Unlike last year, I didn’t buy many jazz CDs this year. My meta-list recognizes two releases as popping up most frequently on year-end "best of" lists:
Charles Lloyd Quartet, Rabo de Nube
Bill Frisell, History, Mystery
Both are high quality but neither is a game-changer. I liked Miles from India, a combination of Miles Davis’s jazz fusion with Indian riffs; that would be my jazz pick of the year.
From a previous post, here are the classical music meta-list picks for the year.
I’ve found one extant meta-list for popular music, here. It is OK for a slow year; I won’t pass along the meta-list I came up with myself because I happen to believe its contents are mediocre, noting that my copy of Santogold has yet to arrive in the mail. If you wish, scour these lists to construct your own meta-list.
In popular music what I enjoyed most this year was:
Roger McGuinn’s acoustic cover (listen here) of Leadbelly’s On Easter Morn He Rose (there is a different version of the song, free, at that link), and
Neil Young’s 1968 acoustic takes on Buffalo Springfield songs, and
The Kevin Shields/Patti Smith two-CD collaboration, which oddly lots of people don’t seem to know about.
I’m not usually so old-fashioned.
Here is a Times of UK list. You’ll find a zillion Amazon lists here, most are OK but too mainstream. I’ll cover world music — which had a good year — soon.
If you are looking for a game-changing jazz CD please listen to Connie Crothers, “Music is a Place”
Here is a review: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=29429
Brandon, you will be pleased to hear that two days ago I ordered Fleet Foxes; we will see if I love it I will blog it.
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/rogermcguinn/albums/album/24357695/live_from_spain
Jazz up-and-comer of the year recommendation: guitarist Mary Halvorson. She has an alternately melodic and fragmented sound. Check out her trio’s debut album, Dragon’s Head, at http://firehouse12.com/firehouse12_records_release.asp?id=50323
2008 has been a disappointing year overall but Frightened Rabbit, Okkervil River and MGMT were the high points for me. Fleet Foxes I was ambivalent about.
Oh yeah, and the excellent Chinese Classical Folk Music, which I came to very circuitously by way of Damon Albarn’s unexpected and sporadically awesome “Monkey” project.
Also, Amadou & Mariam’s great older stuff.
One that I enjoyed very much and just got recently, which I think came out in 2008, was Mocean Worker “Cinco de Mowo”, it’s electronic/jazz/bigband… http://www.amazon.com/Cinco-Mowo-Mocean-Worker/dp/B000QEILQK
Comments on this entry are closed.