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".

The Zolas :: "Invisible"

The Zolas, purveyors of one of the best songs of 2012, "Knot In My Heart", return with one-off "Invisible". It's a bit of power-pop bombast slamming into the chorus with dark bubble gum rhymes like, "When the nighttime crashes it/ look around beside you, babe, we're your friends/When you need some oxygen, jump into the fire with us." The fatalism is strictly lyrical as the guitars race downward against the drums in an escalating series of dares. Like their previous work, no band in independent rock writes hooks with as much punch and as few apologies as the Zolas. The final movement lifts off the ground shooting the metaphors about fire off somewhere in the sky.

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.

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [10-2]

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 2012 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 10 to 2. 

10. A.C. Newman feat. Neko Case - "Not Talking"



What separated Newman's 2012 release, Shut Down The Streets, from being a New Pornographers record remained unclear, especially with a Neko Case appearance on the debut single, "Not Talking". What remained certain was this: when Case and Newman collaborate, the results are magic. A whirling melody and Newman's typical austerity dissolved into Case's transformative duet. It was about a lonely, reverse-engineered Eden. "Rescue teams will look for days/I like the way things are/They should abandon the search," they sang, providing the outlines for exile of these two massive talents. It was allegedly about redemption, a bridge about distance, Case and Newman soaring out over the arrangement with sturdy wings, but it was clear these two were happier out there alone.


9. Father John Misty - "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings"



The most memorable drum and guitar line of 2012, Father John Misty built a house of death on America' far western boundary with "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings." "What are people gonna think?" Misty posed to the woman in question, though he suffered from no reservations of formality when dishing up one of the most satisfying sexual lyrics of the year, "I laid up for hours in a daze retracing the expanse of your American back." It was all love and funerals, digging in the dirt, girls along for the ride, making out and up in cemeteries in Los Angeles.


8. Sun Kil Moon - "Sunshine in Chicago"



Mark Kozelek has never lost sleep over forthrightness. In 2012 "Sunshine in Chicago" was no exception, a bracingly honest take on getting old. He admits to getting an STD in Chicago in the 90s, though this somehow comes across as dulcet as the admissions of his own father's exile to Chicago in the summers to relieve a crowded house. Nominally, it is a walk through a sunny Chicago, but it is Kozelek's talent for blighted imagery that takes us to his father, a more-famous career with the Red House Painters, and that line about "guys in tennis shoes." Few other artists do place, minutiae, and lyrical imagery as well as Kozelek, admitting to being both crushingly sad and entirely fine with getting older, all in the span of a walk down Lincoln Avenue on a sunny afternoon.


7. The Zolas - Knot In My Heart"



The most unexpected and infectious chorus of the year, The Zolas' "Knot In My Heart" proved to have staying power behind their one monstrous hook. It was the Spoon song for the year we didn't get a Spoon record, a bit of angular and restless piano-pop that held incredible darkness beneath an ebullient surface. The "knot" wasn't real, though it probably felt that way. The band unleashed lyrics like, "it's hard and weird not to know how your day begins, though I'm lying next to someone new" a simple and crushing aside. The final twist saw the arrangement at full bore, sparse piano chords insistent over the top of the repeated and eponymous lyric. It both ripped and could rip you apart.


6. The Vaccines - "Aftershave Ocean"



The magical realism emerged as a thick stew on the Vaccines' non-single, "Aftershave Ocean." It was their best song from a frankly forgettable sophomore record that will undeniably result in people getting fired at Columbia Records. "Aftershave Ocean" was undeniably excellent, a weird mixture of elements of 2001 Strokes and 1968 Beatles. The guitar line chased the melody, Justin Young singing throwback pop lyrics like, "You're coming up for air/happier down there/in your aftershave ocean." It wasn't clear what it all meant, some weird lines about self-denial, "pulling the wool over," life being difficult to face and indulgence, but the impression was something more like, "Yellow Submarine," the escape that promised better times below the surface of some magical place.


5. Nite Jewel - "One Second of Love"



A whirring synthesizer back-beat announced the arrival of the singular Nite Jewel's "One Second of Love." It featured the chorus of the year, the absolutely best hook, good enough that she only teased the listener with elements of the first refrain, waiting until the 1.21 mark to unleash the complete version. It was haunting and cold, singer Romona Gonzalez asking, "Who has one second of love?", an implication that this might be more fleeting than we were lead to believe. The middle section darkened further, before a final movement, spacey synths soaring to meet the chorus of their maker, Gonzalez, alone in a layered duet with herself, asking her most pressing question.


