Top 50 Songs of 2013 :: [50-41]

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 50 to 41.

50. Youth Lagoon - "Mute"



Youth Lagoon took his listeners out of the bedroom in 2013, and it wasn't a universally pleasant experience. Seemingly more determined to freak everyone out, a drunk carousel creeps its way in at the edges of mounting of psych-out, "Mute". Still, the sea-sick quality of sophomore LP, Wondrous Bughouse managed to stick, like the final movement of "Mute", a weird and lost battle cry in an age of distortion.

49. Highasakite - "Son of a Bitch"



"Oh grand gesture, enter the room" opens the lens on Highasakite's "Son of a Bitch", before lead singer Ingrid Havik sings, "hold my hair while I vomit". This is the type of reversal that "Son of a Bitch" traffics in without regard for the listener's potential whiplash. This isn't about making you feel good, even if the tumbling chorus spills out of Havik like the puke of the opening line. No one, least of all the band, can hold back here.

48. Field Mouse - "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"



For everyone who prayed for the salvaging of the Silversun Pickups shipwreck, New York's Field Mouse brought "Tomorrow Is Yesterday". A fecund and funny lead singer mixed with the echoing shoegaze jam, a sort of anti-anthem for the death-spiral gentrification of the Williamsburg waterfront, an era and a band both in and out of time.

47. Waylayers - "The Hook"



Waylayers got more out of four notes than most other bands in 2013. A wind-swept synthesizer creation, "The Hook" was full of its namesake, lines like, "I'd rather live my life inside my dreams." From an LP entitled, Fault Lines, "The Hook" debated the silent perils beneath our feet, all the invisible deaths we can bear to consider, a final movement and duet that just vaguely resisted the fatalism suggested in the opening movement.

46. Amity Beach - "Sunday Nights to Infinity"



If youth is soft oft wasted on the young, Amity Beach used it well. "Sunday Nights to Infinity" trades in adolescence as currency: the explosive nights by the lake that feel like they happened to you, whether they ever did or not. The guitars exploded from every direction, a seeming desire to say yes to every impulse at once, the absurd House of Yes that is being young.

45. Night Flowers - "Night"



No one did 1990s guitars like Night Flowers in 2013. "Night" opens like a lost Sundays or Cranberries track, a winsome and lonely guitar line that eventually opens to Hester Ullyart's undeniable vocal. It was something that belonged on the Reality Bites soundtrack, a smoldering kiss between Ethan Hawke and and a stunningly adorned Winona Ryder.

44. Flyte - "Over and Out"



Once you got passed the "Right Back Where We Started From" paralells and the wanton flight metaphors from a band called, Flyte, "Over and Out" held a breezy progression and a number of sticky hooks. Some mixture of the Cars, the Police, and the Talking Heads, Flyte could well dominate 2014, even in the face of their eponymous lyrical symbolism.

43. Polly Hi - "Carousel"



Polly Hi was as close to the old Shins as anyone got in 2013, and "Carousel" held one of those cloud-clearing choruses that Mercer used to write three of before getting out of bed in the morning. Not complex but immensely satisfying, the refrain held everything together. Music wasn't ripe for changing anyone's life this year, but Polly Hi's "Carousel" reminded you of what that must have felt like.

42. ON AN ON - "Ghosts"



Slow was the new fast from ON AN ON's "Ghosts" this year. Like a lost analog to "Where Is Mind?", the power was in the downstroke guitars and the wilting little hooks that grew up and died in the same moments. The final movement seemed to go one forever, a receding vanishing point for a song that never concerned itself with anything but the past.

41. Alice Boman - "Waiting"



It was nothing less than heartbreak on Alice Boman's "Waiting". Pathos dialed to 11 on lyrics like, "I want you more than I need you / I need you so bad", as Boman's little alto steamrolled the listener. There would be no absolution here, nothing but pain in the middle of a long afternoon.

