drums, and mul­ti­ple vocal lines that build into those scream­ing fits. “Run to Your Grave,” in con­trast, is an incred­i­bly sim­ple track, yet that only serves to bring out the lyrics. We have no idea why The Mae Shi is singing so cheer­ily about such a mor­bid sub­ject, but it some­how works. While some songs do sim­ply devolve into unman­age­able noise, the many good tracks earn it a place in this list.

#9: We Are Beau­ti­ful, We Are Doomed - Los Campesinos!

Los Campesinos! could eas­ily have been exactly like 100 other alt-rock-indie-whatever bands. But they’re not, and we’re all bet­ter off for it. We Are Beau­ti­ful, We Are Doomed is blessed with excel­lent intros and instru­men­ta­tion, inter­est­ing lyrics and con­stant energy through even slow songs.  Musi­cally, the album is excel­lent. The lyrics are sim­ple (but carry emo­tional weight if you’re pay­ing atten­tion). Though Los Campesinos! has con­sis­tently put out good albums, this makes Los Campesinos!‘s third album their best - an even more impres­sive feat as this is the sec­ond full-length album they’ve put out this year. The only real low point to We Are Beau­ti­ful is the vocals, which occa­sion­ally seem to be less singing as much as talk­ing melod­i­cally, and from time to time are a bit out of tune. But this is even­tu­ally for­giv­able, as they fit well with the music.  Every­thing con­sid­ered, We Are Beau­ti­ful, We Are Doomed is well done.

#8: Vam­pire Week­end - Vam­pire Weekend

If 2008 was a hit year for any band, that band was Vam­pire Week­end. Its self-titled album gar­nered atten­tion from mag­a­zines includ­ing Spin and Rolling Stones, was cer­ti­fied gold in the UK and reached #17 on the Bill­board 200. Not an easy feat for a first album, but it deserves it. The instru­ments always main­tain cre­ative, sim­ple lines that sup­port the clear, on point tone of Ezra Koenig, which in turn brings out the sub­jects Koenig has cho­sen: orig­i­nal ones, such as Oxford com­mas and Cape Cod. Some tracks are sig­nif­i­cantly weaker than the hits in the album, but even still, Vam­pire Week­end does an excel­lent job through­out the album of remain­ing in its Afro-college-indie niche, yet keep­ing every song dif­fer­ent enough to make an inter­est­ing album.

#7: Per­sh­ing - Some­one Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Some­one Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s sec­ond full-length album, Per­sh­ing, starts off strong. Every sec­tion of “Glue Girls” has very sim­ple instru­men­tals, but taken as a whole, the song is as diverse as one could rightly expect an entire album to be. The vocals through the track, and the rest of the album as well, are always exactly on point, and even though the lyrics are very dif­fi­cult to deci­pher when laid out in print, they sound good. Even though Philip Dickey man­ages to always sound laid back and cheery, even in “Think I Wanna Die,” you can tell what he’s singing about, and that’s all that’s nec­es­sary. This vocal con­sis­tency brings us, how­ever, to the album’s largest flaw: while some tracks like “Glue Girls,” “Think I Wanna Die,” and “Oceanog­ra­pher” stand out - and are excel­lent tracks - oth­ers just fall into the back­ground, and really are barely worth lis­ten­ing to. Over­all, how­ever, this album is still good enough to make the top ten for the year.

#6: Dear Sci­ence - TV on the Radio

Let’s put it this way - there’s a rea­son every other reviewer loves Dear Sci­ence, and as much as we love to buck trends, this is a good album. Dear Sci­ence com­bines an excel­lent, com­plex base­line and melody with great vocals which span the entire spec­trum in a way that keeps the entire album inter­est­ing and engag­ing. In fact, the vari­a­tion of the vocals is a fun­da­men­tal part of the album. From the buzz of “Halfway Home” (a great exam­ple of the draw of the album and an ener­getic, excit­ing way to begin the album), to the slight croon of “Cry­ing,” to the rhyth­mic vocals of “Danc­ing Choose” and on, Tunde Adebimpe’s (TVotR’s lead vocal­ist) tonal range is quite impres­sive. Dear Sci­ence never stops being inter­est­ing, and it’s another exam­ple of a great 2008 album.

