TEN SONGS I'VE LOVED IN 2011

I'm still trying to figure out some kind of albums of the year list (though the number of contenders is slowly but surely dwindling to a manageable number). I imagine that when I figure it out I'll post maybe one a day for ten days or something like that. A countdown! It might add some excitement to this space. Before I get to that, though, I thought I'd highlight, in no particular order, some songs that are off albums, EPs, and other such things that definitely won't be on my albums of the year list (I'm stealing this idea from Nick Southall). Think of this as something of a "Singles of the Year" list, though not all of these were singles.

Solange Knowles - "Left Side Drive"

Okay, yes, it's just Solange singing on top of the old Boards of Canada song of the same name (off the Trans Canada Highway EP), but she really manages to work well with the music. You could almost think (until the coda--although, this version is different than the one I've been listening to, and the vocals are a much better fit) that BoC had written the song for her. The chorus is particularly well done (dig that descending vocal line to kick it off), and I wouldn't be upset at all by a full album that sounded like this. 

Braids - "Lemonade" off Native Speaker

After hearing this song, I was really excited to hear the rest of the album. Unfortunately, it doesn't really live up to the promise of the single, but it's not bad for what it is. I'll be excited to hear their next album, at any rate. The sudden outburst of "Have you fucked / all the stray kids yet?" is a genuine surprise, but the real star is that gently burbling melody line that runs throughout the song.

Dum Dum Girls - "He Gets Me High" off He Gets Me High EP

This is basically just a classic girl group song sped up and with a little scuzz added to it (the start of the song always makes me think of something off Goo, but I can't think of what--"Kool Thing" I guess, but not quite), but damn if it isn't tight and well-written. Really, it's almost like some kind of platonic form--this genre distilled to its essence somehow. The explosion of the chorus is wonderful, and the long, stretched out "Be" at the end of the song  makes me dizzy with glee. Incidentally, I'd never seen this video until right now; I really like it out of sheer nostalgia--it looks like it was made in about 1992 (seriously, I swear there's an Eric's Trip video that looks exactly like this).

  

Efrim Manuel Menuck - "Our Lady of Parc Extension and Her Munificent Sorrows" off Plays "High Gospel"

The name alone conjures up ghosts of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion etc., etc. (seriously, I could never keep track of all the things they added to that name), but this doesn't really fit either camp. It's obviously closer to SMZ, given that Efrim is in something like "rock" mode here and singing (quite well, too, though Katie Moore's vocals really steal the show), but the mood is different--less dire, more hopeful, almost triumphant at times. Disappointingly, nothing else of the album really reaches its power, though "I Am No Longer a Motherless Child" comes close.

Thundercat - "Daylight" off The Golden Age of Apocalypse 

Let me start by saying that I do love this album and I might yet convince myself to include it in my albums of the year list. There are a few dud tracks (the ones that sound a little too close to anonymous FlyLo demos/B-sides), but Thundercat's voice and playing are wonderful (I can see why Simon Reynolds included him as part of what he calls the rise of maximalism). This song isn't about chops (or is at least only incidentally about chops); when those sighing vocals come in with the trilling electric piano and tinkling bells, it feels exactly like daylight. Whereas a lot of the better songs sound very much like 1970s fusion, this wouldn't feel tremendously out of place on Cosmogramma, and it's stronger for that.

Tycho - "A Walk" off Dive

Put this and "Daylight" back to back in a playlist--they work really well together, with "Daylight's" synths trailing off into that gently distorted, echoing opening to "A Walk." There is a very obvious debt to Boards of Canada (especially c.The Campfire Headphase, cf. "Dayvan Cowboy," which puts it in a similar sonic environment to the Solange Knowles song above--possible collaboration? I'd listen to it) throughout Dive, but it's well-played and well-produced. If the songs aren't always quite there yet--Pitchfork's review is correct in pointing out that some dynamic shifts would be helpful, because your attention does want to wander--"A Walk" doesn't suffer from that problem. For five minutes while listening to "A Walk," everything about the world seems magical, and sometimes that's more than enough.

Radiohead - "Separator" off The King of Limbs

The highlight of a frustratingly uneven record, "Separator" wouldn't have sounded that out of place for the band sometime just after The Bends was released, if it weren't so relaxed and spacious. One of the advantages (though it can also lead to some deathly dull songs and albums) about bands having played together for a long time is that they play together well. If nothing else, "Separator" is the sound of a band who know how to play to each other's strengths doing just that. Thankfully, it is so much more: one of Thom Yorke's best vocals on the album; a nice, slightly funky, rhythm section; and those heavenly guitars that come in about halfway through. Why couldn't the whole album have sounded like this?!

EMA - "Breakfast" off Past Lives Martyred Saints

The "Fuck California / You made me boring" opening to "California" may have received much of the attention, but it's the uncomfortable "Marked" that has the album's most devastating line: "I wish that every time he touched me left a mark." Mark Richardson wrote an absolutely fabulous piece on "Marked" that, like most of the pieces he writes, says a lot more than I could ever hope to. My favourite song on Past Lives Martyred Saints, though, is "Breakfast" (sorry for the live version; there's no studio version on Youtube). It's relatively peaceful compared to the rest of the album, but as quietly heart-wrenching as anything else. It also reminds me of Deconstruction's self-titled album (especially some of the quieter songs on it, like "Son"), which remains an underappreciated moment in "alternative rock." And she sounds a good deal like Kim Gordon, though in singing mode, rather than grunting mode.

Fennesz - "Liminal" off Seven Stars EP

This is Fennesz in "Endless Summer" mode, unfurling gorgeous melodies wrapped in static. I can't say that it pushes his sound in any new directions, but it sounds great. Fennesz has mastered his own sound, one that's distinct enough to turn his name into an adjective, and this whole EP sounds like him playing with nothing to prove. Even the drums on "Seven Stars" just literalize Fennesz's deconstruction of early rock and roll, which he's been doing since Endless Summer (he does this better than more literal callbacks--like Deerhunter's recent stuff--manage to do, in my opinion). Anyway, "Liminal" (and the rest of the EP) sounds like a breather after the masterful, but quite dense, Black Sea, and it's a joy to hear.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - "Senator" off Mirror Traffic

Speaking of songs that don't push an artist's sound forward. . . There's nothing about "Senator" that Malkmus wasn't doing with Pavement in the 1990s, and part of the pleasure is hearing Malkmus write a song as good as something he would've written in Pavement. The stop-start structure gives "Senator" a lot of momentum, and it sounds like Malkmus and the Jicks are having fun. The latter point has usually been a warning light when it comes to SM + the Jicks' releases (has a talented band jamming ever sounded so interminable?), but here the listener can have fun, too.