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100-91,
90-81
80. Reigning Sound - My My
Growing and adapting to the times doesn't have to be mandatory. What was cool once will be cool again, and even if it doesn't appeal to the masses, there will always be a corner of the bar where it's welcomed. So it goes with the '70s rock style of Reigning Sound, flecked with a slight bit of country twang: it's pretty pure throwback material, sounding more like it's a 1973 remaster than a new 2014 release. Sometimes, tracks like this can make you wonder what bands like BTO or Three Dog Night would sound like to today's audiences. If it's got this kind of vibe, they'd probably have a corner of that bar for their own, too.
79. Jaws - Be Slowly
If there's one pattern you can probably pick out from these track blurbs in the past couple years, it's probably that I enjoy talking about songs as feelings or images. What does a certain song make you see? It's like imitation synesthesia, where the images aren't concrete, but the ideas feel real enough. This track feels like a surfer's staple, a hazy summer jingle with enough fuzz to feel blissed out, but enough tempo to avoid putting you to sleep. In cold weather, the mood of the song feels a little bleaker, even given its mostly upbeat lyrics, which just further enforces the power of context. Cure comparisons via the guitar also apt.
78. Stars - No One is Lost
I have to imagine trying to wrap up dance-pop albums is always a tough task. You want to go out on a high note, but at the same time, the track has to feel like a closer. You can't put the most energy and electricity in a closer; sure, a finale can
feel like the biggest track on an album, but there has to be a finality you can hear in the notes, a sensation that leaves you satisfied with that being the end. There might not be a more subjective criterion established anywhere on this list, but for the purposes of my own listening habits and rankings, that's how I approach this sort of thing. And so, here we are with Stars, a bad who've released a fun dance-pop album that houses this title track and has deemed it its closer. It has a French spoken-word intro, a build-up, a grand-sounding synth chorus, a double back to a guitar solo bridge, the works. It's dance-y, but you probably won't feel like grooving to it too much. It's got a slight bit of grit to it, plus that intangible feeling of closure, giving it the finality of a closing time track more than a mid-celebration beat bumper.
77. Elizabeth & the Catapult - Shoelaces
Driven by a strong bass line and intriguing vocal hook, "Shoelaces" is the standout track from 2014's
Like It Never Happened, a song that tiptoes on the alt-country line. It's well-constructed, with little bits flying in and altering the verses as the song goes, keeping the whole thing feeling fresh even as it really doesn't change very much throughout. The success of this song in your own ears depends on how much you buy into the vocals. I'd buy them for a few dollars, and so here we are.
76. Spoon - New York Kiss
Sometimes, when a band has a discography bigger than three albums and has established a certain sound, latter day releases can be described simply as "yeah, that's a Band X album." I'm still not sure if most people mean it as a pejorative; personally, I see nothing wrong with staying in a pre-blazed trail as long as the music stays enjoyable.
They Want My Soul caught lots of "it sure is a Spoon album" quips, and for good reason: these tracks probably could've been released on
Gimme Fiction or
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga or
Transference, but they weren't, and they're independently enjoyable. That's a lot of prefacing to say that "New York Kiss" is, indeed, "a Spoon song." If you've listened to Spoon, you've heard something like this before. But that's just the thing: what Spoon do is good, and "New York Kiss" is just another successful notch in that belt. That's not to sell it as underwhelming, because the comfort in familiarity can sometimes be underrated.
75. Kishi Bashi - Carry On Phenomenon
Kaoru Ishibashi is a guy with ideas. His music is progressive and, at times, challenging. He lingers more on the accessible side of "progressive" than, say, Darkside, but his tracks often showcase bits of experimentation in melody and structure that often impress. What often helps is a strong voice, even though his vocal range isn't exactly shown off (comparatively) within this track. His violin playing is this track's greatest strength, laying a slightly somber melodic bed behind the verses and powering an instrumental bridge later on. A lot of Kishi Bashi's tracks involve looping, which doesn't often translate easily to live performance, but with careful composition and construction in a studio, it can often produce neat curiosities like this track.
74. Owen Pallett - On a Path
Speaking of violins, this multi-instrumentalist known for his work both solo and with acts like Arcade Fire and The Mountain Goats flexes his stringed muscle here, a choice track from the very strong opening act to this year's
In Conflict. Pallett's voice is often soft and smooth at the edges here, especially as he goes falsetto for part of the song's chorus, gaining power as it's looped on top of itself during the bridge as as his violins continue to swirl. To characterize the whole song as "soft" because of Pallett's agreeable voice would be a misstatement; it's pretty, but assertive, and a promising glimpse into his future as a solo act.
73. Frankie Cosmos - Buses Splash With Rain
Much like Radiator Hospital earlier in this list, Frankie Cosmos operates in fun size chunks. She's got ideas, she turns them into bursts of song, and that's that. Sometimes, the story of the lyrics is more important than the way a track sounds - sometimes the message simply takes priority - but here, both sound and substance combine to form a highlight track from this collection of sample-size tunes. At a robust 2:10 - the second-longest track of the album - "Buses Splash With Rain" feels like one of the most fully-formed tracks on
Zentropy. It's a relatable sad-teen song - "I'm the kind of girl / Buses splash with rain?" We've all felt like we've been there, sister - disguised by cheery, arpeggiated guitar and uptempo hi-hats on the drums during the "chorus" and second verse. It's a little self-contradictory, a little confused...but who among us wasn't when we were 19-20?
72. Broods - Bridges
This was the way Broods, a brother/sister duo from New Zealand, burst on the scene in early 2014: an out-of-nowhere lead single that sounded confident and fully-formed, anchored by a soaring chorus that just begged to be turned up. Leaving things behind, burying the hatchet, moving on, all different names for the same thing, a thing we all have to learn to handle and accomplish during our lives. This isn't to say we'll ever be any good at doing that, but such is the inevitability of human relationships. They are all dissolved in the end, and the forfeiture of regret is as important a thing to closure as anything else.
71. How to Dress Well - What You Wanted
Tom Krell's electro R&B stylings feel at once very heartfelt and postmodern, yet classical. It's got all the soul of present-day R&B infused with music more mechanical than I'm used to hearing behind such vocals. It strikes me as an innovative approach to emotional conveyance, like Autre Ne Veut with the intensity dialed down a notch or two. Krell's vocals are well-suited to R&B, and the somber electropop stylings he's chosen for this track act as a perfect complement. A solid addition to any slow jam playlist.
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