Year in Music 2012: Top 20 Moments in Music

This is the fifth yearly "favorite moments in music" list. It's probably my favorite, because it's fairly unique, and because it invites a closer look at the little pieces of songs that are awesome - a catchy guitar line, a clever turn of phrase, or a particularly kickass bridge.

As always, there's some overlap beween this and my "best songs" list. That stands to reason, I suppose (the best songs are going to have the most memorable moments a lot of times). I've got Spotify links, Grooveshark when I can't Spotify, and YouTube when I can't find either of the others.

20. fun. - We Are Young
"Carry me home tonight"

When I first heard this song, I didn't even realize that Janelle Monáe sang the bridge. Once I found out, I was sort of unenthralled with the news, since it seemed as though her part was faceless enough to be played by just about any pretty face. "Luckily" enough, I got a lot of chances to analyze it. I came to the conclusion that Monáe infuses this song with a soul and heart that it would be completely lacking otherwise. The song has long since stopped being novel or interesting, the bridge lives on.

19. Kendrick Lamar - Backseat Freestyle
"Goddamn, I got bitches!"

Goddamn, I got bitches!
Daaamn, I got bitches
Daaamn, I got bitches
Wifey, girlfriend, and mistress

Not exactly super intelligent stuff, and it does echo the sort of stupid headed misogyny that I hate in rap music, but damn, does it sound good blasting from the speakers.

18. Swans - The Seer Returns
"You. have. a----rived."

There's lots of poignant, creepy moments to be had on The Seer, but this one tops them all. The way that the backing instrumentation drops out before Michael Gira puts so much malicious emphasis on every syllable before the the band kicks back in gives me goosebumps every time.

17.  Cloud Nothings - No Future/No Past
"Give up...Come to...No Hope...We're through..."

Summing up the album before it even really starts - and constantly building to one hell of a climax along the way.

16. P.O.S. - How We Land
...featuring Justin Vernon

Justin Vernon does it for me, so when he teams up with yet another rapper (am I the only one who finds it a little strange how popular a feature he is? I mean, it works pretty much every time, it's just... weird), I can't help but love it. Plus, in 'How We Land', his voice (with vocoder) is used to maximum effect for a rousing end to a great song.

15. Spiritualized - So Long You Pretty Thing
The song earns its title

The year's biggest album ending. 'Pretty Thing' starts out all slow, before bringing it all back for one huge finale.

14. Death Grips - Hacker
"When you come out, your shit is gone"

It's never really delivered in any particularly interesting way, I just really like the threat "when you come out your shit is gone".

13. Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe
Those super-fake strings in the chorus...

I don't really need to go into this. These are 9/10 of the reason that everyone loved this song.

12. Hot Chip - Night and Day
"YouknowIthinkaboutcha"

In a song filled to the brim with sex, this is the kicker. It's fun as hell. Plus, Linds likes it just enough to where we can dance around in my office while she tells me that she swears she's heard this somewhere else (I'm pretty sure the only other place she's heard it is in my office, but whatever).

 11. Japandroids - Continuous Thunder
Enter Drums

It's a neat trick, synching up that booming drumline with the words 'continuous thunder'. Sometimes, a neat trick like that is all it takes to send a song skyrocketing from good to great.
 

 10. Aesop Rock - Gopher Guts
Aes speaks plainly

"I have been completely unable to maintain any semblance of relationship on any level" - In the hands of someone else, that would simply be a bluntly honest lyric, Aesop Rock usually couches his lyrics with so much metaphor and word salad double talk that it's refreshing to hear him speak plainly and in a emotionally open manner. The entire verse plays out that way. 'Daylight' it's not, but it feels like a breath of fresh air amongst the various double speaking and clever rhymes.

9. Memory Tapes - Neighborhood Watch
(3:55)

Sure, we've already heard this before (from the same artist, even). Sure, this apes pretty heavily from the "three or four minutes of slow, then BAM! big breakdown!" dynamics of 'Bicycle'. Sure, it doesn't really reach the heights of that particular song.

The breakdown here is still awesome.

8. Sharon Van Etten - Ask
"I think I need more than the flowers and letters, man"

'Ask' is a great, fatalistic look at a doomed relationship. This lyric is the highlight for me. Going through the motions isn't working anymore, and though the singer seems like she's only just starting to admit it to herself, it's been that way for a while.

