Songs Of The Year 2008

10. 'Warwick Avenue' - Duffy
Bangor-born, Dusty all over, the sight of Duffy weeping through 60s eyeliner as a cab pulls off from an obscure tube station is the singular sorrowful comedown image which followed all my 2008 disco highs. ‘You think you’re loving but you don’t love me’ cut a little too close to the bone this year, but oh the pleasure and the pain in that voice ...




9. 'No Lucifer' - British Sea Power
Might also be my top video of the year, this track is one of the growers which BSP specialise in. In twenty years time tracks like this will make musical archivists wonder why they weren't the biggest band in Britain. To me they might be.




8. 'The Bones Of You' - Elbow
The only vinyl I bought this year and already feels like a classic, Elbow have been in my life in several wonderful ways this year and this was the prime cut from Mercury-winning The Seldom-Seen Kid. 'I took a hammer to every memento' has been a touchstone line in 2008's darker days.

7. 'Morning After Midnight' - Adam Green

My favourite accidental find of the year, Adam Green the Jewish James Dean plied one of the sassiest and (gasp) funniest tracks of the year with a glorious androgynous muck-up vid to boot.

6. 'The Rip' - Portishead

Eternal thanks to Thom for directing me to a glorious Lazarus-like infusion of faith in Portishead. Yes, that trip-hop band the stoners played to death at University. They came back with an ultra-modern album of mechanically-retrieved soul and this, their finest song to date in my opinion, was given a kiss of approval by a Radiohead cover should you dare harbour doubts as to its other-worldly merit.

5. 'Suffragette Suffragette' - Everything Everything

The great white hope. Recently discovered, homegrown, sophisticated, smart, witty, complex, arresting ... if this band were a man I'd be dating the fucker. This track belongs amongst the year's finest and the future belongs to this band.

4. 'Time To Pretend' - MGMT

I know 'Kids' is probably the cooler choice but the number of times the opening Grandaddy-esque kiddie-toy synth on this track has given me a second wind this year makes it my MGMT highlight hands down.

3. 'Lights Out' - Santogold

Not representative of her output in any way, but what track could be? This seemingly off-the-cuff pop cut is actual genius, distilling 90s guitar riffs into something Kim Deal would be proud of. Santi's finest to date.

2. 'California Girls' - Magnetic Fields

Possibly anathema to have a non-Merritt lead vocal as an MF track of the year but the mix of witty feminist critique, Beach Boys punning and crashing Mary Chain reverb combine to say what Pink's 'Stupid Girl' tried to without the painfully flat-stomached hypocrisy. Stripped down acoustic versions show what timelessly sweet structure underpinned the song all along.

1. 'Mars' - Fake Blood

Everything I love about dance music in four minutes flat, faceless, possible superstar origins (is it Soulwax??), futurist noise pollution and contagiously clipped beats. Trippy Charly-esque beast noises lure you to a darkened world where suddenly the houselights are thrown up to reveal Altern 8-styled in your face aciiied noise terror! The first 'MARS!' is guaranteed to make the hairs on the back of my neck go ping. I literally CANNOT make my feet behave when I play this track. Song of the year.

Sound bytes

Finisterre
I know this is a hundred years old (released 2002) but the film, originally conceived from individual short pieces to accompany the Saint Etienne album of the same name, just came through the post on DVD and it is quite the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in ages. A montage of 24 hours in London filmed in nooks, crannies and jaw-dropping vistas all across the city soundtracked by the Finisterre album and punctuated with spoken interludes by various unseen Londoners on why they love/hate/idolise their great city. Magic. Get it.

Witnessed on Oxford Road:
Man wearing a camouflage army jacket with dark grey suit trousers, slip-on Vans in neon-pink and black checks, carrying a bag covered with a garish floral print like a roller blind from the 1970s. Huh?

Chris Jordan
Jaw-dropping photographs. The Abu-Ghraib montage and Hurricane Katrina images might be unsurpassable in terms of defining twenty-first century America. Any one of his images will amaze and frighten though.

From Manchester Lifestyle Hospital website:
“Cosmetic surgery procedures available: Breast augmentation, Breast reduction, Breast uplift … For further information visit www.baaps.co.uk”

Chalet Lines
Heart-breaking cover of my second-favourite Belle & Sebastian song. For some reason the very British references in this upsetting tale of sexual assault on a holiday camp are all the more moving in his sweet French voice.

Witnessed on Oxford Road:
Four scallies drinking in the street. Not surprising? It was Baileys. Huh?

MGMT remix
Unrecognisably filthy noise-mix of MGMT signature tune.

Pinned to my wall to encourage writing:

“Jack sweated so profusely while writing On The Road that he went through several T shirts a day … He started his book in early April 1951. By April 9 he had written thirty-four thousand words. By April 20, eighty-six thousand. On April 27, the book was finished, a roll of paper typed as a single-spaced paragraph 120 feet long.”
– Introduction to On The Road

“Once work gets a grip, depending on the work you do, it becomes the meaning of life for a while, as much an imperative as eating or sleeping. A career won’t be denied; it chomps away at your allotted twenty four hours and its hunger is satisfied only temporarily before the next urge, as sure as waves roll in from the sea … It has a life of its own.”
– Julian Clary, A Young Man’s Passage

“He had sold one painting during his lifetime. Three times was his work noticed in the press. But these are just details. The real Vincent Van Gogh is the man who has just done “five size 30 canvasses, olive trees”. To me, in context, one of the most moving and realistic descriptions of how a real artist thinks.”
– Alice Walker

Soundtrack:
Stereolab 'French Disko'. Never ever get tired of this, possible tune for October ... The Divine Comedy's cover of Ride's 'Vapour Trail'. I was expecting a pared-down chamber version of this track but they've kept the wall of swooshing guitars and brought the words forward and it's worked. Also a hundred years old I realise but, hey, I work. Am about to embark on a psychedelic trip around Britain in the 1960s, so John's Children, Floyd, Hendrix etc, I'm so bored of right now, right now.