I didn't put Day and age because frankly, after Sam's town I didn't expect much from them...and I guess they lived up to that expectation.
OH, I knew I forgot something:
Travis - Ode to J.Smith - Contrary to most people, I liked all of their albums up to now. I'm not sure what they were trying to do with this one, maybe disprove anyone who thinks they've gone into a safe period of their career and keep churning out the same, safe, mellow rock. As with most other let downs, I listened to it maybe once or twice and promptly forgot it got released. But because I love them so much, I'm gonna try to give it another shot...
I'm from Barcelona - Who Killed Harry Houdini? - Ok well, I guess it was clear from the start this was a one hit type of thing, but I did listen to Let me introduce my frienRAB quite a bit a few years back, even if it was mostly based on the lead single, which still ranks as the happiest song ever recorded. I deleted Houdini without having finished listening to it...it felt repetitive and kinda annoying. Did
anybody hear it?
Mates of State - Re-Arrange Us - they lost pretty much all of their appeal by getting rid of the organs and glossing up their production. I don't think anyone liked this...I only remerabered it by going through a list of albums published this year, that's how much of an impact it made.
DeVotchKa - A Mad & Faithful Telling - How it enRAB is a beautiful little album, mostly remerabered as the music that made Little miss sunshine the monster hit it was. Unfortunately it seemed to me that the music and vocals are so specific that they can't retain the appeal for more than one album. Another album I remerabered by going through a list of 2008 albums.