Top 50 Songs of 2011 :: 50-41 [They're setting fire to my face]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2011 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 50 to 41.

50. California Wives - "Tokyo" 

Nothing felt more neon than California Wives' "Tokyo" in 2011. It was nothing but synths and guitars, a chorus rooted in a geographic tautology, "They're building houses and lights in Tokyo." The brilliance was relative and it was made manifest in the metallurgic guitar chords and keyboard progressions. It all felt like little dabs of mercury slipping around the surface of a table.

49. All The Apparatus - "Let's Go Ride Bikes"

All Apparatus appeal to anyone who enjoys the work of Los Campesinos and anyone who enjoys fun. But you don't need to be watching that "Grab Some Buds" Budweiser commercial to feel like even your most asinine behaviors hold a life-and-death importance. For this Portland band, it is the simple act of riding bikes outdoors that doubles as a thesis statement, a raison d'etre. It is youth in revolt; youth screaming a silly chorus; youth playing big horns, guitars and chimes. It is unanxious youth in an age of increasing anxiety.

48. Letting Up Despite Great Faults - "Sophia In Gold"



We were arguably more into Letting Up Despite Great Faults' cover art on their 2011 EP, a sepia toned shot of some girl's knees, than we were into their music. This is compliment to that girl's knees and "Sophia In Gold", a snappy little slice of electro-pop that reminds the listener of a more seriously heartsick Jimmy Tamborello. LUDGF finally quit on the girl, whoever she is, saying, "I can't say your lines for you." This is a final act, to be sure, and a good one at that.

47. Ducktails - "Hamilton Road"

Certainly the most underrated chorus of the year belonged to Ducktails, a Real Estate side project, and their song "Hamilton Road". Nothing sounded more like a lazy summer afternoon played over a broken stereo as the band mushed through the awesomely singable, "We sit by the water". It wasn't even two-and-a-half minutes, and it didn't need to be.

46. The Echo Friendly - "Same Mistakes"

First, The Echo Friendly isolate the guitars, then add a clap track and the most distant male and female vocals of the year. If it sounds obliteratingly sad, it is. They're talking to each other, ostensibly about, well, the "Same Mistakes", but it never feels conversational. These two parties divert and merge with each other like two lost sides of a double helix, intersecting for a momentary duet before chasing each other away again.

45. Deleted Scenes - "Bedbedbedbedbed"

We loved that Deleted Scenes gave the world such a head-nodding single in 2011 and we loved that they gave us the central lyric five times in a row. No one made a better case for the lack of a need for a space-bar as the band reflected on a woman who pulled their act together, cut their hair and made them get out of bed in the morning. It sounded like The Shins on too much cold medicine which was entirely great.

44. Gauntlet Hair - "Top Bunk"

Gauntlet Hair are one of those awesome college radio bands with a good gimmick (the reverb thing) and an uncommon boldness. "Top Bunk" snapped like their previous work, only this time it changed time signatures with the effortlessness of Art School Rock. It spun off the rails toward the end, grinding the echo-chamber to a halt. The original statement of purpose still stood: We can make huge music with three guys and an effects pedal.

43. The Radio Dept. "The One"

The Radio Dept. had their best year in history, releasing a double-disk compilation album featuring the previously unreleased, "The One" to go with a decade of singles. It was a slow-drive version of the band's usual cold keyboard, placed firmly on a reggae upbeat. This wouldn't be the same brilliance as "Heaven's On Fire" but it didn't contend to be so, more victory lap than finishing kick.

42. Yukon Blonde - "Fire"

If Family of the Year was going to break out in 2011-12, then Yukon Blonde was determined to be close behind, maybe even transcendent of their genre rivals. Both bands make pop with a distinctly Western feel, "Fire" featuring some slide guitar and an affinity for the apocalypse that you only find in musicians and certain circles of evangelical believers. Since the band qualifies as solidly the former and solidly not the latter, we assume their references to burning water and faces is purely metaphorical, but entirely sticky, a hook that lodged in your brain like it was its last day on planet earth.

41. Dominant Legs - "Hoop of Love" 

There is a world in which you can argue that Dominant Legs' "Hoop of Love" had the single best chorus of 2011. A shimmering slice of guitar pop, the song has a respectable pre-chorus, a vague portent to the take off that happens in the real refrain. Muttered asides about "keeping my mouth shut" blur into the completely elevating hook where the band yelps interrogatives about who will be the one to do a variety of things; they leave these questions unanswered. This fails to mention the bridge, an updated Belle and Sebastian inspiration, full of a flecking strum pattern and a final taxiing to the runway of "Hoop of Love".

On The List :: Gauntlet Hair, TEEN, and We Barbarians @ Mercury Lounge [10.21.11]

This review runs live and in color on the Bowery Presents' House List blog.

