Year end list for music. (Most of the links are to previous write-ups by me from throughout the year; please read them!)

10. MOMUS - Joemus

Momus is an unsung hero of pop and, these days, a slightly more sung hero of online journalism.

9. Q-TIP - The Renaissance

Listened to this for the first time on election day. Blue skies, just voted, listening to Dilla's "Move." Choked up. Important moment of 2008.

8. THE ROOTS - Rising Down

"My entry point into this album ended up being listening to it very, very loud, over and over again."

7. THE SEA & CAKE - Car Alarm

Veterans.

6. R. KELLY - 12 Play: Fourth Quarter

Hey. This album didn't come out yet. Earth to R. - what's going on? I thought the trial was over and y'all's free and can get back to the music business, right? 12 Play: Fourth Quarter leaks in early third quarter '08 and your people can't be buggered to get your best album on the streets? What's the waiting about? Well, for legal listening purposes, one of the best songs on the album, "Skin," was released as an official single this year - enjoy.

5. SPARKS - Exotic Creatures of the Deep

Sparks have become a better band than they ever were in their youth, and that is a rare treat. This and 2006's Hello Young Lovers are the two best records by the brothers Mael, and I can strongly recommend both with equal fervor to people who might be forgiving of ... well, elements that turn it into perhaps the most peculiar pop production style in the Western world today. "If you have any inkling to trust me that this works, and that these guys are making the very, very strangest and some of the best pop music around, do listen. If you get the joke, or more appropriately, if you get past the joke (the false grandeur) into the real grandeur (the genius), it's hypnotic. Really. Sparks get gold."

4. MATMOS - Supreme Balloon

The last album Matmos made in their longtime base of San Francisco is the best album of their career. "Supreme Balloon is a Disneyland of synthesized music, its listener given a choice of many lands in which to play — electro-funk, house, Baroque, classic video game, minimalism, and more — with an overall architecture designed for fun, harmless thrills and the eating of color-striped unicorn lollipops."

3. JONATHAN RICHMAN - Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild

In a way, this was the year of Jojo for me. I, Jonathan; You Must Ask the Heart; Rock & Roll with the Modern Lovers - all of these and more became constant listening companions to me. This record ended up starting it all for me. "Nothing had compelled me quite strongly enough to follow through on the rest of his career until I found his latest album at Amoeba and, next thing I knew, it was in my shopping bag. I now couldn't be more glad for the impulse. Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild was a mainstay in my car for a week. No other CD went in for more than a single listen, but Raw and Wild went at least twice in a row every time, as if the album were structured to repeat exactly, so the material could sink in as it should."

2. MAX TUNDRA - Parallax Error Beheads You

I was sure this was gonna be #1, since I gave (and still would give) it a perfect 10 rating. It's the pop masterpiece of the decade, and its relative lack of acknowledgment in the music 'sphere is just one of the many things giving me a sense of pervasive inadequate critical faculties. Is that awful of me to say? I don't care; this thing's amazing, and perfect. "It manages to consistently equal and even occasionally improve upon the best work by [many legendary and contemporary] artists and then some. It's a ten-story, airtight, commercially-zoned madhouse — the Mall of Max Tundra."

1. BOREDOMS - 77 Boa Drum

I was at 88 Boa Drum in Los Angeles this year, and it was a treat, to put it mildly. Rock drummers spiraling around EYE of the Boredoms in a kosmische 100-minute Jap-Kraut blissout. I'd also just seen a San Francisco concert by the core quartet in March, and it was so multi-faceted and phenomenal that something made me feel a tiny bit ambivalent about the larger affair. Never mind, though. I wrote this in an e-mail to some of my closest friends the other day, after receiving the official document of the NYC performance in the mail and listening to it on a 2-hour car trip:

"Musically, it is identical, essentially, to 88 Boa Drum... Upon the instance of its completion, I cried and it became the best recording of 2008. No shit. Being at 88 gives me a decent amount of authority, I think, to say that EYE and team have created a worthy monster. It is the largest live music recording I've ever listened to, and it is crystal clear, and it requires LOUD. Do not listen in your laptop speakers, do not listen out of your iPod dock, if you listen out of your headphones let's hope they're not earbuds -- listen loud and clear.

In my fan-fever hyperbole, I've deemed that this is a proper reminder of why the Boredoms are still the greatest band of the last 20 years. But even without such bias, I imagine you have heard reports of the glory of the Boa Drums. Well, lucky. They are now not only events past (and, hopefully, one more in future); they are, at least in a major way, relivable experiences, and I can essentially guarantee, with this release, a respectable, visceral facsimile."

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vannatta says:

Sir Spencer - your taste is impeccable.

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