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".

Outsides :: "Seesaw"

Chasing the last glimmer in the fading afternoon of the Passion Pit legacy, Outsides, an electro-pop project from Kansas City musician Tim Ellis finds a bit of lingering brilliance on "Seesaw". A glittering syntheizer progression reminiscent of Capital Cities (you can sing "you could be my luck" at a more languid tempo over the opening chords) ends in an ineffable chorus, a lyrical and musical elevation as Ellis sings, "you go up and down like a seesaw." Perhaps reflecting on the unpredictability of a significant other, the singer finally resigns himself to "guess where you'll land." With an EP in the works for later in the summer, Outsides will soon be on the rise himself, a gift for ear-worm melody and the distant synthesizer victories in the tradition of the Small Black and others mining the digital sky for treasure.

Island Boy :: "Heart Attack"

Built on a simple guitar progression and a reliable snare drum, Island Boy launches "Heart Attack" into an echoing stratosphere of pop. It adds complexity, a chorus that explodes out of the speakers like the best parts of the Small Black catalog, all whipping synthesizer drums and vocals drowning in layer upon layer of reverb. The final movement grows no bigger than the original conceit, it merely reaffirms the idea: a long slow jam for someone with far too much to think about. Like the cover art, it is a flight over water, pensive and relentlessly existential.

Dead Mellotron :: "Weird Dreams"

Sure, it takes 45 seconds of distant guitar highway noise for Dead Mellotron's "Weird Dreams" to get underway, but eventually it unfolds in the tradition of slow-drive singles like Washed Out remix Small Black's "Despicable Dogs". The first drum hits even recall moments of "Where Is My Mind?" for their shared shrugging sense of the impending disaster. This most definitely isn't the part where you feel better; it's where you learn to live with feeling worse. "Weird Dreams" rings with bits of both shoegaze and dream-pop, airplane hanger acoustics and underwater reverb, a world full of buried vocals and snapping drums.

Small Black :: "Moon Killer"

There was a delicacy in genre, not function of Small Black's early success. Riding so hotly on the crest of ten or so "chillwave" bands, of which they were the most exemplary and easily derided, the band crafted echoing, synthesized pop that was, perhaps, not always taken seriously. It added no great credibility that their best song, "Despicable Dogs" got considerably better when remixed by other surf-side synth purveyor, Washed Out. And yet, despite the critics, there was greatness in it, a sort of John Hughes-y thing for a generation unable to claim any particular weirdness as self-definition. Recently, seeming even further down the synth rabbit hole, the band have tendered a mixtape, Moon Killer, and a title track that is as stabbing and, frankly, sad a slice of synthesizer pop as you'll hear this year. "Never make you try" and, "It's an ugly way to do things" are the sing-song lyrical modules that house a melody full of wistful heartbreak. Or, put another way, like the critical arrows that ended up embedded in the band's corpus, it was far easier to push this through to the other side, to be even more synth heavy, than it would have been to reverse course, giving us something beautiful and entirely fatal. It's an ugly way to do things, I guess, but how else would you have it?


Moon Killer by Small Black

El May :: "Pleasant Experience" [Small Black cover]

The resplendent El May offers up a free cover of the drowned in reverb single, "Pleasant Experience" from chill-wave purveyors, Small Black. This version, substantially cleaned up, like a close shave and a clean shirt, rings with plinking keyboard chords and El May's haunting, detached vocals. The melody, at once listless and catchy, sticks to the hippo-campus with adhesive, sing-song qualities modulating between only a few pitches, exactly the type of refrain we are so hard-wired to enjoy.

Listen :: El May - "Pleasant Experience" [Small Black cover]

Washed Out :: "Eyes Be Closed"

Ernest Greene broke onto the scene in 2009, riding the crest of chillwave hype as it broke on the beach of chillwave backlash, with a name that both referenced what his music sounded like and a coy reference to how little he thought these genre specific terms of relevance mattered: Washed Out. After a slow drive summer single, "Feel It All Around", Greene signed to Sub Pop and prepared to either sink or swim with the legitimacy of a major independent label. By 2011 it had been two years and chillwave was firmly out of the discussion with even the most solipsistic bands of the genre like Small Black removed from the conversation (including by this writer). Ernest Green was, in short, a long shot before he ever released his first full album, one of those typically confusing moments in modern music.

Washed Out proves more durable with first single, "Eyes Be Closed" off coming LP Within and Without, featuring rippling, cold medicine synths and an intentionally undersold hook. The overt sexuality of the cover art grabs all the attention, but it is Greene's big arrangement and pop sensibility in a sea of swimming electronics that endure beyond genre labeling and the attention deficit tastes of this decade. In the final 90 seconds of "Eyes Be Closed", the song swells around the listener, unexpectedly overwhelming and beyond the boundaries of what seemed possible, a triumphant ode to human connection; waking up on the beach in Ibiza in 1988, not entirely sure how you got there.

