7. Thomas Tantrum, “Work It” (2008)
- Official website.
- From the 2008 album Thomas Tantrum.

From the best album I heard in 2009 – though it’s actually a photo-finish with Song #5 – comes the sassy, saucy, quirky “Work It” – words that should never be used in a dating profile, but are eminently applicable to Thomas Tantrum’s irresistible combination of jangly punk guitar and ooh-ooh refrains.

But who am I fooling: the charm of Thomas Tantrum is all about Megan Thomas’ vocals, her lips seemingly pursed in a perpetual pout, the singer ready to slam the door in your stupid face. And that accent! It was difficult to pick just one song – “Blasé”, “Swan Lake” (for that one it’s “ah ah ah”), or “Shake It! Shake It!” could have easily been on this list – but “Work It” wins the spot if only for the way she stretches the lone syllable in “it” into an impertinent six.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me” (1968)
9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009)
10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me”

- Official website.
- From the 1968 album Odessey and Oracle (Amazon mp3 link).

I fell in love with the Zombies only a few years ago – to think I’d lived so long without ever really hearing them, “She’s Not There” notwithstanding! — and it’s a relationship that continues to grow strong, particularly with their incredible 1968 album Odessey and Oracle – surely up there with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds as one of the great albums of the late ‘60s. (I’m reminded of how I finally “heard” Pet Sounds about a decade ago, once I really listened to it, and was floored at its beauty.) I still pull out Odessey and Oracle fairly regularly and I’m always surprised at the depth of its musical riches. Unfortunately, the Zombies would split up just before the album – and their biggest hit, “Time of the Season” – was released.

“I Want Her She Wants Me” wasn’t even released as a single, or even a b-side; it’s just one practically throwaway track tucked in between the baroque “Changes” and the sublime “This Will Be Our Year”. Recorded a few months after their biggest concert audiences at that point in their career – in the Philippines, as it happens, with Diomedes Maturan as one of their opening acts – the song is pure pop sweetness from Rod Argent, with impeccable harmonies and electric harpsichord. They constitute the only frills in what is otherwise an ordinary love song pared down to its very essence, to the simple logical proposition in the title. If only love was always that simple.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009)
10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat”

- Official website.
- From the 2009 album Changing Horses.

Surely Ben Kweller had been threatening to do this from the start. For almost every power-pop slacker anthem he writes, particularly on his first solo album after the Radish days, Sha Sha, there was an unabashed bid for piano-based singer-songwriter greatness, placing him in the company of people of contemporaries like Ben Folds (which he would later collaborate with, along with another Ben (Lee) in 2003). But there’d also be one or two country/folk tracks that would seem suspiciously out of place, like “Family Tree” or “On My Way”, almost as if Kweller was winking at his listeners and nudging them with a flannel-covered elbow.

His 2009 album Changing Horses – as if the title didn’t holler the fact out loud enough – makes good on that wink and nudge; any closer to country and this would be his Tumbleweed Connection. (It’s probably because he’s moved back to Texas; I guess the 78704 zip code brings out good things in people.)

“Old Hat” is the standout track for me – an achingly beautiful ballad, where the central metaphor (an old hat) is a little shopworn but comfortable, and it works. The live footage on YouTube doesn’t quite do justice to the song – you’re missing out on a lovely pedal steel guitar solo by Kitt Kittermann – but check out this love letter of a song, which begins “Hello, sweet friend of mine” and ends with:

My tornado, love, tore it all down
Now I’m face down in all this muddy guilt
You know I wanna make you smile again
Warm your heart again like an old worn out quilt

Now listen
I’ll be your glove, I’ll be your scarf, I’ll be the cross that covers your heart
But I don’t want you to get tired of me honey after such a good start

I never want to be the old hat you put on your pretty head

Perhaps there’s something liberating in writing in the country genre; there’s a plainspokenness in country lyrics (and by extension, Kweller’s new album) that renders emotional truth less opaque than anything by emo bands out there. But there’s something about his yearning delivery that belies his words: you know in the end he’d settle for old-hat status for this girl anyway.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
- Official website.
- From the 2008 album Fortress Round My Heart.

Yes, it’s one of last year’s big songs, and it was on a bunch of 2008 year-end lists already, but hey, I’m not one of the Pitchfork cognoscenti or Sasha Frere-Jones, so it took a while before this song made its way through a hundred other bloggers and the occasional TV show and Time and finally to my happy ears. “Oh My God”, as the video captures quite literally, is a power pop anthem infused with agitation: the demand to “Find a cure for my life,” the jittery punk guitars, and that quaver in her hoarse voice early in the song just before she erupts into the bug-eyed intensity of the last third. “Is this fun for you?” she asks toward the end; it almost sounds like a threat, but oh, how much fun it is indeed. Probably Norway’s greatest musical export since Darkthrone, and with a better sense of humor about God too.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me”

- Official website.
- From the 2003 album Oh, The Stories We Hold (eMusic link).

The Chicago-based singer-songwriter Anna Fermin has one of those expressively elastic voices that sounds like it belongs to an older generation of singers; she’s partly husky and intimate on one track, then belting it out Grand Ole Opry-style on another. While “country” is the dominant musical idiom in which Fermin writes her songs, it seems like a narrow label for the expansiveness of her band’s styles, like the lilting, jazzy nature of this tune that haunted me all year. “How Do You Judge Me”, is from her band’s 2003 album produced by the late Jay Bennett and was, the liner notes read, “recorded live around Jay’s kitchen table.”

It’s a shame that I couldn’t find longer sound samples or YouTube footage – and I would have loved for people to hear Frank Kvinge’s beautiful guitar solo as well – and that the CD looks out of print and unavailable either on CD Baby or their own website or as downloadable mp3s in the usual places (Lala, Amazon, iTunes). What gives? And why isn’t Anna Fermin an alt-country superstar?

I don’t know what the song means, though I have a guess. Here’s the first stanza and the refrain:

Is it the color of my hair?
Is it the darkness of my skin that keeps you frozen in your tracks?
Is it the clothing on my back?
Is it the unfamiliar drawl of my tongue that makes me small in your eyes?

How do you judge me?
How is it that you know me so well?

—–

The rest of the list so far:

12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]