1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps." I don't know what brought me back to this song, but I discovered it anew this month and fell in love with Nick Zinner's sleek, chime-y guitars. Karen O really lets it all go, especially when her voice crackles during the song's heartfelt moments: "wait--they don't love you like I love you." The YYYs debut really is fantastic; I remember buying it at Best Buy many, many years ago and finding it immensely disappointing. Funny how things work out sometimes.
2. Japandroids - "The House that Heaven Built." - Besides mewithoutYou's excellent new album, there isn't a record I'm more excited for this year than Japandroids's Celebration Rock. "Younger Us," which actually was released in 2010 but will appear on the new record, is one of my college anthems, a song that I hope to look back on and reminisce about the "night[s] you were already in bed, said 'fuck it,' got up to drink with me instead." And don't even get me started on "Young Hearts Spark Fire"; not many songs have more heart, more sincerity, than that. "The House that Heaven Built" picks up where these other great Japandroids songs leave off: massive electronic, fuzzy guitars; big drums; anthemic choruses; and sing-songy but emotionally-tinged lyrics. The song is energetic, full of enthusiasm, and just really fun; I love this band and am so excited to hear whatever is next.
3. Cloud Nothings - "Stay Useless." This song reminds me of The Replacements' "Unsatisfied," one of those rare, inexhaustible songs that hits home from the first note. Cloud Nothings's throaty, nasally vocals may be off-putting at first, but the skill of the guitar work--just listen to how the chorus explodes--and the sheer catchiness of the song demand that listeners return to the vox and learn to love them. I couldn't have been sent this during a more apt period in my life; buried under the burdens of my graduate school existence, words like "I need time to stop moving / I need time to stay useless" resonated all too clearly. I take the message as this: life moves too fast--and, for me, sometimes too slow, somehow, simultaneously--and we occasionally need to pause to be useless for a moment, even when every second seems to be weighted with importance. Part of the awesome irony of the song is that "Stay Useless" is relentless, along with its heavy instrumental follow-up, "Separation." I think that adds an extra dose of charm, and certainly pathos, to a song that will absolutely remain one of the best I've heard in 2012.
4. Thom Yorke - "The Clock." Ever since I discovered Bright Eyes' "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, I fell in love with morbid, electronic-based alt-rock. I guess that's the best way to describe this. The schizophrenic drums, gurgling guitars, and ghoulish vocals sound like the soundtrack to 1984 (not surprising from a man who's written songs with Radiohead titled "2+2=5"). Sometimes Radiohead's music doesn't connect with me, but this dystopic nightmare instantly stuck. I recognized quickly the depth of its metaphors: is this about a failing relationship or death? ("time is running out for us / but you just move the hands of the clock") or more literally about oppression/the loss of autonomy ("You make believe that you are still in charge")? More specifically, on an auditory level, I really enjoy the first moment Yorke sings, "You throw coins down the wishing well"; the descending echoes of his voice mimic the coins' plummet. It's a smart move, capturing a sense of decline, precipitating some form of violent crash--fitting imagery on this bleak track. Just on a purely personal level, though, I'm always excited for that brief moment in the song. For me, at least, songs are at their greatest when the smallest details trigger/offer the biggest reactions/payoffs.
5. Thom Yorke - "Atoms for Peace." Whereas "The Clock" assaults its listener with haunting vocals and relentless drums, "Atoms for Peace" begins tranquilly with hushed guitars and Yorke's soberest voice. The lyrics are beautiful, though extremely poignant:
No more talk about the old days;
It's time for something great.
I want you to get out
And make it work.
So many lies,
So feel the love come off of them
And take me in your arms.
It's funny, whenever I read people's reactions to songs, I always scoff at the tired interpretation that "This song represents X's struggling/failing/failed relationship with Y," yet I view so many songs as describing addiction. I hear Yorke imploring someone to abandon his/her embellished memories of the past and to thrive in the present; Yorke cannot keep saving the person from "going to the dark side with your flying saucer eyes / No more falling down a wormhole that I have to pull you out." The flying saucer eyes is a powerful way of describing someone's transfixion; Yorke has to gently nudge in his consolatory, lullabyish voice, along with an assuaging guitar solo, to have the person "get out / and make it work." It all sounds therapeutic, especially on an album filled with harsh electronic noise.
