5 months ago
12.22.2008
Albums of the Year: Biggest Disappointment
Here comes the ubiquitous year-end list. I'm going to try and spread it out over a couple days, mainly due to travel and HTML inadequacies on my part.
Since it's tough/impossible to embed song files, I'm going to try and at least post a video link of one of the album's songs, or at least a link to the artist's site.
This year I tried to expand my tastes a bit (Americana? British disco-pop? Sound like fun!), with mixed results. No matter how much critics try to push James McMurtry or M83 on me, their appeal has only grown slightly. For those of you who have no idea what/who I'm talking about, don't worry, Kanye West is on my list!
I'll kick it off with my biggest disappointment, then follow that with some honorable mentions and my favorite albums of the year.
Bloc Party- Intimacy
When their debut Silent Alarm came out in 2005, I could not stop listening to it. The tight, spiky, Gang Of Four-style guitar work, the British lyrics I couldn't understand, the general grandiosity of the whole album, everything. The opening line of "Like Eating Glass," It's so cold in this house, became a battle-cry in my Philadelphia rowhouse, as energy costs drove my roommates and I to drop the thermostat to 55 degrees and cover all the windows with blankets to save money.
I even grew to love A Weekend in the City, the band's second album, which seemed a bit overwrought, over-written and over-edited.
But when Intimacy came out this October, I couldn't even bring myself to buy it. While my catalog includes as much electro-pop as the next guy, this album just relied too heavily on the synths and not enough on the guitar work that made the band.
This video is for the only song I actually like on the album.
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At Urban, we play it on repeat. I had to listen to it every day for weeks. I've probably gone through the whole album at least 100 times. I enjoyed it in the beginning, but cannot stand it anymore!
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