Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [20-11]

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 20 to 11.

20. Jinja Safari - "Hiccups"



It was post-Vampire Weekend pop, but it didn't make it any less fun, or any more awkward when the band balked at questions about Graceland. When you're the seventh layer in the seven-layer derivative dip, you don't think much about the six layers below you, even if it means the dudes in Lady Smith want to punch your lights out. "Hiccups" proved new-fashioned fun, a Lion King for adults, cartoonish bombast and hooks for days.

 
19. Slam Donahue - "Bug in the Sun"



"Bug In The Sun" emerged as one of the most singable melodies that 2012 had to offer. The refrain, abrasive on recording, intentionally and artfully tweakish, became something else when re-sung in the shower or a good parking garage. "Twitching like a bug in the sun," really a line about modern anxieties, transmuted into something less when put in the voice of the listener. It was a throwback, melodic and garish, self-consciously poppy, the kind of thing best sung again and again.


18. The Happy Hollows - "Endless"



The Happy Hollows had a quiet 2012, save the release of "Endless," a stirring and juiced up take on the pop that Fleetwood Mac (and now those girls in Haim) made deservedly famous. "Endless" ended in a series of soaring "ohs" from lead singer Sarah Negahdari, the line between her falsetto and normal vocal becoming more and more blurry in the maw. It was probably the layers, sliver upon sliver of vocal mix until the only thing left was one of the most elevating refrains of the year.


17. Wild Ones - "It's Real"



A small song, Wild Ones' "It's Real" was a break up anthem with only one hook. But, the chorus, "One more terror night/no I don't think we'll let that happen" proved both grammatically specious and entirely awesome. It was the kind of music that Rilo Kiley stopped making well before they imploded, or maybe a female fronted Say Hi To Your Mom. It was cute without being precious, adorable without being annoying. It was a bit dark, and most importantly, very real.


16. The Tallest Man On Earth - "1904"



The discography of singers making sense out of earthquakes isn't exactly extensive. In 2012, Tallest Man On Earth turned his talents to the shuddering earthquake that rocked Sweden and Norway in 1904. The magical realism ran deep, Matsson singing, "and as I lower down I hear it's a message, and it's 1902 telling people to get out." This notion of being privileged with the prophetic knowledge of some terrible forthcoming event felt hyper-modern, a sense of unplaced dread, even about a century-old natural disaster in Northern Europe.

 
15. Capybara - "Neighbor Crimes"



Capybara loaded "Neighbor Crimes" full of every bit of their keyboard and guitar pop and then shot it up in the night sky to explode and burn. It reminded the listener of UB-40, perfectly off-beat keyboards and each movement building on this original idea, glossy vocals and explosive guitars in the same moment. It may have been overlooked, but "Neighbor Crimes" was one of most ambitious and unconventional rock singles of the year. It turned the relatively meaningless lyric, "thinking, going, Mexico" into some sort of marching orders: a head-nodding jam that never took itself for anything of the sort.


14. Polica - "Lay Your Cards Out"



You either saw Polica in 2012 or you didn't. The band, maybe the first to ever properly utilize two drummers (and yes, White Rabbits don't count), toured both this continent and the one to our right with a mixture of rolling thunder, cold medicine dreams and magical sexuality. "Lay Your Cards Out" urged a forthrightness that felt real and important this year, the arrangement ebbing and flowing with efficacy, finally a rising tide of layers that washed over the listener, laying everything bare and clean.


13. Chvrches - "The Mother We Share"



"The Mother We Share" patched our genetic material together in a big mess of DNA in 2012. It was Kate Bush-lite, slamming synth stabs and a progression that almost literally took off into the chorus. The shouting catharsis ached of British moral victories, whirring from hook to hook without perfect answers, lyrics like, "the way is long, but you can make it easy on me." We were left with a little girl's voice shouting into the imploding architecture, everything falling apart and, seemingly, coming together. 


12. Challenger - "I Am Switches"



Challenger provided us with the lyric of the year, "I wanna be with you when the other shoe falls." It was one of those deeply American communal fatalisms; in essence, we should be together when this all falls apart. "I Am Switches" was two-halves of a song: one part ebullient synthesizers and big horns, and the second movement, a literal reversal, vocals headed backwards in time and a more plaintive stab at the original idea. None of this would be easy or direct, and all we would have was some sort of new-Platonic Symposium. "There's no philosophy more likely fulfilling than friendship/ I'm lost in the world I'm in love with," were the last lyrics of a difficult but beautiful synthesizer meditation.

 
11. Sky Ferriera - "Everything Is Embarrassing"



Ever since Zooey Dechanel and Garden State, a generation of kids have gotten away from the sort of Calvinist public shame that drove so much of American culture over the last few centuries. It was suddenly fine to wear an ugly sweater or thick glasses or listen to Belle and Sebastian. It wasn't weird or silly, you were at the absolute center of relativist individualism. Dominant culture ceased to exist. You were you, a quirky and intentionally weird self. Bizarre became the new cool. Sky Ferriera threw the brakes on this program in 2012, claiming the opposite instead. It was all so horrifying, each bit of it, your carefully built and self-consciously quirky self. Every stupid thing you said, each protracted goodbye and stupid aside, your lack of social graces multiplied by your mounting anxiety, Sky went after it all. "Everything Is Embarrassing" made a beautiful case for shame, for downcast eyes and blushed cheeks. We're already weird human beings, she argued, let's maybe not celebrate it to loudly.

