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.
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30-21
