If there was one thing that truly defined the musical atmosphere of 2008, it was my ultra hip friend Lucy, who complained to me that "It’s like all of a sudden, everyone trying to be all alternative and cool". Or in other words, everyone was trying to be like her. Which I suppose was more or less about right. We watched as the mainstream flocked to the alternative radio stations in droves, while music gigs became stages not just for bands, but for the every member of the audience to duke it out in a fashionista battle of the fluro. Not that the pop stations had any trouble keeping up mind you, they just jumped on the bandwagon too, dredging up music from the underground that seemed to fit the template. And now poor Lucy has lost a bit of her cool. Because as much as anyone hates it, if there’s any one steadfast measure of cool, it’s always been the mainstream. And if there’s one thing that the mainstream has clung on to, it’s electronic music, in all its glitching glory. So to those expecting a summary of my Best Of ’08, I do apologize, but only briefly. Instead, I’ve decided to lay a finger (or two) on the pulse of cool in 2008, tracing it’s highs and lows through music, from Coldplay (yes, they actually are) to MGMT and beyond. For those wandering in the harsh wilderness of hardcore and metal, it’s a bright, sunny place here, please try not to melt.

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And as with everything else, this year’s origins of cool started with the Brits.

After giving us the industrial revolution, tea, and The Beatles, the Poms managed to outdo even those achievements by introducing to the world the much loved and loathed indie-dance movement. Bands like Bloc Party, the Arctic Monkeys and The Klaxons injected a steady stream of danceable beats into the jugular of indie and spawned a movement whose currents still electrify the airwaves today. Look no further than the recent release of Day and Age, by one of the founding bands of the indie-dance movement, The Killers, which found itself debuting at No. 1 on the UK albums chart. Then in 2008, a rather predictable thing happened. The Americans invaded. Never a nation of renowned for its subtlety, they stripped out the last vestiges of indie and replaced it with a much more agreeable mix of digestible electro-pop. Anyone taking a simple stroll down the mainstreet of pop today would find it impossible to get far without being zapped by the influence of the electronic – Kanye West, (who somehow believes he is still producing hip hop music) is now the self proclaimed voice of our generation – despite the fact that it occasionally needs an autotune every once in a while – and even managed to slip in a reference to the most revered drum machines in history into his album name (808s and Heartbreak). Meanwhile, Britney Spears followed up her already dance pumped Blackout with an even stronger set of shake-your-booty tunes with this year’s Circus.

The Ting Tings of course got one thing right when they slapped on their album name of their wild debut ‘We Started Nothing’ – It’s true, they really didn’t. What they are doing though is riding high on the wave of electronic cool that started only a couple of years before. See, by the end of ’07, everything was in place. Justice’s bangin’ electro debut Cross was unquestionably the electronic album of the year, while Daft Punk made a mini comeback into the mainstream by successfully managing to distill an entire career’s worth of house music into a ripping live mix of electro-house in keeping with the year’s trends (Alive 2007), especially after a generous helping hand from Kanye’s “Stronger”. Still, nothing could really prepare the world for the chart shattering mash up of Timbaland and Timberlake who tore though the pop scene with the release of that now classic Futuresex/Lovesounds, which pretty much cemented the place of electronic music in pop for the time laid out before it.

By the eighth year of the second millennium (yes, that’s this year), the bandwagon has been well and truly loaded. Suddenly, it’s become all about the beats. ‘Who produced it?’ is now the question on everyone’s tongue, much to the benefit of guys like Mark Ronson (Lily Allan, Amy Winehouse) and Diplo (Santogold, M.I.A.) who’ve become some of the scene’s most in-demand producers. How else to explain the starbright supernova burst of MGMT’s rise to the coolest band in existence? Sure, they only have 3 actual good songs, but in a time when the beats matter more than anything, “Time To Pretend”, “Kids” and “Electric Feel” are more than enough to sell out shows in record time. (for reference, MGMT’s one show in Sydney sold out in a matter of minutes). Similarly, even the most mainstream of kids know that The Ting Tings are about as shallow as the mud stained puddle from which they came from, but it hasn’t stopped the fact that “That’s Not My Name” is just so damn hip. On the other side of things, Katy Perry’s fuzz distorted bass rumblings of “I Kissed A Girl” once again proved (like Madonna and Britney Spears before her) that lesbians sell in droves, quality notwithstanding. That said of course, nothing else released this year could quite top the sex laced imagery of French electro-pop outfit The Teenagers who got hipster crowds all over the world singing to the tune of “I fucked an American cunt/I love my English romance/It was dirty, A dream come true/ Just like I like it/She’s got nice tits”. How long that marketing ploy will last though is somewhat questionable, given t.A.T.u’s (Mmm... Russian Schoolgirls) rather lackluster showing on the album charts.

