Contributions to Rockfeedback's Records of the Year '08

Los Campesinos! – Hold On Now Youngster (#75)

As good an indie pop album as any released for many a year, the shouty, witty, sing-along, boy-girl brilliance of the much-anticipated debut from Los Campesinos! was also among the finest albums of 2008 full stop. The blend of Darren Hayman-esque self-deprecating bitterness, Eddie Argos-equalling wit and Stuart Murdoch’s ear for a tune (and eye for a song title) comes together perfectly in songs like ‘Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats’ and ‘This Is How You Spell...’ – but there really isn’t a dud on the whole album.


The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound (#64)

While the Hold Steady took most of the blue collar rock plaudits in ’08 with the solid Stay Positive, this debut from New Jersey’s The Gaslight Anthem snuck up on the inside to out-Springsteen all comers, adding a harder punk edge to melodies inspired by the Boss. With timeless rock’n’rollers like ‘Old White Lincoln’, ‘Great Expectations’ and none better than the title track, The ’59 Sound was one of the few releases in 2008 that made you want to dust off the leather jacket and get a Joe Strummer haircut. Which can only be a good thing, can’t it?


The Acorn – Glory Hope Mountain (#60)

It was only early in 2008 that I got hold of The Pink Ghosts, The Acorn’s excellent 2004 debut. An intriguing blend of acoustic electro-folk, the thought of an ‘evolution’ from this (and the two subsequent EPs) into a concept album based on the life and local music of Acorn main-man Rolf Klausener’s Honduran mother, merely served to multiply that intrigue exponentially. And the Ontarians didn’t disappoint, with sprawling latin ballads based on interviews conducted with Mom and set to music influenced by that of her home. As well-executed a project as it was genuinely touching, Glory Hope Mountain provided a welcome reminder of the redemptive power that music can have.


The War On Drugs – Wagonwheel Blues (#51)

Yet another band of young Americans summoning up the spirit of Springsteen on their debut, The War on Drugs did so in a more interesting, successful and, frankly, bloody brilliant way than most in 2008. The glorious Boss-meets-Dylan harmonica-drenched ramblings of ‘Arms Like Boulders’ is surely one of the finest album openings of the year. But the exhilaration of this introduction hides more than just a collection of backward-looking pop-rock songs. Sonically-speaking Wagonwheel Blues ranges from the lo-fi ballad ‘Barrel of Batteries’ to the waves of guitar of ten minute album centre-piece ‘Show Me The Coast’, with much more in between. There are ideas, textures and timeless tunes a plenty on what is a remarkably impressive debut.


Calexico – Carried To Dust (#43)

Joey Burns and John Convertino’s sixth studio album was a welcome return to top form after the more mainstream stylings of Garden Ruin. Back came the brass, the mesmerising instrumentals, the mariachi storytelling, and, above all, songs to rate among the bands best. As the title implies and as all the best Calexico records do, Carried to Dust instantly transports the listener to the dusty American South with a sound like no other, and is easily as good as anything the Arizonans have produced to date.


Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (#39)

Los Campesinos! not only get props for releasing two full-lengthers in 2008, there should also be the sound of 14 hands patting seven backs reverberating around Cardiff for the combined brilliance of both Hold On Now Youngster and We Are Beautiful.... 10 more tongue in cheek quotidien tales of the disaffected and heartbroken more than complement their debut, on this limited-run-no-single-once-it’s-gone-it’s-gone album, with more great songs a plenty and a title track to absolutely die for.


Born Ruffians – Red, Yellow & Blue (#7)

One of the more interesting guitar albums of 2008, Red, Yellow and Blue was also one of the best (you’d expect nothing less of Canadians signed to Warp) and quite how it never exploded, I have no idea. Led by Luke LaLonde’s strained vocals, the trio mixed scruffy, infectious guitar hooks with Animal Collective-like production (courtesy of Rusty Santos) and a whole range of quirkiness, from a capella breaks to song titles like ‘Badonkadonkey’ and ‘Foxes Mate For Life’. Bursting with childish exuberance and a couple of the songs of the year (‘Hummingbird’ and ‘I Need A Life’) it is a quite brilliant record.


Rockfeedback’s (very fine) Top 10:

10. Neon Neon - Stainless Style
9. High Places - High Places
8. The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
7. Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow & Blue
6. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
5. Mystery Jets - Twenty One
4. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
2. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
1. Portishead - Third

See the entire top 80 here and here.

