Flint’s 2008 retrospective, part 1: well that was disappointing
December 6th, 2008 by Flint
Well dear readers, it’s getting to be the end of the year now and there’s no interesting releases on sight anymore (outside Viola’s Melancholydisco 2 but that’s a remix album anyway) and I’ve heard most of the new releases I wanted to hear this year (damn for randomly forgetting that new Hotel Lights album – I even posted news about it here ffs) so I guess I’m qualified to say something about this year by this time already. And 2008 in music, well, it was disappointing.
Let’s talk about that in a bit more detail.
I’ve reached the point with the amount of bands I follow that by now each year will bring out loads of follow-ups albums by artists I like. This was the case with this year as well but for some reason this year had the tendency to constantly release follow-ups that were… disappointing. Lacking. The majority of albums released this year could be divided into two categories: those that are good but still suffer from some great problems (ie filler, filler and a tad more filler) and actual proper disappointments. The problem with all this was that this was also the year of great lead singles – each album’s arrival was fronted by a fantastic song that gave the fan no idea whether or not the album in store would actually be great. Often a disappointment would occur. And no matter how many slaps you took on the way, you still never lost hope for the future albums…
Fortunately the artists closest to me from this year’s catch were the ones who didn’t disappoint as badly. Some created downright great albums, the others on the hand created the said good albums with problems in them. The major fault in the albums by both Death Cab for Cutie and Moby (Narrow Stairs and Last Night respectively) was the filler: whilst the DCFC album was short in the way that if you had snipped some of the weaker, b-sidey, uninspired tracks from it you would have got a ridiculously short album, but in Moby’s case the return-to-clubbing Last Night would have improved much better if some of the weakest tracks had been cropped out. Both albums are still good and the DCFC album especially contains some of the band’s strongest songs. Just as a whole they both wonked up.
Death Cab for Cutie – Grapevine Fires
Ben Folds and Sigur Rós on the other hand disappointed simply with a bit more lackluster material. Well, in Sigur’s case it was more so an idea that wasn’t taken far enough. The whimsical, more natural, folkier and upbeat approach found on some of the tracks for Asdjkndfjsfdjsff Efsdjkfnsdjfjksdfn utyKJnfsdkjfnd Tkfbkjasdfbsk or whatever it’s called were a fantastic change of direction and opened up a whole new side in the band. Sadly, halfway through the album loses its steam and returns to a more traditional Sigur Rós fare. This wouldn’t be bad normally because the traditional Sigur Rós fare is amazing but in LongIcelandicName the material feels jarring against the more playful tracks and simply aren’t as strong as the band’s past efforts in general. Folds’ album on the other hand got an actual update from moi and you can just glance at that.
Then there was also that Delays album I wrote about some time ago – it probably tells something that I haven’t actually listened to it since. Then again, it also isn’t sunny summer anymore and Delays’ summery pop doesn’t mix well with depressing and gloomy autumn or dark winter nights. Plus I kinda fluctuate on and off from guitar pop anyway.
Beck’s Modern Guilt has been declared as ‘return to form’, but considering how his previous album (The Information) was the best of his career and Guero isn’t nearly as wonky as people say it is, I can’t agree. Especially when you consider that Modern Guilt is pretty damn dull and uninspired. “Chemtrails” is pure awesome and the album’s got a few other nice tunes to it but on the whole it’s an extremely uneventful and uninteresting half an hour.
greatFox, the great music chap who releases his albums for free on his website, released Divine/Null at the start of this year. My opinions can be read here (as well as the artist’s comments about it, which left me feeling a bit guilty, haha) and the final result still is that it’s a wonderfully tight album in atmosphere (well, it IS a concept album after all) and contains a couple of killer tracks but seems to lose a bit of wind by the end and the last tracks blur into one monotonous song. It’s still free though so you should definitely give it a check.
Keane. Keane, Keane, Keane. When am I going to learn? When the previous album, Under the Iron Sea, was released it was fronted by the haunting, gorgeous and oddly dark “Atlantic”. The rest of the album was nothing like it, naturally (it was still nice though). Now Perfect Symmetry was preceded by the amazing “Spiralling”, surely one of the very best pop songs of the year. Unsurprisingly, if you’ve been following the general gist of this retrospective so far, Perfect Symmetry was disappointing. Very disappointing. It’s one of those albums that aren’t bad per se, but simply completely unexciting. Spiralling’s energy and drive are completely gone most of the time, replaced with alright things. Worst of all, Spiralling itself was completely botched – the album version is extended from the radio edit that was given free on the band’s website and the original version actually loses the comparison, sounding clumsy and clunky with all its extended bits and sonical differences. If there’s an album I regret buying the most this year (yes, I actually bought the whole thing on the strength of Spiralling), it’s this.
Keane – Spiralling
There were great things in 2008 too, though. And if you want to find out what I found awesome (although you can probably already guess them from my IP posts this year) and what I think about them now, read the next part of my glorious 2008 retrospective appearing soon in blogs near you!
Tags: Beck, Ben Folds, Death Cab for Cutie, Delays, greatFox, Keane, Moby, Sigur Rós