The 50 Best Albums of 2008

TV on the Radio partied as the world collapsed, Dylan hit the vaults, Lil Wayne topped hip-hop and Metallica thundered back

Posted Dec 25, 2008 7:30 PM

TV on the Radio
DEAR SCIENCE DGC/Interscope

The year's finest rock record was also the one that sounded the most like America in 2008, with infernal visions of war and economic desperation. But amid the fear and loathing, there was defiance: "No bombs are falling on me for sure," sang Tunde Adebimpe; he also called this "the age of miracles/The age of sound." These Brooklynites greeted the historical moment with awe — and responded with art-rock party music. Call it the audacity of hope. Producer-guitarist Dave Sitek has streamlined and deepened the band's fusion of doo-wop, punk and soul; there are swooning ballads, wind-whipped funk and even a Tom Petty bite. And then there's "Lover's Day," the greatest hipster booty call ever recorded, in which TVOTR greet millennial terror with the oldest form of transcendence. "Ball so hard, we'll smash the walls," shrieks singer-guitarist Kyp Malone. "We could build an engine out of all your rising stars." On Dear Science, the sky's the limit.

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Bob Dylan
TELL TALE SIGNS - THE BOOTLEG
SERIES VOL. 8 Columbia

This is one of Dylan's most consistently gripping albums, even though it is a roundup of outtakes and orphaned songs, many cut for the haunted triumphs Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind. Like any night on his Never Ending Tour, each track is a fresh portrait of Dylan at the crossroads, cutting new roads in rhyme, tempo and emotional emphasis: the introspection of "Most of the Time," the looming apocalypse of "Ring Them Bells" and the heavy weight of "Ain't Talkin'." The veering tempers of Dylan's medicine- rattle rasp are a wonder to themselves. His enraged growl in the piano demo of "Dignity" — "In the next room a man fightin' with his wife/Over dignity" — sounds like he's ready to jump right in.

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Lil Wayne
THA CARTER III
Cash Money/Universal Motown

"Next time you mention Pac, Biggie or Jay-Z/Don't forget Weezy Baby," croaks Lil Wayne, and he earns that audacious boast. The most eagerly anticipated hip-hop album of the decade is also the best, from the joyously silly Auto-Tune-on-steroids chart-topper, "Lollipop," to the uproarious "Dr. Carter," in which Wayne dons scrubs to revive moribund hip-hop. The dadaist punch lines hit their marks, but Lil Wayne's greatness lies not just in what he says, but in the way he says it — the virtuoso variations in mood and meter, tone and timbre that mark the MC, as much as any singer, as one of 21st-century pop's great vocal stylists.

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My Morning Jacket
EVIL URGES ATO

Jim James and his bearded crew became the year's mightiest rock band by embracing indie, Southern and hippie rock, but also by transcending what those categories mean. Evil Urges, the Kentucky group's fifth studio album, took My Morning Jacket's pigeonhole-dodging style to wild and crazy new lengths: James indulged in a Prince-style soulman falsetto on the title track, and "Highly Suspicious" stepped to a brittle New Wave funk groove that was nearly unrecognizable as My Morning Jacket — at least until the Lynyrd Skynyrd-flavored multiguitar break kicked in. On Evil Urges, the band pledges loyalty to only one genre: itself.

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John Mellencamp
LIFE, DEATH, LOVE AND FREEDOM Hear Music

John Mellencamp's growling fatalism and T Bone Burnett's scorched-blues production made this the darkest, most compelling Mellencamp album in years. It was also the perfect run-up to Election Day: 14 songs about a nation going broke and a generation on the ropes. "But nothing lasts forever/Your best efforts don't always pay," Mellencamp sings in "Longest Days." He didn't call himself Little Bastard for nothing. "Beware of those who want to harm you/And drag you down to a lower game," he snarls in "Troubled Land." "Just know the truth is coming," he adds, a line that now sounds like the Election Day we deserved.

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Santogold
SANTOGOLD Downtown

Before going solo, the singer-rapper Santi White fronted a punk band, studied African drumming and co-wrote a song for Lily Allen. As Santogold, she wields those influences like hot wax, sealing together icy electro, pogo-worthy ska, fierce dancehall anthems and downtown art-rock for the most ear-opening debut of 2008. Like M.I.A., Santogold specializes in off-kilter street jams. But on songs like "L.E.S. Artistes," she also has the creative ambition and the pop hooks to play venues bigger than Brooklyn basements.

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Coldplay
VIVA LA VIDA OR DEATH AND ALL HIS FRIENDS Capitol

During the sessions for Viva la Vida, Chris Martin consulted a hypnotist to help with the pressure of writing the Great American Rock Album. And it worked. Coldplay got ambitious, calling in Talking Heads and U2 producer Brian Eno, drawing on exotic instruments like Indian tablas and the Persian santur, writing about world events instead of their own feelings, and making music as far-reaching as their global fan base. They ended up with an album that's massively expansive yet intimate enough to incite lighter-waving from London to Tokyo.

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Beck
MODERN GUILT DGC

"We do the best with the souls we've been given," Beck sings in this deft balance of son-of-Odelay bricolage and the confessional charge of his 2002 ghost-folk beauty Sea Change. Modern Guilt has plenty of electricity and playful funk — the go-go guitars in "Gamma Ray," the rubbery-Kraftwerk gait of "Youthless" — but not so much that you can't hear the blues moralist and psychedelic seeker inside. Beck's acoustic guitar drives the midnight-at-the-crossroads "Soul of a Man," while his high-tenor voice hangs in the inky Doors-like church of "Chemtrails" like a worried ghost.

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Metallica
DEATH MAGNETIC Warner Bros.

It's an overdue return to the extended, episodic whiplash of 1986's Master of Puppets and 1988's . . . And Justice for All. James Hetfield's staccato-rhythm guitar and Lars Ulrich's drum-orchestra charge are right up front in "That Was Just Your Life," and Kirk Hammett's wah-wah leads light up the mayhem with a '68-Hendrix vengeance. Hetfield's lyrics are an unflinching examination of the big finish, particularly the terrible allure of suicide — sung with the raging vigor of a man fighting for life. "We die hard!" Hetfield crows, summing up heavy metal's resurrection of the year.

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Vampire Weekend
VAMPIRE WEEKEND XL

This African-inflected Ivy League success story nailed the zeitgeist this election year, but it'll sound good in 2018 because it has great songs. Chalk it up to the simple melodies and lean, midrange rhythms. The falsetto-and-expletive singsong of "Oxford Comma" and the antsy mouse-click ska of "A-Punk" are immediate, hook-filled pleasures; "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa," with its dry, sparkly guitar lines and hand drums, sounded utterly fresh alongside indie rock's parade of New Wave revivalism. Casual as a cardigan, willfully optimistic, ultratuneful and surprisingly danceable, Vampire Weekend is built to last.

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Fleet Foxes
FLEET FOXES Subpop

This remarkable debut from five scruffy Seattle guys was the prettiest album of the year, and the warmest. Singing gentle but spacey arrangements, the folky ensemble could fill up a room like the smell of fresh-baked bread. Highlight: the gorgeous, pastoral "White Winter Hymnal."

Guns n' Roses
CHINESE DEMOCRACY Geffen

Axl Rose has not lost his appetite for disorder. Democracy could never live up to every expectation, but it is audacious and unhinged: the mass of strings, choir and Mellotron in "There Was a Time"; the Spanish guitar and blaxploitation funk of "If the World." It's hard rock without apology — which is enough.