Last week, The Quietus published the first part of our albums countdown, which you can read here. Today, we count down the last fourteen and finally reveal the album that we have pulled out of our pert derrières and deemed to be the ‘best’ of the year.
Of course, this is entirely meaningless – with music fragmenting more than ever before, putting wildly different records against each other is a bit like giving a salty Cornish yarg (official cheese of the Quietus) props over a stinking stilton. Not chalk and cheese – all music, after all, emerges from the same hamper – but nigh-on impossible to rationally contrast and organise into a convenient, record store-friendly hit parade.
Which is why the Quietus’ end of year list is made up of those records that, by our estimation, have made us the most tumescent over the last twelve months. It is entirely undemocratic – the curse of the end of year poll when run on the principles of universal suffrage is that all the interesting records drop to the bottom as the bland-but-ought-to-be-there stuff floats to the top, buoyed by the odd vote here and there.
Instead, the Quietus banished the baying mob of Bon Iver fans [are Bon Iver fans capable of baying? – ED] and locked ourselves in an ivory tower, fortified by Rough Trade coffee to spend, er, all of five minutes conjuring up our list. Just click upon the aesthetically pleasing but also entirely redundant comparison chart of Finnish lighthouses to see what we came up with:
Click the image below for the Quietus’ top 14 albums of 2008
