I had some stuff written for this originally, but reviewing each song was getting a bit tiresome for me (probably because I started at No. 50 and worked my way down), so here, for your viewing pleasure and without commentary (but with YouTube links!), is my list of what I thought were the 50 best songs of 2012.
Simply enough, these are the 10 songs that didn't make it on to my Top 50 of 2012, but which I thought deserved to be highlighted anyways. And if you don't like them, I can only promise that, logically, the actual Top 50 will be better. Presented in no particular order, here they are:
“Time To Kill” | Gold & Youth | Time To Kill 7”
Maaan this song is just stellar, in such a hauntingly simple way. Guy-girl vocals, a thumping bass line, a few guitar strums, and then some mellow percussion thrown in. Everything works so darned fine here that it’s hard to find fault with it. Which makes you think: what’s a really great song? Is it one that does things particular well? Or is it one that doesn’t do anything badly? I’m not going to start this list with a rumination about how good this piece of music is, but with a thought: what is it that makes music good for you? Is it something you enjoy listening to before you go out? Is it something you can relax to at home on a weekday evening? Is it good study music? Is it something that gets you excited when it comes on the radio or your iPod? And to bring it all back, is it something that excels at a particular aspect – or many aspects – or is it something that really just isn’t bad? That last part is especially important. Pop music in general is manufactured to be perfect and listenable. Isn’t a Flo Rida track listenable? Then why does it end up being catchy, but you know that it’s really just shit? Think about that while going through this list, as well as my Top 50 for the year. These songs aren’t perfect. But they evoke something, they make you feel something - good or bad – and they strive to achieve something musically, each in their own way.
“My Love Is Real” | Divine Fits | A Thing Called Divine Fits
This one is more about the great album and project that Spoon’s Britt Daniel and Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs’ Dan Boeckner teamed up for this year. Especially with Handsome Furs abruptly calling it a career (but not a marriage? Dan and his wife/band partner Alexis are still together as far as I know), Divine Fits gives everyone something to enjoy in the same vein. This was the group’s first release off A Thing Called Divine Fits, and it’s a great mission statement for their work.
“Lots” | Dan Deacon | America
As you may know, I’m a huge sucker for Dan Deacon’s work and aural aesthetic (can sound have an aesthetic? pretty sure it can). He released America this year, and while I haven’t listened to the full album yet (it’s sitting in a folder on my desktop), “Lots” is a great track I’ve had the pleasure of spinning a few times this year. It has Deacon’s patented synths, insanely frenetic pace, and crushing build, with some pretty unintelligible lyrics (with some allusion made to past songs?) thrown in by the man himself. “Lots” starts like a laptop booting up, then descends into some kind of daytime rave that collapses in on itself. Sounds about right for a song from the Baltimore DIY madman.
That + just looks right, doesn’t it? Few other duos did such a great job together this year, as another one of their tracks makes an appearance on the Top 50 later this week. Florence is an immensely talented vocalist, as I experienced first-hand this summer at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal. Calvin Harris on the other hand has an uncanny knack for cranking out danceable – yet palatable – tracks with a stunning consistency. He doesn’t make bad music. I don’t think he’s capable of it. There’s just enough pacing with the piano, the kicks are subtle instead of overpowering, and he utilizes Florence’s voice as the central aspect of the song, building around it and letting the instrumentals fall at her feet when she takes to her whisper-singing. Calvin Harris made it a fun year to dance. Florence Welch made it a fun year to sing. Together, they made it a fun year to listen to music.
“Circumambient” | Grimes | Visions
The first thing to point out about this song is that “circumambient” is somehow actually a word according to spellcheck. That’s pretty cool. Secondly: this has to be the most overlooked track on Grimes’ excellent album Visions. It starts inauspiciously enough, with 30 seconds of a jets-soaring sound floating around, a steady, bass-y drumbeat, and then some synth coming in, followed by the bad-ass kick-drum that blows this track away. Claire Boucher’s lyrics are uncommonly easy to make out for the first bit, then the ‘chorus’ comes in and it’s all spliced “baby”s and “aiii”s, with that kick-drum providing the propulsion for the whole thing. Another verse, with Grimes pleading to her “baby” about having a “problem” and not knowing how to stop it. After that: a solid minute of “woooo”s and slow-building mayhem. The drums, the hymnal synths, and on top of all of it, layers and layers of Grimes’ Mariah Carey-defying falsetto. It’s hard not to break out dancing listening to this tune.