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.

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [40-31]

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 40 to 31.

40. Howth - "Secret Goldmine"

Howth, all rich with horns and moral victories offered the outlines of a clandestine financial reserve on glittering single, "Secret Goldmine". A down-stroke guitar and drums cribbed from the National's catalog, "Secret Goldmine" was an unrequited love song, pitched at the last minute in hopes that the feeling would be mutual. "I'm thrilled to be your secret goldmine," was code for something else: unconditional and long form duets.


39. Maps and Atlases - "Fever"



In a year lacking big, bold rock songs, "Fever" did its best to roll the collective windows down and jam the collective accelerator pedal to the collective floor. It was supposed to be a transfiguration, a dreamed moment when the "Fever" passed and we were a more reasonable, less knee-jerk, rational species. Of course, the wailing guitars and slamming drums did little in this stead. "Fever" passed, tipping five minutes, but not without the break that comes in the middle of the night and at high temperature.


38. Donora - "And Then The Girls"

Donora, a Pittsburgh band with brash enough chops to make a name for themselves on the national scene, broke through in 2012 with a rigorous touring schedule and a singular moment on, "And Then The Girls". There was an argument that it was the year's best chorus, a refrain that drove over and over and over at the same idea: the title lyric in falsetto, four notes in play and all of them pleasing to the ear. It was maybe vapid, but so was Le Tigre, and "And Then The Girls" recalled a glossy riot grrl chic, girls in revolt but tastefully done.


37. Mirror Talk - "Choose Life"

For anyone waiting on the Future Islands record that never came in 2012, Mirror Talk was the baritone synth pop of which your dreams were made. Rooted in an oblique question - "Is it true love?" (and the comma placement or lack there of made all the difference) - "Choose Life" was the grinding, industrial jam to architect the last stages of a disaster. It was New Order for kids that knew New Order; it was Future Islands for people that already loved Future Islands.


36. Eliza and the Bear - "Brother's Boat"



The insistent opening guitar chords of "Brother's Boat" announced the arrival of Eliza and the Bear. It was post-Mumford pop, folk music with a touch of bombast, Edward Sharpe without all the commercial overtones. The final explosion, "Just let it go," was built for Beasts of the Southern Wild, an anthem for where the wild things actually were. 


35. Princeton - "Remembrance Of Things To Come"



Princeton does baroque pop better than anyone in indie rock and "Remembrance Of Things To Come" was no exception. It was all build and no payoff, strings frantically chasing a syncopated piano progression around a falsetto vocal. It was indie rock for a string quartet, things lost and forgotten or, as the band suggested, those memories yet to be made.


34. Oberhofer - "HEART"



No one went more for broke in indie rock this year than Oberhofer on "HEART". The all caps title was an overture, an introduction, to what was a twitchy and bombastic arrangement. The final movement, one of the best 90-seconds of music this year, was a crashing, tumbling conclusion to an already bold arrangement. It was about losing love, a shuddering coda to a brilliant bit of somber pop, Bradley Oberhofer cooing down the back of the disaster. 


33. Chairlift - "I Belong In Your Arms"



There is a world where Chairlift's "I Belong In Your Arms" was the single best song of 2012, a glittering bit of synth pop built for an 80s movie that was never made. Like The Chocolate War, the gags are slapstick and the allegories are hard to miss, Polachek and her crew making a crystalline arrangement that drives restlessly forward like a lost and improved Kate Bush single.


32. Lord Huron - "Time To Run"



Things fell apart internally in 2012, or at the very least, continued their pattern of utter instability. So pardon Lord Huron for looking outward on lead single, "Time To Run," a banging and clattering slice of world pop that served a bit of footnoted notice to bands like Local Natives and Vampire Weekend. The truth was out there, to be sure, a mixture of love and loss in the service of foreign interests and neocolonial ideas. 


31. Here We Go Magic - "How Do I Know"

In the era of the overly certain opinion, "How Do I Know" presented a pleasant countretemps. All about not knowing if she or he was the one, Here We Go Magic offered a bit of indecision - and this is completely absurd because "How Do I Know" is also so clearly a love song - in a time and place where everyone, everywhere, all the time, has a take.

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [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 2012 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 50 to 41.


50. Swim Good - "Totally A Mess Wild"



A spiraling and looping beat, this First Rate People offshoot delivered a song about being out of control that was tautly and intentionally organized. The initial duet was the charmer, playful and biting in the asking of questions like, "Are you ashamed of the things that you do?"


49. Little Legend - "Saints"



This group of Wisconsinites brought the house when it came to blue-collar rock in 2012. "Saints" proved to be nothing like its title, lines about being born under bad signs and with fires lodged firmly in the skull. It was all whiskey and cigarettes, full of small sins and resolute sinners


48. Teleman - "Cristina"



Bits of Phoenix crept into the corners of Teleman's debut Moshi Moshi single, "Cristina". The cruise-control set at something closer to residential speed limits, "Cristina" glides around under its own power: glossy, love-sick and circular.


