Bruce's Best of 2008: Honourable Mentions

All in all, a pretty satisfying year for new music. So satisfying in fact, that I felt the need to shout out (in no particular order) some discs that didn't quite nudge their way into my Top Ten, yet still found their way onto the speakers with pleasing regularity.

Gang Gang Dance, "Saint Dymphna"
Never has the schism between the dancefloor and the indie snob's bedroom disc seemed so tantalizingly thin, and yet so tragically apparent. In a perfect world we'd all be dancing to this on Friday night and drinking martinis named after different species of whales. I get the sense that this is the sort of album Bjork wanted "Volta" to be, and maybe if it had been, I'd still be listening to it.

Nine Inch Nails, "The Slip"
After two consecutive LPs of getting his guitar-rock ya-yas out, I was initially wondering if the new, fitter, happier, more productive Trent 2.0 had permanently abandoned his softer side. "Ghosts" quickly put the lie to that, but I couldn't conceive of it as a cohesive single album as such (and hey, neither could Trent, given the need to divide it into quasi-EPs). The seemingly off-the-cuff, "what, another album?" delivery of "The Slip" showed that we could have our cake and eat it, too: an A-side of straight-forward rockers, and a B-side of moody synth-driven pieces. Reznor's Bowie worship continues unabated as he delivers his own take on the structure of "Low", and while it ain't up to that standard, "The Slip" kept the now-furiously productive NIN machine on a steady roll.

GZA, "Pro Tools"
One could argue that a Fiddy diss by an elder statesman like the GZA was both cheap and a grab for attention, but anything that brought extra attention to this solid number was fine by me. It's great to have a disc where the Genius isn't in danger of being eclipsed by his more flamboyant Wu brothers. Even though he's not fighting tooth and limb to stay above the waves of cinematic beats that Muggs threw at him for 2005's "Grandmasters" collab, that's a bit of a plus on "Pro Tools": the spotlight's all on the GZA, and he keeps it both relaxed and masterful.

Boris, "Smile"
Everyone's favourite "Yeah, but have you seen them live? So fuckin' loud, man!" band applied some shoegazey gloss to their two formulas (that would be "depresso-crescendo" and "garage-spazz" for those just catching up) this time out. Hell, they even tried to pen a power ballad in "You Were Holding An Umbrella", but ended up composing something that earns its emotive response honestly. I steered clear of the whole multiple mixes/tracklists debacle, so no comment on that.

Bloc Party, "Intimacy"
I never understood the hype, and in some ways I still don't, but I like this. I'm sure some of their core fanbase are upset at the overproduction, but it's about time that some of these post-punk revival kids realised that their predecessors didn't flee from the mixing desk in terror. The remix disc of an LP which never existed.

Bison, "Quiet Earth"
Fuck, this is heavy. And happening right in my backyard! Hide the good china. Stoner metal's never sounded so fresh. Or so much like thrash, for that matter. The perfect antidote to BC's Wolf Parade/Black Mountain rep.

Earth, "The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull"
On the flip side, drone metal never sounded so stoned. Their Cormac McCarthy obsession continues unabated, but here they're looking not so much out the window at barren plains, but rather at the inner landscape While Thinking Very Deeply about the munchies. To quote Benjamin, "Hunger as an oblique axis cutting through the system of the trance."

Ladytron, "Velocifero"
While there's no clear club smash like "Everything You Touch" or "Sugar" to be found, they've admirably maintained the compositional standard they achieved with "Witching Hour", which pushed them so far ahead the rest of the pack desperately trying to flee from the dread shadow of electroclash. "Black Cat" drops serious bass while "Runaway" is smooth n' cute, but the whole affair's slicked with a sheen of glistening black.

Dr. Dooom, "Dr. Dooom 2"
"They wanna sue me! Why? Cuz I'm Doc Dooomy!" Oh, Keith. You so krazy. If there was one thing 2008 was missing before this dropped, it was a Simon Cowell diss track. The slap-happy horrorcore of "Run For Your Life" was the aural equivalent of the Hilarious House of Frightenstein, and KurtMasta Kurt's production is solid from back to front.

Wire, "Object 47"
A pleasant mix of "The Ideal Copy" era overdrive and the dada-pop of the recent Colin Newman fronted Githead side-project. Lead-off track "One Of Us" is both a "Map Ref" quality sing-along and a bitter riposte to now ex-guitarist Bruce Gilbert. I'm still quite peeved about the cancellation of the Vancouver gig, BTW.