2008 Albums You Should Hear Wrap-up + One To Watch in 2009

So, first of all; profound apologies that it's fucking half way through January and I'm still catching up on my year-end stuff. New to blogging, didn't realize how long it would take to write (semi-)serious album reviews/underestimated my own lazyness, exams, excuses excuses, etc. Anyways, I'm all done, and since I didn't really offer any explanation at the outset, figure I should probably see to that now. Basically; I just wanted to turn people on to a few of my favourite albums from the past year, some of which happened to receive not a lot of attention from the general music-listening/blog-reading public. I enjoy reading other people's year-end lists, but I know I'm not capable of objectively ranking music that truly matters to me, hence the unranked, two-paragraph, two-mp3 format of the posts. Hopefully you've discovered something you like; that's really what this blog is largely about (actually I'm lying, it's largely about me working out my personal issues by whining to a crowd of internet strangers). Anyways, with that in mind (the discovering-new-music-you-love thing, not the personal-issues/whining thing. Actually, just forget I ever said that.), here's a band that's been dominating my listening habits since I picked up their album on the 4th of this month, and I'm sure will continue to due so for a very long time indeed.



The only reason I listened to An Horse was because they were touring with Tegan & Sara. Although, initially, that alone wasn't enough to pique my interest. Even Sara's glowing MySpace blog about them here, which you'd think would have been enough to convince a rabbid T&S fan like myself to give 'em a go, failed to do so due to the fact that I'm a total fucking idiot. So instead of taking advantage of the Interwebs and spending the two seconds at myspace.com/anhorse that it would have required for me to realize I was in love back in October, I waited until the beginning of January, when all my year-end list recommendations had run dry and I figured, Alright, fine, it's not like I have anything better to do, I guess I'll go listen to some An Horse.

SO DAMN GOOD.

That's seriously all I could think. (In fact, proof of my speechlessness can be found right here.) Following the initial rush of spinning all the songs on their myspace several (hundred) times, I started asking the important questions; namely, do they have any more music, and how might I purchase it? Why, as a matter of fact, they did have an album. It was called Rearrange Beds and was currently available on iTunes, with physical release in their native Australia in January and the rest of the world in March (on the 17th). After nearly two seconds of deliberation, I did something I almost never do and bought the whole album on iTunes. SO GOOD. I think you get that by now. But listening to it every night in my bedroom alone wasn't enough: I had to make sure as many people heard this band as possible, and make sure no one else fell into my (seriously, it's patented) deadly pitfall of equal parts ignorance and apathy. Hence, this post. Yes, it's not the greatest piece of journalism ever conceived, but at least I gave you an mp3! Anyways, to quote Sara's blog post, which put it excellently:

"i rarely, and with much less fever, promote/pimp what sends my heart racing but i feel compelled to drive the masses towards this band. if i was a teenager i would buy a poster and put it over my bed. but im just a nerdy late twenty-something and find it more appropriate to just carry a photo of damon and kate in my wallet. respectable. i adore them. please go see them. and tell your friends. also, their new album is available on itunes. it is SO good. please buy it."

So, in short; Kate Cooper and Damon Cox rock. An Horse roxxorz my soxxorz. You should all go stream some tunes at theirspace and maybe buy the album at iTunes. Or, if you happen to live in Australia, pick up a CD here and check tour dates here. Aaaaand here's two mp3s (the one I posted before and another one), enjoy.

An Horse - Camp Out (zShare)
An Horse - Scared As F**k (zShare)

(I seriously had an impossible time choosing which two songs to post, they're all equally amazing.)

An Horse on MySpace / Buy (Australia)* / iTunes

*Cheap international shipping, though.