2017: The Songs (10-1)

Previously: 120-101, 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51, 50-41, 40-31, 30-21, 20-11
Spotify Playlist

10. LCD Soundsystem - Call the Police

LCD's "All My Friends" is one of the very best songs I've ever heard. It builds at a restless pace, from disjointed piano to rolling waves of drums to the full-bodied anthem for aging I continue to relate to more and more as I do my own aging. And if "All My Friends" was an existential struggle to cope with the fallout of growing older, "Call the Police" feels like a paean to the next step: Not giving a shit.







9. Charly Bliss - Glitter

I'm not sure I heard a refrain better sum up the anxiety and self-doubt so many of us live with these days than "Am I the best, or just the first person to say 'yes?'" And it's delivered in such a wonderfully light, hooky way that you can't help but feel a little better about it all. In reading about what Eva Hendricks had to say about the song, it sounds like a song initially meant to be a jab at an ex-partner that eventually turned introspective, and in that way it feels more universal and accessible.





8. Yumi Zouma - December

Much in the way I enjoyed Roosevelt last year, I found Yumi Zouma's Willowbank to be a delightfully easygoing jaunt, treading the waters of yacht rock while keeping some pop sensibility. "December," the album's best track, plucks along at a measured pace, rhythmically supported by swaddled hand claps and snare hits. The gentle rise and fall of its synths and singer Christie Simpson's voice call to mind images of riding a ferry across the water, the craft's yawing and pitching muted by its size, a sensation blending into the background as you take in the scenery gliding gently by.




7. Algiers - The Underside of Power

The pure grit and emotion that goes into singing a song like this is undeniably attractive. The progression from the doomsday lullaby at the start to the war march in verse two is an energetic jolt, and the verse-to-chorus shift from minor to major chords is mesmerizing. It's political and ferocious, and necessary for today's world. It rages against the machine and the sinister edge that lines everything that lords over us.






6. White Reaper - Party Next Door

On first listen, it might be hard to identify five words in this song. Like, it's difficult. Part of that's by design for White Reaper, which has always lived in the realm of down-and-dirty basement punk, carrying those values over now into songs that bring to mind things you might hear at a midnight drag race. It's a song that sounds like what it's about: A house party spills over into the street, rowdy and boisterous and loud and unhinged, with people firing guns into the air from their car while presumably doing donuts. And it all rushes past in just over two minutes, a condensed adrenaline rush. It, like everything else on The World's Best American Band, is caffeinated and fun and easy to slap on repeat; just as it finally fades out after its frantic conclusion, you're ready to get ramped up by the intro all over again.


5. Everything Everything - Desire

One thing you can never dock EE points for is a lack of big ideas. You can't say that these dudes don't go for it, album after album. In the wake of last year's one-off single "I Believe It Now," the art pop quartet pumps out another massive cut, blending their signature multi-part harmonies in a cascading chorus with Jon Higgs's typically robust falsetto. It goes straight to the rafter and hangs there, blowing out the bass as the guitar gets plucked further and further up the neck. It's just big, damn it. It feels close to the apex of some of the best moments from their previous album, Get to Heaven, which is quickly ascending my list of all-time favorites. If you're a Big & Bold kind of person, I have the group for you, right here.


4. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - French Press

How do we bridge the gaps between ourselves? How do we stay connected to everything all at once? Well, we can't, and the struggle of accepting that reality - and the strain it puts on our relationships as an effect - is something that weighs heavy on the conscience of RBCF in this blissfully jam-y alt-rocker from the Australians' EP of the same name. It reminds me of the ending of Real Estate's "All the Same," which builds from a more minimalist, dreamy jam into a community effort of loop-de-loops. Here, the same basic principle can be heard, but with 100 percent more rawk, from crashing cymbals to extra riffs and solos over two minutes of joyous jam session material.



