Spotify
Previously:
100-91,
90-81,
80-71,
70-61,
60-51
50. Eternal Summers - Play Dead
Powered by a strong bass presence, "Play Dead" would probably qualify as the song that "churns" the most on
Gold and Stone. It charges forward from the get-go after two tom smacks and chord strums, all the while leading up to a solo that just kind of briefly
rips out of nowhere. It's the closest thing to beach rock on the album, a song that feels befitting of the band's name.
49. Waxahatchee - Air
My favorite song on 2013's
Cerulean Salt was "Lips and Limbs," a calm, woozy song about a couple in quiet distress. "Air" is the polar opposite, a direct and incisive track with a soaring chorus that packs all of the emotion people have come to expect from Katie Crutchfield. There's very little outside the chorus that someone could call "pretty" and get away with it; really, it's probably not meant to be pretty. It feels angry but contained, sad but proud. You might have gotten to me this once, it says, but that's not gonna happen again.
48. Young Galaxy - Must Be Love
If there's a thread that binds a lot of Young Galaxy songs together, it's probably that they can feel intergalactic, like something produced from an alien-but-not-far-distant world. There's a separation between that idea and, say, Animal Collective, and really this track conjures more images of some moon disco than slimy ET life. It's cool (yes, saying that in the a breath near the one that spoke "disco") and confident, a track that'll force your toe tap up into your shoulders.
47. Foals - What Went Down
My girlfriend calls this her "invincibility song," one that fills her with the feeling of power that she can do anything, get anything done, and (surprise) I think that's just right. Their last album,
Holy Fire, was at its best when the band were just straight-up rocking ("Providence"), or coming close to it ("Bad Habit," "Milk & Black Spiders"), and the dial is twisted forward an extra notch here. The explosions in the choruses feel cathartic, invigorating, making you feel as if there's a bit of Woman or Man of Steel in you, too.
46. The National - Sunshine On My Back
In reality, I'd hoped that a National collaboration with Sharon Van Etten's presence more pronounced would have resulted in a top 10 song. It's not insulting to put it in the top 50 - that's more a reflection of how hard I lean on both of those acts individually - and in fact the potential chemistry shown here is still as enticing as I'd imagined it would be. It's a National track that's well-served being a one-off, detached from any specific album but certainly feeling like a B-side from somewhere between
High Violet and
Trouble Will Find Me. Maybe it's more of a compliment to speak of it this way, after all; a one-off single released for no particular reason is still good enough to land among more concerted efforts from throughout the year.
45. Coeur de Pirate - Oublie-moi (Carry On)
Not really expecting a more assertive take on pop from Beatrice Martin was my first mistake. I'd settled into the notion that Martin used her lighter-than-air voice exclusively for piano ballads tinted with sadness, not this triumphant break-up song (I assume purely from the title and loose association to the English version, which leads off
Roses, not from understanding ten words of French) wherein her spirit will not be extinguished. There's still some feeling of that frailty that's just inherent in the tone of her voice, but it's overshadowed by things far stronger than that here.
44. Kurt Vile - Wild Imagination
Sometimes, you know a song is going to end up among your favorites after just a few seconds. The
b'lieve i'm goin down... closer has a terrific chord progression, a sweetly wistful sequence of sound that offsets Vile's creaked lyrics about fantasy and nostalgia. There's abundant charm here for different reasons: the guitar is sugared and sounds lovely, and even as Vile's less-than-perfect singing dances atop it, you can't help but feel connected to the man through his words and authentic vibe. There's production value here, to be sure, but Vile's singing still manages to give off a lo-fi oeuvre and the sense that this is a song that could've been conceived as bedroom rock. Maybe, at its core, it still is.
43. Wolf Alice - Your Loves Whore
Fans of the MVP Baseball series from long ago may remember a band called Revis, whose song "Caught In the Rain" etched itself in stone among other MVP soundtrack members when it appeared on the 2003 edition of the game. That song might've been an influence for Wolf Alice, who capture the same vibe from that song in an updated format here. That's not to say it's a cover or lifting or anything like that - of course not - because, if anything, it's nice to be reminded of something I think of fondly. Also, Ellie Rowsell is a better vocalist. Guitars swoop around each other is hazes of distortion and vocals echo back on themselves three times, echoing throughout the halls that early 2000s rock built so sturdily for them.
42. Funeral Advantage - Gardensong
If ever there was a genre meant to be more about how a song makes you feel than what it could ever be about lyrically, it would probably be "dreampop." Everything is hazy, nothing is clear or focused, and the general feeling a given song provides is probably one that involves some use of the word "float." Tyler Kershaw's got that feeling in spades here. A bunch of songs with such similar vibes can sometimes be fatiguing, but as a standalone single, all risk of that is removed for "Gardensong." So what if you can only really understand maybe 10 words of the lyrics? Float on.
41. Hot Chip - Huarache Lights
I guess it's not really the norm to think about machines taking over human jobs (and whatever else) as a plot for lyrics to a dance track, but here we are. If anyone were to do that, though, Hot Chip would likely be the name at the tip of most people's tongues. Its overarching notion that there's something metal and industrial about the very music itself keep everything thematic (vocoder filters help too, sure, even if they're a little less subtle). The breakdown starting at 3:45 certainly feels space age-y, and hell, if we're gonna go down at the "hands" of machines, might as well get a little happy about it, yeah?
