Dallas Music Blog

Perhaps lost amongst the abundance of year-end lists made by just about everyone in recent weeks are, well, the lists of albums people didn't listen to in 2008.

Hipster Runoff took this idea and ran with it earlier this week, and, yep, the results are pretty golden. For instance: No, the Hipster Runoff people did not listen to New Amerykah Pt 1: 4th World War.

"Erykah Badu - A lot of people liked this album, but I just remember her as a Zany, free spirited black woman who is largely responsible for making Andre 3000 the zany black man that he is today."

Read the rest of the list right here.

Find our slideshow of our favorite concert photos of 2008 right here.

I didn't get to Dallas until February, so apologies to any great shows that took place in January--I missed them. But over the past eleven months, I saw plenty of live music--both with touring bands and locals.

How many sucked? More than I care to say.

How many were so-so? Most, actually.

How many were great? A good amount--cutting this list down to 10 wasn't all that easy.

Assuming I went to three shows a week over the 48 weeks I spent in Dallas (a low estimate, really), simple math says I went to at least 144 shows in 2008. After the jump, my Top 10. Feel free to share your favorites--or bash mine--in the comment section. (Like you need permission...) --Pete Freedman

Sure, 2008 may be done, but the list-making still continues... This year, five contributors to the Dallas Observer's music section were asked to participate in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which compiles the lists of hundreds of music critics across the country into one massive, hopefully conclusive, aggregate list. Over the last couple of days, we've been posting various excerpts of their choices for the best of '08.

After the jump, Pete Freedman's favorite records and singles from 2008--in descending order. But, first, a teaser for one of his picks...

Sure, 2008 may be done, but the list-making still continues... This year, five contributors to the Dallas Observer's music section were asked to participate in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which compiles the lists of hundreds of music critics across the country into one massive, hopefully conclusive, aggregate list. Over the next couple of days, we'll be posting various excerpts of their choices for the best of '08.

After the jump, Jesse Hughey's favorite records from 2008--in approximate, descending order. But, first, a teaser for one of his picks...

Sure, 2008 may be done, but the list-making still continues... This year, five contributors to the Dallas Observer's music section were asked to participate in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which compiles the lists of hundreds of music critics across the country into one massive, hopefully conclusive, aggregate list. Over the next couple of days, we'll be posting various excerpts of their choices for the best of '08.

After the jump, Noah Bailey's favorite records from 2008--in approximate, descending order. But, first, a teaser for one of his picks...

Sure, 2008 may be done, but the list-making still continues... This year, five contributors to the Dallas Observer's music section were asked to participate in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which compiles the lists of hundreds of music critics across the country into one massive, hopefully conclusive, aggregate list. Over the next couple of days, we'll be posting various excerpts of their choices for the best of '08.

After the jump, Darryl Smyers' choices for the ten best albums of 2008, in descending order. But, first, a teaser for one of his picks...

Sure, 2008 may be done, but the list-making still continues... This year, five contributors to the Dallas Observer's music section were asked to participate in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which compiles the lists of hundreds of music critics across the country into one massive, hopefully conclusive, aggregate list. Over the next couple of days, we'll be posting various excerpts of their choices for the best of '08.

After the jump, Merritt Martin's choices for 2008's best album--in alphabetical, but otherwise no particular order. But, first, a teaser for one of her picks.

The title of this post is ripped right from an email that popped up in the inbox yesterday afternoon in the wake of this post--and, lo and behold, yep it's from Preston Jones of the Star-Telegram, sharing the links to his favorite concerts and albums of the year, as well as the link to his top 20 Texas albums of the year list, which features 19 North Texas artists and Alejandro Escovedo.

Not sure, exactly, why Jones didn't just call it his Top 20 of North Texas list and pick an album other than Escovedo's, but oh well.

Me? Gotta figure that, if we're including all of Texas, some Austinites who put out some great records this year (Shearwater, Okkervil River, What Made Milwaukee Famous and The Black Angels to name a few) should've made the cut. Either way, the lists are definitely worth checking out. --Pete Freedman

In reverse order, this handful of releases looked cool and the music matched the cover art.

5. Calexico - Carried to Dust

Not only did the uncomplicated illustration style reflect a return to the simple desert themes that are Calexico's stock and trade, this cover oozes retro cool.

A cover that seems created to cause migraines. I suppose this shit's supposed to be a comment on our modern condition or something. If so, spare me.

You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were demolished by a Midwestern black man, and gender barriers were hurdled by an Arkansan and an Alaskan.

Democracy has a few awesome new dance moves rolling into the Obama presidency, and it'll be a feast for the wonks to break 'em down. It's for those wonks that we've done some number crunching. When future pointy-headed academics are scouring data in attempts to better understand America in 2008, might it not be instructive to offer a snapshot of a different sort, one that attempts to explain the People and their mindset from a quasistatistical/analytical ethnomusicosociological perspective? 
Specifically, let's address the population in a head and/or heart space it cares deeply about: through its music.