3. The National - Day I Die

One of the finest tracks this group has released in the last 10 years is one that takes relationship uncertainty head on, grappling with its ugliness. This territory has been trod by this group, oh, once or twice before; what feels fresh and new here is an urgency that hasn't been felt since "Bloodbuzz Ohio," a desperate energy that soars above all of the staid, wallowing overtones of Trouble Will Find Me (which, to be fair, is a great album for when you're feeling staid and wallowy). "The day I die, where will we be?" Matt Berninger implores in the face of the cloudy future before him. He reflects on his shortcomings ("I get a little punchy with the vodka") before seeking comfort in running from what's before him ("Let's just get high enough to see our problems"), all the while seeming to acknowledge that this is an obstacle he'll have to surmount before too long. This is a song written from the crossroads, where the next step will either set you on the path to redemption or to desecration; so take stock in what you have, and make sure you're prepared for the trip you decide to take.

2. Slowdive - Star Roving

A song whose mood reflects that of its title, I often feel adrift in some faraway galaxy when this song begins. Admittedly, for a long time, I considered this my No. 1 song of the year. Its ambiance and scope and feeling of floating as it powers through some uncharacteristically rough-and-tumble guitar and drums on out to some far-flung reaches of the universe. It's a song that, at the same time, is relaxed in its aggression, sort of like how you could fly through space at the speed of light and still take years to go from point A to point B. It's a song I almost never skip, as its intro feels regal and heralded, announcing the beginning of something wondrous and expansive that I can't help but provide five minutes of my time to, again and again.


1. Julien Baker - Claws In Your Back

To truly grasp the monumental, unbelievably cathartic ending to this song, you have to try and understand where Baker came from. Sprained Ankle, her debut full-length, was an album written from the depths, rarely full of hope and instead mired in the worst moments of Baker's memory. The tales were and still remain gripping, but finding a silver lining or ray of hope often required some logical leaps. But now, the tides are turning, and enter Turn Out the Lights, which finds Baker not bound by her past problems but educated by them. She's still fully cognizant of what her detractions appear to be and the missteps she's taken, but those things are now part of the bigger of her self, rather than what exclusively defines her. And so, enter the final words of the song, which start (fittingly) around the time the arrangement of the song, musically, opens up: "I'm better off learning how to be / Living with demons I've mistaken for saints / If you keep it between us, I think they're the same / I think I can love the sickness you made / 'Cause I take it all back, I changed my mind / I want it to stay," and it's that last phrase that overpowers my soul, igniting it, setting it awash in what can only be a fraction of the enlightenment Baker herself must have felt upon truly realizing that all is not, in fact, lost. The trip back from the edge is, I'm confident, more harrowing than anything I've yet experienced, but I can almost feel everything that went into that struggle and ultimate triumph when I listen to the song's closing. There are few moments like it that I've ever heard, and its combination of beauty and emotion make it ultimately deserving of the highest personal accolade I can give it.

2017: The Albums (40-1)

40. The Lone Bellow - Walk Into a Storm

39. Big Thief - Capacity

38. The War On Drugs - A Deeper Understanding

37. Peter Silberman - Impermanence

36. Rainer Maria - S/T

35. Pale Honey - Devotion

34. Cloud Nothings - Life Without Sound

33. Alvvays - Antisocialites

32. Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister - Planetarium

31. Gordi - Reservoir

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30. Cameron Avery - Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams

29. Wolf Parade - Cry Cry Cry

28. Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart Of Life

27. The xx - I See You

26. Hiss Golden Messenger - Hallelujah Anyhow

25. Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors

24. The Districts - Popular Manipulations

23. LCD Soundsystem - American Dream

22. Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness

21. The Horrors - V

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20. Broken Social Scene - Hug of Thunder

19. The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

18. Ariel Pink - Dedicated to Bobby Jameson

17. Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in the Alps

16. Spoon - Hot Thoughts

15. Lorde - Melodrama

14. The New Pornographers - Whiteout Conditions

13. Jessie Ware - Glasshouse

12. Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins

11. Waxahatchee - Out in the Storm

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10. Yumi Zouma - Willowbank

9. Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds From Another Planet

8. Charly Bliss - Guppy

7. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - The French Press EP

6. Everything Everything - A Fever Dream

5. Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up

4. Julien Baker - Turn Out the Lights

3. The National - Sleep Well Beast

2. White Reaper - The World's Best American Band

1. Slowdive - Slowdive

2017: The Songs (20-11)

