Downloaded a crazy amount of albums from various 2008 top lists here, good thing there's a freeleech on waffles.fm right now.
As usual, djmartian has a ton of links. I'm afraid to even visit him – way too much info, you could drown. But I primarily downloaded the top tens from Pitchfork, The wire and for variety - the top spots from the best of 2008 community. By the looks of it, all sorts of musical LJ-heavyweights cooled off to the idea of such a community a long time ago, and now it lives on mostly through the efforts of adehopt.