[review 2008: favourites]

I am convinced that there are two types of aging: the graceful type and the kicking-and-screaming type. As I am almost certainly going to be the second type, musically speaking, it should be absolutely no surprise to anyone who’s heard Johnny Foreigner that Waited Up Til It Was Light would end up at the top of my list. Let’s consult the features checklist, shall we: heaping dollops of enthusiasm, check; a sound ripped from the pages of the American indie scene circa late-90s, back when emo-core was still a badge of honour and the midwest was totally cool, check; singers perpetually stuck in “schoolyard yelling” gear, check; British import that’s really hard to find here (because apparently half the albums I hear now fall into this category), check.

I imagine that if I were 19, Waited Up Til It Was Light would not just be my favourite album of the year, but my favourite album ever and ever and ever. At least one review has called bassist Kelly Southern the woman worthy of worship by a generation who just missed the likes of Charlotte Hatherley, and that sounds just about right—but not just her, but the whole band. Packed with more energy and enthusiasm than several thousand mediocre albums combined, Johnny Foreigner’s debut will lodge itself in the part of your brain that controls the singalong impulse and not let go until you’ve memorized the chorus to “The End and Everything After” or the end of “Salt, Pepper and Spinderella” or the utterly magnificent “Cranes and Cranes and Cranes and Cranes,” a song that introduced to me my new favourite conceit of having your two lead singers alternate yelling syllables of the lyrics out as though they were screaming love letters to one another across a crowded cafeteria.

Drowned In Sound, an ardent supporter of Johnny Foreigner, posted a review where the author said “even I’m almost too old for this passionate squall.” I have to disagree; Waited Up Til It Was Light is the fountain of youth, packaged in an aluminum and plastic disc. Listen to it and you will return to a younger, more carefree existence where nothing else mattered when you turned it up loud. What are you waiting for?

[review 2008: favourites]

Friend Opportunity, Deerhoof’s biggest breakthrough to date, was a thoroughly idiosyncratic album whose euphoric highs—the galloping thunderstorm of “The Perfect Me,” the adorable chorus of “+81″—outweighed but did not entirely eclipse its too-strange missteps, chief among them the frustrating and distractedly dissonant final track “Look Away.” But where Friend Opportunity offered occasional moments of pure joy, Offend Maggie offers moments of heartstopping beauty. Where Friend Opportunity felt like a great collection of songs, Offend Maggie sounds like a single cohesive statement. And where Friend Opportunity was merely very good, Offend Maggie is utterly fantastic.

“The Tears and Music of Love” has that characteristic Deerhoof bounce, but it’s not as galactically insane as the Deerhoof of old. In fact, it’s perhaps the closest Deerhoof come to sounding normal—a raucous rock band fronted by a helium-voiced Japanese woman, versus a fractured pop band where Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocals are merely one part of a strange brew. “Chandelier Searchlight” isn’t particularly weird, either; it’s the new, more restrained Deerhoof doing a jaunty countrified number. Slowly, over the course of the album, you realize the moments of obvious lunacy are far fewer; only “Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back” offers the ridiculousness of old. On Offend Maggie it actually sounds somewhat ill-advised, partially because the album works much better when it’s on a more even keel.

The title track is a good example of the rewards Deerhoof reaps with its slightly revised approach. It’s not a particularly strange number, but the calm, pastoral folk-pop number retains the same infectious qualities Deerhoof has always had, and marries them to a more subdued sound that focuses more on charming you with beautiful melodies than wowing you with novelty. Which isn’t to say the novelty doesn’t still show up; it’s just that Deerhoof have figured out when it works best and when they’ve gone too far with their sonic experiments.

After clearing the hurdle of throwaway track “This Is God Speaking,” you get to the final two tracks of the album, and it’s here that Offend Maggie went from very good to great. Unlike the guitar wankery of “Look Away,” “Numina O” and “Jagged Fruit” actually go somewhere, building to epic climaxes and offer some of the most heartrending moments on the album. It’s a surprisingly weighty and affecting finish to an album that began with relatively light and cheery numbers like “Chandelier Searchlight” and “Snoopy Waves,” a progression that makes you think Offend Maggie seems nice enough, just before it worms its way deep into your heart.

