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One of the perverse joys of living in the Mount Tremper area this last year and a half has been the lack of cell phone coverage. There’s something reassuringly old-fashioned about hanging out in an area where tourists aren’t constantly gabbing to their friends back home on the phone, where conversations with neighbors aren’t interrupted by beeps and buzzes from inner pockets, where people don’t wander the aisles of the local supermarket calling their spouse because they forgot what kind of milk they were meant to be buying. (That would be me – and most married men, I imagine.)

And it’s not just Mount Tremper that’s lacked for coverage. For years, the “dead zone” has extended from just west of Woodstock Village, out on through the central schools area in Boiceville, past Mount Tremper, through the relatively busy village of Phoenicia, and then another ten miles in each direction, north towards Hunter and west towards Belleayre. (Both those ski mountains have service, though Belleayre’s is patchy.) And for years, the local newspapers have been full of editorials and letters assailing the apparent incompetence of various town boards (including Woodstock, Shandaken and Olive) for failing to allow cell phone companies to freely erect towers on our many local mountain-tops and bring us all into the late 20th Century, let alone the 21st. (Environmental issues come into play here, as do those of property ownership, payment to the towns in question, and the actual enthusiasm of the phone companies to invest in such sparsely populated areas. Why we’re dependant on cell towers when the rest of the world is using satellite coverage is a story for another day.)

To be honest, I haven’t found the lack of coverage much of a bind. Yes, it would be nice to call home on those winter days when my 2-wheel drive car can’t make it up the hill, but that’s what neighbors are for, right? And if I want my wife to pick up something at the video store or the library when I know she’s heading there, I’d just leave a message at the store. (Vice-versa, too: I’ll call home from these places as well, given that most of the stores know us personally, and local calls are free.) And anyway, if nobody has cell phones, then nobody has cell phones, and we’re all on a level playing field, correct?.

It’s so important that we can use our cell phones out here! Click on the photo for a larger image.

Correct. Or at least, correct until a few months ago, when some contractor, delivery man or whoever was at our house when we heard the unfamiliar sound of a cell phone ringing from around his person. We looked at him in astonishment as he casually took the call. Did he have some kind of snazzy satellite link-up, we wondered? Was he a government agent in disguise? No, he explained when he got off the call, he just had service with Verizon. Hadn’t we heard? Verizon had installed a cell tower in the area.

He was right, and as word spread over the last few months – without local media coverage, as if this were a secret that we all needed to discover for ourselves – the playing field distinctly unleveled itself. Cell phones have been heard ringing where you least expect them: at school meetings, on hikes, even at the local monastery. It’s somewhat eerie when your “dead zone” suddenly sparks to life – and it’s all the more so when you’re with a different cell phone company.

Our cell phone account was with AT&T/Cingular, the company with the monopoly on the iPhone, which I desperately crave. But their drop rate is appalling, and capitalism is capitalism. In other words, I don’t owe them anything. So, two Monday mornings ago, I bit the bullet, called Verizon, and switched our service, taking our number with us and snagging a free phone and connection in the process. Less than 48 hours later, the FedEx man showed up with our new phone. I switched it on, activated it and, lo and behold, four bars came up immediately. We don’t just have cell phone coverage at our house, but full cell coverage.

Given the choice, I don’t deny that I’m going to enjoy having a cell phone round the neighborhood. I can now make all those pesky, unnecessary calls home when I’ve just left the house. I can call home from the supermarket to check what milk we have to buy, or from the farm stand to determine what kind of potatoes, decisions we’ve making independently, and without instigating divorce proceedings, for the last couple of years. And hey, someone can get hold of me when I’m hiking up the mountain behind our hill, despite the fact that I do so largely for the solitude and peace of mind.

And yet there remains a silver lining. Coverage does not yet reach the extra three miles from our house in Mount Tremper to Phoenicia. Perhaps the village, already known as a gratifying alternative to Woodstock and its busloads of weekend tourists, should advertise itself accordingly. Come to Phoenicia: where your cell phone won’t ring. For now.

Having finally completed my home cellar and retrieved many of my wines from storage, I’ve recently been opening up some of my Southern Rhônes from 1998, a particular warm and acclaimed vintage, here in this colder-than-cold Catskills winter. As I embark on the calculated guessing game of figuring out which ones are ready, which ones can sleep on, and which ones should have been devoured by yesterday, I’ve come to understand why people buy cases of single wines – so that they can take some of the risk out of the process. Oh well. Naturally, these are all Grenache-dominated wines, and given that they’re also from the same region, there’s an inevitable repetition of tasting notes: ginger(bread) is the telltale aroma, and there’s likely a degree of earthy leather to be found somewhere on the palate, too. And yet, for all that, I’ve been experiencing a marked difference in development, and ultimate joy.