6. Thom Yorke - "Harrowdown Hill." In terms of songwriting, this is one of Yorke's standouts. Not many songs can be intense and infectious simultaneously, but "Harrowdown" achieves that during its dramatic chorus where Yorke wails the melancholic lines: "But I'm coming home / To make it all right / So dry your eyes. / We think the same things at the same time -- / We just can't do anything about it." These wonderfully vague lines could be interpreted in various ways, although it's hard for me to remove them from some context of violence: the stream of consciousness ramblings ("Did I fall or was I pushed / Then where's the blood?") and imagery that I cannot detach from the Holocaust ("There are so many of us / Oh you can't count"). "Harrowdown Hill" falls somewhere in between the morbid nightmare of "The Clock" and the tranquility of "Atoms"; as Yorke says, here he's "slipping in and out of consciousness," suggesting a sort of liminality, a mix of the solipsistic nightmares of "Clock" ("Can you see me when I'm running?") and the troubling sentimentality of "Atoms" ("We think the same things at the same time / We just can't do anything about it"). The song flows seamlessly through this web-like narrative, sonically weaving from the opener's prickly guitars to the chorus's emotive outburst to the conclusion's hypnotic guitars. I don't know why this album was received lukewarmly; I think it's better than most of Radiohead's work.
6. Thom Yorke - "Harrowdown Hill." In terms of songwriting, this is one of Yorke's standouts. Not many songs can be intense and infectious simultaneously, but "Harrowdown" achieves that during its dramatic chorus where Yorke wails the melancholic lines: "But I'm coming home / To make it all right / So dry your eyes. / We think the same things at the same time -- / We just can't do anything about it." These wonderfully vague lines could be interpreted in various ways, although it's hard for me to remove them from some context of violence: the stream of consciousness ramblings ("Did I fall or was I pushed / Then where's the blood?") and imagery that I cannot detach from the Holocaust ("There are so many of us / Oh you can't count"). "Harrowdown Hill" falls somewhere in between the morbid nightmare of "The Clock" and the tranquility of "Atoms"; as Yorke says, here he's "slipping in and out of consciousness," suggesting a sort of liminality, a mix of the solipsistic nightmares of "Clock" ("Can you see me when I'm running?") and the troubling sentimentality of "Atoms" ("We think the same things at the same time / We just can't do anything about it"). The song flows seamlessly through this web-like narrative, sonically weaving from the opener's prickly guitars to the chorus's emotive outburst to the conclusion's hypnotic guitars. I don't know why this album was received lukewarmly; I think it's better than most of Radiohead's work.
8. mewithoutYou - "The Soviet." Sometime this month I discovered newfound brilliance in this song, but I can't for the life of me remember what I realized! But I can say that I love the imagery in this song about temptation: the foxes, who "only come out when its quiet," come with their tails "of delicate orange and cinnamon red" to tempt the spiritually "dead" to continue to ignore true Love (God). The singer's own struggles are captured as he admits, "How else can I confess? When I looked down as if to pray...well, I was looking down her dress!," yet he ultimately renounces them during the song's emotional and instrumental climax, "Ah! I don't need this! Stay out! I don't need this." It's a brief, whirlwind of a song, but I find it perfectly compact, probably the climax of what continues to remain my favorite album of all time.
9. M83 - "I Guess I'm Floating." Is it a somber reflection on the past? A spirit hovering over the present? It's both haunting and comforting, shocking and soothing -- all in all, unsurprising ambient excellence from M83.
10. M83 - "Teen Angst." The way this song builds off of the hushed electronics of "I Guess I'm Floating" is magnificent; it reminds listeners of the beauty of listening to albums all the way through. Despite the title, the lyrics have more emotional depth than angsty doggerel: "How fast we burn / How fast we cry / The more we learn / The more we die. / I hear the planet crying now." I don't want to read the last line as some form of bitter jab at the teenage world; I see it instead as a somber understanding of our collective fate.
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