[review 2008: favourites]

Read a bunch of reviews for Box of Secrets and you’ll get an idea of Blood Red Shoes’ weaknesses fairly quickly: a tendency to stick too closely to the same basic sound, and perhaps still in search of how much sonic polish is just right and how much is too much. But some of these weaknesses are in fact my favourite things about the band’s first album. Taking three years to incubate, Box of Secrets is cobbled together from a mix of live staples and early seven-inches, re-recorded to strike the overly amateurish bits and present a more professional package. What’s great is you can easily go on Youtube or track down some of those early singles and listen to various tracks in their larval stages; the early version of “ADHD” gives you the best idea of how the band sounds in raw form.

What’s amazing is that in many ways, Box of Secrets is more aggressive and unrelenting than the earlier stuff. Much like Pretty Girls Make Graves in their heyday, Blood Red Shoes sound better with the benefit of road-tested experience and a bit of studio work—it’s amazing how full and explosive the music is, considering there’s only a guitar and drums. Coming to the band this year, without the benefit of three years’ worth of backstory, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Brighton duo sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus. Rarely does the band place a foot wrong, at least in terms of the performances. If there is a problem, it’s a strategic one, so to speak.

But Box of Secrets is one of my favourite albums of the year for incorporating so many of the elements that seemed missing from so many other albums. When the band are at peak form, like on “ADHD” or “You Bring Me Down,” there are few things more exhilarating, breathtaking or intense.

[review 2008: favourites]

The Kills have always been on the periphery of my musical universe. With the occasional review saying “sounds like PJ Harvey but grungier!” and “way cooler than the White Stripes,” there was at least a pleasant-sounding buzz around the band’s first two albums. But I couldn’t quite take seriously a band whose members wanted to be called VV and Hotel in interviews, and to be honest I’m not one for the hard-living, drink-and-fight stereotype Alison Mossheart and Jamie Hince seem to embody. In short, I wasn’t really buying it.

Well, I’m sorry I doubted them, because Midnight Boom made the first half of the year not seem quite so hopeless when it came to music. After finding that many of the albums I was looking forward to were lacking in substance or appeal, it took the strains of “Cheap and Cheerful,” aka the obvious radio single, to convince me there was still music out there I haven’t heard yet that would appeal to me. And it’s with tracks like “Cheap and Cheerful,” “M.E.X.I.C.O.C.U” or “Sour Cherry” that the capital-A attitude the Kills seem to have makes sense: suddenly the comments about how they don’t look sexy and yet exude sex make sense, when you think about songs as slinky as these.

But let’s remember they’re not a club band, but a dirty indie rock duo with a predilection for marching band beats. So alongside the dancefloor numbers are more restrained but equally great tracks like “Black Balloon,” with Mossheart trading in her sass for an almost naive, sweet vulnerability. And then there’s the centerpiece, “Last Day of Magic,” which manages to completely overcome the apparent setback of rhyming tornado with Winnebago. For a solid two weeks, this was pretty much the only song I listened to. If there was nothing else on the album worth listening to, this would still be worth the price of admission.

But more than any particular song, the greatest contribution Midnight Boom makes is the noir atmosphere that soaks into every part of the album. The Kills’ single-minded dedication to that rough-edged, blackest-night aesthetic is perhaps the most laudable aspect here, and sets Midnight Boom apart from most albums produced this year.

[review 2008: favourites]

I don’t know who decided that 2008 should be the year a few people decide to remount the whole twee-punk thing, but goddammit, I could kiss you. You’ve singlehandedly saved us from a year full of indie-folk wunderkinds who bore me with their subtle inflections and introspective observations about the mundane life, instead of battering me with yelps and sweet nothings like these young folks from Wales, who are apparently so excited about stuff that they require an exclamation point in their name.

Hold On Now, Youngster is Heavenly on speed, I think. Take that same twee-pop aesthetic that launched a million bands in England and the Pacific Northwest, and speed it up a bunch, then have some ritalin-addled male singer sing some clever turns of phrase over top, and maybe throw in some random hyperactive keyboard. Then break it all down with a surprisingly sweet and contemplative string-infused outro. Congratulations, you’ve just created “Broken Hearts Sounds Like Breakbeats.” The album is full of songs based on variations on this pattern, and it’s the sort of thing you would think would get old fast.