DOMAINE DES AMOURIERS VACQUERYAS 1998
I wouldn’t typically expect Vacqueryas to improve for a decade, except that I tasted this wine when it was young and had the feeling that it was probably the best of the vintage for this village. I was thrilled then to have those expectations confirmed. The color was an almost impenetrable dark red, with no softening of color whatsoever and only the lightest of bricks around the rim. The nose was very powerful, a gorgeous medley of spice, ginger, leather and earth and just a little raisin touch that gradually wafted away; while most of the fruit had disappeared, this was certainly not old or drying out. Rather, the wine had developed gracefully into muscular middle-age, exuding confidence and character. In the mouth, the wine kicked up a dusty set of smoothed-out tannins, with a creamy quality to the mid-palate, and a remarkably long, vibrant, rich and enduring finish, again all leathery spice. I’m picturing James Bond – preferably Sean Connery around the Dr. No period – looking at his reflection in the shaving mirror and saying: A handsome man and no mistake. Probably the best Vacqueryas I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve had a few), a highly sophisticated and rewarding wine showing near to, but not necessarily yet at, its peak. And, I’m glad to say, I have another bottle. (I also had a rewarding experience with the Les Sang des Cailloux Vacqueryas 1998 a couple of months back, which was, likewise, singing loudly, though possibly on the way down.)
More Vacqueryas at iJamming!

DOMAINE BRUSSET GIGONDAS LE GRAND MONTMIRAL 1998
Now this one I did buy a case of, and after an early period dominated by sweet oak, it’s settled into a comfortably reassuring wine, warm and cozy, just the thing for a cold winter’s night and easy-going food. The color on this GSM (Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre) blend is now a dusty red, and starting to show some a little brick. There’s a fuzzy ginger-bread aroma, a dusty spicy texture going on, still some bright acidity and an endearing and fulfilling finish. Medium-bodied, medium strength, comparatively understated for the vintage and the village, nothing spectacular but a lovely wine all the same. I’ll drink up my remaining bottles soon.

DOMAINE LES GOUBERT GIGONDAS 1998
The cork was nearly run through with wine on this one, but not sufficiently so that the wine had yet started to escape. Both the dusty red-brown color and the visible brick indicated some ageing. Surprisingly bright and acidic, this one quickly opened up with aromas of lavender, raspberry and blackcurrant. Much more vibrant and primary than the Brusset, and absent the kind of chewy, bulky heft I’ve experienced before from this quite austere and old-fashioned winemaker. Relatively youthful, certainly still approachable, and still a ways to go. (I’ve subsequently come across a tasting note of a 20-year old Goubert still apparently in absolutely perfect shape.) Great stuff. Wish I had more.
More Gigondas at iJamming!

PATRICK LESEC LES GALETS BLONDS CHÂTEAUNEUF DU PAPE 1998/
DOMAINE GRAND VENEUR CHÂTEAUNEUF DU PAPE 1998
Onto what should have been the big guns. The Les Galets Blonds, a negociant wine, was unfortunately fizzy. What do we call this fault and what we do about it? The Grand Veneur, produced by Alain Jaume, followed on from the Brusset over dinner last Saturday night and, I realized to my cost, would have benefited from decanting, or at least longer exposure to air and greater opportunity to open up, for the nose initially gave little away. The color was a thick purple, still clearly very ripe, and only over time – and there wasn’t really enough of it given our guests’ thirst – did some smooth leathery, mushroom-like aromas escape out of the glass. Suitably full-bodied, but reticent, it eventually came around and revealed some of its secondary intentions as it wore down through the bottom of each glass. I wish my notes here were a little more intensive; never easy trying to make them in the middle of dinner, especially in a wine that develops while it’s in the glass; my conclusion from this initially brooding but ultimately happy camper was to allow my other Châteauneuf du Papes from 1998 plenty more resting time and lots more opportunity to breathe.
More Châteauneuf du Pape at iJamming!

DOMAINE GOURT DE MAUTENS RASTEAU 1998
Arguably the most famous controversial non-Châteauneuf du Pape southern Rhône wine of the vintage. Robin Garr at the Wine Lovers Page web site effusively reviewed the 1997 a long time ago and suggested that “It may inspire insiders’ jokes about “Helen Turley meets the Rhône.”” This comment has stuck with me, for that might still be the best description of a wine that was so overwhelmingly concentrated and extracted, even after almost a decade in bottle, that I had to double decant it and leave it several hours before it stopped barking like a feral dog and started wagging its tail a little. (Helen Turley, to fully explain the reference, makes some of the “biggest” of Californian Zinfandels.)

