We hope you enjoyed our week long feature of the Top 50 Songs of 2010. In addition, we've put together a group of 2010 rarities, songs that you might have missed as the B-side to a single release, a radio session, a cover song, or a live show that we were able to track down. We listen to a lot of music in any given year and occasionally we come across something not everyone gets to hear. It's like Behind The Music for a blog that already spends its time on music that hardly anyone listens to. After the jump, these are those songs:
"Home" was the last song LCD Soundsystem would ever make, the final track on their allegedly final record. This fatalism rang appropriate. For most Americans 2010 was an age of increasing anxiety and for James Murphy, it was a year he sold the most records of his career and wrote, "Home," about his dead friend Jerry Fuchs who fell down an elevator shaft in Bushwick in late 2009. It was a modern answer to David Byrne's "This Must Be The Place," a dissatisfied take on satisfaction, or a very sophisticated translation of the platitudes about being happiest right where you are. But, Byrne was trying to talk himself into a women, a slacker's manual for how to fall in love. Murphy was just squinting to see the cocoon of human relationships that surrounded him. He spent most of 2007 asking where the hell his friends were. In 2010, James Murphy figured out they were there the whole time.
The verses address Murphy's place as a weary social meteorite on the New York scene, the coolest of the late night kids who aren't kids anymore. He reflects, "Yeah, do it right/and head again into space/so you can carry on/and carry on/and fall all over the place," his take on Byrne's blithe, "I guess I must be having fun." These late nights have worn him down, if not out. You see him nodding his head in a DJ booth at 3am, a mixture of champagne and bourbon in his glass, while he confides his need to "shut the door on terrible times, this his "trick to forget a terrible year." The keys and synths remain amoral, neither supporting this misery nor the nights out that Murphy used to overcome it.
Amidst all this pain lies a complicated pathos. Murphy knows he is actively ignoring his age and his emotional fragility on the wrong side of 40, divorced and too many empty bottles left under the colored lights. Yet, he asks the central question: "What would make you feel better?" The answer is a self-directed admonition as Murphy pleads, "You might forget the sound of a voice/still you should not forget/yeah, don't forget/the things that we laughed about." We rolled on the floor like children, he muses, but then you need to get home safely because we can't afford to lose each other. People make this work. People fill his life.
In his most obvious nod to Byrne's search for "Home," Murphy reaches the same conclusion in almost the same words, "So I guess I'm already there." He closes with a promising reminder, "If you're afraid of what you need, look around you/you're surrounded/it won't get any better ... until the night." It took a less naive melody to arrive at this final song about being surrounded by friends. What makes him feel better is this invisible fabric he has taken all too often for granted. These long nights out aren't the sound of impending age and death; they are the life blood of a man who has built and tied his life to this scene and these people. He sees it now in the final moment. His friends are right here.
10. Crystal Castles - "Not In Love" [Ft. Robert Smith]
Crystal Castles, mostly known for their ripping electoclash, found a slice of pop brilliance in 2010 with an assist from Robert Smith. "Not In Love" was rooted in a simple chorus of industrial synths and Smith's lithe, rye vocal modulating the title lyric. It was a cover of a Platinum Blonde original, but that robbed none of the top-shelf pop in the chorus, a 1980s tune recast somewhat anxiously as one of the best hooks of the year.
The Jezabels were the darlings of all the bands we saw this year. Their Kate Bush-tinged pop was best framed on "Mace Spray," a song that lyrically addresses the need for self-defense in an increasingly pessimistic age. The piano chords are spacious and the vocals from singer Hayley Mary eventually take the elevator to the top in the chorus, where the arrangement crashes around her voice, sounding equal parts vulnerable and threatening. With one of the best singles of 2010, the Jezabels already marked themselves as one of the best young bands to watch in the next 12 months.
Over the summer we saw the two singers from GROUPLOVE kiss each other on the mouth. This wasn't necessarily scandalous, and our voyeurism was joined by the other fifty or so people in Los Angeles' Troubadour. It was a moment of raw emotion of exactly the kind that the band describes in "Colours," a song rooted in a simple acoustic guitar progression that ends sailing and screaming over a fractured landscape. The band insists on "leaving the ground to find some space," before assuring us, "it really ain't that bad." The final movement is a tautological edict, "We call it ... life!" GROUPLOVE was uniquely positioned to describe this great, common human experience, screaming, shouting and floating above it.
