Night Panther :: "Fire"

Night Panther initially sounds a lot like Princeton on latest single, "Fire", a restrained baroque piano progression that unleashes into a full synthesizer jam in its second movement. Previously, the band aimed itself at glossy and sensual synth arrangements, and "Fire" represents an evolution, the first movement tied to a pretty piano and string arrangement and a swooning lyric, "there's a fire under my nose." However, "Fire" proves relentlessly expansive, finishing with a kitchen-sink flourish where Night Panther channels the most satisfying moments of the Scissor Sisters catalog: big piano chord resolutions, synth horns, falsetto vocals. In short, it's a circus tent break up song, the last lyrics, "it's time for me to move on."

First Rate People :: "You Won't Get This Joke At All"

First Rate People storm back with the dialogical single, "You Won't Get This Joke At All". Always able to cobble together diverse influences, sometimes forcing the ideas for two songs into a beautiful and catchy cacophony, "You Won't..." opens with synth punches that are equal parts Passion Pit and Britney's "You Drive Me Crazy". Of course, the twist comes with the addition of a dialed-back and pretty acoustic guitar progression and Anna Horvath's singular vocal. One of the best voices in independent music, Horvath is heartbreaking and heartbroken on lyrics like, "There are streets and there are signs / there were worse and better times," a neo-Dickensian understanding of an emotional trauma in our particular modern moment. Her last line, "across these gender lines / I need you," the arrangement returning to the breezy acoustic guitar on which it originally torqued, suggests a profound tensile strength, a durability even. If these two song ideas can be firmly blended into one arrangement, these broken relationships might too survive. "You Won't" is one of the first great songs of 2013 from a band certain to breakthrough this year.

Local Natives :: "Heavy Feet"

Local Natives long ago cornered the market on big group vocals. Each arrangement seemed to swell on human power alone, the spacious guitars and signature pounding tams subordinated to the nearly physical lift of a group of voices racing over the longer, curved, top part of the wing. "Heavy Feet", a track from their excellent sophomore LP, Hummingbird, is a treatise on the type of love and loss that seems to crest in the mid-20s. The chorus is full of claps, a post-apocalyptic lyric, "after everything," and drums that speak the influence of the production of the National's Aaron Dessner. It is a high tide and a washing away, two and three part harmonies colliding to the finish in a race to get us all finally up in the air.

Hilang Child :: "Chaturanga"

The NPR-pop of Hilang Child recalls the most life-affirming moments of bands like Fleet Foxes and Stornoway. Debut song, "Chaturanga" features vocals that are at once warm and cold, echoing against a sparse piano progression that somewhat relentlessly opens its lens wider and wider until expansive "ahhs" bring the song's whole universe into focus, a gigantic and somehow undistorted fish-eye. The Hilang Child EP, First Writings is available for free download through the band's Bandcamp.

32ft/second's 2012 Rarities Collection

We hope you enjoyed our week long feature on the Top 50 Songs of 2012.  In addition, we've put together a 19-track group of 2012 rarities, songs that you might have missed as the B-side to a single release, a remix, a radio session, a cover, or a live show that ended up in our iTunes this year. We listened to thousands of individual songs in 2012 and occasionally we came across something not everyone got to hear. Some songs are more obvious, things you certainly will have heard in one form or another and some are deeper cuts. It's like Behind The Music for a blog that already spends its time on music that hardly anyone listens to.

 32ft/sec's 2012 Rarities Collection (.zip)

1. Arcade Fire - "Sprawl II [Soulwax Remix]" (BBC Radio Rip)
2. Swim Good - "Bury My Body And Tell My Friends" (B-side to "Totally A Mess Wild" single)
3. Memoryhouse - "This Will Be Our Year" (Zombies cover)
4. Mumford and Sons - "Tessellate" (Alt-J cover on BBC's Radio1)
5. The Zolas - "Escape Artist" (Live Acoustic Southern Souls Session)
6. Capybara - "Neighbor Crimes" (Live in Brooklyn)
7. Father John Misty - "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" (Live on KEXP)
8. POLICA - "Leading to Death" (Live in Phoenix)
9. First Rate People - "Office Party" (Live)
10. Theme Park - "Jamaica" (Live on The Amazing Sessions)
11. Jinja Safari - "Ignition Remix" (R. Kelly cover on Triple J)
12. Oberhofer - "HEART" (Violitionist Sessions)
13. Thieving Irons - "So Long" (Live on KEXP)
14. Dan Griffin - "Yulia" (Wolf Parade cover)
15. Tame Impala - "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" (Acoustic Pitchfork Log Cabin Session)
16. Passion Pit - "Take A Walk" (Live Acoustic on KEXP)
17. Chvches - "We Sink" (Live on BBC Radio1)
18. Marina and the Diamonds - "PRIMADONNA" (Acoustic)
19. The Vaccines - "Teenage Icon" (Live Acoustic Corona Sessions)

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [Number One]

1. Best Coast - "How They Want Me To Be"



2012 wasn't the year dominant culture ceased to exist, but it might have been the year where we all became most keenly aware of it. A creeping relativism, unleashed during the previous decade in music with the release of Garden State, the ascendancy of the Seth Cohen and Zooey Deschanel tropes, the quirking of cool, finally came home to roost. Subculture, in the old Hegelian sense, lost its way. How could you march against the edifices of a fake empire if there were no edifices against which to march? How could you march at all if everyone was in step with their own proverbial drummer? It was finally unclear who was in charge, and the project of postmodernism was sort of complete. The walls and gates of the inner parts of the cultural empire were down; the center had exploded before Foucault and Derrida got to stand triumphantly in the inner chambers; the center now lay in a million little pieces and everyone seemed to hold a part of it.

