30. Teenage Halloween - Stationary
May I always remain a sucker for fist-in-the-air punk, forever enthralled by successful build-and-releases, and captivated by music that's cool with sounding a little less than perfect. It's also a pretty neat trick that a track called "Stationary" crams about 4 or 5 segments of rhythm into barely more than 2:30. It's over almost before you realize, but it's got enough of a rush packed in that you feel like you spent twice as long listening to and absorbing it all.
29. Fiona Apple - Newspaper
Nothing about Fetch the Bolt Cutters is "easy" to listen to. The music is raw from toe to tip, arrangements to lyrics, and you can pick any one of its tracks as the one that cuts deepest. It's all incredibly strong in the face of overwhelming vulnerability needed to put songs like this out into the world. This track, addressed to the current partner of Fiona's/the narrator's ex, is one big warning; of manipulation, of doomed love and fatal attraction, and the unbridled urgency of Apple's delivery is enough to spike your blood pressure. It's hard to call any of this song "pretty," because it doesn't feel like the right word, but the swell of the choruses into a choir of the damned backhandedly compliments her company as "wearing time like a flowery crown," trying to spare her from a similar fate, is pretty gorgeous in its own unique way. Like a lot of Apple's work, there isn't much else that sounds like this.
28. The Districts - Changing
I don't consider "mid-tempo" to be a sin. I really don't. I feel like that label gives songs a bad rap. But when you have something like this song, which gets hot but never really boils over, the pacing feels just right. There's enough reverb and echo to make the choruses sound huge compared to the fairly sparse verses, and those builds really give this song character.
27. Everything Everything - Black Hyena
EE are a very political band, and they're not super subtle about any of it, but the way Jon Higgs writes his lyrics and delivers the lines can give things that would look ridiculous on paper this strange level of credence. "Black hyena gonna bite the idiot" doesn't read like the world's most cutting insult, but as the pre-chorus leading into the spectral proclamation of "At last! Hello, re-animator!" it sure sounds like it's got heft the words alone couldn't convey.
26. Beach Bunny - Promises
There's something so youthfully invincible about this song that I'm obsessed with. It, like "Dream Boy" before it on this list, is a song about pining, but with an added layer of inner conflict that catapults the chorus into the sky. And anyway, who can't connect with a line like "Part of me still wants you, part of me wants to fall asleep?"
25. Phoebe Bridgers - Kyoto
Arguably one of the most fascinating people working in music right now, Bridgers has added layers (and horns!) to her sound on her sophomore album to really great effect. And while this track's got its own underpinnings and tinges of sadness, the smarts and wittiness of the lyrics are as sharp as anything else she's produced so far.
24. Pottery - Hot Heater
To borrow from David Letterman in a post-performance plaudit to Future Islands a few years back, I'll take all of this ya got. This new-order Devo/Talking Heads fusion is the perfect balance of weirdness, jam, and groove. And a guttural grunt or two, can't forget that. Whatever you want to call the mutt formed from the mixture of all those ingredients, it's hard to deny that it just sounds like a lot of fun.
23. I Break Horses - Neon Lights
Listening to this song reminds me of the first I Break Horses song I ever heard, "Winter Beats," which immediately captivated me. And "Neon Lights" does a few of the same things that "Winter Beats" did, only bigger and better. The tempo builds faster, the vocals are clearer and higher in the mix, and there's more "pop" than "dream" in this bit of dreampop. There are multiple moments of catharsis, a bunch of little notes that seem to float on in your head even longer than they might've intended to.
22. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - Be Afraid
As far as general life lessons go, "be afraid, be very afraid, but do it anyway" is a pretty good mantra. There's a lot to gained both from being cautious and eventually saying "fuck it" anyway (covid is not one of these things you gain from, so don't even), so it's always nice to get a little push in the back to go for something we're not 100% sure about.
21. Vundabar - Burned Off
There is such much about Vundabar's Either Light that feels airy and fun, and this track leads the charge. From the schoolyard bounce of the guitar/xylophonic keyboard hopscotching along the verses on through Brandon Hagen's squawks to the gentlest of headbanging sections in the second act (seriously, you can bang your head to it, I tried), there's an infectious energy to the enterprise I could feed off of for days.
