what I listened to in 2008

For the third successive year, I've succumbed to the temptation to rank my favorite new songs. If nothing else, it's a way of charting a significant part of my life during the past months – but it could also serve as a prompt for conversation and debate.

The ground rules? Only one song per band (side projects excluded). The song should have been released during the calendar year, though I've bent the rules where some self-published or import albums from last year are concerned. I'd love to see some other lists popping up on here. Steez? Jeffrey? BJ? Melissa? Buzz? Andrea? Mom?

My 75 in descending order:

1 Grizzly Bear – While You Wait for the Others (Live on KCRW)

2 Fleet Foxes – Mykonos

3 Wolf Parade – The Grey Estates

4 Love Is All – Give It Back

5 Bottomless Pit – Fish Eyes

6 Department of Eagles – Waves of Rye

7 Beach House – Home Again

8 Bon Iver – Skinny Love

9 Horse Feathers – Curs in the Weeds

10 Sera Cahoone – Only as the Day is Long

11 Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – Buriedfed

12 Blitzen Trapper – Furr

13 Land of Talk – Corner Phone

14 Deerhoof – Chandelier Searchlight

15 White Denim – Sitting

16 Man Man – Harpoon Fever (Queequeg’s Playhouse)

17 Frightened Rabbit – Good Arms vs Bad Arms

18 Sigur Ros – Gobbledigook

19 The Walkmen – In the New Year

20 Andrew Bird – Oh No

21 Thao – Yes, So On and So On

22 Mirah – Don’t

23 The Dodos – Fools

24 TV on the Radio – Love Dog

25 Cat Power – New York

26 Giant Sand – Belly Full of Fire

27 Scout Niblett (f. Will Oldham) – Kiss

28 Richard Swift – Would You?

29 Karl Blau – Mockingbird Diet

30 Mount Eerie and Julie Doiron – Voice in Headphones

31 Chad VanGaalen – Willow Tree

32 Sun Kil Moon – Tonight the Sky

33 Women – Group Transport Hall

34 Marnie Stern – The Package is Wrapped

35 Jay Reatard – Night of Broken Glass

36 Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – Paranoia (Never Enough)

37 Destroyer – Leopard of Honor

38 Dungen – Det Tar Did

39 Bound Stems – Happens to Us All Otherwise

40 Crooked Fingers – Cannibals

41 Port O’Brien – I Woke Up Today

42 The Shaky Hands – Show Me Your Life

43 Fanfarlo – Harold T. Wilkins

44 King Khan and the Shrines – Welfare Bread

45 She & Him – I Was Made for You

46 Sunset – When Perfect Flames Expire

47 The Magnetic Fields – Old Fools

48 Grouper – Heavy Water / I’d Rather Be Sleeping

49 Marissa Nadler – Colorado Girl

50 Grand Archives – Orange Juice

51 Soltero – Out at the Wall

52 White Rabbits – Beehive State

53 The Fiery Furnaces – Duplexes of the Dead

54 Gnarls Barkley – Run

55 of Montreal – Id Engager

56 MGMT – Electric Feel

57 Dosh – If You Want To, You Have To

58 Ratatat – Falcon Jab

59 Q-Tip – Move

60 The Roots – Rising Down

61 Chairlift – Bruises

62 Vivian Girls – Never See Me Again

63 Tape – Beams

64 Laura Gibson – Freight Train

65 Rocketship Park – Run Away

66 Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Glue Girls

67 The Raveonettes – Dead Sound

68 No Age – Things I Did When I Was Dead

69 The Rosebuds – Life Like

70 Shearwater – The Hunter’s Star

71 Calexico – Two Silver Trees

72 Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks – Cold Son

73 Spoon – All I Got Is Me

74 Tapes ‘n Tapes – Hang Them All

75 Islands – The Arm

It's a little strange to see the songs lined up like this; it shows me that I've been listening to a preponderance of pop and folk and less of the noise stuff that benefits from live performance. Maybe this is what happens when you live in a city with no music venues.

Anyway, if there is interest, I'll continue posting mp3s. And if anyone wants to e-mail or text me their list, I'll post it, and will add the music where I have it.

