VA - Now Hear This! The Best of 2008

The best of 2008, hand-picked by the readers of the Word.

In an average year we bring you 180 tracks via our monthly Now Hear This! CDs. We don't expect any one individual to like everything they hear. But we hope that out of each 15-track CD you find a handful of new acts (or acts who are new to you) that you want to investigate further. We are granted use of these tracks by the record companies because they recognise that Word readers try new things. And for that, we thank them.
Every year we ask readers to nominate the music they have been most impressed by on this year's Now Hear This! CDs. Then we put together this CD, a varied sampling of some of the year's most distinguished music, from the dubstep stylings of Burial through British Sea Power's hairy-chested anthems to the autumnal shades of Teddy Thompsons acoustic music. It's a reminder of the job the CDs do of keeping you in touch. Now might be a good time to subscribe to ensure that you don't miss any of next year's.

Tracks

01 Sigur Ros - Vid Spilum Endalaust (3:23)
02 Roots Manuva - Again & Again (4:05)
03 British Sea Power - No Lucifer (3:29)
04 The Felice Brothers - Frankie's Gun (4:07)
05 Aimee Mann - Freeway (3:50)
06 Burial - Untrue (6:17)
07 Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance (3:41)
08 Little Jackie - Liked You Better Before (4:00)
09 Epic45 - Winterbirds (3:45)
10 Randy Newman - Losing You (2:43)
11 Friska Viljor - Oh Oh (3:13)
12 Shelby Lynne - Just A Little Lovin (5:20)
13 Chris Difford - Fat As A Fiddle (3:27)
14 Pinch ft. Juakali - Brighter Day (5:21)
15 Teddy Thompson - Where To Go From Here (3:13)

Total time: 59m 54s


What's on the CD with the January issue:

1. Sigur Rós - Við Spilum Endalaust
“What’s the capital of Iceland?” “About £4.20.” Thus runs the recession joke keeping us all amused in these troubled times. Meanwhile, one Icelandic export is seeing its stock rising higher and higher. Sigur Rós’s fifth album, Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust (which translates as “With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly”) has taken them from the icy fringes of art rock to the temperate waters of the mainstream.
From the album Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust

2. Roots Manuva - Again and Again
There’s something about the jogging-on-the-spot nature of this disc, something about its straining for a chord change that never actually arrives, that marks this out as a unique record. Roots Manuva, the erstwhile Rodney Smith, has been ploughing his own wonky furrow through the borderlands where hip hop rubs up against reggae for some time and this whole album demonstrates that all that dedication was worthwhile.
From the album Slime & Reason

3. British Sea Power - No Lucifer
British Sea Power have traditionally reached beyond the familiar rock colouring box for both their inspiration and presentational ideas. They have in the past rocked the gaiters-and-corduroy look, they sport footwear that is favoured by fell runners in their native Cumbria, they read improving books and on their recent tour they were accompanied by the London Bulgarian Choir on this song among others. This record was nominated for 2008’s Mercury Prize.
From the album Do You like Rock Music?

4. The Felice Brothers - Frankie's Gun
It is not widely appreciated in the UK that The Band, the definitive expression of rural America, were predominantly Canadian and made their most lasting music in upstate New York, a car journey away from New York City. This is one of the things they have in common with The Felice Brothers, who hail from the Catskill Mountains, the resort of vacationing New Yorkers in the films of Woody Allen. This, their third album, has been a huge favourite with many Word readers.
From the album Alpinisms

5. Aimee Mann - Freeway
Ever since she debuted with Til Tuesday in the early ’80s it’s been clear that Aimee Mann packs one of the great voices in pop music. She has a brilliant way with a lyric and a vocal tone you can live with day in and day out. In naming this record @#%&*! Smilers (which is said to be pronounced “Fucking Smilers”) she appears to have announced her disillusion with the record business. The record, however, being a thing of considerable beauty, will not give up so easily.
From the album @#%&*! Smilers

