Destroyer - "State of the Union". In Destroyer's song, it's raining. He asks: "What did you learn?" And answers: "Girls are great / grated on my plate / and boys are best / served / with a stake through the chest." It doesn't sound like he had a very good year, no, and like I said it's raining. On New Year's Eve it should snow. If anything, it should snow. Or the sky should be clear as a lens, and dark as a friend holding her hand over your eyes. And when the champagne pops, the thing to remember is that this is not your year's punctuation - the period at the end of 2007, your momentum's full stop. Instead it's the sound of something being dislodged, of spirits finding an opening, of the doors of your life coming unstuck. The sound of a dam bursting.

Patrick Wolf - "The Magic Position". The best so far of the things I missed, and a song I hope you're able to take with you into two oh oh eight. What matters: the joyfulness of the over-and-over, the splendour of the start-and-restart. It's a song of relentless repetition - in handclap and major scales and ever-thumping drums and the sky-seizing yip of fiddle. But as Patrick Wolf shouts: "HEY!" Because somersaulting into a new morning, a new month, a new year, dancing even the same steps to the same songs, there's newness waiting; there's happiness; there may even be bliss. Sooner or later you're going to dance on over onto the right person's toes, or into the right person's arms, or just in a circle of friends so dear that the sparks in their eyes are all the light you need; and you'll not be searching for lighthouses any more: you'll have found the shore.

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Abby writes, no, sings?, beautifully about Okkervil River's "Unless It's Kicks".

Eric Marathonpacks talks about favourite albums of the year, but the thing that glints & gleams is the way his words on Spoon & LCD Soundsystem become a canvas for his heart's particular beat. I remember the day after everything went down, I somehow made the connection in my mind with the song, and although I knew it would be too painful to listen to, I couldn’t get it out of my head with a crowbar if I tried. I know everyone in the world has been through the exact same situation, maybe more than once, but this was the first for me, and man was it fucking awful. Art didn't redeem the hardships of 2007: but it was there with him, yes, as he pushed on through them.

[photo is of Sebastian Errazuriz's "The Tree", in Chile.]