“Fall In” | Cloud Nothings | Attack On Memory
Fall in love? Fall in a puddle? Who cares, someone’s falling, and it sounds fucking awesome. Punk goes super-charged pop with Cloud Nothings, and this track is the perfect example. I know you read that and thought “pop goes punk? forget it”, but Cloud Nothings succeed in a way that defies genre labels or mash-ups or anything. Their singles simply evoke youth and carelessness and pain and joy, but set to music. The jangly guitar, the Weezer-evoking “fall innnn, fall innnn, fall innnn”s, and the total exuberance this band plays the song with makes you feel like life is going at 200km/h, one verse at a time.
“The Kids Were Wrong” | Memoryhouse | The Slideshow Effect
The album overall was underwhelming for me, but this track in particular was Memoryhouse at their upbeat best. The drumming provides the real drive, but the sing-songy vocals evoke a hazy sense of place, while the lyrics allude to a forgotten kind of childhood. There’s a sense of loss inherent in this song – loss of sense of self, loss of innocence, loss of home, I’m not sure – but the music is too happy to keep you dwelling on that feeling. Unfortunately, not keeping the other songs perky enough to accomplish the same brought down the rest of the album, but this song remains a highlight.
“Born To Lose” | Sleigh Bells | Reign Of Terror
This song starts off with the usual gusto of a Sleigh Bells tune – crashing cymbals, nearly-out-of-tune huge guitars, and stadium-echo vocals. Sleigh Bells definitely rub a lot of people the wrong way, seeing as they’re capital-L loud and ear-drum busting with their music. They still possess a sense of balance though, as the vocals here are measured, and the instruments try to drown each other out, but don’t. There’s still the yelling and the brashness, but also an odd sense of sullenness to “Born To Lose”. Not vintage Sleigh Bells in every sense of their style, but we’ll take it.
“Teary Eyes And Bloody Lips” | Moonface | With Sinai: Heartbreaking Bravery
I stopped trying to make sense of Moonface’s main actor Spencer Krug years ago. Between being the odder-voiced vocalist in Wolf Parade and his indulgences in (occasionally-maddening) side projects like Sunset Rubdown, the man has made a career of boundary-pushing – mainly, with my ability to stomach most of his music. When he succeeds in aligning himself to some sort of listenable content though, you get a great song like this. Lyrics aside – “Teary eyes and bloody lips/Make you look like Stevie Nix/We never knew that being cruel/Was such a cool thing to do” – or maybe because of them, this song has a great build for its short 2:47 length, featuring swirling synth and guitars. There’s something about the keyboard in this track that makes you think “pirates doing choral singing for someone about to be walked off the plank”, and the literary rambling at the end is thought-provoking if not capable of making sense, but this is still good music, in one way or another.
“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” | Tame Impala | Lonerism
This is almost more the story of a band than of an individual song. I had Tame Impala’s debut album, and I’ve come to so thoroughly despise it for some reason that I haven’t even bothered to listen to it for comparison’s sake. I think I deleted it off my iTunes anyways. I don’t even care enough to check. But, all that being said, their new stuff follow the same style of stoner-rock, but just…better? I don’t even know how to explain it. I think it has to come down to different production, or maybe the drums come through better in these songs, or maybe the first batch of tunes you had to be high to enjoy, and these are fine if you still have all your wits about you. I don’t care to find out what the difference is to be honest, because I’m just going to enjoy “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” for what it is: a good song. No context, nothing – just a singular occurrence of pretty good music. There.
Posts