7. Spoon - "Got Nuffin"
There was no more menacing combination of drums and guitar in indie rock in 2010 than on Spoon's "Got Nuffin." It defines the very need for down stroke guitars, before spiraling off and finding a few demanding piano chords to go with all the purpose of Britt Daniel's structure of guitar, bass and drums. The lyrics describe a moment of hope in an era of hopelessness. "I've got nothing to lose but darkness and shadows," Daniel reminds us as, we assume, he spends all this time losing only to find the freedom from constraint as the necessary descendant. It isn't a grand social gesture, some weak marching orders against the backdrop of a broken American life, just the private commentary of one man who sees his way out of the tunnel.
"Girls Night" was the one song of 2010 that seemed to unflaggingly cross boundaries, unifying disparate people behind a single bouncy keyboard progression. The vocals, the male-female back-and-forth kind, circle each other flirtatiously, throwing looks across the room and daring the other to come over. Their overlap is part of the charm, weaving in between one another, roping us closer and closer to First Rate People, a fantastically promising group from Toronto. No one else brought R&B to indie rock this year; no one else made something this irrefutably catchy. No one else is building these kind of would-be-hits for a mixtape you haven't made yet. This song is the hope that these two voices will cross the room and talk to each other, the hope that this is great and the hope that you will tell someone about it.
The big news this year was Pallettstepping out from behind his old moniker, Final Fantasy and becoming, in no uncertain terms, himself. And then he released a nearly perfect concept record about bipolar farmer, Lewis, and the problems of his magically real universe. Pallett's signature strings come on like a storm, building and menacing at the edges before washing over the arrangement with a fury and taste for renewal. The lyrics, beautiful and delicate, end up settling on single edict, "I'm never gonna give it to you." It is beautifully oppositional, independent and wholly itself.
A 2010 reviewer called Fang Island the sound of "everyone high fiving everyone." On "Daisy," an explosive, decentralized rock song, the band traffics in nonsense lyrics and chord resolutions so big they pull the plane out of the nose-dive, reset the financial markets and, yes, organize a six billion person high five at the apex of an arrangement built to crest. In a year with too much anxiety for too many people, Fang Island took this gospel of freedom on the road and to the people: Less worry, more hand slapping.
18. Band of Horses - "Dilly"
Band of Horses did the crossover this year, making more money than ever before and managing to frustrate some of their loyalists. The record was too pop. It was being sold in Starbucks. It was built for sync. "Dilly" cut through the hype and the criticism to divine one of the great choruses of the year. Modulating between three pitches and settling on easy rhymes and platitudinous lyrics, "It took a tall one to see it/two to believe it/three to just get in the way," made it instantly memorable, singable and infectious. In 2011, this will be the soundtrack for some dreadful movie trailer. The crossover is dangerous, but it works.
17. Computer Magic - "Running"
We have a certifiable music crush on Danz from Computer Magic. Her string of one-off singles dominated 2010 in intervals of her choosing and with shocking consistency for an artist that admits she's only been making music for a few months. On "Running," uneasy synths swirl and sway in the ether, as her voice sheds pretension and asks the simple, if fleeting question, "And I'm running all the time/Can you catch him before I go?" No one is making better laptop pop anywhere right now.
It was a year dominated by the surf rock of the Drums and the Weezer-beach vibes of Surfer Blood and the stoned summer of Wavves and Best Coast. Amongst all this coastal music, everyone missed the Finnish upstarts French Films and their buzzing and propulsive "Golden Sea." Track one of the Golden Sea EP, one of the best of the year, the song of the same name takes us to the water, but there is a trick. The slurring lyrical delivery sharpens around the final chorus, "It was only a dream," as plinking synths erupt like children let out for recess, proving the best beaches are the ones we go to in our minds.
15. The Naked and Famous - "Young Blood"
It was the wanton hopelessness of the central lyric, "fall back in love eventually," that kept "Young Blood" from being one of those blind anthems of youth. The Naked and Famous explored the concept of unfettered younger days with a hint of the despair that always creeps near the edge of such meditations. Fact is, lionizing youth is a losing battle, every day the romance a little less intense, each moment a little less pure. It was those words, "fall back in love eventually," that gave a certain, hopeless and hopeful finality to these breathless, sparkler-holding, bleeding-from-the-arm, jumping-in-the-deep-end days of miracle and wonder.
14. Frightened Rabbit - "Nothing Like You"
The next move is never clear for a band who made their name by being miserable and now, against the odds and better advice, are happy. So it was not by choice that Frightened Rabbit fostered a different sense of pathos on 2010 release, The Winter of Mixed Drinks. The band was famous now, and the lead singer was in a relationship that he repeatedly and fondly referenced on stage. The only thing worse than being happy is trying to fake misery. So, Frightened Rabbit angled to describe how they got happy. The pointed and furious "Nothing Like You," took the romance of the platitude in the title, turned it entirely around, not as a compliment but as an accusation. The most damning line is the first one, "This is a story and you are not in it," before offering a shovel for this previous love to bury herself.
