The Best Of 2008: Aidan Williamson's Top 10

Somebody said to me when I first became involved in this business "You'll come to love truly awful music just as much as you love the truly great". As you can likely imagine, it was met with the kind of facial response usually reserved for those times when you accidentally drink the milk you forgot to throw away last month.

As time passed though, the realisation came over me as to what the meaning of this sage-like advice was. When you're listening to around three-hundred different albums in any given year, only a handful are astonishingly awesome, and conversely only a handful are laughably bad. The realm most music occupies is that of the average. Yes, 95% of bands rely on tired sounds, uninspired lyrics and mediocre delivery. Like a man sifting for gold though, that one nugget makes the scum currently inhabiting the underneath of your fingernails completely worthwhile.

As you can see from the ten albums I selected below, I'm a person who appreciates originality in sound. Whether it be the fusing of post-rock and hardcore, the combining of classical opera, metal and rock, or even the now common amalgamation of electronica and post-metal. An intriguing sound is not enough by itself though. No, the good old-fashioned tune is equally important. Hence why bands that perhaps walk the path most trodden, but in an entirely superior way have earned themselves acclaim also.

All I ask of 2009 is for it to go easy on the neo-folk and to please find some way of destroying Cobra Starship, and possibly Bring Me the Horizon, thank you Mr. Ox.

1.) Moving Mountains: Pneuma

Many have argued (weasel word alert) that with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai on the scene: post-rock has perhaps come as far as its formula allows. Thankfully many a band have taken its ethereal basic fundamentals and fuse it with other genres. With their debut album Pneuma, Moving Mountains cornered two markets by concocting the fiendish combination of epic sweeping compositions with the pulsing heart of a punk-hardcore tour-de-force. Instant classic is the result.

2.) Frank Turner: Love, Ire & Song

Nothing is liable to elicit a stronger "grrr argh" than when hardcore/punk musicians pick up an acoustic guitar. After all, how could the man who gave us the lyrics "Willy Wonka was a capitalist confidence trickster/a poster boy for neo-liberalism, a full-stop on revolt." could ever work strumming gently around the campfire. Two albums later and those word are slowly being eroded by stomach acid. Turner's genius is thrown into even sharper focus and the fresh simplicity of his musicianship makes it all the more impressive. Beat that Oberst!

3.) The Cast Before the Break: As Your Shoulders Turn On You

Another band toyed with the concept of grandiose rock earlier this year. Despite being unsigned at the time, The Cast Before the Break gave us the true definition of a concept album, one which carefully built and sustained intensity throughout its tragic tale of human weakness and search for meaning in life and death. Sort of like LOST: the musical, only it's not remotely about LOST, or an island.

4.) Frightened Rabbit: The Midnight Organ Flight

The Highlander film series was based upon Scottish culture wherein only one subject in each field can survive. The Twilight Sad, Glasvegas and Frightened Rabbit are competing for the title of Scotland's premiere musical act this year. While Glasvegas may be winning the sales and the 'looking like a nonce by wearing sunglasses indoors' league: Frightened Rabbit quietly slipped in and stole the best album award.

5.) Islands: Arm's Way

Anyone who's ever witnessed Cradle of Filth in action will know how easy it is to get 'creepy' wrong. With Arm's Way, Islands succeed in making your skin crawl for its entire duration as Nicholas Thorburn recounts his twisted, allegorical tales of death, devastation and despair. Funny how so many despondently dark and dank words begin with the letter 'D'. If only we'd thought of it before Jeff Lindsay did.

6.) Mutyumu: Il y a

Envision yourself standing in a room. At one side of the room The Royal Opera perform Madame Butterfly; at the other end of the room Megadeath are performing; in yet another side, further in the distance, stand 65daysofstatic. Can you imagine the cavalcade of converging musical disparity? Well, now you don't have to, Japan's Mutyumu have already done it for you. A visionary sound and a stealthily infectious epicosity (don't look it up) leaves every other purveyor of metal music in the bitter, tear-stained dust.

7.) The Gaslight Anthem: The '59 Sound

The break-out punk album of the year. The Gaslight Anthem garned kudos from throughout the musical landscape with an album which plunged modern day pop-punk into a time machine, stopping to grab a young Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits along the way. Seriously doubting that "And Sally said, Sally said/Meet me by the River's edge./We're going to wash these sins away./Or else we won't come back again." will ever stop resonating within this tiny little mind.

8.) Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago

2008 became the year of 'where'. Nobody cares anymore who produced it, who guested on it or who wrote it. Now, it's all about the location. Recorded your latest album inside a chasm within Gunung Mulu National Park? Fantastic have a record deal. This trend was all due to Justin Vernon who isolated himself in the woods to provide us with this brooding folk masterpiece.

9.) Genghis Tron: Board Up the House

With the swift-manoeuvring skills of a batpod Genghis Tron (think brutal warlord meets technologically advanced film about motorcycles) can change from crushing metal pounding to rich, textured ambient passages quicker than you can say "maybe you should slow down Henri". Step aside Temüjin, there's a new empire in town.

10.) Portman: From Here To Your Eyes and Ears

British bands taking their cue from across the pond usually have the artistic direction of Phil Collins. Portman, however, funneled explosive and emotive rock through a philosophical lens which belied their influences. During very occasional moments the vocals and production may have let them down (while at other times these same things blasted it into the light) yet always shining through was the complex truths and magnificent choruses.