Top 5 Albums of 2008

Artist: TV On The Radio
Album: Dear Science

Genre: Indie Rock

Sounds like: America in 2008

These Brooklynites greeted our historical year with awe and responded with some art-rock party music. Call it the audacity of hope. Producer-guitarist Dave Sitek streamlined and deepened the band's fusion of doo-wop, punk and soul; there are swooning ballads, wind-whipped funk and even a Tom Petty bite. Be sure to listen closely though, there's a lot going on here that only reveals itself with time.

Artist: Lil Wayne
Album: Tha Carter III
Genre: Southern Rap
Sounds like: The best rap album of 2008. Period.
"Next time you mention Pac, Biggie or Jay-Z/Don't forget Weezy Baby," croaks Lil Wayne. This is just one of Lil Wayne's punchlines that hit the mark, however his greatness lies not just in what he says, but in how he says it. I don't know how this weed smoking troll-of-a-man does it, but he's a virtuoso of variations in mood and meter, tone and timbre that mark him, as much as any singer, as one of 21st-century pop's great vocal stylists. Oh and most importantly; don't forget to pack your subwoofer.

Artist: Metallica

Album: Death Magnetic

Genre: Thrash Metal

Sounds like: Agression and escalataion

Critics have called this Kirk Hammet's revenge and I can't agree more. The guitars are back in full force - monsterous riffs, chuga-chuga palm mutting and wah-wah infused solos. They may be old timers, but they've proven they can still rock in vitally violent way. Metallica finally sounds like Metallica again.

Artist: Portishead

Album: Third

Genre: Alternative Rock/Trip-Hop

Sounds like: A mysterious psychedelic rock album

11 years in the making, this is the most effective and all the while challenging music you will listen to this year. AllMusic went on to say: "It demands attention, requiring effort on the part of the listener, as this defies any conventions on what constitutes art pop apart from one key tenet, one that is often attempted yet rarely achieved: it offers music that is genuinely, startlingly original."

Artist: B.B. King

Album: One Kind Favor

Genre: Electric Blues

Sounds like: B.B. King outside his comfort zone

One Kind Favor is a celebration of life with all of its ups and downs, filled with heartbreak but also great joy, which is precisely what B.B. King's best music has always been. His style and tone has changed though, the most radical since the success of The Thrill Is Gone back in 1970. At 83 years old, this singer-guitarist proves once more why he remains one of America's living legends.

Honorable Mentions:

Dido Safe Trip Home

Girl Talk Feed The Animals

Kings of Leon Only By The Night

Nine Inch Nails The Slip

Santogold Santogold

Taylor Swift Fearless

Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend

Dido - Safe Trip Home

Providing the hook for Eminem's murder ballad "Stan" is an odd way for this English singer to launch her career. But this former Faithless frontwoman and writer for Britney Spears has always harbored a dark side. This third album expands her relaxed wine-bar sound with even deeper shadows.

There are melancholic edges to these tracks, but it's not haunting - it's comforting, reassuring music that's quietly groovy; music that Dido hinted at before but never quite made. The last two tracks, "Burnin Love" and "Northern Skies" seep into each other just perfectly and are an appropriate, powerful way to bring closure.

My Top 5 Nickelback Songs

In order of how long I can stand listening before changing the radio station:

5. Never made it as a wise ma...

4. Prison gates wo...

3. From undernea...

2. Look at...

1. I...

DJ Rupture

Stop Motion Cambalacha from Rukula on Vimeo.

A Jack Johnson Christmas

Brushfire Records — home of Jack Johnson, Mason Jennings, Matt Costa, G. Love, Rogue Wave and others — will soon release This Warm December: A Brushfire Holiday Vol. 1, a mix of Christmas songs performed by their family of artists.

Can Indie Rock do Christmas justice? I hope so. Jack Johnson will sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Someday at Christmas". Their is also a Mason Jennings' rendition of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" that should be...interesting.

From Brushfire: "This is something we've been talking about for a while. It was a little difficult to get everyone in the Christmas spirit to record these songs during the summer, but we pulled it off." Elsewhere on the disc, Matt Costa does "All I Want for Christmas" and G. Love debuts "Christmas Baby."

