Top Tunes 2011: The Full List
I’ve been working my way through a list of 20 favorite songs of the year this month and today marks the end of it. Here’s the full list in a convenient package, with links to the little things I wrote about each song. Also, I made a (slightly incomplete) Spotify playlist with all the available songs, if that’s something you’re into. Stay tuned for a Top Albums list next week…
- Orcas - “Until Then (Broadcast cover)”
- Beyoncé - “Party (feat. André 3000)”
- Handsome Furs - “When I Get Back”
- Widowspeak - “Hard Times”
- James Blake - “The Wilhlem Scream”
- Julian Lynch - “Terra”
- Shabazz Palaces - “An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum”
- Purity Ring - “Ungirthed”
- Toro Y Moi - “How I Know”
- tUnE-yArDs - “My Country”
- Wye Oak - “Holy Holy”
- Destroyer - “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker”
- Dum Dum Girls - “He Gets Me High”
- Battles - “Ice Cream (feat. Matias Aguayo)”
- Big K.R.I.T. - “Dreamin’”
- Phantogram - “Don’t Move”
- Forest Fire - “They Pray Execution Style”
- Bill Callahan - “Drover”
- Twin Sister - “Gene Ciampi”
- Jay-Z & Kanye West - “Ni**as in Paris”
Jay-Z & Kanye West - “Ni**as in Paris”
Though Watch the Throne covers more ground than most people want to give it credit for, the gold-plated operative word on the marquis is still king-making (or, if you prefer, superhero-making). The double-edged mass appeal of it can not be overstated—love them or hate them, our collective jaws sit agape at the spectacle of Jay-Z and Kanye West crowning themselves heroes of…uh…rap? Pop? Bootstrap capitalism? Mogulhood? According to Jay, it’s ballin’, and in my lack of a better term I suggest we accept his. With its tense, echoing riff and ticking white-knuckle beat, “Paris” ensures The Throne’s victory is properly writ: larger than life. From bathroom stalls to McDonald’s menus to French discos to royal weddings, the pair treat their lives as a master class in ballin’, so much so that even the jokey “going gorillas” line (and John Heder’s subsequent response) takes on weight. Do we not know what it means because it’s nonsense or because we just don’t ball hard enough? For the answer, see the mid-2011 spike in Google searches for “Margiela” and the YouTube footage of two millionaires blasting through “Paris” three eleven (?!) times a night. Will Ferrell was right: this year, this was the only song we skated to.
Twin Sister - “Gene Ciampi”
“If you like Gene Ciampi, you will love his movies!” sings Andrea Estella on a standout track (one of many!) from Twin Sister’s In Heaven. So who the hell is Gene Ciampi, you ask? According to Google, Wikipedia, and IMDb: nobody. Whether so obscure he’s escaped the eye of the internet or (far more likely) just a figment of her imagination, the point of the song is clearly not man but myth. He’s the kind of leading man that’s been out of fashion for decades—he sings, dances, brings the romance and comedy in equal measure—making Twin Sister’s ode to him less an act of faux celebrity worship than a whimsical wish for an outmoded kind of “magic-hearted man” to adore. Much of this nuance is eclipsed, however, by the pure, fantastic sound of this track. Drums shuffle with confidence and subtlety (cowbell!) while bass is hefty and organic. You can almost feel the thick metal coil of the strings on your fingers as it leads between verses. And that guitar—it’s wily yet melodic, the tone bending and springing somewhere between Memphis country and California surf. In true Twin Sister fashion, though, the cumulative effect of “Gene Ciampi” follows neither the whimsy of its words nor the hodgepodge of its sound. Instead, it simply feels fresh, fun, sophisticated, and oh so cool.
