McClow's Review of 2008 - And Record of the Year

In the holiday chasm that is the time between Christmas and New Year DetritusTV thought the relative calm of this period would be the perfect time for reflection and to share with you all our review of the year.

DetritusTV was gestated in July of 2008 and like a neotenous offspring we clambered and crawled our way around the darkly lit and barely digitised corners of the blogosphere. Thanks to regular updates and bouyant viewing figures DetritusTV has made it this far and passes into 2009 with completly unrealistic expectations as to what it will achieve.

If you have time we'd like to meander on a bit about music we liked in 08. This year witnessed one of the fiercest agrarian pop wars in recent memory as Midlake and Fleet Foxes fought it out with choruses of stoneworkers and greenery and while The Foxes won in terms of popularity DetritusTV thinks in the end Midlake will be known as the artistic victors for making the record with the unwieldy title of The Trials of Van Occupanther. Another artist namely Goldfrapp released an album with a pastoral theme and with its elegiac tone it ensured the band drifted from the mainstream, still a great album though. Releases by No Age and White Denim were pleasingly scuffed and rollicking and White Denim had one of the catchiest singles with Let's Talk About It. The Chromatics had the best record that you couldn't buy in a store and Alias's Resurgam was quality as was Katie Kim's Twelve. In terms of electronic music DetritusTV enjoyed the Shed album entitled Shedding the Past but would with no hesitation name Black Dog's Radio Scarecrow as the best record of 2008. One half of DetritusTV can say that it realigned the parameters of electronic music and what it can achieve and yet remained entirely listenable and enjoyable.

Micah P Hinson released an album but not much notice seems to have been taken as everyone was listening to Bon Iver's great songs that were actually written by his log cabin.

McClow