Jeff's Best of 2008

Since everybody likes to read a "Best Of" list at the end of the year, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring and create one myself. This isn't going to be a list focused on only one thing, such as music, but I'm going to try to fill it with things that I thought were great about 2008 (which rhymes). However, I'm going to start with a cd. Also, the numbering is arbitrary and does not indicate any ranking, other than the order in which I thought of them.

Portishead - Third

Portishead's first cd in over 10 years was, I thought, particularly interesting and challenging. So, really, it was just like the Portishead of 10 years ago. It's nothing that is '10 years in the making' or anything along the lines of Guns N Roses Chinese Democracy that had been worked on over that long hiatus. The album is definitely rooted in the past year. It has a definite Portishead sound, long spaces between notes and sounds. Sometimes mechanical. Lots of samples. But, I thought it also took those staples and did something new with them.

The song 'Machine Gun' is a good example. It takes a sparse arrangement and mechanical sound and pushes them so that the drum line is so obviously mechanical that you automatically think of a factory and production line. The vocals sound as if they are recorded in the largest space possible and only the chill of the higher notes is left. The only time the song sounds organic, and this is a little paradoxical, is at the end when an electronic keyboard line enters.

Now, if only they would tour North America.

Here's some samples.

Click to hear Machine Gun

Click to hear The Rip