2008 has - like most years - been full of ups and downs. I’m suspicious of the end of year critics who proclaim it to have been either a vintage or meagre year for music. The tunes are always out there, it’s just a question of whether you’re lucky enough to stumble upon them at the right moments. The following seven songs may not have been the most popular or most prominent songs of the year, but I chanced upon them at the right moment to hear their magic.

City Middle - The National

This will, perhaps, be the song that stays most with me. For ever put off by the band’s name, this was the year I put my defences down and realised that I had missed one of the most innovative and important bands of the last ten years. In common with the rest of the album alligator (2005), this song pulls out all the tools at this gifted band’s disposal - from vocal lines through to the drums (how many bands can you name where the drums are used as an instrument rather than a fancy metronome?) - and employs them effortlessly to create a searing epic full of ambiguity and space. A band not afraid to aim high. 

Open Relationship - Ryan Mintz

How do you make a song brave, ballsy, and fragile at the same time? Well, you could do worse than listen to Ryan Mintz’s Open Relationship to take your cue. Everything here rests on Mintz’s voice - similar to Cat Stevens in some respects - which rather than being perfect is beautifully human. My chief complaint about soul-searching singer-songwriters is that most rarely manage that elusive alchemy that changes navel-gazing into art that can move someone else, or to put it another way, from a whine into a solid song. Mintz does just that here.

Folding Stars - Biffy Clyro

There’s nothing more satisfying - for a music fan - than watching a band progress, perfecting their art. For me, Scottish band Biffy Clyro had always been full of potential, but never quite lived up to their promise. The album Puzzle (2007), though announced itself as that moment when their intelligence, melody, and passion all gelled together in equal meaure - balanced,  and yet rocking on the edge. It was superb, and this was one of the best moments. A song facing death and loss, transforming the pain into a poetic, poignant, and huge love song. 

Italian Girls on Mopeds - Andy White

Andy White, I reasoned to myself back in the ’90s in Dublin, is an acquired taste and won which I don’t have. His voice too distinctive, his northern roots too apparent to make sense to me. It might be age or wisdom that lead me to re-evaluate this year, as I spent muchpleasant  time in the company of his songs - or perhaps it was simply that this song would win over the harshest of critics. It’s crafted, light of heart, and full of the joys of life. Rave on. Can’t find a decent video from youtube, so head straight over to Andy’s MySpace page to hear the song.

The Vanishing of Maria Schneider - dEUS

This year saw the welcome return to form of Belgian band dEUS, after the relative dissapointment of their last album Pocket Revolution (and relative is the key word there - even when they’re not 100% on form they’re more interesting than most others).  In an upcoming interview with TMO Tom Barman apparently* voiced dissapointment with how this track, a duet with Elbow’s Guy Barlow, turned out, but to my ears it’s just perfect. Lush, romantic, and experimental the song takes as its pivot the image of Maria Schneider, the star of Bertolucci’s classic Last Tango in Paris and becomes a grand meditation on ageing, fame, and the passing of time. The video is a live performance, from the studio (but it’s missing Barlow and the lush sound)

Gold - Interference

This is an old song, but one that suddenly found a new audience this year thanks to the huge success of the Irish film Once. While the film centres on the songs of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, there is a magical moment when, at a party, Fergus O’Farrel of the Interference sings this, one of his signature tunes. It’s apt because the song is, it seems to me, very much about being amongst friends - about the opposite of isolation. It opens with an acoustic guitar setting the tone, shortly followed by the other instruments joining in - and joining in is the key phrase here. Then O’Farrell’s unmistakeable voice, perfectly complimented by Hansard’s backing vocals, takes over - with the musicians playing around and in response. As his voice swoops, moulding the song to its climax, the various elements of the song unite into something positively thrilling.Beautiful is an over-used adjective when talking about songs, but there’s no more appropriate description here. This song is a thing of rare beauty. 

*TMO editor Andy Lawless did the interview recently, and let me see a draft.

O.k here’s the deal - I’m asked to get seven songs together that rocked my year (why seven? Maybe the editor is on a Madonna Kabalistic tip - who knows?). My clause - these are songs that I’ve played obsessively throughout the year, but they’re not necessarily released this year. Now, with that out of the way, we can proceed:

 What’s Your Problem - The Zutons

As the backlash against globalisation gathers pace, some decent swamp-rock from Liverpool is the best aural antidote to the credit crunch. This is a snappy dancing beast that got played on my desktop most monday mornings throughout the year. The perfect response to all those - this blog included - that spent their time dismissing them as the band that wrote that brilliant Amy Winehouse/Mark Ronson song Valerie. This is upfront, sassy, and jubilant - though they trip in the final hurdle with that ‘it was the face of a woman’ explanation. Never apologise, never explain.