How does it sing and dance? Who does this singing? Who best moves our collective booty and tugs at our heartstrings? I've been crunching Billboard album and singles chart data in order to better understand Who We Are in 2008. I've compiled information on every artist who cracked the Top 10 album chart and the Hot 100 singles chart this year. I've researched each artist and tallied the lot of them based on a number of factors, including gender, ethnicity, nationality, state of origin (if American) and record label. I've then analyzed these numbers. What follows are some conclusions.

(Note to Nate Silver: I'm a lowly music journalist who can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and use a calculator, but not much else. Let this serve as a springboard. Margin of error: 4 percent. Results reflect chart positions up to and including the Dec. 6 issue of Billboard.)


And now it's time for the "I love you like a fat kid loves cake" memorial Worst Lyrics of 2008, March Madness-style tournament, this year a terrifying mélange of appalling oral-sex requests, bargain-bin philosophies, grammatical atrocities, and cringe-inducing pillow talk. To elevate the drama, I provided a trusted colleague with the 16 artists who qualified and had him assign seeds--Lil Wayne you expect to go deep into a showdown like this, but Lucinda Williams? Some fantastic match-ups resulted, but in the end, nobody is topping Nickelback's backstage-pass bon mot, as devastating a blow to feminism as Katy Perry and Sarah Palin combined. Oh, for those innocent days of 50 Cent.

Click to see the full "Worst Lyrics of 2008" finals.

-- Rob Harvilla

For whatever reason, we were feeling like a real team last week--so much so that we gathered up most of the music writing crew here at the Observer and packed everyone into my spacious fake college dorm room office to talk about our favorite local releases of the year (and to take very unlively pictures, it seems...).

Anyway, someone suggested we record it. For posterity, I guess. So we did.

The result: Our debut DC9 at Night podcast, in which we discuss, among other things, Rhett Miller's hatred for Darryl Smyers (and vice versa!), Noah Bailey's general lack of enthusiasm toward everything, and my own apparent lack of faith! Also: local music!

And we actually had a pretty decent time doing it, I think. Anyway, the resulting three-part, year-end podcast is after the jump. Stream it or download it--your call. Just try to enjoy yourselves. We did. --Pete Freedman

In all these year-end, best-of lists, I'm seeing little respect given to the over 50 crowd. So, since I'm heading that direction myself, I thought I would be the one to share some AARP Holiday Cheer.

1. Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
The Fleetwood Mac guitarist/singer finally incorporates some of what made his band so great and produces his best solo effort. By far. Period. Of course, several members of Mac (not Stevie Nicks) make an appearance on Gift of Screws and songs like "Did You Miss Me" and "The Right Place to Fade" would not sound out of place on Rumours. What better recommendation is there than that?

2. Todd Rundgren - Arena
Singer/songwriter/producer Todd Rundgren shows little signs of slowing down at 60. Arena is 13 tracks that show Rundgren's still ferocious rock side. Cuts like "Mad," "Gun" and "Pissin" approximate everyone from Aerosmith to ZZ Top, but still sound like classic Rundgren. If you caught him at House of Blues a few months back, you know just how vital Rundgren remains. 

3. Jackson Browne - Time the Conqueror
Also recently turning 60, Jackson Browne is making some of the best music of his storied career as Time the Conqueror amply demonstrates. Check out the introspective "Live Nude Cabaret" or the Bush-bashing "The Drums of War" and try to deny that Browne still has "it."

4. Randy Newman - Harps and Angels
Newman's first studio album of all new material in a decade shows the 65-year-old in fine, sarcastic form. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" is as biting (and spot on) of a satire as Newman has written since "God's Song" and that was nearly 40 years ago. "Feels Like Home" is just another beautiful, New Orleans style piano ballad. The entirety of Harps is a testament to Newman's continued greatness.

5. Van Morrison - Keep it Simple
As the title implies, Van Morrison decided to scale back his band and such proved to be a wise decision. Abandoning the country leanings of his last couple of releases, Morrison takes Keep it Simple in a more soul/blues direction and the results are impressive. "How Can a Poor Boy?" and "School of Hard Knocks" are just two of the standouts. Morrison's voice seems to get better with age and he still has more righteous chutzpa than just about anyone in rock. --Darryl Smyers

Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously absurd record or two in 2008. Here are the most preposterous rap songs of 2008. RICK ROSS, FEATURING T-PAIN "The Boss" (Def Jam) Though Rick Ross claimed on his debut album, Port of Miami, to know Manuel Noriega, The Smoking Gun website found that Ross was a prison guard rather than an international drug kingpin before he was famous. Perhaps they met in the can? In any case, his assertion on "The Boss" that he "made a couple million dollars last year dealing weight" is absurd. Still, we're tempted to give him a pass on his claim that "I don't make love/Baby we make magic," because, well, we wouldn't know.

