Top Tunes 2010
People who follow me on tumblr have probably already seen a handful of these blurbs. I haven’t been super explicit about organizing them as an ongoing list, but it was nice to take my time and only have to talk about one or two songs a day. Now, through the magic of tagging, I have a collection of 25 of my favorite songs from 2010 (a month in the making!) for the perusing pleasure of whomever. Clicking a song title in the list below will take you to the thing I wrote about it.
And, of course, any time you put up a list like this, it bears repeating: this is an entirely personal collection. I haven’t heard every good song that came out this year and, more importantly, just because I left some awesome songs off this list doesn’t mean I think any less of them. Actually, to be perfectly transparent, this list was primarily compiled by looking at play counts in my iTunes library and then seeing what feelings I felt, a method which I realize is chock full of holes. Good thing most people don’t judge you based on silly things like year-ends lists, right?
- LCD Soundsystem - “All I Want”
- Real Estate - “Art Vandelay (Daytrotter session)”
- Deerhunter - “Helicopter”
- Janelle Monae - “Tightrope (ft. Big Boi)”
- High Places - “On Giving Up”
- Dent May - “Eastover Wives”
- Here We Go Magic - “Collector”
- Primary 1 - “You Belong to Me (ft. Anna Prior)”
- Emeralds - “Candy Shoppe”
- The Besnard Lakes - “Albatross”
- Twin Shadow - “Slow”
- Mountain Man - “Sewee Sewee”
- Gobble Gobble - “Eat Sun, Son”
- Wye Oak - “My Neighbor”
- Beach House - “Take Care”
- Oberhofer - “o0Oo0Oo”
- Candy Claws - “Silent Time of Earth”
- The Love Language - “Heart to Tell”
- Woods - “Death Rattles”
- Spoon - “Is Love Forever?”
- Benoit Pioulard - “Lasted”
- Crystal Castles - “Celestica”
- Levek - “Look on the Bright Side”
- Gorillaz - “Empire Ants (ft. Little Dragon)”
- oOoOO - “Hearts”
oOoOO - “Hearts”
People don’t always realize that context is a choice, especially when it comes to digital music that you get from the internet. The particular clutch of bands with similar aesthetics as oOoOO—‘witch-house’ or whatever name you want to give it—were mired in context in 2010. What people said about music like this (and, heck, how these bands decorated their myspace pages) often seemed more important than whatever music it was all attached to. And yeah, in some cases that was true, but I also wonder if some of the musical ideas didn’t get a fair shake.
“Hearts” is pale and somewhat gothic, but it’s not crowded by blown-out, sludgy, contourless sounds. The bass rattles like cheap speakers in the back of a car, but it fits comfortably in the middle of the mix. The guitar licks sit like smoky echoes of Fleetwood Mac and the odd synth squiggles provide a wonderfully spacey foil for them. Whoever this singer (‘Miss Lisa’) is, she sounds wounded and distant without the explicitly druggy moans or—heaven forbid—faked rapping. It’s primarily headphone music, but sample the track, speed it up a few clicks, and yeah, I think you could even play this in the club. I guess my point with all of this is: don’t judge a band by its buzz. You might miss out on one of the year’s best songs.
Gorillaz - “Empire Ants” (ft. Little Dragon)
Maybe I’m easily amused, but I still get chills every time this song shifts at the half way mark, when the disco keys fade in and the angular funk beat drops. In a way, the binary construction of “Empire Ants” represents an inverse of the album’s title and theme. The first half is the ‘beach,’ with Damon Albarn extolling the virtues of warm sunlight amid lazy guitar strums and a gently gurgling drum machine. It’s all balmy and humid, with sounds fizzling in the distance like a thin mirage. The second half would of course be the ‘plastic’ part. Gorillaz have always had a heavy streak of futurism and it’s always been bleak and dystopian, but never has it been presented as something immediate and sympathetic. Little Dragon deserve a lot of credit for it, especially Yukimi Nagano and her crestfallen voice, but the essential beauty of the song is tied to the juxtaposition. It might seem obvious, but hearing the same idea expressed through opposite styles in the same song turns out to be pretty breathtaking.
Levek - “Look on the Bright Side”
I would hope that I could say this about every piece in my Top Tunes feature, but this is a song that feels rare. Stylistically, its golden soul affectation is something you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a home-recording indie singer-songwriter, but it’s not so strange that it seems like a knowing wink, a pastiche of cool-via-uncool-coolness (if that makes any sense). Instead, it showcases a fine craftsmanship and natural ease far beyond its humble budget. The rhythm section is smooth and slinky, the guitars are funky and fresh, and the touches of violin and mellotron are gorgeously understated. As different instruments trade off accenting David Levesque’s raspy melodic turns, it’s easy to miss the fact that the song never really repeats itself. “Look on the Bright Side” is everything good soul music can be: fun, earthy, sensuous, poignant, and ultimately life-affirming.
Crystal Castles - “Celestica”
There’s a pretty big disconnect between Alice Glass and Ethan Kath in their grimy hipster hood-rat garb swilling cheap cans of beer in the middle of the day and the delicate, wounded sweep of “Celestica.” It’s a fitting illustration of the loose stylistic binary that defines Crystal Castles, something that was a lot easier to talk about back when you could point to moments of sharp, malicious ugliness that put the smoother stuff in perspective. Here, it’s a much subtler art. Kath does a great job of manipulating volumes, using the rise and fall of hissy white noise to punctuate the beginnings of phrases. And even though Glass sings in the softest and most vulnerable voice she can muster, they’re not afraid to sample it, chop it up, and pitch it down to a deep moan. I think that slippery fearlessness is what makes Crystal Castles’ 2010 output appealing: even if they’re not screaming at you nearly as much, their confidence is ironclad.
Benoît Pioulard - “Lasted”
This is another one that I’ve already covered extensively and am happy with everything I’ve said, but which is worth revisiting because it’s just that great. The idea that this is music with a secret—its words and meaning wisked away by the windiness implied in the recording—is still foremost in my mind when I listen to it. Because it’s pacing is simple and measured, it seems pensive and honest, but Thomas Meluch’s gentle poise and harmonic richness give it a whitewashed air, like it’s participating in far older traditions of music than folk and pop (I’ve used the word ‘monastic’ before and that still feels very appropriate). Not exactly prim or stuffy—it’s far too organic for that—but ‘proper’ and reverent. There are some great sonic touches hiding in the background, too: percussive ticks and taps, twinges of phased guitar strings, and waves of organ drone that swell and threaten to capsize Meluch’s boat. If indie rock can have hymns, “Lasted” is one of the finest.
Spoon - “Is Love Forever?”
What a great little song fragment, huh? It has a beginning and an awesome vamp toward the end, but the middle has been scooped out and thrown over Britt Daniel’s shoulder. Par for the course as far as Spoon is concerned, but I love how convincing they are about it. They never sound sheepish or mild-mannered or like they’re phoning it in, even as they willfully forgo a catchy chorus payoff or, heck, a second verse. And, as we see quite plainly from Daniel’s clipped exclamations, they continue to wear the seams of their studio constructions with pride.
