That was the year that was...Neatly sidestepping inevitable libel charges by eschewing the annual ‘worst of...’ list, our writers pick out the prime cuts from the rotting carcass of the year gone by. Mmmm... Enjoy.
by Oliver Downes, first published in LondonTourdates #037 ,12th December 2008
Best Album
Dr Dog: Fate
Park The Van
Releases from the big-name noteworthys were few and far between this year, the best being The Raconteurs’ stupidly fun but slightly patchy Consolers Of The Lonely, the Third coming of Portishead and Mr Cave’s superb Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! which proved that yes, the man can do no wrong.
This leaves stellar efforts by artists working within increasingly particular sub-genres to pick from - Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago for folk, Black Mountain for darkly epic prog-rock with In The Future, Port O’Brien for manically-desperate-yet-exuberantly-carefree indie with All We Could Do Was Sing, the first volume of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward’s simply dreamy She and Him project for 50s kitsch pop and Shearwater’s Rook for general kick-ass-ness.
A Place To Bury Strangers’ effects-smeared debut was another highlight, vying with Deerhunter’s Microcastle for best rock release. However my pick for the year has to be Dr Dog’s gloriously nostalgic Fate - the ultimate in musical comfort food.
Best Concert
Shearwater
Bush Hall
17 September
Because of our venerable editor’s despotic proclamation that ‘only gigs in London count’, I’m unfortunately unable to babble at any length about the absolutely heaving Midnight Juggernauts show I attended earlier in the year at Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire nor the even more spectacularly rammed Raconteurs gig at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange.
The Scots certainly know how to party. London shows attended, by comparison (with the exception of the King of Blues gig at Koko back in September at which the crowd felt like a gelatinous sea of sweaty, alcohol drenched flesh) have generally veered towards the unnecessarily polite end of the spectrum (door staff at ULU and the Forum excepted), while musically being very, very good.
Special mentions for Calexico and Deerhunter particularly, but my pick probably has to be Shearwater’s performance at Bush Hall, Jonathan Meiburg and company lifting things beyond ‘very good’ to simply magic.
Photo of Shearwater: Rachel Lipsitz
