Music Blogs

Present: 1 Sam Amidon--"Sugar Baby," from All Is Well (Bedroom Community): Sam takes old songs and old instruments and makes them sound neither nostalgic nor hokey--nor, for that matter, old. Then he sings in the sweetest, most buttery voice imaginable. This song is a heartbreaker to its last stuttering notes. Listen to it whilst perusing Amanda Petrusich's excellent questing travelogue It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, And The Search For The Next American Music (Faber). Martin Colyer

2 Jill Barber--"When I'm Makin' Love To You," from Chances (Dependent): A ray of early morning sunshine in an album of small-hours love-lorn lament, this is a shag-happy celebration of all being right with the world, sung with a sleepy little gurgle of old-timey concupiscence from a Canadian rootsy-tootsy artist in the tradition of Victoria Williams. Mat Snow

3 Beck--"Gamma Ray," from Modern Guilt (XL): The guy may have lost his musical way--or at least his musical standing--since 2002's sublime Sea Change, but in the year that saw a deluxe reissue of the dizzying Odelay this track reminded us of just how brilliantly Beck pastiches that mid-'60s psych-pop beat-group groove. Barney Hoskyns

4 Walter Becker--"Upside Looking Down," from Circus Money (5 Over 12): If Donald Fagen is odd, his co-Dan is odder still, with an intense, black melancholy lurking at the heart of his witty and playful virtuosity. Musically, he makes every spare riff, phrase and chord change count in an album of small-group jazz/roots reggae fusion (you read that right). Electric piano ripples and his guitar stings across clattering drums and a basement groove in only his second solo album, music so stylistically and emotionally paradoxical it repays constant repeat play. MS

5 Peter Bruntnell-"Cold Water Swimmer," from Peter And The Murder Of Crows (Loose): The highlight of the songsmith's seventh album, this typically wistful nu-folkscape has an arrangement that deliciously blends Pink Moon orchestration with an electric sitar flashing back from "On The Road Again" and "Green Tambourine" to a thrillingly tarantella finish. Robert Plant, look to your laurels. MS

6 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds--"We Call Upon The Author," from Dig!! Lazarus, Dig!! (Mute): Now a grand cultural institution, the former Birthday Party boy continues his rich vein of comedy with an album of which this is a peak in its effortlessly clever rudeness; you could imagine Dylan cutting this in the same session as 'Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat.' MS

5 Ry Cooder--"Waitin' For Some Girl," from I, Flathead (Nonesuch): People seem to have tired of Ry's Cali-retro adventures, blanking My Name Is Buddy and I, Flathead after the admittedly superior Chavez Ravine, but this Stonesy bar-band rocker was as good as anything on that album. And don't forget Cooder's double-disc UFO Has Landed comp on Rhino--a great sampler of his Warner and soundtrack glory days. BH

6 Toumani Diabaté--"Elyne Road," from The Mandé Variations (World Circuit): The Mandé Variations was every critic's token World Album of '08, but what can a time-poor rockist sourpuss do but bow down before the sheer serene loveliness of Diabeté's kora, the instrument's chiming ripples resonating somewhere between harp and acoustic guitar. Time to breathe and reflect and sigh at the immaculate sadness of it all. Let the man's fingers do the talking. BH

7 Elbow--"Weather To Fly," from The Seldom Seen Kid (Fiction): Burial should have won the Mercury, but we'll that slide. Actually, Asleep At The Back should have won the Mercury back in '01 and we'll let that slide too. Nothing on The Seldom Seen Kid comes close to "Little Beast" (or "Switching Off" or "Great Expectations," come to that) but this at least is worthy of comparison to Asleep's magical "Scattered Black And Whites." BH