Calexico - Carried to Dust [City Slang album]

For some it was on Hot Rail (2000) that John Convertino and Joey Burns’ Tex-Mex Americana vision reached its peak. Their, well, “Cal-exican” sound felt at once warm and familiar to fans of alt-country and Americana (and before that the likes of Love) but at the same time completely unique, with mariachi story-telling on tracks like ‘Ballad of Cable Hogue’ and ‘Service and Repair’ alongside brass-laden instrumentals fitting together as perfectly as nachos and guacamole. For many others it was 2003’s well-regarded follow up Feast of Wire, but either way, there have undoubtedly been patches of near-greatness for the Tucson duo and their many contributing friends throughout their 12 years. The decision to move in a more mainstream, brass-less, instrumental-less direction on 2006’s Garden Ruin, though, didn’t really reach the heights that might have been expected of it. So (if bands like Calexico actually worry about such things) sixth album Carried To Dust could be something of a pivotal release: returning to their desert roots (as the album’s title may imply) or carrying on down the shiny path to a potentially wider audience.

With that in mind, the opening ‘Victor Jara’s Hands’ seems like a statement of intent, containing each of the elements that first set the band apart from their contemporaries, from jubilant brass, to Spanish vocals, to the Latin American subject matter. It’s a bubbly start and has all the hallmarks of a live favourite, but for some reason there’s something that, at least at first, just doesn’t sit quite right about this re-introduction to the sounds of the dusty West – it ’s almost as if the band might be trying too hard to re-capture former glories. The hushed ‘Two Silver Trees’ is definitely heading in the right direction thanks to a dream-like chorus, but it still doesn’t quite excite as much as it could.

It takes until the gorgeous waltz ‘The News About William’, that builds from rattling drums and delicate strings to the closing soaring vocals, that Carried To Dust really settles into its groove. And from here it is some groove. The brief instrumental ‘Sarabande in Pencil Form’ is a strangely settling segue into ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday’ and ‘Man Made Lake’, songs that certainly confirm the growing suspicion: Calexico are back on form. In a big way. The road-trip rhythms, backing “ooohs” and “aaahs” and lyrics about “my Irish whiskey glass” of the former track, conjure up lofty literary allusions of a hard-drinking Kerouac or Bukowski, while the screeching guitars and dramatic tones of the latter picks up where ‘The News About William’ left off, showcasing the more impressive end of Joey Burns’ range compared with the whispered gruffness elsewhere.

Thankfully, the standard far from drops after this auspicious couplet and there are more and more signposts to the fact that this is Calexico on top of their game. The Latin sounds of the bouncy duet ‘Inspiracion’ provide a convenient time to practice your conversational Spanish, and this along with the likes of ‘House of Valparaiso’ (featuring old friend Iron &Wine’s Sam Beam) and the instrumental ‘El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)’ recalls the finer mariachi moments of Calexico’s back catalogue. For the latter this is literally the case, it being a re-imagining of the Feast of Wire track ‘The Trigger’, but the initial concerns about the opening track being an attempt to recapture something lost are proven totally unfounded with each passing song. And in contrast to the it is perhaps the aching ballad ‘The Slowness’, steeped in pedal steel and lovely boy-girl harmonies is perhaps the most enrapturing moment, providing the soft centre to the album.

At 15 tracks Carried To Dust is a relatively long album (though not particularly by Calexican standards), but such is the consistency and vibrancy of almost every one of them that it seems to fly by, right up to the three suitably delightful compositions that wrap it up: a third and equally satisfying instrumental, ‘Falling From Sleeves’, the broody ‘Red Blooms’, and another triumphant collaboration, ‘Contention City’ with Tortoise’s Doug McCombs. Along with the other four fifths of the record, these tracks are filled with a whole range of textures – layers that get deeper and richer with every listen. To return to the original suggestion, it seems that rather than revert back entirely to their roots or continue down the road on which Garden Ruin seemed to be headed, Calexico have taken an entirely preferable route. For throughout the album the band perfectly bridge the gap between their unique Tex-Mex heritage and a more rounded sound.

If you were being overly critical you could say it is perhaps a little “lite” in a few places and lacks some of the menace of earlier works, but Calexico’s sixth long player is a real triumph, and at least as good as Feast of Wire, Hot Rail or anything they have put their name to thus far. The best thing is, the way it all clicks in to gear here makes for great excitement about Convertino and Burns’ future work – something you probably couldn’t have said if they had made a Garden Ruin Part 2. As it is, with Carried to Dust Calexico have hit the pinata squarely on the nose, and we are the lucky ones left to reap the candy they have left scattered beneath.

****

First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.