47. Long Walks On The Beach - "We're Growing Up"



Long Walks On The Beach made lo-fi sound high on the vaguely seasick "We're Growing Up." Frantic and breathless, the band grappled with the developmental process in a string-soaked universe where "crowds swell" without urging and people "hang tough" in the tape fuzz.


46. Mike O'Neil - "Henry"



Mike O'Neil built the most marketable chord progression of 2012 on "Henry;" it was a wonder it didn't find a multitude of advertising syncs. "Henry" wasn't intentionally commercial, but its breezy arrangement and lilting piano were made for the selling of consumer durables on your television.


45. farragoes - "The End of the Affair"

"The End of the Affair" was a summer single that name-checked Dostoevsky, snappy enough to sing along and dark enough to drive a listener to review their copy of Notes From Underground, somewhere gathering dust on a bookshelf. It was electro-pop with a cynical twist, sounds made for May and lyrics for the middle of a winter that never ever ends.


44. The Shins - "No Way Down"



In an election year, the Shins surprisingly shitty LP, Port of Morrow included one of the sharper, and least obvious political songs of the campaign. All about Mercer's weird liberal guilt and his effervescent liberal anger, it was at once a stab at elites, and a polemic spoken in their language. Beautiful and self-consciously hypocritical, "No Way Down" emerged as a song about "a tiny few having all of the fun," marketed in Starbucks outlets and served with five dollar coffees, a v-neck sweater song all about the 99%.


43. Warships - "Sleeper Hold"



Rooted in a lonely guitar lick, "Sleeper Hold" eventually gathered warmth before spilling over in one of the year's most affirming choruses. It wasn't all rainbows and lollipops, the lyrics were largely about sleeping alone, but the layered and soaring vocal of the refrain was enough to carry the light up out of the darkness.


42.Wildcat! Wildcat! - "Mr. Quiche"



Wildcat! Wildcat! will have a far bigger 2013 than anyone is ready for, a fact evinced by debut single, "Mr. Quiche." It sounded like the making of an indie rock slow-jam, lyrics about "lonely days" and a keyboard progression that practically exploded off the fingers. Two distinct movements, one sparse and the other lush, "Mr. Quiche" eventually erupted into falsetto final act before falling away to nothing.


41. Band of Horses - "Shut-In Tourist"



"Shut-In Tourist" exercised form and function in the same moment, the chorus' only and intensely memorable lyric was the repeated, "so I repeat what you said." The band sang the lyric four times in each refrain, the refrain repeated three times, and then a fourth for posterity only. That's 16 chances to sing "so I repeat what you said," which was, luckily, one of the better, if smaller, hooks of the year.

China Rats :: "To Be Like I"

If everything breaks right for China Rats in the next few months, they will be 2013's answer to the Vaccines 2011-campaign. The Leeds band channels more Ramones pop-brut than the Vaccines ever did, but the insistent drums and shout-along refrains are the common thread. "To Be Like I" is a revolving door rock song, spinning and spinning in place, joyfully centered on the title lyric. The band will play SXSW in a few months time, and have a coming single to back "To Be Like I" and the band's other recent raucous single, "N.O.M.O.N.E.Y." With a big following in the UK, in the ever-evolving American "now," China Rats are in the pregnant moment before things either happen or don't, like "To Be Like I," full of potential, brash and uncertainty.

Tom Odell :: "Another Love"

Tom Odell crafts a fragile, weary and angular piano demo on debut song, "Another Love." Seemingly built for the closing credits of an intensely credible, if boutique cable drama, "Another Love," begins in self-conscious and sparse reserve before finding its down-beat and unfurling in wave after wave of harmony and nearly bucolic melancholy. That progression, the one that initiates the second movement, the transition from sparse to expansive, will feel like it is everywhere at once, the power of chord resolutions and a group of voices together.

Kodaline :: "All My Friends" [LCD Soundsystem cover]

It has been a weird last five years and everyone knows it. See, in 2007 when James Murphy's thesis statement track, "All My Friends" descended on downtown New York, no one had any way of knowing what the next years held. Only a little further downtown the next year Lehman Brothers would accidentally destroy the global economy. Speed up to 2012; LCD is no more; global financial markets are still behaving like a depressed teenager; "All My Friends" is still a genre and generational-defining track." It was about getting older and losing bits of yourself along the way, trying to regain the groups that held you together and have now fractured apart, the grand codependency of youth collapsing into jobs, unemployment, distance, all grinding bits of adulthood. In Murphy's world this was, "you're blowing 85 days days in the middle of France." Kodaline, a band who are doing a very reverent Coldplay impression, recently covered "All My Friends" with a mournful, Irish sparseness. While nothing touches the original, Kodaline, also tapped in the BBC's Sound of 2013 as one of the most promising acts of the coming year, take Murphy to church in a final, group sing. It won't stave the anxieties that drove "All My Friends" the first time, nor will it fix the new ones that emerged since its release, but it's a wonderful reminder all the same.