2016: The Songs (50-41)

Spotify

Previously: 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51

50. Yeasayer - I Am Chemistry

There's something strange about nearly every Yeasayer song, something that sounds just off enough for it to avoid resembling anything generic, but never repulsive and always more of a curiosity than anything else. You could pick a couple of those things from within this track, from the slightly seasick guitars in the intro to Chris Keating's supervillain-in-his-signature-armchair delivery or the children's choir singing about oleander, you're really never left short of things to leave you wondering if you heard that song right the first time. It's something endearingly consistent about Yeasayer throughout their whole catalog, and the lead single from this year's Amen & Goodbye fits snugly in that armchair shaped like an upturned hand that your weird aunt Dominique has in her living room for some reason.

49. Pinegrove - New Friends

Pinegrove's Cardinal starts with a song called "Old Friends" (#67) and ends here, with "New Friends." There's a journey the album takes you on to get from A to B and here, at the end of that trip, we have a declaration, a statement of intent that past fuckups are what they are and the future should be experienced with as much of that baggage cleared as is possible. Sometimes, relationships and friendships decay. It just happens. And Evan Stephens Hall owns it - "I resolve to make new friends / I liked my old ones, but I fucked up so I'll start again" - and punctuates himself with a simple question: "What's the worst that can happen?" Sometimes, you just have to find out for yourself.

48. case/lang/veirs - Best Kept Secret

A sweeping bit of Americana led by Laura Veirs's honey-sweet vocals and an overwhelming sense of adoration and appreciation for someone who exudes goodness. Maybe there just aren't enough people like that in all our lives, but the characterization of this guitar-teaching, emotionally available wonderperson as a hidden gem or diamond in the rough means he or she is something of a rarity. That much of the subtext here is a shame, but that's about it; the rest of the track is unadulterated feel-good grandeur in the towering strings and orchestration above high-note bass rhythm and brightly twangy guitar.

47. Okkervil River - Call Yourself Renee

From one set of strings to another, this next song slows things down considerably, taking its time to unfold layers of violins and cello as a piano falls like a gentle snow. It isn't until the song is nearly two minutes old that Will Sheff decides to start telling his tale of a South Dakotan and a missing man, weaving it into thoughts of reincarnation and universal purpose. "I'm not scared to die, as long as I know that the universe has something really to do with me," Sheff breathes out after rapid-firing words across his verses, a tired coda to this metaphorical fable that carries an incredible amount of beauty across its seven-minute runtime.

46. FM-84 - Everything

Songs that embody feelings - whether one alone or a swatchbook of all the shades you can imagine - without uttering a single word are nothing short of wonderfully impressive things. This intro track to FM-84's chillwave/retro/synthpop album is exactly that: An instrumental track that hits all the right notes of nostalgia, love and urgency, letting all of those things mix together and crash over you like a wave on the surf at sunset, bubbled, frothy and roaring.






45. Maggie Rogers - Dog Years

You might know Maggie Rogers as the young women who bowled Pharrell Williams over during his guest appearance at her NYU music class. That song, "Alaska," was a bouncy bit of...post-folk?...that caught Pharrell's ear and provided Rogers with lots of praise. "Alaska" was later released as a proper single ahead of some sort of future release. And it's a fine track. Her follow-up single, "Dog Years," is the real star of the Maggie Rogers show so far. It's got more of a mainstream sound than "Alaska," but is filled with this youthful feeling of hope that the former never really puts out there. "Dog Years" is a toe-tapper with a full-throated chorus whose final line - "We will be alright!" - lands like a rallying cry for your heart. You feel it, and you believe her.


44. Tegan and Sara - U-Turn

Straight-up, in-your-face, no-apologies pop with an edge that manages to play off both Sara Bareilles and St. Lucia in the same breath. The Quin sisters' full-hearted foray into modern pop music after years in folk/singer-songwriter land could have gone any number of ways; with 2013's Heartthrob, they had a smooth transition, and here on "U-Turn" they've found something very close to perfecting that move. Eminently danceable with an earworm of a chorus, the song is a pure winner.





43. Martha - Precarious (Supermarket Song)

A fun snot-rocker laced with heavy Northeast England accents and a "love is love" message told in a story about a supermarket cashier and a patron with a crush. The lyrical message is love-positive ("I'm a person, you're a person, nothing else is really certain") and the punk chorus beat of "Oh-oh, when ya gonna get off work?" almost makes you look around to see if a skanking circle has starting forming anywhere.


42. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Close

There's some sort of danger nearby. Maybe it's around the corner, maybe it's a few blocks away, maybe it's out on the edge of town, but you feel it approaching. This lingering sense of wrong, of impending doom, hovers over "Close," just one of the many massive, slightly proggy rockers on Pretty Years. Maybe it's the whooshing way the song starts, or the damaged chorus, or the flayed guitar solo before Joe D'Agostino's wounded "It's as much of a declaration of love as I'll ever muster" swells into an acidic chant of "locked out, we are free" as the world proceeds to end and a demon of a solo of what could easily just be distorted guitar feedback takes over. And that may be what it is, but it feels like audio doom, imposing and all-consuming.

41. Frightened Rabbit - Lump Street

Much like FM-84's "Everything" told a story without words, here is a story told with many plain words with a thematic turn aided by an abrupt musical about-face, turning what was nearly a dirge about a ramshackle town that's down on its luck and morale into vintage National-esque peppering of drums and bass, spotted with cleaner guitar hits and a healthy helping of hope. The gear shift is what makes this song special. It neatly complements the lyrical theme of the track and enhances the entire production, busting through the dreariness with a necessary dose of sunshine.

Next: 40-31

2016: The Songs (60-51)

Spotify

Previously: 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61

60. Crying - The Curve

There's something to be said for not wasting anybody's time declaring what your song's gonna be like. The first thing we hear is a cascading keyboard, joined in short order by more keys, fuzzed out and shooting for all of those high heights that synthrock can take us to. Everything about this song almost comes off ridiculous with how far out it puffs its chest. All of those synths and power chords and distortion; you really can't help but respect how hard this song goes for it.






59. Ages and Ages - Something to Ruin

Introducing itself purely as an installment of Ages and Ages' signature group folk-rock, "Something to Ruin" is something of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Past the first verse, a dark and foreboding guitar chimes in, hovering around the periphery of the next verse like a threat. It barges in like a thunderclap, the dark storm cloud at the city limits. Really, once the vocals end and the piano cuts in, it begins to sound like rainfall, as if this phase of the song is introducing the shower that's been lurking on the outskirts. It's more meatheaded than malicious, the "rainstorm" sort of announcing its presence but not really doing any damage. All that's to say the song never devolves into anything metal or overly industrial, and I'm sure many people would interpret the evolution of the song's sounds differently, but it certainly seems like the song's final act fulfills Tim Perry's wish that "something ugly would happen."

58. Lewis Del Mar - Such Small Scenes

The bull-in-a-china-shop entrance of this song, stumbling all over its formless self of blown out drums and drunken lullaby cooing, belies a mathematical precision that a lot of people hear on albums like Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest. The comparison ends there, as Lewis Del Mar are more alt-J than Droste, the vocals almost sneered more than they're sung. As album introductions go, it's messy, but it's a controlled mess. It was hard to expect less after the release of last year's "Memories," a hydraulic grease puddle of a song that ended up on an EP the band released before their self-titled debut this year. Lewis Del Mar are a one-two guitar/drum punch in the Japandroids vein



57. Chairlift - Crying In Public

Two different tracks the involve crying in the same set of 10! Wheee! But where the name of the band at No. 60 told a completely different story from the song attached, here, the song's title pretty aptly precedes the style within. It bears repeating every time Chairlift comes up: Caroline Polachek just has an awesome voice. It may not be the belting force of someone like an Adele or hold the wild, improvisational ability of some of the more prominent pop stars going, but it holds some serious range and glistening smoothness all its own. As far as Chairlift songs go, it's pretty straightforward both lyrically and musically, which successfully avoids undermining the song's emotionally genuine lyrics. It comes across as one of the sweeter songs you'll hear in this list, to its complete benefit.

56. Billie Marten - Milk & Honey

Marten's hushed whisper of a voice is, and I hope this makes sense, fragile but forged from steel, its softer edges buttressed both by her disaffected stance on people and their material greed, as well as a brass accompaniment not unlike something out of a High Violet-era National song. That disaffect is pretty comfortably seated within Marten, and her own Genius annotation for the first lines of the chorus spells it all out pretty plainly: "Sometimes it's nice to sit and read and yawn and eat lemon drizzle you know?" This song would soundtrack a scene like pretty nicely.