Previously: 120-101, 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51, 50-41, 40-31, 30-21
Spotify Playlist

20. Julien Baker - Turn Out the Lights

As good as the studio version of this song is - and I obviously think pretty highly of it - what I'll always remember about it is the first time I heard it, live, in Brooklyn as Baker opened for the Decemberists earlier this year. For more than a year, I'd been living with the bare bones of Sprained Ankle, and all of the pain Baker felt and poured into the songs on that album were tethered to something that kept them from fully, ferociously ripping your heart out. Everything was still a lot to internalize, but on the other side of headphones, I was afforded some protection. Then, as I heard this song's eruption of force in its climax (relatively speaking, here), I was caught completely off guard. The leash that had been around the neck of this music wasn't just taken off, it was ripped off. Baker was done playing nice, and preparing for war against what had held her down on that first LP.

19.  Big Thief - Shark Smile

The "Thelma & Louise" of songs on this year's list, "Shark Smile" is a tale of a fatal-by-design joyride. Starting off with disconnected, disjointed riffing sampled from what was apparently a 30-minute jam session during a day of recording, Big Thief immediately set an uncomfortable mood, appropriately setting us at unease for the story that's about to come. It's one of only a few times where we hear Adrianne Lenker's voice clearly, without muffle or static; it's a far more dire song than most of the rest of Capacity, and gets produced as such.





18. The Afghan Whigs - Demon In Profile

There might not be a word I connect to music more strongly than "catharsis." You can hear it and feel it in so many different types of music that it feels universally applicable and accessible. You can feel it in the careful progression of the likes of Sufjan and Julien Baker, but you can also feel it in songs that can reach stadium rafters, too. The latter phenotype is what we're working with here, because we've got those windmill guitar solos and brass sections and rapid-fire piano all building toward the high point just after the 2:30 mark, when everything comes together to sound like relief for the tension running through the song in the lead-up.



17. Fleet Foxes - Third of May / Ōdaigahara

Two titles for two distinct pieces of music in the same track; for my purposes, the first two-thirds of this song, on its own, probably would've come closer to the top 10. I consider the instrumental outro a bit of a drag and a bit overlong, despite its beautiful moments. The first half, though, from the immediately harmonic start to the near disappearance of every instrument and the eventual restart, is vintage Pecknold. And I love it. "I'm reminded of the time it all fell in line on the third of May," in terms of pure musical construction, with the way it floats down like a leaf shed from the top branch of a tree, is gorgeous. Even as darkness descends and the sound turns more solemn as it approaches the 4:00 mark, beauty abounds. It's a sliver of all there is to unpack on Crack-Up, but it is the most immediately stunning and accessible track on the album.


16. The Districts - Point

Saying something as oblique as "the point is beside the point" leaves me wondering what The Point is more often than not...until I remember to follow these words of wisdom. "Point" is decidedly rough around the edges - more shaved wooden spear than wrought iron pike - with its overdriven guitars and bass plunging into persistent strums every time the chorus bursts onto the scene. There's an undercurrent of drag or resistance or some opposing force that makes the chugga-chugga of the drums against those waterlogged guitars produce this distinct take on slacker rock.




15. Alvvays - In Undertow

A song for a humid summer day if I ever heard one, this is Alvvays' best song since "Adult Diversion," and has an argument for belonging with the likes of "Party Police," too. Molly Rankin and friends sound a bit more world-weary on this one: "What's left for you and me? / I ask that question rhetorically" is about as resigned a line as you can come up with. It's kind of a sign of the times in that way, isn't it?







14. Ariel Pink - Bubblegum Dreams

Yeah, this bozo just had to go and make this sound like something the Beach Boys would've made if they were hanging out with Wavves and Panda Bear, didn't he? I don't know why I just called him a bozo; I think capturing the essence of fuzz pop this well (for my taste, at least) just makes me wish I could read musical tea leaves this well. I'm jealous. Anyway this song is a delightful jaunt, and stays light and airy despite its superfuzzy instruments; the saccharine lyrics come close to being cloying or treading into cynical territory, but instead I just find them funny. Terrifically (typically) weird stuff here.