And even then, the Brits refused to give up, staging their own musical coup by propelling bands like Coldplay far into the mainstream once again. Coldplay. I mean face it, the only reason you liked them in the first place was to show your “sensitive side” to help you get into the pants of that smokin’ indie chick you never quite ended up hooking up with anyway. ‘You know how I know you’re gay?’ – Yeah. With Viva La Vida, Coldplay threw open their sound to capture a rocky edge that shot them into the untouchable realm of being liked that the smokin’ preppy chick – now even the indie guys have a chance with them, if of course they aren’t too busy being apathetically cool. A similar thing happened to the once edge-of-cool Kings Of Leon, whose Only By The Night thrust them into the high circle of rock deities off the back of “Sex on Fire” and “Closer” both of which ride up there with MGMTs “Kids” as singles of the year. Across the Atlantic, Fall Out Boy, whose 2007s Infinity On High pretty much spawned an entire industry around it, are set to cement their own position as pop-punk heroes with the release of the most excellent Folie A Deux – keep an eye out on this one as it bombards your radio through 2009.

On the more subtle side of music, folky influenced indie fleshed out a strong showing this year, with The Dodos Visiter ushering in a note of childlike celebration to the year, while Okkervil River’s sequel to 2007s The Stage Names found a moving storytelling experience in The Stand-Ins. Both Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes almost overwhelmed the hype machine as their somewhat unique and eclectic self titled debuts ravaged the scene for a while, before simmering down in favor of… well, better albums. Undoubtedly though, the two biggest winners out of the scene in ’08 have been TV on the Radio’s starmaking Dear Science and Deerhunter’s minimalist masterpiece, Microcastle, both of which set the benchmarks for indie listening this year. And none of this is even coming close to mention the wonderful intimacy of Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago...

Still, all of this couldn’t keep American inspired dancey dance away, with Girl Talk’s Feed The Animals marking him out as the premier mash-up artist of ’08  –  no matter which way anyone looked at it, mixing Radiohead with Jay-Z was bound to turn heads. Diplo, who in 2007 had been at the forefront of off-kilter DJ cool (having helped produced M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” and pushing hard for the brazillian baile funk of CSS’ Cansei de Ser Sexy) found himself paired up with songstress Santogold on her self titled effort which had hipster types up in arms, while their dub filled mixtape Top Ranking also received critical acclaim across the board. Meanwhile, who’d have thought that Crystal Castles would have worked up one of the most (pointlessly) fun records to last the year? If the gimmicky the 8-bit video game electro-spazz didn’t make this an album already marked for the bin of quick love, NME pretty much sounded the band’s death knell by naming Alice Glass the coolest person of ’08. All that aside though, there’s more fun on their self titled than you’ll find on a string of glowstick parties on the East coast. Hercules and Love Affair, following in the footsteps of neo-Disco pioneers LCD Soundsystem also brought to 2008 a glitter ball of fun with their own highly praised dance-punk offering that packed out dance floors wherever they went.

Turning an eye my very own local scene, Cut Copy’s mix of indie and electro allowed me a rare moment of national pride after In Ghost Colours was featured on Pitchfork’s ‘best new albums’. And while we’ve taken a stop down under, it’s probably fitting to mention Australia’s very own bludgeoning indie-dance movement, with the Van She’s V taking out the Silveri award for most brilliantly produced album of ’08 and Ladyhawke’s self-titled taking it out for the coolest electro-pop record/Stevie Nicks impersonation. (OK, so she’s from New Zealand, but so is Russell Crowe and everyone still calls him Australian). Still, there’s absolutely no denying the tornado of havoc that The Presets cooked up with their sophomore effort Apocalypso on the dance scene here - I probably didn’t go to a single party in which the rave dripped “My People” or the dirty electro house of “Kicking And Screaming” wasn’t blasted though the alcohol fueled night… and I loved every minute of them. I was even lucky enough to catch all four acts, together with Hercules And Love Affair at Modular’s (Australia’s best indie-dance label bar none) 10^th anniversary party just over a week ago, which was, for a lack of a better word, bangin’.

