Best Albums of 2008: 15-11

15. M83 - Saturdays = Youth

France is not only the cutting edge of electronic music but there may be something in the water there and they have a talent for tap in to the heartbeat of the pop music generation. With the themes of love, teenagers…Anthony Gonzalez manages to mush together these elements into a great shoegaze-synth odyssey. M83 songs are perfect transmitters for something transcendent that has its roots in our childhood.

M83 - You Appearing [zshare] // [ysi]

14. College - Secret Diary

Staying in France and with the aesthetics of the 80s, College aka David Greiller made the debut LP of Valerie and it lives up to the expectations. As a concept album, it is about secrets and stalking and peeping, forbidden love and its secrecy. There’s even a special edition in VHS format! How cool is that? Accompanying the theme, the music is the best retro-future synths you can imagine and when there are vocals, they are like if they sounded from another world.

College - She Never Came Back [zshare] // [ysi]

13. Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.

Dancing on the edge of weird ambient sounds and the hereditary indie-noise of the 90s, Bradford Cox created one of the best chaotic/escapist pop record of the year. It’s hard to give a pop dressing gown to experimental attitude and imagination and this album (along with the M83) is a perfect example that this is not an either-or decision between art and pop but the situation is much more complex. Deerhunter kept its intergrity in opening up.

Deerhunter - Never Stops [zshare] // [ysi]

12. Jaguar Love - Take Me to the Sea

As a lovechild of two amazing bands after their splits, Jaguar Love started with raised expectations. I’m not a fanatic fan-type who weeps at the split and then curses everything the ex-bandmates do afterwards out of resentment. Take Me to the Sea is a great indie album, full of energy, screams, giant guitar-waves and tragedies. The shifts and variations between sweet-sad melodies and the explosions give band an undeniable individual charm.

Jaguar Love - Georgia [zshare] // [ysi]

11. Foals - Antidotes

Oxford 5-piece, Foals, made into the list with their awesome debut, Antidotes. The album is full of hits and tracks representing a unique fingerprint. Futuristic indie-disco along the UK lines. Strange dance rhythms, post-punk dryness and the whole sound could be described with a glass-sound allegory or something. Both sensitive and aristocratically cold, Antidotes rocks the disco balls and even touches some parts of some souls.

Foals - Electric Bloom [zshare] // [ysi]

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 28th, 2008 at 2:57 pm and is filed under deerhunter, best of 2008, electronic, foals, m83, indie, jaguar love, College.