Pitchfork Top Albums of 2008

Why do I get the feeling that all the little indie nerds will be pitching a fit when they see Pitchfork's top ten list?

Here it is:

1. Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP / Fleet Foxes
2. Portishead - Third
3. No Age - Nouns
4. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
5. Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.
6. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
7. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
8. M83 - Saturdays = Youth
9. Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
10. DJ/Rapture - Uproot

So it's Fleet Foxes for the win and Vampire Weekend makes the top 10. I can hear the cries of outrage now. Even though those were my two favorites on this list, they were not a big hit with most of the kids who consider these bands derivative, or inauthentic, or (worse yet!) in danger of becoming popular. They're good bands with good records in a year that didn't have much to offer.

My guess is that none of these records would have made last year's 10 ten list which was like a murder's row of brilliance (Battles, Spoon, Animal Collective, of Montreal, Radiohead, M.I.A., LCD Soundsystem - oh, 2007, how I miss you). But rather than see 2008 as an abject failure, Pitchfork does something different, and something that I really hadn't thought possible: they give it some shape, make it coherent, draw together some loose threads and allow 2008 to tell its story - even if it is a lesser story. For once, Pitchfork lives up to its own hype and provides a public service by inviting us to try out some music we might have missed, or underestimated, or misunderstood in some way. That, in and of itself, is a lot more than you might've gotten out of other similar lists, listmakers and would-be tastemakers.

So where I was frustrated, I am now intrigued:

Hercules and Love Affair? Antony sings disco!

M83? Sounds kind of smooth, if you know what I mean.

Cut Copy? MGMT + Pitchfork Seal of Approval.

Deerhunter and No Age? Definitely need to spend more time with these records.

Portishead? Creepy and unlistenable - but now legendary! So Third is probably worth a spin.

TV on the Radio? Overrated, overrated, overrated. It's the third time they've made the same murky sounding, treble-free record. But hey, at #6, not so bad. Doesn't bother me as much. Mozel Tov.

As for Vampire Weekend, I admire the fact that these guys already seem like they've been around forever. They released a great summer record in the dead of winter, and let it carry them through the whole year. If Wes Anderson listened to more Paul Simon, or The Police his movies might have sounded like this. But the secret is, that there are fun little stories buried in these songs.

And Fleet Foxes: they're not as good as Band of Horses, or Iron and Wine, or early My Morning Jacket, or even Midlake, but in 2008, this was the record we needed to fill in the gap. The only thing that bugs me is that no one else has noticed how "White Winter Hymnal" is sort of a gimmick. It's the "Mushaboom" of the album. It's the quirky hook that draws you into the more expansive, and more contemplative songs that fill out the rest of the album.

So there you go. Pitchfork's list saves the year from its own worst tendencies and will hopefully annoy the right sort of white people. Good stuff.