Photo by Michael Alan Goldberg

Two young blondes with toothy smiles and hard-core work ethics, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, helped country expand its fan base in these years of shrinking music sales. Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and George Strait kept filling arenas and at least maintaining their popularity on the road, if not with record sales. But as has often been the case, the best country music has little to do with what's successful in the genre. It's made by those who care more about songs and arrangements than about what the radio is playing or what sparks an arena concert. Country music's strengths come from timeless elements; the same can be said of this list of albums.

Americans who still think of Latin music as mariachi bands and gyrating Ricky Martins and Shakiras might want to lend a closer ear to the genre. This country's Hispanic population isn't just growing, it's growing more diverse. More and more unique musical styles are being gobbled up, and that should come as good news to alternative gringos hoping to spruce up their castellano. This year's Latin-music highlights come from all over the Spanish-speaking map. We'll start in the farthest geographic corner: an island in the Mediterranean.

BUIKA
Niña de Fuego
(WEA International)
Afro-Spanish artist Buika epitomizes cultural and ethnic diversity. Over three decades ago, her parents fled political turmoil in the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea and made a new life for themselves in a gypsy neighborhood on the island of Mallorca. After stints as a Tina Turner impersonator in Vegas and as the vocalist on some chic house and funk albums made for the European clubs, Buika has found her niche in flamenco and Latin jazz. This year's Niña de Fuego contains many of the same gitano elements found on her successful LP Mi Niña Lola, and pushes the boundaries further by adding Mexican ranchera. Only someone as strangely bohemian as Buika could pull together these emotive styles with just the right amount of melodrama.

Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry and synthetic to wet and gushy), rhythm tracks can be tempo-tweaked with an upward toggle to change a Timbaland beat into a Chromeo one. Add some T-Pain-esque pitch-correction vocals to your between-track banter for that 2008 feel (actually, please don't). The rail guiding it all: that four-on-the-floor stomp. Herewith: nine collections of dance music (and one licentious exception), some of them mixed into sets, others unmixed for your own sampling pleasure.

Simian Mobile Disco
FabricLive 41
(Fabric)
At least four different Fabric mixes could have landed on any reputable list of the year's best dance collections. Depending on your mood and your hormonal levels, either Metro Area's syrupy Demerol disco mix, M.A.N.D.Y.'s 25-track thumpfest (featuring Yello, Gui Burrato and Booka Shade), or DJ Yoda's insanely diverse FabricLive mix (Violent Femmes, Jurassic 5, Bell Biv Devoe, Adam F, Wiley), could effectively wobble your azz. Simian's stands a little above the rest (save one - see below) in its audacity, inclusiveness and ability to celebrate electro and house without resorting to the stupid futuristic robotic stuff. The set opens with Japanese 1970s cheeseball Tomita, features the year's best dance track, Hercules & Love Affair's "Blind," transforms "Suite Equitra" by the late NYC street composer Moondog (who's having a very healthy afterlife as a mixtape MC) into a dancefloor stomper, hits on current faves Deadmau5, and digs deep in the crates to uncover genius inventor/musician Raymond Scott. It closes with a great threesome: Plastikman's "Spastik" into Green Velvet's "Flash" into (of all things) the Walker Brothers' "Night Flight." This mix will totally transform your rush hour slog home from work.

Plastikman
"Spastik"
(M_nus) (from Simian Mobile Disco's FabricLive.41 mix)

Sascha Funke
Watergate 02
(Word and Sound)

Part of Ellen Allien's BPitch Control posse out of Berlin, Sasha Funke creates crisp, clear, antiseptic beats on his own tracks, and this mix, released by the popular Watergate club in Berlin, hits all the right riddims if you like your techno with funny chirps, bloops, hisses and electro-riffs swirling around heavy bottom-end bass bump. It's a cool mix of minimalism, one in which repetition is dotted with tidbits of oddball melodies and sampled voice-wisps. You're not going to hear any raucous divas pretending to lose their virginity, not going to hear dumb k-hole trance washes or dirt-covered electro. Rather, Funke offers a mixed sampler of mostly 21st century, mostly German techno (DJ Koze's masterful "I Want to Sleep" included), with one glorious surprise smack dab in the middle: Midwest rave legend (Wisconsin) Woody McBride's "Boy Girl Boy Girl."

