ALBUMS
1. Rasputina - Oh Perilous World - 15
2. Poetry Scores - Go South for Animal Index - 14
3. Pharaoh's Daughter - Haran - 13
4. Richard Thompson - Sweet Warrior - 12
5. Angelique Kidjo - Djin Djin - 11

TRACKS
1. Feist - "1234"
2. Devo - "Work It"
3. Horsebox - "Stupid Parts of Town"
4. Morphine Berry - "Ghost in the Mirror"
5. Adub n Lil Chase - "Johnny Get Your Gun"

ARTISTS
1. Feist
2. Britney Spears
3. Gogol Bordello
4. Meshell Ndegeocello
5. Marcel Khalife

COMMENTS
The news of course is not that radio's dead but that it's not missed — most of my listening was done in supermarkets, during commercials, before movies, in online videos, and even a few CDs. Not a bad way for sound to permeate life and cream to rise to the top, like those cultures who have no word for "art" because it's already what's painted on your tent and carved on your dinner-bowl and tattooed on ya face.

Following the mad-hermit-in-the-woods model of remote celebrity, the Poetry Scores collective got my attention with a booklet-and-enclosed-CD called Go South for Animal Index, based on journalist Stefene Russell's oracular poem about Native American deities and several generations of industrial and military murder by radiation. On the music portion, the poem is extruded and permuted like scientific samples or the chant of a post-apocalyptic cult. Shortwave drones serve as a robot chorus, like obsolete instruments playing themselves or strummed by the fading whirlwind of nuclear tests. In between, organic song structures somehow push up through the wasteland. These guys have no website or store, but can be emailed at poetryscores@yahoo.com — try it; pony-express is the new wi-fi.

Morphine Berry's "Ghost in the Mirror" video had the arch-rustic tangled roots they keep telling us to expect from Dylan; haunted hobo pastiche from a studio hovel in Hoboken, NJ, gives global-war death
its due and chases some spectres away. [http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=19754932]

Bringing awkward back was Horsebox's "Stupid Parts of Town" video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6t-IFl8PSw] — classic gimmickry with animated gig handbills singing at you from every London streetcorner, and the most viral tune yet from my favorite heirs to Brit-jingle.

Surely the greatest work of performance art this century so far was Britney's somnambulant VMA act, seen by most as a reproduction (in endless not-so-instant replay) and short-circuiting the celebrity machinery in the only way left, which is to truly not care about it. For this staggering amount of money and staging to be expended while the only person it's all for sleepwalks through it like any of the rest of us shambling from cubicle to coffee-machine was the kind of thing to make even Warhol sorry he's dead. One point Kathy Griffin and Dr. Phil could agree on was perplexity at how Britney could forget her softwear yet again on the ride out, though of course, this is her new encore — it got her so much attention the first time that she left it in the show. And for this generation the show, unlike the underpants, must stay on.

Some artists, of course, have real problems, and even more cause to think twice about thanking God at awards shows — like Marcel Khalife, who kept reminding the West of the majesty of Arab culture while trying to remind theocratic censors in the Middle East of artists' inalienable rights to free expression. Some people just can't win. But some ideas eventually will.

If programmed playlists insist on making me a captive audience, I might as well be an audience someplace I chose to be — like at the movies, where old wine went down well from new bottles, including Sabbath's original "Iron Man" on the trailer for the comic-book flick of same name (a perfect storm of pop free-association), while groovin' to the credible robo-funk of the new Devo song on the Dell ad before
"Talk to Me" came on made me feel, okay, 42 again. But still.

"The world is blowing up and all you people really wanna do is sing old commercial songs," exclaimed Uncle Floyd, the no-budget public-access pioneer, at a surreal nostalgia gig in a rotting New Jersey ballroom (with potato chips). Right you are, Unc, and 20 years from now all we'll wanna sing is Feist's iPod-ad song. Surrendering now saves a lot of time.

In a decade where it takes The Wall Street Journal to spill the beans about the Bush and bin Laden families' business ties and congressional Democrats to authorize an imperial war, it makes sense that the Bowie-curated High Line Festival would be an underwhelming run-through of the official fringe (Arcade Fire! Polyphonic Spree!) while the mad genius of Bowie's fellow New Yorkers Gogol Bordello would be showcased to six billion people by bleedin' Madonna. But I'd like my smug certainties back, thanks.

