Smash or Trash

I'm finished with college for Christmas, having accelerated through about 10,000 accumulated words of essays and assigments at an alarming rate, and have got down to the real work coming up to Christmas. Those of you who've been following this blog for a while know that I spent about a month and a half last December and January writing progressively longer, more complicated and more emotive reviews of the 25 best albums of 2007. Traffic actually spiked on the blog, and I had fun doing it even if it took over my life for a while.

Well, I'm doing it again. I have my albums, and it's just a matter of ordering them, and then writing about them. I've been listening back to the year, and what I originally thought was a weak year for music is opening up its folds to me. Vampire Weekend, Why?, Of Montreal, Times New Viking, El Guincho and Deerhoof all put out genuinely brilliant albums in 2008, and many lesser gods put in a good showing too.

But listening through this afternoon with my 15 year old brother in the room, I thought I'd take the opportunity to get his opinion on some of the tracks that make up what I consider to be 2008's best albums. I played a game. Called Smash or Trash. Conor likes Kanye West, reggae and ska and chart indie. He surprised me a little. But not much. Here's the data I collected:

Trash...
Adebisi Shank - Colin Skehan (comment: not that bad, but still trash)
Beach House - Gila
Correcto - Joni
Deerhoof - Snoopy Waves
Department of Eagles - Teenagers
The Dodos - Red and Purple
Dublin Duck Dispensary - The Last Bottle In The World (comment: Is this the song from the morning? Like, the alarm clock? Trash. Definitely trash)
Fight Like Apes - Lend Me Your Face
Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal (comment: are you serious? What do you think?)
Jay Reatard - Always Wanting More
Jeremy - Beautiful Creatures (comment: is this Smokey Robinson?!)
Lovvers - No Romantic
No Age - Teen Creeps
Parenthetical Girls - Four Words (comment: likes arrangement, annoyed at voice)
TNV - Drop-Out (trashed immediately)
Wolf Parade - Call It A Ritual

SMASH!
CSS - Jager Yoga (comment: Sounds like Bloc Party. Did not recognise it as CSS, or who they were.)
El Guincho - Kalise (comment: thought it was hilarious, said "is he Mexican?")
Man Man - Hurly Burly
Of Montreal - Triphallus To Punctuate (said smash early, and began to regret it when the "I supporrrrted your kid" disco bit happened.)
Ponytail - Beg Waves
Santogold - Shove It (comment: sounds like The Specials at the start)
Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
Why? - The Vowels Pt. 2 (smash, thinks Joni's voice is hilariously weedy)


The picture is the submission of some O'Neill to some Lord Deputy and I have no excuse for its use other than it was on my desktop.