Everything about this wine was heavyweight, from the double-thick bottle to the double-thick grape juice inside. The color in the glass was so dark red that it was almost black. No brick whatsoever. Incredibly long, slow-moving legs advertised intense alcohol and glycerin. The label claims 14%; I’m no expert, but I’d be surprised if it was less than 15. Made, I gather, from 100% old vines grenache, it gave off some of that grape’s characteristic ginger(bread) aroma, but most of what I got initially was saddle leather, mushroom and bark – albeit with some roasted nuts trying to poke out through its open fire. My initial taste resulted in an extraordinarily rich attack, like a sucker punch to the tongue, with dusty tannins quickly coating the cheeks. A long, long, long, warm, rich, mildly spicy finish confirmed the wine’s ferocity at rear end as well as up front. This was all sampled late Sunday afternoon in a warm après-ski bath after one of the coldest days on the slopes I’ve ever experienced, but the effect, rather than warming me back up (and rewarding me) as intended, was like skiing off piste and smack into a tree. It was all I could to stay conscious.

One cup of coffee and a couple of hours later, I poured from the decanter into two different Riedels – the large high-end Syrah glass and the more everyday Chianti-Zinfandel glass. The Syrah started to show some Burgundian dark cherries in amongst the earth and tar; the Zin glass, to be honest, did much the same. This wasn’t a wine about to change its form for shape, if you get my drift.

Back on the palate, the wine had settled down enormously, pun fully intended. Still peppery, spicy, with those dusty tannins and an almost inpossible power, but with more pronounced fruit up front and a much softer finish. By the end of the evening, accompanying a Portobello mushroom pasta and some hard cheese, it had come into its own, revealing a complex character underneath all the brute strength, with that milky smoothness that I look for in an older Châteauneuf du Pape. Never a wine to gulp, it gradually became one to savor.

All in all, an intriguing wine – though not entirely unique: I had a similarly brutal experience with Domaine La Soumade’s Rasteau Cuvee Prestige 2000, which I opened last summer in the UK. That one was almost undrinkable, it was so port-like, even with dinner. The Gourt de Martens, especially given the aeration, was ultimately more forgiving.

I find it endlessly fascinating that the wines from Rasteau can be so full-throttled that they could easily pass for heavyweight Châteauneuf du Papes, and yet those from Cairanne, around the corner, rarely go more than five years. Such is the thrill of terroir. I have another bottle of the Bressy ’98, but I’m in no rush to drink it. Five years, I figure, will do nicely. And when that occasion comes around, I’ll make sure I’ve built up my fighting capacity.
More Rasteau at iJamming!

Singles – to the extent that they still exist – offer a lot more leeway for one’s end-of-year round-up than do albums. You can pick a passing fancy with less need for apology. You can choose an act you may not love, or may not even know, or may never expect to hear from again. You can enjoy the moment. And there were plenty moments to enjoy in 2008. My iTunes must have downloaded some 850 “Songs of the Day” between KEXP and IndieFeed; I surely have heard several hundred more through my favorite Podcast magazine shows. Then there’s the music I heard on the radio, the tracks that came my way by e-mail, the ones I heard through friends, the individual songs off of various albums. All told, there was so much great music I truly struggled to keep track of it. The record industry may be in crisis, but the business of making music is flourishing.

In my case, for variety’s sake, I always like to ensure that I don’t include the same artists in both my top 10 singles and albums: that’s why, for example, there’s no Vampire Weekend or Ting Tings here, even though they released singles that were among my favorites of 2008, for they showed up in my Top 10 Albums of 2008 instead. Nor did I include M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” unquestionably one of the most innovative and benchmark recordings of the last ten years; I just took the attitude that it had been released on a 2007 album, Kala, which I included in my top 10 for 2007, and left it at that. I see now that it topped the Village Voice poll for ’08, and having also witnessed the reaction to “Paper Planes’ when I DJ’d a wedding in the Catskills last year (don’t worry, it’s not what you think it was!), I wouldn’t dispute that it was the best and biggest song of 2008.