4. Beach House - "Myth"



It was a lighthouse warning, an iron triangle, a pot and pan beginning. It was something you couldn't quite place, that ringing sound that began Beach House's stunning achievement, "Myth." That banging, inexplicably folded into the arrangement, like an auditory announcement in the fog that lay ahead. It was beautiful, intentionally and creatively gauzy. Victoria Legrand, in her usually haunting voice, suggested, "what comes after this/momentary bliss/ consequence of what you do to me" as if to say to the world they pushed back in their chairs, something this pretty has to come at a cost. Dreams this big, lies this wide, fog this rich, it must fall apart somewhere. It was maybe a bit much, but like only a few other songs this decade, you'll likely remember where you were when you heard "Myth" for the first time. There was no denying this truth, a banging reminder of where you were on their drifting sea of melody and self-deception.


3. Stars - "Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It"



Leave it to Stars to hit us with a lyric like, "take the weakest thing in you/and beat the bastards with it," a neo-Breakfast Club call for weird dignity in an increasingly individualized and lonely world. For Torquil Campbell, his weakness was that he was frightened and high, twin admissions at the center of "Hold On When You Get Love ...". Amy Milan was reduced to a Kate Busy-like feature in the chorus, her tweaked and soaring vocal offering a counterpoint to Campbell's confessional Moz. The marching orders were everywhere, the title, the chorus, the ratatat drums calling us to attention, the way they slammed in and out of the chorus, the Cure guitars. It was big and bold and beautiful, a bit silly and a bit saccharine, but love can be like that. Stars remained appropriately at the center of the melodrama, maybe the song of their career, one that Campbell admitted had a "pretty melody," but wouldn't help you leave the party at the right time. This was presumably a cautionary tale of the infidelities that happen after midnight. It was an admission; they could tell you what love sounded like, but they couldn't make you do it.


2. Alt-J - "Breezeblocks"



No one knew what to do with Alt-J in 2012. People compared them to Radiohead. Critics swooned. Pitchfork left them out of their top 50 albums. It was a cacophony as loud as the disparate influences on their record. This writer nearly had a meltdown listening to their debut LP, An Awesome Wave, and its best song, "Breezeblocks" the first time through. There was so much to it, two distinct movements, each a bit bizarre, describing first a murder and then a cannibal's desire to eat the object of your love. The final lyrics, almost done in a round fashion, "Please don't go/I'd eat you whole/I love you so," layered and layered, the drums gaining in intensity and the arrangement swelling behind the band until it was almost maniacal. Perhaps this was suitable for a song about holding the object of your desire down with concrete blocks, a winking and intense idea for what would become the band's "radio single" at college radio in the US. The weirdness worked, and Alt-J held us all under the water, or maybe it was us that killed them. Either way, we were kept together in a weird, pseudo-fetishy way, held down with weights and bound to the bottom.

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.

The Zolas :: "Knot In My Heart"

The Zolas' "Knot In My Heart" might as well be a punch in the chest. Both are these sorts of goofy visual similes that serve as the coded language for our deepest and most unspeakable emotional geography. The unmentionable becomes the banal, our common touch on things we barely understand, words like, "heartache," phrases like "love sick." Though in the midst of this linguistic obfuscation, the band gives hints of more straight forward depths on lyrics like, "It's hard and weird not to know how your day begins." The Zolas insist on their intention to take pop songs and "fuck them up," but there is nothing shabby or unintentional about the cloud-clearing chorus of "Knot In My Heart," where the arrangement almost visibly lifts off the ground. Growing in its insistence, The Zolas craft one of those pop songs that traffics in the dark sorts of solipsisms of the early 20s, the sorts of sea sick pains that you wake up with, a grinding anxiety of love and loss, and they set it to a bouncy, modulated chorus that tickles every dopamine receptor available. Easily one of the best singles of 2012, it is happy sounding music for the daily apocalypse of heartbreaks from afar. "Knot In My Heart," like "heartbreaks" and "chest punches," is silly language, semantic laziness, and it is absolutely the best anyone can do.



Download :: The Zolas - "Knot In My Heart"