Earlier this year I jumped on the My Morning Jacket bandwagon after ignoring the critical hype for a couple of years, and discovered that their latest album Evil Urges is one of the very best releases of the year.
Now it’s TV on the Radio’s turn. After seeing their Dear Science album on a heap of year-end top ten lists, owning the top spot in several, I broke down and bought the CD. The early verdict: Believe the hype. This is easily one of the best albums I’ve heard in years.
This song doesn’t have any particular meaning for Alex and me — in fact, today is probably the first time she’s ever heard it. But I find it to be such an effective expression of romantic longing that I felt it would fit in nicely this week.
This is the second “country” song of the week (country in that it is performed by a country act, though the song itself probably owes more to the blues). Throw in the Dylan song, which has been covered by plenty of country stars, and a bit of a trend is emerging.
I have some year-end stuff on the way but it’s not quite ready because I haven’t seen/heard all of the things I need to before I can put 2008 to rest. I plan to count down my top ten songs of the year as part of the Song of the Day series, and I’ll do that as soon as I’ve listened to the albums I just bought to see if anything on them will crack that list (so far I know at least one will).
In the meantime, I figured I’d list some people and things I very happily discovered this year. This list excludes anything I was a fan of prior to Jan. 1, 2008.
Please add your own discoveries in the comment section (and remind me of any I might have missed).
To really showcase how much Alex means to me, today I am highlighting a Bob Dylan song that is not sung by Bob Dylan. As a die-hard Dylan fan, that’s a difficult thing for me to do. But nobody said love is easy.
This song has actually been covered by a laundry list of performers… everybody from Kelly Clarkson to Neil Diamond, Bryan Ferry to Joan Osborne. The best-known versions belong to Billy Joel and Garth Brooks, both of whom landed on the singles chart with the song.
My choice, Adele, has also had success with the track overseas and is releasing it in the U.S. as the next single from her well-received album 19.
The second great movie I saw this weekend (and the second-best movie I’ve seen so far this year) is Ron Howard’s adaptation of the celebrated stage play Frost/Nixon. Howard has a knack for dramatizing historic events — this is easily his best film since Apollo 13 and for my money rivals that great movie.
I suppose it would be hard to go wrong starting with such excellent source material, especially with playwright Peter Morgan on board to adapt his own work. But Howard has avoided any of the traps inherent in filming a piece intended for the stage and crafted a compelling work of cinema that works as both an underdog tale and an intimate tragedy.
Meet Me In Montauk 