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Citizen James is away on important business. We can’t tell you much, as it’s kind of top-secret, but, suffice it to say, they don’t have the internet in the deepest, darkest reaches of the Canadian wilderness. We did, however, want to give you a peek into the mind of citizendick’s third leg and have included his picks for the song list below. We’re without snappy commentary on these, as they’re his babies and we didn’t want to put words in his mouth; hopefully you’ll still get the drift (we did opt for a few videos, just to keep your attention).
- “Nothing to Lose” - Jason Collett
- “Working Poor” – Horse Feathers
- “Lady Luck” – Richard Swift
- “Old, White, Lincoln” – Gaslight Anthem
- “Modern Dislocation” – Crooked Fingers
- “What’s it All About” – Girl Talk
- “These Stones Will Shout” – The Raconteurs
Thus ends the epic journey that was our 2008 song list. We’ll do it again in 358 days. Set your clocks.
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Today’s installment of our “Best Songs of 2008″ compilation is lyrically bent and steeped with melody. As a fan of distortion, I struggle a bit with the Iron and Wines of the world. I get bored. Breathy vocalists don’t do it for me. Instead, I envision a MTV Celebrity deathmatch pitting James Taylor versus Grace Slick. In the first round, James Taylor croons a ditty that makes panties drop. However, what he doesn’t see is Gracie standing behind him ready to belt out a crisp, window rattling howl that crumbles his dreadnought into pieces. Slick wins. Game over.
I like singer / songwriter stuff, and I can identify with how these cold winter months lend themselves nicely to the slower, foggy music. But when I find the rare mixture of lyricism, arrangement, and edginess, I consider it perfection. These songs are all based in largeness, lyricism and songwriting with edgy attitude and brilliant instrumental arrangement. 3 of the 5 were no secrets this year. On a ton of year-end lists, and for good reason. Do yourself the favor of picking them up for your collection.
- “The Hollows” – Why? (There seems to be two types of indie fans. Ones that hate Why? and ones that love them. The stream of conscious lyrical assault of the album works for a wily English teacher like me. Yoni Wolf has finally fused the rap / pop / alt / thing perfectly with Alopecia. “The Hollows” is the badass track amid a lot of other tough guys on the album.)
- “Lost Coastlines” – Okkervil River (Does it get any better than this? I’ve been perplexed for two years about how Okkervil River is not a hugely famous rock band. Will Sheff is a lyrical genius and the inadvertent attitude his delivery creates is brilliant. This banjo plucking journey is one of the best songs of 2008 because of, well, all its pieces.)
- “Nothing Ever Happened” – Deerhunter. (The last three minutes of this song is one of the best three minutes of 2008 music. If you’re not entranced by the sonic jam session that closes out this track, then you accidentally turned on the wrong tune.)
- “Centralia” – The Story Of (The keyboard and guitar sandwich of this song is ear candy, and the harmonies and vocal arrangement leave this track echoing in your brain long after its through. This band is all about tone. Call it alt/rock, call it pop, call it what you will. It has rarely left my side since the album’s release.)
- “White Winter Hymnal” – Fleet Foxes (This song is about as non-chalantly intense as any song I heard in 2008. Does that make sense? I know it does to somebody out there.)
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Kevin has a bit more organizational prowess than I do. His list has a theme, a unifying principle of sorts. Mine does not. Below are five more songs from 2008 that I loved listening to. They don’t make a lot of sense next to each other, but I can vouch for the quality of all of them.
- “Fame and Fortune” – Mission of Burma (This is a re-issue. We know this. We understand that it could have been on our best songs of the year list in 1981. We did not have a blog in 1981, however. The song is perfect and the re-issue includes some songs that were not on the original release; track down both.)
- “Drains” – Megafaun (My love for Megafaun is no secret. “Drains,” while maybe a bit more direct and accessible than the rest of Bury the Square, is the track I return to the most often. There’s a dreamlike quality to “Drains” that is very appealing and that I don’t hear a lot of on the rest of the record.)
- “Target Heart” – Blue Giant (Straight ahead country music, which is a good thing.)
- “Welfare Bread” – King Khan & the Shrines (I told you at the top that it was kind of a disparate list, right? That’s how I roll, country music and straight ahead soul sharing space on the page. I love the horns, I love the vocals.)
- “1000 Times” – Blood Red Dancers (We’ll be revisiting the “Let Him Fight; I’ll Be in the Breadline” EP a bit later in the month. It’s a gem and this is one of the standout tracks. It’s not often that a harmonica sounds like a herald of the apocalypse, but it does here. The literary flourishes on “100o Times” are all over the rest of the EP. There are times when it sounds like David Yow reading from Blood Meridian. That is my cup of tea.)
We’re approaching the end of our 2008 songs list. You can expect five or so more songs tomorrow and, perhaps, on Wednesday. Following that, we’re into new material for everyone. I’m atingle with expectation.
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I like it when I see baby dolls get run over in the street. I like tattoos, and when girls fight. As my colleague James once said, “I like music that makes me a worse person, but in a good way.” I like my guitars tuned down a half step, and when singers go after it vocally. Since music, after all, is a convergence of artist and listener baggage, attitude is crucial. I was weaned on 80′s hair metal, Adam Curry, Headbangers Ball, and all my dad’s old LP’s. As much as I try to be an indie rock-snob, I can’t escape my past. I suppose it’s tragic irony that I now co-run a blog site all about a wide variety of musical styles, forms, and mediums, and while I appreciate and will gladly latch onto many other genre, I’ll never ignore the importance of the blues, stack amps, and les pauls. It’s ingrained.