The collection will also feature the first ever official track by Malaysian singer Zee Avi, who is the first woman to be added to the Brushfire roster. Patrick Keeler (drummer from the Raconterus) really likes her and claims she's a cross between Norah Jones and Billie Holliday. Check out a clip of Avi here. ­

Metallica - Death Magnetic

Death Magnetic can now be listened to in it's entirety. All for free. With this release comes a well written review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine:

Call Death Magnetic Kirk Hammett’s revenge. Famously browbeaten into accepting Lars Ulrich and producer Bob Rock’s dictum that guitar solos were “dated” and thereby verboten for 2003’s St. Anger — a fraught recording chronicled on the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster — Metallica’s lead guitarist dominates this 2008 sequel, playing with a euphoric fury not heard in years, if not decades. This aesthetic shift isn’t because Hammett suddenly rules the band: powerless to add solos to St. Anger, he couldn’t reinstate them without the blessing of Ulrich and James Hetfield, the politburo of Metallica. The duo suffered some combination of shame and humility in the wake of the muddled St. Anger and Monster, convincing these two unmovable forces to change direction. They ditched longtime producer Rock — who helmed every album since 1991’s breakthrough blockbuster Metallica — in favor of Rick Rubin, patron saint of all veteran rockers looking to reconnect with their early spark. Rubin may be the go-to producer for wayward superstars, but as the producer of Slayer, he’s also rooted in thrash, so he understands the core of Metallica’s greatness and gently steers them back to basics on Death Magnetic.

Of course, Metallica’s basics are pretty complex: intertwined guitar riffs, frenetic solos and thunderous double-bass drums, stitched together as intricate seven-minute suites. Metallica slowly weaned themselves away from labyrinthine metal during the ’90s, tempering their intensity, straightening out riffs, and spending nearly as much time exploring detours as driving the main road, all the while losing sight of their identity. This culminated in the confused St. Anger, a transparent and botched attempt at returning to their roots, crippled by the chaos surrounding the departure of bassist Jason Newsted. With all their problems sorted out in public — including replacing Newsted with Robert Trujillo, who acquiesces to the Metallica custom of being buried far, far in the mix — the group embraces every gnarled, ugly thing they eschewed in the years since Metallica. Death Magnetic bounces the band back to the days before Bob Rock, roughly sounding as if it could come after And Justice for All. Such a deliberate revival of the glory days can be tricky, as it could make a group seem stuck in the past — or, just as badly, they can get essential elements wrong — but Death Magnetic is a resounding success because the band hunker down and embrace their core strengths, recognizing that their greatest asset is that nobody else makes noise the same way as they do.

That’s the pleasure of Death Magnetic: hearing Metallica sound like Metallica again. Individual songs and, especially, Hetfield’s lyrics — less the confessional ballast of St. Anger, more a traditional blend of angst and terror — are secondary to how the band sounds, how they spit, snarl and surge, how they seem alive. Metallica isn’t replicating moves they made in the ’80s, they’re reinvigorated by the spirit of their early years, adding shading they learned in the ’90s, whether it’s the symphonic tension of “The Unforgiven III” or threading curdled blues licks through the thrash. Listening to the band play, it’s hard not to thrill at Metallica’s mastery of aggression and escalation. There is no denying that the band is older and settled, no longer fueled by the hunger and testosterone that made their ’80s albums so gripping, but on Death Magnetic older doesn’t mean less potent. Metallica still is vitally violent and on this terrific album — a de facto comeback, even if they never have really gone away — they’re finally acting like they enjoy being a great rock band.

Music Taste Defines Personality

Fans of classical music and jazz are creative, pop lovers are hardworking and, despite the stereotypes, heavy metal listeners are gentle, creative types who are at ease with themselves.

So says Professor Adrian North of Scotland's Heriot-Watt University who has been studying the links between people's personalities and their choice of music.

"People often define their sense of identity through their musical taste, wearing particular clothes, going to certain pubs, and using certain types of slang," North said.

"It's not surprising that personality should also be related to musical preference."

North claims this is the largest study ever conducted into individuals' musical preference and character; taking survey of over 36,000 people from around the world to rate how much they liked 104 different musical styles before taking a personality test.

"Researchers have been showing for decades that fans of rock and rap are rebellious, and that fans of opera are wealthy and well-educated. But this is the first time that research has shown that personality links to liking for a wide range of musical styles."

His study concludes that jazz and classical music fans are creative with good self-esteem, although the former are much more outgoing whereas the latter are shy.

Country music fans were found to be hardworking and shy; rap fans are outgoing and indie lovers lack self-esteem and are not very gentle.

Those who like soul music can be at ease as his research concluded they are creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease with themselves and have a high self-esteem.

North is still looking for volunteers to take part in his research.