6. Burial - Untrue
The breakthrough Burial album actually came out in 2007 but it was featured in our first Now Hear This! of the following year and has been a fixture in the Word office soundscape ever since that time. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize and there are those who thought it should have romped it since it was that rarest of things – a sound with no obvious precedent. It has been described as the secret sound that the Victoria Line makes in the middle of the night.
From the album Untrue

7. Likke Li - Dance Dance Dance
OK, we cheated. Back in the summer we couldn’t get a track from the Lykke Li album, which had been hailed by James Medd in our pages for “tunes that are not just cracking but also slightly strange, mournful and twisted, the kind that stay with you”. But because it’s a record that has grown in appeal since that time, we figured it was better that you heard it late than never heard it at all. And so here it is.
From the album Youth Novels

8. Little Jackie - Like You Better Before
This year the artist formerly known as Imani Coppola teamed with the artist always known as Adam Palin to form Little Jackie, a duo whose music hints at the neatly turned playground-pop singles of the Brill Building era. Their single, The World Should Revolve Around Me, was one of the hit singles of the year. This is every bit as good.
From the album The Stoop

9. Epic 45 - Winterbirds
Epic45 are Rob Glover and Ben Holton. One of them works in an art gallery, the other in a psychiatric unit, they grew up listening to the Beatles records of their parents and the New Order records of their elder brothers and their aim is to convey something “about the passage of time, both personally and historically. How things change, decay and the memories we’re left with in the present day.” If we’re going to have “folktronica”, let it be like this.
From the album Let Your Heart Be The Map

10. Randy Newman - Losing You
Forty years after he made his recording debut, Randy Newman produces what he calls his best album. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” he said on his appearance on Desert Island Discs this year. Although it’s the lampoons like A Few Words In Defence Of My Country and Potholes that snagged the early attention, it’s straight love songs like this, in which he has always excelled, that stay with you long afterwards.
From the album Bravo!

11. Friska Viljor - Oh Oh
A Swedish duo, who took their name from a second-division football team, they came together to comfort each other after affairs of the heart had taken a wrong turn and have vowed never to compose sober. We have sought to match their commitment by promising never to listen in any other state.
From the album Outbound Plane

12. Shelby Lynne - Just A Little Lovin'
At first there was a question over whether Shelby Lynne’s recasting of the ballads of Dusty Springfield as jazzy torch songs was anything but an attention-seeking gimmick, but as the year has worn on we have kept coming back to this record, which proves that easy listening is not a term of abuse. This track contains the longest pause on this CD.
From the album Just A Little Lovin’

13. Chris Difford - Fat As A Fiddle
Chris came in and guested on the Word podcast this year and this was the song he played. Whereas other songwriters of his generation have faced up to questions of mortality and morality, Chris is the first one to confront the issue that concerns far more middle-aged men, namely their expanding waistline. “And it’s so hard to put on my socks in the morning”, he sings. Once heard it will go through your head every time you reach down.
From the album The Last Temptation Of Chris

14. Pinch featuring Juakali - Brighter Day
The other prong on the twin forks of the dubstep invasion of the last year (the first is Burial), Pinch is the nom de guerre of Bristol DJ Rob Ellis. His music arises where the drawn-out tension of incidental music meets the clashing consonants of Jamaican dancehall and even the transported devotional music of Pakistan. The album is a double, comprising one album of instrumentals and another with various guests on vocals, like this one featuring New York MC Juakali.
From the album Underwater Dancehall

15. Teddy Thompson - Where To Go From Here
It’s taken a while for the white smoke to emerge from the chimney above the critical conclave but it seems widely accepted that with this record Teddy Thompson has finally fulfilled the considerable promise of his previous three. It was produced by Marius De Vries, whom Teddy first met while contributing backing vocals to his old friend Rufus Wainwright’s Vries-produced album.
From the album A Piece Of What You Need