On the cusp of super-stardom, Sweden's the Radio Dept. released their best record, Clinging To A Scheme in 2010. Sunny single, "Heaven's On Fire" hid something darker, a perfection inflamed, maybe by an arsonist, from just one look at "you." The power of this significant other - and here we mean this literally - is not unidirectional; its capabilities both productive and able to destroy. Over bouncy keys and lighter-than-air drums and guitars, the vocals belay this danger. One of the best songs of the year, hiding in plain sight, ready to light your perfect world on fire.
12. Magic Man - "Monster"
Boston's Magic Man released one of the best truly independent records of the year, Real Life Color, a twinkling bit of electro-pop that made no apologies. On "Monster," a nearly six-minute epic, there are three distinct movements, each colliding into final marching orders, "Find your monsters, don't tell you friends," turning human psychology into a gigantic internal game of Manhunt. As for the outside world, they tell us to, "leave the world in a jar but come back to it." We are reminded of the great frontier inside, of the terror and beauty that lie within us, and of the stunning little keyboard band in Boston.
It was a little guitar record from a girl in Brooklyn that grabbed us by the throat in 2010. While at times it was reminiscent of a twenty years later Exile In Guyville, this wasn't so angled against love or at sewing up a busted heart. If anything, Blair'sDie Young, and its most seminal track, "Hearts" is about being in love with youth, what she calls the yearning and aching of young life. In her fortune cookie wisdom, Blair confides, "my heart hides in a cassette tape", one of the most subtle and winning lyrics of the year. The final minute finds a spinning conclusion with the hyperventilating title lyric recast as texture. We never had this song on cassette, but we spent most of the year hiding in this digital record, a new, modern love.
In 2010 Kristian Matsson as Tallest Man On Earth, an unlikely Swede, so successfully tapped the American folk tree, the most common critical comparison was Bob Dylan. Perhaps a better precedent - and entirely more reasonable - would be Bon Iver, as shared makers of small, acoustic records that chart the depths of human sorrow with mournful vocals and little else. On "Burden of Tomorrow," Matsson's yelp and drawl sketch a universe full of metaphors rooted in nature. Perhaps with an eye toward Dylan and Vernon, he intones, "Rumor has it that I wasn't born/I just walked in one frosty morn." Surprise.
On one of the best debuts of 2010, Wildlife charged out of the gates with "Stand In The Water," replete with pounding drums and a unforgettable hook, "just as long as you're looking for me." This is all before the arrangement explodes into a sea of backing vocals and another assurance, "We're all going somewhere." It sounds a little like a more fully realised Wolf Parade demo, something absolutely going somewhere
A shabby chord progression and vocals that sound like they've been up all night before being recorded into a wax paper microphone are the backing of Dead Confederate's slow drive "Run From The Gun." The title lyric is sandwiched around the divine promise, "don't be afraid," while it remains unclear if this violence is real or imagined. The guitars project longing, the vocals agony, but the hook will stick in your cheek because it was built to do so.
In 2007 it was fashionable to scream, "Where are your friends tonight?" Hooray For Earth offered an entirely optimistic response in 2010, with a chorus built on the title lyric and a church of chiming synths and swelling backing vocals. A cloying subject matter that never becomes cloying in practice as the band navigates this hopeful territory with aplomb and a knack for arty synth rock, like an indie rock Erasure. That is, hopefully, taken as a profound compliment.
No band, and certainly no song, better captured the essence of a spinning, sunny summer than Math and Physics Club did with "Jimmy Had A Polaroid." The lyrics are built around a silly bit of nostalgia before the protagonist moved away. All that remained was this picture and these lost salad days spent getting dizzy in the park.
The stage name for Cameron Mesirow, Glasser delivered some combination of the industrial pop that has become currency in loft apartments and the cold, urban tribalism of label mates Tanlines. Mesirow's vocals emerge as the only source of warmth in the the freezing arrangement of xylophone and looping hand claps. Slowly, the sonics expand, becoming fully realized as "Home" swells behind her like the menacing storm front she alludes to in the song's first lyrics. She is gorgeous and haunting, as you might expect.
Designed perfectly for a movie montage, Northern Portrait craft a slice of twee with tumbling guitars and a self-actualizing chorus. Left in the wake of a now defunct Lucksmiths, the band takes up the banner of shoe-shuffling, feel-good pop currently only rivaled by the Acid House Kings and Math and Physics Club in spirit and execution. Is it the Cure playing a Belle and Sebastian record or something less self-serious? They make no mistake, the answer sitting squarely in the title.