55. Haley Bonar - Called You Queen

I don't imagine this song was written for me - my type - but I see lines like "Passed out in a bathroom stall / You still looked better than them all" and take heart from them. I mean it! Think of it this way: We've all got our dings and dents and flaws, and sometimes you A) just have to own it and B) still realize that you're cool as hell in your own way, even at your low points. It doesn't matter whether other people think that's true; you should! To hell with the haters.






54. Blossoms - Cut Me And I'll Bleed

This song's presence here is kind of weird, I'll admit: The single was released in February...2015. It then lay dormant, an island unto itself, until it was re-released  largely unchanged on the band's self-titled, full length debut LP this past August. It's had a pretty prolonged shelf life, and missed being included on 2015's list mostly to delay until this album actually hit shelves. Hey, my list, my rules. The song is clean-cut, modern Brit rock with that "smoking on a corner at night in leather jackets" edge to it that can only be explained that poorly in words and felt that clearly in sound.




53. Balance and Composure - Loam

Is post-emo a thing? Is that a genre yet? I think B&C tend to lean more post-hardcore than that usually, but "Loam" is something that captures that emo-leaning vocal sound like The Hotelier with the industrial, machine-like depth and layers found within the grander tracks of bands like Touché Amoré. The interesting thing about the "emo" lifecycle is that the genre today is something completely unlike what it was near the turn of the century; vocals that sound whining and melodramatic have been replaced with more serious words and sounds, reinventing the whole term. "Loam" is at the forefront of that movement, a churner that never induces an eyeroll from its sound or words like the emo term used to suggest it might. It might be safe to use that word again.

52. Radiohead - Identikit

A pretty song on an album of pretty songs, "Identikit" stands out mostly for the flourishing guitar solo that rounds it out. Having left most of their rock aesthetic behind on the past few albums, the group finds a bit of that jam instinct to tap into here. Even if the lyrics aren't the most poetic things Thom Yorke has ever written ("Broken hearts make it rain" feels familiar for a band I'm so used to hearing completely new things from), the sound is tight and effortless as ever.






51. Wye Oak - Better (For Esther)

Gather 'round and let Jenn Wasner tell you a ghost story or, if you prefer, what it's like to live in the shadow of a predecessor. The lyrics, to me, read like the tale of someone with large shoes to fill. What type and shape of shoe isn't known or really all that relevant; just by the sound of her voice - airy and ethereal - it feels clear that Wasner is preoccupied with something incorporeal. The atmosphere created by the shuffling drums and ambling guitar seep into the words, permeating the track with a spectral feel that's both haunting and engrossing.

Next: 50-41

2016: The Songs (70-61)

Spotify

Previously: 100-91, 90-81, 80-71

70. Car Seat Headrest - Cosmic Hero

It's sort of assumed as a "comes with the territory" kind of thing that an eight-and-a-half-minute song is going to have a lot to unpack. "Cosmic Hero" is a real hefty sucker of a song, building from a single, protracted trumpet note up to an avalanche of distortion and fuzz and Will Toledo yelling "fuck you!" back to the chorus lyrics that try to reassure him. It's a song about feeling disaffected and detached, of motivation and lack thereof, and the struggle of finding out how to truly be self-aware and self-accepting. The burn is slow and the build-up is patient, but the payoff of finding yourself having successfully navigated this song at the end is more than worth your time.

69. Radiohead - Daydreaming

Any time you use "-est" at the end of an adjective when talking about a song in the place of a discography as vast and beloved as Radiohead's, you're walking a thin line. But there are few songs within that catalog that sound like this one, and that's what makes it one of the prettiest the band has ever done. Thom Yorke's voice sounds old and weary here, and you can imagine him as being weathered both in real life through his tireless political activism and through the "persona" of the head of a band that has traversed countless musical miles through all sorts of terrain. I'm not sure that's a distinction Yorke has ever made himself, but it was something for me to think about, anyway. The song is orchestral - part of the suite of highlights of Jonny Greenwood's compositional skills on A Moon Shaped Pool - while also feeling spacey, almost galactic. And the ending, with a bellowing cello and mangled vocal sample, is a fascinating coda.