Pharaoh's Daughter's album-launch gig was a fitting communion with my tribal Jewish traces, a musical devotion in a concrete-club cave. The album, included as a souvenir with the ticket price since the
post-copy-protection revolution will be performed, not broadcast or recorded, makes a relic to cherish.

Speaking of formats and traditions flung up in the air, always count on Rasputina's Melora Creager to intercept whatever soundwaves are bouncing back to us from Alpha Centauri in a given year to sift like
scattered tiles and tell the world's fortune — in this case, inexplicably-impassioned Laura Nyro-style showstoppers and a strange obsession with the Mutiny on the Bounty story that seems determined to
kill whatever was left of nautical-adventure fandom after Pirates 3. Of course the retro fervor and warrior-chic are exhumed advisedly. Rasputina run through the usual, inexhaustible catalogue of
how-far-we-haven't-come, with odes on 19th century climate change, child armies medieval and modern, and other ills delivered in a seance's-worth of dialects and personae for an unhinged outsider
art-rock opera of dead-end times. Designed to stay in style, alas.

We're writers, so why pretend that some of the year's best rock and hip-hop wasn't in print? Image Comics' Phonogram (about a sound-based sorcerer struggling to stop the zombie rebirth of Britpop and clear the way for someone else's youth), by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, and Chris King's pre-published prose novel The Cricket That Didn't Sing (about a cottage reality-TV empire based on
exploiting/extolling obese rappers and counterculture transsexuals) blasted the filmscores of my dreams.

With two whole weeks to go until Project Runway came back, The Salt-N-Pepa Show rode in to give my life meaning. I won't tell the Writers' Guild, but to call this show unscripted is an insult to the spices' always-on-stage poise and button-pushing. Especially since what they've really done is killed the reality show and brought back the variety show, with an improbable sit-skit each week (S tries to
matchmake for P; P has to move in with S as odd-couple hell on earth ensues; etc.) followed by a thematic excuse to perform an old hit — "Express Yourself" after a tense pastoral encounter-group session,
"Let's Talk About AIDS" for a Lifebeat benefit, "Push It" for a Jena 6 protest trip (the parents requested it, okay?!). Ten years ago they left us wanting more, and homies, this is it.

Period bard Richard Thompson soldiered on preserving the lost culture of a bygone world — not the Middle Ages, I mean, but about 1971, in the days before folk-rock, glam and metal completely parted company. Some people paint the same landscape over and over (lookin' at you, Jagger), while some find their way back to the actual fields and bring in a timeless harvest (Mr. Thompson, take as long as you like).

Blessed are the cult stars, for their altars will never be so tall as to be toppled — reaping 15 years of glory by resisting 15 minutes of fame, Meshell Ndegeocello seems to be enjoying imagination eternal, and it's a divine inspiration to those who've kept the faith. Her newest album issued more sonic sacraments from the shaman of soul. Shawoman? Anyway.

"Johnny Get Your Gun" [http://www.universalartists.net/category.jhtm?cid=3] served as a good news source while John Stewart's on hiatus — a white rap, but what better medium to convey that colonization leads to misery? In this case, an eloquently unspeakable oral history of working-class kids consumed in Iraq. And yes, a cousin of mine wrote it, but what should that matter if we're all Friends?

Paul McCartney tried to counteract the caffeine in many a Starbucks customer's purchase, but that wasn't me; I went for the somewhat stronger culture clash in Angelique Kidjo's Djin Djin, letting it be coffeehouse music since there's now about three Starbuckses between me and any of the nearest remaining record stores. Following her reliable recipe of simply acting like you've already won, Kidjo held forth at everyone's mall and Main Street with one of her most hardcore roots albums yet, including nary an English word and some daring rural textures and ritual cadences amidst the trademark pop-funk and duets with Western-pop "guests," most of whom she wipes up the floor with. The struggle is over, but continues to spectacular effect anyway, god bless her...

Those of us who would record the true heartbeat of music have a lot more lifting to do with the loss of critic and culture-sage Tom Terrell to cancer on November 29, 2007. A master word-improviser and a perfect-pitched soul. He'll never feel gone.