Top 50 Songs of 2013 :: [30-21]

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 2013 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 30 to 21.

30. Prides - "Out of the Blue"



At the moment when you're reading this in March or June of 2014 and you've Google searched "new Glasgow band Prides" and you're realizing the "Out of the Blue" was one of the best songs of the previous year, don't feel guilty or ashamed. "Out of the Blue", like its title, came from nowhere and crushed the listening public at the point of its release in early 2013, a public still likely drunk on the success of CHVRCHES, and provided a slamming and singable synth symphony to dance yourself clean. That's the word from the future and the past.

29. Local Natives - "Heavy Feet"



In a year that Vampire Weekend thoroughly dominated the mainstream indie rock World Music scene, it was unfortunately easy to forget the dense success of Local Natives' second LP. "Heavy Feet", an alternatively plaintive and storming treatise, rode the back of friscalating drum riff and the soaring vocals of two lead vocalists. The hook lyric, "After everything", though "Heavy Feet" was much more about the present than anything else.

28. The Zolas - "Invisible"



"Invisible" emerged as a yippy and misbehaved single, a one-off from Vancouver power-poppers, the Zolas. Of course, like their other work, the chorus stabbed you in the chest and demanded utter complicity. It wasn't necessarily about Gyges' ring, but it did concern itself with the collapsing architecture of modernity. An incomplete but beautiful treatise on destruction, the listener found themselves singing, "When you need some oxygen, jump into the fire with us", an implication that burning it all down was a collective project.

27. Frightened Rabbit - "Backyard Skulls"



Frightened Rabbit, what else could they possibly have to offer? Listeners rode the misery plane into the hillside, absolute CFIT, on Midnight Organ Fight, before the band told us they weren't "miserable now" on the subsequent LP. It was a head-spinner as we arrived at their latest and its best track, "Backyard Skulls". Were we here to be destroyed or not? The lyrics concerned themselves with the things, the bodies, buried in our metaphorical backyards. Someone always finds these terrible memorials, "a long lost soul, like a skull beneath the ground". The pathos was turned to 11 even if we all, band and listener, knew we didn't feel feelings like that anymore.

26. Smith Westerns - "Varsity"




It was necessarily regrettable that the Smith Westerns best ever song, "Varsity" didn't merit more positive press. The record from which it originated was, unfortunately, poor. Containing only two good songs, "Varsity" was left nearly alone to fend for the band's credible and critical future. "I guess it's a point of view", they sang like relativists in the pre-chorus. The arrangement recalled a high school experience no one ever lived, a remembered self that never existed and a world that was only in dreams.

25. Junip - "Walking Lightly"



The menace of the drums belied the lyrics of "Walking Lightly", which largely concerned the responsible tread with which we collectively traipse the land. Jose Gonzalez whispered his whispering best, ushering the listener into a world, self-contained and complete, where he suggested something and nothing at once. It was one of the great and forgotten songs of 2013. Gonzalez, likely, wanted it this way.

24. Waxahatchee - "Brother Bryan"



If you didn't much care for Liz Phair, despite the endorsement of NPR, you weren't much for Waxahatchee in 2013. If Phair made you uncomfortable, if the hooks were too irremovable, Waxahatchee was a derivative version of a difficult thing. But if you loved Phair, this was as close as you could come to 1993. "Brother Bryan", the best song off a transcendent record, isolated a lonely bass riff and a few splashy drums beneath the singular vocal of Katie Crutchfield. The last lyric that shuts everything down, "In this place I think about you", one more measure and it was over.

23. Small Black - "Free At Dawn"



It didn't make a lot of sense, and it didn't need to. Like most great pop, "Free At Dawn" rooted itself in an initial loop, expanding the idea in imperial fashion, adding a down-beat and then storming through an echoing chorus that never totally got its due in 2013. The substance proved ethereal - "I was feeling as reckless as rain" - and the final movement, an invigorated low-end and a doubling of the first impulse suggested a celebration this describing the freedom of the morning.

22. Phantogram - "Black Out Days"



Phantogram never find themselves far from a huge loop, and "Black Out Days" did not disappoint. Buzzing synths competed with the fecund vocals of the lead singer, who sang things like, "I don't ever recognize your face", before the the chorus exploded into a sky of unrecognizable sounds. While they surely lifted the initial loop from Freelance Whales' "Generator", no one knew and no one cared. It was about the explosion of the short term memory, a discursiveness on modernity that sounded destructive and was.

21. Sky Ferreria - "You're Not The One"



Everyone loved the Sky album - even if it was dark, NSFW and needlessly devoid of hooks in places - and "You're Not The One" surged as lead single and one of the best songs of the year. The pre-chorus ("It's the middle of the night ...") was good enough to be a hook on most other songs but here it merely set up Ferreria at the top of the room on the title lyric. It was a John Hughes slam for an era that barely knows who John Hughes is, a Breakfast Club for a generation that never went to detention for anything. Suffice it to say, negation is the new affirmative and, "You're Not The One".

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [20-11]

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 2012 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 20 to 11.

