Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [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 2012 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 30 to 21.

30. Reptar - "Orifice Origami"



No one had more fun in 2012 than Reptar did during the opening thirty seconds of single, "Orifice Origami". The shuddering synthesizer arrangement coalesced for a brief moment on the shouting lyric, "Something's not all right here," a sort of something-is-rotten-in-the-state-of-Denmark for a generation of kids almost as gutted and even less decisive than Hamlet. Irony was the twist, a party song about everything being all fucked up, dancing on the edge of a disaster, or what your summer should have sounded like if you were under the age of 30 and stuck with these circumstances.


29. NO - "Another Life"



 "Another Life," represented the resounding announcement from post-National rock outfit NO. It channeled Berninger to be sure, only missing a lyric about apple pies or lemonade or something in the lemonade. It was Americana all the same, dark slices of counterfactual, lines like "we'll get pretty after," all targeting a group of future selves that would self-actualize. It wasn't "Mr. November" but on the shaking conclusion, it was NO's "Mr. November".


28. Paradise - "Endless Wave"



Paradise is shaping up to have a massive 2013 around first demo "Endless Wave," a carefree surf-pop arrangement that owes just as much to the Beach Boys as it does to LCD Soundsystem. Opening to a stomping middle section, the band concerned itself with languid days of summer and a sort of zero-friction reality where the confetti cannons explode and we're all carried away on their "Endless Wave".


27.The Rest - "Laughing Yearning"



The most criminally underrated rock band of 2012, The Rest released a crushingly great record and no one from mainstream independent music circles, at least in the US, seemed to go as bananas as they, perhaps, should have. "Laughing Yearning," without spoiling all the fun, is the song that Local Natives will struggle to find on their second long-player, a wide open and Western rock song about hysterical lost love. These were celebratory drums, and a soaring melody, all colliding in one of the best chord resolutions of the year, the lead singer moaning into the maw, tumbling downwards and finding himself in the final group of choruses.

26. Bloc Party - "Truth"



No one made guitars sound so at once warm and abrasive as Bloc Party did on "Truth". Easily the best song off what was a forgettable fourth record - and it was called Four which should have been the first non-silent sign of alarm - "Truth" churned forward toward a crystalline chorus. The band's traditional sawing guitars were here harnessed for the purposes of elevation, signaling a danger and a submission, Kele promising, "I am yours now, respectfully." 

25. The Mean Season - "Hearts"



It was gritty stuff on The Mean Season's "Hearts," opening lyrics about past pursuits and cold hearts. The innovation, beyond the shabby indie rock arrangement, was the critical commentary about the heart ever became a symbol for love. Perhaps it is just a mean little fist that keeps you from dying. Maybe love is elsewhere, rather than the four-chambered flesh beneath your rib cage. Even a bit meta, the band demanded, "Who decided it was such perfect symbol for love/when it's only an organ pumping your blood?" in one of the best, worst and most memorable lyrics of the year.


24. Theme Park - "Jamaica"



Like St. Lucia, Theme Park was actively engaged in making equatorial music in 2012. "Jamaica" joined the already great single, "Two Weeks," to firm up the sense that Theme Park could be staging a take over in the next few months. "Jamaica" was carefree, an instantly memorable hook and a chorus that drifted along under its own power.


23. Thieving Irons - "Poison"

If "Poison" didn't make sense to you, you either had an intensely bucolic adolescence or missed it all together. The narrative thrust, the repeating hook, "I've got poison in my head," exploded into a middle section that was the closest rock music has come to the churn and crush of the finishing kick of LCD's "All My Friends." After all, "Poison" had a second motif. "You were always on my mind," they sang, a reference that this poison might have a proper noun attached to it. She, like the song that followed, was an absolute killer.

22. Harriet - "I Slept With All Your Mothers"



There wasn't much to "I Slept With All Your Mothers." It was less than two-and-a-half minutes long, a lonely little piano and some plodding guitars. It was the vocal, a screaming and insistent melody, not to mention the most pathological conclusion of any rock song of the year, that sent "I Slept With All Your Mothers" near the top of 2012. It was all love and rage, a "fuck off" to the girl who broke your heart, and a middle of the town square scream, "I Slept With All Your Mothers!" before wading off into the friscalating darkness alone.


21. Suburban Living - "I Don't Fit In"



It was the Cure song that the Cure never released. "I Don't Fit In" was independent rock's "Friday I'm In Love" for 2012, only without the saccharine coating and the radio play. All reverb and washing guitars, Suburban Living chased the melody around for awhile before shouting the title lyric against a backdrop of glittering guitars. It was the final downbeat, a relentless and dogged driver, that propelled the arrangement along. This was the music the Drums could never dream of making, a sadness of an unarticulated type that no one has time for anymore.

