Best of 2008 and 2009

Due to being back in school and the economy being down in general, I didn't have enough money to buy a ton of new albums in 2009. In fact, there are several I would like to own that I missed. So, instead of making a best of 2009 I compiled a best of 2008 and 2009, figuring that my best of 2008 was poorly circulated anyway. If you were on the mailing list, this is the disc listed as 0809. Also, by spreading it out over two years I was able to limit it to one song per album. The whole collection ended up leaning fairly alt-country and has a nice warm feel for much of it. Enjoy.

1. Mudcrutch – Shady Grove (from Mudcrutch (2008))

Tom Petty and his high school buddies, most of whom ended up in the Heartbreakers, make a great bluegrass band. What makes this album better than just about any Tom Petty album, though, is that it is more collaborative with shared vocals and shared songwriting. This song, an inspired take on a traditional number, showcases the band’s instrumental prowess.

2. Hayes Carll – Beaumont (from Trouble In Mind (2008))

I’ll admit it, I bought Hayes Carll major-label debut for the same reason most people did: the funny song titles. “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” “Wild As A Turkey,” “She Left Me For Jesus” and “Faulkner St.” were all promising titles, but the album’s best songs turned out to be the more straight-forward, and often more serious, ones, such as “It’s A Shame” and “Beaumont.”

3. Jill Sobule – Palm Springs (from The California Years (2009))

At first I thought I was drawn to this song simply because the syntax of lines like “I took the Prius. / It gets good mileage” is so prototypically Sobulian. I realized there was more to this song, though, than Sobule’s signature objective detachment revealing an underlying sense of solitude. Though this song seems hopeful at its beginning, the refrain, “something’s gonna happen to change my world,” sounds like a portent. The song reaches its climax with the statue of Sonny Bono, the town’s hero. The song’s speaker is like Enoch Emery in Flannery O’Connor’s Wiseblood, chasing down Sonny Bono like he does the mummified midget.

4. Kimya Dawson – Loose Lips (from the soundtrack to Juno (2008))

Leave it to a crazy chick like Kimya to make an anti-Bush song out of a WWI propaganda slogan. “They think we’re disposable? Well, both my thumbs’re opposable. Spell that on your double word and triple letter score,” ranks with the best signifying ever.

5. Elvis Costello – Turpentine (from Momofuku (2008))

This song sounds like a leftover from a Warner Bros.-era Attractions album, most likely Brutal Youth. As a general rule, these are my least favorite of Costello’s albums, but they all had at least a few good songs, and they all had songs that could have been even better had Costello taken more time to develop them. This sounds like an outtake, but it sounds like it could have been the album’s big single, a “Sulky Girl” in the making, and like he decided to take the time to develop it right. Also, the Imposters – the Attractions with a new bassist – provide more than ample backing, giving a layered production that sounds reminiscent of Imperial Bedroom, Costello’s 1983 attempt at sonically recreating the Sgt. Pepper’s sound, and frantic playing that is like a more rocked up Delivery Man than what comes off as rather stilted on Warner albums like Spike and All This Useless Beauty.

6. Bob Dylan – Shake, Shake Mama (from Together Through Life (2009))

Dylan has recorded so many blues shuffles that they rarely intrigue me anymore, especially when they have a title as silly as “Shake, Shake Mama.” Before I heard Together Through Life, I decided from the song titles that this would be my least favorite song on the album. It was easily in the album’s top half and slowly crawled over other favorites like “If You Ever Go To Houston,” which seems an update of 1970’s “Wanted Man,” and “Forgetful Heart.” What makes this song isn’t only the groove but the strangeness of many of the lines, and the later revelations concerning where many of them came from. The verse about Judge Simpson, for instance, is lifted more or less wholesale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

7. Flowers Forever – Strange Fruit (from Flowers Forever (2008))

I was somewhat impressed by Flowers Forever when I saw them open for Daniel Johnston. I was blown away by their energy in the studio. This civil rights anthem was most famously recorded by Billie Holiday and was written by Abel Meeropol, under the pseudonym of Lewis Allen, who later gained fame for adopting the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. I do not know if he ever appeared before HUAC himself.

8. Prince – Dreamer (from LOtUSFLOW3R (2009))

This song features Prince the political preacher, a face he has worn time and time again, starting with 1981’s “Sexuality” through to 1991’s “Money Don’t Matter 2Night” (the Spike Lee directed version of the music video for this is astounding) and 2004’s “Dear Mr. Man.” These songs have, in many ways, become less nuanced, and have certainly become less implicit (though “Sexuality” was simultaneously explicit). “Dreamer” is perhaps the least implicit of all, paying direct tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., whose spirit Prince is trying to embody in all of these works. Prince’s guitar work here begins by seeming to channel Lenny Kravitz channeling Jimi Hendrix – rocked up, but not too much. Then it becomes a bit funker – Prince channeling Lenny channeling Prince channeling Jimi, which is looser than it sounds on the page. By the end, the final solo channels Jimi directly.

9. Amos Lee – Won’t Let Me Go (from Last Days At the Lodge (2008))

I purchased Last Days at the Lodge as a birthday present for my girlfriend, Sarah. The first or second time through the disc, she commented that she didn’t like this song because it sounded like Michael Jackson. I know what she meant, but I disagree. The song features Lee trying out his falsetto for the first time, but he doesn’t consistently use it throughout the song. Having heard a number of Michael Jackson records, I don’t think he can sing any lower than he does. At first thought, I thought this seemed to channel Al Green. It has a little of an early-70s R&B vibe to it, and there’s no doubt it’s a song of seduction. After listening a little more, I realized that the way Lee glides between his lower range and his falsetto comes closer to mirroring Prince. The similarity goes beyond the vocal styling. The lyrics of the second verse open with “Stood around while you dated that old fool Parker.” Using “old fool” as an insult sounds like it comes straight out of a Prince song, and Parker sounds like a name he would use. The next like, “Whole time I knew he wasn’t no damn good for you” features Lee wrapping his vocal chords around “you” like it’s a double note, which is another Prince move. The verse ends with “all I wanna do is make sweet love to you,” peeling up into the falsetto. The song fades out with Lee’s voice double-tracked, singing his own background vocals. The whole thing comes off sounding like what many of Prince’s mid-to-late nineties genre experiments would have founded like had they been successful. A week or so after I gave her the CD, I caught Sarah singing along with this in the car.

