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