Previously:
120-101
Spotify Playlist
100. Japanese Breakfast - 12 Steps
Breakup songs are, by their nature, extremely personal things. The ability to connect, as listeners, to stories of heartbreak that aren't our own is a demanding one. There's a fine line separating every breakup song from being too cloying or pathetic, and it's a treacherous path to walk. Michelle Zauner hears your warnings and proceeds to run them over as she sneers out a song whose summary best reads to me as "ah, well, we tried."
99. Arcade Fire - Put Your Money On Me
Everything Now that strikes the right balance of Win and Régine's vocals while building at just the right pace - Win's vocals starting to swell as the horns kick in is a great moment - calls to mind the better moments of
Reflektor's "Supersymmetry" and
Neon Bible's "Intervention" call-and-response. I may not like that songs like this are the new exception to the rule for Arcade Fire, but I'll take what I can get just the same. For my, um, money, the only song on
98. Nicole Atkins - Darkness Falls So Quiet
Dolls of Highland - captured so beautifully. Atkins has a great voice, and uses it artfully atop a jazz shuffle beat. This is the kind of song you imagine a cabaret performer cooing lustily to an adoring audience, as she wanders out through the fourth wall, tousling some hair or pulling on a necktie or two as she saunters about. This track reminds me of the dark, back-alley brooding that one of last year's best albums - Kyle Craft's
97. Pale Honey - Get These Things Out Of My Head
Sweden is great. I love Sweden. The Tallest Man On Earth? The Sun Days? The Gothenburg area is really pumping out some great acts lately, in particular. Anyway, Pale Honey are a Swedish duo who make really cool, hazy, not-quite-sleepy rock with that gentle Swedish...uh...twang?...on their English lyrics. The mix of propulsive drums and fuzzed out guitar serves as a really stylish frame for Tuva Lodmark's voice.
96. Kane Strang - My Smile Is Extinct
Melodrama is cool sometimes. Usually, that kind of thing is best digested if the whole thing is pretty apparently tongue-in-cheek. Mission accomplished almost immediately here ("Yes, she is the best I've ever had / I'll say it to her face and I'll say it to her dad" is the first lyric? Okay.), and so the rest of the story told by "My Smile Is Extinct" comes served with a side of pitying smile. The pop rock here recalls Fountains of Wayne, and the lyricism manages to accomplish the same pseudo-absurdity without being too embarrassing to be heard blasting from your car speakers.
95. Stars - The Maze
A growing number of my all-time favorite songs (of which this track doesn't
quite belong, clearly) require patience. As in, 90 seconds or so of it. Here, on "The Maze," Stars decide to take that exact amount of time to lead in to a rather cathartic chant of "I fell into a dream!" It sounds great. It has that undercurrent of foreboding (thanks, string section) on the verses after that first explosion, stringing the last three-and-a-half minutes or so together rather neatly. It sounds like a track that'd be amazing to see live.
94. Sam Smith - Pray
A transcendental voice means nothing without at least a semi-decent vehicle for it to arrive in. Sam Smith's debut full-length featured a lot of fluffed pop tunes that Smith worked with admirably; imagine Tommy Wiseau's lines in "The Room" delivered by Morgan Freeman, and you have an idea of what I'm talking about here. Smith has an incredibly unique, soulful voice, and needs songs with a soulful bent to really sound like he's fully unlocked. "Pray" has that, and I'm not just talking about the choir backing. The second verse, Smith sounds like he's physically hurt. In the chorus, he builds from the bottom of his register up to the falsetto. It's a wonder to listen to this man sing, and you have to think - at least, I do - that this voice should be capable of delivering an all-time great album before his career is done. Maybe
The Thrill of it All doesn't quite reach that status, but "Pray" is a track that makes you think he might not be so far away from it.
93. Foo Fighters - Run
Hey, this is cool. Foo Fighters are about a decade past being their most influential, but in the wake of
Sonic Highways and
In Your Honor, it's nice to hear Grohl & Co. just kinda rip again, without a whole lot of concern for radio playability. The intro starts off leaning the other way, but things devolve into something that sounds like it'd soundtrack an underground drag race between a couple of Hell's adolescent demons; maybe not overflowing with bile and super crunchy guitars and indiscernible wails of lyrics, but definitely laced with a bit of getdownwithyourbadself. I mean, we're not talking about Converge or anything even close to doom metal. And I'm risking hyperbole even now; let's just say it's nice to hear these guys sound like they're up to shred a little bit again, even if the edges are still pretty smooth.
92. The Lone Bellow - Can't Be Happy For Long
It's entirely possible that I underrate the Lone Bellow a fair bit. Their collaborative, pastoral, Fleet Foxes-esque efforts always come off pleasant. Their arrangements are always tight. They always sound emotive. "Can't Be Happy For Long," for its part, features the band's signature close harmonies and folky tendencies with a fresh coat of gloss. It hits light a beam of sunshine on a chilly day.
91. Waxahatchee - Silver
Katie Crutchfield ain't afraid to tell it like it is. Her solo-ish project Waxahatchee has always felt - to me - like a true vehicle for Crutchfield's own thoughts and feelings and stories, more so than some acts that come across like they're playing a part. Waxahatchee material never falls short of feeling personal. Past efforts have usually boxed those feelings and stories in more subdued tones - see "Limbs and Lips" from
Cerulean Salt - but
Out In The Storm finds her, by her own admission, reverting to a more classic form of songwriting. And it certainly sounds comfortable to her, detailing a fraying and one-sided relationship in the form of a straight-up rocker, complete with electric guitar solo. Hell yeah man, why not?
Next:
90-81
