Drowned in Sound's Top 50 Albums of 2008

Vampire Weekend take their Ivy League education, their New Jersey upbringing, and turn it outward – arms open, hurling themselves across the freshly cut college grass, shirts creasing under the afternoon sun.

Glass’s voice, too, is the same that’s been luring lusty seamen onto the rocks for millennia, but the way it and the drums are textured – so that the machines they’re passed through sound like they’re melting away – brings Crystal Castles to the outer edges of greatness.

Although comprising only nine songs spread over less than forty minutes, For Emma, Forever Ago is one of the most captivating collections these ears have heard for some time. 

Both ancient and futuristic, a mildewed signal from a more advanced culture that failed to survive the ice age, Third doesn’t make you pay attention to its desolate contours, but rather stare out of the window, creeping panic causing your mind to dart in a million dark directions at once.