This year brought inspired music-making in daunting quantities, from veteran operators and crazed-genius outsider types who found devoted listeners despite the industry downturn. Below, a roundup of ten recordings I returned to again and again in 2008. They’re in no particular order. As with everything here, please consider yourself invited to share your own discoveries from the year. Thanks!

TV On the Radio: Dear Science. If you’re not careful, you might find yourself singing the refrains of Dear Science over and over again, without even realizing it. That’s not terribly unusual until you analyze said hooks a little bit – they’re dark and eerie and weirdly assymetrical, and thus miles away from what allegedly works on the radio. Paired with the equally smart accompaniments – serrated-saw drum machine beats, fantastic gales of analog synthesizer – the result is a giddy dream state that renders other attempts at ‘80s-rock worship (Franz Ferdinand et al) totally irrelevent.

Radiohead: In Rainbows. The more I live with this record, the more this year’s oft-repeated media storyline about how Radiohead (1000 Recordings, pg. 627) “regained” its voice seems off. The band is simply evolving, perhaps more rapidly than our benumbed ears can comprehend, recombining devices used on the last few records in startling ways. Thom Yorke’s observations on human vulnerability come through after just a few spins, but it might take years to appreciate everything swirling around inside these stark and stunningly elegant songs.

Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago. An opportunity to ponder, at length, the risks and benefits of confronting isolation, distance, and those pockets of darkness that lurk often undisturbed within. This year brought an astounding crop of independent-thinking outsiders; For Emma is easily the most intriguing debut.

Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes. Much has been made of the disarmingly earnest vocal blends on this debut. Equally significant are the instrumental expanses that stitch those vocal episodes together. Spacious and wonderfully unhurried, the Fleet Foxes melodies describe pastoral landscapes usually glimpsed only by birds, from a distance, above the tree line.

My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges. And mixed feelings. This record’s high points (“Remnants,” “Touch Me Pts. 1 and 2,” "Thank You Too!") reach closer to the rock ecstatic than almost anything else that arrived in 2008. The low points (“Highly Suspicious”) make one thankful for the invention of the remote control. But hey, it’s an album in the classic old-school sense, and that alone deserves applause. It’s refreshing to hear a revered band (1000 Recordings, pg. 537) take so many chances.

Alejandro Escovedo: Real Animal; The Gaslight Anthem: The 59 Sound. A tossup. In one corner is a veteran (see 1000 Recordings pg. 261) who this year discovered a new hard-rocking platform for his bittersweet observations on life. In the other is a fast-rising punk trio led by a songwriter (Brian Fallon) who sounds like Bruce Springsteen and isn’t afraid to namedrop Charles Dickens. The Gaslight Anthem careens along at a heedless clip that’s ideal for these songs, which capture the moment of sudden heaviness when the stereotypical knucklehead gets his first taste of adulthood.

Santogold: Santogold. Santi White is everything that’s righteous about pop music – she’s open to and conversant in many styles (bouyant ska, shadowy electronica), has the fierce will of a punk rocker and a taste for the snarly side of the ‘80s new wave. Mostly she writes tense, high-drama songs with endlessly infectious hooks. Her eccentric debut is required listening for those who think that everything consequential in the realm of the pop single has already been done.

The Mars Volta: The Bedlam In Goliath. Here’s a case where the much-discussed backstory – about a restless spirit communicating song ideas through a Ouija board – probably kept people at arm’s length. That’s a shame, because this intricate cycle (1000 Recordings, pg. 476) is more than merely an audio representation of bedlam – the lyrics, sung in a truly freaked-out scream, grapple with the big questions (life, death, purpose), and they’re supported by instrumental wickedness that goes hurtling by at warpspeed. Only very occasionally does it sound like anything you’ve heard before.

Juana Molina: Un Dia. These journeys often begin with Juana Molina’s lone voice offering a contained, haiku-like idea that is easily repeated. From there, the songwriter and visionary layers that voice into massive chorales that move in tight synchronization, like trains running on parallel tracks. There’s lots going on, but never too much: Every element is essential to these majestic, often wistful and surprisingly hypnotic soundscapes. Like Segundo (1000 Recordings, pg. 511), this is mindbendingly great.

