Like a preemie out the womb

A more detailed "best comics" post will be along shortly, but for now I'll just post some music lists:

1. Sandro Perri - Tiny Mirrors
2. Future of the Left - Curses
3. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
4. Battles - Mirrored
5. Brian Joseph Davis - The Definitive Host
6. Marnie Stern - In Advance of the Broken Arm
7. Jay-Z - American Gangster
8. Dirty Projectors - Rise Above
9. UGK - Underground Kingz
10. Joel Plaskett Emergency - Ashtray Rock
11. M.I.A. - Kala
12. Cephalic Carnage - Xenosapien
13. Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover
14. Kids on TV - Mixing Business With Pleasure
15. Rihanna - Good Girl Gone Bad
16. Ghostface Killah - The Big Doe Rehab
17. Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
18. R Kelly - Double Up
19. Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
20. The New Pornographers - Challengers

And 10 favourite tracks I submitted to Idolator:

1. Rihanna [ft Jay-Z] - "Umbrella"
2. UGK [ft Outkast] - "Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)"
3. Justice - "D.A.N.C.E."
4. LCD Soundsystem - "Someone Great"
5. Sandro Perri - "Love is Real"
6. The New Pornographers - "Go Places"
7. Jay-Z - "Fallin'"
8. Avril Lavigne - "Girlfriend"
9. Kids on TV - "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off"
10. Grinderman - "No Pussy Blues"

And finally some reissues:

1. V/A - The Very Best of Ethiopiques
2. Sly and the Family Stone - Stand!
3. V/A - Summer Records Anthology (1974-1988)
4. Pere Ubu - The Tenement Year
5. Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different

I've already written a lot about some of these albums (like the beautiful, melancholic Sandro Perri record) and I have to do it again in the next few days. It's the singles that seem more vivid during these artificial stock-taking exercises anyway, having formed pungent associations with this person or that memory over the previous 365 days.

Not that all of them do. Sometimes it's simply uncomplicated thrills, Girlfriend. "Fallin" hits so hard precisely because Hova mythologizes his fuckups as much as his successes. I was surprised, actually, by the unhappy bent of those tracks, sad by design ("Love is Real"), thanks to events (UGK) or just seething with blue-balled frustration ("No Pussy Blues"). None of it seems to reflect my 2007 - well, okay, sometimes that last one did, although one of the best jokes in married Cave's dirty-old-man lament is that, if the girls I know are any indication, his louche creep persona would still have a lot of takers.

That may just echo general uncertainty as we head into the new year, whether within the music industry or the world as a whole (right now I'm more optimistic about the latter). But maybe not. I turned twenty this year, and even when you struggle valiantly against assuming any adult responsibilities aging simply flanks you in other ways. I haven't gone through anything close to the severed-limb breakup "Someone Great" documents, but that kind of experience is more comprehensible by the day; like the song's narrator, I can see it coming. Maybe that's why "Go Places" was my favourite song from Challengers - a combination of gorgeous melody and naked sentiment wherein Carl Newman finally abandoned the cryptic riddles to get down on one knee and take his woman's hand. That Neko Case actually sung the thing (because he didn't think his voice was good enough) only makes the awkwardness more charming.

There was a bit of that in the killer "International Players Anthem" too, with twee, metre-mangling Dre declaring his lurve before UGK extol a slightly different ideal of romance. But even though those two like their girls dirty and paid by the hour, they all got each other's backs anyway, and that message of fidelity was all the more affecting after Pimp C's untimely death. "Umbrella" is similarly loving and loyal underneath those cold trance synths. Rihanna's against-all-odds ditty stood apart from a blob of pallid R&B ballads this year by facing encroaching doom with a defiant shrug, and that's why it's my song of the year when Father Time may be delivering a new one full of trying times. It's not the flimsy canvas that matters when the rain comes down but the people underneath it with you.

Back Like That

Sure, everyone else in the "comics blogosphere" might have signed off for the week, but my whole extended family seemingly lives in the GTA so it's not like I have traveling or...anything else to do. I'll probably do a real post no one will be around to read on the weekend (best-of lists also to come!), but for now I hope you'll be contented by my contributions to the first part of Eye Weekly's end-of-year roundup. Okay, I'll throw in maybe the best album cover of the year too:

Service Advisory

The combo of schoolwork and end-of-year music-crit stuff has built up into an insane work avalanche, so I don't think I'll be able to post much of substance until next week when U of T breaks for the season. Hopefully things will be back to a normal schedule then. In the meantime I might reheat some Eye Weekly stuff that's been taken offline, or just try some quick and dirty reviews, but I promise unseen drawings by the likes of Stuart Immonen in...The Future!