So this 6-song installment from citizendick’s Best Songs of 2008 is hinged upon that premise. I liked these songs because of who I am. They sang to me again and again throughout the year. When James and I found this broken doll lying on a dirty street in the south side of Cleveland a couple weeks ago, I envisioned this blog post. It’s time to crack skulls. A couple of these bands are psuedo-mainstream. Doesn’t matter. These songs are brooding and delicate. Stomping and sincere. Ghastly and protecting.
- “Queens Will Play” by Black Mountain (Stomping, visceral, psychedelic, epic. I could make a list of adjectives to describe how great this song is.)
- “The Crippled Jazzer” by Marnie Stern (This entire album is an odyssey, but this track stands out as unique. The central riff punches you in the face, and goes nicely with Marnie’s high-pitched voice and intensity. I’m thinking this is the direction her third effort will go.)
- “Baltimore Blues No. 1″ by Deer Tick (Although this technically came out at the end of 2007, it was re-released this year. Bluesy, echoing guitar fills are right up my alley. Get the whole album.)
- “Waves of Rye” by The Department of Eagles (My colleagues laughed at me when I brought up the obvious Salinger allusion here. This song is emotional, metaphoric, and dissonant in the most pleasant way. The Grizzly Bear side project fires up all cylinders here.)
- “Strange Times” by The Black Keys (My hometown boys, The Black Keys, do their thing so well. If it ain’t broke, why try to fix it. I still love the Thickfreakness days, but “Strange Times” could have come straight from that album and have been its best track.
- “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin” by Those Darlins (I like tattoos. I like country with an attitude. I like women. I like catchy songs. I loved punk when it was cool. Yeah. Sign me up. I couldn’t turn this off in 08.)
I also can’t forget to give a shout out to the three folks in Guam that checked our page on January 3rd. I’d also like to tell our one loyal reader in Peru that we see you down there. Don’t think for one second we didn’t notice…..
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We’re switching it up a bit on you for the next five tracks we loved from 2008. The first five all came from albums we did not hit in our notable 2008 records list. Today, we present our favorite tracks from some of those notable records. There were some disagreements in the citizendick offices on these picks and we’d like to emphasize that all of these albums come with our seal of approval. Listen to them all the way through, but enjoy these standouts in particular. In the meantime, I’ll be putting a bag of frozen peas on my left eye (I was pulling for “Shake, Shake, Shake.” Kevin punched me in the face. We went with “Sitting.”)
(editor’s note: I started with parentheticals on the first song post. I’m not sure that they make sense here, as it appears that I’ve a bit more to say on these songs, but I’m sticking with it. Consistency is the soul of excellence. Or whatever.)
- “Black River Killer” – Blitzen Trapper (On one hand, a country western gun-slingin’ ballad of outlawry, on the other, a rap-inspired anthem, in both hands, maybe our favorite song of the year. Other folks will tell you that the title track is better here. They are candy asses.)
- “Touch Me, I’m Going to Scream, Pt. 2” – My Morning Jacket (As mentioned in the notable albums list, this will absolutely melt your face off live. My inclination is to include “Smokin’ from Shootin’” as well, since they bleed together on the record and they’re always paired live. Either way, sit back with the last twenty minutes of this album and enjoy.)
- “Army of Ancients” – Dr. Dog (Hard to pick one song from this album; as mentioned below, there’s not a lot of filler on this record. This makes it in on the strength of the background vocals, which are both cryptic and soaring. Added bonus: if I search for “Army of” in itunes, the next song to play after this one is “Oliver’s Army.” Hoo-ray!)
- “Sitting” – White Denim (We’re going to get all rock criticy on you for this one; brace yourself. Horn-infused, quick guitar bursts, with slow, haunting background vocals looming, it’s apparent that the layering of the track is fragmented but completely dependent on its pieces.)
- “South of France” – Harlem (How can a band that gleefully sings “I hate every book that I’ve ever read” produce a song that sounds as smart as this one? That, friends, is a rhetorical question for the ages.)
This list keeps on keepin’ on tomorrow! Don’t forget to check out our next five songs! words words words words words words words words words words words
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Over the next several days, we’ll be lobbing some of our favorite songs from 2008 your way; the first batch is listed below. We’re still wrapping our brains around how the “internet” works, so, for the time being, we’re just listing (although most of them are in the lala player at your right). We’ll throw a few songs up each day for the next week or so until we’ve emptied the citizendick warehouse of all our faves from the year that was.
- “Tora Tora Tora” - Pretty & Nice (I defy you to get this song out of your head.)
- “The Twist” – Frightened Rabbit (I’m breaking with the thinking of my fellow citizendicks on this one; they prefer “The Modern Leper.” Tragically, they’re wrong. This one’s a gem. “Let’s pretend I’m attractive…”)
- “Black Hole” – She & Him (This makes us sound a touch sissified. We do not care.)
- “Changing” – The Moondoggies (You’ve, no doubt, read about this one elsewhere. Everyone is right; it is amazing.)
- “Sausalito” – Conor Oberst (Is it as good as “Waste of Paint?” Probably not. Such is life.)
Five more tomorrow! Tell your friends!
Odds and ends:
- Big ups to largehearted boy, who was kind enough to give us our first shout on the internet.
- My lady and I went into the woods this weekend to celebrate the New Year far from society’s wiles, no television, no internet, no cellular telephone service. We did take the portable speakers and the ipod (stick with me; I’m meandering to a point.). We had the digital alarm clock set for the midnight hour, champagne uncorked, music cued up. We kicked off our new year with the Walkmen’s “In the New Year.” We didn’t want to leave you with nothing to listen to, so there’s a kicking live performance of that song below. You’ll especially enjoy the drunk, screaming “yeah” at the open and close.
The Walkmen – In the New Year – 10-28-08 – London