Parties aside, let’s take a moment to dive into the deep end of the electronic blue, where most of the stand outs have surprisingly come form far leftfield – Blue Sky Black Death without question produced the most inspiring set of electronic tunes of the year, with their instrumental hip hop masterpiece Late Night Cinema quite literally emptying the pool of contenders with its atmospheric sweep of immersion. Surprisingly, dubstep, which seemed to be on the edge of spewing forth into the mainstream consciousness after Burial’s awe inspiring Untrue in 2007 failed to produce the quality of music I had expected this year. (but for anyone who was looking into it, perhaps take a gander at iTAL tEK’s Cyclical or Distance’s Repercussions) Nevertheless, DRFNT’s Echodub collective put out a late savior for the scene with their compilation Echodub Presents: Anechoic Chamber setting the standard for minimal, techno inspired dubstep, thanks to its mix of chill but mesmerizing tunes. (Found free for download at: www.echodub.co.uk/)

On the other end of the genre, Meat Beat Manifesto followed in the trails of the harder, bass heavy production that seems to have gained popularity in the last year or so, with Autoimmune playing distant cousin to the Pitchfork hyped groove of London Zoo by The Bug. Davwuh, one of my surprises finds of 2008, also put through one of the most captivating and unsettling albums of the year in the form of the self-released Dystopia. (Found free for download at: http://davwuh.wordpress.com/). Davwuh though, hasn’t been the only artist to surprise me either – had Evol Intent’s Era Of Diversion appeared just a few months later, I would have been ready to declare Drum N’ Bass a dead genre. But holy hell would I have had been wrong – Era Of Diversion pushes the boundaries of the genre far past what most artists could even conceive, literally leap-frogging across ideas with an aggressive presence that’s been unparalleled by any electronic album this year. If there’s one electronic album you want to be going out and buying this year, make it this one.

And that other corner of musical beat didn’t let down the year either, with rap and hip hop producing some absolute kickers. While Kanye’s 808 and Heartbreak has gotten its fair share of obligatory sneering on here, the music lover in me has still got to admit that well… it’s a pretty solid album. And bowing down with his swansong in 2008 is another veteran of the scene, with Scarface’s Emeritus paving out a fitting goodbye for one of Southern Rap’s most respected verse churners (until of course he makes his inevitable comeback). Although the equally respected GZA and Subtle never quite hit the highs of their earlier careers with their respective Pro Tools and ExitingARM, it was Q-Tip (of A Tribe Called Quest fame), who as one friend put it ‘is the sound of Barry Manilow in 2008’ – now this makes sense only when you consider that The Renaissance is smoother than the skin I’d be rubbing honey into as I undressed her in the dim lights of my pad and just about as cool as the club I picked her up from. After all, when you’ve gone so far from gangsta as to have Norah Jones on guest vocals you may as well be compared to Barry Manilow. And while Erykah Badu was busy revitalizing soul with her most excellent New Amerykah Part One (World War Four) and Black Milk was emerging from the shadow of bigger stars in the scene, it was in the end the always reliable The Roots, who dropped the hottest and tightest rap record of ’08 in the form of Rising Down.

Not everything released with a beat or affiliated with any sort of electronic quips was dirty and/or dancy though, and 2008 also let loose some breathtakingly beautiful albums created with not more than a couple of synths, drums machines and the like. The aforementioned Blue Sky Black Death still takes its place as my second favorite album this year, while trip hop veterans Portishead continue to forge crystalline beauty with their third offering, the aptly titled Third. Elsewhere, The Flashbulb’s Soundtrack to A Vacant Life and Lights Out Asia’s Eyes Like Brontide captured the hearts of Sputnikers looking for stunning instrumental scoundscapes as pressed out from the reviewing prowess of our very own Adam Downer. The American Dollar and Vessels also managed to drop out some of the prettiest rock offerings of the year, with their respective White Fields And Open Devices and A Memory Stream being some of the warmest and inviting cuddly bear music to sit back and relax to. On the more meatier side of post-rock, The Samuel Jackson Five released their career defining Goodbye Melody Mountain, while God Is An Astronaut and Sigur Ros both released predictable, middle of the road albums, neither of which did nothing to hurt their position as post-rock’s premier acts - although it did little to further it either.

