Nervous Acid (2008: The year in albums.)

Nervous Acid’s 2008 Year in Albums: The Podcast.

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Earlier this month Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins told the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot that the band would no longer be making full-length albums:

We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance, and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.

Cynical bloggers made fun of Corgan and called the Smashing Pumpkins irrelevant, but in reality, this is quite possibly the most significant psychic shift we’ve seen yet in the digital music age. The fact is, if there was any one band who carried the album-rock banner higher than anyone, it was Smashing Pumpkins. Siamese Dream was easily one of the best rock albums of the ’90s, and Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was simply groundbreaking — the first truly successful experiment in rock album grandeur of that decade. Trivialities aside, Billy Corgan’s relationship with “the Album” — uppercase A, natch — was more storied than that of your typical rock band. “The Album” was a work of art and a cohesive story to him; it was more than just a collection of ten songs. And yet here he is, in 2008, saying, “There is no point. It’s done.” It was, perhaps unconsciously, the most relevant observation that any rock star made this year.

At the same time, the lady doth protest too much.

Upon reviewing this final list, looking for trends, I realized two things. For one, these albums all maintain individually coherent thoughts. And past that, these fifteen albums also seemed to represent two major themes: consistency and redemption. Ida, Ryan Adams, Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon, Oasis, Feeder, and Ron Sexsmith, for example, have all been dependable stand-bys for up to fifteen years. None of these artists have ever truly disappointed me in that time, so judging their new albums is often about the context of their work or simply measuring the highs and lows. (Ida and Ryan Adams both hit career highs this year, in my opinion; Mark Kozelek handed in his most emotionally resonant work since he temporarily derailed himself with AC/DC cover albums.)

The redemptive records often have a more interesting story, but they also arrive with a healthy dose of self-consciousness. Panic at the Disco, for example, were so nervous about Pretty. Odd. that the opening track even featured a disclaimer. “You don’t have to worry ‘cause we’re still the same band,” sings Brendan Urie, but that is slightly disingenuous: Panic somehow went from naïve alt-rock circus act to sophisticated classic rock songwriters before they hit the legal drinking age — all the while risking short-term album sales for a long-term career.

The only album more unlikely to reach this list is The Circus by Take That. Formerly known as That Boy Band that Robbie Williams Sang With, the group reformed in 2006 as a four-piece and made an album this year that even many of my hardened British friends begrudgingly enjoy. (It is currently the second fastest album to reach one million copies sold in the U.K., just behind Oasis’s Be Here Now in 1997.) The secret? For many of us, this record managed to successfully combine the Top 40 radio formula with the epic Britpop explored by, say, Blur’s The Great Escape. In other words, there’s enough sugar in it to make you feel guilty, but not enough to make you fat.

This year’s top two albums mine similar territory with each other, reconciling analog rock with digital technology. Newcomer James Yuill, to start, made a record that stands up to every test. He’s quite obviously a songwriter first, but that’s precisely where he strays from the beaten path: Instead of choosing melody over rhythm, his skills as a programmer and producer allow him to explore the conventions of folk and techno equally. He finds his unique voice by refusing to take sides.

The same can be said of 2008’s Album of the Year, The Devil, You + Me by the Notwist. With six years elapsed since the release of their breakthrough, the Notwist expanded the vocabulary explored on Neon Golden while creating a start-to-finish satisfying experience. It’s an album with nontraditional peaks and valleys, too: Vocalist Markus Acher barely leaves a two-octave range, only emoting as much as he absolutely needs to, and yet by the end of “Gone Gone Gone,” you will be fucking emotionally exhausted.

In a stark contrast to Billy Corgan’s loud-or-soft, albums-or-no albums style of binary thinking, the Notwist and James Yuill make no broad declarations of their allegiances in the analog-digital divide, but instead, offer a third suggestion: Just make something new, dude. This is the mantra that governed 2008.

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For a list of 2007’s Year in Albums, go here.

(Photo by Torarnv)

A regular dispatch of essays, criticism, and (pop) cultural ephemera, compiled and mixed by Norman Brannon.

12.23.2008 2008: The year in albums.

Notes