[Note: This is the first in a series of articles that constitute Village Voice Media's year-end music package. The others - pop, indie-rock, dance mixes, Latin, country, alt-country/Americana, metal, rap/hip-hop and special graphics breaking down the year in charts and 2008's worst lyrics - will be posted on Rocks Off throughout the rest of the holiday season.]
It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.
BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco e
Aftermath thinks the thing he likes the most about new bands is the sheer lack of pretense and ego. We love it when bands do sound check five minutes before they play to two dozen friends upstairs at a bar, with no setlist to be seen. Only armed with the songs they've been fine-tuning for months, setting them just so like a painting on a wall.
We are upstairs at Boondocks for what will be only Hungry Villagers' third show, after spending close to half a year in a studio behind Ikea of
Strangeways, here they come: Rocks Off has learned that former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has requested passes for his ex-bandmate Morrissey's sold-out April 11 show at Jones Hall, leading to speculation that the two will perform onstage together for the first time since the influential Manchester band's acrimonious 1987 split.
"Johnny's manager emailed us Monday asking for tickets and backstage passes," a source close to the show's promoter told Rocks Off Wednesday. She asked not to be i
www.myspace.com/thefactorypartymusic​
It always amazes Rocks Off how we'll start liking one band - Bunnymen-loving London post-punks White Lies, in this case - and then a little while later, stumble across a local band who could be their twin. If only, you know, they weren't from halfway around the world.
That's what happened with Houston's The Factory Party. Just as we were ending our extended honeymoon with White Lies, which lasted from a week or two before Austin City Limits to the trio's d