#5: Mod­ern Guilt - Beck

Mod­ern Guilt is a return to Beck’s ear­lier style - more like Sea Change than Guero or The Infor­ma­tion. How­ever, unlike Sea Change, Mod­ern Guilt isn’t too slow or unin­ter­est­ing. Beck uses com­plex base­lines and intros to keep his tracks inter­est­ing, and suc­ceeds for the most part, though a few tracks run out of steam by the end. “Gamma Ray” stands out here - it’s catchy, fast, and full of energy. Beck’s inde­ci­pher­able lyrics are back, but it’s not a prob­lem, as they com­ple­ment the trance-like atmos­phere around many of the tracks. When the tracks get faster and where the base­lines are stronger, they’re excel­lent. Some of the slower tracks aren’t espe­cially notable, but they’re cer­tainly not ter­ri­ble and the faster tracks hand­ily make up for any weak­ness here. Mod­ern Guilt is a solid, decent album and another good release by Beck.

#4: Con­sol­ers of the Lonely - The Raconteurs

At first glance, Con­sol­ers of the Lonely might seem like The White Stripes with a decent drum­mer, and indeed, the first track, “Con­soler of the Lonely,” really is just that. But Con­sol­ers of the Lonely is a much greater improve­ment than just that. Even in the first track, the vocals are notice­ably richer than the hoarse vocals nor­mally asso­ci­ated with Jack White. The rest of the album con­tin­ues to grow, from the lighter, more musi­cal “You Don’t Under­stand Me,” to the musi­cal depth and inge­nu­ity of “The Switch and the Spur,” and to tracks like “These Stones Will Shout” which make the album truly diverse. And yet, the sounds of the myr­iad bands from which each of the mem­bers orig­i­nates are still rec­og­niz­able. The Racon­teurs is often thought of as a side project, but Con­sol­ers of the Lonely is not an album any­one can ignore.

#3: Out of It - Brad Sucks

Some might dis­count Brad Sucks as just an indie ver­sion of Beck, but all of Turcotte’s songs are orig­i­nal, and hey, if it sounds good, why not? Brad Sucks’s Sep­tem­ber release, Out of It, is filled with the dis­torted vocals Tur­cotte has mas­tered, matched per­fectly with great instru­men­tals that really make the tracks acces­si­ble. In fact, the instru­men­tals, which switch between processed and acoustic can through­out the album only be described as spot on, and that holds for the lyrics as well. The fact is, if the biggest prob­lems the album has are that the birds chirp­ing to the rhythm of “Bad Sign” is some­what mawk­ish and that some of the tracks, while still very good, were not as inter­est­ing or orig­i­nal as many of the oth­ers, the album must be excel­lent. Out of It is an incred­i­ble album, and fully deserves its place as third best of 2008.

#2: Nar­row Stairs - Death Cab for Cutie

Nar­row Stairs isn’t exactly a depar­ture from style for Death Cab for Cutie. Nev­er­the­less, it’s an excel­lent album. Ben Gibbard’s vocals are as dis­tinc­tive as ever, and they fit with the well-written if occa­sion­ally clichéd lyrics. Nar­row Stairs has extremely strong intros and tempo shifts, and uses a slower, con­tem­pla­tive speed to build a solid album. It’s a great tes­ta­ment to Death Cab’s appeal that radio sta­tions would even con­sider play­ing all eight min­utes and twenty-six sec­onds of “I Will Pos­sess Your Heart” - and it’s worth it. Death Cab man­ages to use a grad­ual buildup to lead into an excel­lent (if slightly creepy) tale of unre­quited love. Nar­row Stairs takes every­thing Death Cab is best at and makes it even bet­ter. This is one of Death Cab’s best albums, and it’s cer­tainly one of the best albums this year.

#1: Rook - Shearwater

At the top of our list is Shearwater’s fifth album, Rook. Not only does it stand out at the top of a list of out­stand­ing music, but it’s com­pletely dif­fer­ent from every­thing else on this list, and quite com­pelling. As com­pared to our other selec­tions, Rook is a softer and deeper album.  Shear­wa­ter uses a few instru­ments to do a huge amount, and it works very well with the almost plain­tive vocals.
Rook’s lyrics are among the best of any album on our list, espe­cially in the title track, which weaves an apoc­a­lyp­tic tale inter­twined with appro­pri­ate avian imagery.  Rook’s slower pace, rather than becom­ing at all tire­some, in fact fur­ther empha­sizes the del­i­cate facets of the music. Every part of this album has been put together well, from the lyrics to the vocals to the melody, and it shows. Rook is excel­lent, and there’s no bet­ter way we can think of to fin­ish off our top 10 list.

Thanks for read­ing our list, and if you don’t hate us yet, be sure to check in on Sun­days for new reviews. We’ll post our first real review on the 11th.

This post is tagged 2008, Top Ten