My Keepers for 2008

Few albums slowed down the pace enough to become memorable this year. A slew flew by without leaving an imprint.

As I rooted through CDs and songs eating up my laptop’s memory, some earlier highlights came back to me.

Black Mountain’s Sabbath/Floyd synthesis is best reserved for the winter months, with Amber Webber’s vocals saving In the Future from stoner rock repetition. Beck just missed with the brief Modern Guilt, his best and most focused since Sea Change.

TV on the Radio, Jenny Lewis, Calexico and Devotchka all produced strong efforts, but I wanted to avoid repeating my 2006 list. Any of those records could have made the cut otherwise, but let’s face it, I’m a fan.

The best records should move the listener and convert them to the cause. All of these accomplish that goal.

The Keeper List

Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes and Sun Giant EP

If you own this stunning debut on vinyl, the equally amazing EP comes in the same package . So I consider part of the same whole, a journey of folk-rock refracted through the prism of Happiness is a Warm Gun and Paranoid Android. Sure, they could be described as a more rustic My Morning Jacket, but I barely listened to Evil Urges after Ben Crites turned me onto the Fleet Foxes. My favorite track shifts depending on the day - today it's Blue Ridge Mountains, tomorrow I'll pick Mykonos.

After a hundred or so listens, I can’t find a stale note.

Mudcrutch, Mudcrutch

Tom Petty reunites with original bandmates, two-thirds of whom play in the Heartbreakers. Throughout these high-octane, swampy rock tunes sprinkled with a little Bakersfield country, Petty shows that the band was long overdue for a reunion. Scare Easy is among his best ever. The epic Crystal River finds the man at home with a Grateful Dead vibe. Essential side project is such an oxymoron, but Mudcrutch never gets bogged down in rock cliché. They effectively stamp their sound on covers of Six Days on the Road and Lover of the Bayou.

With Petty, everything old was new again.

She & Him, Volume One

Two Hollywood starlets tried to branch into music this year. Thankfully, Scarlett Johannsen is acting again and Zooey Deschanel left me wanting She & Him’s Volume Two.

Joining forces with M. Ward, the album sometimes waffles around some shaky, first-album songwriting, but Deschanel is the real deal. Her trembles with a heartfelt honesty and pulls many a page from the Joni Mitchell/Carly Simon/Carole King songwriting book while never sounding derivative.

Neil Diamond, Home Before Dark

The first collaboration between producer Rick Rubin and the King of Schmaltz Rock stripped down his theatrical sound but remained solidly cornball. With acoustic guitars up front and percussion nonexistent, Home Before Dark puts Neil Diamond the Songwriter alone in the spotlight. He never wavers on beauties like Pretty Amazing Grace, No Words, Home Before Dark and If I Don’t See You Again. His audiences want to glitz, but it’s hard to argue with the formula of Neil+Acoustic Guitar after these folk-pop gems.

Broken Social Scene Presents: Brendan Canning, Something For All Of Us

Three years and counting since the last official Broken Social Scene album, Canning’s turn at the BSS “solo” album game dug up gold. Giving more attention to flashes of My Bloody Valentine and Elliott Smith than Kevin Drew’s volume from last year, Canning sense of melody pushes him free of the noise-rock pack. Churches Under the Stairs and Snowballs and Icicles should stay into the rotation until BSS releases its next proper album (whenever that might be). Scenester Jason Collett turned out a fine collection of Dylan-esque pop, but Canning opened untold facets from the Scene’s sound of organized mayhem.

Blitzen Trapper, Furr

Dropping the needle on Sleepytime in the Western World was among the greatest musical joys I experience this year. This Seattle band threw in dashes of the Beatles, Elliot Smith and the Kinks the more fully flesh out their sound. By reining in their noisier tendencies, the overall sound benefits.

Trapper is responsible for two of the year’s best ballads – the delightfully tender Furr, a epic tale of a man's coversion to wolf and back, and Not Your Lover, the best After the Gold Rush outtake Neil Young never wrote.

Best Boxed Set

Look Them Straight In the Eye and Tell Them … Pogue Mahone

I already completed an extensive review, but Philip Chevron’s recovery from cancer gave Pogues fans the treat they always craved – the archive-emptying box set.

I could have done without the reunion live tracks (I don’t think what Shane MacGowan qualifies as singing anymore). But these five discs reveal a staggering depth to a band often pigeonholed as just playing Irish pub tunes.

(Follow the keepers label for past year-end editions.)