68. School of Seven Bells - Ablaze

With one foot in the heated retrowave pool and the other on the stone electro-rock deck, "Ablaze" straddles the line of riding a modern trend while sounding rooted in the era it's paying homage too. With some updated production and a big, enveloping sound, "Ablaze" feels like it could have either been released this year or back in the '80s. It's bombastic without being obnoxious, leaving you feeling more invigorated than stuffed with schmaltz despite its lovey, heart-eye-emoji lyrics. It's a feel-good rocker borne of multiple eras, made extra poignant given the loss of guitarist Benjamin Curtis to lymphoma in 2013, a back story that paints every track of SVIIB.

67. Pinegrove - Old Friends

Evan Stephens Hall's voice greets you with a warm handshake, gently twanged despite being from Jersey. This brand of alt-country-meets-emo-revival is uniquely Pinegrove's this year, and while it blends elements of both of those genres, it never feels like it belongs exclusively to one of those crowds. Sure, it's got a banjo, and sure, there's a recurrence of "every outcome's such a comedown," but this is a song welcoming to all comers. Like with other Pinegrove songs (which you'll see later in this list), the lyrics are worth reading along to, just to get the full scope of the story being told. They're carefully woven vignettes that tell a single story: Be of the moment, because things change very quickly and have no rewind button.

66. The Tallest Man On Earth - Time of the Blue

I may never get over how funny it is that one of today's best folk artists - a genre often associated with those who embody Americana, like Bob Dylan - is Swedish, but truth is truth and Kristian Matsson is still one of the very best things going, no matter his origin and no matter how many times I talk about it. "Time of the Blue," an as-yet unassociated single released from out of, well, the blue earlier this year, recalls a time between Matsson's wonderful 2010 LP The Wild Hunt and 2012's There's No Leaving Now, a tweener song more closely tied to Matsson's purer folk beginnings than 2015's Dark Bird is Home. A gently-yet-swiftly finger-plucked guitar dominates the composition, joined only briefly by a piano and muted trumpet (I think Harmon mute, but I'm not the expert here!). It's a characteristically sparse arrangement, allowing Matsson's voice to be the star.

65. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Julie's Place

Some of my favorite songs from any given year, no matter how high or low they end up on these lists, are the songs that emerge from absolutely nowhere to surprise me so completely and pleasantly that my entire day is made better just by listening. RBCF is a band I'd never heard of before this year, until Sub Pop's Youtube channel posted audio of this single and I thought, "sure, why not?" (Honestly, you'll find so much good music with this line of thought. It's the genesis of every cool discovery.) The controlled frenetic energy of this song makes me think both of it being played on a beach in the summer and in a garage in the suburbs with the door up on a drizzly afternoon.




64. Japanese Breakfast - Everybody Wants to Love You

An airy bit of psychrock, aided by Radiator Hospital's Sam Cook-Parrott, with a chorus hook that'll stick with you for a good long time after the song ends (seriously, I would hear that rapid fire "everybodywantstoloveyou" in my head anytime anybody said the word "breakfast" for what felt like weeks). It's barely over two minutes long, but any more than that in this case would feel like bloat.







63. Little Scream - Love As a Weapon

I'm not sure I can come up with a better comparison for what this song sounds like than Laura Snapes, who's really one of the top music writers going these days, when she said this sounds like St. Vincent covering the Bee Gees. That's absolutely what this is. Annie Clark is here and she's covering '70s funk with an unceasing falsetto. But this is not Annie Clark and it's not the brothers Gibb, it's Laurel Sprengelmeyer making a song packed full of groove and head bobbing.






62. Angel Olsen - Give It Up

I'm having a hard time remembering such a difference in sound between consecutive albums from a single artist. Angel Olsen's 2014 Burn Your Fire For No Witness was one of the more profoundly dark and brooding records released that year, but this year's My Woman finds her in an entirely new place. "Give It Up" is far livelier, with Olsen's voice elevated out of the morose dungeon it was trapped inside on Burn and it suits her wonderfully. Sure, the lyrics are still a bit pained and fraught with emotion (the first line is "Hurts to be around you," after all), and maybe it wouldn't be a true Angel Olsen song without that. But the energy found within is almost danceable. "Where you are is where I want to be" is how the song ends, which is a funny sentiment, because where I usually want to be is listening to this song.