13. Carly Rae Jepsen - Cut to the Feeling

Look. LOOK. Okay. If you haven't given CRJ a shot in this post-EMOTION world we live in, now would be the time. If you have tried and still can't get into a song like this...well, I mean, musical tastes vary. But I can't ignore a pop song that shoots through stadium ceilings and on up to the goddang moon. It's a song about breaking through monotony and staleness and it's a party I wanna be part of. Party Rae Jepsen.






12. Broken Social Scene - Halfway Home

Some songs just sound better with more cooks in the kitchen. Like right here, where one single, isolated vocalist is never heard; every piece of singing has some counterpart, be it harmonic or rhythmic or whatever. Like most BSS songs, it's a hugely collaborative, team effort. There's a whole ton going on, some raucous amalgam of joyful noise that undergoes no fewer than three separate swells in just over four-and-a-half minutes. It craves to be turned up loud - like most great jams do - and I oblige every time it comes on.





11. Jessie Ware - Your Domino

So few artists going know how to make these soulful confessions of love and adoration sound so smart, assured and distinct time after time. At least, very few know how to do it as well as Ware. This time, the twist is a persistent pulse of synth paired with a tap-tap-pause-tap rhythm, a mix just left-of-center enough to bob your head to without trudging into jazz or math rock territory. I'm also a big fan of how throaty the bass guitar sounds in the mix, layered directly on top of the bass drum hits, as well as how effortlessly Ware's voice climbs up and down the "Do you know I, oh, I wanna be your domino" line at the end of the chorus, bouncing between notes so effortlessly it almost obscures how tricky that line must be to sing. This is also another Ware song free of That One Nagging Thing that's kept me from considering tracks like "You & I (Forever)" among some of my all-time favorites. It's both sensual and catchy, making it one of my two or three favorite Ware tracks yet.

Next: 10-1

2017: The Songs (30-21)

Previously: 120-101, 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51, 50-41, 40-31
Spotify Playlist

30. Wolf Alice - Heavenward

The older I get, the more I seem to enjoy songs that come blanketed in sound; songs that balance volume with depth and create these layers of things to hear all at once. I mean...re-reading that sentence, I realize that that's what all music is (duh), but listen to this song's intro and chorus and follow along with me. With effects on top of instruments - all of them playing their notes in step - combining with Ellie Rowsell's ever-climbing vocal turn, create this mix of stadium rock, shoegaze and drone that mix melody and white noise almost effortlessly. It's a rowdy dream.




29. Spoon - Hot Thoughts

Oh hell yeah, that's a xylophone. Or a marimba or something. But anyway, more than just having that twinkling badassery as part of their rhythm section here, I really enjoy this slightly nefarious side of Spoon's sound. There's a darkened urgency to a lot of their songs Hot Thoughts, and the title track leads the album off appropriately. It's a microcosmic table setter for what's in store: Just the right amount of doom-and-gloom, or at least as much as you can have in a song with a marimba.





28. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - Cumberland Gap

Isbell and his troupe usually do a great job with heartfelt, measured music that prods the heart with intelligent, well-thought ballads and odes. Less frequently, that typical level of smarts is instead applied to something that instead opts to just rock out. Ta-da: Here's "Cumberland Gap," which plasters Isbell's gently-drawled delivery upon a surprisingly frantic beat and traveling bass lick.







27. Dirty Projectors - Cool Your Heart

Thanks to a nice assist from Dawn Richard - and a memorably disorienting, fascinatingly-edited music video - this is my favorite duet of the year. Everything that goes into this song, on paper, feels like it should create a mess: Vocalists aside, the brass, sparse and staccato synth and bongo drum hits...don't necessarily seem like they'd come together to make this slick, bouncy jam. But here all of that is, and the song is definitely a jam.






