Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks – Out of Reaches

I bought this record in the spring, during a mission trip to Trinidad. I’ll always associate its Afropop guitar tones with my weeklong stay in that country, which is fitting because Vampire Weekend is music for tourists. Ivy-leaguers who borrow musical motifs from the poor and sing of the rich, these dapper young men are nothing if not brave. But their audacity pays off with this brief set of 10 very direct, hummable songs. Cue countless  MTV appearances and thousands (but probably hundreds) of young girls screaming, “I LOVE THE UNFORTUNATELY-NAMED EZRA KOENIG” at the baby-faced lead singer, and you’ve got a real pop phenomenon on your hands.

Vampire Weekend – A-Punk

8. Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are The Very Best – The Very Best

Speaking of Vampire Weekend, 2008 was the year of the “We Are the World” sing-along, where indie freshness was all about tearing down cultural boundaries and celebrating unity. No record of quasi-covers embodied this exciting trend more than Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are The Very Best, which found Malawi/London singer Mwamwaya delivering on the promise of his smiling rendition of “Paper Planes”. This is openly joyous music, drawing from too many influences to comprehend (my favorite is a cover of the Beatles’ “Birthday”). It’s an audio-cultural epicenter and it’s readily accessible…Download for FREE here.

The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit) – Birthday

7. Top Ranking – Santogold/Diplo

Let’s get it out of the way. She’s no M.I.A. Yes, the best moment of this release is the M.I.A.-centered “Get It Up”. But Santogold and Diplo do their best to decorate and reinvent the eccentric pop of her self-titled debut while steering away from those comparisons. The result is a surreal and fluid summer mix tape that hops from era to genre to sub-genre successfully for well over an hour. Top Ranking constructs a towering mass of dub- inflected grooves that flow seamlessly into each other before finding peace in the soaring “Icarus”. Let this curb your appetite until the next “Arular”.

Santogold & Diplo – Get It Up

6. The Renaissance – Q-Tip

Headline: Godfather and spiritual guru of hip-hop returns after nearly a decade of absence, STILL puts others MC’s to shame. We all miss A Tribe Called Quest (or at least we all should), and in 2008, The Renaissance is as close as it gets to the jazzy beats and sincere rhymes of Q-Tip’s former group. Don’t be disappointed though, he’s the same as before, except that now he croons about love as much as he raps about it. The album’s pacing arcs so nicely, the drum machines fizzle in perfect time and the album even dropped on the day that our first black president was elected. Besides, “Gettin’ Up” is one the best songs of the year.

Q-Tip – Gettin’ Up

5. Feed the Animals – Girl Talk

This summer, Greg Gillis released his new album of mash-ups in the same manner in which Radiohead released In Rainbows, half a year earlier. Users could download the entire album for free, if they so chose, through the artist’s website. This “pay-what-you-want” system is especially appropriate for Girl Talk, whose very essence is the celebration of all things popular. When I attended a Girl Talk show in late June, at the onset of his Feed the Animals tour, the music’s appeal to the general public was undeniable; this is definitely dance music, albeit dance music with a sardonic twinkle in its eye. You may laugh when Gillis slyly combines Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” with Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish,” but chances are that you’ll dance too. Download for FREE here.

4. New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War) – Erykah Badu

“Mama hopped up on cocaine, Daddy on spaceships with no brain,” murmurs Badu on “The Cell,” and it’s a typical example of the singer’s knack at refracting tragedy through the bizarre. As dense and amoebic as Badu’s hair on “Amerykah”‘s front cover, the album is more of a mood piece than a collection of singular entities. One exception is the Madlib-produced “The Healer,” a floating black hole of a song that envelops R&B, hip-hop, and spoken word, spitting out something new altogether. It’s hypnotic in its manipulation of time and theme, and the song is just the first peak of an album that feels like one long high.

Erykah Badu – The Healer

3. Mountain Tan Commercials – Arch M

I stumbled across Arch M while surfing random music blogs this summer. I know next to nothing about Corey Reid, the hands and heart behind Mountain Tan Commercials, except that he has the concept of distortion down to an absolute art. This mysterious cassette release, lasting only a few tics over nine minutes, is only a sampler for the forthcoming “Moon-Tan,” but if the strung out euphoria of these songs is any indicator of artistic intent, it’s time to get your panties all in a bunch. Take a walk with Mountain Tan Commercials and its dreamy, dilapidated pop charm will win you over before the second listen. Download for FREE here.

Call me bombastic, but the writing team that serves as the core of Animal Collective, Dave Portner (Avey Tare) and Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), is the next Lennon and McCartney. Portner is the enigmatic, tortured “artist” and Lennox, no less creative, loves him a sugary pop tune. Portner sings lead on each of these songs, seemingly finding some peace after the shouted insecurities of “Strawberry Jam”. Water Curses consists of three tunes recorded during those 2007 sessions and a fourth that might as well have been. It certainly doesn’t feel patched together, though; the songs trickle and gurgle into each other, cascading down from the jubilant title track into the slowly melting ice of “Seal Eyeing”. Animal Collective is making music that sounds like nothing else, and this contemplative EP is a fine place to start for the unacquainted.

Animal Collective – Water Curses

1. Los Angeles – Flying Lotus

The Warp label’s newest poster boy, Flying Lotus (aka Steven Ellison), reminds me so much of labelmates Boards of Canada. Los Angeles shares the same throbbing, hypnotic break-beats of that group’s seminal work; both artists use aching, inferior sounds to construct dystopian fantasies. But where BoC is obsessed with recreating/re-imagining childhood, Ellison’s music inspects the grime of adult city life. Ellison also works from a much more diverse palette; he is the great-nephew of the late Alice Coltrane. By exploring the capacity of jazz’s rhythmical accents, he continues to build upon the rich history of African-American music. Ellison’s heritage (and his exhaustive crate-digging) pay off in dividends; there are signs of Brazilian, Indian, and hip-hop influence plastered all over this album’s gritty alleyways. Feel free to blast it from your Hummer or whatever, but PLEASE listen to Los Angeles with a decent pair of headphones before you die. It’s dark, gelatinous fun and it’s the best record of 2008.

Flying Lotus – Beginners Falafel