8 Estelle feat. Kanye West--"American Boy," from Shine (WEA): Let's face it, Estelle should have won the Mercury over the lamentable, stodgy Elbow (an undeserved triumph of rockism over beauty and vitality). And "American Boy" was the sound of the summer, floating over London in a way that took us right back to 1973 and the Isleys' "Summer Breeze." Even the de rigueur appearance of Kanye West fails to keep this gem earthbound. Mark Pringle

9 The Fall--"50 Year Old Man," from Imperial Wax Solvent (Sanctuary): Though I stopped keeping up with The Fall eons ago, I couldn't help loving this middle-aged Mark E. Smith rant on the band's latest platter: "Computer doesn't work for me/I had a Sinclair back in 1983..." And I absolutely adored the cantankerous old soak's autobio-ramblings in his Renegade (Viking). BH

10 The Feeling--"Without You," from Join With Us (Universal): Copping licks and textures from old Wings and Supertramp blockbusters is regarded, oddly enough, as outré in the extreme when you could be doing the same to low-selling Can albums from the same period. But once over that taste hump, rejoice in a gift for the creamy melody and harmony for which Macca himself has struggled for decades to reactivate. Such pleasure should never be guilty. MS

11 The Fireman--"Sun Is Shining," from Electric Arguments (One Little Indian): Based on their previous two albums under this hobbyist joint moniker, you wouldn't say ex-Killing Joke bassist and born-again Second Summer Of Love producer Youth was the creative foil Paul McCartney has lacked since Denny Laine, even St. John himself. But on their third album Macca permits himself to burst out of the groove and into full-throated song with results that gloriously flash back to his summer '67-summer '68 peak. MS

12 Fleet Foxes--"He Doesn't Know Why," from Fleet Foxes (Bella Union): They started to sound a tad winsome after prolonged exposure to their adored debut, but how great it was to hear such hymnal male harmonies again--as good, I'd contend, as the Beach Boys or Crosby, Stills and Nash. BH

13 Robbie Fulks--"I Like Being Left Alone," from Revenge! (Yep Roc): The most poignantly funny song of the year not written by Bill Bailey. Robbie ponders where to find inspiration to write a new song at the age of 43. (At the age of 20 you've got all the things you like, say girls and alcohol, as inspirations.) He finally decides that he doesn't like anything anymore--"Talkin' about sales reps, Talkin' about the government, Talkin' about the children, I'm talkin' about you, you, you..."--sung so straight, played so delicately by his great, great band. MC

14 Gnarls Barkley--"Open Book," from The Odd Couple (Warner Bros.): An extraordinary track from an extraordinary album. Cee-lo yelps and shrieks over Danger Mouse's skittering drum-machine loops. Scarily intense. BH

15 Goldfrapp--"Caravan Girl," from Seventh Tree (Mute): Somewhat out of place on the duo's bucolic fourth album, this driving 4/4 anthem was a rousing blast of teen-female liberation, the cry of a nice middle-class girl in semi-Sapphic love with a wild siren from the wrong side of the tracks. BH

16 Al Green with Corinne Bailey Rae--"Take Your Time," from Lay It Down (Blue Note): From the Reverend's best album for three decades, proof positive that sometimes, just sometimes, you not only can but should wind back the clock and meticulously recreate your finest hour. The smoldering tick of the drums, the swelling but subtly recessed strings, the buttery horns ... and those pipes! And the best singer Leeds has ever produced shadows him beautifully. MS

17 Bon Iver--"Re: Stacks," from For Emma, Forever Ago (4AD): The real treat on Justin Vernon's heavily-garlanded backwoods-cabin DIY opus lay at the close of the record in the shape of this six-minute marvel of mopiness:"when your money's gone and you're drunk as hell...," sung in that richly soulful white boy falsetto over deep blue acoustic chords. The sound of ecstatic aloneness. BH

18 Kings Of Leon--"Be Somebody', from Only By The Night (Columbia) The Followills' transformation into fully-fledged stadium monster--a Dixie U2 fit to compete with the Killers--was completed by an earnest, blustery fourth album. They may never make anything as special as "The Bucket" or "McFearless" again, but the mighty "Be Somebody" was enough to be going on with. BH

