I bought two albums by The New Pornographers on the back of ‘Letter From An Occupant’, the albums were a trifle disappointing (although ‘Bleeding Hearts Show’ narrowly missed my top ten), yet this song seems to get better with each listen. Okay, so the video looks like it was done by an A-Level Media Studies student, with a budget to match, but close your eyes and concentrate on the song. It’s all in the muscular riffs, the driving, uplifting tempo and above all Neko Case’s fantastic voice. I usually can’t stand anything with the whiff of a Britpop influence but I love this song. I also find it rather amusing that a bunch of Canadians wrote the best Britpop song of all time.

This song is, perhaps, a little lucky to grab the #9 spot in my rundown. It makes it into this prestigious list by the virtue of the fact that it’s near the top of my current playlists but it is still at the point where it sounds fresh and raw. Whether I will still be listening to it next year is difficult to know. It is, however, an unquestionably great song; raw and indignant, propulsive and emotional, it is, to coin a phrase, an alt-anthem. Maybe StWC will make it their anthem; then again subtlety has never been their thing.