Some of this certainly marked an improvement. Dominant culture and its relationship to subculture always proved a little abusive: the popular kids against the literate ones, the cool kids against the kids who were into cool things. This fever dream, it seems, passed in the last ten years. Cool now seeped from everywhere, packaged and marketed by a million different companies and adopted in every possible form. Rap kids could wear studded belts and skinny jeans, and skaters wore flat brims. Hipsters rode a rising tide of cultural contrarianism and irony, and adolescents possessed a veritible buffet of acceptable cultural signifiers from which to choose. The xx even made a case for the coolness of introversion and baggy black clothes in the past three years, a fact that would have labeled you a school shooter during the knee-jerk, binary 1990s. Cool could now be virtually anything, a hyper-inflation of cultural capital where everyone was rich and poor at the same time.

So when Beth Consentino of Best Coast sat down to write "How They Want Me To Be," the most haunting and pregnant song of the 2012, it was a little unclear who, exactly, she meant. Who was this "they"? Further, given Consentino's sort of annoying position as an arbiter of "cool" and her myriad failings for being wantonly commercial and personally petulant, was she even the right person to be making a case against "them", even if we were to figure out who "they" were? Consentino was not the most adept or archetypical revolutionary for this confused age. In fact, she will probably be remembered as one of the more cynical artifacts of an incredibly cynical era of indie rock. But her argument on "How They Want Me To Be" took an inward twist that was as thought-provoking as it was gorgeous.

The signature lyric and idea, "I don't to be how they want me to be," proved to pleasantly outdated, a sort of walking, talking bit of nostalgia for a time when parents just didn't understand and friend groups wielded group-think like a cudgel. What was most charming in Consentino's argument was that she still felt penned in, even riding a self-made tidal wave of solid-color Wayfarer sunglasses. No one was chasing her, flannel shirt and full of tattoos, that irritating Los Angeles cool spilling from behind her maybe ironic t-shirt, and still she ran. It was the grand American tradition of restlessness, a sense that all was not well, and that the cultural police still might be out there somewhere. "They" weren't dead; "they" still wanted her to be some indeterminate way. She wanted nothing to do with it. "How They Want Me To Be" was one of the only rock songs of 2012 that so openly admitted to being culturally uncomfortable, that this era of wide-open social and cultural mores was no panacea.

The answers were not to march against new cultural standards or search for more and more bizarre counter-cultural movements; the answers were probably in your bedroom or in your immediate social circle. The revolution was waking in the middle of the night and finding reassurance in another person who felt the same way about this era of cultural fragility, a multivalient dystopia outside and a cocoon within. This was not the breezy fun of "The Only Place," the intensely marketed and marketable single from the record of the same name. "How They Want Me To Be" reflected a deep and delicate, not to mention new, set of anxieties.

Something wasn't right, and it was now impossible to say who or what was responsible. "How They Want Me To Be" illustrated Consentino spending money recklessly and against the better advice of her friends, revealed her mother "just wondering", asking "a lot of questions", the gentle pressures that Consentino necessarily turned into the enemies of her freedom. These were the anxieties that haunted her nights and early mornings.  It couldn't be a nagging adult or even a judgmental group of friends, these were her fictions. No one was chasing her and no one would be. In a world that was once organized by who you were for and against, Consentino woke to find that everyone was for everyone. We were, finally, terrifyingly, alone.

The answer to this new cultural anxiety lay next to her. The song took a final twist on its last line, Consentino wailing into her own duet, "You don't want me to be how they want me to be/I don't want me to be how they they want me to be." No one used "to be" verbs with more poetic license and impact than she did in 2012. The scary realization that "they" didn't exist didn't deter Best Coast. "How They Want Me To Be" proved both a beautiful love song, a plea for refuge from all these swirling cultural decisions, and a new set of marching orders against an age that thought it killed the notion of marching orders. Solace in finding new enemies, in reinvigorating the old conversations, in resisting these new anxieties, in finding someone who also didn't want you to be like they wanted you to be, it was a plea for individuality and partnership in an era that did the mostly former.

We could find ourselves again, she argued, with another and against new cultural enemies, maybe even ones of our own making. Our freedom would not lie in breaking out, but rather in breaking in, finding another who nervously scanned the room and wondered who "they" were and what, if anything, "they" wanted you to be. As an existential statement, "How They Want Me To Be" crafted itself in the negative. We all clutched physical parts of the destroyed cultural capitol and the subcultural Molotov cocktail that destroyed it like little bits of the Berlin Wall, artifacts of a bygone era. The revolution was now past. These battles were over, but "in the morning and the middle of the night," the fight raged on within.

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.