19 Ladyhawke--"Magic," from Ladyhawke (Modular): Though it's a footnote to Madonna's fab rip of Abba's "Gimme Gimme Gimme"--complete with a juddersynth Moroder groove--I loved Phillipa Brown's Eighteez chutzpah, and the song's melodrama is as good as anything by her Scandinavian counterpart Annie. BH

20 K.D. Lang--"Je Fais Le Planche," from Watershed (Nonesuch): It's our loss that we seem to greet each new Kathy Dawn album with respectful near-neglect when we should be strewing rose petals in her fragrant path. Her music is so effortlessly beautiful, and none more so than this song, sadly just one of two bewitching peaks on this lovely album co-written with her finest foil, Ben Mink. MS

21 Lil' Wayne--"A Milli," from Tha Carter III (Cash Money/Universal Motown): The pint-sized N'awlins rapper came up with the goods on his 2008 multi-plat smash--especially on this looped spew of minimalist misogynist megalomania. BH

22 Shelby Lynne--"I Don't Wanna Hear It Anymore," from Just A Little Lovin': Inspired By Dusty Springfield (Lost Highway): Sound of the year: Drums. Guitar. Piano. Bass. Not much reverb. Giant pauses. Killer room sound, courtesy of the legendary Phil Ramone. On top of it all, nakedly, Shelby Lynne's gorgeous voice. On the Randy Newman song, "I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore," reached some kind of peak. "In my neighborhood, we don't live so good/The rooms are small and the building made of wood/I hear the neighbors talking ‘bout you and me, I guess I heard it all/cause the talk is loud, and the walls are much too thin..." And Dean Parks' repeated guitar figure at the end is sheer perfection. MC

23 Aimee Mann--"Medicine Wheel," from @#%&*! Smilers (Superego): From the California Album of the Year, grown-up songs of blasted hopes, none better than this: "The day you left and you called me bitch, I called you selfish, better pull that switch, put my son on amphetamines...," where Elton John piano is joined by Levon Helm drums, before a dynamite horn chart battles with an overdriven electric piano. MC

24 MGMT--"Weekend Wars," from Oracular Spectacular (Columbia): Like a freshfaced Brooklyn-hipster version of Flaming Lips--complete with awesome Dave Fridmann production--MGMT came on like ecstatic drug-crazed choirboys. Everyone loved "Time To Pretend," but this was the sleeper standout from Oracular Spectacular, its falsetto vocals, synth ripples, and hymnal chords cresting in a breathtaking finale: "I'm a curse and I'm a sound..." Stunning. BH

25 Juana Molina--"Un Día," from Un Día (Domino): Listen closely to the music of this former star comedienne of Argentine TV and you can identify every component: hushed, close-mic'd and overdubbed singing, a cleanly plucked acoustic guitar, a gentle, looped riff and rhythm track, burbling analogue synthesizer and all sorts of noises-off. Layered with a rare and compelling attention to building subliminal tension and release, the title track of her fifth album rearranges your headspace for seven more genre-blending tracks that cumulatively induce an almost hypnologic reverie. MS

26 Neon Neon--"Stainless Style," from Stainless Style (Lex): You've gotta love Gruff Rhys. Who else would collaborate on an '80s techno-pop paean to automotive fantasist John DeLorean and make it work? Gary Numan meets New Romo in a shiny Motor City of the mind. BH

27 Randy Newman--"A Piece Of The Pie," from Harps And Angels (Nonesuch): Brecht and Weill for a credit-crunched world, complete with dissonant orchestration, self-deconstructing interruptions, and droll name checks for Jackson Browne, Johnny Cougar [sic], and Bono. "The richer are getting richer," sings Randy, "I should know..." God bless him. BH