7. Frank Ocean - Pyramids
The first synth line

I love the way the entire song (which is otherwise quite busy) gets out of the way to allow that jagged synth line to take center stage, as if it knows what it's got on its hands. Once it comes around the second time, it's layered with the rest of the song, and serves as the transitional to the second half of the song. Both parts are great, but it's the first - isolated and arresting - that really grabs the attention.

6. Clint Mansell - Leaving Earth
Reaper Blast

The ending might have sucked (and it certainly did), but for that stretch of time at the beginning of the game - when they mercilessly undercut a pretty piano ballad with a jarring bassoon blast - everything was perfect.

5. Ghost Beach - Miracle
OOOOOHHHHHH!!!

The chorus of 'Miracle' (hell, the entire song) is pretty much bottled enthusiasm. No moment was more enjoyable (or easier) to lip synch to, and no other hook sent my mood skyrocketing like this one.

4. Lost Lander - Wonderful World
Five Notes

It's funny what context means to music. Without this song's excellent music video, it's extremely unlikely that I would've been as taken with this simple sequence as I was. The accompanying visuals underscored what had been there all along. The moment itself is a fleeting as it is unassuming - a simple five note melody a little over two minutes in that solidifies the mood. Without the video, this moment wouldn't have struck me. Without this moment, this song wouldn't have been one of my favorites of the year.

3. Japandroids - The House That Heaven Built
"Tell 'em all to go to hell"

When they love you, and they will (and they will!)
Tell 'em all they'll love in my shadow
And if they try to slow you down (slow you down)
Tell 'em all, to go to hell.

One of the year's biggest anthems provides the year's biggest rallying cry.

2. Ramona Falls - Spore
"Here I Come"

The first two songs off of Prophet were...okay. 'Spore' started the album proper (and probably should've been the first track on the album). There's a sense of unease throughout the song, culminating in this fantastic section to close out the song.

1. Burial - Loner
(1:23)

'Loner' was already an unusually aggressive Burial song. Then those notes hit - four of them, in a descending pattern, repeated until they blur into each and wrap the listener up in them. Everything else in the song is defined by them, to the point where the repeated "set you free" chant starts to become cruelly ironic. The instant I heard this song in February, I knew that everything else was playing for second.

Year in Music 2012: Top 5 Music Videos

My five favorite music videos of the year. In order. Without a great deal of comment, because these all stand out on their own (I would've said 'because it's Christmas', but I wrote this up like a week ago, but Merry Christmas, anyway).

5. Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks

4. Lost Lander - Wonderful World

3. PSY - Gangnum Style

2. Alt-J - Breezeblocks

1. M.I.A. - Bad Girls

CD Review: Lana Del Rey - Born to Die

With everything that's been said about Lana Del Rey, it's worth noting that her major label debut album has been out for all of one week. We've heard all about the woman's image, her constantly morphing videos, her lips (especially the lips), and how calculating it all is. All of that chatter has two sizable disadvantages. First, it has a shelf life that expires, it would seem, about two weeks before the album itself drops (publications that adored the idea of getting 'firstsies' when 'Video Games' came out are falling all over themselves to distance themselves from the finished product). Second, it really has nothing to do with the only thing I'm even remotely interested in.

Is the damn album any good??


Well, yeah. It is. I mean, to a certain extent, it was bound to be. Anyone with an open mind loved 'Video Games' and 'Blue Jeans' (I certainly did), and the title track is excellent, as well. That's three good-to-great songs - already more than to you're likely get out of a vast majority of pop albums. The only question was whether or not the rest of the album was going to live up to those songs. On that count, how could it possibly do that? Anyone who was going to enjoy Lana Del Rey at all was going to have heard their favorite song by the time they pop in the disc for the first time (and truthfully, if you hated "Video Games" or "Blue Jeans", then you really don't need to give this a try... nothing here is going to convince you if you didn't like those songs). The track listing doesn't do Born to Die any favors, the three songs people have heard are loaded at the front of the album, giving people a glut of lesser songs to close it out.