10. Flight of the Conchords – Robots (from Flight of the Conchords (2008))

Dance techno that sounds inspired by Ween and 70s sci-fi kitsch. The music is catchy and the sci-fi is fun. Part of the sci-fi is simply funny, such as the binary solo which is just a voice repeating 0 and 1. The rest of the sci-fi kitsch shows up in the hilarious and nearly touching pseudo-social commentary that fills the track, much like it did films like Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, films made at a time when 2000 did seem like the distant future where anything was possible. There is the line about how there is “no more unethical treatment of the elephants… of course, there are no more elephants, but still it’s a good thing,” and then the whole story line of man enslaving robots and forcing them to work “for unreasonable hours,” pushing us humans to near empathy. Also, is it just me or does it sound like Kermit the Frog saying “Their systems of oppression – what did it lead to? Global robo-depression”?

11. Scarlett Johansson – I Wish I Was In New Orleans (from Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008))

Critics lambasted Anywhere I Lay My Head, the album where ScarJo and David Sitek rummage through Tom Waits catalog, but I thought it was surprisingly well done, and this is only one of many standout tracks, chosen perhaps because it nicely segues into Randy Newman, a real New Orleans pianist.

12. Randy Newman – Piece of the Pie (from Harps & Angels (2008))

I read an interview with Newman where he said him and his manager were having dinner somewhere and all of a sudden this guy came and banged on this huge plate-glass window, flipped off Newman and then walked off. When Newman asked his manager who it was, he said it was John Mellencamp. Newman sent him flowers hoping he’d take the whole thing in good fun, but apparently the feelings weren’t returned. If this story isn’t wholly apocryphal, Johnny Cougar should quit his whining. The only person who comes out good in this song is Jackson Browne, who still comes out ignored. Newman throws the first stone at himself – “the rich are getting richer; I should know” he sings.

13. Nellie McKay – Crazy Rhythm (from Normal as Blueberry Pie (2009))

McKay’s best Doris Day covers are those from Day’s time with Les Brown’s orchestra singing the big band hits. “Crazy Rhythm,” a jazz standard, has often been recorded as an instrumental but the lyrics perfectly describe syncopation’s intoxicating powers. Also interesting is how the lyrics describe jazz as “low brow,” though it is not often seen so today. Bob Dorough guests on piano.

14. Levon Helm – Growin’ Trade (from Electric Dirt (2009))

“Growin’ Trade” is probably the most lyrically intricate piece of music released in 2009. It is a dramatic monologue set to music. The audience in unclear, but over the course of the song it becomes more and more clear that the speaker is growing marijuana, “a crop you grow to burn,” and that he feels shame for it. This captures the cultural zeitgeist evident in shows like Weeds, where hard times and unforeseen circumstances have forced otherwise honest people into the drug trade. Whereas Weeds uses that premise for laughs, however, “Growin’ Trade” is all tragedy, a recession-fueled tirade against the ills of corporate farming.

As the song opens the speaker is characterizes as a man whom “hard labor” has “never bothered.” Right away, this draws a sympathetic, if not empathetic, ear from the listener. The more mature I become, the more appreciation I have for work and the more disdain for sloth, so from my perspective, I admire the speaker immediately. We soon learn that the speaker is going through hard times though, enduring “seasons of calamity.” The speaker complains that he’s “half the size that he used to be / and half of that is gone.” “Gone” suggests finality, meaning that there is not enough labor for him to do to rebuild himself. Furthermore, this metonymically extends to the land. Not only is the farmer’s muscle gone, but so is his land as it is getting bought up by corporate farmers. We finally get the specific reason for falling on hard times: the increasing difficulty to make a profit as an independent farmer. The speaker reports that “seedin’ ten” crops will “only get you five” and that his livestock have nearly starved to death. The first verse ends with the like “I gotta do what I can to survive,” which suggests the speaker will do something that compromises his values, maybe even something illegal as suggested by the first line of the chorus, “The law won’t be forgivin’.” That something turns out to be growing marijuana, hinted at by the phrase “I used to farm for a livin’. Now I’m in’ the growin’ trade” that recurs in the chorus, and confirmed by connecting various references throughout the song, such as “a crop you raise to burn.”

We learn more about the speaker’s moral struggles in the second verse. He sees himself as part of a tradition of hard-working men dating back to his grandfather. He describes the farm as his “legacy,” as something that must be carried on to the next generation. He also is concerned however with the loss of dignity that occurs when he is forced to turn from the work of farming to the drug trade. This further develops the notion of the speaker as a hard worker trapped by economic hardship. The second half of the second verse moves in a different direction, showing how hard work has been replaced by paranoia. Helm croons that there’s a “shotgun on [his] shoulder / where a toe sack oughta be.” Each of these has a metonymic relationship to a specific type of work. The toe sack, a name for a sack which potatoes were bought in and which was later reused to harvest cotton by hand, is symbolic of the hard work the speaker has endured, but it has been replaced by the shotgun. The shotgun is there for protection, of both the speaker and his crops. The speaker is worried that “the thieves are getting bolder / and the feds may be wise to” him, and he needs the shotgun to fight them off.