61. Local Natives - Villainy

Local Natives were always headed down this path. They won over lots and lots of people (myself included) with their garage-folk debut Gorilla Manor, but felt like they were leaning toward bigger and grander things. Sunlit Youth, their third full-length, finds them striving to touch that new ceiling, and "Villainy" leads things off with that very thing in mind. Having traded in their old oeuvre for one of synths and even bigger oh-oh choruses, Local Natives have a different kind of triumph on their hands here. It's the realization of some kind of destiny - this wasn't a band destined to cover Simon & Garfunkel in their backyard forever - but where they go from here feels entirely open-ended.

Next: 60-51

2016: The Songs (80-71)

Spotify

Previously: 100-91, 90-81

80. DIIV - Dopamine

There's a soft, hazy edge to every sound DIIV put into a track, enough to make just about any of them sound like they could fit on a go-to-sleep playlist. Even "Dopamine," one of the lead singles from the 63-minute marathon album Is the Is Are (released in 2015 ahead of the album's 2016 drop date), has these undefined ridges to drums and guitar alike, and even though this isn't a sleepy song, it's very easy to get caught floating along with it. Especially when the bridge hits, a beautiful interlude that loses none of the song's tempo or momentum and instead carries it one step closer to the stars. Even the bridge's lyrics talk about getting a glimpse of heaven. Nas said 22 years ago that sleep is the cousin of death; it's the same concept here, but in a far more peaceful way. Yeah, I don't know, those are two artists who really aren't even kind of related, but that's what I think of! Hooray music!

79. Fear of Men - Island

Fear of Men's "Descent" was one of my absolute favorites from 2014, a poignant track about the death of a relationship. On "Island," Jess Weiss's gentle, sad vocals lay atop a heavily muted and softened drum machine (at least, it's so precise as to sound like one), blanketed by a ghostly whirlpool of a vocal sample all along. Weiss calls herself a "woman of wax," likening herself to an island (wonder where the song title comes from) in that she doesn't "need to feel your arms" around her, and asserts that all of this is plenty fine, thanks. "Used to be scared to be misunderstood / Now I don't care if I'm not what you want," she disdainfully posits, and you can almost imagine her waving her hand at you as she does. There's something in her voice and this song's performance that sounds like it's been through defeat, but this song is coming from the other side of that battle, resolute in its present and its composition.

78. Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam - In a Black Out

People who grew up listening to The Walkmen can recognize Hamilton Leithauser's voice in an instant, that scratched, nasal, slightly intoxicated croon - if you could go so far as to call it that - is unique unto Leithauser alone, and every track he sings on - be it a Walkmen track or here, with Vampire Weekend alum Rostam Batmanglij on their joint project - is uniquely his. You might have heard this song on a commercial, and its success is a nice win for both Leithauser and Batmanglij. The extra ears that will be drawn to its arpeggiated guitars and Leithauser's pained elegiac vocals will, at worst, recognize it as something distinct. At its median and better, the song dawns upon us as an exercise in a beautiful kind of restraint; the bridge supported by an angelic choral backing is among one of the prettier things you'll hear this year. If he wants, Leithauser can really let it rip, but his restraint here is what helps make this track special.

77. Hiss Golden Messenger - Heart Like a Levee

Folk can't be an easy genre to navigate, but more often than not, I still find myself thinking it's one of the most consistently beautiful types of music out there. M.C. Taylor's Hiss Golden Messenger is one of those projects that always makes me think the genre is nearly infallible, regularly producing some of the more heartfelt and heart-rending songs in the market. If absolutely nothing else, this song contains one of the finer lyrical stanzas of any song on this list: "Sing me a river / I'm a peach tree jumper with rain in my shoes / If you let me, honey / I'll set the world on fire for you." Read it, and it's nice. Listen to it, and you'll believe it.

76. Haley Bonar - Stupid Face

I may ruin this for those of you who haven't listened to this song before reading, but there's a certain magic to songs that only have two verses, repeat the lyrics of those two verses, and yet still feel like new and different words despite sounding nearly identical. Maybe it's the fuzz surrounding Bonar's voice, the mixing that buries the guitar deep below drums and synth that distracts, but it didn't really even dawn on me until reading the lyrics on a screen that they were replicas. Go figure. Anyway, that's one thing that stood out to me among a few others on "Stupid Face," a chugging fuzz-rock song that feels rah-rah in all the right ways.