The music itself is darkly poppy, with a hint of hip-hop beat to go with the string flourishes that Born to Die is absolutely full of. Lana's better with the solemn stuff, her voice sounds a little frail for the more upbeat stuff (though I will cop to enjoying the 'harlot scarlet' bit in "Off to the Races"). She's clearly meant to evoke a sultry nightclub singer, but there's always a weird "innocence corrupted" angle that pops up. The allusions to Lolita obviously aren't by accident. They are a recurring theme throughout the entire album ("Off to the Races" directly appropriates a line from it, and several other songs allude to it). This could come off as heavy-handed, or even a little creepy if the music wasn't so damned catchy - and make no mistake, the songs are catchy. Even if they sometimes have obvious flaws (would it have killed them to do a take where she takes an extra half pause between "let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain" and "you like your girls insane"?? I may have to make an edit that adds it in. It will never stop bothering me), they are well built.

Born to Die is interesting to me, not because of the weird controversy that hovers around it, but because it's a well built, if flawed, album. The flaws seem so correctable in spots, but they give the whole thing a character that overcomes what could have been a connect-the-dots affair. At the same time, it leaves a lot of room for Lana to improve. I think there's every chance that she will. This might be truly great, but if she can capture that dark, haunted, yet cynical vibe that makes her best music jump, there's no reason to think her next one might not be. I'm a lot more interested to see that than I am to hear another heavy-handed dissertation on how her lips make her a sellout.

7 / 10

Highlights
* Born to Die
* Blue Jeans
* Video Games
* Diet Mountain Dew

Top 20 Albums of 2011

Presented, as last year, with limited comment. Spotify and Grooveshark links for all.

20. Beastie Boys
Hot Sauce Committee, Pt 2

RIYL: The Beastie Boys

The Beastie Boys returned in style after the mostly 'meh' To the 5 Boroughs. Solid hooks and clever lines throughout.

19. Tim Hecker
Ravedeath, 1972

RIYL: Droning bliss, the world's most melodic air conditioner

The year's most surprising album. I gave it a preliminary listen thinking I would easily discard it. That shit is haunting.

18. Panda Bear
Tomboy

RIYL: Watery sounding music, lots of vocal layers, The Beach boys being played in a really big room.

Lots of highs, a couple dry spots in the middle. Still enough on the high end to come back to again and again.

17. Sims
Bad Time Zoo

RIYL: Doomtree, Really wordy rappers, books about 'Occupy wall street'

Sims rubs me the wrong way a lot of times, so the instant I preordered his CD, I wondered why I had done so. I proceeded to love it.

16. Drake
Take Care

RIYL: Really rich people humblebragging constantly.

I don't know exactly how I got to this point. The dude just makes catchy music that works as great as driving music during summer or winter, day or night. The production on his tracks fascinates me.

15. Dessa
Castor, the Twin

RIYL: Jazzy female fronted rap, High swagger to body weight ratios

I had already heard a lot of these arrangements at Blowout VI, but the jazzier live band really gives Dessa that "chanteuse in a smoky bar" vibe that really fits these songs.

14. The Weeknd
House of Balloons

RIYL: Lurid, debauched parties, Smooth crooning, drugs.... lots of drugs, sex

How to become a really big deal in 2011... work your ass off, release three albums worth of material. Oh yeah, make incredibly catchy songs that make six minutes feel a quarter that long (also, talk about sex and drugs a lot).

13. Blue Sky Black Death
Noir

RIYL: Huge sonic landscapes, instrumental hip-hop that doesn't have anything to do with hip-hop.

Nothing could ever replace Endtroducing, but at times this feels like a slightly more cinematic version of that DJ Shadow masterpiece.

12. Kurt Vile
Smoke Ring For My Halo

RIYL: Acoustic guitars, cynical lyrics

Smoke Ring For My Halo was a welcome surprise. I didn't expect much out of it, since I'm not big into the wandering acoustic rock thing. Vile's arrangements just feel so much fuller than most of his genre.

11. James Blake
James Blake

RIYL: Soul/Dubstep hybrids... are those a thing?

I didn't listen to a lot of Blake's output last year (I'm sure I'll remedy that soon enough), but this worked as a good introduction. Surprisingly good vocals and well constructed songs.

10. Viva Voce
The Future Will Destroy You

RIYL: Pretty much anything. Seriously. Why aren't you listening to these guys?