We saw LESANDS on two coasts and in two small rooms in 2010. One, a tiny art space in East LA and the other, a well-accented space in Park Slope, Brooklyn and each time their vibrating synthesizer anthems elevated the scene. "Pretenders" is their center piece, a pounding and buzzing dose of pop so relentless and infecting in its approach that you will have "roses, roses, roses ..." stuck in your head for weeks.
Magic Bullets delivered one of the most immediately accessible songs of the year on the yelping, Smiths-inspired "Lying Around." The lyrics trace the animative qualities of relationships, and the concurrent malaise in their absence. The guitars are playful and the bass line, frenetic. The final conclusion is a little slice of pop nihilism, "It doesn't mean a single thing."
The Vaccines are absolutely going to kill you in 2011, approaching US shores with as much unknown hype as any rock band we've seen since the early Arctic Monkeys singles in 2005. On first demo, "If You Wanna," the band etches their exit strategy for a failed relationship; just let her come back. It's alright if you wanna come back, they suggest, with something of a rye grin and no mention of what drove the separation in the first place. It's refreshing, a chorus this full of hooks, and unpolished and unconcerned with being either.
A dark, sexy slice of female fronted post-punk, Silver Swans took us downtown and underground in 2010. Pushed through crowd to the back of the club and into some secret corner with dead eyes and weak hearts, the central lyric is a lie, "I don't think about you anymore."
"Under The Gun" both enjoys the comfort of conversation cliches and relentless 4/4 snare drums. A pounding rock song at the center of Apex Manor's debut record, The Year Of Magical Drinking due next year on Merge, caught our attention for its unapologetic affect and the huge guitars that carry us into the last chorus.
Ebullient on arrival, New York's Murder Mystery slice synth-pop into the kind of digestible bites that are metaphorically carried around by waiters at Chairlift's holiday party. It's not quite "I tried to handstands for you," but chiming synths and an intensely infectious chorus make the co-dependency of the title seem an after thought and your answer the immediate and necessary, "Yes."
The glossy, soaring rock of California Wives gave us an intense reflection on lost youth this year. The song builds and builds on the backs of whipping guitars, clocking near five minutes in total, before a final chorus and an explosion so fitting it makes clear that getting older isn't dying at all. For a young group with a stellar EP, be certain to follow each day in the future for this band with an inside chance of being the Stills of 2011.
In one of those moments that needs television licensing before you will take full notice, Pallers'"The Kiss" takes off under its own power at the 3.15 mark, like a zero-gravity push, sliding into infinity with no regard for physical friction or conventional resistance. We said this was a long drive for someone with someone with too much to think about. Apologies, Brock, it's still true.
The guitars in Generationals' "Trust" are so simultaneously mournful and optimistic, it very nearly makes the lyrics seem sarcastic. Earnestness is currency in this crowd, and this band, more than most, is willing to look you in the face and sing lines like, "what's the use in trusting more than we have to?" They don't have an answer but the prevailing assumption is you will figure it out yourself.
La Sera vocalist Katy Goodman is so stupidly pretty she inspired cynicism from at least one 32ft/sec contributor who accused us of giving looks-based favoritism. The former Vivian Girl did stun, but it was with her voice, the detached, breathy tones that held captive the longing "Never Come Around." It was a single more suited to a late 1950s house party where the boys and girls spin records and smile at each other, not because they feel good, but because it was the fashion to do so.
Small Black have sold their guitars and bought turntables, and then they sold their turntables and bought synthesizers and samplers. Perched behind a wall of modern technology, the band draws on the sonics of a distopian, urban safari, creating the music for the headphones of the kids who roam post-industrial Bushwick (you can fill in your own version) wondering what the hell happened here.
Sun Airway traffic in sea-sick loops and bending sonics that feel like the woozy second-movement of cold medicine on an empty stomach. The chorus sails out of the gloom and maw, but the message is about burial, about being driven underground. In the verses the band returns to its cloudy, anxious vernacular as we steady ourselves against something immovable. If you feel unsettled, good, it's working.
For this writer in 2010, Delorean will never leave the stage at Chicago's Empty Bottle the night before their daytime slot at the Pitchfork Fest. It was late and we were bouncing around to the fog horns and the stream-lined and echoing Euro-pop. At the center of a washed out summer in the middle of the night in a foreign city, "Stay Close" seemed an appropriate close to an evening spent next to Kurt Vile and Neon Indian, losing their minds along with the rest of the kids, "Get up, get up, get up."