The sense of paranoia which begins in the second verse is much more emphatic in the third verse, which opens with an image of “helicopters in the distance.” The helicopters may be real or imagined; may be used to spy or drop fertilizer. The speaker reacts by saying that whoever is in the helicopter “is going to meet some resistance,” although the irony is that the helicopter may not be a police helicopter at all. The helicopters are supposedly “getting closer every day,” but the description of them never gets more specific, hurting the speaker’s credibility. The speaker sounds like a man crazed. He says “there’s no price too big to pay” to save his farm, and implicit in that is a threat of violence. He says that “they [have] take[n] it all away,” and the listener quickly realizes that “it” is more than just the land or the marijuana or even the ability to grow crops and control production – “it” is the speaker’s identity. The speaker is being driven by a loss of self so deeply affecting that he feels no reason to live. He says there no difference “between a cot in the jail house / and a bed beneath the clay,” but the lyrics sounds patterns here betray him. “Bed beneath” creates a soft alliteration that makes the grave sound more inviting than jail. Furthermore, the rhyme scheme in the third verse is abababcbb. “Jailhouse” is the only end word without a rhyme in the verse. This disrupts the rhyme scheme and makes the jailhouse sound uninviting, as opposed to “clay,” which restores the rhyme scheme. In the end, the speaker is defeated, having lost himself and having resigned himself to an early grave, fighting no one to save his imagined dignity.

Another layer the song has is the speaker’s spiritual struggles. This theme is first suggested in the first chorus, and illustrates one important feature of the performative aspects of music as opposed to looking at lyrics purely as poetry. When Helm sings the line “the law won’t be forgivin’” the first time, he slurs “law” so that it sounds like “Lord,” and one can imagine by extension that “law” suggests not only law and order but the Law as handed down to Moses. Verse two begins “the summer beauty of the cotton fields / was like a view from Heaven’s door.” He also notes that his granddad “said that harvest time was what the good Lord made us for.” These lines suggest that the speaker sees farming as being God’s work, and so by becoming a marijuana grower as opposed to a farmer he sees himself betraying God. After this, God leaves the song until the end of the third verse, signaling perhaps that the speaker is having trouble coming to terms with his relationship with God. At the end of the third verse we have the line where death, the “bed beneath the clay,” is declared to be no different than jail. This suggests that the speaker may feel that death will entrap him and punish him. He may believe that he has doomed himself to hell. The final line of this verse – “I guess there’s nothing to do now but pray” – finds the speaker once again seeking solace in God, suggesting that he has found his way back and no longer feels shamed out of his spirituality by being a marijuana farmer.

Another aspects of this song which is striking are the multiple levels of diction appearing side-by-side on the page, creating what Yusef Komunyakaa would call the “neon vernacular.” There is a blend of low diction, – “big,” “work,” “good,” – middle diction, -- “labor,” “seasons” – and high diction – “calamity,” “dignity.” There is also a good blend of the rural farmer’s voice, suggested by dropped endings and jargon such as “toe sack,” “live stock,” and “seedin’,” and the more street-wise voice of the urban drug runner, embodied in phrases like “the feds may be getting wise” and “they’re gonna meet some resistance.”

The sound in “Growin’ Trade” also makes good use of various effects. For instance, even when police aren’t being mentioned, they are always lurking in the song’s sounds. In the first verse “hard labor” connotes prison even though the speaker has labored as a free man. “Crops” and “crop” both appear, and both sound very similar to “cop.” As the paranoia grows in the song, so does this sound pattern. At the beginning of the third verse, “cop” is contained in “helicopters,” and as Helm performs it “heli-” is mumbled to the extent that “copters” may as well be “coppers.” Later, “cot” again echoes “cop,” further suggesting the threat of police intervention. Sounds call to sounds throughout and Helm excellently manipulates the rhyme scheme throughout, using a series of slant rhymes to create tension just where it is needed.

15. The Jayhawks – Rotterdam (from Music From the North Country (2009))

The Jayhawks always stun me with their beauty. Every note is beautifully played and sung on albums such as Tomorrow the Green Grass and Rainy Day Music. When the Jayhawks announced the release of Music From the North Country, a greatest hits collection, I was excited to get an overview of the albums I didn’t have, but was thrilled when I heard a deluxe edition would be released with an album’s worth of outtakes, b-sides and alternate versions. “Rotterdam” comes from the deluxe edition. It does not disappoint. This is the most American song every about Manchester, so much so that when one hears Gary Louris singing about the train, one can’t help but imagine the American railroad rather than one going through England. The mountains and the prairies and the babies that open the song sound more West Virginian than Liverpudlian. The overall effect of the song, like so much of the Jayhawks work, is to leave the listener in a state of joyous peace.

16. Jakob Dylan – Valley of the Low Sun (from Seeing Things (2008))

This song evokes John Wayne, but then dismisses him. Lines like “I know soldiers are not payed to think, but something is making us sick” unmistakeably evoke a political message, but don’t quit us quite as hard over the head as some of Jakob’s father’s early, acoustic songs. Jakob has been making music for nearly twenty years, but this is his first opportunity to shine as a solo artist, and it is interesting that he does so with a stark acoustic album. The comparisons could be obvious, but if you listen closely they really aren’t. Yes, Jakob and his dad have both recorded acoustic solo albums and both have described a war-torn world contemporary with our own. There is something unique about the way the younger Dylan constructs his narratives though. In some ways they are looser, less bound to form. Rather than make grand statements, Jakob lets his images float, lets them bump into each other while he sits on the sidelines just imagining what we can make of them.

17. Bob Dylan – Red River Shore (from Tell Tale Signs (2008))

Tell Tale Signs is a compilation of Dylan’s unreleased leftovers spanning the period between 1989 and 2006. Time Out of Mind is perhaps Dylan’s most heralded album from this period, and yet when it came out many of the people who played on it expressed shock that “Red River Shore,” the best song recorded at the sessions, was left off the album. Tell Tale Signs reveals other errors in judgment with regard to that album, but certainly leaving off this gem was one of the most egregious. This song is a ghost story, but the mystery is who the ghost is. Most commentators have felt that the speaker is pining for a girl who is long dead, wishing her back to life. Lazarus and the attendant possibility of being brought back certainly loom large here, but I’m not convinced that the girl is dead. It is the speaker who is certainly dead, whether he realizes it or not. The girl may or may not be dead, but since the song is really about the speaker’s state, whether she is alive or dead matters little. There are several parts of the song that suggest it is the speaker who is dead, such as “the frozen smile that’s on my face fits me like a glove.” The speaker has “been out where the black winds roar,” which doesn’t sound like a place mortals have visited. He even admits that “some of us scare ourselves to death in the dark to be where the angels fly;” if he gained that knowledge through experience, then the speaker is surely dead. Coming back now, in a different time, searching for the girl who he feels a soul mate too, the speaker talks to people, but they don’t seem to be listening. When he says “I wonder if anybody saw me here at all, except the girl from the red river shore,” the listener knows that none of the people he talked to were aware of his presence. Sadly, although the speaker continues to search in vain, even if he finds the girl from the red river shore she may not be interested. The speaker says she is “true to life,” and the irony is she can’t be faithful to both life and a dead man.