Belgian Fog :: "You Drive Me To Madness"

Mix equal parts of the baroque twee of Belle and Sebastian and the bedroomer dreams of Youth Lagoon and you arrive at the glittering and homespun jams of Belgian Fog. On most recent track, "You Drive Me To Madness" singer Robert Dale glides into his falsetto in a chorus that chirps between the same five notes. It's the type of modulation endemic to the best hooks, this one drowned in the soft glow of clipping vocals and tumbling keyboards. Between previous single, "Wait For Help" and "You Drive Me To Madness" it's a wonder that Dale isn't already signed and working on a debut full length effort. The end result of his most recent one-off pulses as a magically real universe - he calls it "another dimension" - of pleasant and fantastical orthogonals, the distance spinning towards and away from the listener in equal measure, a promise of things to come.

Parks, Squares and Alleys :: "Forest"

A bit of dreamy post-punk emerges from Khabarovsk, Russia in the form of Parks, Squares and Alley's second single, "Forest". If it were even possible for a label like Captured Tracks to snap the 19-year old up, he could quite easily project to do a Robert Smith impression of the Youth Lagoon precociousness act of two years ago. "Forest" is a bedroom record with ambition, a snappy little chorus - "So many things that scare, living in the forest" - mixed with an incredibly sophisticated bridge that melodically echos the "I never ... " final movement of the Killers' "Mr. Brightside". Hard to believe and undeniably real, Parks, Squares and Alleys marches around upright in daylight and in full view of the town; the residents disbelieve their eyes - could that have come from there? But there are always strange, wonderful things coming out of the forest, or out of eastern Russia.

There Is Danger :: "Passport"

The charming last movement of There Is Danger's latest single, "Passport" offers singer Illya Riske riding down the back of a cascading melody and a mantra, "All I wanted was adventure." It sounds vaguely apologetic, the final iteration of a song that has Riske admitting, "I keep my passport in pocket" and "I fall in love in every city", a love song to wanderlust and all her terrible drivers. The sounds are dreamy and spirited, lo-fi and ambitious, a little prop plane rock song that buzzes low over the trees. Appropriately, Riske ends not with an apology but a demand, "Just give me adventure." Both he and his listeners won't be disappointed by what the next movement brings, a national tour and unfolding recognition, one of the best independent bands in this vein since Throw Me The Statue and Youth Lagoon.

Youth Lagoon :: "Mute"

His most bombastic effort to date, Youth Lagoon debuts the second song, "Mute" from coming sophomore LP, Wondrous Bughouse. Opening with a spacious guitar line and measured drums, "Mute" is more funeral march than relieved catechism. In keeping with first track, "Dropla", the arrangement spins off into the stratosphere, a sea-sick loop that sounds robbed from a children's carousel. The final movement trends toward cacophony, his biggest guitars to date and a piano line that feels firmly divorced from the admittedly ambitious bedroom creations of his debut album.

Youth Lagoon :: "Dropla"

Youth Lagoon began as a bedroom recording project that grew long and large without ever losing its sense of intimacy on 2011's stunning LP The Year of Hibernation. It was a general specific, a record so widely loved and with which everyone expressed a different, sort of personal connection. Returning with the first single from sophomore record, Wondrous Bughouse, Youth Lagoon evolves toward something more expansive on "Dropla". The arrangement clanging away and unfolding into a uninterrupted stream of sounds that border on cacophony, the aesthetic trembles on the outer marker of chaos. "You'll never die" is the edict, the motif and the high water point. Nearly tipping six-minutes, Youth Lagoon swells his sound noticeably here, a good sign for the potential for sustained magical realism on Wondrous Bughouse. The listener, in the end, is left washing away with the sounds of the old, lo-fi keyboards with which Youth Lagoon bored his way into so many hearts and music collections.

Calvin Love :: "Magic Hearts"

"This life is the best, but it's killing me fast," confesses Calvin Love at the heart of his bedroom synthesizer meditation, "Magic Hearts." He surely means it, a solidly down-tempo assessment for a song that relishes it's distant keyboards and lonely bass line as much as its clap-track drums. While Love mentions none of the debauchery that might be killing him, he does use the title, a reference to the magic heart that would change you in the future. It's Youth Lagoon for the dance floor, a snapping little single, so taut and steeped in equal parts fear and love of the technology that made the very recording possible. Love seems to have a plan, fall in love, the last magic trick we have, before the lights go down on the whole show.