Husband/wife duo Viva Voce are a great band that I haven't been able to get anyone into yet. They make good rootsy rock music. Sometimes she sings, sometimes he sings. Listen to their music.

9. Doomtree
No Kings

RIYL: Vaguely indie-ish rap that doesn't succumb to standard indie rap tropes

With "No Kings", Doomtree really branched out their production to new places. Almost all of them worked for me, and the rappers themselves sounded fresh and up to the challenge, ready to tear into that new direction.

8. Childish Gambino
Camp

RIYL: Clever lines and good hooks, smartasses, rappers who enjoy Rugrats

This album is kind of a combination of the bite I wanted from a Tyler, the Creator CD mixed with the pop and R&B sensibility that Drake infuses everything with. Thanks to Andrew for the heads up.

7. Cults
Cults

RIYL: Catchy, retro tunes with dark secrets, small, coastal new england towns

I didn't buy the hype last summer, but the debut album was alluringly dark, yet catchy. It was sort of like if Best Coast joined... well... a cult.

6. The Antlers
Burst Apart

RIYL: Sad songs, songs about the endings of beautiful things, the end of Old Yeller

I'm slowly coming around on The Antlers. Not just this album, but their whole discography. This one still reigns supreme, though. A thoroughly emotive and exhausting listen.

5. …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
Tao of the Dead

RIYL: Doodling dragons on the back of your chemistry notebook

Trail of Dead keeps insisting on making the music bigger and bigger, at this point it's in for a penny, in for a pound. That means, that for every tightly spun barnstormer, there's a 17 minute proggy beast. Luckily, I enjoy it all.

4. Radiohead
The King of Limbs

RIYL: The Kid A side of Radiohead, Thom Yorke, Skittery Beats

I'll admit, if this wasn't Radiohead, I don't know if I would have given it as many listens as it needed to grow on me. Once it did, though, it stuck with me. There's not a weak track on the album.

3. TV on the Radio
Nine Types of Light

RIYL: All thing funky, the vocal stylings of Tunde Adebimpe

I was sort of surprised to see how much this album got slept on. It's definitely moving further toward TVotR's funky side than their previous offerings, but hearing songs like "Second Song" proves that's actually a pretty good thing.

2. The Go! Team
Rolling Blackouts

RIYL: Cheerleaders, explosions (of confetti), saying everything in double dutch time

The formula hasn't steered them wrong yet, why would they change it - especially when they seem to have come closer to perfecting it here than ever before.

1. Bon Iver
Bon Iver, Bon Iver

RIYL: Beards

It's the fashionable pick this year, but it got that way for a reason. I tried to resist the siren call, it didn't work. Each of these songs feels like part of my daily life at this point. If the lyrics don't quite have that naked emotional honesty that The National struck last year with High Violet (and I don't think they quite do), the music itself does more than enough speaking. It whispers, it strains, it breathes, it squalls - and Justin Vernon's weirdly compelling voice sails the album through that storm. In the Grammy nominated (!?) Holocene, he sings "...and at once I knew, I was not magnificent..."

Meh, I disagree.

Top 30 Songs of 2011

Yeah, ya heard. Thirty. Because twenty wouldn't have been enough. I made a Spotify playlist out of these songs. They all require a listen, so go ahead and do that.

Also, I had written all of this list down, along with writeups that I was feeling pretty good about (probably somewhere in the range of  1000 words. I was proofreading everything, when suddenly my computer rebooted, and when I came back, Blogspot had saved precisely nothing. My fury is undying.

Enough complaining, on with the list.

Edit: The Spotify Playlist is now live. A few of the songs aren't available on Spotify, but 24 of them are.

30. Tim Hecker - The Piano Drop
Ravedeath, 1972

The first time you hear this song, it sounds like noise. Each subsequent listen reveals just a little more until suddenly you're finding yourself riding along with the rattling lower sounds and feeling giddy every time the higher sounds start pulsating from left to right. Listening to this song on a good sound system in a completely dark room is one of the more revelatory experiences of the year.

