2008: Year of the animal

For whatever reason, a lot of music I've been digging this year has had something interesting in common. A bunch of my 2008 highlights revolve around bands with animal-related names. One of my favorite albums released this year would have to be "Fleet Foxes." They backed up the solid album with an impressive appearance at Pitchfork Music Festival in July. (I'm looking forward to seeing these guys at Metro in October -- who's with me?)

Another "animal" moment for me this year also came at Pitchfork. The out-of-this-world performance from Animal Collective is one I'll never forget. And while the band's studio works leave something to be desired with me, Animal Collective has to be one of my most anticipated bands to see live.

This leaves me with my third "animal" highlight of 2008. I've held off writing about this band on claptrapped, waiting to see if their appeal would wear off. If anything, my fascination and appreciation is growing by the day. The band is Wolf Parade. I kept reading about their debut, "Apologies to the Queen Mary," and took a chance and picked it up a couple months ago. I have to say, it's a pretty impressive album. The band features two singer/songwriters that basically alternate every song. But instead of having a disjointed feel, the two songwriters really mesh well together, making for a very enjoyable flow.

After hearing this album , I wanted more, so I picked up their second album, "At Mount Zoomer," which came out in June. This album is darker and probably not as easy to get into. But after some closer listens, the different sound of this album has me very excited about this band.

Dan Boeckner, who plays guitar and is one of the songwriters, had this to say (from Sub Pop's Web site): "After Apologies… we wrote about four or five new songs, but we decided to throw them out because they sounded too much like what we’d already done. We could have easily made another Apologies… but what would have been the point?"

I know my last post involved me totally ripping into a band for changing their sound, but "At Mount Zoomer" is an example of how a change can be a good thing. The band kept a lot of the great elements from "Apologies." The guitars and keys mix seamlessly and simply work very well together. It features the same wide range of vocals. Both singers have distinctive voices, but they never seem to sound the same in any two songs, which makes it feel like there are more than two singers. They took these elements that work and added a twist. A dark twist.

So while it's inevitable that I'll stumble across another animal-related band, I'd have to say Wolf Parade is my favorite discovery of 2008 so far.