75. Ra Ra Riot - Bad Times

And speaking of Ra Ra, we turn the page to more direct synthrock here. It's more than just synths, though, because this track pulls out all the stops: Prominent bass mix, drums that sound like timpani, a chorus that aims for the ceiling and hangs there like a bat wearing eyeliner and volumizing hairspray. It's Ra Ra Riot at their best - a greatest hits from this band would blow the doors off of lots of places - and grandest; they aim high and hit their mark.



74. Gordi - So Here We Are

Bless Stereogum for having any idea who Gordi, stage name of Aussie Sophie Payten, was or could become. The power of Payten's performance calls to mind some Imogen Heap (thanks to some familiar vocal distortion), but remains free and clear of being anything but its own animal: A vocal tryst, a rendezvous at night just after it's rained and the streets reflect the phosphorescence of the lamps overhead. It's gently cold, giving you a chill just before it wraps a blanket about your shoulders.


73. Mass Gothic - Every Night You've Got to Save Me

Noel Heroux used to front a band called Hooray For Earth, a widely unknown outfit that saw some radio play with a couple of singles but saw a large chunk of their catalog fail to gain mass appeal. So it goes (I'm still stung by Pilot Round the Sun's failure to stay together and move beyond Philadelphia), but from the ashes of one band, other projects can emerge as their own Phoenixes. Spell check tells me Phoenixes is real and I've spelled it correctly. Anyway, Heroux's solo project is called Mass Gothic, and it incorporates some of the more pounding percussionist aspects of HFE but, particularly on this track, sounding more optimistic and hopeful than usual. This track, strangely, serves more as a thematic break in the middle of this self-titled album, framed by more morose tracks. But "Every Night...," despite a lyrical phrase or two, is anything but morose. It might even be...jubilant?

72. Minor Victories - A Hundred Ropes

I may not remember a single music video more readily than the video for this song, a super-slow-motion sequence of a horde of samurai emerging from a corn field on some sort of attack, entirely in black-and-white and without any sudden surprises or plot twists. The onslaught is coming, and you get to watch what was probably a 20-second sequence take nearly four minutes to unfold. That's not to say "A Hundred Ropes" goes all Dickens and dilly-dallies around the point; it's always immediate, always focused and ever-present on that caffeinated side of shoegaze, like Field Mouse earlier in this list.

71. Beach Slang - Art Damage

No band right now captures that slightly drunk, ears ringing from a live show feeling quite like Beach Slang and their driving post-punk. The lyrics often talk of feeling alive and saying things like "hell is cheap and I'm loose." They're Japandroids' older brother, a little more world-weary, but still capable of blowing a door or two off their hinges.







Next: 70-61

2016: The Songs (90-81)

Spotify

Previously: 100-91

90. Lionlimb - Domino

In some alternate universe, Elliott Smith never left us. In this otherworld, Smith took the next logical step in his music after Figure 8, infusing more jazzy tendencies with his quiet croon. But it's not Smith here; it's Stewart Bronaugh and Joshua Jaeger, who credit (apart from Smith) Miles Davis for a good bit of their sound. And the groovy integration of rock and jazz here support this track as being the unorthodox marriage of Smith's emotive songwriting and Davis's groundbreaking jazz compositions, the B-side Smith himself never wrote but almost certainly could have.


89. Rooney - Washed Away

Rooney's 2003 self-titled album is one I very, very closely associate with the beach. The shore. The feeling of waves crashing nearby. Seagulls. Something about its vibe was "The Modern Age" Strokes-ish enough to keep that summer feeling alive in any season. Now, on the title track from this year's Washed Away, I find a return to that feeling. Yeah, maybe Robert Schwartzman can't exactly replicate the youthful feeling that 2003's self-titled debut captured so wonderfully (the difference between 21 and 32 is pretty stark, honestly!), but "Washed Away" is the closest the band has felt to bringing the setting back to a sandy shore someplace. Schwartzman's "Weezer covering late-era Strokes" oeuvre is a good way to make that happen, and I'm not complaining about it a bit.

88. St. Lucia - Home

I was born in the 1980s, but I don't remember a damn thing about it. I get glimpses of the period every time I hear some Human League or Cure or Bon Jovi, but no group going now captures the sound and feeling of that time in music quite like St. Lucia. Their 2013 wonder, When the Night, was a perfect marriage of '80s synth tendencies with tropical groove, creating a tiki-lit panorama of everything that could go right with synthpop. Now, with Matter, they go a bit more concrete and big-city with their sound, and "Home" fills that wind-tunnel-blown-hair gap you didn't know you had in your life. The party of brass and synths and percussion is a wild one; a whirling, multi-directional wave of sensation that envelops and washes over you by the final wood block hits.

