Top Albums of 2008

[Wildcatblue7]

The only Switchfoot I like is from New Way to be Human and before.  I know that's unusual, but having cleaner production later in their career really highlighted Jon's vocal weaknesses for me.  A lot of their stuff is purely unlistenable for me because of his voice, which is a shame because I know there's talent there someplace.

[murlough23]

The only Switchfoot I like is from New Way to be Human and before.  I know that's unusual, but having cleaner production later in their career really highlighted Jon's vocal weaknesses for me.  A lot of their stuff is purely unlistenable for me because of his voice, which is a shame because I know there's talent there someplace.

That's interesting, because some of the stuff on Human is relatively polished and produced and poppy. I'd say Learning to Breathe is actually slightly rougher around the edges, and Oh! Gravity definitely went for a rawer sound in several places. But there's probably no beating their first album in terms of rawness, and you are right that Foreman's voice is better suited for that kind of thing.

While The Legend of Chin ranks among my least favorite Switchfoot albums due to its unevenness, it does contain a lot of "long-lost favorites" that I still love which never seemed to get much traction among Switchfoot fans - songs like "Bomb" and "Edge of My Seat" and "Might Have Ben Hur", etc. I kind of wish newer Switchfoot fans would give that album a fair shake.

[Aaron]

I kind of wish newer Switchfoot fans would drool over that album!

Fixed 

[spacebrat311]

Legend of Chin is, to me, Switchfoot's MOST consistent album. It is the only album of theirs in which every song is at least listenable to me, and whenever I listen to it, I'm struck by the fact that I can't for the life of me figure out why their compositional intricacy took a massive step down after NWTBH.

[Aaron]

Legend of Chin is, to me, Switchfoot's MOST consistent album. It is the only album of theirs in which every song is at least listenable to me, and whenever I listen to it, I'm struck by the fact that I can't for the life of me figure out why their compositional intricacy took a massive step down after NWTBH.

The lifesucking force that is a record exec.

[murlough23]

Legend of Chin is, to me, Switchfoot's MOST consistent album. It is the only album of theirs in which every song is at least listenable to me, and whenever I listen to it, I'm struck by the fact that I can't for the life of me figure out why their compositional intricacy took a massive step down after NWTBH.

There are a few tracks like "You" and "Concrete Girl" that are, to me, incredibly boring. As for "compositional intricacy", it's interesting to have songs like "Life and Love and Why" and "Underwater" that go off-road from the usual verse/chorus structure, but I think they still do songs with unexpected twists and turns instead of going back to the same chorus - like "Daisy" or "Faust, Midas and Myself", for example. Maybe not as many of them, but then, I don't think a band who has a gift for crafting extremely catchy choruses should try too hard to subvert that gift.

I also think there's intricacy found in some of their more "pop" material for reasons other than this - even one of their mellowest songs, "Only Hope", is pretty brilliant from a compositional perspective, with the shift from minor to major key. That is a very hard song to play on the guitar, and to keep within a vocal range that your average singer can cover. And the time signature changes in "Dirty Second Hands" are dizzying. So I think they still use quite a bit of intricacy when they want to.

[Aaron]

I still maintain that they aren't as good now as they were because they have too many musicians in the band for their sound.  Some bands do well with more than 4 members, but their best sound, to me, was as a trio.

[Ian]

I don't think you can really judge a band like Switchfoot on intricacy and musical talent.  While of course you'd like them to have these things, Switchfoot is primarily a radio rock band, so I like to hear them excell in making accessible, fun tunes, which is the reason I think Chin is as good if not better than their more polished stuff.  I still like their newer stuff too though, cause even though the lyrics are a drag at times (Jon's a pretty good writer, but holy cow the next album better not be about how there's more to life than material things), it's still fun to sing to and musically far more admirable than the majority of hit music right now.

Actually, my favorite work by Switchfoot is the first 6 tracks of NiS.  They really mastered every aspect of their sound on these tracks.  If next six tracks didn't completely suck (except for Diasy and Fatal Wound) and were up to par with the first half, I would honestly consider the album for my top twenty or so of the decade.  It's quite a shame.

edit: was about to say minus Stars, but I'm listening to it now and I forgot that it's actually quite good

[ajyouthguy]

I still maintain that they aren't as good now as they were because they have too many musicians in the band for their sound.  Some bands do well with more than 4 members, but their best sound, to me, was as a trio.

they could make an amazing album of the year and you'd still say that, though.  seriously.

[Aaron]

they could make an amazing album of the year and you'd still say that, though.  seriously.

