'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

Saw The Hold Steady on Tuesday. The last big, current band I wanted to see and hadn't. And they did not disappoint me. OK, so they didn't play 'Soft In The Center', or 'Your Little Hoodrat Friend', or even 'Killer Parties' (which I was sure would be the encore), but then it's not like they played a short set, or any duds - they just have too many brilliant songs to fit them all in. On stage, they're an object lesson in how things which shouldn't work, sometimes do. Craig Finn holds all the attention, and Craig Finn is without doubt the least cool man I have ever seen fronting a band. Hell, even just in an indie *audience*, he would be noticeably one of the less cool ones. And he flaps his arms about and overacts double-takes during the bits where he's not singing and does spiels about how great it is to see "real people in a real room having a beer, not on Myspace or the messageboards" which from anyone else would have me cringing. And yet, it works. You know when parents tell kids that all you really need to do to be accepted is believe in yourself? And every kid who isn't incredibly stupid wonders how the parents have forgotten so much about the world as to think that, because while belief matters, belief won't cover everything? Well, turns out that if you believe as hard as Craig Finn, it is enough. Literally, magical.
(Speaking of magic - Alan Moore fans may be aware that he worships the serpent god Glycon, in large part because Glycon was comprehensively discredited centuries ago. I didn't know much more than that, here's an essay Moore wrote about Glycon a few years ago, and it turns out that Glycon was conceived by the False Prophet Alexander, "a plausible and gifted but amoral fraud". My new second favourite classical namesake)

Wristcutters - A Love Story is almost a parody of US indie cinema. Shannyn Sossamon, Tom Waits and a bunch of HBO and Arrested Development alumni are suicides trapped in an afterlife which is the same as life, except slightly worse - dead end jobs, broken-down cars, and an inability to smile (though wry half-smiles seem to be fine). And yet it's actually rather lovely - both smart and sweet, in the way that so many of those films try so very hard to be and don't manage.

David Devant have new material! And Brontosaurus Chorus do too, but that doesn't come as quite such a surprise, them not having been however many years now without any. Still, let joy be unconfined! Anyway, it's that time of year, isn't it? The NME have printed their predictably predictable list, so I might as well tell you what were really the ( Albums of the Year, 2008 )

As for singles - or I suppose we should just say 'tracks' nowadays...it wasn't a bad year, but there was no Song Of The Year, was there? By which I mean something both brilliant and ubiquitous, an 'Umbrella' or 'Get Ur Freak On' or 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head'. 'Wearing My Rolex' felt like it could be that song, but it was too early and didn't hang around like it ought to have done, ditto 'Ready For The Floor' (in spite of that brilliant proto-Dark Knight video) and Hercules & Love Affair's 'Blind'. MGMT's 'Time To Pretend' and Black Kids' 'I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You'...too hipster to win over the world, perhaps? Both wonderful, though. I think the song which'll probably take me right back to 2008 in years to come is 'I.W.I.S.H.I.W.A.S.Gay'; alas, if it does conquer the rest of the world, it's not going to be 'til next year now.

Best book title I've seen recently: Building Confidence - For Dummies.