Nor would I argue that this list might change. Thanks to a friend’s burned DVD with some 80+ selections from 2008, and my interest by the various end-of-year lists, I’m having a good time playing catch-up with yet more of the great music that was released last year. Had I compiled this list now rather than a month ago, I might have included Estelle/Kanye West’s “American Boy,” Portishead’s “Machine Gun,” Grace Jones’ “Williams Blood” and more. But I didn’t, so I didn’t. Here, then, are my top 10 songs of last year as registered at the Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll.

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MGMT, “Time to Pretend”
Bonus Features/Sony

The Brooklyn duo had two other major “hits” in 08 – “Kids” and “Electric Feel” – but it was debut album Oracular Spectacular’s opening cut that truly won me over. The widely-discussed lyrics were surely the wittiest and most acerbic of the year, but they tell only part of the story: there’s also the song’s structure, its beat, that opening riff, the continued melody, the relentless groove, the exuberance, the arrogance, the irony… everything about it spelled out epic anthem. To truly understand MGMT’s impact this past year, you might want to note the fact that the official YouTube video has been viewed over 8,000,000 times – inspiring over 14,000 text comments! Then again, parent company Sony Music has disabled blog embedding, forcing very potential viewer over to YouTube to further bump up those numbers. In a waning record industry, that’s how the major companies fight to stay on top. Whatever: it doesn’t take away from the most essential song of the year. Yes it’s overwhelming but what else can we do? Get jobs in offices and wake up to the morning commute?

At Sony’s “request,” YouTube disabled the ability for sites like mine to embed the “Time to Pretend” video on external sites. Reason enough to rip a copy of the CD; they’ve surely sold enough by now. This is a video about the making of the “Time To Pretend” video. Oh, the irony. You can still watch the video here, for free.

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CITY REVERB, “City of Lights”
Dumb Angel

Lost City Folk, the debut album from this mellifluous new London group, has been a long time coming; it’s finally set for release in Feb ’09. While I kept my advance copy on regular rotation, the gorgeously delicate, mid-tempo, lightly-structured dance song “City of Lights” served to set the scene for the wider public with its ultimately uplifting melancholia, a striking example of how so much modern music defies easy categorization. Looking for new life, changing my ways, whatever does it mean?

City Of Lights – City Reverb

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LYKKE LI, “Little Bit”
Atlantic

Since long before anyone ever coined the term trip-hop, I’ve been a sucker for female-sung, electronic-based, moody ballads, so Swedish singer Lykke Li’s “Little Bit” had my name written all over it. Dark, mysterious and slightly intimidating for what’s essentially a love song, the original recording (and yes, I do know it dates back to ’07) was so perfect that the CSS remix sent my way last spring could not improve upon it. For you I’ll spread my legs apart.

Lykke Li performing “A Little Bit” on Dutch TV. Electronic music can be played acoustically, too, you know. (Though if you want to feel the beats, check the CSS remix.)

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TRICKY, “Council Estate”
Domino

Talking of trip-hop, the man who was there at the start of the Bristol sound came back with his strongest single in years – and, notably, the first one to feature his voice and his voice only. As much a rock record as a rap tune, as grittily grimy as anything from the generation that followed in his footsteps, it showed the Knowles West Boy still unwilling to be pinned down even after all these years. Remember boy, you’re a superstar.

Tricky got to make an old-fashioned, high-budget video for “Council Estate.”

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PARTS & LABOR, “Nowhere’s Nigh”
Jagjaguwar

Of the 200 or more KEXP Songs of the Day I heard via Podcast in 2008, this is the one that just resonated with me. Equal parts indie, punk, electronic, and pure noise, with a piercingly simplistic guitar solo and a great key change, it got under my skin and stayed there. Turns out the Brooklyn quartet have been putting out albums since I lived in the borough; the fact that I’ve only now come across them speaks to the enormous amount of music out there as much as to my own ignorance. Wish I could hear the lyrics well enough to quote them, but it’s not essential with every single.

Parts & Labor don’t yet have a video for “Nowhere’s Nigh.” So watch nothing. It’s the music that matters, right?

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AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT, “Sometime Around Midnight”
Majordomo

I can thank KEXP for this one too, though it soon became omnipresent. The tale of a recently jilted lover encountering his ex in a bar, reminiscing at the thought of being in bed with her and getting drunk beyond belief when she leaves without him, it was wrapped in an accordingly brooding, slowly building and ultimately exorcising emo arrangement. The song sparked unusually intense debate in the blogosphere, and the album did not seem to come close to matching this one classic. The word “single” is therefore doubly applicable in this case.You feel hopeless and homeless and lost in the haze of the wine.

The official video for “Somewhere Round Midnight” hints at, but does not fully recreate the lyrical drama.

