Favorite Songs Of 2012

I wonder how many songs I listened to this year. Thing is, despite using multiple tools to track what I listen to and how often I do so, I purge so many tracks after sampling them a time or two, that I would imagine the majority of the songs I screen are buried deep in a virtual pit of 1s and 0s. So there’s no real way of knowing exactly how many individual tracks I listened to over the past 12 months.

Which means, I guess, it takes a lot to impress me and not get relegated to my digital trash heap. This year was full of epic singles and fantastic albums that comforted me, helped me pass time, and served as a soundtrack to the events of my 2012.

I always like to look at my favorites list and see if there were any trends for the year. Based on the 20 songs I’ve selected for 2012, it was a year that rocked. It was a year that fell heavily under the influence of the 1980s. It was a year full of dream pop. And it was a year in which women pleased me more than they’ve pleased me in the past¹. Ten of the 20 songs feature women on vocals, and an 11th is by a group that has male-female co-lead singers; it just happens to be one of the guy’s songs. To put that in perspective, only once in the last seven years, the years I’ve posted my year-end favorites, have female artists had more than five of my top 20/25 songs.

20 - “Star Machine” - Bob Mould

Last summer was was the summer of Mould. In July, all three Sugar albums got the remaster/rerelease treatment and I spent a couple weeks wallowing in Mould’s epic, mid-90s pop. It came as a surprise six weeks later when he dropped a new solo album, a nifty recreation of the classic Sugar sound. Like another 50-something artist from Minneapolis, he can still crank out peerless pop when he sets his mind to it.

19 - “October” - The Helio Sequence

Echoing early U2, this Portland duo offered a gorgeous set of atmospheric pop on their Negotiations album. This track fits the month it is named after perfectly. Warm, with a hint of a chill in the background. A reminder that no matter how perfect things may seem, there is always something just below the surface that can upset them.

18 - “Peacemaker” - Jesca Hoop

Massive.

That’s the word that pops into my head each time I listen to this song. It is huge, punching you in the mouth and demanding your attention. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t turn it off or skip to the next track. But why would you? It’s freaking brilliant.

Hoop’s genius is combing vaguely Siouxsie & The Banshees-esque music with those killer, tribal drums and then putting her modern spin on an ancient Greek tale of women withholding sex from their men in order to end war. The music sucks you in. Her lyrics make sure you can’t, won’t ignore it.

She pulls no punches, either, making it the dirtiest song of the year, too. So listen cautiously.

17 - “Groundhog Day” - Corin Tucker Band

The second 1990s indie rock hero to make the list, Tucker was one of the founding women of the Riot Grrrl movement. With Carrie Brownstein she formed Sleater-Kinney, a band that helped to set the standard for women who wanted to make intelligent, socially-conscious music that also rocked hard.

She hits all those points here. Smart? Check. Socially conscious? She doesn’t know how not to be. And rocks? Hell yes. In the process she issues a challenge to her fellow Gen Xers: just because we’ve grown older, started careers and families, and lost some of the passion we had 20 years ago, there’s no excuse not to try to improve the world around us.

16 - “Lafaye” - School Of Seven Bells

I’ve always enjoyed sub-genres like Dream Pop and Shoegaze. Noisy, atmospheric realms where lyrics are often difficult to discern, but where you can close your eyes and completely disappear inside the soundscape.

School Of Seven Bells' Ghostory was my favorite Dream Pop album of the year. It is loaded with tracks that build and crest and swirl around you, each topped with Alejandra Deheza’s heavenly vocals.

I don’t know if this is the best song on Ghostory. But it is the most perfect. It doesn’t push the musical boundaries the way some of their other songs do, but that chorus is lush and gorgeous and inescapable.

15 - “Answering Machine” - Scout

The most controversial song in the countdown. But only because of my silly music rules.

Should a cover, a song both written and made famous by someone else, get consideration as one of my favorites for a given year? Often I would say no. But when it is as exceptional as this one, I say yes.

