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".

On The List :: Augustines and Frightened Rabbit @ Webster Hall [10.25.13]

This review runs first and with great photographs from Sean O'Kane at Bowery Presents House List blog.

Frightened Rabbit and Augustines are nearly mirror images of each other: one Scottish, one raised in the wilds of Brooklyn, each driven to find salvation in ripping guitar-drum-and-bass rock songs. Augustines frontman Billy McCarthy, who is leading the third iteration of the band once known as Pela and then We Are Augustines before landing on their current nomenclature, admitted as much at a sold-out Webster Hall on Friday night, when they opened for their Scottish counterparts. “I’m gonna miss them so goddamn much,” warbled McCarthy about Frightened Rabbit in his trademark gravel-flecked baritone. The parallels were obvious under the sweeping stage lights, both groups pitting themselves firmly against the forces of modernity, trying to recapture a world of unfiltered misery and saviors, a time when people loved people enough to be destroyed by them.

There wasn’t an ounce of irony in either band. Augustines played “Cruel City,” a song about being miserable in New York City, and the single from their upcoming second full-length, and McCarthy yelled, “That was for you!” to wild applause. The audience didn’t exactly come for misery, but rather to experience the redemptive power of an emotive past, to bathe in the pain of others for whatever that would be worth. As if unifying their purpose, Scott Hutchinson, lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, joined Augustines on “Headlong into the Abyss,” a song that either band could have penned.

Frightened Rabbit took the stage backed by their monstrous half-crucifix-half-telephone-poll backdrop that has become the band’s iconography. While the saving was strictly lyrical, a fan in the 10th row stared down Hutchinson and mouthed every word to the opener, “Holy,” seemingly unaware of the other 1,500 people in attendance. Frightened Rabbit followed the tune about divinity and personal failings with “Modern Leper,” another vaguely biblical reference and the song that broke the band firmly into mainstream indie rock six years ago.

The band sounded explosive and tight, marching through “Nothing Like You” and “Living in Colour” before playing one of their first releases, “Old Old Fashioned.” “This is a dancing song,” said Hutchinson, the arrangement’s sea-shanty chord progression erupting from the fret board on his guitar. Of course, it wasn’t just a dancing song—it was about getting back to an old, lost world, a song about waltzing around the living room with a woman who might well hold the power to make you utterly miserable. The redemption would be in older patterns. Frightened Rabbit then played “December’s Traditions,” about the exacting power and misery of these yearly rituals. It wouldn’t even matter that Hutchinson climbed into the venue’s balcony late in the set, because Frightened Rabbit
and Augustines had already crawled backward in search of salvation in something old.

sootytern :: "Get It Sorted"

"It's often lovely," the last lyric of UK band sootytern's "Get It Sorted" rings against the edges of an arrangement that features an unholy and ebullient alliance of ukelele and mandolin. It risks being a bit cute even if it, thankfully, never is. Even hidden beneath the twee veneer is a tiny post-punk song that in its final movement chases up the fret board for the highest iteration of hi-fi stringed instruments, an ode to shoegaze with tools that fit in a backpack. It is the type of self-actualized pop that reminds this writer of a combination of the leanings of Mumford and Sons - the choice of traditional folk instruments to create what are, ostensibly, pop songs - and Stornoway or an unplugged and considerably happier Frightened Rabbit. For all their repetition of the final lyric, "Get It Sorted" isn't often lovely, it always is.

Top 50 Songs of 2010 :: 20-11 [My heart hides in a cassette tape]

20. Owen Pallett - "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt"



The big news this year was Pallett stepping 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.

19. Fang Island - "Daisy"

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.

16. French Films - "Golden Sea"

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.

13. The Radio Dept. - "Heaven's On Fire"

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.

11. Blair - "Hearts"

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's Die 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.

Frightened Rabbit [feat. Craig Finn] :: "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart"

Last night at Terminal 5 Craig Finn joined Frightened Rabbit on an explosive little cover of Elton John and Kiki Dee's 1976 hit, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." From the lead singers of two bands who traffic so much in heart-break, it is a plea and a bit of irony in the melody and lyrics of a gay man and a motown chick from the 70s. Seems just about correct for a Scot and a guy from Brooklyn who have written enough misery to fill a book.

Fruit Tree Foundation :: "I Forgot To Fall"

The Fruit Tree Foundation is a collection of Scottish musicians who have come together to produce a record exploring issues of mental health, raising funds and awareness. Featuring heavy-hitters like Scott Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit and James Graham of The Twilight Sad, as well as curators Rod Jones and Emma Pollack, the collaboration is already bearing dark, intense and rich fruit. Even the simple edict of allowing Hutchinson and Jones loose on a record dealing with issues of mental health seems a match made in heavenly hell. After all, it was Hutchinson who looked us straight in the face in 2007 and sung, "You're not ill and I'm not dead/Doesn't that make us the perfect pair?" and then later in 2010 moaned, triumphantly, "I'm not miserable now!"

On "I Forgot To Fall," one of two teasers on the Foundation's website, Hutchinson's vocals are immediately recognisable, fragile and insistent. The arrangement is a spiralling affair of strings, splashing drums and building guitars. For this group darkness is not a foreign feeling, the depths known deep yet survivable, pain put on tape and left for others to hear.