28 Randy Newman--"Potholes," from Harps And Angels (Nonesuch): The most hilariously quotable song from the most quotable album of the year. But his lines are even funnier in toto and in character, that character here being the nearest Randall has ever got to a self-portrait in a song that celebrates family life with the salt and vinegar of mild insult to his nearest and dearest and the cheerily perverse thought that the forgetfulness of age takes the edge off painful memories. And all sung to a swinging Baloo the bear beat. MS

29 Vampire Weekend--"M79," from Vampire Weekend (XL): If VW's preppies-in-Soweto mannerisms were--let's be honest--a little too twee for comfort, "M79" was divine for its rococo string fills alone. Oxford commas aside, at least these dweebs broke the supermarket-indie mould with their wry debut. BH

30 The Wild Beasts--"The Old Dog," from Limbo, Panto (Domino): Wild Beasts also broke that mould, though I could only take so much of Hayden Norman Thorpe's Edwyn Collins-meets-Prince-via-Starsailor swoon of a voice. This was the wildest thing on their Domino debut. BH

31 Brian Wilson--"Midnight's Another Day," from That Lucky Old Sun (Capitol): Back in harness with his bandmaster and lyricist Scott Bennett and, from SMiLE, Van Dyke Parks, the 66-year-old man-child makes the nearest thing to a new masterpiece in That Lucky Old Sun's paean to SoCal circa '63. Faintly echoing the immortal "'Til I Die," a song of personal and spiritual isolation yet redemption, this is a beautiful and frankly unexpected creative Indian summer. MS

Past: 1 George Akaeze And His Augmented Hits--"Business Before Pleasure," from Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds And Nigerian Blues, 1970-1976 (Soundway): The funkiest track of 2008, with Mr. Akaeze counseling his fellow Nigerians to take responsibility and put food on the table before carousing away their meagre earnings. BH

2 Cargoe--"I'll Love You Anyway"/Tommy Hoehn--"Blow Yourself Up," both from Thank You, Friends: The Ardent Story (Big Beat): Little-known also-rans on a cult Memphis label that was itself little more than an also-ran, Cargoe and Tommy Hoehn at least left us with these miraculous slivers of mid-'70s pop. "I'll Love You Anyway" is a killer ballad, all Fender Rhodes gloopiness, weepy guitar, and dead-ringer Eric Carmen vocals. "Blow Yourself Up" is the power-pop godhead, Raspberries meets Radio City by the Mississippi. BH

3 Cristina--"Is That All There Is?," from Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1974-1983 (Strut): Before he struck fleeting pop gold with his Kid Creole alter ego, the splendidly-named August Darnell oversaw a bunch of left-field, post-disco productions for RCA (Machine, his own Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band) and of course Ze. A new comp rounds up some of the playfully wacky NY stuff that wasn't on 1982's semi-legendary Mutant Disco album. Among the selections there's this frisky take on Peggy Lee's sub-Brecht/Weill 1966 anthem of jaded depravity by the petite missus of Ze founder Michael Zilkha. BH

4 Della Daniels and Ester Mae Smith--"Move Upstairs," from Como Now: The Voices Of Panola County, MS (Daptone): Acapella testifying from a field recording in Mississippi, but from 2006 and not 70 years ago. Six minutes that build and build without sweetening or soft-focus into a mighty roar to scourge the unbeliever and heave us to heaven, ready or not. An amazing track. MS

5 Dillard and Clark--"The Radio Song," from The Fantastic Expedition Of Dillard And Clark (Sundazed): A fantastic song from a fantastic album--a cosmic-country travelogue of a song that emerges from early Byrds and heads towards the poetry and soul-searching that was Gene Clark's metier. BH

6 Bob Dylan--"Ain't Talking," from Tell Tale Signs (Columbia): Six minutes of voodoo hypnotism, propelled by George Recile's train-rhythm drumming, anchored as ever by the gumbo bass of Tony Garnier, thick and sticky at the bottom of the mix. Time spent with Lanois has really influenced Dylan's recording of his own voice. Listened to on headphones, it's as if Bob is your conscience talking directly to you. "I'm trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others, but, oh mother, thing's ain't going well..." MC

