California Wives :: "Marianne"

The surprise isn't how charming and singable California Wives' music can be, it's how easy they make it all sound. Like you and three acquaintances could go down to Guitar Center, learn a few chords, pick up some equipment and then sign a deal with Vagrant Records. On "Marianne", they update their stylistic direction from inheritors to the Stills' throne to something closer to Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - and here it doesn't help that the second word of the first verse is "heartbreak" and fourth, "teenage". The big chiming synthesizers in post-chorus back the band's trademark driving guitars (see: "Blood Red Youth" and "Tokyo") all around fatalist lyrics like, "They will find you out, even though you tried". The chorus, one of those refrains still rooted in proper nouns for when bands are young and still write about cities and girls, is charming and accessible, a final trip through those big guitars and huge booming synths, democratic enough to feel like anyone could have written them and elitist enough that no one did.

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".

California Wives :: "Tokyo"

Glossy is the word you're looking for. Metallurgical synths open the curtains on California Wives' latest single, "Tokyo", before a more lacadaisical version of the band's trademark guitars fill out the bottom of the mix. Glossy and full color, these are the winsome sounds of a band so relentlessly polished that their sound catches and reflects light. The chorus is a nonsense tautology, "They're building houses and lights in Tokyo." But, like on debut single, "Blood Red Youth", this band excells in laying the foundation of a refrain and making the lyrics seems more and more insistant - fervent even - each time around. By its conclusion, sounding like a balladeering Phoenix, California Wives have another excellent single to their credit. The Tokyo lights, such a useful image, glowing warm under a blanket of darkness.

Listen :: California Wives - "Tokyo"

Top 50 Songs of 2010 :: 50-41 [Get up, get up, get up]

50. Silver Swans - "Secrets"

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."

49. Apex Manor - "Under The Gun"

"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.

48. Murder Mystery - "I Am (If You Are)

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."

47. California Wives - "Blood Red Youth"

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.

46. Pallers - "The Kiss"

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.

45. Generationals - "Trust"

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.

44. La Sera - "Never Come Around"

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.

43. Small Black - "Photojournalist"

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.

42. Sun Airway - "Put The Days Away"

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.

41. Delorean - "Stay Close"

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."

California Wives :: "Purple"

California Wives' Affair EP is one of the best of the year, echoing the same territory, though profoundly more American and sunwashed, that The Stills charted with such depth and efficacy on their first record in 2003. The second song to be released from the EP, "Purple" is full of ratatat, dance-rock drums and a pace that leaves the song and its singer out of breath. This speed is matched by lyrical sparseness and a collision to the finish leaving more questions than answers. Expansive, but soft at the edges, with just enough taut energy to vibrate off the ground, "Purple," will send you soaring into, all apologies to Michael Chabon, a winter of undialated times.

Listen :: California Wives - "Purple"

California Wives :: "Blood Red Youth"

An ode to the breathless energy of younger days, "Blood Red Youth," from California Wives finds itself at once nostalgic and troubled. The influences range from the ethereal bass lines of the earliest days of post-punk to the hi-fi guitars and synthesizers of a Phoenix record, and for most of five minutes they seem to be fighting for the very soul of the track. But the guitars gain texture, asserting more and more authority, finally wrestling to an upbeat hegemony in the song's final 90 seconds. The chorus soars up an octave, part of a satisfying down-shift take-off, hushed vocals turning into the vagueries of a battle cry, "not what those people did to you in your blood red youth." Oblique lyrics notwithstanding, the final message is at best unclear, energized, dark, lost and alive.

Listen :: California Wives - "Blood Red Youth"