The 1984 original was a classic Replacements song, sounding as though it was recorded after a marathon drinking session. Paul Westerberg’s voice was shredded, the guitars tuneless noise wailing behind him. It was a drunken, late-night call to a lover far away that would be regretted in the morning.

Here, though, Ashen Keilyn discovers tenderness and sweetness in Westerberg’s lyrics and brings them out for all to hear. She took a love song written for punks, drunks, and the other late night denizens of clubs and bars and turned it into a song for everyone. It may not quite be Siouxsie and the Banshees reimagining “Dear Prudence” or The White Stripes destroying “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself.”

But as far as covers go, it’s pretty great.

14 - “You Kill” - Eternal Summers

Some bands name themselves after their sound, the Clash being the most famous example. That is the case for the Eternal Summers, who make shiny, happy music to be played endlessly over summer weekends. Take this song, for example, which tells the story of the beginnings, and endings, of a romance. Doesn’t it sound like something you would want to hear, ohhh, a million times while you wasted your summer away at the neighborhood pool?

13 - “Capricornia” - Allo, Darlin'

Speaking of songs that are perfect for summer…

Here is an impossibly gorgeous song about the bittersweetness of leaving things you love behind in order to chase your dreams.

12 - “Broken Arrows” - Francisco The Man

Plenty of artists brought the rock in 2012. We’ve already heard from Bob Mould and Corin Tucker. We will still hear from other artists who made sure that the spirit of rock was present. This track, though, takes a slightly different approach to rocking.

It begins as a fairly standard alt-rock piece. Jangly electric guitars. A decent-enough melody. Nice vocals, although the lyrics are difficult to pull out of the noise.

But then, about two-and-a-half minutes in, it evolves into something else: A psychedelic jam session that is utterly brilliant. The elastic bass line is a perfect counter to the looping, spacey guitar solo, holding it just tight enough so that it doesn’t escape orbit. And the gentle fade away at the end allows you a moment to breathe deeply and recover.

It’s not complex. It doesn’t try to change the world. But those last 3:30+ thoroughly entranced me.

11 - “State Hospital” - Frightened Rabbit

Frightened Rabbit have released full-length albums in 2008 and 2010. Each year they nabbed the top spot on my favorite songs list, with “The Modern Leper” doubling as my favorite song of the last decade. So this is a bit of a disappointment for them, I’m sure. In their defense, this was the title track of a five-song EP, with their third LP set for release in February. They have hope for 2013, I guess.

Not that this is a bad song, obviously. In the past lead singer Scott Hutchison has filled their albums with confessional songs of his most pathetic romantic failings. For the first time, he’s turning his eye to the world around him. Or at least to fictional characters not based on him. Here he shares the “most threadbare tall story the country has ever heard,” about a girl born into misery who can’t quite seem to escape it. Instead of his fucked up self-pity, it’s a girl living a fucked up life. Changing the subject does not change his way with words. As long as they are fucked up, he’s brilliant.

If it is any consolation to the band, this video is my favorite of the year. It takes the inherent drama of the song and cranks it up to 11.

10 - “Watch The Corners” - Dinosaur Jr

The guitar solo is a lost art, rendered less meaningful as music split into a million sub-genres. Sure, you’ll hear the occasional solo, but often it’s some heavily produced, saccharine regurgitation of Eddie Van Halen’s solo for “Beat It.”

So when you hear a real guitar solo, one that gets into your skull and works its way down your spine, it really stands out.

There’s nothing fancy about this song. It’s pretty much what J. Mascis and his buddies have always done over their nearly 30-year career together. What makes it great are Mascis' two epic guitar solos. He never forgot how to shred, and here he destroys, catapulting an otherwise fine but unmemorable song into one for the ages.

9 - “Sixteen Saltines” - Jack White

It’s been three years since Jack White appeared on my year-end list. Which is significant because he appeared on my favorites list, one way or another, every year from 2003 to 2009.

