I played this song in the presence of company once. Not on purpose, of course, but more because I needed to hear this particular song at that particular time, as some form of emotional prescriptive. My friend both figured out “Lullabye For Christie” and missed the point entirely at the same time: “What the hell are we listening to, Wesley? It’s like a fuckin’ funeral dirge.” Maybe it’s the violin.

Whatever You Love, You Are is arguably the Dirty Three’s finest moment. Horse Stories is probably more beloved, and definitely the raw quality of the Dirty Three’s earlier albums is noticably absent here. But the Australian trio are at their creative peak on this 2000 record, every song precious and integral to the whole. Whatever You Love, You Are is the Dirty Three’s most vivid portrait; while Horse Stories sounded vaguely nostalgic and Ocean Songs carried the weight of a thousand severe depressions, Whatever You Love sounds like a love letter to the wonders of the night.

By the time She Has No Strings Apollo came around in 2003, people started to wonder if the Three had anything else up their sleeves; finally the melancholy material and the violin-guitar-drums arrangements were wearing thin. “I Offered It Up To The Stars And The Night Sky” still seemed to offer something new, with its opening of scattered violin overdubs. Even the more traditional tracks like “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night” radiated with emotion. And then there’s “Lullabye For Christie,” still one of my all-time favourites after all these years. It’s such a simple song, but nevertheless a powerfully uplifting one. It is possibly the closest thing to true beauty I have in my collection.

This is the last song I’ll be posting this year as part of the regular rotation. I’ll be spending all of December reviewing the albums I bought in 2004, the good and the bad. Luckily for you, I managed to find at least one good song to post off every album, so even if some of the albums were mostly stinkers, you still win in the end. The year-in-review MP3s will stay up two weeks longer in usual, meaning they won’t start to disappear until the new year. That’s also when angels twenty will return to the regular rotation.

The New York Observer takes a peek inside Pitchfork and how it’s become such a trendsetter. The article points to the Arcade Fire as an example of Pitchfork’s ability to launch unknown bands into the stratosphere. Broken Social Scene, another Canadian darling, was one of the first bands to benefit from the Pitchfork effect; Paper Bag Records even saw fit to put an excerpt from Pitchfork’s review on the album’s slipcover packaging. Of course, with Broken Social Scene out of the limelight for the moment, it’s easy to forget that its members are always out and about; Stars and Metric happen to be the two active satellites of the Broken Social Scene empire at the moment, but another album is apparently in the works.

It almost doesn’t matter, though, because I find it highly unlikely that the band-cum-collective will ever be able to put to record anything as gripping as “Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old Girl.” Probably the track that introduced most people to Broken Social Scene, it’s also the band’s best song—and that says a lot, sitting beside tracks like “Cause = Time” and “Almost Crimes.” But “Anthems” is a world unto itself, and even with the benefit of two years distance there’s still nothing you can really compare the song to. Emily Haines’ vocal performance is stunning, adding a delicate touch to the fragile beauty of the song. The layers of effects over her voice slowly disappear over the course of the song, until finally it’s practically stripped bare, leaving only a vulnerable little girl.

The world “Anthems” paints feels like one permanently painted in shades of sepia, a teenager’s restless memories conjured out of a rustic dustbowl. It’s a song that seems to ache with longing, especially as the final verse kicks in with the almost rhythmic repetition of “park that car / drop that phone / sleep on the floor / dream about me.” And it’s probably a song you’ll wish you could hear again for the first time.

We’ll Have A Time was the last album Dear Nora would record as a full band; after its release, singer Katy Davidson moved to San Francisco, leaving the rest of the band in Portland. Both The New Year and Mountain Rock were essentially solo outings for Davidson, as Dreaming Out Loud was. And just as Dreaming Out Loud served as a folkish counterpoint to You Make Me Smile, Dear Nora’s later releases would see Davidson return to simple, spare bedroom folk. There seems to be more to the stylistic shift than simple logistics; left to her own devices, Davidson seems to prefer a more introspective approach and doesn’t seem too interested in striking up a full band again.

So Dear Nora’s charm is no longer the unrestrained twee-pop energy of a college-age band, but the quieter pleasures of songs like “A Polar Bear.” You can still hear the 60s influences, but whereas earlier material seemed more inspired than directly influenced by the girl-group sound, Dear Nora’s later output is more overtly nostalgic in sound.