Tag: Favorite Songs (Page 2 of 6)

So I suppose I should finally do this.

I won’t say this was the toughest time I’ve ever had putting a list together. While some years the songs kind of sort themselves, there have been plenty of Decembers when I’m still trying to figure out what to include and in what order right up until I made my list public. But, as I wrote last week, this has been a tough musical year for me to crack.

It’s been such an odd year that I’m throwing out a rule that I’ve generally held to hard-and-fast: songs must be from the current calendar year. In the past, if I didn’t discover a cool song or album until the calendar year after its initial release – especially if it was a late-year release – I would not include it in the next year’s Favorites list.[1]

Because, you know, rules I guess.

I’m throwing that out not once, but twice this year. It’s a brave new world, friends!

Also, this is not a true countdown. The songs listed below are generally in order of preference, but other than my Song of the Year, no numbers are attached to any of them. Forgive me, Casey.

One more note before we get to the list:

SOME OF THESE VIDEOS CONTAIN NUDITY AND/OR STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT

Watch with caution if at work, kids are around, or you’re using your in-laws’ wifi.

“The Ground Walks, With Time In A Box” – Modest Mouse
Another charming yet goofy song in MM’s long career of them. I hear a strong “Rock The Casbah” influence to the music.

“Gimme All Your Love” – Alabama Shakes
Brittany Howard is a force of nature. While the hype for their 2012 debut album was so over-the-top that it had many doubting this year’s Sound & Color upon it’s release, her epic howl quickly won many of those critics over.

“Deeper Than Love” – Colleen Green
The most honest and depressing song of the year. Shortly after the cold, sterile bass and drum loop begins, Green throws this opening line at us:

Someday I hope for a lover to kill me
It’s the closest I can hope to get to anybody.

Jesus!

Green confesses every one of her hangups that prevent her from having a successful relationship on this track. It’s brutal and troubling, but because it is so sincere, it is also amazing.

“Let It Happen” – Tame Impala
Tame Impala is one of those bands that I often like the idea of more than their actual music. I admire their willingness to experiment and go in odd directions. But I often find listening to their entire albums a chore.

I love this track, though, as its epic sprawl delivers on all the band’s promise.

“Autodidact” – Swervedriver
One of the best, and most underrated, bands of the early 90s came back in 2015 after 17 years without releasing an album. While it didn’t hit the heights they reached back in 1993, I Wasn’t Born To Lose You was thoroughly enjoyable. This is its finest track.

“Lisa Sawyer” – Leon Bridges
It takes guts to turn the clock back to 1963 and craft your sound and image around a time that not only predates today’s young music buyers, but most of their parents as well. Bridges’ debut album was one of the finest of this year, and this ode to his mother was its fabulous centerpiece.

“Sagres” – The Tallest Man On Earth
Lush and warm and wonderful. Yet another amazing artist from Sweden.

https://youtu.be/FpakQW8-_zA
“Web” – Thee Oh Sees
This is some hot goddamned rock and roll right here.

“To Die In L.A.” – Lower Dens

“Gates Of Dawn” – Heartless Bastards
The first of two sets of songs that I have a hard time separating. In this case, it is because their lead singers have some similar qualities. And both bands harken back to my youth. Lower Dens sound like a mid–80s, fringe Top 40 hit from a synthy, art rock band while Heartless Bastards mine the bluesy side of that era’s Heartland Rock.

“Pretty Pimpin” – Kurt Vile
I was a bit disappointed by Vile’s album b’lieve i’m goin down… But this track is a fantastic take on the “I’m not sure who I am anymore” song, done in a distinctively Vile style.

“Laced” – DMA’s
Derivative of many bands in many ways. But it’s still a delightful little song.

“Tiny Prayers” – Restorations
(October 2014 release) A song I can relate to in so many ways, as I feel a bit stuck between the most recent chapter of my life and figuring out how to begin the next. I often feel like I’m wasting time without accomplishing anything. While I don’t measure time in how many coffee cups are scattered around the house, that image certainly resonates with me.