87. Amber Arcades - Fading Lines

"Can't tell the worst from the best in me," says Annelotte de Graaf through her Amber Arcades persona/nom de plume/stage name/what-have-you, speaking plain that all-too-true feeling we can all relate to from some point in our past or present. Maybe "identity crisis" is kind of a harsh description for this episode; the lyrics read like a breakup song, but without the acid and bite that would make you think it's a recent memory. It almost feels reflective - maybe a little regretful - but still grounded in reality and a present that's completely separated from this memory.





86. High Highs - Movement

Dreamy bedroom pop can sometimes feel a little too caught up in itself, swallowed up in layers of echo and synthesizer and distantly booming percussion. And while the first half of this song certainly floats, Jack Milas's voice seems to hover in that space between waking and sleeping, like when you're about to fall asleep for a nap but still have a fingertip on the ledge of staying conscious. And the final minute-plus brings everything into sharper focus when the booming snare drum joins the party. "Movement" never strays far from being slowly rhythmic and relaxed, and its beauty lies squarely within that simplicity.

85. Explosions in the Sky - Disintegration Anxiety

A churning, industrial bit of math rock from a group whose bread-and-butter sound more often could be found in tracks that looked to soar above anything and everything is...a bit of a left turn. The track starts off interestingly enough with an underwater synth fade-in, and the fade takes long enough that the entrance of those whirlpool drums after a subdued bass interlude almost takes you by surprise. The tempo picks up, the guitars go quicker and then, with about 30 seconds left, you hear the slow-played, moderately overdriven guitar you've heard from this band so many times before. Released as the lead single for The Wilderness, "Disintegration Anxiety" was something of an announced departure from the norm for EitS, and puts on display the technical skill of a band that hasn't lost a step.


84. Your Friend - Come Back From It

It sounds like Beach House if they were piped in over the PA in a dungeon. I'm not really sure I can do a better job describing it than that, so I'm just gonna stop there.











83. Memoryhouse - Dream Shake

One quibble I had with Memoryhouse's 2012 debut The Slideshow Effect was how it could sometimes feel too sweet, Denise Nouvion's voice a little too smooth and the lyrics too heartfelt that it didn't fully click with me. I mean, hey, if you're gonna get faulted, there are worse ways to lose points. None of that really seemed to be an issue on this year's follow-up, Soft Hate, a far more immediate and...aggressive?...effort that registers quickly with most of its tracks. "Dream Shake," both a pulsing indie rocker and woozy dreampop song more in line with what the band cultivated on Slideshow, is the band's best song to date.




82. Porches - Be Apart

Those who deal or have dealt with social anxiety may find some common ground in Aaron Maine's lyrics on "Be Apart," a sadly optimistic track built over rubber-ball rhythm synths about the uncertainty or disquiet about the sheer volume of everything in the world. You know how your mind can wander sometimes, dancing from thought to thought, about anything at all, until the collective weight of your speculation finally dawns on you and, man, it just feels heavy, right? Makes you feel like avoiding dealing with it sometimes, yeah? The wordplay in the chorus here is important, as the way it's written goes "I wanna be apart / I wanna be a part / I wanna be a part / Of it all," with "apart" and "a part" sounding exactly the same when sung. It's all about that conflict of anxiety and the coexisting desire for a fellow traveler when the weight of the world can feel like too much.

81. Ages and Ages - I'm Moving

The first (and still only) time I've seen Ages and Ages live, they took the stage in numbers that might make Arcade Fire and the Polyphonic Spree break a sweat. Or, at least, they seemed to fill the stage so completely both with their presence and sound that the six or seven people there made Union Transfer feel like your friend's basement, cozy and familiar. That group power pop aspect comes through wonderfully here, on the standout track from Something to Ruin, the band's third studio album and follow-up to 2014 favorite Divisionary. Like the band they opened for that night at UT, Lake Street Dive, everyone in Ages and Ages contributes to the joyful noise of their vocals, led by Tim Perry. The harmonies are gently layered to start, and soon enough, a vocal round builds to feature three distinct parts. The band's best songs often feature these techniques, and this is no exception.

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