Listen :: Washed Out - "Eyes Be Closed"

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."

Small Black :: "Search Party"

Rock music got officially confusing a few years back. Last spring during the recording of debut LP, New Chain, Brooklyn's Small Black insisted on using absolutely no guitars. James Murphy summed this up tension in 2002 when he drew the parallel as, "I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables/I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars." And with that rock music found its soft center, a second layer, whereby its rebelliousness would no longer be contained in a single aesthetic, but rather in the abiding challenge to the prevailing aesthetics, whatever they were. Of course, despite the shimmering brilliance of "Search Party," the latest mp3 off Small Black's above-mentioned LP, they are undeniably part of a movement of synth-wave bands that have pushed listeners underwater and out into space. Meaning this is the moment before the twist, the second before the chain turns back on itself and destroys everything that built the new New Order.

Listen :: Small Black - "Search Party"
Listen :: Small Black - "Photojournalist"
Listen :: Small Black - "Despicable Dogs"

Small Black :: "Photojournalist"

Hushed voices and whispered half-truths are perhaps the strongest details of an admittedly amorphous lo-fi movement, and they are the hallmarks of Small Black, a band building the best stuff in the echo chamber. As on their previous work, "Photojournalist," lead-single off debut LP New Chain, relies heavily on looping and curious keyboards. Still the arrangement pulses and breathes like organic lifeforms taken root in all this binary code and silicone production, a bit of human touch in the synthesizer fog. And like an anthropomorphized New Order single that stayed out too late or took too much Philosophy in college, "Photojournalist" is expansive and thoughtful without losing sight of its own blurred edges and troubling moments. All Big Questions and fear of bumps in the night.

Listen :: Small Black - "Photojournalist"

On The List :: Small Black @ Mercury Lounge [3.7.10]

This review runs, in radio edit shine on Bowery's Houselist.

In an appropriate coda to the fading electro craze of the last five years, newly dubbed "glo-fi" bands stepped into a void that perhaps didn't exist. Small Black is exactly one of those bands, not quite original but more likely a sharp, revisionist critic. After all, the lo-fi synth movement managed to fire this electro-impulse through muddy, underwater effects and fuzz, finding rough choruses and beauty in something intentionally broken. If Justice was a metaphorical Saturday night, Small Black is slow-drive, contrarian Sunday morning.

With multi-colored lights echoing around the front of the stage, Small Black appeared four-across, opening with "Weird Machines." Not the least bit ironic, even given the collection of technology on stage, the song is endemic of what makes the band such an intriguing prospect; it is both anthemic and intentionally drowned in cold medicine reverb. In what is now typical response, the crowd moved their feet and nodded their heads with vicious and responsive purpose. Running through the bass-heavy, "Lady In The Wires" and some unreleased material before closing with the anti-hit hit, "Despicable Dogs" and the closer, "Bad Lover," Small Black defined something both steeped in criticism and concerned with contemporaneity.

As the lyrics to "Despicable Dogs" - "do it without me/do it when I'm gone" - sailed out through flashing light and moving humanity, there attached no extra significance as the second to last song of the night. In ways, the pathos was the narrative movement from bands obsessed with the dance floor to bands making similar music in their bedrooms. This is the soundtrack to a Breakfast Club generation that never received a detention, a soundtrack for the kids who actually enjoyed staying home. If Small Black isn't crushing your Saturday night, and this was a Sunday, they are the blinking, blurry eyes of a Sunday morning, criticism and coffee in the kitchen.

Listen :: Small Black - "Despicable Dogs"

Top 50 of 2009 :: 10-6 [Am I free or am I tied up?]

10. Miike Snow - "Animal"

One of my favorite things about music is how much more "sense" a band makes after seeing them in a live environment. Sometimes that "sense" is bad, forever coloring their music with the stink of a terrible live show. But other times, that "sense" comes to the stage wearing white plastic masks and rocks so hard you can't see straight. Miike Snow are in the later category, walking to the stage at the Mercury Lounge in September wearing featureless, Vanilla Sky-inspired masks. "Animal" proved to be the most approachable song from their self-titled record. Upstroke guitars and a bubbling chorus gave us something that, though profoundly electronic, felt warmer than sunshine. Even if you couldn't read its features exactly, the sense was more than undeniable.

9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Heads Will Roll"




The Yeah Yeah Yeahs went for broke this year, releasing an appropriately-titled record, It's Blitz, with cover art featuring a human hand obliterating a raw egg and electro-rock jams meant to cut. Track two was the shimmering, frustrated and committed, "Heads Will Roll." More plea for pleasant slaughter than a call for direct revolution, "Heads Will Roll" encouraged us to, indirectly, lose our minds ("Off with head") so we could dance until we were dead. It rhymed and we were helpless.