26. Creeper - Hiding With Boys

Packed with all the riffs and theatricality of vintage My Chemical Romance, Creeper manage to deliver a song about being in love with a vampire with just the perfect amount of schmaltz. It's full of funny lines like "hiding the evidence of dying, you clung to cigarettes and cheap perfume," and "loving you is killing me" (wink wink), but the narrator here is pretty serious about the whole thing and would prefer you acknowledge his love as genuine, please and thanks! It's gotta be tough to find a happy mix of bombast and inanity, but Creeper (on a concept album about this whole affair, no less), manage to execute it all with a fairly tremendous amount of success.



25. The xx - Replica

One song I was pretty attached to, years and years ago, was Seal's "Love's Divine." Something about the piano/keyboard lick the song was built off of resonated with me like none before really had. It was twinkling, crisp, and ushered in the song in the wake of a thunderclap and orchestral swell. I hear similarities in sound between that riff and the one that permeates "Replica," the finest track from the latest xx LP, I See You. And though the themes vary between the two tracks, there's an undercurrent of redemption they both share. For Oliver Sim - who takes lead vocals on this one - there's more of a personal connection to past personal struggles, and the difficulty in accepting our wrongs and finding ways forward. Maybe he's not quite there yet, but the the wordless interludes of celestial synth bursts and Romy Madley Croft coos sure make you feel like he is close. And maybe we all are, too.

24. Lorde - Green Light

A power anthem about pressing on in the wake of a breakup, Lorde's most urgent song to date features a step forward in songwriting that was already considered solidly precocious on Pure Heroine. "I'm waiting for it, that green light, I WANT IT" Lorde clones wail in the background of the chorus, Ghosts of Poptimism Future from the future version of the still-heartbroken Lorde in the present tense of the verses. It's the feeling of progression, from cathartically belting out a song at a traffic light, stopped and waiting for it to turn green, to hitting the gas and powering through the next 0-to-60.




23. Charly Bliss - Westermarck

Eva Hendricks has a singing voice that comes dangerously, dangerously close to being cartoonish. It is so distinctive and occupies such a contrasting niche to the music it complements, that sometimes it hardly feels real. To that end, I can foresee it being off-putting to hear, kind of in the way Colin Meloy's nasally academic turn at the front of The Decemberists doesn't always hit home for everybody. Me, though, I find it enthralling in its uniqueness. Not quite pop punk and just left of indie, Charly Bliss go full throttle on the endorphins to drown out the heartbreak of having someone leave you for your cousin (ouch).



22. Los Campesinos! - I Broke Up In Amarante

We have another breakup song here, but it's not chronicling the end of a relationship; instead it's an autobiographical tale of Gareth David's peaks and valleys during the recording process of Sick Scenes. Amarante is a Portuguese town apparently not far from where the album was finished, and snippets of the lyrics (at least according to David's notes on the song's Genius page) seem to confirm the overarching themes of anxiety and stress, of futility and Sisyphean struggle. Maybe we can credit the band and its members for pulling David through, and could consider the final chorus - where David tries singing the chorus solo, but eventually admits defeat and quickly mutters, "nah, I'm gonna need you to help me out here" to the rest of the band - as a nod to that support.


21. Grizzly Bear - Three Rings

Ed Droste made it a point to say, ahead of Painted Ruins' release, that the album would not be focused on his 2014 divorce from Chad MacPhail. But as we hear two different tones within this song - from gentle and reassuring to pleading and borderline desperate - it's hard not to imagine this as a stand-in for the kind of back-and-forth that may have been sadly prevalent in the latter stages of that relationship. In a less specific way, it's universally applicable to all of us: "I wanna show you my best side...I wanna make it alright...Don't you know that I can make it better? Don't you ever leave me" are lines that carry plain emotional weight that we've all had to lug at some point, too.



Next: 20-11

2017: The Songs (40-31)

Previously: 120-101, 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51, 50-41
Spotify Playlist

40. Dream Wife - Fire

This is the song the good guys hype themselves up with just before going on to stop the bad guys from pulling off That Big Heist. It's got some adrenaline pumping through it, with lots of mid-to-high-neck guitar and that straightforward AC/DC drumming with a couple breakbeat flourishes. It chugs ahead from its first breath, and conjures images of a pretty sweet pool party in the backyard of the richest kid on the block: It's feels mischievous, but in that innocently youthful way that keeps its power chords from ever feeling threatening.







39. Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister - Mercury

At the close of the interplanetary voyage of Planetarium, in a reversal of expectation, we find the closest planet to the sun in our system. And what do we think of when think of Mercury? Warmth. I mean, maybe that's the biggest undersell you can possibly do for a planet outside of calling Jupiter "sizable," but it's the gist and generality behind the way this song comes off. Without burning your ears, "Mercury" contains an abundance of warmth, both in Stevens's soft, hooky verses and the vox-less second half's ambient glide. It contains a lot of the spatial feeling that made "Pluto" successful, but the touch of warmth here succeeds more than the coolly formed gait of its fellow track.


38. Sylvan Esso - The Glow

I have and may always be a big fan of nostalgic songs, the tracks that contentedly remember good days gone by, without ever seeming sad that they've come and gone, or hopelessly resigned to never having any more. Enter "Glow," which navigates the murky waters around the line that divides those themes and finds the happiness in reflection without ever seeming sour or stuck. Amelia Meath namechecks a slew of people - real or imagined, it doesn't make much difference - each with their own distinctive adjective or phrase, and its these descriptors that paint each one as youthful, energized, and part of something beautiful. It's hard to convey something like that when describing some of these people as "snide" or "loud," but listening to the track...it all makes sense. It's part of what makes us and the groups of people we call our friends special; idiosyncrasies and flaws abound on the palette, but they're just as important to the finished painting as any other color.

37. Sufjan Stevens - Wallowa Lake Monster

You can't improve upon Carrie & Lowell. Going into Stevens's b-sides and outtakes project, The Greatest Gift, you know that all you're about to hear will fall short of what the album proper holds in store. But that doesn't mean the collection is altogether inferior on its own merits; far from it. Take "Wallowa Lake Monster," which sounds positive and definitively borne of the Carrie & Lowell sessions era, rife with all the sad and haunting beauty that each of those songs contained. It is, of all the songs contained on this release in the intermission between C&L and whatever comes next, the closest to deserving of a spot on the original album. And it's a b-side! This era of Stevens's songwriting has traded whimsy for gravity, but he's still so damn good at it that it's tough to stop listening anyway.


36. Julien Baker - Shadowboxing

In contrasting Baker's Sprained Ankle with tracks like this, it's immediately apparent how the mixing and mastering have progressed and not swallowed Baker, but instead amplified the weight of her voice and words. Adding a harmonic layer is one strong addition, but the real crunch time arrives when Baker lets loose with a trademark belt or wail. And so she does here, as midway through this track we're enveloped by a blanket of "Tell me that I shouldn't blame myself / You can't even imagine how badly it hurts / Just to think sometimes / How I think almost all the time" that shrouds us in an emotional cloud in that close way that Baker is already perfecting. After comparing herself to an "unloaded shotgun, dismantled and harmless," she implores us: "Tell me you love me / Tell me you loved me," and the distinction the tenses there being made so clear just makes the plea that much more resonant.

35. Phoebe Bridgers - Georgia

It isn't until this song is about a minute old when you feel like it's going to turn into something much more massive than its simple, soft drum patter and bass foundation; that's when the first notes of the theremin arrive, and the build is on. Over the subsequent minutes, the drums continue to add onto themselves, the bass becomes more prominent, and Bridgers's harmonizing becomes a bit more pronounced. And as the urgency reaches critical mass, a string section erupts and launches Bridgers aloft into this wonderfully achy challenge. She is, after all, venting about the rough edges of a relationship to her partner's mother (as I hear it, anyway) in a near-desperate search for the reason why he's so good but not just right. Maybe it's the discovery of her own fault in giving up too soon ("He came up through the water without a sound / With my back to the shoreline, I dreamt that he drowned")

34. The National - Nobody Else Will Be There

Relationships - a marriage, in this song's case - need care and nurturing. Always. As we age, our needs may evolve, but at the base of everything we build with someone else sits an inherent, intangible connection that must be maintained. Reaching the point where that connection has frayed, we again find Matt Berninger. This time, though, we find his singer-character taking on the "how do we fix this?" angle, instead of the "well, things are kinda screwed" one that propelled the drama of so many National songs before this. "My faith is thick and my skin is thin as ever / I need you alone / Goodbyes always take us half an hour / Can't we just go home?" Berninger pleads in his half-broken, closest-thing-I've-got-to-a-falsetto edge of his croon, his voice rationally urgent. At the end of the day, the resolution to all relationship problems lies with the two in the relationship, and Berninger knows that extra, focused attention is called for here. He's ready to work through it.