I get so excited - The Equals

I’ve long meant to check out The Equals, the North London reggae band from the mid ’60s, and this was the year that I got around to it. The band are best known for having Eddy Grant on guitar, and for their chart-topping hit Baby Come Back, but the main impulse for me was to hear Police on My Back, after that electrifying cover by the Clash on the Sandinistas! album. That original is mildly dissapointing compared to the Clash cover, but there are so many gems on The Best of the Equals that it’s irrelevant. I get so excited sums things up perfectly - with Derv Gordon’s gruff voice and Grant’s catchy riff, this is pop music for young working men and women on the cusp of a friday night. Put it on at any party and watch the dance floor fill - a timeless classic.

That’s Not My Name - The Ting Tings

This was one of the best and most abused songs this year. Using their technical limitations to produce something familiar but new, that’s not my name got taken on and championed by the purse-string-holding hipsters that it lampooned. With a stripped back electro riff that brings those of us old enough to remember back to Toni Basil’s catchy but b-anal Oh Mickey. this is a song sung by Katie White lamenting the patronising indifference she faced with her first band, and yet it’s been marketed here, there, and everywhere on its catchy hook and her pretty blonde looks. Ironies abound, but don’t let your head get too messed up on it - it’s a great tune, from a great band. Don’t let the fact that it’s on every advert and tv promo around interfere with that. ‘Nuff said 

These Few Presidents - Why?

I’m lucky enough to not know much about Yoni Wolf’s previous musical incarnations (cLOUDDEAD or Greenthink), or even Why?’s previous outings like Elephant Eyelash. Lucky in the sense that knowing precious little about them, I don’t have to jump into the critical maelstrom evaluating his musical style-shifting (from abstract hip-hop through to alternative pop). For me it’s enough just to listen to the brilliant album Alopecia and enjoy. There are some great tracks on offer on the album, but the one I kept coming back to was this. Why? (couldn’t resist that rhetorical flourish) Because of it’s cool D.I.Y feel, the bass, the gear shifting chorus  and what must be contender for the best line of the year “even though I haven’t seen you in years, yours is a funeral I’d fly to from anywhere…”

She Just wants to move - Scotland Yard Gospel Choir

Another song that’s not of this year, but which, slowcoach that I am, came my way during 2008. It’s a potent reminder that, sometimes there’s no reason for an ulterior motive. Sometimes a song, shorn of context or complications, works just because it’s got a chorus to die for. No innovation, no trendsetting, but you can’t stop yourself singing along.

Abel - The National

This is one of those guilty pleasures - a song that Mrs Murphy just physically can’t listen to, and so to be enjoyed when she’s out of hearing range. Why she can’t abide Abel is a matter open to conjecture, but the screaming repeated chorus of ‘my mind’s not right’ probably has something to do with it. It’s a tense song, liable to raise your heartbeat, and, if you’re prone to nerves, make your palms sweat.

Which is all to the good, because this is a superb and twisted slice of American rock, from probably the best album of the year. With it’s staccatto beat drumming, ranting and raving your attention is grabbed. The story is, like all the best, ambiguous - is the singer Cain when he edgily sings ‘Abel c’mon, give me the keys back’?What makes this brilliant, though, is that it’s not just a 120mph thrash -no, this is shaded, paced, and not just a little bit creepy.

Ilegal Attacks - Ian Brown (featuring Sinead O’Connor)

It’s a sad state of affairs when you have to get a political wake-up call from the man who may well be best remembered for penning the lines ‘the messiah is my sister, ain’t no king man she’s my queen’, but that’s exactly what we got from Ian Brown this year, with his brave stance against US & UK militarism and the death and destruction it causes. The album was great, but this track was extraordinary - in no small part thanks to O’Connor’s haunting vocals (for someone with such a strong voice and personality, O’Connor has repeatedly put in brilliant collaborations - with Shane McGowan on the Pogues Haunted, or more recently with Damien Dempsey).

You’ll have the cynics turning their noses up at the simplicity of it all, but sometimes simplicity is what’s called for - and in a year when both Blair and Bush admitted their ‘mistakes’  without any consequences, maybe Brown’s opening ‘what the fuck’ is the most eloquent response necessary.