The Roots: Rising Down. With this blast of astringent commentary, the Roots (1000 Recordings, pg. 660-661) move beyond hiphop gamesmanship to talk violence, addiction, media stereotypes and long-festering racial divisions. Arguably the first great record of the Obama era.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• OK Computer - Radiohead | Buy

• Phrenology - Roots, The | Buy

• Segundo - Juana Molina | Buy

• The Bedlam in Goliath - Mars Volta, The | Buy

• Gravity - Escovedo, Alejandro

to register alarm over your company’s chronic neglect and mishandling of the Elis Regina catalog. In some parts of the world (Brazil, obviously, and also Japan), it’s possible to buy all of Ms. Regina’s classic titles, with original artwork and liner notes. In the U.S., you are selling six different slipshod anthologies of her hits – while ignoring the individual titles, some of which have been out of print for years. To make matters worse, most of what’s available on CD here has not been properly remastered; the audio is of the dismal quality associated with the first-generation compact discs in the 1980s.

This is troubling for many reasons. Elis Regina was one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, a master whose slight inflections tell stories behind the story. Her recordings – most made for Philips in Brazil and issued on various Universal-owned imprints in the U.S. – represent an important point in the history of Brazilian popular music. They are thrilling whether you understand Portugese or not. They are classic illustrations of the “Long Tail” idea, as they’re considered essential by those who worship the music of Brazil and by rock devotees who rarely venture into anything marketed as “World Music.”

Elis Regina’s contribution to world culture is well documented, and still Universal seems to regard her as an alien creature. It’s outrageous – but given the state of the industry, not surprising – that her important recordings are not in circulation. Not too many years ago, major label executives recognized the value of the catalog; they saw themselves as caretakers of legacies. That meant not simply preserving great recordings, but championing them so that current listeners might discover them and be, as I’ve been, profoundly enriched. There’s much less of that advocacy happening now, as the labels pursue hits over careers. The end result of such short-sight is painfully audible in the braying, high-drama histrionics of your present-day divas. They clearly haven’t ever heard a singer like Elis Regina. And they desperately need to. Right away.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Como & porque - Elis Regina | Buy

• Elis & Tom - Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina | Buy

I’ve been thinking about the “perfect storm” conditions that led to our present economic implosion(s). Wondering what a farmer fleeing the dust bowl would make of “credit default swaps” and the like. Wonder whether the people Woody Guthrie writes about in the songs of Dust Bowl Ballads would even consider our current circumstances to be adverse. Though it’s something of a cliché to look back at the hardships of the old days, in this instance perspective is helpful, particularly given the general twitchiness of the media. Guthrie’s chronicles from that long-gone era offer more than sketches of economic devestation – inside his songs are glimpses of the internal resolve, determination and faith that helped ordinary people survive extraordinary challenges. Perfect for your next rent party.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Dust Bowl Ballads - Woody Guthrie | Buy

• Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse - McDaniels, Eugene | Buy

Tell a jazz aesthete that you intend to begin exploring “America’s classical music,” and you can usually count on an automatic response: Start with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, the most famous jazz album of all time. That’s perfectly reasonable advice, as Davis’ 1959 masterwork offers thrilling explorations of mood and color, and contributions from some of the form’s legendary soloists. If you’re enchanted by it, here are five suggestions for further exploration.

Count Basie and His Orchestra: Complete Decca Recordings (2000, Decca/MCA). This anthology offers the essential DNA of swing rhythm circa the 1930s, as played by a super-alert (and highly polished) band.

Ahmad Jamal: But Not For Me: Live at the Pershing (1958, MCA). Sometimes jazz can seem like the “look-at-me” grandstanding of attention-mongers. But it can also be a realm of poise and understatement, as this shimmering live date from 1962 demonstrates. Cue up the jukebox hit “Poinciana” to hear piano trio music at a sauntering, serene, easygoing peak.