And yet, it doesn’t. Oh, sure, if you’re not the type to abide by twee preciousness in your music, you will probably hate this band as well. But that’s fine, because the rest of us are perfectly happy to don our backpacks and our rimmed glasses and attempt the weakest sauce dance party ever. Los Campesinos! fly the flag of “Twee as Fuck” into a new decade, and though I think there are other bands that do the unabashed enthusiasm thing better (just you wait, impatient one), the kids from Cardiff obviously have a bright future ahead of them. Hell, they managed to record TWO albums this year, so they even managed to get the sophomore slump over with (though I can’t say for sure; I have just acquired said second album and am still performing the initial examination).

[review 2008: favourites]

Welcome to Be Your Own Pet, a band that either isn’t old enough to know or else has decided to ignore the fact that people mature significantly in the years before and after your high school graduation. Get Awkward loses a bit of the ferocity from their debut, but otherwise the formula hasn’t changed very much: teenage boredom and rebellion, pierced occasionally by bouts of fucking shit up, all set to a bubblegum thrash punk sound set permanently on fast forward. And really, if you liked the first album, this is pretty much exactly what you were hoping for from Get Awkward: more of the goddamned same, please.

So let’s talk about what’s changed. Jemima Pearl sounds a bit gutsier this time around; she doesn’t sound quite so bratty this time around. If you’re lucky enough to have an import version of the album, you’ll also have three tracks missing from the US version that demonstrate a bit of range, namely the girl-group revenge murder story of “Becky.” But there are signs all over the place that behind the party/rebellion stuff are signs of a slightly more thoughtful approach: “Kelly Affair” is named after the band from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, for example. And the whole album sounds less like an actual statement of adolescent life and more like a fun pretend version of the same. It’s pure escapism, which is why I never really bought the whole “Be Your Own Pet cannot be appreciated by anyone over 25″ comment. Of course they can; we’re the ones who still wish we were teenagers, and this is the perfect soundtrack.

I’m sorry, did you want me to talk about songs? Well, there’s nothing quite as vitriolic as “Girls on TV” or “Bicycle Bicycle You Are My Bicycle,” nor any lines quite as eminently quotable as “I’m an independent motherfucker, and I’m here to take your money / I’m wicked rad and I’m here to steal away your virginity.” But “Heart Throb” is probably one of the best songs they will ever write or play, and many of the tracks in the opening salvo are almost as good (”Kelly Affair” and “Becky” are two obvious examples). What undoes the album in the end is in part the same problem with the debut: it all goes on for slightly too long and starts to sound a bit generic by the end. And this time there isn’t a killer zombie song at the end to save it (that actually comes a bit earlier, in the form of “Zombie Graveyard Party”).

But none of that really matters because you aren’t even necessarily listening to the album for specific songs, but for that feel-good jolt of sun-drenched garage-punk goodness. Maybe when we get around to the third album, this inability to put together a complete album will become a problem; for now, Get Awkward is a great follow-up.

[review 2008: half-measures and quiet victories]

Even without knowing what happened to the Dears after Gang of Losers, it wasn’t hard to figure out what Missiles was going to sound like just from your gut feeling. It would be hard to recreate the luminescence of Gang of Losers without sounding like a thinly veiled retread, so the obvious next step was to take things down a notch. The indistinct cover album and the less grandiose title for Missiles were also clues. Then add in the fact that the band practically imploded, leaving only Murray Lightburn and Natalia Yanchak as the only members left standing, and it’s not at all surprising to find Missiles a scaled back, quieter affair.

In fact, Missiles is almost completely bereft of the epic musical statements that anchored Gang of Losers. The Dears have never been quite as popular as some of their independent Canadian comrades, partially because their uber-dramatic approach can be difficult to take—see the criticisms often levelled against some of the more bombastic tracks on No Cities Left. That’s not so much a problem now, as the Dears run quite a bit cooler emotionally and dynamically, which is great unless you think of the album as perpetually stuck in second gear, as the more ardent heart-on-sleeve supporters of the Dears might find. Missiles, then, has the ability to bring some of the naysayers into the fold, but also leave long-time fans wanting a bit more.