18. Elvis Costello – Red Cotton (from Secret, Profane and Sugarcane (2009))

Elvis Costello culled the songs for Secret, Profane and Sugarcane from a number of projects he had been working on that had just never gotten finished. He reworked several of them into a more or less Americana theme that would work with a nice acoustic-country feel. While I am not convinced that the effort as a whole hangs together as successfully as King of America does, many songs stand out as being quite brilliant. “Red Cotton” is one of the Secret Songs, a project Costello was recruited to work on. As I understand it, The Secret Songs is to be a new musical/opera based on the life of Hans Christian Andersen, though the songs from it that appear on Secret, Profane and Sugarcane seem to have more to do with P.T. Barnum. As I understand it, the people behind The Secret Songs have since passed over Costello in favor of Nellie McKay, and Costello remade the songs to fit into Sugarcane’s Americana shtick. The song is now from Barnum’s point of view and in it, according to Costello, “Barnum reads an abolitionist pamphlet while manufacturing souvenirs of the ‘All-American Tour’.” This seems a bit simplistic to me, especially for a song nearly intricate enough to challenge “Growin’ Trade.” The song begins with Barnum “cutting up her pure white dress / that [he] dyed red.” Right away, the listener must situate themselves. The white dress suggests Barnum is referring to a female, which brings in all sorts of gender issues. Her dress is white, suggesting purity, but Barnum has dyed it red, suggesting violence. The white dress in particular suggests sexual violence, and in addition to rape perhaps murder with the sound of “dyed/died.” In the context of abolition and the Civil War, it is likely that this refers not only to misogyny, but also couples that with racism. The red cotton of the title may be the dress of a slave raped by her master, a practice common throughout the South. Furthermore, the dress is being cut up and the scraps are being put “in cheap tin lockets” to be sold as souvenirs, showing that this practice further commodifies sexual violence. Still, when those in Europe buy these American items, the violence is what “time erases and memory mocks,” showing how commodity fetishism causes the consumer to ignore the commodity’s history. Costello accomplishes all of this within the song’s first four lines. As the song goes on, though, Barnum realizes that the slaves are transported in “coffin ships” and to them the new world is only one of “auction blocks and whips.” Later still, he describes the “sheet on your fine linen bed, / the blood stained red on each cotton thread,” confirming the sexual violence suggested in the opening lines. By the end of the song, Barnum is ready to quit capitalizing on icons of the slave trade. The last two verses are perhaps the most powerful – strong statements of what is wrong with Barnum’s trade and how it undercuts society. Barnum says “the Lord will judge us with fire and thunder / as man continues in all his blunders. / It’s only money. It’s only numbers. / Maybe its time to put aside these fictitious wonders. // But man is feeble. Man is puny. / And if it should divide the Union / there is no man that should own another / when he can’t even recognize his sister and his brother.” In that final couplet we are reminded of the violent miscegenation which led slave owners to have two families – white and mulatto – who lived in resentment of each other.

19. Ry Cooder – Spayed Kooley (from I, Flathead (2008))

This song cuts two ways. It opens with Cooder wryly declaring that certain people are going to make a lot of money off of homeland security. Cooder’s speaker, though, has all the homeland security he needs, and it is a dog. This sounds like a cruelly delightful satire of how much the Bush administration has spent in Iraq in the name of “homeland security.” As the song continues, though, it becomes clear the speaker wants to secure the homeland, and the border, against immigrants, and that his dog has been trained to be racist. This level of the song opens with the lines “empty out your pockets, let him see your hands. / Be sure to talk good English so he can understand.” The second line of the couplet makes it obvious that the speaker has a problem with Hispanics, especially those who haven’t learned English. The line before it is perhaps more revealing, though. “Empty out your pockets,” in the song’s immediate context, means to show that you are not armed. It also means to hand over your money, though, and has insinuations of loss of privacy and robbery by coercion. As soon as the song moves into its more racist direction, it also serves to simultaneously undercut that position by making the speaker out to be a villain. I, Flathead is the last of three concept albums in a row that deal with Hispanics in Southern California, and his work with Buena Vista Social Club and long history of appreciating Latino musical styles suggests that this undercutting of the racism is what Cooder intended all along.

100 Albums, 100 Words (10-1)

10. Johnny Cash – American Recordings (1994)

In 1970, Johnny Cash recorded a song called “What Is Truth?” The answer to that question is found here in the honest and unadorned voice that fills this record. Cash’s albums for Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label are all excellent, but this stands above the rest. Unexpected covers (Glenn Danzig’s “Thirteen,” Nick Lowe’s “The Beast In Me”) abound, and often flirt with Cash’s darker side. The humility which suffuses tracks like Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me, Lord?” makes it not too surprising that Cash considered naming this album after his two dogs (the two sitting on the cover), Sin and Redemption.

9. The Who – Who’s Next (1971)

Sometimes I wish Lifehouse had come to fruition, but it would be tough for Townsend to improve on this album, a bargain at any price. The Who are known for being raucous virtuosos, but this albums shows they weren’t lacking in melodic chops. Splendid experiments in synthesizer – its first use in popular music – bookend this album and augment several other tracks. Nicky Hopkins' soulful piano is pure and easy on "Song is Over," lending the near epic a light, breathy yearning feel. And still Keith Moon bangs the drums harder and faster than anyone else in the history of rock.

8. Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska (1982)

A man howls like a dog lying wounded, his voice echoing the hollowness of humanity across the rolling plains – this is the landscape of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Down lonesome country roads roll killers and gamblers, and their pathos fills the stark soundscape with a wall of regret. This is the album that is borne out during the dim hours of midnight, sung from the hood or a rusted out Ford truck whose engine might never rev again. The desperate cracks of steel strings snap against the soul as the desperate vocals of roughshod earth and iron deliver you from nowhere.

7. Prince – Sign O’ the Times (1987)

On the cover, a blurred Prince walks through a world that is all surface, a rich carnival scene painted on a yellow cotton sheet. In the materialistic facade of the mid-eighties, one couldn't have blamed Prince for losing his artistic focus; as it happened, it sharpened into its finest point. In turns frenetic, apocalyptic, sumptuous and effervescent, Prince turns his talents loose over jazz, techno, balladry and the best George Harrison imitation outside of a Ween album. The subject matter is equally diverse: abstinence, broken homes, AIDS, and starfish as a breakfast food. So what keeps it together? Sensational bravado.

6. Jayhawks – Tomorrow the Green Grass (1995)

With vocals more harmonic than Crosby, Stills and Nash and guitars brighter than any sun, the Jayhawks cook up a late summer jam session. Despite song titles like "Blue" and "Bad Time," the music keeps a friendly veneer throughout. It sounds so casual it could have been recorded in your kitchen. The album lives up to its name, planting a seedling in the heart of the listener so that their days will grow greener as each morning arrives. Even when it's a "bad time to be in love," it is a good time to be in love with this record.

5. Joni Mitchell – Blue (1971)

It wasn't until I heard Joni Mitchell sing that I realized how badly I want to be a redneck on a Grecian isle who knows how to do the goat dance very well. The introspective melancholy that pervades this album shoots right through the soul, but it’s often enough a price paid for ecstasy that the listener isn't left wanting to slit their wrists. Mitchell's fingers caress the piano, massaging fertile tone from its keys. The original detail, especially in the "Last Time I Saw Richard," brings a warm, quotidian realism to the album that makes it accessible to anyone.

4. Van Morrison – Astral Weeks (1968)

In listening, I followed you –
a young lad, rosy-cheeked and leather-clad,
you roamed the streets of Dublin,
ducking in and out of Cypress Avenue,
down past the shops,
to where she lay beside you.
You still found the strength

to look straight in her eyes
and see the pale horse galloping

through her lens.

You found the courage to finger the jagged grain
and accept that pain for all of us, to etherize your love,
to stretch your pain across a starlit sky.

And here I sit, ears taut with grief,
afraid to touch

those twelve jagged bars of rejection.

3. Brian Wilson – Smile (2004)

“Nick Walusko – vocals, guitar, eye-patch, carrots.” I have no idea what an eye-patch sounds like on record, but it makes me proud to know that someone out there is playing one. The carrots are easy to identify as their crunchy chomp provides the percussion on “Vega-Tables.” Is this album overly drug-laden? Probably, but it’s still the happiest hodge-podge of Americana ever put on record. Sure, there are a few melancholy twinges, most noticeably in the horns on “You Are My Sunshine,” but for the most part this album is guaranteed to raise more smiles than Sgt. Pepper’s or Pet Sounds.

2. The Costello Show – King of America (1986)

Costello’s first record featured the phrase “Elvis Is King” hidden among checkered boxes. On King of America, he steals the King of Rock’s, the other Elvis’s, band to do what no other foreigner has done so exquisitely – deconstruct the American Dream using the nation’s most proto-typically American idiom, country. From “Brilliant Mistake”’s opening cocktail chatter to the soldier circle jerk that closes “Sleep of the Just,” Costello points a contrarian microscope at Americana. Even the two covers are memorably revealing, especially “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” where Costello Americanizes a British bastardization, albeit a great one, of American R&B music.

1. Nellie McKay – Get Away From Me (2004)

If you blend torch ballads and hip hop, stir in a cup of political angst, sprinkle in some virtuoso keyboards and garnish with irony, you get Nellie McKay. The album cover says it all: our heroine busts a chorus-line pose in a red, hooded pea coat in front of a graffitied construction site. Every track is melodically eargasmic and McKay’s lyrics are filled with the wit we would expect from a twenty-first century vaudevillian. From the moment she starts scatting in Yiddish (hcabnesie? maybe?) on “David,” McKay performs a sultry intellectual seduction that anyone who can hear falls victim to.

2008 Supplement -- Best Male Songs Ever, Vol. 1

Along with the mix tape for the year in review, every year I compile supplementary bonus discs for my collection. This year I made two: my favorite songs by male artists and by femal artists. No artist can have a song repeated. Gender depends upon vocalist rather than songwriter or people playing, just for simplicity's sake. This is the playlist for the male version.

1. Bob Dylan - "Angelina" (Shot of Love outtake, 1981)

Mysterious and deep, this song is filled with magical images. Given context, I think it is about Christian Bob falling in love with a heathen of a woman and ready to do spiritual battle to keep her away from the hellfire. Whatever it is about, it is gorgeous and mind-blowing.

2. Barry Louis Polisar - "All I Want Is You" (1976, reissued on Juno)

This folksy love song is a series of light-hearted metaphors that seem inconsequential. The song's strength though comes across in its seeming honesty. It has that Walden effect, where simplicity comes through as authenticity.

3. Paul Simon - "Graceland" (from Graceland, 1986)

This travelogue about Paul Simon and his son takes a personal journey into America's heart of darkness -- the race-divided South -- in search of the racial unification that occured at Sun records, transforming the personal into a powerful metaphor of national significance.

4. Elvis Costello - "Sleep of the Just" (from King of America, 1986)

Costello has long been interested in writing songs dealing with issues of domestic violence. In this song, Costello, with shifting points of view, depicts a soldier leading a young girl on and engaging in a photographed one night stand with her. He shows the emotional impact this can have by implicitly comparing it to a gang rape in the final verse where her picture is "pinned up upon the barracks wall in her hometown while the soldiers take their turns with her attention."

