Duff’s Favorite Tunes 2008

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This is pretty redundant at this point, not only because it’s nearly the end of March, but considering I did monthly reviews of pretty much everything I bought in 2008, as well as occasionally posting thoughts on individual albums. (I may have skipped things like “CDs bought in foreign countries” and such.) But this makes those “give me some music ideas” emails less annoying.

(with links to Snip commentary. sometimes.)

Favorite Albums:

Matt Costa “Unfamiliar Faces” Quirky and unexpected. Fave songs: “Mr. Pitiful” and “Miss Magnolia”

Bon Iver “For Emma, Forever Ago” Swoon. I know all the cool kids had this album in 2007. I ain’t that cool, yo. Love the album, love him in concert (see Favorite Gigs category down at the bottom). Love love love. Fave song: Re: Stacks

Jesse Malin “Glitter in the Gutter” Rockin’. Can’t even pick a fave song, just love the entire thing.

Fleet Foxes Listening to FF is like sitting in a field of daisies in 1973 while people around you kiss and weave each other bracelets. May be a bit ‘twee for some. (But it’s so pretty!) Fave Songs: “White Winter Hymnal” “He Doesn’t Know Why” “Your Protector” “Oliver James”

Earlimart “Hymn & Her” With every album they just get better and better. Pretty and intimate. Fave songs: “Time for Yourself” “For the Birds” “Town Where You Belong”

My Morning Jacket “Evil Urges” I lovelovelove this album. But I did NOT like “Z”. At all. If you peruse le Internet, you may find that everyone who liked this album was not much of an MMJ fan before, and those who were, were greatly disappointed. Ah well. Fave song: “I’m amazed”

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin “Pershing” I didn’t even listen to this album until months after I bought it. Which is just so wrong ‘cuz it’s so good. Fave song: “Heers”

Carla Bruni “Comme si de rien n’etait” Her french albums just take my breath away. Why do I even pretend to try to learn this language? I’ll never sound like this when I speak. Fave song: “Tu Es Ma Came”

The Submarines “Honeysuckle Weeks” Has the same intimate boy/girl vibe of Earlimart but more poppy, more upbeat. It just grew on me more and more as the year went by. Fave songs: “Swimming Pool” “You, Me and the Bourgeoisie”

Keane “Perfect Symmetry” This one totally took me by surprise. Fave songs: “Better than This” “Time to Go” “The Lovers Are Losing”

Runners Up

Favorite 2008 Artist Not Mentioned Anywhere Above:

Joseph Arthur who put out FOUR EPs (“Crazy Rain” “Could We Survive” “Vagabond Skies” and “Foreign Girls”) as well as joining with the Lonely Astronauts for a full album (“Temporary Peple”). Which puts him at ridiculous output levels, along the lines of Ryan Adams and Joe Purdy. I really loved all the EPs; the full album is good, just not quite at their level. Fave songs: “Slow Me Down” “Lovely Cost” “Radio Euphoria”

Guilty Pleasure: Shwayze

Violent-Femme reminiscent: Wave Pictures “Instant Coffee Baby”

Dance, dance, dance: Cut Copy “In Ghost Colours”; Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip “Angles”

Favorite Singles: (not on any of the aforementioned albums)

Favorite Covers:

  • “Folsom Prison Blues” Everlast (Johnny Cash) This is just so many times awesome. The whistly horse sound? Yeesss.
  • “Forever Young” Audra Mae & Forest Rangers (Rod Stewart) Featured on Sons of Anarchy.
  • “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” First Aid Kit (Fleet Foxes) Even prettier than the original. Super spooky.
  • “I Should Have Known Better” She & Him (Beatles) You really can’t go wrong with a Beatles cover. Myself, I would go with “Run for Your Life”.

Favorite Gigs:
So I sorta went to 70 shows in 2008. I’d totally say that next time I wonder how I’m wasting all my time away, you could just yell “Concerts!” except I seem to have SERIOUSLY turned this trend around in 2009 (three months in and I’ve only been to two shows. What?!?). Anywho… 10 of those 70 were openers, so it was really only 60 shows. And 6 were at Monolith, 5 at Lollapalooza and 13(!) at Pitchfork, so you know, that’s really like seeing 24 sets at three shows so… Anyway, my favorites were:

  • Bon Iver Who I saw three times but my favorite was the second time which was at Lakeshore Theater, which is literally around the corner from home. and has seats. yay for both, says the old lady.
  • Crowded House Mostly because they sing my favorite song of all time and I’ve only been waiting to see these guys live practically my entire adult life. And yes, I know it’s not the FULL original lineup.
  • Matt Nathanson More for his humorous banter than for the tunes.
  • Earlimart. So so pretty.
  • Avett Brothers. These guys could fill up the world with their sound.
  • Band of Horses. A truly magical moment at Monolith.
  • Great Lake Swimmers. FINAFUCKINGLY.
  • Mumford and Sons. So unexpected.

Concerts I Can’t Go To

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Waah ;(

April 6 Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
April 14 Katie Herzig
April 16 Cold War Kids
April 21 Great Lake Swimmers (they are sooo good in concert)
June 28 Avett Brothers (also great live)

These are the first shows I’ve been interested in months but they all take place during the week. Hello Chicago concert promoters, how about you book some bands I like on Friday and Saturday nights? Is that really too much to ask?

À la Super Eggplant, currently, I am…

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Eating: Stress is making me not hungry. Oh I’m still eating. But it just makes my tummy feel worse than it already does. Wouldn’t it be nice if this led to some unexpected droppage of excess poundage? (It won’t.)