Well, when they do, I'll judge it individually.  However, they haven't mad an album of the year type album yet. Maybe TBL, but NIS and O!G have been far from top album billing.

[bloop]

However, they haven't mad an album of the year type album yet.

By "album of the year type album", do you mean one that could reasonably be put at the top by someone else?

(I like them, but I don't think any of their albums rank so high as that)

[Ian]

Don't think Switchfoot has it in them to make an album of the year when there are so many way more creative bands out there, but I bet if they really hit their stride they could do a top ten or so.  I wasn't keeping track of music when TBL, so I don't know if that would have been.  I might have put NiS in my top 50 if I kept track when that came out.

[Aaron]

By "album of the year type album", do you mean one that could reasonably be put at the top by someone else?

(I like them, but I don't think any of their albums rank so high as that)

Yes.

[spacebrat311]

Yes.

Agreed.

[murlough23]

The only time I ever gave Switchfoot "Album of the Year" was for TBL, which I later retracted in favor of Michigan when I discovered Sufjan Stevens. So I guess they've never truly gotten that honor from me. The funny thing about TBL is that I don't like the synth-oriented sound as much, but that album just happens to be a really solid collection of Switchfoot songs that were all pretty much instant classics (for me, anyway). On NIS and O!G, I love the sound more, but find that the songs (particularly in the back half) aren't as consistent.

As for there being too many people in the band - they merely brought their studio recordings up to speed with their live show. They had an extra guitarist (which may or may not have been Drew, since Drew was still in All Together Separate) from somewhere back in the days of LTB or TBL, and they definitely had Jerome hanging around with them long before he was an official member of the band (to handle the electronic stuff in some of the songs from their second and third albums). Personally, I prefer the fuller sound to the sparser sound. This aspect is, to me, independent of the quality of the songwriting and composition.

As for the "record execs" accusation, I really don't see how this works, considering that Charlie Peacock was the driving force, production-wise, behind all of their first three albums, and each of those had a very different sound from one another. Peacock founded re:think Records with the intent of singing bands that could have a foot in both Christian music and mainstream music, so this was the intent for Switchfoot all along. It's really a lazy accusation to assume that the more polished, poppy sound of TBL came about because some record label exec forced them to. This happens every time a band who was someone's pet favorite in their indie days signs to a mainstream label, and I'm honestly quite sick of how quickly everyone jumps on the "sellout" train. It's fine to prefer the old sound to the new sound - I understand that it can be frustrating when a band you like changes their sound. But if you like them for being creative, I'd think you'd almost have to expect that.

In any event, Switchfoot's back to being indie now (probably more indie than they were in the re:think days, since that label was affiliated with Sparrow), so who knows, you may get what you want from them in the future, now that they're most likely done being in the mainstream spotlight.

[spacebrat311]

In any event, Switchfoot's back to being indie now (probably more indie than they were in the re:think days, since that label was affiliated with Sparrow), so who knows, you may get what you want from them in the future, now that they're most likely done being in the mainstream spotlight.

Maybe. I don't see them cutting back two members of the band and dropping the "we're trying too hard to write something that will change your life" lyrical style any time soon. I'm basically hoping that Fiction Family is the quality album I've wanted from Switchfoot, because Jon has proven to me that he can't do it on his writing ability alone.

[murlough23]

Maybe. I don't see them cutting back two members of the band and dropping the "we're trying too hard to write something that will change your life" lyrical style any time soon.

The two additional members of the band will probably remain, yes. But then, they've done songs that were dense before they had this many members, and they do a lot of songs now that rely less on the electronics (Jerome plays rhythm guitar on those, I guess), and they've done acoustic, sparse songs throughout their career regardless of how many members were in the band. So I don't think extra band members necessarily correlates to a more "mainstream" sound.

As for the lyrical style, this is my one major nitpick with the band at this point, and it was the one thing that kept me from giving Oh! Gravity five stars. The "This is your life and you're meant to live it, so I dare you to move" theme has been done to death in their music. I'd have started dropping their album grades to three stars instead of four if I hadn't been enjoying the music so much.

I'm basically hoping that Fiction Family is the quality album I've wanted from Switchfoot, because Jon has proven to me that he can't do it on his writing ability alone.

Interesting; I thought Foreman's solo material showed a lot of depth and variance in subject matter. However, since it was much more personal in some places and much more explicitly Biblical in others, I kind of figured this was his way of getting out the stuff that didn't fit into the parameters of Switchfoot as a band. But I was hoping that the lessons learned from this personal exploration would be applied back to his songwriting for Switchfoot in the future.