5. The Band - "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" (from The Band, 1969)

This may not be my favorite Band song, but my interest in it has grown exponentially over the last year. It's no "Up On Cripple Creek" yet, but the working man ethos and litany of crops makes this rural unionizing song a winner.

6. Brian Wilson - "Vega-Tables" (from Smile, 2004)

The brilliance of this song is the child-like wonder it exudes, the same wonder that led Brian Wilson to develop an arrangement that featured people chomping on carrot and celery sticks in lieu of traditional percussion.

7. ? and the Mysterians - "96 Tears" (1966)

I love garage rock, and this organ-pumped pop song is one of the most sadly forgotten hits. Once a chart-topper, it is still little-known and difficult to come by despite Cameo-Parkway reissues.

8. Van Morrison - "Caravan" (from Moondance, 1970)

This epic of blue-eyed soul just surges and ebbs with the wonderful nuances of Van's aformal voice.

9. The Beatles - "Here, There, and Everywhere" (from Revolver, 1966)

One of McCartney's best ballads, this love song is awash in lush melody.

10. Ben Folds Five - "Brick" (1997)

What hooked me on this was the piano figure. Having been familiar with the song for a decade, it wasn't until recently that I payed attention to the words, aching and wrenching, as I drove home for the holidays.

11. Prince - "Sometimes It Snows In April" (from Parade, 1986)

Proof of Prince's egotism, this song is an elegy for Christopher Tracy, the character Prince played in Under the Cherry Moon, the 1986 film he wrote and directed. In the film, Tracy is murdered by Craig T. Nelson (of TV's Coach), the racist father of the girl Prince falls in love with, who is played by Kristen Scott Thomas. Still, despite its egotism, this song boils over with pathos and passion.

12. Arrested Development - "Mr. Wendal" (from 3 Years, 5 Months and 7 Days In the Life of..., 1991)

This was one of the first rap songs I fell in love with, and that was before I realized the powerful social commentary contained within it. The song celebrates hoboes as people too, and explains the virtues of helping those less fortunate. You go ahead Mr. Wendal.

13. James Brown - "Mother Popcorn" (1969)

"Mother Popcorn" has the most post-modern bass line known to man. A funky tune about curvaceous ladies punctuated by ecstatic screams about a salty snack. Classic James.

14. Billy Riley and his Little Green Men - "Red Hot" (1957)

Billy Riley's gal is red hot, and, comparatively, other rockabilly ain't doodely squat.

15. Johnny Cash - "The Mercy Seat" (from American III: Solitary Man, 2000)

Cash's cover of this Nick Cave track is one of the mot powerful gems to be mined from his American Recordings series, and that is saying a lot. The song is a cryptic jigsaw puzzle, a Rorschack test of serial murder and apocalyptic salvation.

16. Thin Lizzy - "Don't Believe A Word" (from Johnny the Fox 1976)

Thin Lizzy may be the most underrated metal band of all time. Their melodies and hooks are fantastic. This song couples those ever-present qualities with a self-deprecation that strengthen's Lizzy's legacy.

17. Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band - "Jungleland" (from Born To Run, 1975)

This song is a true epic. When it reaches the midpoint, the song simmers down to a murmur. When it rises from its ashes, the slowly paced piano that restarts it provides a pulse, upon which every instrument imaginable builds, not least of which is Springsteen's tortured and chiseled voice, pushing the song beyond its imaginable limits.

Best of 2008 Mix Tape

It is that time of year again; the time when I summarize the best new music that I listened to this year, compiling it onto a disc. These are twenty of the best.

1. Mudcrutch - "Shady Grove" (from Mudcrutch)

Mudcrutch, Tom Petty's original band, shares at least half of its genetic material with the Heartbreakers. In the Heartbreakers, though, it is clear that, while Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench often shine, Petty is always in control. Mudcrutch is a bit more democratic. The group is prone to instrumental bluegrassy jamming, the kind of stuff that wouldn't be out of place on an album like Workingman's Dead. This brings the players to the forefront. Also, Petty often shares the vocal mic or relinquishes it completely, giving even more prominence to the other members of the band. While their original songs are also great, their covers might be their best. Their take on Roger McGuinn's "Lover of the Bayou" sears it, but the real cake is their jovial jaunt on the traditional "Shady Grove."

2. Jakob Dylan - "Evil Is Alive and Well" (from Seeing Things)

Almost every review I read of this album pointed out that, while people expected an acoustic album from Jakob Dylan to be just like his dad's work, there couldn't be two artists more different. Hogwash. The problem is, critics are comparing Jakob to Bob's earlier work; what he really sounds like is Bob's later work. If Dylan ditched the cowboy band and stripped back his sound, this is exactly the kind of record he would make. The album is where Bob's Modern Times meets Springsteen's Nebraska. Several melodies borrow heavily from traditional songs and the lyrics are opaquely apocalyptic. No where are they more apocalyptic than on "Evil Is Alive and Well," a song personifying Satan in various contemporary guises. Haunting.

3. Hayes Carll - "Beaumont" (from Trouble In Mind)

Rather than one of the endlessly witty comic songs he has received a small bit of recognition for, "Beaumont" is perhaps Carll's saddest song; a song about a potential relationship that fails because of a series of missed coincidences. It begins with an implosion of pathos: "I saw you leaning on a dream." The line meets that perfect balance of the concrete and the metaphysical, and with descriptions of the bar he saw her in and the white rose he tried to woo her with between them, the line takes even on more emotional weight when it comes back at the song's end.

4. The Moldy Peaches - "Moldy Peaches" (from Juno)

Maybe I ust love this so much because its the closest thing my giral and I have to a song. Its filled with great little contradictions though, like "we sure are cute for two ugly people." It also includes the Konami Code (up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, B A start), which is an accomplishment for any pop song. It references John Henry and Don Quixote in the brilliant amalgam of "Don Quixote was a steel-drivin' man." Despite having a late 2007 jump start, this song wasn't ubiquitous for me until 2008.