And of course, none of this would be possible without the help of the electrons that flowed though all the music discussed. And on the topic, music lovers of all types couldn’t have missed the literal explosion of popularity of the music scrobbling software last.fm (www.last.fm) in 2008, which for a while there, was probably just about the edgiest piece of music related cool to hit the net. That was of course, until MGMT, Coldplay and The Ting Tings pretty much dominated the ‘most listened to of 2008’ lists. Still though, there’s something so strangely satisfying about being able to point out that the latest hxcdeathslammoshcore band you found only has 23 listeners and one impossible to find EP which is just so damn good. Music Cool Cred plusplus. And – here’s a prediction for you - if anything, 2009 will see last.fm spread its reach even wider audience, which quite honestly can only be a good thing.

So to round up, the truth is that in a way, this sketch of the year’s cool couldn’t be anymore at odds with my personal top of ’08 list. With the exception (maybe) of For Emma, Forever Ago, the truth is that no one (who matters) is going to even know that a band called Evol Intent ever existed or that Cynic pretty much shattered the bounds of progressive death in 2008. If you rolled your eyes at NMEs’/Pitchfork’s/Rolling Stone’s top 50 of ’08 list, the sad fact is you probably aren’t all that cool. Sorry. But don’t take it to heart, after all, you, like me, can just tell yourself that your music taste, in all manner of speaking, actually transcends cool. You’ll sleep better tonight. (maybe)

So… album of the year? With not so much a second’s hesitation, I’m going to go with Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago – the truth is, there’s not much to be said about Bon Iver’s debt that hasn’t been already said. Every critic and his fruit fly has more or less passed some sort of comment, however brief, on just about every conceivable aspect of For Emma. Yet not a single one could ever even begin to tell you anything about just what the weight of emotion that Justin Vernon’s minimalist acoustic masterpiece carries with it. For Emma, Forever Ago is simply too… personal. I couldn’t tell you what anything here really meant even if I spent the next few years listening to nothing but this. It’s music which makes it’s own meaning in the deepest confines of the heart, simply skipping with bounds and strides straight across ears and into the chest with piercing clarity – and it’s never hurt more than this. It’s been just over a year since the original pressing of For Emma was laid down, and all this time later, it’s an album that still that quite literally sends shivers of electric warmth running across my skin. For all the amazing music that floated to the surface in ’08, For Emma, Forever Ago still rides atop a wave that isn’t even in sight of anything else, and is simply the most stunning and sublime release ever to grace music in a long, long time. That we’ve even gotten a glimpse of the swirls of wonderment here is more than anyone could ever ask for.

It’s been a hell of a year, and here’s to another one to blow my mind.

Top 25 of ’08:

1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
2. Blue Sky Black Death - Late Night Cinema
3. Cynic - Traced In Air
4. Off Minor - Some Blood
5. Deerhunter – Microcastle

6. Evol Intent - Era Of Discontent
7. Adebisi Shank - This Is An Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank
8. Echodub Presents: Anechoic Chamber
9. Kings Of Leon - Only By Night
10. Diplo/Santogold - Top Ranking

11. Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One
12. Daitro/SNS - Split
13. The Roots - Rising Down
14. Fall Out Boy - Folie A Duex
15. Scarface – Emiritus

16. Verse En Coma - Rialto
17. Coldplay - Viva La Vida
18. Davwuh - Dystopia
19. Okkervil River - The Stand-Ins
20. Ohana - Dead Beat

21. Q-Tip - The Renaissance
22. The Dodos - Visiter
23. Thrice - The Alchemy Index Vol. III and IV
24. Shugo Tokumaru - Exit
25. Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

More '08 Features: 

Jared Dillon, Nick Greer, Ryan Flatly, Nick Butler, Andrew Hartwig, Trey Spencer, Daniel Incognito, Lewis Parry, Adam Downer, Mike Stagno, Channing Freeman, Tyler Munro, Damrod, Tyler Fisher

Alex Silveri, Dec 2008.

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