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The year in music
Unlike last year, I didn't buy many jazz CDs this year. My meta-list recognizes two releases as popping up most frequently on year-end "best of" lists:
Charles Lloyd Quartet, Rabo de Nube
Bill Frisell, History, Mystery
Both are high quality but neither is a game-changer. I liked Miles from India, a combination of Miles Davis's jazz fusion with Indian riffs; that would be my jazz pick of the year.
From a previous post, here are the classical music meta-list picks for the year.
I've found one extant meta-list for popular music, here. It is OK for a slow year; I won't pass along the meta-list I came up with myself because I happen to believe its contents are mediocre, noting that my copy of Santogold has yet to arrive in the mail. If you wish, scour these lists to construct your own meta-list.
In popular music what I enjoyed most this year was:
Roger McGuinn's acoustic cover (listen here) of Leadbelly's On Easter Morn He Rose (there is a different version of the song, free, at that link), and
Neil Young's 1968 acoustic takes on Buffalo Springfield songs, and
The Kevin Shields/Patti Smith two-CD collaboration, which oddly lots of people don't seem to know about.
I'm not usually so old-fashioned.
Here is a Times of UK list. You'll find a zillion Amazon lists here, most are OK but too mainstream. I'll cover world music -- which had a good year -- soon.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 10, 2008 at 06:43 AM in Music | Permalink
Comments
If you are looking for a game-changing jazz CD please listen to Connie Crothers, "Music is a Place"
Here is a review: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=29429
Posted by: babar at Dec 10, 2008 7:17:28 AM
Is Fleet Foxes too "mainstream"?
Because their debut this year was *awesome*.
Posted by: Brandon at Dec 10, 2008 9:10:24 AM
Brandon, you will be pleased to hear that two days ago I ordered Fleet Foxes; we will see if I love it I will blog it.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Dec 10, 2008 9:25:50 AM
MIA, Tyler, you needed that one, or i was out.
Posted by: mpkomara at Dec 10, 2008 9:27:14 AM
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/rogermcguinn/albums/album/24357695/live_from_spain
Posted by: at Dec 10, 2008 9:27:17 AM
Heh, glad to see MIA there, Tyler. I've been waiting for her to hit it big stateside, think it will happen?
Posted by: Michael at Dec 10, 2008 10:15:06 AM
Jazz up-and-comer of the year recommendation: guitarist Mary Halvorson. She has an alternately melodic and fragmented sound. Check out her trio's debut album, Dragon's Head, at http://firehouse12.com/firehouse12_records_release.asp?id=50323
Posted by: Justin at Dec 10, 2008 10:38:15 AM
If you haven't heard the new Raphael Saadiq album, I highly recommend it. It is a contemporary motown album from one of the most underrated musicians of the year.
And before you listen to fleet foxes (which produced the best album of the year) you should listen to this cover by some sweedish girls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMrqBldlqzA
Posted by: Jonathan Nehmetallah at Dec 10, 2008 1:17:11 PM
2008 has been a disappointing year overall but Frightened Rabbit, Okkervil River and MGMT were the high points for me. Fleet Foxes I was ambivalent about.
Posted by: Eddie at Dec 10, 2008 6:52:00 PM
These days I generally find that my musical discoveries are only weakly related to what's coming out in the current year. After all, most albums were made before 2008. This year my biggest discoveries were the National (yup, I'm late to the party), Nina Virdee, Cannonball Adderley, The Clientele, Kayhan Kalhor, a rediscovery of "Shrink" by Notwist, my guitar teacher's band, and Frank Zappa.
Of course Tyler's been around longer than I have, so maybe he gains more from focusing on the new music.
Posted by: mk at Dec 11, 2008 12:10:20 AM
Oh yeah, and the excellent Chinese Classical Folk Music, which I came to very circuitously by way of Damon Albarn's unexpected and sporadically awesome "Monkey" project.
Also, Amadou & Mariam's great older stuff.
Posted by: mk at Dec 11, 2008 12:18:53 AM
You can listen to the Neil Young at npr.org, and Fleet Foxes (live, not the album, but good) as well. Maybe one could argue that for pop music, a meta-list of "live on the web" is as interesting as a meta-list of albums.
Posted by: anon/portly at Dec 11, 2008 4:11:31 AM
One that I enjoyed very much and just got recently, which I think came out in 2008, was Mocean Worker "Cinco de Mowo", it's electronic/jazz/bigband... http://www.amazon.com/Cinco-Mowo-Mocean-Worker/dp/B000QEILQK
Posted by: david at Apr 16, 2009 3:19:39 PM