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MOBY, “I Love to Move in Here”
Mute

Thanks to Grandmaster Caz’s rollicking rap and Moby’s return to his early 90s happy house beats, “I Love To Move In Here” delivered to those parts his last few years’ releases have missed: the heart, the head, and the feet. For the record – boom! – it’s the Seamus Haji mix that got me moving in here, rather than the original, somewhat muted (double boom) album version. Old school’s taking you back.

The official video for Moby’s I Love To Move In Here. The version I like so much can be heard here.

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THE JUAN MACLEAN, “Happy House”
DFA

The Juan MacLean also know how to get a dancefloor going; outside of LCD Soundsystem, on whose DFA label they reside, they’re probably America’s strongest contemporary indie dance act. The title to “Happy House” puns on that musical sub-genre, but it’s in fact a verbal reference to the glory days of a love affair. Available in all manner of mixes and length, “Happy House” is exuberant, cheeky, loud, repetitive, innovative and cool as fuck. You are so excellent.

The Juan MacLean performing “Happy House” at the Bowery Ballroom – nine minutes and counting.

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LILY ALLEN, “Fuck You”
Parlophone

As we know, swearing isn’t clever. Which is why I wound up my last summary with the f-word, why MGMT use it in “Time To Pretend” and why Lily Allen cheerfully recorded a single with this title. While admirable as a flip-off to racists and homophobes everywhere, one might yet question how Allen proposes to fight “hatred” of her subjects with the “hate” she espouses for them in her chorus, but she’s still young and relatively innocent and will presumably discover the answer for herself along the way. In the meantime, she delivers “Fuck You Very Much” with the same, disarming singalong ease as she did her break-out single “Smile” a couple of years back. (Her new single “The Fear” is stellar, too.) Pop music at its most wittily revolting. Please don’t stay in touch.

No official video yet for Lily Allen’s “Fuck You Very much,” but no shortage of YouTube uploads either.

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FLEET FOXES, “White Winter Hymnal”
Sub Pop

The Seattle band’s eponymous debut album topped many a year-end list and based on “White Winter Hymnal,” it’s easy to understand why. (I’ve subsequently picked up the album, and am finding it hard to put it back down lonbg enogh to listen to anything else.) A throwback to Beach Boys in the manner of Panda Bear, an embrace of the high-pitched urgent wail per Band of Horses, nostalgic and yet futuristic at the same time, “White Winter Hymnal” exudes the Christmas-y jingle jangle of its title, but its somewhat broader subject matter is ensuring extended play in our own snow-covered climate. In fact, the more I listen to the words the more I want to grab my kids and go out roll around in the white stuff. I turned round and there you go.

One of the year’s most beautiful songs, “White Winter Hymal” by Fleet Foxes, gets a beautiful video, too.

Willow Community Church, Jan 24, 1:35pm

I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to a Top 10 List for 2008 were it not for wanting my votes to count in the annual Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll. I’m not sure that the poll carries the same weight as it used to in our increasingly fractured musical universe, where albums are increasingly distributed digitally, without artwork, and where singles are something of a nebulous concept. But it’s still fun to contribute, hoping that I do my own small part in nudging a few artists and their music either onto or up the list.

The Voice poll for 2008 came out this week, with the news that TV On The Radio’s Dear Science bludgeoned all competition with approximate 70% more points than its nearest rivals, Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut and Portishead’s aptly-named Third. Erykah Badu and Fleet Foxes rounded out the top 5, after which…. Well, why you don’t check the full list for yourself; it’s much fresher and more youth-oriented than in many years.

As it turns out, only one of my own choices is in that top 5 list (Vampire Weekend at #2), which is understandable: given that I spent much of 2008 listening to and writing about music from 1927-77, I had to let a lot of releases pass me by. Still, I’m glad to see I wasn’t alone in my love of new albums by old-timers Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (#9), R.E.M. (#25) and David Byrne and Brian Eno (#29), though at the same time, I find it somewhat disconcerting that I’m the only person to have found the albums by Nick Halstead, Quiet Village, Snow & Voices, and the Ghostly Swim compilation all equally poll-worthy. Are my tastes in new music that far outside the mainstream of music critics? (Note: I switched out Quiet Village for Sigur Ros in this online list, having fully acquainted myself with the latter group’s lovely new record in the interim.)

Though I can get as pissed off at collective trendsetting as the next person, I view the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll (which still includes a singles chart as well as many comments and essays) as an accurate barometer on national tastes (1500 hundred writers are invited to contribute, with several hundred doing so) and I enjoy studying it all the more now that you can access each pollster’s individual choices with just a click of the cursor. (And, even better, with another simple click, see who else voted for the same records.)

