music in 2008. yikes. if i liked anything this year, it was usually because i'd mistaken it for being from some other year or some other era. half of the stuff i was into sounded like it was from the 70s or 80s, and the other half was indie-folk or alt-country, which tend to be a bit timeless. maybe that's a sign that i'm getting older, though i'd prefer to think that it's more reflective of what's happening in the industry.

2008 was definitely a year of singles for me. albums were too time-consuming in a year when i dealt with two clusterfuck projects, an industry that is barely keeping its head above water, a company that is on the front page at least once every two weeks, a trans-Atlantic relocation, and a head that was crammed full of Really, Really Big Exam III™ crap for six months.

having said all of that, here are the songs that got a lot of play this year. gentle reader, in alphabetical order, i present:

the dirty canuck's top singles of 2008

1. Bon Iver, “Skinny Love”
i can’t remember the last time a song made me feel this much like i was intruding into someone’s private life. the lo-fi production, the quiet intensity of the first verse, the naked and pleading anguish in the vocals, the way his voice cracks as he gets louder, the wrong note about 3 minutes in, the near triumphant “woo-hoo-hooos” near the end. all of it makes me feel like i’ve accidentally walked into the room of a man who is working through something intensely personal; like i’ve become intimate with his story without his permission. even months later, i find that by the end of the song, i’ve unconsciously bowed my head, almost as an apology for barging in. no other song i heard this year was better able to convey such a sense of heft through such weightless production.

2. Cut Copy, “Hearts on Fire”
imagine yourself on a dancefloor, bodies moving all around you, lights flashing overhead. imagine the song you’re listening to: heavy on synths and keyboards, chunky basslines, a saxophone hook, a guitar-solo bridge, and a robotically detached yet human voice delivering lyrics about “searching for a love alive; drowning in the silence as we walk the night”. is it New Order? no. Depeche Mode? wrong again. it’s Cut Copy delivering a song that could easily pass for an 80s club classic. i remember being impressed by this band a few years ago when i was listening to a lot of dance-punk, but nothing could’ve prepared me for how good they would get at perfecting that 80s dancefloor sound.

3. Death Cab For Cutie, "Cath..."
DCFC and i parted ways many years and many albums ago. at some point their sound moved too far away from the stuff i fell in love with in the autumns of 2000-2002: the multi-layered walls of sound, clean Gibbard vocals, and driving drums. when i first heard this song, i thought it was from an old EP that i'd forgotten about. except the production was way better than it was on We Have the Facts.... and Gibbard sounded much too confident. sure enough, it was from this year’s Narrow Stairs (which also spawned the excellent if not slightly-indulgent “I Will Possess Your Heart”). i’m always happy when bands i love find the kernel of their sound and manage to expand on it in a way that feels new but not foreign. on “Cath…”, the boys in DCFC have managed to do just that.

4. Duffy, "Mercy"
this song confused the hell out of me the first time it came up on my iPod. i didn't think i had any Northern soul around in a format other than cassette tape. but i brushed off the confusion and didn't think about the song again for awhile. it came up on shuffle a few weeks later and again, i was confused. this time i listened to it a bit more carefully. wait - this wasn't Northern soul. it was too modern. but it sounded just like it, with its dancefloor bassline and drums and torch song vocals. i eventually checked out Duffy's album, Rockferry. it's a strong debut, with several other great songs, but this is the one that i keep coming back to, half-expecting my life to turn into a British movie from the 60s, complete with Twiggy, Ben Sherman shirts, and soul club badges.

5. Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal"
so the first time i heard this song, it annoyed me. it sounded like one of those stupid exercises we were forced to do in grade 3 music class where each section of the class starts singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" in rounds. but i gave it another chance. i kept giving it chances. i listened to it when i woke up, when i walked to work, in the rain, in the car home as we sped over the Brooklyn Bridge. i kept trying to place it to a moment in time, to a moment in my life. after a few months i gave up. because it doesn't really inhabit any particular moment or space. it really is that stupid exercise from grade 3 music class - a melody and rhythm that you've always known, that rattles around in the back of your brain, two minutes of harmonized voices and instrumentation with a steady drum like a heartbeat that renders location and age and time and place completely irrelevant.

6. Frightened Rabbit, "Keep Yourself Warm"
i don’t remember when or where i found this song. it sat in a folder on my iTunes for months, untouched. i kept giving up on it because the first minute or so is a bit slow. it doesn’t really grab you. one day, i sat down with the intention of pushing through. so i did. and for the first minute or so, it was slow. and then, about 30 seconds later came that lyric that stuck in my head for days: “it takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep warm”. consider me grabbed. from there, the song picks up steam, with a wonderful musical breakdown for the last minute or so. i liked several other songs by this band this year, but none surprised me as much as this one.

7. Jason Collett, "Out of Time"
i've been spoiled by the talent that comes out the Broken Social Scene collective for far too long and have enjoyed Collett's solo work for awhile now. his albums are the ones you throw on when you're having a beer on the dock up at the lake, watching the sun set over the water, or when you're driving through the Ontario countryside in late summer, cornfields moving past in amber and green waves. this song all solid hooks, well-placed handclaps, straightforward delivery, elastic guitars, and the assured mediations of someone who's seen enough of life to know himself and know his place in the world.

