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Occasionaly a lyricist is able to pen in a sparse collection of words something so profoundly moving that it rivals the narrative punch of drawn-out novels and scripts. Something immediately compelling is parcelled into a few choice words and a sudden clarity of understanding overwhelms. The universe for that moment is resting on each verse, the music accentuating every pause and intonation. Part wonder at the craftmanship of each phrase, part immersion in the storytelling, the following songs are testaments to the range of great lyrics I consider worth commemorating in this playlist. A song like Nick Cave’s Darker with the Day is a baroque feast of words that teeter into sublimely evocative storytelling vignettes, whereas a song like Cat Steven’s Father and Son rests at the other end of the spectrum, succinct and composed in its competing voices. And, of course, there is my favorite song lyrical or otherwise, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, which includes these sorrowful verses:

I hear that your building your little house deep in the desert, your living for nothing now, hope you are keeping some kind of record… and you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

1) Nick Cave – Darker with the Day (the last song of the phenomenal achievement ‘No More Shall We Part’… ‘a gilled jesus shivering on a fisherman’s hook’)
1) Nick Cave – Darker with the Day

2) Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat (crystalline perfection, to shatter and reassemble and shatter again, the eternal ache)
2) Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat

3) Cat Stevens – Father and Son (ah youth, ain’t it the truth)
3) Cat Stevens – Father and Son

4) Junip – Ghost of Tom Joad (ok, this should be by Bruce Springsteen, but as I do not own that version in mp3 format, this stunning cover will suffice. ‘welcome to the new world order’)
4) Junip – Ghost of Tom Joad

5) Bob Dylan – Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (the song that made Allen Ginsberg tear up reminiscing about in Scorsese’s ‘No Direction Home’ documentary. I normally do not approve of ‘list’ songs, but this is truly the distillation of something bigger than us all, a damn near way of life)
5) Bob Dylan – Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

6) Will Oldham – I See a Darkness (Johnny Cash does a haunting cover of this that you can listen to on my Don Quixote playlist, but Oldham gives the right chill factor to these perfectly chosen words)
6) Will Oldham – I See a Darkness

7) Tim Buckley – Song to the Siren (‘long floatin’ on shipless oceans/ I did all my best to smile/ til your singin eyes and fingers/ drew me loving to your isle’ ‘nuf said)
7) Tim Buckley – Song to the Siren

8 Tom Waits – Time (very hard to choose one example of Tom Waits talents, but this is a favorite of mine from Rain Dogs, even though the more obvious choice would be Ol’ 55)
8 Tom Waits – Time

9) Vic Chesnutt – See You Around (best end song to a playlist ever, in addition to the great lyrics. Vic kicks your ass around with his verbiage, such a brilliant little song and it captures so much of my personality in the process I had to include it)
9) Vic Chesnutt – See You Around

As almost all years, there was a high amount of quality, an extraordinary amount of undeserved hype (Vampire Weekend, Fleet Foxes, Black Kids to name a few), and it also had a few disappointments (The Hold Steady, Coldplay).  

Here’s ten of what I consider the quality of the year. 

1) Bon Iver- “For Emma, Forever Ago”

Typically not the kind of thing I go for.   Lo-fi, unpolished, almost sounds like a demo.   Thank God I let this one in to my head this year.   I can’t shake these songs.   Delivered with such feeling it’s impossible to not be drawn in.   Every song stands on it’s own, but they all work together to form a brilliant whole. Many nights while laying in bed, these songs would play in my head.   A haunting work.

2) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds- “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”

In 1994, I got to see a Nick Cave show at Lollapalooza that I liked, but my attention was severely distracted as I was waiting for the Smashing Pumpkins later in the day.   Too bad I was so young because I’m sure if I had been paying attention and knew who Nick Cave was, it wouldn’t have taken me years to “find” him.   A defining album of what Nick Cave is.   A stunning lyrical work taken alone, but you can’t give short shrift to the Bad Seeds and what really holds the album together, the music.

3) Kings of Leon- “Only By The Night”

Every so often, a record will come by and take you by complete surprise.   While I’ve never been a huge KOL fan, I am now.   This is EXACTLY how I like my rock & roll, huge and ambitious.

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Normally I’m a movie guy. Because of that obsession, it is increasingly difficult to keep up with all of the great new music that is released each year. As I look over others’ top ten lists on the year I realize how much I missed. I also never claimed to be a musical genius. Still, I know what I love and I do keep tabs on what Chris Robinson calls “the song.”

2008 has to be the oddest year yet, in terms of my personal tastes and trying to stretch my musical muscles a little bit and challenging myself. By mid summer I was pretty much sick of the folky, indie-rock movement (snooze). But who would’ve thought that a lot of my favorite music on the year would be from bands that showcase a female singer with poppy, bubblegum melodies and beats? And while none of them appear on this list, I’ve also flirted with some Hip Hop this year (13 and God, Why?, Citizen Cope, Forss, Person X, etc.) and even some danceable electronica.

As I look over the list below, I realize that it isn’t all that creative and fairly derivative; maybe even cliched, but hey, that’s cause they’re GOOD! So anyway, after thinking about it too much and weeding out some albums that probably should have made it, here are my top ten albums of 2008…

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