The Voice poll is considered more informed than many others not just for the number of contributors, but for the fact that writers are allowed to allocate points to each of them ten albums: a minimum of five and a maximum of 30, as long as the totals add up to 100. Sometimes, I’ve labored over that issue; this time around, I just spread the love equally. And so, in alphabetical order, here are my own Top 10 Albums of 2008:

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DAVID BYRNE & BRIAN ENO – EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS WILL HAPPEN TODAY (Opal)

It’s far from the “electronic gospel” they believe it to be, and it’s an equally long way from their one and only prior collaboration, 1981’s My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, but Everything That Happens Will Happen Todayis every bit as beautiful as you’d hope for from this meeting of Renaissance Men. With Eno’s (surprisingly?) uptempo initial instrumentations effortlessly propelling the songs forward, Byrne finds his most delicate and frequently falsetto voice to deliver some especially poignant lyrics that, despite this album’s lengthy germination, serve to capture the hesitantly optimistic mood of America prior to the turn of the election. Of special note is the decision to stream the album online, and to drop the highly danceable “Strange Overtones” onto blogs everywhere. Yes, the pair can afford to self-finance their artistic indulgences, but the effort paid off as word rapidly spread of the album’s excellence.

Highlight: I find “The River” especially inspired, Byrne’s voice at its most casually affecting, and the line about how “A change is gonna come, like Sam Cooke sang in ’63,” perfectly timed.

Artist web site
Live review

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NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS – DIG!!! LAZARUS DIG!!! (Mute)

No midlife crisis for Nick Cave, who bounces back to the Bad Seeds from his/their Grinderman sojourn to make arguably his fiercest, most rambunctious and instantly exhilarating of albums in a career hardly short of such. On Dig!!!, the eight-piece Bad Seeds exude a contagious energy, regardless of tempo, that demonstrates the merits of live recording, and which is apparent from the religious analogy of the title track through the recurrent choruses of “More News from Nowhere” and “Lie Down Here (and Be My Girl).” Would that every young group fresh out of the gate could play with such spirit.

Highlight: “We Call Upon The Author,” for its repetitive chord patterns, rhythmic shifts, and highly literal lyrics – a defiant cry, delivered in a beat-poetry rant, for some of history’s finest to justify themselves. “Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best! He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-way weirdly on wings and with maximum pain…”

Artist web site

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NEIL HALSTEAD – OH! MIGHTY ENGINE (Brushfire)

First heard in full as featured album on WDST’s Acoustic Breakfast show, up here in the Catskills; next heard in full at my friend Chris Coco’s house in London. Perhaps the only album of the year that could find favor in such seemingly opposite environments, the second solo effort from the former Slowdive and Mojave 3 front man is a delightfully delicate and poignant set of poetic observations. Driven by Halstead’s restrained voice, his gentle guitar playing and easy way with subtle melodies, the songs are accented by pedal steel, piano and other instruments, almost none of which offer a hint of his late 80s hard-rocking psychedelic past. (That comes, instead, from lyrics like those on “Elevenses” – “Don’t offer me a line, I only want a cup of tea.”) Proof – not that I needed any – that there were always solid songwriters behind all those heavy shoegazing riffs.

Highlight: “Sometimes the Wheels.” Double-tracked vocals and what sounds like a backward electric guitar over a circular acoustic riff that rails on door-to-door bible bashers. “Knock on the door it’s early morning, man in a suit says he wants to talk to me, about the big JC, who the fuck is he?” Nobody said acoustic singers had to maintain niceties.

Artist web site

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JAMES – HEY MA (Mercury)

Rarely does a reformed band release an album to match the creativity of its erstwhile heyday and Hey Ma, James’ first studio record since 2001, is probably not quite up there with the very best of their previous nine albums. But then James has always set the bar alarmingly high, and Hey Macertainly comes close to jumping it, an exceptionally strong offering from the same seven-piece that recorded 1990’s Gold Mother and 92’s Seven. Indeed, if there’s a weakness to Hey Ma, its in its faithful familiarity to that peak period, distributing its weight equally between upbeat anthems (the title track and “Whiteboy”), ballads (the beautiful finale “I Wanna Go Home”) and the kind of mid-tempo brooding beasts that casual listeners often dismiss but fans soon come to love (in this case, “Of Monsters & Heroes & Men” and “Bubbles”). Similarly, Tim Booth covers the usual subject matter: the demons of war (“Hey Ma,” clearly about the response to 9/11), a yearning for love (“Upside), and an unending quest for spiritual meaning (just about everything else). There’s no James without Booth, which is why the others broke up when he left the band in 2001, but equally, the front man is at his strongest when he lines up with these musical partners. Be it Jim Glennie’s deceptively simple bass, the soaring guitar work of Larry Gott and Saul Davies, or Andy Diagram’s greatly missed trumpet, there’s an unequivocal communion when these musicians come together.

