Top albums of 2008 (so far)

I've been listening to some great new albums lately and my ears are burning enough that I feel it's time to share.

At this very moment, the album that has taken up full residence in my brain and refuses to let go is "Flight of the Knife," the new disc from Bryan Scary & the Shredding Tears. Some of you may recall Bryan Scary from last year's brilliant debut, and incredibly he's managed to outdo himself on this sophomore effort. It's almost impossible to describe everything that's going on here, as Scary literally runs the gamut through seemingly every possible musical genre imaginable - pop, rock, '50s doo-wop, glam, orchestral baroque pop, vaudeville, carnival whimsy, chamber pop, prog, post-punk, and probably several other genres that I can't think of right now - and somehow seamlessly melds everything together in an utterly brilliant hook-drenched pastiche of a concept record. Seriously, every single song tosses off about 8,000 hooks, and you could listen to each track several times and still catch new hooks that will quickly lodge themselves into your brain each time. The story has something to do with spacecrafts and other assorted flying vehicles, but as always for me, the lyrical content is secondary to the outstanding songwriting and musicianship. Scary manages to evoke the Beatles, Queen and Bowie to name a few points of reference, and as far as more recent bands, there's some Chris Brown (my #2 record of '07), Jackdaw4, a ton of Jellyfish and traces of just about every good power pop band I've ever name-checked. Even though we're only in April, it's going to take an absolute monster to surpass this album as #1 record of 2008. On a random side note, apparently the band has a big fan in Perez Hilton of all people, so perhaps for once one of my extremely underground bands will actually pick up some mainstream appeal.

The Crayons: What's Wrong With You - "What's Wrong With You" is just a solid album of mostly mid-tempo power-pop, with great vocals and arrangements. Reminds me of the Tories in parts, and the Rosenbergs elsewhere. It starts off strongly, and then it surprisingly actually gets even better in the middle of the record (an area where, as we all know, a lot of records tend to sag), highlighted by the 1-2-3 punch of "Well," "Maybe" and "By the Way." Seriously, try to get "By the Way" out of your head, what with that little guitar lick throughout and then the sweet-ass lyrical shift and minor chord in the coda - that's great stuff.

Panic at the Disco: Pretty.Odd. - This is definitely the surprise of the year so far. If the Beatles were still recording albums in 2008, this might be a reasonable approximation of what they would sound like. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on here, between acoustic guitars, horns, string sections and creative arrangements. Panic has pretty much shed its entire emo sound but maintained its inherent catchiness, and the result is song after song of melodic goodness. This album's also been pretty well-received critically, but I'm not sure what the fan reaction has been so it'll be interesting to see if they keep up with this new, more mature pop sound, or feel forced to go back to what made them stars in the first place. Obviously the former would be ideal, as they've really taken a giant leap forward between their first two albums. A lot of bands fall back into pigeonholing themselves after releasing a successful debut album, so to really shift gears stylistically and come out sounding even better is truly impressive.

Previously: Top ten albums of 2007 (so far) [5.10.07]