(For the next ten days, I’ll be counting down the list of my 20 favorite albums of 2008. Obviously I didn’t hear every album that came out this year–although I did hear quite a lot of them–and obviously personal taste factors into this quite a bit, so I can tell you now that if you’re looking for gospel or metal recommendations this isn’t the list for you*. But let’s not squabble, let’s just appreciate all the nice music that folks are making. I’ll be posting about two albums a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, from now until next Friday.

*Although I’d like it if somebody did make a best metal albums list. I saw some pretty awesome live metal shows this year and I wouldn’t mind broadening my home listening horizons. Or at least loudening them.)

#20.
Hotel, Hotel
The Sad Sea
Silber Recordings

Few sounds in this world are less interesting to me than ones that fly under the banner “post-rock.” And even if I like the sounds of it, I’m usually really put off by something else, like overly complicated CD packaging, a band’s mysterious need to punctuate the middle of their name, or even just pesky reviewers who use the word “soundscapes” to describe a record. (Seriously. Can that word go away? “Soundscape” is as bad as “ringle”, as far as dumb music terminology goes.)

So I should have hated The Sad Sea, an album that just dares you to remove it from its form-fitting cardboard packaging without getting scratches and/or fingerprints all over the damn thing. And to make it worse, Austin five-piece Hotel, Hotel have a comma in the middle of their name. But the sounds on the album–and they’re not soundscapes, reviewers be damned–are really achingly lovely, and completely won me over despite myself.

A concept album about the wreck of a ship called the Mary Celeste, The Sad Sea drones along slowly, with lots of droning, two violinists and no vocals. On opening track “From Harbour” they sound like Low re-writing the theme music for Twin Peaks, and from there the album just gets lovelier. And as the ships slowly slips away in closing track “The Captain Goes Down With the Ship (Drowning),” there’s a sense of gloomy peace that defies cheesiness somehow.

And, honestly, I’m even sorta warming up to their stupid comma.

Listen! Hotel, Hotel, From Harbour

Tags: albums of the year, hotel hotel

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