“Continental Shelf” – Viet Cong
Not sure if this is goth, industrial, post-punk, or some brand new sub-genre I don’t know the name for. I do know it’s the hardest rocking song of the past year that stayed in heavy rotation on my music devices.

https://youtu.be/2jhRtybGYD4
“Dreams” – Beck
One of the biggest songs of last summer, this struck the perfect mood for the season when it came on and you were sitting near a lake, pool, or just in your backyard. And this may be the best unofficial, user-created video ever, featuring shots from the 1979 TV movie Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

“Out Of The Woods” – Ryan Adams covering Taylor Swift
I don’t often include covers in my year-end list, especially one that is as gimmicky as Adams’ covering Swift. But, as you know, I loved his version of 1989 and while several of his songs could have made the list, I loved this one the most. The original is a huge, glossy, Roxette-esque scorcher. Here Adams turns it into a somber, beautiful, tear-jerker.

“Queen Of Peace” – Florence + The Machine
Florence Welch is an absolute treasure.

“Leave A Trace” – CHVRCHES
No sophomore slump for these Scots. And proof that even a “guitar-rock” lover like me sometimes gets swept up in songs that are big and shiny. And, yes, I love that Lauren Mayberry has become a feminist icon with her fierce, passionate, public proclamations that women should not be objectified, dismissed, or held to different standards than men because of their sexuality.

“False Hope” – Laura Marling
Filling the “brooding, female, singer-songwriter” slot that Emma Ruth Rundle and Angel Olsen filled last year. This song smokes.

“Kansas City” – The New Basement Tapes
So many reasons for me not to like this song. 1) I’ve never been a Bob Dylan fan. 2) The whole idea of taking a bunch of “lost” Dylan lyrics and turning them into an album performed by an all-star cast 40 years later seems like a huge gimmick to me. 3) I’m not terribly fond of Mumford and Sons, and Marcus Mumford takes the lead vocals on this track. 4) While Johnny Depp hangs out with a bunch of musicians I like, his appearances always strike me as opportunistic. Sliding in for the absent Elvis Costello on this track was yet another reason to doubt it.

Thing is, I love this song, and it’s not just because of the title. I love it because it’s a great freaking song. And it was part of what was a pretty great year for my hometown.

In fact, I really like the entire album, although I did not listen to it front-to-back until just a few weeks ago, nearly a year after its release. Yep, this is the second song that was released late in 2014 that I’ve slid into this year’s list. Although in this case, at least it didn’t hit high rotation on the radio until deep into spring, so it’s kind of a ’15 track.

“Pray For Rain” – Pure Bathing Culture
Just a beautiful, bouncy, and thoroughly infectious song.

“Fool For Love” – Lord Huron

“All This Wandering Around” – Ivan & Alyosha
Two more songs that feel joined to me. I first heard them around the same time. They had a similar sound and feel. They remained in my high rotation for several months. Both were great for cranking up and listening with the windows down on a summer day. Lord Huron touches up against that neo-Heartland Rock vibe I’ve dug so much in recent years. And I&A have a blissful, AM radio feeling.

“Depreston” – Courtney Barnett
Barnett made a name for herself through songs full of wry, often hilarious, observations about everyday life. Sometimes her humor was a bit difficult to find, layered beneath her laconic, Aussie delivery and slacked-out, surfy guitars. But digging for it always brought a tremendous payoff.

This song, though, was a break from that formula. There are the same wonderful observations about the mundane that other writers may miss. But rather than humorous, here they are tender and touching.

There’s the wonderful opening section, where Barnett agrees (reluctantly you can’t help but believe) to leave the hip, young part of town for the suburbs and domestic bliss with her partner. As she guides us through her tour of a potential home, her attention drifts from its architectural features to the artifacts of its previous occupant. Containers filled with coffee, tea, and flour. Photos of a man serving in Vietnam. Curiosity of how much the woman who lived there last first bought it for. Already filled with mixed feelings about her new life, Barnett seems overwhelmed by the life she has stepped into.

And the closer – a simple, repeated rejoinder from the real estate agent eager to defeat her reservations and close the deal – is the perfect coda.