R.I.P. Levi Stubbs

Tonight I discovered that Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops has died. However you feel about his lengthy list of Motown hits, he would be worth memorializing, and celebrating, for his role in creating one of the great pop songs of all time -- the Holland-Dozier-Holland hit It's the Same Old Song. Some of the obituaries I've read suggest that, as his songwriters pushed his natural baritone up to a tenor register, his voice gained its characteristic "urgent and pleading" quality. You should listen to it, anyway:

The Four Tops: It's the Same Old Song

And here is a wonderful cover by Iron & Wine: Same Old Song

A funny aside: after his Motown heyday, Levi Stubbs took jobs recording video game voiceovers and starred as the plant in the film version of Little Shop of Horrors. I imagine the conversation about that job going something like this:

Agent: Ever hear of Little Shop of Horrors?
Levi: Uh . . . the movie or the shop?
Agent: The brand-new multimillion-dollar musical. And you are starring . . . as the horror.
Levi: It's the part I was born to play, baby!

Fake Music

One of my favorite bands for the past decade at least, Yo La Tengo is comprised of a husband-and-wife team, Ira and Georgia, and their partner in crime, James. They are multi-instrumentalists who swap instruments at will during their shows. These concerts are always incredible -- in fact, I saw them at Royal Festival Hall in London, and Jen left Russia so that she could see them in Germany. Add those memorable concerts to a handful of appearances in Cambridge, Somerville (with Jen and Stephen), and Houston, and they may be the band I've gone to see most frequently. (They are also, incidentally, responsible for one of the funniest videos I've ever seen, in which they collaborate with Bob and David of Mr. Show.)

At times, their sound may be a little abrasive for younger ears, but their eclectic and melodic style frequently produces great songs to share; Gwennie in particular is fond of an album of covers, Fakebook. Rather than simply recreate versions of obscure songs (though the album frequently succeeds at this -- Ira was a music critic before becoming an international rock star), the band creates a sustained musical statement, partially by including "covers" of a few original songs among the reinventions. The entire album is a showcase for the good humor and gentleness of the band, while also hinting at their sonic adventurousness.

Here are some full-family favorites:

mp3: Here Comes My Baby

This cover of a Cat Stevens song actually reached the band through a wilder and rather more obscure version by a sixties garage band called The Tremeloes. A good dancing song for small (and larger) feet.

mp3: Griselda

Gwennie has called this song "Mazelda," one of her favorite made-up princess names, for the past few years. I think of it as the country equivalent of a Shakespearean sonnet, in the sense of a mannerly or courtly seduction. It strikes me as funny, but that may be due to its lyrical deftness. It's another obscure number originally by the Unholy Modal Rounders.

mp3: The Summer

And finally, one of the band's auto-covers: simple and perfect.

Two children's music artists we met this summer

Justin Roberts started his career playing with an indie-rock band in Minneapolis. Success came slower than he’d hoped, and he became a Montessori preschool teacher during the days. One Christmas he sent out a CD of songs that he’d written for his young students to friends and family. One of his college friends, Liam Davis, was a music producer, and suggested they record the songs professionally.

He has visited our public library here in Rochester a few times since we moved here, but ironically, we really met his music this summer while we were away in Florida. His lyrics are deliberate and fun (often quite silly), and his indie family music style is engaging and varied.

The words that open an alphabet song he sings on his first album, Great Big Sun, were some of the first that caught our attention: “A is for the applesauce that mother poured into my bubble bath. Bath starts with B, and don’t starts with D, and I forgot C, but everything else starts with E.” The song does make its way through the rest of the alphabet, but not without much silliness. My boys are quite entertained. Worth a look if you need something new.

The second artist that we discovered this summer is Frances England. She has two cds. The first one, Fascinating Creatures, she wrote as a fundraiser for her son’s school. The second one, Family Tree (which I haven’t heard yet), celebrates the birth of her second son. Also a sort of indie-folk feel, her music is easy to listen to—do you have to live with a three-year-old to appreciate some of the issue she writes about? Toddler mood swings, tricycles, blueberry pancakes. No, I think you just have to have been three.