Making: I did finish a bunch o’ matching nickname hats over the weekend. But I haven’t done much lately. Sure, crafting should be a stress reliever. But it is also an energy user and I don’t have much of that right now.

Reading: At home, as I mentioned already, I’m reading “City of Refuge” by Tom Piazza, which is mostly really good but also too sad to read on the El (I hate crying on the El!). Therefore in transit, I am reading “The Forest of Hands and Teeth” by Carrie Ryan that I picked up after reading this review and it is soooo good. (And actually it’s sad also. What was I thinking? Beautiful. But Sad.) But I’ve probably only got one more train ride left with it so I’ll have to pick out something else shortly.

Watching: BStarG. BStarG. BStarG. I think I will be crying Friday night. And by *think*, I mean there’s a 99.9% likelihood of that happening.

Listening to: Every single thing I bought in 2008. Shuffled. Working on my “favorites of the year” list because I think that’s really useful to have in, you know, MARCH or even APRIL. 😉 Hahaha.

Failing at: Managing. Things. such as 1) eating; 2) spending; 3) (which are both due to) stress. (Thanks to MissStephanie for my new category)

Wordplay

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Pleased to meet you meat to please you
said the butcher’s sign in the window in the village.

–from “Domestic Violence” (collected in Domestic Violence) by Eavan Boland.

Shyla Bruno was doing a review of Philip Roth’s newest book, and Craig said, “You going with ‘Goodbye, Portnoy’ for the head?”
“No – listen to this – Allen came up with ‘The Gripes of Roth.’ ”
Craig waited a moment and then issued one of his patented, arch, stagey chuckles. “Bingo,” he said.

–from “City of Refuge” by Tom Piazza, which I bought after I read this (I myself am NOT much of a Lahiri fan) and am sooo enjoying. Enjoying in a tearful, maybe won’t read in public because I might start bawlin’, kind-of way.

Poetry: For All We Know, by Ciaran Carson

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Bought in Dublin, baby. An Irish poet my Dad introduced me to a few years ago when we were trading packages of “here’s some of my books you should read” recommendations, and I read (and told you about) one of his translations when I was home for Christmas a year ago. I was so excited to go into Hodges & Figgis (a GREAT bookstore in Dublin), stroll over to the irish authors section, and find a HUGE selection of his stuff. It was hard to choose what to buy!!!

I chose this one and I think I did well. A collection in two parts, a man and a woman, a story told, and then retold, mirrored from one part to the next, intertwined with other events. I read it several times over several days, and still want to go back for more. Certain images and themes repeat over and over again, with different details ringing in your head. Little moments, expanded, then contracted, then expanded. These were lovely poems and my regret is I didn’t buy another book of his when I had the chance. I’ll be searching out more, you can count on it.

(For those of you poetry scares off, these were very accessible. Readable even without pondering of the deeper layers, and the repeat images, and then connections tethered and severed…)

Short Stories: Delicate Edible Birds, by Lauren Groff

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I enjoyed her debut novel last year. Then I got one of the stories from this book in my One Story subscription (which I highly recommend you treat yourself to. It’s cheap, it’s good, and it’s just one story. EVERYONE can make time for one story!!). I was so excited to see this collection come out and not one bit disappointed. Very, very good. Better even than her novel! My second favorite book of the year so far. Such an impressively wide range of characters and timeframes and situations and… And really, I cannot recommend these stories highly enough. They were all completely individual (sometimes a problem in short story collections), and completely engaging, and original, and UNEXPECTED. I’m in awe.

Mystery: Dark Hollow, by John Connolly

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The second Charlie Bird book (here was the first). Bought in the Atlanta airport on the way home. No New Orleans this time, primarily set in the boonies of Maine (ha!). As with the first book, has an intense layer of psychology/mythology that somewhat overpowers (not necessarily in a bad way. mostly good, sometimes a little frustrating) what would otherwise be just your normal mystery novel. Makes everything creepier and ickier. Has some follow-up to the ending of book one, but I feel there is more to come with those relationships.

Mystery: Every Dead Thing, by John Connolly

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Bought and read in Dublin, yay. An Irish writer…who sets his mysteries in America; this one in New York City and New Orleans. If you, like me, have British relatives and friends who get completely BENT OUT OF SHAPE when some American writer sets their books ‘cross the pond and gets little details wrong… Yeah, I kind of had to shake my head and laugh at seeing the opposite occur. (Not that he’s “British” being “Irish” but the correlation is there regardless.)

In some ways, it’s a mystery series like any other: an ex-cop Charlie Bird, with a sad personal history of violence, winds up involved in a mystery, has some criminal friends and some not, there’s really brutal murder and mayhem. The additional spin here is that this has far more than your average mystery’s amount of psychology and mythology running under it. Bird’s thoughts often go wandering off for a bit into an underlying sort of swirl of emotion and ESP like feelings. Sometimes it added interesting themes and I went with it; other times I wanted him to get back to solving the mystery already!

Dark, gruesome, brutal. Some horrible stuff happens to quite a few people. Pretty frakkin’ intense. (In a good way. Obviously.)

Mystery/Fiction: Lies of Silence, by Brian Moore

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Bought and read in Dublin, yay. Belfast, the IRA, having the wrong job (but right for them), politics vs. personal safety, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and intertwined relationships convoluting things, as they do. Something a bit desperate and sad about the train of the events. The ending shouldn’t have been a surprise, but somehow it was.