I guess it goes without saying that all these tracks will stick with me for personal reasons. It's been that kind of year.


Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma

How much you like Vampire Weekend seems to be inversely proportional to how serious you are about your class hatred - that they're rich upper class kids from upstate New York, or something, and make no attempt to hide it, seems to have become their asthetic. But whatever, they make great tunes, and I'd much rather rich people sang stuff like this than songs of misery, or pretended to be poor to look cool. As Ezra Koenig asks on this track, "Why would you lie about how much coal you have? Why would you lie about something dumb like that?"
This is footage of them playing Oxford Comma at a picnic somewhere - lovely.
Vampire Weekend are basically the Strokes playing Paul Simon's Graceland album, but better, and minus Simon's infamously dodgy handling of aparthied-era South African politics.

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The Hold Steady – Sequestered In Memphis

Rollickin' good road-trip rock'n'roll as only The Hold Steady can really make you believe in. Crain Finn's character is holed up in some small-town cop-shop being interrogated about a night out that went somehow wrong. "Now they want to know exactly which bathroom - dude, does it make any difference? It can't be important... Yes, sir, I'll tell my story again..."
I wrote a 3000 word essay on this band not that long ago and it only made me love them more. If this song doesn't make you want to drive somewhere far away with the windows down, preferably to a party, I will never understand you.
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Charge Group – Lullaby For The Apocalypse

I first heard Charge Group at the Super 8 Diaries launch at Dirty Shirlows in Marrickville. I had no idea who they were. Vidan, BFC and I got really impatient with them because they seemed to be soundchecking forever... and then they started playing. Breathtakingly beautiful, delicate music that makes you forget where you are. Musically they sit somewhere between the Dirty Three, the Drones and Art Of Fighting.
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Snowman – We Are The Plague


Try listening to this song in the dark. To quote this guy who edits this zine I read when he was talking about something else, if there was a scarier song put out this year, I am afraid to hear it.
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Here's part of a list of my favourites of the songs that were released and caught my eye this year. I missed a lot of great 2008 music, no doubt... do comment and let me know what I should check out - I'm informed by usually-reliable sources that Fleet Foxes and Erykah Badu both put out really great albums this year, amongst others that I haven't gotten to just yet.


Ohana – One On Four
('Dead Beat', Imperative Residence Records)

www.myspace.com/ohanamusic

When I wrote my review for music & pop culture (or spoke to anyone about new music) I said: "Ohana’s music is composed of angular, precise rhythms. Not a note is wasted. In fact, it’s only about a third of the time that all four musicians are playing at once. Individual parts are repetitive and simple, but together the songs are compulsively danceable, in no small part due to drummer Kino’s brilliantly inventive ostinatos. This is music that is more than the sum of its parts. One On Four is an example. A sparkling, arpeggiated guitar line runs throughout the song, sounding somehow distant. It’s joined at intervals by a complementary, mumbling bassline and a cascading second guitar melting over the first. Before you realise, the subtle climax of the song is upon you and Farrier is screaming that “some things are irreplaceable! Some things are better off not lost!”"
One On Four was, for me, the best song of the year. I was obsessed with it and it still sounds somehow perfect to me.
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Foals – Balloons
('Antidotes', Transgressive Records)

Ghosts Of Television broke through more significantly this year in the Sydney indie scene, with an infamous and brutal last-band-on performance at the underground Goodbye Sunshine Festival, a praise-filled feature in Mess+Noise and a righteously angry hipster-baiting single, City Of Painless Childbirth, flogged for months on FBi Radio. But the enigmatic opening track of their debut EP for Chatterbox Records was probably the best thing they released this year. The guitars stutter with restrained menace whilst vocalist Nic de Jong plays the part of a disgraced fascist leader trudging through the scenes of his crimes ("Here is the door I kicked in / And here are the books that I burned / Here is the champagne that I drank / As the streets looked on horrified"). Ostensibly he's a broken, shamed man, but the wistfulness of de Jong's multi-tracked falsetto and the soaring space-rock climax the band builds hint at the character's unrepentance.
Sydney DJ Mailer Daemon completed a vaguely dubstep-ish remix of Furthest Village From The Sun that you can stream here.
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Cut Copy - Hearts On Fire
('In Ghost Colours')

Hearts On Fire sounds like it could have been created anytime in the last 25 years, in a good way - witness the New Order guitar line, the early 90s house vocal samples, and the buildup to that sax solo. Dan Whitford's lyrics stir up a sweet anticipation but could be about almost anything - blanks that you fill in yourself. This is perfectly constructed, floor-filling dance pop - if there's any doubts in your head about that, listen to the last minute of this song and observe how everything just fits together.
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more to come.

A chorus heard throughout the suburbs - open up your mouth and fake the words
Suddenly they reawaken, snow domes shaken, a kiss on the shoulder.