5. Flight of the Conchords - "Robots" (from Flight of the Conchords)

Futuristic meta-electronica about doing the robot. Not bad. This humorous number also features the only binary solo ever, chanting 1 and 0 in various combinations. The real winner though is the catchy melody that couches the phrase "we used poisonous gasses and we poisoned their asses." Also, it sounds like Kermit the Frog has a cameo when the dude sings "global robo depression." The last few seconds, though, may be the most annoying part of the mix tape.

6. Randy Newman - "Piece of the Pie" (from Harps and Angels)

Any song capable of getting John Mellencamp's panties in a bunch is okay in my book, especially when it calls him Johnny Cougar. I like Mellencamp alright, but I'm pissed off he'd take offense at a song so brilliantly witty. This song takes on socialized healthcare, celebrity ad spots, and Bono's humanitarian posturing while exposing the inherent problems with wealth distribution. This song is one of Newman's finest moments ever, and is easily the best satire of 2008.

7. Flowers Forever - "Strange Fruit" (from Flowers Forever)

This song starts off with horns, showing it, as all versions are, is indebted to the indelible voice of Billie Holiday. Once the drums start, though, it is off in a totally different direction. Almost mariachi in the rhythms and howled in an anguished yelp. After Abel Meeropol, the song's composer, got done being blown away I think he'd appreciate it.

8. Dr. John & the Lower 911 - "Dream Warrior" (from The City That Care Forgot)

This swampy funk haunts my dreams like a samurai warrior ready to take on the whole of FEMA, which is more or less what Dr. John is in spirit. He references "Strange Fruit" again, but recontextualizes it to the Ninth Ward rather than Southern lynching. This is among the best protest songs of the year.

9. Scarlett Johansson - "I Wish I Was In New Orleans" (from Anywhere I Lay My Head)

The piano softly plunks out a music box tinkle of a lullaby as Scarlett half-talks this breathy and deeply textured love letter. I don't know whether to take a shot of whisky, slow dance under a dixie moon, or do both.

10. Elvis Costello & the Attractions - "Turpentine" (from Momofuku)

This song is like Paul McCartney on amphetamines. The melody is great, the harmonies are better. The wicked organ and the driven drumming push it along, and the whole thing ends up feeling like a Victorian bender.

11. Guns'N'Roses - "Madagascar" (from Chinese Democracy)

The logical sequel to "Civil War," "Madagascar" explodes with excellent vocals form Axl before disintegrating into a post-modern mish-mash of sampled sources from films, speeches, etc. Part ballad, part rocker, it is so far my favorite of a host of great songs on Chinese Democracy.

12. Katy Perry - "I Kissed A Girl" (from One of the Boys)

I realize that she is just trying to, quite sluttily, capitalize on lesbian chic. I also realize that she may actually be an animatronic manikin. Still, even I don't really respect her, I respect the brilliance between the power pop of "I Kissed A Girl." It is an anthem, even if it stands for nothing but a desire on Perry's part to pocket a fat wad of cash.

13. Ry Cooder - "Spayed Cooley" (from I, Flathead)

Okay, so maybe Randy Newman has some competition in the satire category. "Well, you hear a lot of talk about Homeland Security. It sounds to me like someone's gonna make some seeeerious money out of the deal" starts out Kash Buk, the fictional narrator of I, Flathead. He goes on to explain how he has all the security he needs. It's called his dog.

14. Hayes Carll - "It's A Shame" (from Trouble In Mind)

Born from the same thematic ground as "Beaumont," but a bit jauntier, this song comes off bittersweet. There's little sweeter than "kissin' for hours beneath that sweet magnolia," but it just makes a line like "standin' at the window with a broken window view" all the harder to take when you realize circumstances just won't let the love be.

15. Hank Williams III - "The Grand Ole Opry (Ain't So Grand Anymore)" (from Damn Right Rebel Proud)

This song encapsulates the movement to reinstate Hank Sr. into the Grand Ole Opry. With righteous indignation, Hank III composes a one-man manifesto.

16. Scarlett Johansson - "Falling Down" (from Anywhere I Lay My Head)

The piano falls like rain onto a bed organ chords with plucked strings behind it. Scarlett sounds masculine and strong, and imagining that voice couched in her feminine figure makes her even more alluring. As gorgeous as anything Tom Waits has made.

17. Randy Newman - "Korean Parents" (from Harps and Angels)

Always one to accept responsibility, Randy Newman tells today's young parents that their "parents aren't the greatest generation." This song looks at the anxiety of influence in a realm out side of literary criticism, and how anyone under 70 uses their parents success as a reason for their failure. This is a useless strategy. To contravent it, Newman suggests hiring Korean parents to take care of the kids. As he points out, Koreans are good student not because they are smarter than other ethnicities, but because their parents force them to work hard on their schooling.

18. Jakob Dylan - "All Day and All Night" (from Seeing Things)

Jakob owes his dad for this one. This song is filled with those declaratives that come out of nowhere that filled Bob's "Love and Theft" in 2001 and The Basement Tapes 40 years ago. "Bees make honey. I'll make it mine." "Don't crowd me lady, or I'll fill up your shoe." "I do it big or don't do it at all." "I'm no pig without a wig." "Ain't got no baggage that I can't use." "My captain's decorated." "Got more good luck than I'll ever u se." Can you tell the difference? The peak of copying his dad comes with the line "Me and Delia -- we're more than friends" in which Jakob places himself in the context of the folk tradition. If you take Bob's version of "Delia" on World Gone Wrong seriously, Delia is more than a friend; she's the woman who drove his dad to suicide.

19. Bob Dylan - "Red River Shore" (from Tell Tale Signs)

This epic tale is full of mystery. A man who can bring people back from the dead? I've got some ideas on the language he used.... Most people interpret the ending as revealing that the girl from the red river shore is in fact dead. I'm not so certain. I think the speaker himself is dead. That reading would certainly be in keeping with the folk tradition and seems entirely plausible given Dylan. People who read it the other way point out that when he asks about the girl, "no one knew who [he] was talkin' about." Later, though, he says that he doesn't think "anyone ever saw [him] there at all, 'cept the girl from the red river shore." No one said they didn't see her; they said that they only didn't know who she was. The speaker could have already been dead when he saw her, and maybe that's why no one responded; they can't see him because he is but a ghost. The girl may be a ghost now too. At least one of them needs "that guy who lived a long time ago."

