Three days until Christmas. Hopefully that means you’re pretty much done with preparations, and now you are just waiting. I think I can help you with that. Say what you will about top album lists; I think top song lists are much more interesting, and much more heterogenous. I owe my impetus this year to Said The Gramaphone; I chanced upon that top song list this week, and put those selections on my ipod shuffle right next to candidates for my own list. Their disclaimers echo my own — this list I’m about to share with you is completely arbitrary. I kept a folder during the year of favorite songs, and to compile this list, I just opened that folder and pulled out everything that resonated with me this year. Ranking it was a bit more difficult, especially after you get past the first 10, but I just kept whittling it down, paring it down, listening to what I’d compiled, and the results are what you see here. Enjoy! Merry Few Days Before Christmas! Hopefully these songs get you through when Perry Como and Johnny Mathis won’t:

25. Kristin Hersh - Poor Wayfaring Stranger - Kristin Hersh spent part of 2006 living here in Portland, and while she didn’t play secret gigs at my favorite venues, she did record some b-sides over at Mississippi Studios for the “In Shock” single. I’m considering them as her goodbye present to Portland before migrating to greener, probably less-wet pastures. Kristin came out with a respectable album this year, and has all sorts of fun stuff coming up next year; most notably her CASH program, and a performance piece based on memoirs that she’s writing. As for this song, it is a fitting end to the list, what with the melancholy and all. You’ll hear the sadness in Kristin’s voice, you’ll hear some cool banjos, and you’ll hear big crescendos not normally heard in a traditional song.

24. Amon Tobin - Always - I need to do some more research on Foley Room, the album from whence this song is taken. But I’m pretty sure that Amon Tobin created an entire album of sounds that are normally used in the world of sound effects for cinema. “Always” has a James Bond-ian guitar riff, and some bombastic Fatboy Slim-ian beats.

23. LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous! - People are raving about Sound Of Silver, and while I’m not quite on that bandwagon, I did think it had some great songs, especially this opening track. For me it is all about the slow build-up, followed by the Eno-esque multitracked harmonies.

22. The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Herculean - Damon Albarn projects quickly become brand names; there’s obviously some marketing savvy behind it all. For this new project, the revered name of ex-Clashman Paul Simonon was mentioned, but I don’t hear him at all in “Herculean”, and I don’t care. I don’t know much about radio these days, but this does have the sheen of modern-day pop hit upon it. Was it a hit somewhere? UK maybe?

21. White Stripes - Rag And Bone - I guess I’ll paint a picture of my White Stripes fandom by saying that I get the most kicks from that “well it’s true that we love one another / I love Jack White like a little brother” song. While my wife hates these types of songs with spoken word segments in them (see also Fiery Furnaces), I happen to love them. So is no surprise that this little tune about door-to-door junk collectors clicked with me. If you are a Meg-fan who feels like we need to hear more of her on albums, then I think that this year’s Icky Thump would be the album for you! She gets called out by Jack for being “rude” in this song, and spouts words straight out of a David Lynch script on the song “St. Andrew (This Battle Is In The Air”).

20. Bright Eyes - Four Winds - Leave it to Conor Oberst to pen a swingin’ country song about religious intolerance. This song accompanied me on a handful of roadtrips this year, and seemed to make that stretch of road so much better.

19. New Pornographers - Myriad Harbour - There are so many great moments in this song. What I love most of all are the legion of voices on the chorus, and the mention of the now-archaic phrase “record store”.

18. Feist - I Feel It All - Have you all heard this one? Hopefully it hasn’t been played to death and used in commercials like “1234″ has. Favorite line: put your weight against the door / kickdrum on the basement floor

17. Air - Mer Du Japon - Getting tired here - it’s easy to love songs, much harder to write about why, or say something interesting about them. Kudos to Said The Gramaphone for writing about songs in an eloquent beautiful way. This song popped up on my iPod during a trip to San Jose, CA. and definitely lent itself to walking around the downtown area. I guess what I’m saying is that Air is good at creating an urban soundtrack for everyone. EVERYONE.

16. Modest Mouse - We’ve Got Everything - I have a few friends who send me MM tracks occasionally in an effort to convert me. It has never worked until NOW. I’d love to know if Johnny Marr was involved on this track. It rocks in a way that doesn’t sound like Marr at all, and yet I just love Marr’s work so I want him there on this track.

15. Iron & Wine - Carousel - My favorite indie-folk is stripped down and stark. Given this criteria, I should’ve been all over previous Iron & Wine albums. They just didn’t hit me like this. The Shepherd’s Dog is amazing in its arrangements for each song. Here on my fave “Carousel” the guitar picking is still in the forefront, but there’s so much else here: Vibes, Rhodes Piano, multi-tracked Sam Beams, and noodling before and after the song begins.

14. Ryan Adams - Off Broadway - I have a theory about why I love this song: in it I hear melody lines from AM radio hits of the 70’s that I can’t remember enough to place, like an audio blind spot. It feels like a piece of my childhood, much like Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” or Rolling Stones “Shattered” was. Suffice it to say that Ryan Adams is deft at evoking mood and era.