[review 2008: half-measures and quiet victories]

You’ve mastered hammer-ons and used them to make actual songs instead of nightmarish strings of metal solos. You’ve convinced Zach Hill to become your mentor and explosive drummer. You shriek with the power of a possessed valkyrie. (Note to music writer self: what exactly is that supposed to sound like, anyways? Figure that out before you toss out another ridiculous simile.) You’ve destroyed crowds using nothing more than the power of your guitar and your iPod for backup. And all of this you’ve accomplished in just one album. So what do you, Marnie Stern, do for an encore?

This Is It and I Am It… takes Stern in a less confrontational—maybe even more contemplative?—direction. Lacking are the most obvious signs of insanity like “Grapefruit,” Stern’s breakneck-pace proof of concept. But the trade-off is there are also fewer tracks that sound more like advanced guitar showcases than actual songs; especially during the first half, Stern does a great job of using her six-string wizardry to service the needs of the song. As a result, “Ruler” and “Shea Stadium” turn into some of the loudest, most overtly metal-influenced dreampop songs you’ve ever heard. It’s an unexpected but welcome twist.

Not that Stern’s lost her edge at all; “Transformer” and “Roads? Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roads” should put you off that idea. But even the more aggressive songs retain a certain artfulness; “The Package Is Wrapped” even has a bit of a groove to it. The only real downside to the album, then, is that for all of Stern’s expansion into new territory, it’s still a bit of a niche product—she hasn’t become a pop star overnight, unless you have some strange ideas about what constitutes a pop star. But if you’re already in the right headspace—say, an owner of Stern’s first album—This Is It and I Am It… builds nicely on the original blueprint.

[review 2008: half-measures and quiet victories]

Applause Cheer Boo Hiss, the first Land of Talk release, reminds me of a certain alt-rock radio sound, but it’s not something I can put my finger on directly. Fast forward over two years later, to the Montreal band’s first proper album, and things have changed. Lizzie Powell’s sung with Broken Social Scene on the side while most of the band’s original lineup have moved on for good. The band’s had their gear stolen and their European plans dashed after the Decemberists cancelled the tour Land of Talk was slated to support.

But most importantly, they’ve spent the better part of two years running Applause Cheer Boo Hiss into the ground. It’s not surprising that Some Are Lakes should take a slightly different musical approach, then. But one thing has stayed the same, at least: Land of Talk still remind me of days gone by. Only this time, I have a theory as to why Some Are Lakes feels faintly familiar: it reminds me of Weeping Tile’s Valentino.

As a reassuring slice of vaguely nostalgic Canrock, then, Some Are Lakes succeeds. The title track is Land of Talk’s “Every Good Story,” “Young Bridge” their “South of Me.” The trouble is, I’m not sure I entirely like this new direction; it sacrifices the raw intensity I loved most about Applause Cheer Boo Hiss, and even turns some of that first release’s assets into liabilities. Take, for instance, Powell’s distinctive voice. On their EP, that voice was simultaneously aggressive and vulnerable, like the sound of a survivor constantly fending off fatigue and almost on the verge of breakdown. Here, her voice has lost some of that colour; instead, on tracks like “Give Me Back My Heart Attack,” it becomes indistinct and robbed of its emotional intensity.

The most obvious case study of Land of Talk’s transition is “Young Bridge,” long a staple of the band’s live show. You can hear live versions dating back to when Land of Talk’s original lineup was still intact—back then, “Young Bridge” sounded like a more upbeat b-side of Applause Cheer Boo Hiss. The drums sounded more intricate and nimble, and some of the same relentless guitar riffs that drive so many of the EP’s tracks was still present during the bridge. The version found on European versions of the EP added some ill-advised reverb to Powell’s vocal performance, and the drum parts were simplified slightly. The Some Are Lakes version takes the evolution two steps further, slowing the tempo further and removing all of the urgency of the original bridge by scaling back the guitar chords drastically.

That’s not to suggest the album is a failure; the first three tracks make a great late-night set, and the centerpiece is the 3am motel-room radio ballad “It’s Okay.” It’s completely unlike anything we’ve heard from Land of Talk, and though it’s hard to see the band make a career out of songs like it, “It’s Okay” is the standout track of the album. But I’m hoping that next time around, Land of Talk brings back some of the intensity they used to have in spades.