8. The Killers - "Four Winds"

Full disclosure: "Four Winds" isn't an original Killers' cut. It's a Bright Eyes track but I'm no special fan of Bright Eyes. With no sentimentality for the original, The Killers' take on the track approaches the furthest reaches of epic synth-pop. Churning with a massive down-beat and the faux-richness of big keyboard chords, "Four Winds" delivers every bit of the apocalypse Oberst's original lyrics promise. It is the third verse where Flowers finds himself as the shaking ringmaster at the front of a rising arrangement, singing, "And I was off to old Dakota where a genocide sleeps/in the Black Hills, the Bad Lands, the calloused east." He then describes four winds, the four horsemen, leveling the pines. Big, synthetic bells chime all around him and you can't help but think of all the things we've helped destroy.

7. Small Black - "Despicable Dogs" (Washed Out Remix)

It is odd to put your favorite song of the year as at number seven on a list of your favorite songs of the year. Small Black proved to be one of the better things to come out of the New York music scene this year and "Despicable Dogs" proved to be their best song. Then, a few months later, came Washed Out's take on the track, a looping, wistful, cold-medicine take on the original. Pulling out the song's natural lyrical nostalgia, "do it without me/do it when I'm gone," Washed Out filled our ears with lazy synth chords and dancing loops. The original soundtracked my flight out of LA. The remix soundtracked the rest of my year.

6. Wolf Gang - "The King And All Of His Men"

Wolf Gang wasn't a tough band to call but, boy, did we ever call them. Back in March when only one other publication on whole Internet was writing about them, we told you that Wolf Gang would blow up. It was only based on a rough, poorly recorded demo but you can't listen to what it sounds like - you have to hear what it could sound like. "The King And All Of His Men" was exactly what Wolf Gang could and sound like. Opening with big, tribal drums, followed quickly by sweeping keys, vocals and a chorus as crystalline and catchy as anything out this year, Wolf Gang proved to be exactly what we said they were. We wrote about this band more than any other in 2009 and we're calling an even bigger 2010.

On The List :: Free Energy and Small Black @ Bell House [11.10.09]

Free Energy

It was a weird night at Bell House in Brooklyn. Ranging from the committed, almost baroque synth-collisions of Small Black, through the chunky, frankly forgettable, Diehard and closing with the if-you-haven't-seen-them-see-them-now Free Energy, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a little disjointed.

Small Black took the stage in front of something like 20 somewhat engaged music fans. Having seen them at CMJ it wasn't a surprise when big-packaged drums came thundering out of the speakers. They play this sort of broken-hearted synth symphony, but with live drums and thudding bass. If there was a indie version of The Breakfast Club, I would almost certainly want Small Black to do the soundtrack. I scratch, "We are wingless birds/engines of death" onto the back of a receipt. Listening to "Weird Machines," their last song, I think about a weird vision I had in the car the other day. All of us, a generation of overprotected kids who took off and never planned for what would happen next, we are birds rendered wingless in flight and now we silently soar towards the ground; a gigantic, v-formed fatal formation. Of course, this is absurd. But Small Black inspire a level of esoteric absurdity that I'm willing to accept.

Closing the night would be Philadelphia and DFA-signees Free Energy. Over the summer, their eponymous first-single put the screws to me in a way music hadn't in a while. It's a clear throwback, wearing its influences like a cut-off t-shirt or like the Dazed and Confused DVD that 85% of college students have somewhere in their private possessions. The music is unpretentious and uninhibited and the band doesn't play like the room is at 15% capacity, a circumstance more to do with night of the week and neighborhood than quality of music.

In fact, by the time they're motoring through "Free Energy," the audience is moving forward and shuffling around. When the lead-singer is sounding through the best lyric of the night, "We are young and still alive/now the time is on our side," it would be hard not to think of a reversed set of fatal emotions. You, whoever you are, might have clipped our wings. You might have tried to kill us. But we are still alive and this thing is blowing back on you like a hurricane. All those black, wingless birds aren't looking to crash, they're looking to blow you out of the water. If there's one band to see right now it's Free Energy. They are the best American rock band on tour and you should go see them, dead or alive.

Listen :: Free Energy - "Free Energy"
Listen :: Small Black - "Despicable Dogs"

Ohmyrockness 5th Anniversary Party/Oya Festival @ Santos Party House

My CMJ begins when I stumble through the doors of Santos to be confronted by three Norwegians in short shorts and glittery tops. They are men. They are the men of Ungdomskulen. I quickly send a text to someone in the room about the glitter shirts. They are, empirically, awesome. But it is the music, not the aesthetics, that is moving the front of the room. Packed against the stage are all the usual CMJ kids: plaid shirts, tight pants, expensive cameras, notebooks stuffed in the spaces between textiles. But in this case, they are moving as Ungdomskulen closes their set with animated and amused aggression. At least one girl, having never seen the band before says, "That made my CMJ. That was the best thing I'm going to see." This is what bands from Norway come to do; impress you - you in the graphic t-shirts and winter hats inside, you - and in this case, they do.

