it's time for music!

It's that time you've all been waiting for — time for my favorite songs of the year. Yessss!

Yeah, there's a lot of other stuff I could write about in this space, but I am working hard to put the break-in behind me and move forward. To be honest, I am finding it upsetting to think any more about the break-in than I already have. 

So I am here to share some delicious songs with you. I hope you enjoy.

(6) "Sanssouci" — Rufus Wainwright. Lord knows how I love this man. 2007 saw the release of Rufus' decadent Release the Stars, an dazzling album with the same lavish production that characterized his splendid Want One album and the cryptic Want Two. "Sanssouci" is probably my favorite song from the album, a playful little number about love and longing and boys in hotels. The song features a charming flute part, a sort of trilly, lacy little flute line that makes you feel like dancing around in a tutu. Over the summer I was rewarded with the sight of seeing a big muscular man wearing pin-striped circus pants playing that flute part at Rufus' Atlanta concert. That was a good day.

One of my favorite lines in the song is almost a throwaway, a casual line in which Rufus sings I'm tired of writing elegies to boredom. When this song came across my radar in the spring, that line felt like a strange revelation, a clue on the path. I took it as encouragement to broaden my horizons, to jump into something unexpected and scary. As silly as it sounds, I felt an implicit endorsement from Rufus when I quit my horrible soul-eating job at the Very Large Multinational Corporation a few months after discovering this song. 

(5) "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" — Iron & Wine. I've been following Sam Beam since the days of The Creek Drank the Cradle, and I was happy to welcome this album to the fold this year. "Flightless Bird" is a beautiful, hymn-like waltz that closes The Shepherd's Dog. This song captures all that I love about Iron & Wine. The images of simple purity in Beam's music suggest a transcendent beauty that always waits just beyond our awareness.

(4) "The Part Where You Let Go" — Hem. I'm growing terribly predictable by adding a Hem selection to my top songs list each winter, but I can't help it. They're one of my favorite bands and one of the groups I turn to most frequently when seeking solace. They're like comfort food, except without all the guilt and calories. This song found me in June when I was leaving the stability of that soul-eating but lucrative day job and entering unknown territory. There were a number of occasions over the summer when the chorus reduced me to a quivering pile of tears.

(3) "Miracle of Five" — Eleni Mandell. NPR's delightful Song of the Day feature brought Eleni Mandell to my attention for the first time this spring. Her entire Miracle of Five album is full of sweet, folky songs like this one, with easygoing guitars and some sleepy saxophones. This is a very pleasing album.

(2) "Either Way" — Wilco.

Maybe the sun will shine today.

The clouds will blow away.

Maybe I won't feel so afraid.

I will try to understand 

Either way.

The childlike simplicity of these lines that open Wilco's album Sky Blue Sky took my breath away when I first heard them. The clarity and courage in those lines becomes even more significant when you realize that the person who wrote them, Jeff Tweedy, suffers from major depressive disorder and panic attacks. The lines seem like the best kind of therapy, a promise to just accept each day with open hands. Perhaps it was the knowledge of Jeff Tweedy's ongoing struggles with depression that led me to somehow link these lines to my thoughts about Bob, my friend who killed himself in August. I think this song was borne from deep vulnerability, and that's what I like best about it.

(1) "Australia" — The Shins. I loved all of The Shins' Wincing the Night Away album, but this song especially. The joy and abandon of this song buoyed my spirits throughout the year. It's been years since I came across a song this singable. The entire first half of this Wincing album is about as close to genius as contemporary pop music gets.

Honorable mentions:

- "The Storm" — José Gonzalez (this was a Friday Night Lights soundtrack favorite — thanks to the producers of FNL for their fantastic taste in music)

- "What Is a Soul?" — M. Ward

- "Is There a Ghost" — Band of Horses. I bought Cease to Begin this month after seeing that the album made it into the top 10 of Paste magazine's Top Albums of 2007. The album feels like what would happen if The Ocean Blue and My Morning Jacket got together and had a big fight and then decided to be friends. Melodic, bouncy rock and some really lovely harmonies.

- "Goes Around" — Rockfour

- "The Story" — Brandi Carlisle. The way Brandi's voice cracks at the climax of this song never fails to give me shivers.

Well, that's my story. Let's hear what you've been listening to for the past twelve months.

new music notes

I spent much of the weekend rocking out to the new Shins album, Wincing the Night Away.

If you're on the fence about getting this album, let me just push you off, right into the buy camp. You won't regret it. If you require further convincing, go visit the Shins' myspace page – you can listen to ten complete tracks there.

It's a really satisfying record, with wonderfully imaginative melodies that recall everything I have always liked about Morrissey's more spirited songs ("Australia" is the particular Shins track I'm thinking of here – don't you hear a little bit of "Piccadilly Palare" in there?).

In other delightful music news, my friend Jose recently sent me a tidbit about Rufus Wainwright's forthcoming album, Release the Stars:

The LP, which is due to be released in May, has been executive-produced by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys.

Wainwright said of the new record: "The theme is just about releasing your love and your brilliance, or acting on your impulses and basically laying it all down on the line.

"I think so much of life is spent hoarding and saving and protecting, and very few of us really live our full potential."

Speaking about his recent creative activity, Wainwright told the Ann Arbor News: "I'm definitely in my prime and ready to flex all the artistic muscles I have been training over the years."

Needless to say, I am quivering in anticipation over this one.

My Super-Duper Top Favorite 7 Songs of the Year

Well, 2007 has been a good year for music.