Bill Evans and Jim Hall: Undercurrent (1962, Blue Note). At its best, jazz is a constantly evolving conversation between musicians. This recording presents two master improvisors, the coloristic pianist Bill Evans and guitar virtuoso Jim Hall, deeply immersed in a musical exchange. There are no distractions.

Booker Little: Out Front (1961, Candid). Recorded just as “free jazz” was hitting its stride, this fiery date led by trumpeter and composer Booker Little strives for – and achieves – a balance of old (hard bop) and new (free jazz) thinking that’s unlike anything else.

The Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall (2005, Blue Note). This recently unearthed live performance from 1957 showcases the herculean tenor saxophonist John Coltrane tackling some of Thelonious Monk’s most challenging compositions. It’s a crucial “lost chapter” of music history.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Kind of Blue - Miles Davis | Buy

• Complete Decca Recordings - Count Basie and His Orchestra | Buy

• But Not for Me: Live at the Pershing - Ahmad Jamal

• Undercurrent - Bill Evans and Jim Hall | Buy

• At Carnegie Hall - The Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane | Buy

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Legend of Arab Music - Oum Kalthoum | Buy

• In Concert in Paris - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan | Buy

One of the more impossible tasks in compiling such a list was contending with artists like Young, the mercurial singer, songwriter and guitarist who has made important contributions across several decades – and in strikingly different musical spheres. Knowing I couldn’t represent all of Young’s “periods,” I went with the record I felt was most likely to enchant someone new to his work – After The Gold Rush – in hopes that its fragile, plaintive melodies would send listeners into a longterm exploration of Young’s discography. Below, five Next Stops for those who find themselves newly captivated by this cryptic genius.

• Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969, Reprise). Young’s first album with Crazy Horse seems mannered when compared with the extreme (and sometimes aurally punishing) sonics of later collaborations. But the songs – among them “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Cinnamon Girl” and “Down By The River” – stand among Young’s most crystalline, razor-sharp compositions.
• Tonight’s The Night (1975, Reprise). After losing two associates (Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry) to heroin within a year, Young created a caustic, sometimes fractured-sounding masterpiece that’s ideally suited to late-night meditations on the meaning of life. He’s hurt, angry, hungry for truth and mistrustful of fame and all of its once-beguiling trappings.
• Rust Never Sleeps (1979, Reprise). Somewhere in the mid-to-late ‘70s, Neil Young looked around, noticed a pronounced sense of atrophy (if not outright decay) in the culture, and responded with withering indictments of narcissism, escapism and assorted other “isms.” These songs – “Powderfinger,” “My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue” – rank up there with the most trenchant rock music ever made. For even more extreme versions, seek out Live Rust, released later the same year.
• Weld (1991, Reprise). Here’s Young with Crazy Horse, tearing through the “hard stuff” in his songbook at the moment just before grunge would remap the rock universe. There are waves of ear-splitting distortion, and guitar solos that find middle ground between elegant melody and scrap metal, and an absolutely incendiary cover of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In the Wind,” complete with explosions in the distance.
• Harvest Moon (1992, Reprise). Young risked significant ridicule when he returned to the quaint acoustic settings of Harvest, the 1972 album that contains his only number-one hit “Heart of Gold.” The Harvest Moon backdrops are similarly poignant and hauntingly spare, but Young – unlike so many rockers desperate to recapture those glory days – doesn’t go backward at all. Instead, he wrestles with the concerns of grown folks in his peer group, writing of friendships that inevitably fade over time, urban Everyman’s role in environmental destruction, the challenges of retaining a bit of fire in the belly as the world drifts into a complacent stupor.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• After the Gold Rush - Neil Young | Buy

• Retrospective - Buffalo Springfield | Buy

• Déjà vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young | Buy

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Lô Borges - Lô Borges | Buy

• Out Front - Booker Little | Buy

• How the West Was Won - Led Zeppelin | Buy

• Singles Collection: The London Years - The Rolling Stones | Buy

• Gymnopédies/Gnossiennes - Erik Satie | Buy

It’s perhaps unrealistic to expect the world to catch up to Molina – whose Segundo (1000 Recordings, pg. 511) is an exotic concoction of tightly braided vocal harmonies, surreptitious beats and strange primitive electronic sounds. Her music is quirky, an acquired taste. Still I hold out hope that these records will eventually reach a wide audience, because nobody – not even Bjork, to whom she’s often compared – is doing anything remotely like this.