Grand Resort :: "Night Is Dark"

The bedroom pop of Brooklyn's Grand Resort, like the best of all small projects, holds the ability to create a universe in its entirety. Like Youth Lagoon, and others before him, the delicacy, the hands-on lushness of Grand Resort's "Night Is Dark" lies in its slow construction, a sort of musical diorama that feels both complete and entirely limited. But this discretion is the important twist, a meditation on optimism and transcendence, immortalized here as, "Take me away, far away."

Listen :: Grand Resort - "Night Is Dark"

Mystery Pills :: "The Glass Traditions"

Even on the most dilated summer evenings of my youth I had little desire to take mysterious, unnamed pharmaceuticals. I did, however, want to make ridiculous any common structures of authority, and I assuredly did so in the most obvious, inept way possible. So the concept of Mystery Pills, the moniker of Raj Dawson, and his title single, "The Glass Traditions" seem inexorably linked. They both suggest a darkness, a youthful disdain for established norms and social mores, the kind that reads, "Do not operate heavy machinery" with excitement not trepidation, and that this brand of blind, thoughtless immortality is what always changes the world. This is the spectral absurd in this youthful bit of lo-fi from Rapid City.  At its biggest, it is small. The drum machine could easily be by necessity, not choice. The aesthetic is a less syrupy Youth Lagoon, but the dare, the one from the beginning, is the important one. Dawson confides in the chorus, "I don't want to ask forgiveness", a line that will end up rhyming with the title lyric. In essence, give me whatever is in your hand, we're going out to break anything that can be broken.

Listen :: Mystery Pills - "The Glass Traditions"

Porcelain Raft :: "Unless You Speak From The Heart"

Porcelain Raft is sneaking up on everyone and no one with his upcoming album, Strange Weekend. The tiny arrangements and demos released by the band in late 2010, evolved into more spacious, wistful, organ-driven creations. The sonic territory flecks the edges of the reverb-heavy drowned pop of the past few years, but cuts like "Unless You Speak From The Heart" rely on slicing sharp craft and breezy hooks. In short, this is the Youth Lagoon of the coming months, save a more upbeat ethos. In that very modern way, critics and listeners have both a sense that Strange Weekend,"will be good" and a willingness to be surprised by its goodness. This is the new magic trick, knowing the Prestige is coming - a quiet, little record about quiet, little heartbreak - and still being impressed when it arrives.

Listen :: Porcelain Raft - "Unless You Speak From The Heart"
Listen :: Porcelain Raft - "Put Me To Sleep"

Top 50 Songs of 2011 :: 30-21 [The world will unfold all around us]

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 2011, no band may appear twice. Each post contains a lyric from one of the ten songs to follow, a hint and a hook that stuck out clearly in this group. Today, we count down 30-21.

30. The Jezabels - "Endless Summer"



This was the year and the album where the Jezabels washed over the American consumer like a rogue wave. Well, it didn't happen, but it wasn't for fault of "Endless Summer", an alternately austere and bold piece of pop music. Singer Hayley Mary cast herself in the sharpest form of relief, the single best voice of the year, a vocalist entirely unrestrained and simultaneously in total control.

29. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - "An Ugly Person On A Movie Screen"

 

The mix of electronics and silky vocals gave Detroit's Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. an easy entry point to the pop listener of 2011. Building on a successful 2010 EP, the band returned with a well received full length (just ask Paste Magazine) and a track five, "An Ugly Person On A Movie Screen" that blew the collective doors off. Or maybe it was the roof, a musical convertible with the power to pick up the breezy, send the clouds home early and sound sunnier than anything else you heard this year. The chorus was full of woozy "nahs" and lyrics like "You don't know how your caged bird sings". It was, of course, critical of a world too focused on aesthetics, even if the aesthetics here were fantastic.

28. Typhoon - "Summer Home"

Sometimes it is a lyric, even just one, that sticks out so squarely it makes the whole song ache with relevance. For Typhoon on "Summer Home" it was the soaring and fragile, "it's how we start over" set on repeat in the bridge. The band attempts to follow its own recommendation, stripping the arrangement down to nothing, before building it again, though never returning to the edicts of the bridge. It was a delicate brand of folk music that Typhoon pulled off in 2011, built at once for destruction and again for framing, its edges serrated but not ill suited to construction.

