The Zolas :: "Escape Artist"

The Zolas - Escape Artist from Light Organ Records on Vimeo.

Last year the Zolas gave the world the Spoon record that Spoon didn't write. While it isn't a direct analog, the Zolas sophomore record, Ancient Mars was full of lively piano arrangements and probing hooks. On "Escape Artist", ostensibly the second single behind the sublime, "Knot In My Heart", the band crafts a lyrical meditation on anxiety, avoidance and self-destructive modalities. The video, a beautiful urban tableau, gives new and provocative corners to this argument, including a bucolic climax under the fuzzy lights of a night club. Coupling with the graphic lyrical imagery of the chorus, the Zolas find a gauzy and grimy conclusion to a bizarrely charming pop song.

The Zolas :: "Observatory"

The Zolas rely on their ability to find a cloud-clearing chorus in their mixture of indie rock tropes and exceptionally hook-driven piano arrangements. On "Observatory", the second promotional release following one of the catchiest songs of 2012, "Knot In My Heart", the band is again at their methodical and occasionally weird work. "Observatory" is ostensibly a song about a stick-up in the midst of a break in, though it certainly chases down some increasingly bizarre pathways ("I want to read your book but I don't want to break the spine" and "We know we're living in a tumor/we know we're living in a coral reef") as the arrangement unfolds. It all boils toward the chorus, a bit of Spoon with the edges softened, an ebullient little slice of pop that will stick in your head immediately and for days.

Slam Donahue :: "C'mon C'mon"

Rooted in a shambling acoustic guitar progression that feels lifted from a Spoon cut, Slam Donahue's latest, "C'mon C'mon" is their most urgent and needy track yet. Lyrics wax philosophical about loving the chase, an urgent plea to "talk about this," while the undercurrents still secretly hope for something unrequited. It is a divided if not entirely incoherent meditation. "I want to lose you and then pursue you," confides second verse, as a the break-beat arrangement flexes and breathes underneath. The final plea is to "talk about this," a thoughtful aside for a band who primarily has produced carefree, party-first jams. This, in the final analysis, a love song for the kids who have been out too late and loved too little.

Top 50 Songs of 2010 :: 10-6 [They're sorry they couldn't change]

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.

9. The Jezabels - "Mace Spray"

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.

8. GROUPLOVE - "Colours"

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.

6. First Rate People - "Girls Night"

"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.

On The List :: Spoon @ Mercury Lounge [1.21.10]

This review appears on Bowery's Houselist Blog.

The sidewalk in front of Mercury Lounge was divided into two lines like some sort of downtown apartheid: One for those seeking to pay their way in to see Britt Daniel and the other for those with their names on the guest list. They were faced in opposite directions—the music-industry insiders and the morally righteous superfans willing to stand in the cold and pay real money for music. It was thus written on the street that something special was happening inside. A band that will play Radio City Music Hall in two months was playing this tiny sold-out venue.

Spoon took the stage just after 10 and, Daniel, in a brown fitted shirt (he wrote an entire song about this in 2001), was awkward in the way cool people can get away with being weird and compelling. He thanked us for coming, and the room buzzed with the sense that we should be thanking him. Spoon slipped into “Black Like Me,” maybe their most cerebral effort, before shifting into “Is Love Forever?,” off their latest album, Transference, a downstroke anthem that ends with a collision of reverb and the feeling of a pulled plug. Daniel played most of the new record, including “Who Makes Your Money” and “Nobody Gets Me but You,” in the first half of the set. The crowd, quite obviously a sea of personal and music-business connections, leaned close and the room approached the feeling of a birthday party where everyone was sure their invitation was genuine.

Daniel upped the ante in the set’s final third. Favorites “Cherry Bomb,” “I Summon You” and “Beast and Dragon, Adored,” appeared next to new cuts like “Mystery Zone,” “Written in Reverse” and the night’s closer, the propulsive “Got Nuffin.” Daniel thanked us again for standing in the cold and we silently replied that we mostly hadn’t. But some did, and for the feeling of a major event with a big band in a little room, this is exactly what counted.