From the Norwegian meat market, we run a quick jaunt downstairs to catch the last songs of Evan Voytas' set. He and I have never met but I once made an inside joke about him being confused and disoriented and he liked it enough to put it on his website. It is rare that anyone pulls press quotes that you actually like. Evan Voytas pulled an inside joke that I didn't expect him to get, let alone appreciate. He is wearing a cardigan sweater two sizes too big as he motors through "Higher" and "Astro" to close his set. "Astro" takes a particular level of commitment as Voytas resolves to sing it almost entirely in falsetto. Voytas packs his things in a neither confused nor disoriented fashion. The trip from California was long and maybe by the end of the week we'll know if it was worth it.

After Voytas, and a reasonable soundcheck, the night belongs to Small Black. The Long Island by way of Brooklyn set bring decks of synths and loops to burn. Backed by live drums and a wave of sound big enough to sink this basement in 10 feet of water, Small Black are the unquestionably the most exciting band of the evening. The electronic soundscapes feel more personal in person and the undulating synthesized melodies are more meaningful at higher volume. They play "Despicable Dogs" fourth out of six and when they're finished it's too soon. If there's a band to catch at CMJ 2009, in that way that small bands are still just small bands, it is Small Black.

Meanwhile, upstairs, I Was A King power through a set thoughtful, yet not unself-conscious, indie-rock songs. Even after I'd been prepped to hear them sound like Teenage Fanclub, they sound A LOT like Teenage Fanclub. This is far more of a compliment than it is an accusation of derivative influence. They are our second Norwegian act of the night and are expected back in Oslo in three days time. Their female guitarist is one of the more compelling parts of the evening, wailing on her whammy bar like it is joystick to an outdated videogame.

The night would end with dueling indie rock from Cymbals Eat Guitars upstairs and Real Estate downstairs. Cymbals Eat Guitars finds its stride in the middle of their set, channeling that time in the mid-1990s when music was about pain and independent labels marketed emotional catharsis to all those thousands of destroyed, hyper-literate, post-Smiths fans of this country. If Steven Malkmus was in the building, he wouldn't be upset, but he wouldn't be entirely impressed either. Real Estate provides a more mathematical, and at once lush, solution to the same problem: fuzzy guitars, delicate arrangements, and confusing song structure. It is far better than I just made it sound. And like that, the lights come up and we're asked to leave.

Listen :: Evan Voytas - "Astro"
Listen :: Small Black - "Despicable Dogs"
Listen :: Cymbals Eat Guitars - "Wild Phoenix"
Listen :: Real Estate - "Beach Comber"
Listen :: I Was A King - "Norman Bleik"

Small Black :: "Despicable Dogs" [Washed Out Remix]

The glo-fi genre holds as much promise as it does confusion. Warm synth-lines, echoing and fuzzy vocals - it doesn't seem definite enough to be promising. But Small Black made their way into our summer as the soundtrack to a departure from Los Angeles. As the 2.30am red-eye sailed out over the city, the song's signature lyric "do it without me/do it when I'm gone" took on added relevance, after all, I was getting out of there. The neon lights seemed to pulse and move with the electronics in my ears, like this was all a high-budget commercial done by a director with a tragic sense of humor and an eye for human drama.

But this experience in late July holds nothing to one I had this morning. Washed Out's take on "Despicable Dogs" is quite simply the most beautiful song I've heard this year. With a wall-of-sound loop and a "We can dance if we want to" allusion, Washed Out have pumped up the Small Black original into something that is as head-nodding as it is completely perfect. The emotional haymaker is still in the chorus where the signature lyric, the one that made Los Angeles harder to leave, comes through a mess of coordinated synth-peels like the quiet return of a past relationship or the departure from a current one. It needs no introduction. You can already feel exactly what this means.

Listen :: Small Black - "Despicable Dogs" [Washed Out Remix]

Small Black :: "Despicable Dogs"

On his way out of a major American city, a young man may become prone to fits of nostalgia and/or a desire for something cinematic to score the departure. Small Black with their fuzzy synths, persistent beats and surprisingly epic aesthetic have just the song. The chorus says it all, "do it without me/do it when I'm gone." Bright lights don't bore me - it's just time to move back to a more familiar florescence. Tonight, we sail over the Rockies. Tonight, we head for home.

Listen :: Small Black - "Despicable Dogs"