33. Jessie Ware - Alone

Thematically, we have relevant songs in sequence here on this list: Both this and No. 34 focus on the one-to-one, person-to-person closeness we all feel compelled to fulfill. Ware, though, doesn't find herself in a relationship on the rocks; instead, she's standing at the outset of something great, and she feels it, and she's putting herself out there. Nowhere is that better sung than in verse two: "Just wanna talk a little longer / So baby, don't you wanna stay a little later? / 'Cause I could watch you watch me forever" rings out like a confession of love without ever uttering the L word. It's in that vulnerability that Ware succeeds so greatly here.



32. Everything Everything - Night of the Long Knives

Art pop, as an idea, is a subset of music that should challenge us and what our preconceived notions of song formula and chord progressions should or even could be. Everything Everything have always done a fine job of envelope pushing, never shy of letting Jon Higgs's falsetto loose like the banshee it is, but also of being lyrically sharp (at least, post-Man Alive) and flexing wordplay muscles. It helps that Higgs is so skilled at delivering rapid-fire phrases, and that delivery helps land pre-chorus biters like "Yes, the bomb may be falling / If it lands where you stood / Man, I know it's a real big shame about your neighborhood." These are guys fully aware of the world we live in and the madness that abounds within it, but still find ways to couch it all with a tongue cemented firmly in cheek.


31. Los Campesinos! - Renato Dall'Ara (2008)

Introducing itself as if it were being heard by someone ascending stairs from the basement of a club to its ground floor - or, perhaps, as someone surfacing from a pool that's only outdoor and it isn't heated? - comes a tale of someone who had his ship come in and has struggled to keep riding the waves produced in its wake. Renato comes off like some slacker who probably means well, but can't get out of his own way and lacks some pretty critical self-awareness. That story comes packaged in a romp that calls to mind some of Arcade Fire's earlier roof-lifters if they were played in double time.




Next: 30-21

2017: The Songs (50-41)

Previously: 120-101, 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51
Spotify Playlist

50. Alvvays - Hey

There's a sense of whimsy that...pervades?...Alvvays's second full-length album, a lighthearted current on an airier level than their self-titled debut. Everything feels a bit bouncier now, and nowhere on the album is that put on a brighter, clearer perch than here. "Hey" doesn't quite match the foreboding obsessiveness of "Adult Diversion" from LP1, but its evolution from bubblegum to artpop within itself is a fun little journey. It feels like a longer track than its ~2:50 runtime, mostly for all the different masks it wears. There's a lot going on, but it never approaches feeling exhausting.





49. Rainer Maria - Forest Mattress

The first time I listened to this song, I was looking out my window onto the city skyline as a thunderstorm rolled in. I could swear I saw a lightning bolt hit the Empire State Building. There was something so theatrical about the whole scene, and this track fit the mood like a glove. The shift from dissonance with guitars in the verses to this profound swell as Caithlin De Marrais belts out pastoral passages about being one with nature...if you'll pardon the easy pun, it struck a good chord with my ears. There's a little bit of rawness left in the vocal track that adds to the song's authenticity, validating the emotion behind the words. Highly recommended for your next thunderstorm viewing.



48. Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister - Pluto

The gentle haunt of Sufjan's voice floats through this song like Voyager passing through a planet's city limits. The song plays like an extraterrestrial transmission, shot through the boundless black on its way to some far-flung cluster of starstuff. It carries with it the feeling of pure expanse that any deep thought of space carries with it, especially in the orchestral flourish that bridges Sufjan's verses. The gentle hurt in Sufjan's voice during what could be described as the song's choruses hit squarely, calling to mind some of his more impactful moments on solo work ("Lose our clothes in summertime / lose ourselves to lose our minds" in "Holland" comes to mind for me, for one). There's more production here than your typical Sufjan work outside of Age of Adz, but the spatial atmospheres created by the Dessner/Muhly composition and the subtle layer of intimidation added by McAlister's percussion creates an entire world unto itself; maybe even an entire galaxy unto itself. To be sure, the song feels like a journey that takes us past more than one celestial body.

47. Broken Social Scene - Vanity Pail Kids

This song is just badass. I love the rippling drum pattern, the jolts of brass, the insidiously hushed verses that lead into these call-and-response pieces about greed and outsized self-perception. It's the exact kind of song you can imagine a huge ensemble playing on stage; the sheer number of moving parts helps create all the depth on display here. It's splashy and crunchy and choral and comes off like a sonic riot. Me like.






46. Jaws of Love. - Jaws of Love.

Shifting gears entirely from No. 47 - and further emphasizing why this playlist goes the same whether played straight through or on shuffle - we find Local Natives' Kelcey Ayer's debut as a solo artist. Flush with echo and a lilting piano that gently crashes into an adult-alternative wave, Ayer's smooth voice effortlessly slides up his register into falsetto. The piano reminds me of the music from the home-building mode of The Sims, a relaxing suite of compositions that really put me in that feng shui mood as I built up my pixelated mansion. I swear I mean all of that as a compliment.




45. Wolf Parade - Valley Boy

Maybe the proximity of my writing up this list is too close to the reissue of Automatic For the People for this to be without influence, but I hear a decent bit of peak R.E.M. in this cut from Wolf Parade's return LP. The Spencer Krug-sung track details the aftermath of a one-time star's fall from grace and their subsequent fleeing from the spotlight. It's sort of fitting that the band's first album in seven years has a song with this theme...but I might be trying a bit too hard to connect some dots there.





44. Waxahatchee - Brass Beam

For my money, Katie Crutchfield's rasp is better suited to music like this: A fuller sound, with more production while still feeling DIY. Having her twin sister Allison chip in with some backing vocals and harmonies is a nice touch, too. There's still a lot of bitterness in Katie's voice and words, but here, she's not overpowered by the things seeking to bring her down; they fuel her.







43. Destroyer - Cover From the Sun

A lot of Dan Bejar's work with Destroyer is occluded, erudite, hazy stuff that often sounds like it's coming from a guy perched on a stool beneath a single spotlight at a club. And then, every once in a while, he busts out something like this: A track barely over two minutes long that plays more like a rock anthem while still being plenty erudite. It wouldn't be a Destroyer song if the lyrics weren't full of wordplay like: "So what's new? The girl thinks you are a blonde Che Guevara / Sleep in cars, theater under stars, Sheakespeare in the park / You've come undone," which Bejar even admits is all smirking puffery and "typical Destroyer bullshit...mocking the singer." Planting a tongue firmly in cheek can still feel plenty fun, even without being super obvious all the time.


42. Elliott Brood - Dig a Little Hole

This quick-hitting, folksy stomp-clap that's actually sad as hell when you listen to the words usually leaves me feeling conflicted after I listen to it. The music is lots of fun and bright and upbeat, and the lyrics are about the singer-character's alcoholic and depressed parents, and broken-hearted revenge gone wrong. I mean, that's a lot to cram into 2:25. All I can say definitively is that the song is super catchy, even given its themes, and it's fun to listen to even in the face of all that goes wrong inside it.





41. Japandroids - Arc of Bar

Most of the impact Japandroids' music makes is immediate stuff. From everything on Celebration Rock to the lead title track single from Near to the Wild Heart of Life, it's pretty self-evident that these fellas do good work when the urgency is high and the imperative to kick butt is priority one. But then this song came along and introduced something entirely new to the arsenal: A churning slow-burn of near-epic length (7:25??). The lyrics tune down the "party til we're dead" mentality a bit, and the track's build takes its time; the result is a song that's almost as gratifying as some of the band's best, delivered in almost entirely unexpected way.



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