As for Fiction Family, I expect great things from a collaboration between members of two of my favorite bands, but I do not expect them to meet the expectations of either Switchfoot fans or Nickel Creek fans. Given Watkins' influence, the songwriting will probably be a bit more obtuse (in the interpretive sense, not in the sense of being idiotic). I'm honestly not sure what to expect, but I'm looking forward to it. They're probably doomed to fail if you expect them to somehow make up for Switchfoot's perceived failures, though.

NP: "Hangin' by a Scarlet Thread", DeGarmo & Key

[ajyouthguy]

well i may be in the minority, at least around here, but i like them better with Drew and Jerome.

[murlough23]

well i may be in the minority, at least around here, but i like them better with Drew and Jerome.

I'll show you some solidarity on that one.

[Aaron]

well i may be in the minority, at least around here, but i like them better with Drew and Jerome.

Even with Jerome I liked them.  With Drew?  Too guitar heavy now.  Drowns out the rest of the band.

[murlough23]

Even with Jerome I liked them.  With Drew?  Too guitar heavy now.  Drowns out the rest of the band.

I'm not having any problems hearing everyone. I prefer their sound with more - forgive me for this - gravity.

NP: "Shout Me Out", TV on the Radio

[spacebrat311]

Maybe. I don't think they had a density problem before though. They really knew how to interlace their instrumentals in complementary, non-duplicative ways as a three-piece, which created an impressively full sound. That's a rare gift, and I don't think that their current approach is nearly as interesting.

[plvarona]

I finally finished my "Year in Music" column for 2008.  If you've been following my Music Journal there shouldn't be too many surprises, although my write-up does give the reasons why I ranked the albums the way I did.

Here's the link:

http://www.epinions.com/content_5271036036

[murlough23]

I finally finished my "Year in Music" column for 2008.  If you've been following my Music Journal there shouldn't be too many surprises, although my write-up does give the reasons why I ranked the albums the way I did.

Here's the link:

http://www.epinions.com/content_5271036036

Good stuff. Your favorites and mine overlap in several places.

NP: "Pam Berry", The Shins

[dgp11776]

Very late to the game (sorry!), but here are my 9.00 and better albums from 2008.  Now you can continue on with 2009...

Full Albums
1.  The Reign of Kindo - Rhythm, Chord, and Melody  9.75
2.  Cool Hand Luke - The Sleeping House  9.75
3.  Deepspace5 - BakeSale  9.75
4.  Katie Herzig - Apple Tree  9.50
5.  House of Heroes - The End Is Not the End  9.50
6.  Starflyer 59 - Dial M, Dial In  9.50
7.  My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges  9.50
8.  The Myriad - With Arrows, With Poise  9.50
9.  Beat Rabbi & Deepspace5 - Deepspace5soul  9.50
10.  Delirious? - Kingdom of Comfort  9.25 
11.  Edison Glass - Time Is Fiction  9.25
12.  Children 18:3 - Children 18:3  9.25
13.  Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends  9.25
14.  Tyler Burkum - Darling, Maybe Someday  9.00
15.  Braille - The IV Edition  9.00
16.  The Classic Crime - The Silver Cord  9.00
17.  Sev Statik - Shotgun  9.00
18.  John Mark McMillan – The Medicine  9.00 
19.  Red Umbrella - Living & Surviving  9.00

Short/Live Albums
The Listening – Transmission 1  9.50
Emery - When Broken Hearts Prevail EP  9.25
Deas Vail - White Lights EP  9.00
The Eternal Effect – Deo Vindice  9.00
The Lonely Hearts – Born In the Dark EP  9.00
Jon Foreman - Spring EP  9.00
Over the Rhine - Live From Nowhere, Volume 3  9.00
Mars Ill – Black Listed Sessions  9.00

Christmas Albums
Harry Connick, Jr. - What a Night!  A Christmas Album  9.00
Travis Cottrell – Ring the Bells  9.00

[Josh]

That reminds me: I was supposed to get a promo copy of that Reign of Kindo album to review, but it never showed up, so I never listened or reviewed. Their loss, but apparently mine as well. I need to seek it out...

[dgp11776]

I know Wanderer had it as his #1 for the year as well, and bloop lists it above Coldplay.

[Aaron]

That reminds me: I was supposed to get a promo copy of that Reign of Kindo album to review, but it never showed up, so I never listened or reviewed. Their loss, but apparently mine as well. I need to seek it out...

It is well worth your time.

[ajyouthguy]

I know Wanderer had it as his #1 for the year as well, and bloop lists it above Coldplay.

i had it at #5