runners-up - “Stop,” “Kimmi in the Rice Field”
Bill Callahan - “Drover”
We’ve all seen enough movies to know that the cowboy, the lone horseman, the cattle driver (‘drover’ in the old parlance) is one of the most classically conflicted characters in American literature. He’s a grizzled man—hardened by years of life on the move, he carries with him a vague cynicism that spurs him to seek solitude, yet he remains keenly aware of the weight of his isolation, unable to completely bury his humanity in the dust and sweat of his work. “The pain and frustration is not mine, it belongs to the cattle,” sings Bill Callahan on this, the opening track of his latest album, perhaps salvaging a tough exterior by projecting his internal struggles somewhere else. He strums his guitar with a tense hand, remaining a quarter beat ahead of the drums, guitars, and violins that serve as his accompaniment. “One thing about this wild, wild country: it takes a strong-strong, it breaks a strong-strong mind,” he reminds. It’s easy to hear the first parts of this chorus—about wild country and strong minds—and mistake it for self-mythology without realizing that the whole thing amounts to an admission of exhaustion. And yet, like the old drovers whose ranks he joins himself to, Callahan is seasoned enough to know that it’s the only way his lifestyle can work. For him, anything else is a waste of time.
runner-up: “Riding for the Feeling”
Forest Fire - “They Pray Execution Style”
Most songs on Staring at the X, the slept-on sophomore album from Brooklyn’s Forest Fire, exist in a comfortable place between rough-hewn folk rock and crunch-leaden spaciness. But here, on the record’s standout centerpiece, they deviate furthest from their comfort zone and in so doing stumble upon perhaps the most dangerous and exciting version of themselves possible. Natalie Stormann takes the lead from usual frontman Mark Thresher on all fronts, giving a slick and level-headed vocal performance while her bass guitar becomes the iron backbone of the song, a menacing disco anchor around which the rest of the band smears static, noise, touches of synth, and the barest of beats. Though Forest Fire should in no way be considered a danceable band, the way they tear apart a steady four-on-the-floor pulse and electronic arpeggios, leaving only intermittent scraps drifting in their wake, is wholly gripping. They’re not afraid to let Stormann’s phrases hang in mid-air or let the grainy buzz of guitar feedback linger over a chord change, abstracting the otherwise structured style from which they’re pulling. “They Pray Execution Style” is the rare song that complements the established work of a band while simultaneously pointing the way forward to an electrifying new future.
Phantogram - “Don’t Move”
Where they once worked in dark, hard-boiled beats largely inherited from Portishead, Phantogram are now taking steps toward the livelier end of the night. The collage of clipped little samples that litter “Don’t Move”—watery orchestra hits, luxurious soul horns, an impassioned vocal wail—create a swirling effect that transforms its tumbling drums and skyward guitar peals into a slo-mo pan-global jump-along. It’s all percussive, really, pushed ahead by those extra thumps of kick drum and punctuated by collective crashes (absent actual cymbals)—a four minute series of exclamation points. So while it’s true you can dance to this one, a casual ear to Sarah Barthel’s breathless lines reveals that “shake, shake, shake” may not refer to our booties after all. “I’m not your nervous feeling each time we say goodnight,” she sings, “I’m not your paranoia when someone’s at the door,” and, pointedly, “I’m not your drinking problem.” In this light the song’s title and Barthel’s “keep your body still” dictum become a kind of passive accusation. While the subject sits fretfully envisioning “buildings burning to the ground,” Barthel points to the bright side—“Can’t you see that you’re fine / and know that you’re still alive”—taking a cue from the beat and soothing social anxiety through inclusion.
Big K.R.I.T. - “Dreamin’”
In the grand tradition of songs like “Juicy,” this is a self-contained origin story paired with a light kiss-off to everyone who ever doubted Justin Scott, a.k.a. Big K.R.I.T. But rather than harp on his success (in part, perhaps, because he’s still something of an up-and-coming figure) “Dreamin’” finds K.R.I.T. casting his youthful struggle as a point of integrity. “Couldn’t afford to pay the rent but passed up on a deal ‘cuz it wasn’t right,” he explains humbly, “besides I ain’t rap about dope nor did I sell it / I guess the story of a country boy just ain’t compelling.” If the lyrics scan a tad flat, it’s because they’re brought to life by the soft sepia glow of K.R.I.T.’s much-lauded production. Southern in its rural sprawl but eschewing the sharp highs and thundering lows of real trunk-rattlers, “Dreamin‘“s beat fleshes out all the strange nostalgia for harder times only hinted at in the verses. K.R.I.T. pulls this trick several other places on Return of 4eva, but nowhere else does he sound as haunted by his own doubts (the chorus samples croon “He’s dreamin’…he’s not for real”) or as uplifted by the knowledge that he’s proven them wrong.
runner-up: “My Sub”