Highlight: The subject matter of second single “Waterfall” pushes all the right buttons: fear of old age, sense of destiny, the redeeming value of nature. A mid-tempo pop song with its a riff shared by trumpet and guitar, it’s so good it manages not one but two distinct middle eights.

Artist web site
iJamming! club live reviewand concert hall live review

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R.E.M. – ACCELERATE (Warner Brothers)

Following the disappointment of the occasionally uplifting mid-tempo album Reveal and the absolute disaster of the equally mid-tempo but tragically plodding Around The Sun, the three remaining members of R.E.M. wisely retreated, huddled together, and vowed to give themselves a much-needed collective kick up the arse. The result: an 11-song, 35-minute album that rivals (though does not surpass) both 1984’s Reckoning and 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant for sheer unadulterated energy and urgency. Accelerate is not a case of old men trying to recapture their youth; rather, it’s that of three middle-aged men rediscovering their mojo. Lyrically, it’s relatively familiar territory: statements of political discontent (the aggressive “Man-Sized Wreath,” the painfully restrained post-Katrina homage “Houston”), and affirmative individual action (“Living Well Is The Best Revenge,” “I’m Gonna DJ.”) Musically, there are the easy anthems (“Supernatural Superserious”), the pop songs (“Hollow Man”) and the deliberately dischordant extended riffs (“Sing for The Submarine” stretches to five minutes; fortunately, several others come in under three.). In other words, R.E.M. may not have re-invented themselves as they managed so frequently during their heyday, but they more than restored their fans’ faith.

Highlight: For all its cohesive strength, no one song demands entry into the Essential R.E.M. collection. That said, the four numbers that between them booken the album are as rapturously energetic as anything R.E.M. have managed in decades. And had any other band this past year closed out an album with the feedback spew of “Horse to Water” and “I’m Gonna DJ,” – especially that chorus line, “music will provide the light you cannot resist,” – it would have been hailed as a masterpiece.

Artist web site
iJamming! album review
iJamming! concert review number 1 and 2

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SIGUR RÓS – MEÐ SUÐ Í EYRUM VIÐ SPILUM ENDALAUST (Bad Taste)

The Icelandic group’s “coming out” album, 1999’s Ágætis Byrjun, remains one of my desert island discs, but subsequent efforts () and Takk fell emphatically short in improving on the act’s distinct formula. So I was delighted to hear that Med Sud… (translated as With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly) represented a new dawn, a rejuvenation, an apparent desire to make “fun,” “fast” music. All things are relative: while Med Sud… is at times a little livelier, and certainly a less dense than some of its predecessors, singer Jon Thor Birgisson remains as angelically inscrutable as ever, and not just because he sings in Icelandic: his is a voice that makes me think of Latin choral music as it should be, an instrument rather than a conveyor of words. Indeed, there’s something eminently hymnal to this album, especially the organ accompaniment to “Festival” and the delicacy of the finale “All Alright.” And while there are moments of comparative exuberance, I still find Sigur Ros’ music to be contemplative and consolatory, and all the better for it.

Highlight: Unquestionably, the nine-minute “Ára Bátur,” from its votive first five minutes with just reverbed piano and Birgisson’s falsetto, through to its massive choir and strings build-up and its emphatically classical finale. Stunning.

Artist web site

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SNOW & VOICES: WHAT THE BODY WAS MADE FOR (Ruby Elastic)

Second album from LA-based former solo singer Lauri Kranz, along with musical partner Jebin Bruni, producer/”architect” Darrell Thorp, and a team of musicians that includes Joey Waronker on percussion, improves substantially on their already impressive 2005 debut. Kranz’s keenly-enunciated voice can sound as frail as a feather in the wind, but the instrumentation – much of it in the form of electronic sound sculptures – toughens things up enough to lift Snow & Voices into territory partially occupied by Portishead. And while the lyrical content is frequently dark and dubious (“Hearts Were Made To Be Broken,” “Rainstorm”), the quality of the melodies and their arrangements ensures that the overall effect is one of solace and comfort. The cover of the Doors “Touch Me” is sublime.