20. Jinja Safari - "Hiccups"



It was post-Vampire Weekend pop, but it didn't make it any less fun, or any more awkward when the band balked at questions about Graceland. When you're the seventh layer in the seven-layer derivative dip, you don't think much about the six layers below you, even if it means the dudes in Lady Smith want to punch your lights out. "Hiccups" proved new-fashioned fun, a Lion King for adults, cartoonish bombast and hooks for days.

 
19. Slam Donahue - "Bug in the Sun"



"Bug In The Sun" emerged as one of the most singable melodies that 2012 had to offer. The refrain, abrasive on recording, intentionally and artfully tweakish, became something else when re-sung in the shower or a good parking garage. "Twitching like a bug in the sun," really a line about modern anxieties, transmuted into something less when put in the voice of the listener. It was a throwback, melodic and garish, self-consciously poppy, the kind of thing best sung again and again.


18. The Happy Hollows - "Endless"



The Happy Hollows had a quiet 2012, save the release of "Endless," a stirring and juiced up take on the pop that Fleetwood Mac (and now those girls in Haim) made deservedly famous. "Endless" ended in a series of soaring "ohs" from lead singer Sarah Negahdari, the line between her falsetto and normal vocal becoming more and more blurry in the maw. It was probably the layers, sliver upon sliver of vocal mix until the only thing left was one of the most elevating refrains of the year.


17. Wild Ones - "It's Real"



A small song, Wild Ones' "It's Real" was a break up anthem with only one hook. But, the chorus, "One more terror night/no I don't think we'll let that happen" proved both grammatically specious and entirely awesome. It was the kind of music that Rilo Kiley stopped making well before they imploded, or maybe a female fronted Say Hi To Your Mom. It was cute without being precious, adorable without being annoying. It was a bit dark, and most importantly, very real.


16. The Tallest Man On Earth - "1904"



The discography of singers making sense out of earthquakes isn't exactly extensive. In 2012, Tallest Man On Earth turned his talents to the shuddering earthquake that rocked Sweden and Norway in 1904. The magical realism ran deep, Matsson singing, "and as I lower down I hear it's a message, and it's 1902 telling people to get out." This notion of being privileged with the prophetic knowledge of some terrible forthcoming event felt hyper-modern, a sense of unplaced dread, even about a century-old natural disaster in Northern Europe.

 
15. Capybara - "Neighbor Crimes"



Capybara loaded "Neighbor Crimes" full of every bit of their keyboard and guitar pop and then shot it up in the night sky to explode and burn. It reminded the listener of UB-40, perfectly off-beat keyboards and each movement building on this original idea, glossy vocals and explosive guitars in the same moment. It may have been overlooked, but "Neighbor Crimes" was one of most ambitious and unconventional rock singles of the year. It turned the relatively meaningless lyric, "thinking, going, Mexico" into some sort of marching orders: a head-nodding jam that never took itself for anything of the sort.


14. Polica - "Lay Your Cards Out"



You either saw Polica in 2012 or you didn't. The band, maybe the first to ever properly utilize two drummers (and yes, White Rabbits don't count), toured both this continent and the one to our right with a mixture of rolling thunder, cold medicine dreams and magical sexuality. "Lay Your Cards Out" urged a forthrightness that felt real and important this year, the arrangement ebbing and flowing with efficacy, finally a rising tide of layers that washed over the listener, laying everything bare and clean.


13. Chvrches - "The Mother We Share"



"The Mother We Share" patched our genetic material together in a big mess of DNA in 2012. It was Kate Bush-lite, slamming synth stabs and a progression that almost literally took off into the chorus. The shouting catharsis ached of British moral victories, whirring from hook to hook without perfect answers, lyrics like, "the way is long, but you can make it easy on me." We were left with a little girl's voice shouting into the imploding architecture, everything falling apart and, seemingly, coming together. 


12. Challenger - "I Am Switches"



Challenger provided us with the lyric of the year, "I wanna be with you when the other shoe falls." It was one of those deeply American communal fatalisms; in essence, we should be together when this all falls apart. "I Am Switches" was two-halves of a song: one part ebullient synthesizers and big horns, and the second movement, a literal reversal, vocals headed backwards in time and a more plaintive stab at the original idea. None of this would be easy or direct, and all we would have was some sort of new-Platonic Symposium. "There's no philosophy more likely fulfilling than friendship/ I'm lost in the world I'm in love with," were the last lyrics of a difficult but beautiful synthesizer meditation.

 
11. Sky Ferriera - "Everything Is Embarrassing"



Ever since Zooey Dechanel and Garden State, a generation of kids have gotten away from the sort of Calvinist public shame that drove so much of American culture over the last few centuries. It was suddenly fine to wear an ugly sweater or thick glasses or listen to Belle and Sebastian. It wasn't weird or silly, you were at the absolute center of relativist individualism. Dominant culture ceased to exist. You were you, a quirky and intentionally weird self. Bizarre became the new cool. Sky Ferriera threw the brakes on this program in 2012, claiming the opposite instead. It was all so horrifying, each bit of it, your carefully built and self-consciously quirky self. Every stupid thing you said, each protracted goodbye and stupid aside, your lack of social graces multiplied by your mounting anxiety, Sky went after it all. "Everything Is Embarrassing" made a beautiful case for shame, for downcast eyes and blushed cheeks. We're already weird human beings, she argued, let's maybe not celebrate it to loudly.