This year I decided to refine my listening habits, trying to purchase whole albums instead of just fabulous singles. Yes, iTunes is a beautifully addictive technology that puts untold hours of juicy music right at my fingertips 24/7. It also lets me severely limit an artist's scope by just downloading one 3-minute pop song instead of digging deeper into their work. So I made a deliberate effort this year to choose the long view whenever I could.

Picking out these songs is always one of my favorite exercises at the end of the year. Every year, I sift through my music collection and come up with this list of songs that I didn't know twelve months ago. It just makes me realize all over again how much beautiful stuff people are doing out there in the world. (2007's forecast calls for new albums by Nora Jones, Rufus Wainwright, and Sam Phillips. People, life is good.)

(7) Ray LaMontagne — "Within You"
'Til the Sun Turns Black was Ray's much-anticipated sophomore album, and though I don't think it hit the crazily high standard set by his first album, it did offer some memorable moments. This song is one of those curious pieces that manages to be deeply mournful and uplifting at the same time. The song doesn't even have much lyrical content, but it has a soulful, soaring melody that gets me right in the gut every time I listen. The arrangement of the strings and the horns really makes this song shine.

(6) Jon Dee Graham — "Something Wonderful"
This spring, a friend at work told me about Jon Dee Graham, a Texas artist with a gravelly voice and a lot of sad stories. His voice sounds like he just got off the bus that took him to hell and back. And now he's singing you the wonderfully simple lesson he learned while he was there: "Something really wonderful is going to happen to you." I challenge you to listen to this song at an appropriately blistering volume, and just try to not feel better. Impossible.

(5) Sera Cahoone, "Couch Song"
Sera Cahoone's voice pays tribute to hillbillies and torch balladeers. I was delighted to discover this debut album on NPR's "Song of the Day" (an endless source of thoughtful musical selections). "Couch Song" showcases Sera's soulful Patsy-Cline-meets-Neko-Case voice, and her wistful lyrics. "If we don't talk, I won't mind, because that's the only way to get along sometimes," she sings, offering a perfect tribute to a faltering, complicated love.

(4) Luka Bloom, "She Sings Her Songs With Open Arms"
The little promotional sticker on the cover of Luka Bloom's Before Sleep Comes album calls it "nine songs for insomniacs." In 2003, an aggressive bout of tendinitis forced Bloom to lay down his usual instrument of choice, a steel-string electric guitar. While recovering, he picked up a gorgeous Spanish guitar with nylon strings, hoping it would be easier on his hands. This gentle mini-album was the result of his nights experimenting with that guitar. Clocking in at just 28 minutes, the album offers nine little lullabies for adults. You can almost feel the tension melting away at the first notes of this first song. This album is a particularly fitting soundtrack for a quiet cup of tea (and Bloom offers a beverage recommendation — the fifth track is titled "Camomile").

(3) Rocky Votolato, "White Daisy Passing"
Rocky Votolato may be Texas' answer to the ghost of Elliot Smith. "I'm going down to sleep in the bottom of the ocean," he sings in this haunting folk song layered with delicate harmonies. I became slightly obsessed with this song in 2006, adding it to just about every mix CD I made. I also made a point to tell as many people as possible that I did not discover Rocky Votolato after hearing this song on The O.C., where it was apparently featured. (I've got standards.) Just because Mischa Barton likes this song doesn't mean you can't like it, too.

(2) Cat Power, "Lived in Bars"
Choosing just one song off Cat Power's fantastic 2006 album was very, very hard. The Greatest reveals Cat Power finally coming into her own, and knowing how good she really is. For this album, Cat Power (Chan Marshall) recruited a handful of great Memphis soul musicians to support her in the studio. I've been following Marshall's music for a while now, feeling pangs of sympathy whenever I encountered another story of her paralyzing stage fright ("she has been known to stop playing in order to apologize for a self-perceived flaw in her performance," says Wikipedia). That's why The Greatest is a particularly satisfying release for The Little Girl from Georgia That Could. "Lived in Bars" begins in its typically simple, stripped style, a minor-key dirge on the piano. But about halfway through, the song picks its skirts up and starts dancing around in the kitchen, and you find yourself singing along. It just makes me happy every time I hear it.

(1) Kate Bush, "Sunset"
"Every sleepy light must say goodbye / To the day before it dies in a sea of honey," sings Kate in this elaborate song near the end of her masterful double-CD release, Aerial. Kate Bush is definitely an acquired taste; if you are a meat-and-potatoes music lover, you will find her tendency to experiment endlessly annoying. Aerial features bizarre sound bites of Kate's son talking, her lover whispering, birds chirping, Kate herself laughing hysterically, Kate herself reciting 150 decimal places of pi, etc. But "Sunset" feels like a slice of genius, six minutes of musical perfection. It starts with just a single piano, a voice lamenting the end of the day and describing the colors of the sky and water. It gradually builds to a joyful climax that makes me envision Kate herself dancing on the beach at dusk. Naturally, she pulls out lots of her classic tricks along the way (weird Greek chorus thing in the background, crazily ambitious tempo changes that shouldn't work but somehow do, etc.). It took Kate Bush 12 years to develop this ambitious double album, but she has said that she hopes Aerial will not be her last release. I am glad that this artist plans to continue sharing her work with us as she moves into her richest, most imaginative years.

Honorable Mentions in no particular order:
Paul Simon, "Another Galaxy"
M. Ward, "Poison Cup"
Bob Dylan, "Someday Baby"
Neko Case, "Hold On, Hold On"
Maria Taylor, "Song Beneath the Song"
Camera Obscura, "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"
Hem, "He Came to Meet Me"
Hem and Autumn Defense, "Saint Charlene"
Madeleine Peyroux, "La Javanaise"

What was your song of the year? Post a comment and tell me about the music that changed your life in the past twelve months.