Starting in August this year, we find it hard telling you what the best Norwegian album of the year is, but don’t think for a second that we won’t try.
So, if the year only had five months, and started in August. Top 5 Norwegian albums of 2008 would look something like this:
1. Rockettothesky / Medea
2. Humcrush / Rest At World’s End
3. Magnus Moriarity / Perhaps Interior Heart Politeness
4. Syntax TerrOrkester / Familien Min Forstår Ingenting Av Det
5. MoHa! / One-Way Ticket To Candyland
Bearing in mind that quite a few albums slipped past us newcomers in the reviewing business with far too much to do. But behold ‘09, when nearly each and every new Norwegian album will feel the wrath of our reviewers upon their weary sleeves.
To even things out, here are the personal High Fidelity lists — from throughout the year — from selected Nö Music writers.
1. Aura Noir - Hades Rise
A monumental old-school trash return with moments of obscene scratchacid-like qualities. One of the most important bands in metal today, period. You should look into the story of the making of this record, it’s pretty insane!
2. Haust - Ride the Relapse
3. Next Life - The Lost Age (technically out Jan 09… - ed.)
4. Darkthrone - Dark Thrones and Black Flags
5. The White Tiger Prepade - Death Aquatic Dream Thunder Posse
In no particular order:
Humcrush - Rest At Worlds End
Syntax TerrOrkester - Familien Min Forstår Ingenting Av Det
Dog and Sky - lhasa Express
Lukestar - Lake Toba
Harrys Gym - s/t
Top 5 Songs of the Year:
1. Real Ones – Outlaw
2. Whitest Boy Alive – Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)
3. Annie – Songs Remind Me Of You
4. Rockettothesky – Grizzly Man
5. Magnus Moriarty – Warning From The Skies
Top 5 albums of the year:
1. Rockettothesky – Medea
Rockettothesky’s startling album owes an audible debt to Vespertine; all twinkling, fleeting arrangements and meandering vocals that seep and eddy, but whilst that Björk record was a warm celebration of sexual love as a force of unification with nature, Medea is a psychologically frightening exploration of feminine mystery and medieval morbidity. Twenty-first century problems are transposed onto a mythological canvas; school shootings intermingled with ‘sea-nymphs’, sex primal and destructive, each song circled by or submerged in the concealing and eroding darkness of the immutable forces of the waters of mortality. But where Vespertine ended up sounding too slight, too twinkly, too meandering, Medea is jagged, shadowy, poetic, simultaneously appealing and appalling, and at times even wonderfully catchy. Rockettothesky has crafted an album that is always interesting, consistently challenging, and frequently nothing short of breathtaking.
2. Lindstrøm – Where You Go I Go Too
‘I Feel Space’, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm titled the most famous cut off his EP collection It’s A Feedelity Affair. On this debut album proper he doesn’t just ‘feel space’; he positively embodies it – both spatially and cosmically. Lindstrøm has crafted a vibrantly rich and fleshed-out, evolving, musical universe: a patter of twinkly electronics seems to transport us to a distant sheen of stars, a bass fluctuation to wisp us past a supernova, a fleeting synth to guide us through the birth and death of a star; the panting breaths that interrupt the title track suggesting his vision of the cosmos even encompasses the birth of man. Where You Go I Go Too, would perhaps be more fittingly titled ‘Where I Go You Go Too’, such is the sense of being led by its maker on an epic journey – and such is the album’s frequent evolution and fluctuation that it is small moments, rather than songs, that we cherish as listeners: the guttural reverberation 5:28 into the opener, or the shimmering droplets that herald the emergence of ‘The Long Way Home’ from the mist. Lindstrøm’s proggy Italo-Disco may look back in time for its inspirations, but it is taking ‘dance’ music to a profoundly new place.
3. Real Ones – All For The Neighbourhood
Take a healthy mix of genres, from Americana to psych-folk, chuck in a daunting number of eclectic instruments, dust liberally with some killer harmonies, add several spoonfuls of foot-tappingly perfect pop melodies, season with more than a pinch of joyful abandon and divide into eleven well-greased songs with not a dud amongst them and what do you get? One of the albums of the year, that’s what.
4. diskJokke – Staying In
Scandinavian electronica is bleak, icy, glacial and angsty. Right? Someone obviously forgot to get a memo to diskJokke, whose debut album Staying In exudes a chirpy bounciness that better suggests a fancy-dress Halloween party in Barcelona than some alienating hypothermic experience on a shadowy tundra. Sure, it has its icy, shiny moments, but even they would be better termed glossy, and anything Nordic with bursts of trumpet and handclaps is obviously gleefully engaged in throwing stereotype to the wind. Lindstrøm may have been the darling of the Oslo-Disco scene in ’08, but if it was a party you were after diskJokke was the man to look up.
5. Madrugada – Madrugada
Not the hippest choice, perhaps, and this is a long way from being the band at their best, but I think that Norwegians to an extent take Madrugada for granted. Coming at Norwegian music blind, or should that be deaf, a few years ago, I was struck by just how interesting Madrugada were compared to bands of a similar stature in the UK. At their worst they churned out easy-listening country dirges, or cocksure posturing post-punk clangers, but the very fact that their range extended to encompass these two starkly divergent aspects speaks volumes about Madrugada’s importance. Norwegians should be proud that they elevated to the big-league a band who married the lascivious entreaties of Leonard Cohen to the snarl of The Stooges with an often fierce (although strangely diminishing from album to album) lyrical intelligence, and Madrugada, their final record after the death of guitarist Robert Burås, is, if unexceptional, a fitting goodbye. ‘Honey Bee’ finds the band at their most sexually frustrated Cohenesque, whilst Sivert’s stunning voice soars effortlessly on album highlight ‘What’s On Your Mind’. Just as Ian Curtis spitting that ‘a loaded gun won’t set you free’, or Kurt Cobain’s ironic insistence that ‘things have never been so swell’ took on a loaded significance after their respective deaths so Madrugada cannot but be listened to in the context of Burås’ passing. ‘Don’t just leave me this way/ with nothing left to go on with’, ‘Highway of Light…/ Puts all flesh/ Of human spirit/ To rest’ – despite being largely recorded when the guitarist was still alive his imminent death seems to hang over the record, and I defy anyone to suppress a shiver as Burås’ own broken voice, far inferior to Høyem’s, closes the album defiantly: ‘Don’t know when they put me in the ground/ I don’t know about me left alone/ All that matters that I follow you/ On my way to the unknown bound.’ A lifetime achievement inclusion? Probably, but one they deserve.
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2 Responses to “Albüm of the year 2008”
Jonathan - December 29th, 2008 at 23:45
Haha, I like the “five months only” spin! Looks like it’s yielded some choices that might not have otherwise featured in these lists, so that’s cool. I’ve got some listening to hunt down!
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