10. Girl Talk. "Play Your Part (Part 1)." Any track off Feed the Animals—the unquestionable album of the summer—could have made this list. Dr. Gillis gets by with a little help from his friends Lil' Wayne and Sinead O'Connor, a combination that makes for one of the best Girl Talk moments since Biggie rapped about the Twin Towers over "Tiny Dancer."
9. Grizzly Bear. "Two Weeks." It's hard to judge a track solely on a live recording, but I have evidence beyond recording of a performance on Letterman that leaked in July: When Grizzly Bear broke out "Two Weeks" (sure to be a highlight of their upcoming '09 release) during their show at a synagogue in D.C.'s Chinatown, the infectious piano stomp and soaring harmonies stood up against the rest of their remarkable set. The studio version has a lot to live up to.
8. Little Joy. "Keep Me In Mind." The Strokes seem in limbo after dropping a resoundingly mediocre album nearly three years ago, but no matter: It just so happens the band's drummer has new side project—and his singing voice sounds exactly like Julian Casablancas'. Little Joy—fronted by Fabrizio Moretti, erstwhile drummer for the all-but-dead Strokes—surprised many with a self-titled debut chock full of delicate gems and addictive jams. "Keep Me In Mind" sounds the most like classic, Is This It?-era Strokes, and is therefore the strongest track.
7. MGMT. "Time to Pretend." Yes, the drums and synths do absolutely kill. But, more importantly, never has a song condemned the boring monotony of a 9-to-5 job with such convincing damnation. Moving to Paris, shooting some heroin and fucking with the stars is clearly the more logical career move.
6. Vampire Weekend. "A-Punk." Forget the hype and forget the backlash: "A-Punk" still sounds as fresh as it did on its first listen. It may contain some of the band's most silly and surrealistic lyrics, but few songs this year had anything as consistently winning as the chants of "Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!"
5. Atlas Sound. "River Card." The most awkward-looking pop star since Joey Ramone, Bradford Cox—taking time off from his gig fronting Deerhunter to record as Atlas Sound—included the hypnotizing "River Card" on his debut album Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. It sounds like bedroom pop at it's dreamiest, as if it were actually recorded inside a giant pillow. But Cox's voice pierces the digital fog of reverb-y vocals; suddenly, it makes perfect sense why he would stay up until 6 in the morning listening to "Where Did Our Love Go?" on repeat.
4. Department of Eagles. "No One Does It Like You." With a track as immediate and bouncy as this, it would be a sin to write off Department of Eagles as an appetizer just tiding over the populace until the next Grizzly Bear release. The first few seconds explode with a fuzzed-out guitar line and a crunchy tambourine, but when Daniel Rossen adds the cascading harmonies of his day-job band to the coda, the song is elevated to the level of the best works in the Grizzly Bear canon.
3. Bon Iver. "re: stacks." The heart-stopping whirl of a few simple guitar strums gets you immediately, but that ethereal voice hits you like a ton of bricks. The song sounds as cold as the Wisconsin cabin it was recorded in, but at the same time, it makes you feel so warm.
2. Lil' Wayne. "A Milli." A hook-less wonder. Weezy sneers through brilliant verse after brilliant verse, spitting stream-of-consciousness musings straight off that inscrutable tablet in his mind. It's invigorating, it's weird—and it's a hit. Does anything define 2008 better than that unending torrent of a-milli-a-milli-a-milli-a-milli-a-mil-a-mil-a-milli-a-milli...?
1. The Walkmen. "In The New Year." Like all the classics, "In The New Year" is a song so happy it makes you sad and so sad it makes you happy. The explosive core of The Walkmen's God-affirming fourth album You & Me, "In The New Year" opens like a Depression-era novel: A burst of far-off strings, wistfully metallic guitar strums, raspy up-front vocals, all wrapped up in foggy same-room production—it's the band finally finding a perfect equilibrium of the sounds they've tested in the past. And the optimism, albeit hard-won, couldn't be more appropriate: As 2009 looms bright in the near future, the scrappy, howling yell of "It's gonna be a good year!" is so beautifully believable. But it's delivered with an air of an unforgiving sadness, cloaking the hope in the aftertaste of broken promises: pipe dreams, old addresses, stormy weather, long-lost friends. And that's what makes the song a classic—like all the best poets, frontman Hamilton Leithauser finds catharsis in the tragedy, wonder in the melancholy, and a good year to finally arrive after enduring this mess we've sludged through. 2009—It's gonna be a good year!
Check back Sunday, Dec. 7 for the next list.For the other lists, click here.
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