{"id":1167,"date":"2009-01-08T14:37:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T22:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/01\/belated-best-records-of-08.html"},"modified":"2009-01-08T14:37:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T22:37:00","slug":"belated-best-records-of-08","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/01\/belated-best-records-of-08.html","title":{"rendered":"BELATED BEST RECORDS OF 08"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Afraid the days are past where i could do a definitive top-10 of all the year’s music, but here are a few new ones i’ve really liked:<\/p>\n

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Beach House is a dream-pop duo from baltimore, sort of a chick-led version of Galaxie 500, a less strung out Mazzy Star or a non-Japanese Sugar Plant. I’ve played this one, the aptly named “Devotion,” incessantly; it is perfect hangover music and gets you to a really otherworldly place without drugs. get high on life! My favorite song is the shattered “Gila<\/a>,” which you can see them playing here at a record store in Dallas. and here’s a more polished performance of “Master of None<\/a>.” this just in: beach house play LA’s henry fonda<\/a>, with the killer band The Walkmen, on Jan. 20.<\/div>\n
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i think we’re beyond the point of being surprised by anything Lucinda Williams turns out — the outlines of her records are pretty familiar, the mix of you-done-me-wrong with country traditionalism, alt-rock attitude and literary smarts. but “little honey”\u00a0is my favorite record of hers in a while — it’s not entirely unified but it’s not all gloomy. i cant deny that “tears of joy<\/a>” for instance recalls earlier LW songs, but it’s one of about half a dozen great tunes on the new one, with a kickass band. and while it’s hard to imagine elvis costello spending a night in jail, enjoyed his hammy duet with lucinda on “jailhouse tears.” my friend david letterman<\/a> agrees.<\/div>\n
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my favorite non-rock music over the last decade or so has been downtempto, neo-dub, whatever you call it. one of the finest is Nightmares on Wax, a sound system from Bristol, UK (home of the trip-hop scene) who mix soul with jamaican with very shadowy, abstract beats… i love everything they put out, but was very happy to discover “though so…” at amoeba the other day. here’s my favorite from the record, “195 lbs.”<\/a>\u00a0(and the track “da feelin’,<\/a>” which is less mellow than the rest.)<\/div>\n
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and in case anyone is wondering about my pov on vampire weekend, i think they are better than the backlash allows…..\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Photo credit: Flickr user 5<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Afraid the days are past where i could do a definitive top-10 of all the year’s music, but here are a few new ones i’ve really liked: Beach House is a dream-pop duo from baltimore, sort of a chick-led version of Galaxie 500, a less strung out Mazzy Star or a non-Japanese Sugar Plant. I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[564,565,40,566,38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-baltimore","7":"category-electronica","8":"category-indie","9":"category-lucinda","10":"category-rock-music","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}