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Perfume's CD Game from Japan
<I>Stereophile</I>'s annual "Records 2 Die 4" will be coming out shortly, but here's your chance to get a jump on the reviewers: What recording from the last 365 days ended up at the top of your musical heap?
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.
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.
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.