Minilogue Vs KAB
"That's a Nice Way to Give Me Feedback"
(Autobahn)
from Sascha Funke's Watergate 02 mix

In a year worthy of your rage, metal delivered in spades. What with the economy circling the drain and Sarah Palin coming down from the tundra and then refusing to go back, 2008's been the kind of year that really makes you want to smash your head into walls or punch random strangers in the face. Good thing there were so many awesome records available to serve as a soundtrack for exactly that kind of behavior. The ten discs below are just the tip of a very big, very heavy iceberg. Metal seems to grow stronger each year; 2009 will bring new albums by Mastodon, Deftones, Lamb of God and more. In the meantime, check these out.

Metallica
Death Magnetic
(Warner Bros.)
Five years after their last comeback, they did it right. Combining the punishing thrash of their early glory years with the thick, bluesy grooves of their 1990s output, the members of Metallica reclaimed their throne as America's kings of metal. Songs like "That Was Just Your Life," "My Apocalypse" and "Cyanide" are made to be heard blasting through speakers bigger than your goddamn house, but even on an iPod, they'll have you clenching your fists and banging your head like a fourteen-year-old amped on testosterone and Red Bull.

Opeth
Watershed
(Roadrunner)
Opeth's last album, Ghost Reveries, took its progressive black/death-metal sound to its logical endpoint. So the band took a sharp left turn, incorporating a new guitarist and drummer, psychedelic studio trickery, odd rhythms and even a female vocalist on the folky, emotionally affecting opening track, "Coil." Of course, none of this means that Opeth has forgotten how to bring the heavy: "Heir Apparent" is one of the most assaultive songs of its career, including a drum solo that announces its evolution quite capably.

It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.

BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco exploded, the Piano Man's deeply unhip 1978 breakthrough proved that top-shelf Broadway/Brill Building songwriting could still sell - and, occasionally, rock. "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" and "Anthony's Song (Movin' Out)" remain priceless snapshots of Annie Hall-era NYC, the title track bares real teeth, and the Kenny Chesney fave "Only the Good Die Young" - banned from several college-radio stations for its unseemly insinuations about Catholic schoolgirls - is still a corker.

Extras: Complete June 1977 Carnegie Hall concert; DVD of Joel's March 1978 appearance on the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test; thirty-minute making-of doc and facsimile of his lyric sketchbook, scratch-outs and all.

Pop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious.

The following ten singles saturated the Top 40--or what passes for hit-oriented radio in this topsy-turvy musical climate--while proving that accessibility doesn't necessarily preclude creativity.

A couple of weeks ago, an expert on the Harry Potter series told an audience of high school kids how lucky they were to have this Big Shared Experience--these seven books and 41,000 words in common. What does Harry Potter have to do with hip-hop in 2008? In an age when many year-end lists should be subtitled "Ten More Albums You've Never Heard of and Will Never, Ever Hear," plenty.

Technology has made the world smaller, and in response, we've found smaller and smaller worlds to inhabit. Think of a specific era--in some cases, a specific artist's work from a specific era, or even a specific year--and someone, somewhere is re-creating those very sounds. Which is fine, and sometimes a lot of fun. It's just that those folks who are still striving for the Big Shared Experience were the most interesting stories of the past year in hip-hop. They were the people who believed that hip-pop didn't automatically equal T-Pain, or the real pain of automatic IQ loss.

There were several such moments in 2008.

See the Top 10 after the jump...

In 2008, independent rock returned to the underground, where it belongs. Given the grand catastrophe that is today's record industry, most major-label executives don't have the time or energy to convince music fans they might like something a little out of the ordinary. They're too busy recycling variations on what were once sure things while desperately searching for career exit strategies that don't involve tall buildings, open windows and running leaps. As a result, fringier artists have had the opportunity to develop outside the spotlight, sans the sort of unrealistic commercial expectations that can lead to self-consciousness, compromise and a lifetime of regret. Not selling means not selling out, as the following albums demonstrate.

In next week's paper, we'll unveil our national package on the best music of the year (the following week, we'll tackle the best in DFWd music). But, as a teaser, here's our paper's contribution to the national package: Noah W. Bailey's picks for the best Americana/folk releases of '08.

Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category.

Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen Trapper's fantastic Furr smells more like the Kinks than Neil Young. [Editor's note: That's why we put it on our indie-rock list.] We likewise discarded Shearwater's near-masterpiece Rook, despite the fact that the album's instrumentation includes both banjo and a hammered dulcimer. And while we certainly returned to releases by Bon Iver and Bowerbirds throughout the year, we actually heard both records last year, when they were first independently released.

After this arduous vetting process, these are the records that survived: ten releases that dabble equally in meat-and-potatoes alt-country, soft-focus '70s pop folk, and the old, weird America of Greil Marcus.

As a Zooey Deschanel character once put it, long before she ever met M. Ward: "Listen and light a candle, and your future will become clear."