7 Betty Harris--"I'll Be A Liar," from The Bert Berns Story, Vol. 1/Claudine Clark--"Disappointed," from The Jerry Ragovoy Story (both Ace): Some of the deepest American soul to emerge in the early '60s was that shepherded by the flamboyant Bert Berns, who produced smoldering sides for Atlantic and other, smaller indies (and even came to London to work with Them and Lulu). The soul got deeper still when Bert partnered with Philly-born Jerry Ragovoy and wrote/produced urgently emotional hits by Garnett Mimms, Erma Franklin and more. Ace served both these men handsomely in '08 with anthologies of their work. Harris' "I'll Be A Liar" is a vintage slowie by the raw-voiced lady whose sultry "Cry To Me" preceded Solomon Burke's (Berns-produced) hit version of the song. Clark's (Ragovoy-produced) "Disappointed" is pre-soul but shatteringly--almost masochistically--agonised. BH

8 Fotheringay--"Late November," from Fotheringay 2 (Ledgling): A highlight of the late great Sandy Denny's all-too-brief career, "Late November" came back to glowing life on the long-lost sophomore release by this post-original-Fairports quintet. BH

9 Liz Phair--"Glory," from Exile In Guyville (ATO): Another overdue reissue, Phair's great debut strutted its man-eating response to the Stones' Exile but also found room for more subdued beauties like this. The lyrics are lewd: "He's got a really big... tongue" but the acoustic chords are bittersweet and almost pained. In an age where Katie Melua sells out arenas, it's a crime that Phair never became a superstar. BH

10 Plush--"Whose Blues Anyway," from Fed (Broken Horse): Liam Hayes' voice is like a splice of Scott Walker and Thom Yorke: Fed could be Radiohead doing soul music. This exquisite miniature of a song (1:35) was just one of several splendors on a sublime record first released in Japan in 2002. BH

11 Phoebe Snow--"Harpo's Blues"/"Mercy On Those," from Phoebe Snow (Shelter) and It Looks Like Snow (Columbia): Yes, I know "criminally underrated" is overused, but what an original Phoebe Snow was/is. "Harpo's Blues" (1974) can still make you cry, and the great It Looks Like Snow, all high-class NY sessioneers really getting their teeth into huge arrangements, still sounds wonderful. "Mercy On Those" sounds like the perfect anthem for the outgoing American administration: "The battle was won but the war has been lost... Have mercy on those men with no feelings..." MC

12 Dennis Wilson--"Thoughts Of You," from Pacific Ocean Blue (Sony Legacy) Those of us who've raved about Pacific Ocean Blue for 30 years as the forlorn masterpiece of sunkissed anguish it so obviously is can only smirk self-righteously at the sight of it atop everybody's Reissues Of The Year lists. There's something great about Brian Wilson's hellraiser kid bro turning out to have huge melodic talent of his own--though that too was clear to anyone paying attention to Friends ("Be Still") or Sunflower ("Forever"). Bambu, P.O.B.'s unreleased follow-up, turned out to be almost as good. BH

13 Robert Wyatt--"Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road," from Rock Bottom (Domino): This is what all arty Canterbury prog-rock should have sounded like: martial snare ripples, liquid Tubular Bells guitars, and the former Soft Machinist's dreamily mockney voice. Astoundingly lovely. BH

14 Warren Zevon--"The French Inhaler," from Warren Zevon (Rhino): The greatest of the many great songs on the LA malcontent's amazing debut--a snide but tender portrait of a Hollywood rock chick (Zevon's ex, as it happens) with a semi-classical arrangement and creamy backing vocals by Warren's Asylum cronies the Eagles. BH

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