If you’ve got a
Spare half a million
You could knock it down
And start rebuildin’

The D’s Notebook 2015 Song of the Year

“California Nights” – Best Coast
Listen, I love Best Coast. The album from which this comes, and which it is the title track for, was probably my most listened-to album of the year. But there’s always been a depth missing in Bethany Cosentino’s lyrics that keeps her songs from being timeless rather than momentary loves. And, frankly, comparing this to my Song of the Year from recent years, it just doesn’t measure up.

All that said…this was Best Coast’s finest album yet. And this was the song Cosentino was born to sing. It is bigger, more dramatic, and just better than anything she’s written and sung before. The hazy guitars and rolling bass evoke the earliest days of The Verve. Cosentino absolutely soars through her lines. And Bobb Bruno’s solo is the perfect punctuation. It’s a song easy to get lost in, and once it’s complete, you want to go back and listen again. In a year that seemed subpar to my ears, that’s enough to make it my favorite.

I’ve been struggling with my Music Favorites lists this year. Where I normally love sifting through everything I’ve purchased, streamed, and downloaded over the past year to put together my favorite songs and albums lists, this year it’s been a bit of a chore.

My first inclination is to say that is because this has not been a particularly good year for music. At least for the types of music I listen to. And, to a certain extent, that is true. In the sweet spot of all the genres I favor, I don’t think there have been that many fantastic albums in 2015. But as I scan the various Best Of lists that are beginning to hit the web, I see plenty of albums that I listened to once or twice but failed to connect with. I think I found a partial explanation for that last week.

As I was skimming through my Best Of lists from years past, I was reminded at how freaking good 2014 was. I’m not sure I realized it at the time, but last year was one of my all-time favorite years for music. It featured one of my 20 favorite albums ever (Lost In The Dream by The War On Drugs, an album I still listen to frequently), one of the boldest statements in rock music in ages (Against Me!’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues), along with a dozen or so other albums I could put on right now and love, front-to-back. There were albums that did not crack my Top 5 last year that, if released this year, would have been a clear #1 album for 2015. Weird.

I wondered if perhaps I was out-of-touch with the zeitgeist in the end of the music pool I swim in. On both the music blogs I check daily and the SiriusXM alternative/indie rock stations that I listen to, guitar-heavy music seems to have fallen out of favor, replaced by artists who rely more on synthesizers, sequencers, and laptops, or have healthy electronic/dance elements to their sound. Not that I dislike those flavors. A couple of songs that fit into those sub-genres are on my Favorite Songs list this year. But I still prefer the guitar-based groups.

And as most of the albums I loved last year charted well on all the big Best Of lists, it’s not like I’m that out-of-touch. So perhaps it’s just an odd blip in history where there was a glut of albums that I loved in one calendar year then very few in the next.[1] Which could bode well for 2016.

Other things that made this year a challenge, musically:
* My June hard drive crash that wiped out 7–8 years of playlists, metadata, and a few hundred songs.
* Switching to Apple Music from Rdio, which caused some shifts in how I listen, especially to new releases.
* Several music blogs I follow either shutting down, or changing away from offering MP3 downloads of new tracks to streaming them through Soundcloud.
* Me aging? For years I’ve taken pride in still keeping up with new music. However, it seems like many of my favorite bands of recent years harken back to the sound of the mid–80s. Am I finally closing my ears to what the kids are listening to and are my preferences calcifying around the era I came of age? I hope not, so I’m just going to ignore this option.

As I’ve thought this through and read new Best Of lists each day, I’m realizing that perhaps this year wasn’t as bad as I originally believed. It sure wasn’t 2014, but through a variety of factors, I just was not able to appreciate it as much as I could have. In fact, I’ve found a couple albums and songs in the past week that I skipped over when they were released that I’m now enjoying quite a bit.

I’m putting the finishing touches on my lists. My Favorite Songs list will have a slightly different format this year, and I’ll likely post it in just one or two parts early next week.

1 – “Holy” – Frightened Rabbit
This is the fourth time FR has cracked my year-end list, and the third time they’ve grabbed the #1 spot. Yes, I’m a massive fan and this spot was pretty much reserved for them the moment I learned they would release an album in 2013. But still, they had to deliver. At least three of their songs were in the running for this spot, most notably “The Woodpile,”¹ the song I nearly made co-#1.

