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Previously:
100-91,
90-81,
80-71,
70-61,
60-51,
50-41
40. Frank Ocean - Self Control
It's heartening to know that Frank Ocean has had, in the wake of songs like "Bad Religion" on
channel ORANGE, someone actually
care about him in a relationship. Now, that doesn't mean everything's perfect. Maybe the care was there, but some connections still didn't hold, and so the eulogy for such a relationship comes around in the elegiac form of a song like "Self Control," where regret laces lyrics and phrases like "wish we'd grown up on the same advice and our time was right." We can't control everything, and we can't control how (or if) we're completely compatible with any given person, and those times when you come
that close to linking completely only to see it all dissolve, well, they're not easy to cope with. "Self Control" is a reference to the need that emerges in the wake of such a relationship's death and the need to keep space: "I came to visit, 'cause you see me like a UFO / That's like never, 'cause I made you use your self control." That's one of the hardest things to understand and follow through on (usually), and the song's slow progression and emotive singing carries that feeling through very well.
39. Frightened Rabbit - I Wish I Was Sober
A track that sort of flips the verse/chorus progression on its head, "I Wish I Was Sober" is one of FRabbit's finest songs mostly on the back of a rushing, painfully worded second verse. It's worth following along with the
lyric sheet on this one, partially due to Scott Hutchison's Scottish accent but also because they help paint the scene more clearly than the incorrect words found on Google Play or elsewhere. Part of the reason I'm such a big fan of artists who share their lyrics directly is for reasons like this; I want to more fully understand every song whose melody hits me, and better it get it straight from the source than somebody guessing in the description box of a YouTube video. Rant aside, the pulse of this song's second verse propels it to a high place in this list, but it wouldn't stay here without a sturdy backbone of hollow guitar and softly-pounded drums.
38. St. Lucia - Dancing On Glass
You've felt a fire inside you at some point. We all have. And whatever it was you were drawn toward, you knew that you couldn't fully explain
why you felt so compelled, you just knew it. You felt it. You lived it. "Dancing On Glass" is a song about that unforgettable fire. Yeah, maybe success comes with a (hopefully minor) demon or two attached, but sometimes that's just the cost of things. And youth doesn't stand still; the things we treasure as we're young, and the things we strive to achieve as we age, all come with expiration dates. "How high is too low? / We're not that young," says Jean-Philip Grobler, and he's right. Keep that fire alive, keep reaching higher.
37. Shearwater - A Long Time Away
How do you adapt when your worldview takes a hit, when the direction your life was taking suddenly takes an abrupt left as you gently leaned into an expected right? The jolt of reality can bring any walkabout to a crashing halt, and remind you of the things left unattended since you've left. It's often not the most pleasant thing, being brought back to earth from a trip in the clouds. But it's a necessary evil, and Shearwater lay that story out plain in this arena-rock effort complete with an endlessly chugging drum beat, floating chimes synth and even a string section! It's about as Arcade Fire as Shearwater get.
36. Daughter - To Belong
Between 2013's
If You Leave and January's
Not to Disappear, something pretty drastic happened to Daughter. Songs that may have once been mournful and brooding morphed into songs that, while still brooding at times, took on an edge I hadn't really considered possible. Consider "To Belong," which swirls behind delay and echo effects, sending notes and chords out into some purplish abyss behind Elena Tonra's ever-magical voice. It feels like the gusts of wind before a thunderstorm, charging the air with that unseen electricity building up within cumulonimbus puffs. The storm arrives in the form of a bass solo bridge (!) that rushes in with an even stronger gust of air before unwinding into the calm steadiness of the post-electric rain behind it. It's some form of energized gloom I'm completely taken by.
35. Wild Nothing - To Know You
Speaking of prominent bass parts, hoo boy do we have one here. The entire track showcases a hydraulic piston of bass line, simple and structured but forceful and demanding of your attention. Jack Tatum's vocals are a bit more grounded from the haze that swallowed him up on previous efforts like 2010's
Gemini. It's still dream pop - Tatum hasn't lost his way, far from it - and there's plenty of sounds in this track to lay on your back and drift away on over its six minutes.
34. case/lang/veirs - Atomic Number
Entering on gentle guitar notes reminiscent of moments on Joan Shelley's lovely album
Over and Even, "Atomic Number" is a grand stage set to allow three women with distinct, assured, confident vocal abilities to let their talents shine both apart and together. Neko Case takes the lead here, but only by a nose, as she and k.d. lang and Laura Veirs all have their own lines, but converge into smooth, effortless harmonies. The chorus is silk, all of the lines colored in with the various hues and shades of all three women's voices to draw a folk rainbow you could take in for a day.
33. Broods - Freak of Nature (f. Tove Lo)
If 2014's
Evergreen began to paint Broods as a duo resembling Purity Ring's younger, poppier sibling, this year's
Conscious shows that sibling reaching the experimental phase of adolescence. No longer following so neatly in Purity Ring's electropop shoes, "Freak of Nature" has the brother/sister duo of Georgia and Caleb Nott enlisting the diva-like verve of Tove Lo to go for full-out stadium pop. Few choruses aim or reach higher than this one, allowing both Georgia Nott and Tove Lo to weave their voices with one another's, pumping a mostly wordless chorus full of emotion and life, enough to fill any kind of stadium and send a chill down your arms.
32. Crying - Wool in the Wash
I guess this set of 10 is the prominent bass line block. Rhythmics aside (but only kind of), this is one of the most fun rock songs of the year, starting immediately with that bass bounce and continuing to pile on sounds as it goes. The build to the full-throated, overdriven guitar from verse two onward into a cascading solo is a ride down the highway with the windows down and not another car in sight. The drum pattern change for the final chorus into the outro solo is the moment you press the gas down that much more and feel the breeze intensify. It's a light, freeing rock song with that maximalist edge that Crying may not have mastered, but certainly have a great understanding of.
31. Cullen Omori - Hey Girl
The breakup of Smith Westerns might not have registered on a ton of Richter scales, but the loss of the brand of dreamrock that the group had begun to craft on their two full-lengths was kind of a sad bit of news to me. It was cool, then, to see former SW frontman Cullen Omori go solo and release
New Misery, featuring this standout track. Hard to go wrong with the disco beat chorus and post-chorus, vibrant and lively as the coming-of-age story its lyrics tell. The song's second act is more of a comedown, a moment of sobriety after the gallivanting first half. I guess that's sort of how coming-of-age tales usually go after all, yeah?
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30-21