His first solo album, Blunderbuss, is excellent, and it was difficult to pick a track to represent it. In the end I went with the most White Stripes-y song of the bunch. This was also a song that garnered White a fair amount of criticism, as some suggested the lyrics were indicative of some serious lady issues by White at best or were anti-woman at worst.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I always hear this as a light hearted, tongue-in-cheek song about the holes men dig for themselves when we get obsessed with a particular lady. “Spiked heels make a hole in a lifeboat”? We put ourselves in that position, fellas. Jack’s just shining a light on the troubles out hormones can get us into.

But he does have some issues, make no mistake. Fortunately he’s turned those issues into great rock ’n’ roll for over a decade.

This video is pretty f-ed up, though.

8 - “Wrist Rocket” - Wussy

One of the great, under appreciated bands in American rock music. Like so many of their songs, this is a highly literate, wonderfully crafted song about the angst that appears when your lover loves someone else.

7 - “Endless Shore” - Melody’s Echo Chamber

A warm summer day evening, sun just beginning to set. A drink in your hand. Reclined in a chair on a deck or perhaps lying in a hammock. You just relax and let the world spin. Because at that moment, everything is perfect.

6 - “The Rifle’s Spiral” - The Shins

There are a lot of smart guys making smart guy music these days. Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. Colin Meloy of The Decemberists. But no one does it better than James Mercer of The Shins. 

Mercer shut The Shins down for seven years and did other things. But when he got them back together, it was like they had never left. They can still make brilliant pop.

5 - “Sinful Nature” - Bear In Heaven

Chillwave takes a lot of heat, much of it with good reason. The sub-genre, which is heavily reliant on computers for its sound, often produces sound-alike music that just isn’t that good. But when the artist does it right, it can produces amazing songs. Example: last year Washed Out’s “Eyes Be Closed” was my 10th favorite song of the year.

And here is another epic Chillwave track. If “Endless Shore" was like soaking up the beauty of a summer evening, “Sinful Nature” is like being on a beach, letting the surf wash over you and then floating wherever the waves take you.

It’s warm and lush and absolutely sucks you in.

4 - “Serpents” - Sharon Van Etten

Ms. Van Etten has a wonderful ability to create dramatic tension in her music. Her best songs, like this, build to an emotional peak early, then sustain it for the remainder of the song without either letting up or resolving it. It’s a tough trick to pull off, but time-and-again she does it.This song is full of ache, longing, regret, disappointment, and a touch of fear. It is completely magnificent.

3 - “Myth” - Beach House

Because there is always a difference between reality and our deepest desires, even the best relationships are based, in part, upon a myth. When that gap is exposed, heartbreak is inevitable.

Here Beach House explore the moment that gap becomes evident, and the overwhelming desire to bridge it. Your heart can’t help but break a little when you hear Victoria Legrand plead, “Help me to make it…” because all of us have wanted to continue the myth at some point.

2 - “Season In Hell” - Dum Dum Girls

The Dum Dum Girls topped my favorites list last year with “He Gets Me High.” They nearly repeat with this, perhaps their finest song yet.

Over the past two years lead singer Dee Dee Penny’s life has been a whirlwind. Her mother got sick and then died. Her band immediately blew up, becoming critical darlings as they released an excellent album and two EPs. She has said that music was her therapy as she coped with her loss.

That grief will never go away, as many of us know. But when she sings, gloriously, “Doesn’t the dawn look divine?” you can feel her season in hell ending.

1 - “The House That Heaven Built” - Japandroids

Here it is, the big one!

This, my friends, is a great fucking song.

It is a song that, the first time I heard it, I knew would be in the running for song of the year. I’ve listened to it countless times since that first play in April, and it has never gotten old. Each listen is just as good, if not better, than the original.

What makes it great? It is a pure rock ‘n’ roll song. It’s loud and raw and absolutely roars. It’s about being young and free and not yet at the stage of life where we are slowed down by responsibilities. It is about jumping into a car with your friends on a summer night, rolling down the windows, cranking up the music, and just driving without a destination or plans. It’s about embracing the possibilities every single moment presents to us. It’s about being alive.

I love songs that are about saving the world or easing our pains. But sometimes I just want to rock.