13. Laura Veirs - Nightingale - My friends and I coined a term about ten years ago when describing setlists and gigs of our favorite artists. Append “101″ onto the end of your favorite artist, and you are talking about a set geared toward schooling the neophyte, not about appeasing the diehard who knows the catalog by heart. It was pretty much a diss to post a message to your friends and say that you just saw “Robyn Hitchcock 101″. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found something to love about the 101 set; namely the fact that its harder to gauge what the audience faves are in an era when there are few singles and even fewer radio hits to go by. There used to be numbers to gauge all this; now it is just word of mouth. And that feels great to me, and so does “Nightingale”. I can’t predict the future, but in my mind I can see Laura Veirs playing this song for years to come. This just feels like a staple to me.

12. Rickie Lee Jones - Where I Like It Best - Aww, Rickie Lee, why you gotta go couch so much meaning within so much sadness? And yet there is beauty here too. Sad that religion is supposed to bring the best out of people who come together to worship a God, but the failings of humanity are apparent when you bring that many egos into a room. Beautiful because we are able to love; and love is the closest thing to God that I’ll ever feel. When Rickie says, “you are where I like it best” I nod because it is a given. But when she says “you are the prayer”, well, that’s where she really gets me.

11. The Shins - Split Needles - I blogged about this song a few months ago. It is still a fave.

10. DJ Vadim - Got To Rock (featuring Zion) - You’ll scoff when I say that this is my favorite hip-hop song of the year. I’m not really qualified to talk about hip-hop, seeing as I listen to so little of it. But I know what I like when I hear it, and I like this song that DJ Vadim has crafted. I know this is a great song, because I put it on in the car and my wife and kids starting smiling and bobbing their heads. Old school!

09. Elvis Perkins - It’s Only Me - This is where I like it best: stripped down and stark. Just Elvis Perkins and his guitar. Getting all melancholy on us. Ash Wednesday is an incredible album, and I think that it came out in some form last year because I remember reading the buzz on it back then, but maybe not. When I research the internet for release dates, they all say 2007. Then I get sad because I didn’t include this album in the contention for album of the year, when it really deserves to be. Just do me a favor; if you like this song, go seek out more from this album.

08. M.I.A. (featuring the Wilcannia Mob) - Mango Pickle Down River - Excuse me, but your peanut butter is in my chocolate: leave it to Maya to craft a song featuring didgeridoo and rapping Australian kids in it! And it works! Exclamation point! I love the rhyming of “fridge” with “didge”.

07. Julian Cope - Soon To Forget Ya - Julian Cope is a freaky dude, but he sure knows how to lodge a chord progression in the long-term parking of one’s skull.

06. Joanna Newsom & The Ys Street Band - Colleen. Saw a funny pie chart this week from New York magazine. It was commenting on Pitchfork’s Top Songs of the Year, and mentioned that this inclusion was Joanna’s only new song of the year. I had to laugh, because not only was I in on the joke, I was part of it. Yeah, it is the only new song we got from Joanna Newsom this year, but it is the best Kate Bush harp-and-banjo song that I’ve ever heard!

05. Pat MacDonald - The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff cover) - Pat has turned one of my favorite reggae numbers into a rocker, and it is fine by me. I judge this as one of the best of the year because I dialed it up direct on my ipod so many times throughout the year, needing to hear it.

04 Of Montreal - The Past Is A Grotesque Animal - Seeing this song on Said The Gramaphone’s year-end list left me feeling a little vindicated. After all, not too many hit songs run 11+ minutes! Unlike STG, I’ve never thought about dancing to this song, as I’ve only ever listened to this in the car. Maybe I need to expand my horizons a bit, as it’s hard to “tearing the fucking shit apart” when you are belted into a confined space. That krautrock riff turns on, and I am ready for the ride! Favorite line: The mousy girl screams VIOLENCE VIOLENCE!

03. John Vanderslice - Kookaburra - I’ve no clue what this song is actually about. I hear some 9/11 imagery, but not sure what it has to do with a tree that sounds like it has koala bears living in it. I don’t need to know, I guess, in order to love it. I suppose what really sucks me into this song is the alternating between indie-folk and indie-rock. It’s an old trick, but if it is used well, someone like me will not even care. I particularly love the one-note-indie-rock rhythm line with the hard-hitting drums, and then the bassline kicks in. That moment right there is one of the quintessential moments of all of these songs that I’m presenting.

02. Black Francis - Angels Come To Comfort You - After hearing this tragic account of Dutch artist Herman Brood’s death over and over again, I shall have to seek out more info on him. I think the entire Bluefinger album is meant to be for or about Herman Brood, but this song is probably the centerpiece, and one of the best things that Charles Thompson has ever written.

01. Bjork - The Boho Dance (Joni Mitchell cover) - A quiet moment from Bjork, hearkening back to a few years ago when she was using music boxes as a primary instrument. For me, the beauty of this song is in the slowness and in the spaces. Unlike the Jimmy Cliff cover, I love this song for itself. I’ve never heard Joni Mitchell’s original version.

A zipped file of the above selections is available here for a limited time.

My musicvangelism shouldn’t be an end in itself, but should inspire you to go seek out these albums and purchase them. I hope you enjoy the music, and I hope you enjoy the holidays.

While I’ve got you here, might I also interest you in MMM’s first and only podcast?? It got posted last month, but was lost in the shuffle. It was fun to make, and includes several songs from the Portland songwriter scene.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 7:09 pm and is filed under favorite songs, mp3, top 25. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.