29. Wugazi - Sleep Rules Everything Around Me
13 Chambers

Okay, so maybe there is a clear number so far as machups are concerned. Hearing Raekwon's and Inspektah Deck's raps from "C.R.E.A.M." laid over the haunting piano from "I'm So Tired" makes it feel like those song were meant for each other in the first place. By the time Ian MacKaye comes in singing "I'm so tired/sheep are counting me", I wasn't sure I wanted to hear them any other way.


28. Cults - Abducted
Cults

Boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy emotionally abducts girl, knowing that he'll never feel for her what she feels for him - it's a classic story, but Maddie Follin sings it with such conviction that it still feel fresh. "It tore me apart, cause I really loved him." Ah, haven't we all been there?

27. Jonathan Coulton - Want You Gone
Portal 2

"Still Alive" was, in its own little way, a huge thing that sort of came out of nowhere. It would have been easy for Jonathan Coulton to rest on his laurels and write a silly song about cake and lies. Instead, he easily tops his earlier success with "Want You Gone". "I used to want you dead, but now I only want you gone." is one of my favorite lyrics of the year, comedic or no.


26. Florence and the Machine - Shake It Out
Ceremonials

I mentioned te other day that I'm kind of over Florence and the Machine as an album artist, but every so often, they can still craft a hell of a song. "Shake It Out" has everything I want from them - huge voice, huge hook, huge arrangement. Florence's voice has never sounded like it deserves to be booming from every radio on earth to the extent that it does here.

25. Cage the Elephant - Shake Me Down
Thank You, Happy Birthday

After yesterday, you knew it ad to be on here somewhere. The last minute or so of the song is obviously what lands it a spot here, but taken as a whole, it's just a good throwback rock song.

24. Elbow - The Birds
Build a Rocket Boys!

Like I said, Guy Garvey knows how to craft an epic tune. He and the rest of the band make this 8+ minute song seem half that long.

23. The Antlers - No Widows
Burst Apart

It took a while for me to warm up to Burst Apart, but I took to "No Widows" instantly. The lyrics are haunting, the roiling undercurrent of the song is the perfect kind of dark churn, and Peter Silberman turns in one of his most understated vocal performances on the album. It never kicks it up a notch - it doesn't have to. When you've got a song with that much character, you don't need to add theatrics.

22. Childish Gambino - Heartbeat
Camp

Who would've known that a beat that sounds like it was lifted from a Justice b-side would be the perfect vehicle for an emo-rap about post-relationship limbo? The last verse here owns.

21. Kendrick Lamar - A.D.H.D.
Section 80

This might be the most atmospheric rap song of the year. The lyrics are sharp, the hook is memorable, and the production feel like it's breathing. I didn't hear the album early enough for it to really have a chance to sink in, but this song hasn't left my iPod for more than a day or two since I first heard it.

20. Viva Voce - Black Mood Ring
The Future Will Destroy You

The absolute highlight of one of themost underrated albums of the year. The ending, where Anita just sings "I won't be coming back" over and over and the almost country-sounding guitar locks in and slowly fades out is another favorite moment of mine this year.

19. Doomtree - Beacon
No Kings

Dessa songs are generally my favorite Doomtree songs. When she teams up with P.O.S., it's even better. This one was a guaranteed hit with me based on that alone, but then you consider the almost video game inspired beat and great lines like "You called it in the air/It landed on its edge/when the crowd gathered round/you turned tail/I turned heads" (another favorite lyric this year).

18. Lana Del Rey - Blue Jeans
Video Games

I thought that "Video Games" was alright, but "Blue Jeans" was the one that really grabbed me. "I will love you til the end of time/I would wait a million years" might be one of the most heart-wrenching lines of the year. If Lana Del Rey can follow up with anything even remotely this good, she'll be worth the hype.

17. Adele - Rolling in the Deep
21

Yeah, it got super overplayed, and it seemed for a while like it was all they played on the radio. There was a reason for that. This is a tune. It burns with a controlled anger ("You're gonna wish you never had met me", indeed). Adele owned 2001, and rightfully so.

16. Panda Bear - Tomboy
Tomboy

There are lyrics to this song. I only really know that because I looked them up online. They're not particularly important, because Noah Lennox's voice is just another instrument in this song - but what an instrument. They overlap, dart, and weave into the very fabric of 'Tomboy'. They (and the guitars, I suppose) make this my favorite Panda Bear song to date.

15. Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks
Torches

Right before this song surprisingly got huge, people acted genuinely surprised that this song had a dark undercurrent. I don't see how that's possible. The bassline bleeds menace. It's really the bassline that does a lot of the heavy lifting in this song. Sure the hook is catchy as hell, but there's always that bassline, just waiting for you to get too comfortable...

14. M83 - Midnight City
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming.

I'm not breaking any new ground by calling 2011 the 'year of the saxophone'. Bon Iver used it, so did The Rapture and Destroyer. Hell, even Lady Gaga and Katy Perry released singles that prominently featured the saxophone. Even still, the winner for 'Best Saxophone of 2011' has to go to "Midnight City". Sorry, Katy, at least you had that video with Kenny G.

13. Burial - Stolen Dog
Street Halo

When Street Halo was announced, I was hoping that it would have the traditional Burial sound. I needn't have worried, I guess. The best song on the EP is "Stolen Dog", which is maybe the best distillation to date of what Burial does very well. There's plenty of artists who employ the skittering future garage beat, but I can't think of another artist who does so which this much warmth and bona-fide human feeling to it.

12. Bon Iver - Calgary
Bon Iver, Bon Iver

I like "Holocene" and all, but I was surprised to hear that the majority consensus is that it's one of the best songs of the year. I'd say it's not even the best song on the album (that would be this one, just so we're clear).

11. The Vaccines - All in White
What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?

"All in White" sounds vaguely like something that Interpol would've made a few years ago. That's by no means a bad thing. Justin Young's exasperated exclamation of "Lord I know your type..." is great.

10. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Summer of All Dead Souls
Tao of the Dead

Trail of Dead are pretty good at making rock music sound big. Some people have lamented the fact that that's the type of music they want to make now. I'm not one of those people.

9. Beastie Boys - Make Some Noise
Hot Sauce Committee, Part 2

The video's fantastic, but this song for me meant one thing above all.

The Beastie Boys are back.

8. James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream
James Blake

It's just one phrase, repeated over and over again, deteriorating a little bit every time, until staticy electronica threatens to overtake the whole song. Then James Blake does something genius, he brings it all back into focus for one last run through. "I don't know about my dreams/I don't know about my dreamin' anymore/All that I know is/I'm fallin', fallin' fallin'/Might as well fall in".

7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong
Belong

Crunchy guitars, soothing vocals, superhuge chorus. A great anthem.

6. TV on the Radio - Second Song
Nine Types of Light

In yesterday's list, I made note of the fact that this song made me smile more than any other song this year. It's absolutely true. The hook is just so funky. It demands movement. I hate dancing, and I grooved to this song every time it came on in the car. The song will not be denied.

5. The Weeknd - House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls
House of Balloons

It's the sample. Mindless Self Indulgence used it and became stars in their own super-weird way. The Weeknd appropriated it, and made the most undeniable party song of the year. Every time I heard this song, I instantly wanted to start one of those lurid, almost kind of creepy parties. Then 'Glass Table Girls' starts, and everyone remembers why those parties are usually terrible ideas.

4. Tyler, the Creator - Yonkers
Goblin

*Sigh*

I mean, how could Goblin not be awesome with a lead single this good??

3. The National - Exile Vilify
Portal 2

I'm still not sure exactly what this song has to do with Portal 2. A radio in one of the test chambers is playing this haunting, piano-driven piece. I carried that radio around the entire chamber, it was very inconvenient to do so, but I didn't even consider leaving the radio behind. Come to think of it, I didn't leave the radio behind on any of the subsequent playthroughs, either.

2. Radiohead - Codex
The King of Limbs

This song could easily be the sequel (or maybe prequel?) to "Pyramid Song". Same structure, with a somber piano providing the skeleton, and Thom Yorke giving his best vocal performance on the whole of The King of Limbs.

1. The Go! Team - Buy Nothing Day
Rolling Blackouts

Give Ian Parton a lot of credit, this song was recorded before Bethany Cosentino became huge with Best Coast. Only this blows away anything she's ever done with that band. It's just a bomb of up tempo bliss that caught my ear and wouldn't let go. It's been a long time since I've just flat out enjoyed a song this much. Expect tambourines, expect fun, and expect the catchiest song of 2011.