8. Jenny Lewis, “Acid Tongue”
disclaimer: i would listen to Jenny Lewis sing the phone book. having said that, i love this song. it’s quiet. it’s simple. it’s Lewis and a few other singers for harmony and a guitar. that’s all. it’s not quite country and not quite gospel, but lyrically, it might as well be. she sings of being a bad girl, getting into trouble, quitting her bad ways, falling in love, and starting all over again (“to be lonely is a habit, like smoking or taking drugs, and I’ve quit them both, but man, was it rough.”). if you’re looking for an example of beauty through simplicity, this song’s it.

9. The Kills, “Cheap and Cheerful”
you want kick in the throat? here it is. from the phlegmy, throat-clearing cough to the hip-shaking, low-fi drum loop, on this song, The Kills are all trashy chic. they mash blues-punk and electro, throwing in the crack of a whip every few bars, handclaps, and a bridge that features a marching band’s snare drum. the beats groove, the guitars slice, and the lyrics are 100% wrong-side-of-the-tracks sleaze (“I’m sick of social graces; show your sharp-tipped teeth … I want you to be crazy ‘cause you’re boring, baby, when you’re sane”). if Pulp ever needed a grungy, blues-punk, minimalist b-side for This Is Hardcore, this is the song they would’ve picked.

10. Kings of Leon, “Sex on Fire”
i hate the title of this song. for awhile, i purposely avoided the song just because of the title. eventually, i caved and gave it a spin. i was not surprised to find what is arguably the most straightforward stadium rock anthem of the year, with its ripping guitar riffs, big drum solo during the bridge, throaty lead singer, and catchy singalong chorus. the production is clearly geared towards placing this song in regular rotation on the top 40 stations, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. i was surprised that though this song was by no means the best one on my list of top singles, it was the one i found myself singing along to the most. still hate the title though.

11. M83, "Kim & Jessie"
if John Hughes ever makes another movie about teenagers in the 80s, there’s no question that this song could headline the soundtrack. it gets everything about the era completely right - sweeping synths, steady drum machines, whispery vocals. and while the song has so many elements of this style of new wave, it’s not cold or detached. the song conveys real emotion. MGMT often irked me because their swiping seemed a bit too forced. M83’s nod to the 80s also appears to be deliberate, but in a sincere, respectful way. he genuinely, unironically loves 80s music. that this love is embedded into his music is nothing short of a treat for those of us who remember when this sound was all that ever came out of our radios.

12. MGMT, "Time To Pretend"
as i said, i had a lot of problems with the MGMT album. it felt like a collection of decent singles stitched together without any real sense of narrative and after awhile, it just seemed a bit much - too produced, too many synths, too put-on of a performance, too cranked to 11. that said, it did result in a couple of really good songs, and "Time To Pretend" is the best of the lot. it condenses the MGMT sound into a little over 4 minutes. musically, it's that blend of electro-pop, glam rock, disco, new wave, and funk; lyrically, it's the obsession with youth, awkwardness, and mourning lost innocence that has yet to be lost (“I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars … I’ll miss the playgrounds, and the animals, and digging up worms.”). it's just tongue-in-cheek enough that you can enjoy it ironically, and just earnest enough that you might actually think they mean it. try to hate it. really, try to hate it. you'll still be bobbing your head within the first 30 seconds.

13. The Muslims (now known as The Soft Pack), “Bright Side”
unless you live in a cave, you’re probably aware that the economy is in the shitter. if you live in NYC, you’ve probably heard predictions that the city’s economic situation could get as bad as it was in 1977. one of the only good things to come out of that dark period in NYC’s history was the music – hip-hop, disco, and best of all, NYC punk. bands like The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Blondie, the Talking Heads, and Richard Hell & The Voidoids played sharp, fast, furiously, rough, and raw. why am i taking you on a walk down NYC music history? because the first time i heard this track, i thought it was a punk song from 1977. the band’s not even from NYC (San Diego, actually). but the sound? it’s raw and rough. the drums and bass and guitar and lead singer all shamble through it. it’s garage rock. it’s punk. and man, is it ever delicious.

14. The Rapture, "No Sex For Ben"
earlier this year, i gave The Rapture's debut album a spin and was surprised at how well it stood up, even years later. it made me wonder what happened to this band, early adopters of the dance-punk sound. in early June, this song, a trash-talking diss at UK DJ Ben Rymer, surfaced on the music blogs, a b-side produced by Timbaland of all people. somehow this unlikely hip-hop/dance-punk pairing has produced a track that skillfully strikes the balance between beat-boxing bass and cowbell grooves. if the band is able to get to this level of quality for subsequent albums, i might be able to forgive them for their sophomore album transgression.

15. Vampire Weekend, “A-Punk”
at first, it seemed like choosing just one song from Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut to be a top single would be no easy task. after all, the album has at least 5, possibly 6 good contenders for this list. but when i thought about it, “A-Punk” was the song that originally hooked me. this is a band that isn’t just unafraid of complexity – they actively embrace it. but for the first 40 seconds of the song you wouldn’t think so. it’s all straightforward drums, splendidly clean guitarline, and indie rock boy yelping. but then, 41 seconds in and there it is: flutes, pipes, bass, strings, instrumentation. and by the minute mark, they’ve changed gears yet again to pogo-punk “oi oi oi!” before going back to the arrangement of the first 40 seconds. several of the other contenders for top Vampire Weekend single are better songs and better representatives of the band’s distinctive sound. but this is the one that got me hooked.