2008 - songs

I didn't get out a lot this year. Or, maybe I got out too much, I dunno. The point is, I didn't get to hear a whole lot of new music this year. So instead of making a really long year-end list, I'm going to try to keep it relatively short. I'll start with my ten favorite songs of the year.



10 - Okkervil River, "Lost Coastlines" from The Stand Ins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKmZRO8XzyY (video)

I didn't get a whole lot of time with this album, in fact, I've really only had it for about a week. But that was more than enough time for me to fall in love with the album's first real song and first single. It's got that driving beat and wonderful happy-but-wistful kind of sound that should put it at over the ending credits of a teen movie. You know what I mean. Also, while lacking the strained emotion that makes me love Will Sheff's voice so much, Jonathan Meiburg's voice here is pretty great. Maybe I should go check out Shearwater.



9 - The Hold Steady, "Lord, I'm Discouraged" from Stay Positive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMrCIUUtWHU (song, low-quality)

My favorite song from Boys and Girls in America eventually ended up being "First Night." As good as Craig Finn is at shouting as many words as he possibly can in as little time as possible, he's proved now on several different occasions that he can also write himself a really killer ballad. This song not only contains one of the very best lines/couplets of the year (that which closes the song), it also just happens to have the best guitar solo.



8 - She & Him, "This Is Not a Test" from She & Him, Volume One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzB8Qs2sI3o (live)

This is my favorite song from Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward's album, which is very, very good, but not quite in my top five albums. So here's my chance to talk about it: it's very sweet, simple pop music that manages to feel very old and very contemporary at the same time. Zooey's voice is fantastic, and even occasionally overpowers the songs themselves, but that definitely isn't a problem with this song. This wasn't the album's single (that was "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"), but I think it should have been.



7 - Portishead, "Deep Water" from Third

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwrgzdJGexA (song)

It's going to be hard for me to talk about this song apart from the album, or at least hard to not repeat myself when I talk about the album later. It just happens that when I look at my playcounts for this year, I listened to "Deep Water" way more than any other song on Third. It is absolutely minimal, just Beth and a ukelele and eventually some vocal backup, but its power is undeniable. Actually, I'm just going to stop now so I have more to write about with the album.



6 - The Gaslight Anthem, "The '59 Sound" from The '59 Sound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxTmgUx2TOE (video)

This is the single and title track from the Gaslight Anthem's really good and almost excellent The '59 Sound, whose main flaw is that the rest of the album just isn't as good as this song. When everyone says this band "sounds like Bruce Springsteen in a punk band," they aren't lying, nor are they trying to insult them. That's a compliment. This song expertly captures that thing that the Boss always did so well (maybe he still does, I wouldn't really know, I haven't heard a Springsteen album from this decade), that feeling of confused and rebellious optimism. The song is sad, yes, but it's not sad in a mopey or depressing way. The best Springsteen songs aren't personal, they're universal, and this is a great tribute to that idea.



5 - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, "For Every Field There's a Mole" from Lie Down In the Light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O2aH4XLbto (okay, sorry, I can't find it, but everyone should be familiar with this anyway)

Best clarinet solo of 2008. This is also my way to honor this album, which is really completely wonderful but for some reason I just didn't listen to it enough this year. This song, though, man, this is a good song. Wasn't that a great review? Really though, Will Oldham is a fantastic songwriter, and after continually proving that he could write some of the darkest and most haunting songs ever, he goes and writes this album of light and, dare I say (yes I do) sweet music that is wonderfully uplifting. The harmonies in the last third of this song are pretty much amazing.



4 - Death Cab For Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart" from Narrow Stairs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-yP7mb8UE (video)

You can say a lot of things about Death Cab and about Ben Gibbard specifically, and you may or may not be right, but you have to give them at least a little bit of credit for having it in them to showcase and market their new album with an eight-and-a-half minute single. I loved "I Will Possess Your Heart" the first time I heard it, I loved it when I heard it on the radio, and I love it now. Well, less so on the radio, because it's shorter. But I've come a long way from the days when I used to get bored when a song would hit the three-minute mark. There are three specific moments in the song that I love (0:21, the first couple times through bass line; 4:40, when everything else cuts out for Ben's first lines; and the three beats that kick the drums back in at 7:21), but without the very slow build and the patience it demands, those moments mean nothing.



3 - The Hold Steady, "Constructive Summer" from Stay Positive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=019ax9vm_kk (song, low-quality)

It shouldn't really come as a surprise that my favorite band would get two spots on this list, but here it is. This is the opening track from Stay Positive, a song that very easily summarizes everything that makes the band great. As with the rest of the album, Finn is a little more subdued than on other albums, but his passion is still definitely there, and his way with words is just as sharp as ever. Wheras "Lord, I'm Discouraged" gets the best ending line, "Constructive Summer" gets the best opener.



2 - Vampire Weekend, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" from Vampire Weekend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wHl9qRsMzw (video)

Sometime around February or something like that, Vampire Weekend completely exploded. I'm not sure how it happened, but I certainly know why: "A-Punk" and "Oxford Comma" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" are pretty damn catchy. This is the best of the three, in my opinion, and I've been listening to it all year. The album is good, but not great, as it completely dies off after the first half, and I could get into one of those weird arguments about the problem with America falling in love with an Afro-beat band comprised of rich white kids, but none of those things change the fact that this song is really great. I'm also not going to comment on the fact that this song has been around for over a year and was actually on one or two best of 2007 lists; the single came out on August 18, 2008, and I'm sticking with that.



1 - Bon Iver, "Skinny Love" from For Emma, Forever Ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_1E6s7mQxA (fan video about Jim and Pam, apparently by someone who doesn't listen to lyrics)

Speaking of release date arguments I'm ignoring, "Skinny Love" is my number one song of the year. For Emma, Forever Ago is going on a bunch of year-end lists that I'm seeing, so I guess we can just assume that everyone's going with the album's wide release instead of its independent release last year. That's fine with me, since it doesn't really matter to me what year this song comes from, there isn't a better one in either of them. This song is beautiful, heartbreaking, and powerful. It's simple and stripped down, so much so that I can't really say all that much about it other than how much I love it. Here's a final compliment: the album isn't on my best-of list, because I honestly just don't listen to the rest of it. There's no point. I've tried. I just hit this thrird song, and that's enough. Maybe one day I'll try to get past it.