Un Dia, Juana Molina’s fifth international release, arrived this week. It’s an astoundingly beautiful studio wonderment, a record potent enough to give beleagured music people hope. Extending the looping-and-layering approach of Segundo, Molina builds beats one wicked percussion tick at a time, until she’s created elaborate, defiantly unkempt rhythms. Rather than commit to a single recurring beat, she implies all sorts of jarring polyrhythms as she goes along, testing out possible variations while sticking to a general flight plan. Atop this shifting foundation are rippling waves of overlapping Molina voices, each expressing variations of pitch or temperment – these chorales are soothing and snarling at the same time. To encounter Molina’s inventive textures at peak, check out “Los Hongos de Marosa,” which gathers wiggly ad-libbed melodies, blissed-out nursery-school songs and entreaties to strange deities into an eight-minute trance.

Many of the vocals only occasionally hinge on a fixed text, and that’s intentional: Soundscapes like these can signify about all sorts of things, as Molina indicates in a line embedded in the title track. “One day I will sing the songs with no lyrics and everyone can imagine for themselves if it’s about love, disappointment, banalities or about Plato.” That day has arrived: The lyrics of most songs on Un Dia serve as merely starting points, invitations into a fantastic netherworld of sound. Don’t miss the chance to explore it.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Segundo - Juana Molina | Buy

• Homogenic - Björk | Buy

The great Miles Davis '60s quintet, recorded live in 1966 (if the appended youtube information is to be trusted).

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Highlights from the Plugged Nickel - Miles Davis Quintet | Buy

• Maiden Voyage - Herbie Hancock | Buy

• Juju - Wayne Shorter | Buy

It was the last set at a corner bar called Bunkers, and as soon as the band – a powerhouse ensemble with several vocalists known as Dr. Mambo’s Combo – kicked into Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” I knew I was in for a treat. That’s because the great Michael Bland was holding down the rhythm. A titan of the steady backbeat, Bland is one of those cogs in the music machinery who, by virtue of his extreme competance, makes those who employ him sound terrific. He’s been in Replacements songwriter Paul Westerberg’s band for at least one solo tour, and for several years was part of Prince’s outfit; every time I’ve seen him play, his no-frills sense of time has lifted the music up, with no obvious effort.

Bland could probably coast through the Dr. Mambo’s Combo gig, which happens most Sunday and Monday nights. He didn’t. Without doing anything special, Bland made “September” and everything else sizzle. Just by keeping simple, straight-ahead time. He displayed crazy command of the kit – you get the sense he can play any pretzel-twisted drum fill known to man – but he rarely relied on those technical gifts. Instead, he prized steadiness over everything else, generating supercharged syncopations just by striking the ride cymbal, building a sexy funk pulse around a hypnotic kick-drum pattern. It was no surprise that the rest of the Combo was rocking – given that foundation, how could they not?

If you ever find yourself in need of a shot of pure kenetic groove energy, and you’re anywhere near Minneapolis on a Sunday or Monday night, check out this gig www.bunkersmusic.com. It’s a great chance to hear one of our great rhythm masters, up close and personal-like.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Purple Rain - Prince and the Revolution | Buy

• Sign o' the Times - Prince | Buy

• Let It Be - The Replacements | Buy

I’ve been meeting awesome people at bookstores, but this was a chance to hang out – and guest DJ – in what for me is a more “native” environment. Like many people of my generation (I’m 47), I grew up prowling the places where music is sold. In these shrines of sound, I encountered one jaw-dropping title after another, and along the way, picked up a lifelong appreciation for the crazy vastness of music.

