Christmas came and went this year in a blink of a sleepless eye. I mean, i didn't even have time to whinge about it, what with all the stress from what shall now be referred to as the Most Horrible End of Terms In Life (And I Have Had Some Pretty Disgusting Ones), let alone indulge in the festive shopping and baking. My brain doesn't particularly care to recall but suffice to say, all-nighters were the high-points of it all. I then spent the remaining of the week in a semi-conscious state, bedridden and tea stricken, only to tie together on the evening of Christmas Eve a playlist that would pitifully sum up my strange feelings for this stranger holiday. Instead, i felt nothing. Well, not exactly nothing-nothing, just neither joy nor sadness, just... longing. If that's what Christmas is all about - wanting something more, something better - i guess i can understand that. I just can't stand all the jingle bells though.

There was a get-together with the extended family (which i was drunkenly prepared for) and then another in another city (which i wish i were drunkenly prepared for...) but all throughout, i barely skimmed the surface, neither here nor there. Anyway.

It's New Year's Eve apparently, and everywhere i read it's not just best-of but best-of-the-decade lists, and i realised, shit, it's been 10 years. Ten years of what exactly, i don't know, but i'm easily impressed by numbered hallmarks like that (and i love lists) so i figured i should make one too. Only it won't be "the best" (because, seriously, what do i know?) more than "my favorites" (because, anyway, i really am that self-indulgent). And what better list to get me excited than one to rock my bum and heart out on this most hyped and hyperbolic of nights?

Here then is my TOP 10 RECORDS FROM THE DECADE. (Please, feel free to rock mock.)

10. Florence+The Machine - Lungs (2009)
Squeezing in at #10 is this fiery faery i wish i'd partied with (or listened to - or was, for that matter) when i was in the old smoke. Instead, she serenaded me with her seductively anthematic voice long after and every morning on my way to uni these past few months. As a (reformed?) commitment-phobic, it always makes me ridiculously uneasy to proclaim my devotion to a love so young - even if it's for something as inconsequential as a record (and though most of my real ones begun quite quickly...) but please, humour me - i just can't discard that Miss Welch, despite critics and Kiss With A Fist (which, in its awful abandon, is actually winsomely adolescent - makes me want to jump on me bed!), has somewhat restored my 17-year-old girly angst, complete with all the wonderfully silly parts minus the ugly ones. For that, i sincerely thank ye.

Favorite track: Dog Days Are Over. Because, even though i'm not religious, i like to pray.

9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show your bones (2006)
Controversial amongst discussions with J (as he kinda hates this one) it is the record that made me fall unconditionally for Karen O. I thought their first album to be too erratic for my (sensible! delicate!) tastes, and the third, though definitely awesome, has not yet had the time to wield lasting lesbianic love over (young!) impressionable me.

Also, for an entire year, Turn Into was an anthem that drummed my feet feverishly stumbling towards London so stick that into your pipe and smoke it*.

8. The National - Boxer (2007)
If i have no shame, this is where it gets embarrassing. (Hello, you-know-who, if you're reading this, you can skip this part...)

Ok?

Ok. Where were we? Right. Oversharing, one note at a time.

For some reason, once i got to London, my mind kinda went blank. They say the fun is in the ride, not the destination, and i guess whoever these patronizing bastards are they were right because when my plane landed i didn't quite know what to do. I stopped seriously listening to music, or be seriously interested in anything, and was mainly concerned a bit too seriously with surviving and remained seriously dimwitted. Which, some might argue, is the best way to fall in a serious relationship. Because i did. But in that confusing, unexpected, insanely banal way i wasn't quite ready for. Then on a day long after i was back home, i put on this record (which i stole from him, of course) and it suddenly, stupidly and easily, all made sense. How this song reminds me of him, without really having to do anything with him, also rekindled my seriously senseless affair with music again.

Now, please carry on while i coil and cringe in a corner.

7a. Dumas - Le cours des jours (2003)
Alright, so i'm sort of cheating. But i certainly never claimed that this was fair or that anyone but me should care, and asking me to choose between this and the other is like asking me to choose between cake and pie, which is to say impossible (why must there be a choice anyway, huh? can there not be enough love for both!?! WHY!?!) Also, when i first drafted down the list i felt as if something was missing as there weren't any French Homies on it, and then i remembered, of course, how could i forget? and proceeded to feel like a heartless harlot.

This Victoriaville native convinced me (in a year where i needed a lot of convincing) that sometimes we don't have to search very far to find perfectly what we didn't know we needed (even though i still ran away by the end of it all...) I want to say Linoléum was my favorite track but to be honest, every time i walked down the street 8 months out of the year i yearn to have J'erre in my ears. However i may be feeling, it always puts a smile on my face.

(That i wouldn't mind taking my pants off for him does as well.) (Um.)

7b. Feist - Let It Die (2004)
Another fellow Canadian but so much more to me. If i could be a rock star, or rather 'a musician', or sing, or play an instrument, or have any talent really, i think i'd like to be her. That crack in her voice, that little jiggy shimmy, that way she rocks an electric guitar, that simple yet über coolness she swaggers with, i want it all. One evening, i swear, is how long it takes to fall head over heels, and a decade (if ever) to get over.

6. Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)
So good. No bullshit, no distinct memories (except maybe one i dream of making - to see them, one day, in concert) - just so, sooo good, plain and simple.

Favorite track: how do you freakin' decide your favorite Radiohead track anyway? And i'm not even the biggest Radiohead lover either. From 15 Steps to Reckoner, it's hard enough to pick my top 10 (or 11, whatever) albums here, i don't think my indecisiveness can take it any more so just go and listen to the entire thing if you haven't already (it's free! (sort of)). If not, just especially this one:

Because i am a big emo.

5. The Strokes - Is This It (2001)
So if no one cared to figure it out by now, i'm an indie kid. I'd barf at my own hispterdom but at this age, it's more embarrassing to deny it, really. Even more silly would be to deny that this album, after serious debating against the sophomore, never fails to pin me back, without fail, exactly to where i was, what i was doing, how i felt in that awkward beginnings of my twenties. I had only listened to this years after it came out (after Room on Fire actually) on the second semester of my first year at university. I had just quit one (of would-be-three) major, was undecided and confused, sublimely angstsy yet sedately aware of the uselessness of it all, and i can't think of an album that so concisely convey that cringingly tragic stage (i may or may not be still in). I enjoy love/hate/embarrassing relationships like that.

Also, the only reason it beat out all the above is mainly due to this track who's seen me in spasmodic positions and contortions strangers should never see me in (on the dance floor!! on the dance floor!!! tsss.)

4. Interpol - Antics (2004)
There's a reason why most albums here fall between '03 and '04. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, if there was any time to use that quote it was for that time. This Interpol album is the only one i love that i can still listen to without too much worry. And i can dance to it too, so score!

Favorite track: Evil, easily, even though C'mere, followed as strategically as a bad pickup-line by Length of Love, always makes my heart, and knees, melt respectively in that order. (*whispers* Because i am easy *whispers*)

3. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand (2004)
In a time dispersed with 'torrid' affairs - real and, um, fictive - this record was exactly what i needed. Fun, flirty and a little flagitious, it made me break up with The Strokes, forget about Coldplay (yeah, that's right, wha'ovitt?) and dance in the most daftly deviant way without a bloody care.

Every track is golden, and though Michael made me gyrate in the most inappropriate way, Come On Home felt, even five years later, very me. Tangible proof that i'll never grow up, huzzah!

2. Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)
Oh dear. How can i make this one sound less soppy?

Thing is, there isn't really anything funny about this record. I remember the first listen was quite hard for me, not because of what it said but because there was a bit too much clamor for my taste. But i was surprisingly more patient then, somehow, and kept on listening. Like a fungus, it grew on me. And with every raucous repeat, every blundering bang of cymbal, every dweeby wail, it spread like a burning rash until it inflamed and engulfed me completely in this transcendental bright magical light. A true 80's romcom caterpillar-butterfly story that would please any nerdy adolescent raging with hormones (which, of course, i was am).

It is also perfect in that every song tied into one another until it culminated right back at my beginning, where, in the back seat of our old white Pontiac, as a kid, i used to stare into the starry night, wondering about the things universally big and small that every kid innocently wonders about like they're touching the moon for the first time. And it made me think about my parents, and childhood, and mortality, right at the moment where it mattered most and i thought, fuck, how did they know?** but i have a lump in my chest now so will you excuse me for a moment pleasethankyou....









Ok. Let's carry on.

1. Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights (2002)

...

(What is this? A masochistic purging? What the heck is wrong with me to think this'll be a good idea to write on the eve of a new year, where only disappointment and disaster - especially when having to spend it with The Other Family later on (uh-huh!) - can be expected?!? Honestly. AND WHY DON'T I HAVE A BOTTLE OF GIN NEXT TO ME RIGHT NOW!?!)

*sigh*

So yeah. Turn On The Bright Lights. Or 'totbihl', if you will. I 'discovered' them, funnily enough, while reading a magazine interview with Brad Pitt. (See? they're not all trash and tabloids!) They've asked him what he'd been listening to, and as i was still easily wooed by hot-bod actors with architectural sensibilities and underrated comedic chops, i searched it up. Little that i knew, it unravelled me.

I don't listen to it much anymore, not in its entirety at least. There are some heartbreaking pearls: Hands Away made me cry for the first time in public (with people! around!) and The New sang with drunken clarity what i thought silently, while, Leif, well, the first, the last, always left me numb with life. But to put it on, from beginning to end... it wraps me up in its shrouded veil and turns me inside out again, softly breaking me to crystallised pieces. That it can still make me so fragile is why i handle it with kids gloves but it is also why i cherish it most - it reminds me how easily and utterly i have come undone, and how i've managed to pull it back together, somehow, however clumsy it may be. It's like a scar i wear with unknown pride.


So yes. I guess i am purging.

If not only to make room for all the delicious food (and wine! and the bubbly!) that i shall stuff my face silly with later, hopefully for a lot more surprises - good and bad. I'll take it all for the next ten***.

Here's to all a wondrous new year.





________________________
* I don't know what that means either.
** Because it's all about me, obviously.
*** Words, i swear, i never thought i'd say with such honest febrility. Hurrah indeed.