Highlight: The finale “All I Want,” featuring only vocals and a distorted piano, and consumed lyrically by self-doubt and obsession, is a masterpiece, as fine a ballad as I heard last year. What makes it even more profound is that after several listens I still can’t tell if it’s a song about requited or unrequited love.

Artist web site

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THE TING TINGS – WE STARTED NOTHING (Columbia)

The Ting Tings are, at heart, a pop band – a pop duo, to be precise – and given that their debut album came with a hefty amount of major label-backed, iPod-commercial-induced hype, there are reasons to suspect that it will not prove a long-term classic. But pop music serves, in part, to celebrate the moment – which means that We Started Nothing deserves its place amongst the year’s best. And, unlike that other major electro-pop duo debut of the year, MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular, the Ting Tings’ debut is emphatically strong on songs from start to finish: the deliriously danceable single “Great DJ” and the repetitive title track finale bookend at least half a dozen other equally good numbers, including the feisty girly-feminism of “That’s Not My Name” and “Shut Up and Let Me Go,” each of which can already claim a certain anthemic status in some circles. Katie White’s voice is not the strongest in the world, and Jules De Martino’s rhythms and grooves owe more to influence than inspiration, but, just did the live show I saw at Brooklyn’s Southpaw in the summer, We Started Nothing puts a massive smile on my face.

Highlight: “Shut Up and Let Me Go,” the (intended?) homage to Blondie’s “Rapture.” Everything about it seems alarmingly simple, from funk guitar riff through standard 2/4 drums to the Chic-like bass line, but the sum of those parts has a deceptive complexity, and an indisputable infectiousness.

Artist web site
iJamming! concert review

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VAMPIRE WEEKEND – VAMPIRE WEEKEND (XL)

Forget all the buzz about Vampire Weekend, ignore the blogosphere and its inevitable backlash, listen to the album a full year after its release, and see if you don’t hear it, too, as one of the freshest records of 2008. After all, Vampire Weekend came up with a style all their own – indie rock meets African jive. Then there’s the subject matter, all those booking songs about architecture (“Mansard Roof”), college infatuations (“Campus”) and life on the upper crust’s east coast holiday resort (both “Cape Cod Kwanzaa Kwanzaa” and “Walcott”). Plus, the band dynamics seem so well-formed already, from Ezra Koenig’s youthfully endearing vocals to the infectious rhythm section of Chris Baio and Christopher Tomson, and Rostam Batmanglij’s multiple contributions. Hype may be an offense, but innovation and intelligence should always be celebrated.

Highlight: “Oxford Comma,” for its pure pop instincts, its gratuitous swearing (not smart, we know, but highly effective) and subject matter. As an author who received a manuscript back from an editor with several hundred inserts of the “oxford comma” (that which is inserted, according to style, between first, second, and third words of a run-on), I have every reason to sing along.

Artist web site

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VARIOUS ARTISTS – GHOSTLY SWIM (Ghostly International)

I like my Top 10 lists to have variety, in terms of music, acts and circumstance, and Ghostly Swim was of the most enjoyable releases of 2008, not least because it was made available, online, for free, as a partnership between the Ghostly International label and the Adult Swim network of Cartoon Network. Cynics might suggest it’s merely a label sampler, but if so, then what a label, and what a sampler. The listener is taken from the warm and fuzzy glitch-tronic music of Michna’s “Triple Chrome Dipped” through The Chap’s “Carlos Walter Wendy Stanley” (presumably a tribute to the Switched On Bach synth pioneer who had a sex change in 1972), to Daestro’s giddy electro-jig “Light Powered,” past Matthew Dear’s weird and wonderful “R+S” (a tribute to the Belgian techno label?) and then into harder territory: the retro acid of The Reflecting Skin’s “Traffickers” and the industrial chants of Kill Memory Crash’s “Hit and Run” before calming back down for the scraping strings on Milosh’s “Then It Happened” and the vocoder funk of Osborne’s “Wait A Minute.” Kudos for arranging the tracks like a great DJ set. Electronic music – as wide a genre as rock – is still alive and kicking that bass drum. And thanks to collaborations like this, it’s thriving too.

Highlight: From first listen, School of Seven Bells caught me with the delightfully double-tracked female vocals and New Order-like guitar lines of their synth-pop epic “Chains.” The act, formed by former Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis with twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, has subsequently built a buzz, though nothing I’ve heard has yet rivaled the majesty of “Chains.”

Label web site