I had to go with this, though. That driving bassline has been in my head since the first time I heard it back in February. It chugs along like a funky New Order track. And while Scott Hutchison is singing about wishing religious people would leave him alone, his sentiments can easily be applied to the endless string of folks who want to tell us we are, for any number of reasons, living our lives incorrectly. It’s a terrific sounding way of telling them all to just piss off.

2 – “Song For Zula” – Phosphorescent.
It takes audacity to open a song with a line that mimics massive hits of both Bette Midler and Johnny Cash. But Matthew Houck, the man behind Phosphorescent, does exactly that here, when he sings “Some say love, is a burning thing. That it makes a fiery ring.” He definitely gets your attention from the first note.

Beyond that first line is a wonderful, mournful backing track. His weary vocals have the sound of too many nights at the wrong end of a bottle, seeking comfort for his pain. And the rest of the lyrics slowly lay out his case before he floors you with his closing lines,

“But my heart is wild. And my bones are steam.
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.”

It’s a nuclear bomb of a song, one that will absolutely destroy you if you’re not careful.

3 – “Recovery” – Frank Turner.
I do love a good break-up song. So, no surprise that the top three songs feature two break up songs plus a band that I first fell in love with because of their most-excellent album all about getting your heart smashed.

Here Turner sings a very masculine break-up song. I say masculine because musically, this is a rollocking, sing-along with your boys while the pints are flowing at the pub song. Outwardly, it seems proud and defiant, telling the ex to piss off one last time. But the lyrics, which are top-notch, tell a story of a man who drove his love away and desperately wants her back. While he’s screaming with his boys, inside, the pain endures.

4 – “Wakin In A Pretty Day” – Kurt Vile.
This song was a lifeline during the endless winter of 2012-13. When the temperature refused to rise and it seemed like spring would never arrive, this was the promise that warmer, better days would eventually, finally, arrive.

5 – “In The City” – Caveman
It seems like each year there is one synth-heavy song that I can listen to repeatedly and just get lost within its layers. Here is this year’s example.

At first listen, this would seem to be a rather cold, serious song. Each note sounds carefully planned. The transitions are perfect. The ratio of dense synths to delicate yet distorted guitar feels as though it was arrived at through careful mathematical study. The drums are big enough to propel the song forward, but not so big that they dominate. This is a professional song, not one arrived at through reckless experimentation.

But this is far from a lifeless, sterile song. The vocals balance the musical mix wonderfully. As the synthesizers build in the last third of the song, making the song’s base even firmer, the guitars gain life and soar, tugging in hopes of escape.

It is spooky and lush and utterly gorgeous.

6 – “The Mother We Share” – CHVRCHES
At first listen, these Scots sound cotton candy light, an updated take on Nu Shooz, straight out of 1986. But there is weight behind the layers of keyboards and synthesizers. There is depth to Lauren Mayberry’s voice that surprises upon repeated listens. And, good Lord, that hook! Great bands spend their entire careers attempting to come up with a hook like this, and CHVRCHES do it on their very first song.

The countdown continues next week.

7 – “Royals” – Lorde
What a run. I first heard of Lorde late last year (iTunes tells me I added “Royals” to my library on Jan. 26, 2013). Then, the novelty of a sixteen-year-old New Zealander making interesting music was enough to get her some attention. By spring all the cool music websites were in love with her. Come mid-summer, the smart people station in Bloomington had her in heavy rotation. And now, of course, she’s inescapable. Oh, and there’s the matter of the song being inspired by an old picture of George Brett.

Which isn’t a bad thing. While “Royals” has no doubt been over-played, her album, Pure Heroine, is fantastic, start-to-finish. Let’s hope she doesn’t fall prey to the many perils of fame. If she’s this good as a teenager, there’s no telling what she has in store as she gets older, wiser, and more worldly.

8 – “Diane Young” – Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires of the City is getting a lot of Album Of The Year run. While I liked it a lot, too, I may be one of the few who liked their last album, Contra, more. It was tough to pick a favorite track from this fine collection. But this song’s frenetic tempo grabbed me the most.