I’m spending New Years with family in San Juan, and while hiding from today’s drizzles I’m finally finishing up this year’s best of 2008 list. Enjoy!

1 – Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

Cut from a single, worn piece of cloth, it’s hard not to think of For Emma’s delicate birth in a snowy Wisconsin cabin as you listen to Justin Vernon’s collection of winter heartbreak hymns. If you don’t feel it, you’re not human.

• Flume
• Lump Sum
• Skinny Love
• The Wolves (Act I and II)
• BlindSided
• For Emma
• Re: Stacks

2 – Girl Talk – Feed the Animals

Who knew Metallica and Lil Mama sounded so perfect together? The genius in Feed The Animals is that it simultaneously inspires sample-identifying geek-outs and spontaneous acts of dancing like an idiot. It perfectly represents the state of internet art both in its cut and paste aesthetic and its flexible release strategy (nicely thought out, if not as wonderfully executed). Still not getting it? Check out Wired’s spiral graph of ‘What it’s all About’. That’s, well…what it’s about (sorry).

3 – Fucked Up – Chemistry of Common Life

This was the year I got into hardcore, and it was strictly because of this album. Chemistry of Common Life is the perfect mix of shoegaze and experimental hardcore – a perfect blend of arrangement, distortion, and raw aggression. Check out the group thoroughly living up to its name, trashing an MTV studio while performing Chemistry’s Twice Born.

4 – Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes is equal parts Jethro Tull, Beach Boys, and Allman Brothers Band – beautiful four-part harmonies, lyrics about misty forests, and just the right amount of grit to be authentic. And they kill live – check out Sun it Rises, White Winter Hymnal, He Doesn’t Know Why, and Blue Ridge Mountains.

5 – Vampire Wekeend – Vampire Weekend

I resisted this one for a loooong time. It all seemed a little too fratty/twee for me. But damn – afropop done by skinny white college kids never sounded so good.

Other honorable mentions:

• Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
• David Byrne and Brian Eno – Everything that happens will happen today
• Shearwater – Rook
• Okkervil River – The Stand-ins
• Helms Alee – Night Terror

Also – Topspin has compiled a wonderful list of 2008 favorites and desert island picks chosen by the staff – and MetaCritic has compiled as many Best of 2008 lists as they could find into one meta-list – very cool stuff.

Happy 10th, Jeff.

More Goodies:

• Puncture records interview (~2 months before Aeroplane)
• 33 1/3
• Original Pitchfork Review
• Revised Pitchfork Review
• Pitchfork interview (2002)
• Lovely Creative Loafing article
• Optical Atlas – a great Elephant 6 reference

Tis’ the season – of lists. The best albums of 2007, best songs of 2007, the biggest surprises and biggest disappointments – everything gets a list at this time of the year. But the problem is: they all kind of look the same. While going through the process to make my top ten list for 2007, I looked at a lot of other lists, and saw pretty much the same things in slightly different orders on most of them. Except one – I was particularly intrigued by Pitchfork’s Guest List: Best of 2007. Pitchfork accepted submissions from a variety of artists (The Mountain Goats, Deerhunter, Panda Bear, Blitzen Trapper, Caribou, etc.) – some people ranked their top 5 or 10, others listed projects in no particular order.

So I got curious – I wondered if there were any aggregate trends that could be pulled out. After about an hour in Excel, I was done. The result? While a lot of top ten lists from magazines and blogs were similar (most featuring Radiohead and Arcade Fire), the artist compilations were completely different, yet with statistically significant trends. So what were they?

1 – (13 Votes) M.I.A. : Kala
2 – (12 Votes) Panda Bear : Person Pitch
3 – (9 Votes) Animal Collective : Strawberry Jam
4 – (8 Votes) Deerhoof : Friend Opportunity
5 – (8 Votes) Dirty Projectors : Rise Above
6 – (7 Votes) Battles : Mirrored
7 – (6 Votes) Justice : Cross
8 – (6 Votes) Liars : Liars
9 – (5 Votes) Robert Wyatt : Comicopera
10 – (5 Votes) No Age : Weirdo Rippers

The other thing was that artist frequencies had a long tail distribution – meaning that after #20 or so, every other artist listed had only one or two votes. See Artist Aggregated 11-40 after the jump.

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1 – The National : Boxer
The National did it all on Boxer. Matt Beringer’s husky pre-dawn baritone was the perfect foil for the twin guitars of Aaron and Bryce Dessner and a propulsive rhythm section formed from Scott (bass) and Bryan Devendorf (drums). The result was a fully realized, cohesive, utterly consistent package – smart, heartbreaking, funny, and my album of the year. [There's a fantastic live concert of The National on NPR's fantastic All Songs Considered available here...]

2 – Iron and Wine : The Shepherd’s Dog
Fresh from In the Reins and a subsequent tour with album collaborators Calexico, Sam Beam unleashed an evolved Iron and Wine with Shepherd’s Dog. Now competing with the ever-present acoustic guitar and quavering voice are shivers of pedal steel, cascading piano lines, and the processed beeps of guitar and cello – it’s a broadened tapestry that deftly alludes to his previous work while boldly striking out in new directions. [All Songs Considered has us covered again with another great concert available here...]

3 – Panda Bear : Person Pitch
Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, perfected sun-stained electronic pop with Person Pitch. It’s the kind of piece that could never have been made by the influences he gleefully lists in the cover notes – Lennox brilliantly merges the precise timing of a DJ with the unfettered joy of 60’s pop. It’s like if Brian Wilson picked up some turntables instead of sitting in bed for a few years in the early 70’s.

4 – Okkervil River : Stage Names
Stage Names is a smart meta-concept album, ostensibly about the lack of authenticity in the world of a fictional indie rock band – filled with stories that, incidentally, parallel the self-professed mid-level band’s own career trajectory. This type of self-reference could easily turn nauseating, but in Okkervil River’s hands it becomes a triumph of guitars, circular wordplay, and the howl of Will Sheff. It’s brilliant – and, any album that ends with a rendition of Sloop John B automatically makes my list.

5 – Justice – Cross
† is my guilty pleasure. Created by Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, Justice’s long-awaited debut album is house that’s EQ’d to be blasting out of 1-inch laptop speakers. Undeniable fun – and just try to listen to the entire album without wandering around for a few days afterwards mumbling, “Do the D-A-N-C-E, 1-2-3-4-5…”

Check out my 6-10 after the jump…
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