Theme Park :: "Two Hours" [RAC Remix]

Theme Park's lead singer warbles, "Can you feel anything?" in the moments before his band's lead single, "Two Hours" begins getting the RAC remix treatment, a re-imagining of the original that all but destroys any chance at the opening interrogative being true.  For a band that was once derided as little more than a Talking Heads cover outfit, "Two Hours" is a remarkably clean and expansive arrangement, glittering with keyboards and melody. Of course in the world of RAC if some is good, more is better. The synths shift toward the irrepressibly ebullient, jumping at the ceiling of limits as we imagine the audio board level lights looked when this remix began to coalesce: greens, yellows and reds, more reds. The final movement is the right one, drums rolling into synthesizer whirlpools rolling melody and the song's final lyrics, "It's bringing me down." Like so many things, even the second time, it's fantastically not true.

[Elevator 2012] :: Bands On The Rise

A recurring feature of music journalism this century is the mindless prediction of who will "blow up" in the following year. This always feels a little odd coming from mainstream outlets like Rolling Stone, Spin and the BBC. A little like Fox News complaining about the "mainstream media", you think, but you are the mainstream media. If these artists are appearing in your pages, Spin Magazine - let's shatter the fourth wall here - they are already "blowing up". In fact, you're helping that happen. Which means, the only people you can trust on the eve of the 2012 calendar year are relatively small publications with no specific skin in the game and no control of the outcome. That's us. See how we did last year and with regard for the bands that might just make it real this year, in no specific order, your Elevator Bands of 2012 after the jump.

Theme Park :: "Wax"

Theme Park, a very new foursome from the UK, are in that strange, liminal stage of half-notoriety. They exist and are great and yet, it seems no one knows them. In defense of the listening public, Theme Park only have three songs that anyone has heard, and one of these we wrote about, "Milk", was either so good or so unmixed (it's 2011, and these things are hard to parse) that it was taken down from their Soundcloud page almost immediately. Now, those of us who follow things like very young bands from overseas that have a serious chance to wobble the knees of American indie rock kids 18 months from now, know that hurriedly taking songs down from the Internet is about the best sign possible for a band's future success. It means someone is advising them or they have an innate sense of their future earning potential and, well, these guys could be worth a lot of money. Theme Park is sitting in the nexus of great songs, good representation and an excellent niche sound. With their first proper single, "A Mountain We Love" due in August, the band releases B-side, "Wax", a song that sails along under its own mysterious power. Poised as the next big export from the London scene, Theme Park wait, halfway between being the band you've never heard of and the band that's about to bigger than you can even imagine sitting where you're sitting right now.

Wax by Theme Park

DJ Natty Heavy :: "32ft/second June/July Mix"

DJ Natty Heavy and I go back more than 10 years now. And though my career only took a weird and brief trip through the music industry, he made his life there. Currently you can find him producing a top-rated morning radio show in Charleston, South Carolina and spinning the hottest records (check his Fashion Week video above) at Charleston's most exclusive clubs. On a recent visit I asked Heavy if he'd be up for putting together mixes for the blog based on some recent and challenging songs I sent his way. Now, this kid spins hip-hop, freestyles against Common, but you're not exactly going to find the new Cults record in his whip. But he agreed to the challenge, and the first edition mixtape is hot off the decks and ready for stream and download below, along with a track list. This might be the least hip-hop thing he has ever done, and it is absolutely perfect for all your plug-and-play summer circumstances. He even threw in some extra fog horn for me. Check it up or check it down.

Tracks:
1. Cults - "You Know What I Mean"/Common - "The Corner"
2. The Vaccines - "Norgaard"
3. French Films - "Convict"
4. Gauntlet Hair - "I Was Thinking"/Lady Gaga - "LoveGame"
5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - "An Ugly Person On A Movie Screen"/ Tupac - "Changes"
6. Coldplay - "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall"
7.Theme Park - "Milk"
8. Tom Vek - "A Chore"

Natty Heavy - "32ftsec July 2011 Mix" by 32feet

[Elevator] Theme Park :: "Milk" and "A Mountain We Love"

An exciting and very new band out of the UK, Theme Park have only been making their exotic pop since the beginning of this calendar year. However, the first two available songs, "Milk", available for stream and download below and "A Mountain We Love", the video for which you find above and rife with 1990s found footage, represent one of those intensely strong entries that we find ourselves linking back to 18-24 months later. Put as a simple English sentence: Theme Park isn't on anyone's radar right now (a cursory search of blog aggregators reveals that this will be the first post about the band), but they are about to be. The flavor is that miasma of international style that David Byrne (Talking Heads fans will either find this music charming or offensive, always hard to tell) used so successfully, with the same bright guitars and poly-rhythmic impulses with which Two Door Cinema Club more recently architected their rise out of Northern Ireland. The arrangements dilate and weave themselves together like one of those dexterous little girls doing Cat's Cradle over and over and over. You will be hearing a great deal more about Theme Park, popsmiths with a slight eye for the weird and hooks that are only just beginning to take hold.

Listen :: Theme Park - "Milk"