Friday night of CMJ, with everyone a little worse for wear, found Mercury Lounge as the home to the Windish Agency showcase, although it may as well have been an echo chamber. The reverberated Gauntlet Hair took the stage in the 9 o’clock slot. The latest of the blog-to-label bands, they parlayed a snapping first single, “I Was Thinking” into an album featuring their trademark high-fret guitar-board strums and slamming drums and bass. Looking a bit like kids who might have run around in a fixed-gear bicycle gang at your liberal arts college, the band played material from their self-titled debut LP, including stunners “Keep Time” and “Top Bunk,” like Dirty Projectors cuts that got dropped to the bottom of a backyard swimming pool, all glittering guitars and troubling echoes.

Up next the surprisingly charming Teen (good luck searching for them on the Internet), an all-female five-piece, claimed to be three-fifths sisters and 100 percent Canadian. Now playing in and around Brooklyn, the band was dressed to kill, eliciting drunken commentary from some grungy looking guys in the middle of the crowd, which the quintet handled and dismissed with the deftness of a stand-up comedian. Playing a tight set of dream pop, the band felt like one part Stars, one part Wilson Phillips and one part School of Seven Bells. Seeming to build converts with each passing song (the yelling dudes were now loudly proclaiming their love for the lead singer or maybe the bassist or perhaps both), the ladies in their evening wear proved to be the type of pleasant surprise that CMJ still provides.

We Barbarians, with a considerably smaller sound check and a considerably larger sound, took the stage at 11 as the most energetic three-piece of the festival. Trafficking in the kind of sound that might have kept We Are Scientists from getting kicked off Virgin/EMI, We Barbarians opened with the shimmering “Headspace,” full of banging drums and soaring guitars. Lead singer Dave Quon is a force of nature, even on the allegedly more thoughtful tracks of the band’s most recent EP, Headspace. A drummer sweating through his beard and a singer sweating through his shirt aren’t new semiotics in rock music, but there is something in We Barbarians that feels singular, loud and important. The bands would move on, perhaps to the rest of their tours or to even later showcases, and the echoes of the second-to-last evening of another CMJ would ring out without the help of a delay pedal.

Listen :: Gauntlet Hair - "Keep Time"
Listen :: Gauntlet Hair - "Top Bunk"
Listen :: We Barbarians

Gauntlet Hair :: "Keep Time"

 The new tribes aren't the face painted kids of the concert festival circuit. A streak of blue and red on your cheeks doesn't make you a Wild Thing anymore than wearing a bandanna encouraged your parents to change the world during the Nixon years. No, these new villages are groups of kids that dance, aesthetics aside, and yelp and shimmy in place without thinking too hard about it. The sounds are underground, reverb heavy and buried in a backyard swimming pool. Gauntlet Hair add a clap track, as they are wont to do, on "Keep Time", the bombastic opener from their coming LP. The scope and breadth are stunning, a cacophony that holds desperately to coherence, or maybe a narrative structure newly disinterested in following a linear path. These are the hymns of the next thing, anxious and uncomfortable, driving and lost, ripping and humming in time.


Gauntlet Hair "Keep Time" by DOJAGSC

Gauntlet Hair :: "Top Bunk"

No one, and I mean no one, does looping, dreamy pop better than Gauntlet Hair. Last year's surprise jam, "I Was Thinking" was a snapping, bombastic affair. It nearly wore you out with higher-than-hi-fi guitars and a clap track sharp enough to pop a surprised ear drum. Latest single, "Top Bunk", from the band's coming Dead Oceans release steers their sound in slightly different waters, these with the distinct feeling of a very fun, very liquid stop-motion video. Placed squarely at the center are these cascading guitars, but playfully enough to sound like an M.C. Esher merry-go-round, shot from above, spinning fully to the beat. And round and round you go, a pleasant summer dizziness of too little sleep and sun blasted afternoons. The final movement provides change, bits of relief, and some final shabby guitars to say, well, we've been around now.

Listen :: Gauntlet Hair - "Top Bunk"

DJ Natty Heavy :: "32ft/second June/July Mix"

DJ Natty Heavy and I go back more than 10 years now. And though my career only took a weird and brief trip through the music industry, he made his life there. Currently you can find him producing a top-rated morning radio show in Charleston, South Carolina and spinning the hottest records (check his Fashion Week video above) at Charleston's most exclusive clubs. On a recent visit I asked Heavy if he'd be up for putting together mixes for the blog based on some recent and challenging songs I sent his way. Now, this kid spins hip-hop, freestyles against Common, but you're not exactly going to find the new Cults record in his whip. But he agreed to the challenge, and the first edition mixtape is hot off the decks and ready for stream and download below, along with a track list. This might be the least hip-hop thing he has ever done, and it is absolutely perfect for all your plug-and-play summer circumstances. He even threw in some extra fog horn for me. Check it up or check it down.

Tracks:
1. Cults - "You Know What I Mean"/Common - "The Corner"
2. The Vaccines - "Norgaard"
3. French Films - "Convict"
4. Gauntlet Hair - "I Was Thinking"/Lady Gaga - "LoveGame"
5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - "An Ugly Person On A Movie Screen"/ Tupac - "Changes"
6. Coldplay - "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall"
7.Theme Park - "Milk"
8. Tom Vek - "A Chore"

Natty Heavy - "32ftsec July 2011 Mix" by 32feet