Listen :: Fruit Tree Foundation - "I Forgot To Fall"

[Elevator] Three Blind Wolves :: "Three Blind Wolves"

Sounding equal bits Frightened Rabbit and There Will Be Fireworks, with a heavy dose of We Were Promised Jetpacks, Glasgow's Three Blind Wolves should be glad their name is a metaphor and not a fairy tale sentence. What is certain is the pathos in play on their eponymous debut song. As a scraggly organ chord shifts and meditates, the singer suggests an image of three blind wolves dead by the road side. At 1:03 the song takes off into something full (trust me, when this isn't a demo, this moment is going to stand up the hair on your arms), evolving into a surging sort-of chorus that insists, "Don't leave, we need ya/don't leave, we need ya more." This is a band on the rise; a band who with some studio money and sheen will find themselves charging around the States in 2011. But, who are the dead, blind wolves? We assume the three little pigs finally exacted their revenge.

Listen :: Three Blind Wolves - "Three Blind Wolves" [mediafire]

Frightened Rabbit :: "The Twist" and "Head Rolls Off" [Live on Daytrotter]

I spent at least three of the last six hours in the back seat of a car, traveling at, quite frankly, unsafe speeds on a road that seems to relish claiming the wreckage of poor driving decisions and ill-advised lane-changes. Seat behind the driver, head leaned against the window, you aren't far from the mortality of the jersey barrier directly to your left. It hums by at furious, unfeeling speed, maybe thirty-six inches from your ear. If you're paying attention, you realize the finer than fine line between your continued living and your completely plausible and possibly imminent death. But, to dance with death means that death is dancing with you, moving to your coordinated floor plan; to court disaster means that disaster can't secretly be courting you. To live thirty-six inches from your own demise, if you wait and watch for it, is a moment where you can feel really alive. Undoubtedly, we are here and we are lucky for it.

Listen :: Frightened Rabbit - "The Twist" (Live on Daytrotter)
Listen :: Frightened Rabbit - "Head Rolls Off" (Live on Daytrotter)

Frightened Rabbit :: "Living in Color" and "Nothing Like You"

Back in 2007, Frightened Rabbit took a blunt object to our brains and hearts. Lyrically, it wasn't always the most nuanced (neither were our responses) and musically, it wasn't ground-breaking but none of that seemed to matter. From first interacting with "Modern Leper" to discovering "The Twist" and, in my group of friends, a new way of talking, "New band, new song, twist song, twist band, twist sandwich" (Looking at you, Nate), it was the perfect record.

Now, we are headed for a new release from Frightened Rabbit in March 2010. It's rather incredibly called Winter of Mixed Drinks, also a lyric from song "Living In Color." Like most things the band does, it appears overly emotional, destructive, solipsistic and crushing with shreds of a building pathos. With first single, "Swim Until You Can't See Land" already in the can and hitting the web, this week two more tracks filtered out during a live session on the BBC. "Living in Color" and "Nothing Like You" are the logical next step: A little more guitar driven, a bigger sound, something you could throw at an incredible engineer and mixer and make sound like it's going to explode your heart. What do you do with a recording budget that dwarfs your last record? Something like this. Lyrically, it's all still there: "I am floating with my eyes closed/with no sails/I am soaking, I am weathered/by the winter of mixed drinks." Get ready to feel sorry for yourself all over again, world - Frightened Rabbit are roaring back.

Listen :: Frightened Rabbit - "Nothing Like You" (Live on BBC6)
Listen :: Frightened Rabbit - "Living in Color" (Live on BBC)

Frightened Rabbit :: "Swim Until You Can't See Land"

Frightened Rabbit are back with a crushing new single, "Swim Until You Can't See Land." If you can't capture the metaphor, it's about being chased off the beach by a formerly significant other (she is throwing rocks) and swimming until you can't see land. Of course, swimming that far past the breakers (thanks, Everclear) is either liberating or suicidal. But whether you think you'll survive, I think we'll just watch the world die.

Official Video :: "Swim Until You Can't See Land"


Live, solo acoustic :: "Swim Until You Can't See Land"

Tonight, Tonight: Frightened Rabbit and The Brother Kite @ Piano's

Remember last week when I mentioned that part of this crazy blog experiment would be (wait for it) actually going to shows? Well, that time has come. 32ft/second will be making a triumphant/debut appearance at Piano's this evening for some beers and two great bands. These two aren't going to break your iTunes down only to rebuild your music collection in their image - but they are great, very different, and great. Did I say great twice? Great.

Up at 10pm (and remember, this is Piano's so it's going to be on-time), we've got The Brother Kite. They blew up out of Providence, RI and despite playing a brand of indie rock that smashes the delicacy of Teenage Fanclub and the sunshine of a Brian Wilson record, no one seems to know them. This is vaguely criminal. I first got wind of the band from a VP at Virgin Records who spits their gospel to anyone who will listen. Which, in this case was me and now it's you. Their record is one of the most unique and complicated releases of last year and deserves your time, money, attention.

At 11, we've got Frightened Rabbit, all the way from Scotland to break your heart and melt your brain. For people given easily to the art of comparison, they sound like a take-no-prisoners version of Snow Patrol. Or they are a far more put together version of The Twilight Sad. Luckily, I wouldn't do these bands the disservice of being compared to one another. The point is, Frightened Rabbit is one of those indie bands that has a real chance to crossover. They had a song featured on a prominent television show and their record is good enough to crush people when they hear it. They sound big. They sound sad. They are what to make of the broken-hearted. To pull from the song posted below: "well, you're not ill and i'm not dead/doesn't that make us a perfect pair?" If you're scoring at home, that's a metaphor. And we're not ill and Frightened Rabbit is just alive enough to rip through their set tonight.

Like Mr. fucking Rogers: join us, won't you?

Listen:: Frightened Rabbit - "The Modern Leper"
The Brother Kite - "Waiting For The Time To Be Right (sample)"