Some Tracks I Liked In 2008

There may well be more to come, but it's getting to that list time of year again. And there's nothing I like better than a good list, so I'm getting mine in early. Jamie dabbles in that sort of thing, too...

The Dodos – Ashley (Visiter)

There was something about the biting cold of early spring that I found within the music of The Dodos. I was heading towards my finals at uni and each day entailed an uphill hike to the library for hours of silent reading, and something about the cross rhythms in Ashley seemed a part of the heavy momentum of that time. Coupled with which, the exponential improvement in this band’s live shows over the course of the year make them worthy of an end of year accolade, if nothing else.

Laura Marling – Blackberry Stone (Cross Your Fingers EP)

Alas, I Cannot Swim blew the large majority of the music press, including myself, away, even earning Miss Marling a Mercury nomination. (“I’ve no idea what all this is about,” she later confessed to me at the awards ceremony.) But it is in ‘Blackberry Stone’, originally the B-side to single ‘Cross Your Fingers’, that Marling’s astounding vocal range and the mesmerising ache in her lyrics really comes to the fore.

Frightened Rabbit – Backwards Walk (The Midnight Organ Fight)

The Midnight Organ Fight seems one of those albums that people can form an almost unspeakably personal relationship with – even bloggers who usually muster prolific jive on any given subject. Scott Hutchison’s broken Scottish brogue and the band’s epic approach to instrumentation express a kind of red-blooded hurt that is severed before it really takes off in Backwards Walk, a musical manifestation of the frustrated lyrics. The Daytrotter session of this track is a must.



MGMT – Kids (Oracular Spectacular)

Maybe one day, I will be able to listen to this song again. Right now it’s still more irritating than Katy Perry. It became the inescapable summer anthem of 2008, and it was rammed down my throat almost hourly at every festival I went to. But it’s for that reason it makes the top five, too, because one day I’ll hear it and remember chasing mediocre pop stars around Glastonbury and climbing midnight trees in Benicassim and drinking whisky with boys in bands at Roskilde.






Fleet Foxes – Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Fleet Foxes)

It was actually stumbling upon a First Aid Kit cover of this that I fell in love with it, leading me to properly listen to Fleet Foxes’ much lauded debut album. Baroque pop? The saviours of American music? Sounds overblown, but in a strange way Fleet Foxes deserve it for reinventing Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young for a new generation, for sounding so unlike everything else that was released this year, and for the best Jesus facial hair this side of the bible. Amen.





And the shortlist: The Acorn – Oh Napoleon (Glory Hope Mountain) / British Sea Power – Canvey Island (Do You Like Rock Music) / Deerhunter – Saved By Old Times (Microcastle) / The Kills – Cheep and Cheerful (Midnight Boom) / The Last Shadow Puppets – Meeting Place (The Age Of The Understatement) / Mystery Jets – Flakes (Twenty-One) / Raconteurs – Many Shades Of Black (Consolers Of The Lonely) / Tokyo Police Club – In A Cave (Elephant Shell) / TV On The Radio – Halfway Home (Dear Science)

Live Review: The Dodos – Amersham Arms, London – 3/6/08

Perched on a railway bridge in New Cross, the Amersham Arms bustles with a friendly crowd in the South Bank drizzle of New Cross. The little venue glowed with cheerful punters on Tuesday night, excited to see one of the most hotly tipped blog discoveries of recent months, The Dodos . Bringing with them a little east coast sunshine all the way from San Francisco, this three piece specialise in clattering folk-pop conceived by one Meric Long.

Their recent album, Visiter, combines bounce-about, strum-along simplicity with rhythmic complexity built upon layers of hand claps and drum taps. On record, the well-defined percussive and melodic elements of Meric Long’s composition intertwine with folkloric lyrics that oscillate between too-full romantic cheer and hapless love-lost woe, pushing through each track, enhanced through heavy use of multi-tracking. Live, Long reproduces this sound with the help of two percussions, one stationed on kit and the other somewhat of a third wheel, sometimes doubling on drums and at other times bashing away on a glockenspiel in the background.

First up on Tuesday, Port O’Brien executed a patchy set that lapsed into lengthy self-indulgent jamming at times. During particularly elated highlights, however, they secured a firm-footing in the most forward thinking bracket of new-generation folk. Floppy fringed frontman, Joshua Barnhart, proved capable of impressive vocal power, whilst his handsome band bounced behind him, full of smiles and an infectious intensity that converted much of the crowd.

The Dodos were a long time taking to the stage, delayed by technical difficulties that became all too apparent throughout the set. Disappointingly, the magic of Visiter was lost on stage. Though the dusky venue should have provided the perfect setting, the band suffered from poor balance, overpowered by percussion. There were no smattered, smile-inducing handclaps to be seen, replaced by percussionists that rendered clever rhythms with poker faces, perhaps frustrated at their inability to recreate the best of their work before an obviously receptive and enthusiastic audience. One of the album highlights, a swirling dreamy number entitled ‘Ashley’, appeared early on stripped of its poetic charm, coming across hurried and disjointed. Long’s voice is thick and warming on record, wavering magnificently at the ends of phrases and gluing the disparate musical elements together. Live, The Dodos attempted to reproduce this by saturating the vocals in reverb, losing lyrical coherence and acoustic subtleties as they were obscured by percussion.

Whilst the second half of the set was both better received and better played – a notable highlight emerging in the hypnotic trombone intro to ‘Fools’, there is some distance to go before those of us that fell in love with Visiter at first listen can be equally impressed by its live manifestation.