27. Friska Viljor - "Larionov"

Friska Viljor rarely makes any sense to the American audience. The name intimidates us, this before we even get to a song title we don't recognize. Can't you name yourselves after an animal like these American/Canadian bands do, we think? But, Friska Viljor don't care, and they're making the most fun music in the world right now. "Larionov" is an explosion of horns and kick out the windows drums. "You know the answers to the beating of my heart", they sing as their arrangement absolutely explodes around them, and maybe you reconsider how you felt about the consonants in their name and you go pick up their recent album.

 26. Youth Lagoon - "Afternoon"

Youth Lagoon, like Beirut before him, is a precocious, multi-instrumentalist from a part of the country that most Eastern Indie Music Elites label as good for American Indian Art to be used as a t-shirt design in Williamsburg. But the American West couldn't hold this bedroom collection, and "Afternoon" was so full of rich melodies and nostalgia that it didn't feel a bit indulgent or dishonest. Youth Lagoon is really just a kid, but then again, so was Condon.

25. Auditorium - "Sunday"

If you are planning on getting in a relationship in New York City in the next few months, listen to Auditorium's "Sunday". Hell, this song is so sweet, you might end up dating it. Realistically, it describes a rosy-hued picture of life on Prospect Park West, marching up toward Grand Army Plaza and the Great Lawn with a cup of excellent coffee in hand, all in perfect time and harmony. This is your shift at the Co-Op set to music; this is your life but better.

24. We Barbarians - "The Wait Is Over"



Having seen their live show twice now, it is undebatable fact that We Barbarians are the best rock band playing in New York City right now. On their most recent EP, "The Wait Is Over" slotted at track two, a combination of glossy pop hooks and big guitars. The band bears inexact comparisons to early We Are Scientists, but their energy is different, an explosion of resurgent vocals and thrashing breakdowns. If this is modern barbarism, we will throw open the gates of the city and let the invaders in. But then again, they're already here and they're already dominant.

23. Polarsets - "Leave Argentina"



In the year that closed LCD Soundsystem's official career, bands like Polarsets proved that: 1. the cowbell was still very much alive and 2. Dancing in rock music was not as dead as James Murphy's band. "Leave Argentina" was an absurd trip to South America, full of references to "debonaire" sensibilities, nudity and, predictably, cocaine. The final movement put the listener inside the machine as the band screams about feeling drunk and glamorous. It didn't bring indie rock back to the club - it was already there - but it moved it onto the dance floor and made it do the windmill.

22. The Rural Alberta Advantage - "Barnes' Yard"

 

One of those albums that is so firmly in our collective rear view mirror by December, it would be easy to forget that Rural Alberta Advantage released a record this year and even easier to forget that the best song on it wasn't the promotional single, "Stamp". "Barnes' Yard" surged unexpectedly from the speakers, a breathless and aerobic exercise in acoustic pop. As usual, the final denouement lay in Nils Edenloff turning his neck into turnpike of surging veins, screaming into your iTunes with no regard for your safety or his own.

21. Stricken City - "Some Say"

If there was one band that absolutely should have made more noise and sold more records before their demise, it was certainly Stricken City in 2011. "Some Say" was the band's last single before going on permanent hiatus and their last chance to convince you to buy one of their records. The song was divided into a few distinct movements, a soft open, a crackling first third, and an outright explosive final act. "Some Say" was post-punk with an updated ethos but, more likely, it was the song and the band that you missed.

Youth Lagoon :: "Afternoon"

The wistful electronic pop climbs out of your speakers like a Sunday morning, instantly private and familiar. Youth Lagoon, another excellent member of the Lefse family, opens his recently BNM'd record, A Year Of Hibernation with the glimmering, slow burning sounds of "Afternoon", caught between these introverted impulses and a need to share them. This is only the beginning of a slow, clapping build that reaches the paragon of all bedroom pop, seeming important without being grandiose, feeling handcrafted without risking a lack of ambition. These are dreamy anthems for a generation capable of building brilliance in home studios and laptops, both terrified of the outside world and necessarily affecting of it. The band's debut record is out now and they play Glasslands tomorrow night.

Listen :: Youth Lagoon - "Afternoon"