20. Flowers Forever - "Happy New Year" (from Flowers Forever)

This song would have fit great in a late 60s art film. Garage rock, the holiday season and in-song spelling all come together here. The guitars and organ grow to a fever pitch of new year enthusiasm.

100 Albums, 100 Words (30-21)

30. Prince – Purple Rain (1984)

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to praise an album that contains life; electric word, life; it means dancealicious grooves and a few scintillating ballads, and maybe some explicit lyrics. Prince exploded with this album, fusing his admiration for Carlos Santana guitar licks to his love of old-school funk beats. He took musical chances, from the bassless “When Doves Cry” to the hyper-technofied “Computer Blue,” and they just about all work. Despite being infamous for spawning parental advisory labels, “Darling Nikki” is gorgeous, almost as much so as “The Beautiful Ones,” one of the greatest singles that never was.

29. James Brown – Live At the Apollo (1963)

It is all here – everything that made James Brown the greatest. Even from this relatively early point, the groundwork has been laid for Brown’s mind-melting funk in this sweaty r & b workout. Start and stop rhythms punctuate James’ blistering exultations of joy and sorrow in the guttural space beyond words. Perhaps the strongest instrument on here is the crowd, and James knows how to play it like a master, calling and responding until he has to scream. If only we could watch him dance, then this album might be able to save the lives of everyone whose lost someone.

28. Afroman – The Good Times (2001)

Bob Marley he isn’t, but Afroman uses more reggae than just about any other rapper out there, and with skill. Afroman’s underrated raps also incorporate rock and gospel. Lyrically he’s an imaginative MC who is not afraid to push a few buttons. In “Crazy Rap,” Afroman raps about getting head from Colonel Sander’s wife. In “The American Dream” Afroman includes homosexuals and teenage mothers in his vision of a unified America broken free from the bounds of corporate slavery. “Because I Got High” cracks on Hitler. Varied as his subjects seem, they all refer to unity in a diverse world.

27. The Clash – London Calling (1979)

All those annoying little ska boys are a small price to pay for this landmark of jazz-punk fusion. Finally garnering The Clash the attention they deserved in America, London Calling blended horns and guitars more naturally than anything by the E-Street Band by making horns rhythm rather than lead instruments. The record showed the band’s deep roots, shown by “Wrong ‘Em Boyo”’s transformation of “Stagger Lee,” something most other punk lacked, allowing it to carve out new musical terrains. From “London Calling” to “Lost In the Supermarket” to “Train In Vain,” it made the world want to rock the revolution.

26. Jill Sobule – Underdog Victorious (2004)

A breakup in three acts with an epilogue. Act One: Jill is tired of being the poor person in her relationship and its really dragging things down. It’s not looking good for the couple. Act Two: Jill retreats from the relationship by engaging in activism, singing a series of political songs dealing with issues ranging from drug abuse to schoolyard teasing to child prostitution in Israel to the intolerance of fundamentalist religious brainwashing. Act Three: The Post-Breakup Blues. The album ends with a hint of future bliss as she falls in love with the female cop who pulls her over.

25. Prince – Dirty Mind (1980)

“Naked funk” is what Prince labeled the bare-bones, demoesque style he unleashed on Dirty Mind, and naked certainly seems to be his modus operandi here. “Sister” is a song about you-know-what with you-know-who. “Head” is about something that goes on below the shoulders, or below the belt. Many of the lurid encounters leave the narrator confused and alone, however, and the album ends on a serious note with the intoxicating dance groove of “Partyup,” a song that suggests late-night dancing as a way of escaping the paranoia created by Reagan’s Cold War policies. This is the first great Prince album.

24. Stevie Wonder – Innervisions (1973)

Falling in the center of a fabulous quintilogy, Innervisions is a massively powerful album, seamlessly blending political and spiritual concerns into a harmonic tapestry of funk, soul, gospel and jazz. “Living In the City” is one of the most powerful singles ever, and the thematic template for Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message.” “Don’t You Worry About A Thing” and “He’s A Misstra Know It All” are similarly powerful attacks on being self-centered. Between the white-hot funk of “Higher Ground” and “Jesus Children of America,” Stevie slips in some beautiful ballads, like “Visions” and “Golden Lady,” making this a very balanced album.

23. The Doors – The Doors (1967)

In April of 1993, this album changed my life. In the short-term, it inspired me to start collecting records, learn to play piano, write crappy psuedo-poetry, and listen to The Doors endlessly. In the long-term, it not only made me see pop cultu re as something serious, but as something worthy of serious study. It led me to discovering music beyond the Doors and real poetry that bore little resemblance to Jim Morrison's drug-addled ramblings. I'd never heard organ before, and the sound was a revelation. It played over and over at my thirteenth birthday pa rty. Adolescence still chills me.

22. Nuggets – Original Artyfacts From the Original Psychedelic Era (1972, 1998)

Few box sets can brag of being hitless, but this one can, and does. Originally twenty-seven tracks of exquisite acid rock madness, Rhino expanded the original two-record set to four cds, featuring three times the tracks that appeared on the original. The result is no less glorious for the distillation. Many songs sounds like dead on imitations of different artists – Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane – but the reverse seems just as likely after a few spins. From Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” to The Standell’s “Good Guys Don’t Wear White,” this set is a treasure trove of underappreciated gems.

21. Elvis Costello – This Year’s Model (1978)

A promotional poster for this album claimed it was “made in 1953 for 1983.” This album is thirty years ahead of its time, which means we’ve almost caught up with it. Rockabilly-fueled punk, this album paves the way for 80s New Wave. The Attractions are in top form here, playing every instrument like it is the lead. The bass in particular stands out, especially on tracks such as “The Beat” and “Living In Paradise.” The stop-start feel of many songs pushes the adrenaline. For being considered a forerunner of the punk movement, this sounds big enough to be arena rock.