mission freak!

Today, we present the first in five consecutive days celebrating our favorite albums released in 2008. This operates less as a definitive top 5 and more as 5 albums that this staff loved personally this year. Next week we’ll be unveiling some of the favorite albums of close friends of ours. We hope you enjoy our retrospective on what was an exciting (and busy) year in music. - Todd

With a live show that is well-known for its on-stage theatrics, I was ready to write off Evangelicals as a band that took themselves too seriously. And while, objectively, this shouldn’t have affected my opinion of their 2008 release, The Evening Descends, it does. I’m petty like that. Luckily, after their fog filled, seizure-inducing show at Mission Creek ’08, I was shown the lighter side of this band. We rounded out the night having a dance party with tourmates Headlights to the likes of ODB and the GZA. In the morning, a visibly hung over lead singer Josh Jones woke up and asked what happened. “The evening just descended on you, Josh,” I said. I apologized for the terrible joke. “No, I actually kinda liked that,” he responded. Any band that can stand my awful humor is alright by me…oh, and did I mention this was my favorite album of the year?

Download: Evangelicals - Bloodstream