2008 No Depression Readers Poll
Posted: February 3, 2009 6:31 pm
It's unanimous, at least among NoDepression.com's critics and readers: Alejandro Escovedo's Real Animal was the best album of 2008.
Many of you responded to the early-January posting of our annual ND Critics Poll by saying you were interested in having us continue the Readers Poll equivalent that we'd tried out for the first time last year. We complied, you participated, and the resulting rankings are below.
Not only did our readers and critics both put Escovedo's album at the top of their respective lists, they were also in agreement about #2, Hayes Carll's Trouble In Mind, and #3, Drive-By Truckers' Brighter Than Creation's Dark. After that, things diverged a bit, although there were two other records (Lucinda Williams' Little Honey and Kathleen Edwards' Asking For Flowers) that also appeared in the both top-10s.
A couple of prominent divergences: Both Ben Sollee's Learning To Bend and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! made the critics' top-10 but failed to place in the readers' top-40. By contrast, Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson's Rattlin' Bones and James McMurtry's Just Us Kids made the readers' top-10 but failed to crack the critics' top-40.
In cases where we've posted a review of an album to NoDepression.com, we've linked to that review in the list below. Without further ado, here's the list:
http://www.nodepression.com/articles.aspx?id=5260
Many of you responded to the early-January posting of our annual ND Critics Poll by saying you were interested in having us continue the Readers Poll equivalent that we'd tried out for the first time last year. We complied, you participated, and the resulting rankings are below.
Not only did our readers and critics both put Escovedo's album at the top of their respective lists, they were also in agreement about #2, Hayes Carll's Trouble In Mind, and #3, Drive-By Truckers' Brighter Than Creation's Dark. After that, things diverged a bit, although there were two other records (Lucinda Williams' Little Honey and Kathleen Edwards' Asking For Flowers) that also appeared in the both top-10s.
A couple of prominent divergences: Both Ben Sollee's Learning To Bend and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! made the critics' top-10 but failed to place in the readers' top-40. By contrast, Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson's Rattlin' Bones and James McMurtry's Just Us Kids made the readers' top-10 but failed to crack the critics' top-40.
In cases where we've posted a review of an album to NoDepression.com, we've linked to that review in the list below. Without further ado, here's the list:
http://www.nodepression.com/articles.aspx?id=5260