Comments on: Top Fifty Songs of 2008 http://pers.picacio.us/quilly/?p=112 life is dumb dumb dumb Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:09:06 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Luc Perkins http://pers.picacio.us/quilly/?p=112&cpage=1#comment-1386 Luc Perkins Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:50:10 +0000 http://pers.picacio.us/quilly/?p=112#comment-1386 Great lists, as per usual. The yawning chasm in my soul mentioned in a previous wall post has been erased :) But in all honesty I really do look forward to the lists because there's always great for recommendations. In both NC and here in Germany I feel completely alienated from music in general. If there's anything that could get me to move back to Portland, it would be the opportunity to live somewhere where people share music with each other, make music together, etc. Living in a community that so strongly supports that it more rare than I ever realized, particularly having grown up in the Portland area... Anyway, I won't make too many comments on either list, but one thing I'd like to get from you is a basic characterization of 2008, and even of this decade in general. This decade has really just floored me musically. Thinking back on the 90's and all the formative things I listened to, I looked forward to this decade with foreboding: nothing was going to replace grunge, alt-rock, brit pop, etc. I looked around for "replacements" and found British electronic music (Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, etc....ugh), hip hop (which I still can't get in to outside of a song here and there), the dying embers of alt-rock, nu-metal, and the like. Then Kid A and Sigur Ros and Yo La Tengo's "And Then Nothing..." and Mogwai and a whole lot of things really just kicked my ass in all the right ways. I also remember both of us agreeing that when we first got into post rock (including of course that Godspeed show in Fall 2000) we felt like no other music had ever mattered. And then it sort of disappeared by late 2002. Then the Rapture and Q and Not U and Liars came along and really just injected this stream into everything that's still going strong (despite major differences, I think Hot Chip, Cut Copy and others are part of it). Then came the freak folk explosion, which gave us Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, and tangentially you could say Animal Collective. Then there was the "the band"/hipster craze earlier in the decade (remember that, anyone?) which produced a lot of garbage but also gave us the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Strokes, Interpol, and others. God, this decade just gets weirded and also more awesome the more I think about it. And Canada, Jesus H. Where did y'all come from? The Broken Social Scene constellation, the Arcade Fire, the New Pornographers. Four Radiohead albums. Lots of crazy good electronic music (remember Mum?). Sufjan and Antony and Andrew Bird. And somewhere in there Death Cab and the Shins got huge and also did some good things. Okay, I'll stop before I get too rhapsodic. But I feel like 2008 is when a lot of these strands sort of matured in a way. Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes might be inconceivable without freak folk (maybe Beach House too), M83 and Fuck Buttons without melodic electronica, TV on the Radio and the Walkmen without the NYC explosion earlier in the decade, etc. I beyond eagerly look forward to all the best of the decade lists that we'll be seeing before we know it.... Great lists, as per usual. The yawning chasm in my soul mentioned in a previous wall post has been erased :) But in all honesty I really do look forward to the lists because there’s always great for recommendations. In both NC and here in Germany I feel completely alienated from music in general. If there’s anything that could get me to move back to Portland, it would be the opportunity to live somewhere where people share music with each other, make music together, etc. Living in a community that so strongly supports that it more rare than I ever realized, particularly having grown up in the Portland area…

Anyway, I won’t make too many comments on either list, but one thing I’d like to get from you is a basic characterization of 2008, and even of this decade in general. This decade has really just floored me musically. Thinking back on the 90’s and all the formative things I listened to, I looked forward to this decade with foreboding: nothing was going to replace grunge, alt-rock, brit pop, etc. I looked around for “replacements” and found British electronic music (Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, etc….ugh), hip hop (which I still can’t get in to outside of a song here and there), the dying embers of alt-rock, nu-metal, and the like. Then Kid A and Sigur Ros and Yo La Tengo’s “And Then Nothing…” and Mogwai and a whole lot of things really just kicked my ass in all the right ways. I also remember both of us agreeing that when we first got into post rock (including of course that Godspeed show in Fall 2000) we felt like no other music had ever mattered. And then it sort of disappeared by late 2002. Then the Rapture and Q and Not U and Liars came along and really just injected this stream into everything that’s still going strong (despite major differences, I think Hot Chip, Cut Copy and others are part of it). Then came the freak folk explosion, which gave us Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, and tangentially you could say Animal Collective.

Then there was the “the band”/hipster craze earlier in the decade (remember that, anyone?) which produced a lot of garbage but also gave us the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Strokes, Interpol, and others. God, this decade just gets weirded and also more awesome the more I think about it. And Canada, Jesus H. Where did y’all come from? The Broken Social Scene constellation, the Arcade Fire, the New Pornographers. Four Radiohead albums. Lots of crazy good electronic music (remember Mum?). Sufjan and Antony and Andrew Bird. And somewhere in there Death Cab and the Shins got huge and also did some good things.

Okay, I’ll stop before I get too rhapsodic. But I feel like 2008 is when a lot of these strands sort of matured in a way. Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes might be inconceivable without freak folk (maybe Beach House too), M83 and Fuck Buttons without melodic electronica, TV on the Radio and the Walkmen without the NYC explosion earlier in the decade, etc. I beyond eagerly look forward to all the best of the decade lists that we’ll be seeing before we know it….

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