Songs 2008

Photo by Matthew Nistor.

Mp3 blogs are mostly an indie-rock medium. This is an mp3 blog, and yet, indie rock has never left me more cold than it does now. I spent time this year with probably 75% of the records listed on Pitchfork's year-end Top 50. It felt dutiful, like being in a relationship where you're trying to talk yourself into being in love. To indie rock, I say this: it's not you, it's me. I've changed, I guess. I now only need three things from music: songs, soul and good beats. What I no longer need are obtuse lyrics, affected anger or fashionable disconnect.

So what I use this blog for is more of a celebration of what moves me than just another series of blips on our increasingly ticker-fed radars. The emphasis is on my own personal connection, and not the fact that I got there first. And though the handful of readers I do have is a form of pressure to post in a relatively timely manner, I try not to pro-rate the quality of a track just to get something fresh in your RSS feed.

I said all that to say that making a year-end-best list makes even less sense on this blog than it does elsewhere. Although I do seek out and try to celebrate new music, I'm usually late to the party anyway and couldn't give a shit if it's trendsetting or not. But I do find it exciting and surprising to look back on 2008, a year in music culture that I think of as celebrating cold, dated or obnoxious sounds, and see how many things came out that made my soul (and/or ass) quiver.

I am all for the fact that music is moving back to a singles format, and so I wasn't disappointed to find that 2008 was not a good year for albums. (If you are the type that still enjoys owning the physical artifact of your favorite records, browsing the artwork, displaying it in your home like a stuffed boar's head - then I'd say the records to have are: Al Green Lay It Down; Joan as Policewoman To Survive; The Walkmen You and Me; NOMO Space Rock; Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It; Kardinal Offishall Not 4 Sale; Black Milk Tronic; and - if you could only buy one - Jamie Lidell Jim.) But if you're like me, and only have a thirst for concentrate, here, for your consideration, are 15 songs that made my year. Songs that never seemed to wear out their welcome.

Al Green "Lay it Down"

The miracle. Or sign of musical end times. Or both. A furious God casts judgment on a soulless urban music culture by sending his messenger Al Green - resurrected prophet, his flesh, face and dexterous voice still youthfully in tact - back to earth to show the motherfuckers how it's done. Nobody could have predicted it, or that it would sound so vital. Compared to elder Green, the state of youth seems dire.




Gnarls Barkley "Who's Gonna Save My Soul"

Al Green's record could make me despair that soul singing is a dead form. Cee-Lo's performance on this track is the best proof that the end is not yet nigh.



Portishead "The Rip"

When I first zeroed in on this track, it was as much about Portishead's strange, clunky neo-krautrock production, and the hypnotic casio keyboard riff. Then I heard it out of context, when Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood showed up on YouTube covering it with acoustic guitars. I saw the timeless Kate Bush-ness in it then. Beth Gibbons has a strange sense of melody. I'm convinced that she writes more conventional tunes, keeps them secret in her head, and then sings harmonies to them on the record.



The Reflecting Skin "Cavedweller"
I sometimes daydream video concepts when listening to my favorite music. The one for Cavedweller involves some lonely guy at a party. He sits in the same armchair all night long, ignored, while the party rages around him. Then in synch with the pummeling, distorted climax of the piece, his head shoots back, his mouth snaps open, and he suddenly vomits hideous light out of his mouth, eyes, nose and ears while the house is shaken to its foundations.



Santogold "L.E.S. Artistes (XXXChange remix)"

Sometimes the remix is better.



Jamie Lidell "Little Bit of Feelgood (Mondkopf Remix)"

Sometimes the remix has absolutely nothing to do with the source material. And is better.



Jim Noir "On a Different Shelf"

Fugue-like synth noodling gives way to distorted classic rock and vocal rounds about finding inspiration and getting unstuck. Glorious all over the place.



Jonny Greenwood "Prospectors Arrive"

Jonny Greenwood began his foray into absolute music with the score for Bodysong, a wordless documentary with the modest goal of representing the entire human experience - from bloody birth to muddy death - in pictures. His music lived up to the task. It was actually that primordial and base. Greenwood understands the way that orchestral instruments are tools of vibration, and that, when wielded with the right combination of coloring and harmonic perversity, they can strike a frequency so heavy and ancient it predates good and evil.



John Legend "I Love, You Love"

Legend is almost too smooth for his own good. But if you strip the production down enough, say, to just 909 kick drums and Dire Straits guitar swaths, his flavor of over-pretty can really work.



Jamie Lidell "Another Day"

The first video they shot for this was bananas - (somebody help me find this! They've purged it from the web) just Lidell in some toddler's bedroom, playing with puppets and exuding joy. It was a perfect way to communicate why Lidell's retro experiment is more relevant now than it should be. Happiness is always in style, as long as you can dance to it.



Kleerup "Thank You For Nothing"

Hits all the right '80s notes with all the right sincerity.



Q-Tip "Move"

J Dilla will never die. Here his production lends an ass kicking to the most urgent hip hop track of the year.



Raphael Saadiq "Sometimes"

Personally, my song of the year. Wore this one out, up and down. As soon as that filtered organ loop crackles in at the intro, the goosebumps just erupt. I can't explain it.



Black Milk "Bond 4 Life"

With no disrespet to Flying Lotus, he is not the successor to Dilla. Black Milk is.



Fennesz "Glide"

[Untranslatable]