This education is almost always happenstance, not linear: You’re flipping through the racks and something catches your eye. You wander over to a clerk, hoping he or she is not as famously elitest as those immortalized in Nick Hornby’s novel and film High Fidelity. You ask. She answers. The exchange can be brief – “he was on so-and-so’s last record” or “if you like that better check out this...” – and you move on. Then you become intrigued by what’s playing in the store. This sparks another conversation, if the terse codes of music geekdom can be termed a “conversation.” Suddenly you’re off on a different search, guided by someone who by virtue of her employment here has heard a ton of music. Your curiosity is activated. A record you didn’t know existed an hour before is now a part of your consciousness. And just might become your next obsession.

Easy Street is a place where people wander in and make those discoveries every day. In every genre, the selection is deep – these shelves are stocked by people who know music and are dedicated to sharing it. I cued up Lo Borges (1000 Recordings, pg. 106) and began a lively conversation with the extremely knowledgable staff and some patrons that touched on Fleet Foxes, Karen Dalton (pg. 203), TV on the Radio (about how the astonishing new album actually exceeds the hype surrounding it), Mother Love Bone (pg. 526), Professor Longhair (pg. 616), Charles Mingus (pg. 504) and much more. As usually happens, I encountered electrifying stuff I didn’t know and might not ever have found through an Internet search. Don’t get me wrong: I like those automated “genius” recommendation services just fine. But nothing digital can replace the record store experience.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Lô Borges - Lô Borges | Buy

• It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best - Karen Dalton | Buy

• Apple - Mother Love Bone | Buy

• New Orleans Piano - Professor Longhair | Buy

• Mingus Ah Um - Charles Mingus | Buy

This wasn’t some souped-up CD version. Hardly. Through his network of producers, my friend had wrangled a digital replica of the multitrack master. There are apparently lots of these floating around: If you know the right people, it’s possible to snag versions of classic records by the likes of the Police, John Lennon and many others. With software (like, say, ProTools) linked to a mixing console, it’s possible to hear exactly what went on in the making of the music. Track by glorious track.

For the next half-hour, we listened all kinds of ways. My friend started with the full ensemble, and then, right on a downbeat, he’d isolate just the drums – and we’d marvel at how Motown’s engineers captured such a warm and completely natural sound from the kit. We checked on the saxophones – somewhat out of tune! We scrutinized the keyboards, then the backing vocals. Sometimes we toggled back and forth between the full ensemble and one of Marvin’s lead vocal tracks – you can hear him drawing breath before he starts singing, and sense how close he is to the microphone. And how relaxed he is doing his work.

This was listening on another level, like peeking behind the curtain and seeing the magician do his routine from an unauthorized vantage point. I’ve heard “Mercy Mercy Me” hundreds of times, and somehow missed key details. Not only did this provide great insight into one of the gems from Gaye’s life-changing What’s Going On (1000 Recordings, pg. 304), it reminded me about the particular type of listening producers do every day. Most of us hear one big tidal wave of sound; they zoom right in on that faint extra rattle coming off the surface of the snare drum. Back in the days before computerized recording, those artifacts from the instruments (or the room) were unavoidable, and became part of the character of the final product. In modern computer-aided recording, they’re “fixed” in the mix – scrubbed, pitch-corrected and airbrushed away. For your protection.

I’d argue that such obsessive fixing is one reason, among many, that contemporary recordings sound so brittle and sterile. Funny how a computer-aided encounter with the multitrack master could make a compelling case for old-school lo-tech analog recording. And, at the same time, add another layer of meaning onto the song’s already prophetic hook. You know the one, about how “things ain’t what they used to be.”

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• What's Going On - Marvin Gaye | Buy

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, 1938-1947 - Tharpe, Sister Rosetta

The error has been corrected for the online version of the entry: http://www.1000recordings.com/music/abraxas/.

It will also be rectified in subsequent printings.

Recordings of Interest, from The List

• Abraxas - Santana | Buy