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Perfume's CD Game from Japan

Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver

Melody Gardot: Worrisome Heart. If you don't check this out, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Dylan: Bootleg Vol 8, Red River Shore!

Radiohead: In Rainbows

Modern Guilt by Beck, although late in the year, still seems to stand out.

Easton Stagger Phillips, One for the ditch. Three alt country powerhouses make a hell of an album—amazing!

Mercury Rev: Snowflake Midnight. Others released previously but new to me in 2008: Hammock: Kenotic; The Mothers: Township Sessions;and Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová: The Swell Season.

From 2008? None.

That Lucky Old Sun by Brian Wilson.

Fleet Foxes and Jason Mraz. I think I have played both equally often.

Calexico: Carried to Dust—awesome music and a great test CD as well.

Loreena McKennitt: Nights at the Alhambra

Snow Patrol: A Hundred Million Suns. Not too original, I know. Sorry to disappoint you.

Actually, I only bought a couple of 2008 releases; everything else was at least a year or two old. Those 2008 releases I did buy were less than showstoppers.

A would-be friend gave me a CD with a terrible, eerie noise labeled electronic music.

Marcin Wasilewski Trio: January on ECM Records.

Dylan: Bootlegs, Volume 8

Paolo Fresu: Mare Nostrum

I'm sure it doesn't count, because it was released in '05. But I heard Sigur Ros's Takk for the first time in '08 and probably played it a million times. Absolutely brilliant record. Not from this world.

Vampire Weekend. I wrote this album off upon first listen. I didn't want to like what I thought was a group of Ivy League trust fund babies who wanted to show off that they knew what Afro-Beat was. Then I realized they do know what Afro-Beat is all about and they know how to write a damn catchy pop song.

The Avett Brother's Gleam 2. Beautiful Album. "Murder in the City" is the best track of '08 IMHO.

Meet Glen Campbell by Glen Campbell, an album so negatively written about in Stereophile; however such review didn’t in the slightest diminish my enjoyment of every minute of it. Also worth mentioning are: Just a Little Lovin’ by Shelby Lynn, and A Hundred Million Suns by Snow Patrol.

I'm normally that guy who cranks up my McCormack/Thiel's to 11 with some Zepp until I emerge two days later in a semi-coma with everyone having to yell cause I'm quasi-deaf. But I heard Jamey Johnson's In Color and instantly fell in love. Don't know if I should embrace country now, or slit my wrists and wait for the light.

Bon Iver, TV on the Radio

Lucinda Williams: Little Honey. SMV: Thunder (Stanley Clark, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten). Grateful Dead: Complete Winterland 1973. Global Noize: DJ Logic. Herb Alpert, John Popper, and Karl Denison, plus others...

Lafayette Gilchrist: The Music According to Lafayette Gilchrist. Brilliant.

2008 was a disaster, insofar as finding music I wanted to buy. My CD buying has been on the downcurve these past several years—in 2008 I hit an all time low by purchasing only 9 discs, seven of which were close-out bargins. I guess the over-50 crowd has no market value in the eyes of the recorded music industry.

It's hard to pick just one so here are my favorites of 2008: My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges; Lindsey Buckingham's Gift of Screws; Fleet Foxes; Okkervil River's The Stand Ins; Death Cab for Cutie's Narrow Stairs; The Pretenders' Breaking up the Concrete.

Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue (Legacy Edition) is technically a re-release but it is the album I listened to the most in 2008.