Top 50 Songs of 2011

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top 50 songs of 2011

40. Grouplove – “Colours” (Canvasback)
[single; from Never Trust a Happy Song]

Buy at iTunes

While rock has gotten a hell of a lot of mileage out of those fabled `three chords’ over the last demi-century, Grouplove last year entered the collective consciousness with the earnest insistence of just two with the irrepressible “Colours.” While somewhat reminiscent of Arcade Fire, or, at a push even Doolittle-era Pixies, Grouplove successfully circumnavigated dismissive comparisons to both. While sporting the radical-band camp aesthetic of the former and the soft/loud dynamic of the latter, “Colours” felt like a breath of fresh air at the year’s start, as well as an antidote to the nauseatingly jaunty indie pop of a similar ilk that had previously permeated. Its well-worn message of the dually difficult-yet-ultimately-worthwhile nature of existence was imbued with a youthful sincerity that buoyed it up above the crowd as a pleasantly hearty pop offering for what promised to be a difficult decade. At least, until Radiohead and PJ Harvey showed up. – Chester Whelks


39. Factory Floor – “Two Different Ways” (DFA)
[single] Buy at iTunes

Factory Floor – the very name seems to directly put its gaze toward the dancefloor of the Hacienda, that landmark Manchester discotheque that gave more than a nudge to the burgeoning rave scene in the 1980s. And certainly, there’s a touch of post-punk darkness in “Two Different Ways,” but most of all, it’s pure hypnotic electro, following minimal, repeated 303 loops and detached, haunting female vocals. For a while, things were looking shaky there for DFA Records – Tim Goldsworthy gone AWOL, James Murphy dissolving the LCD Soundsystem brand – but as long as the label continues to put out high caliber dance music like this, we’ve got nothing to worry about. – Jeff Terich


38. Kurt Vile – “Jesus Fever” (Matador)
[single; from Smoke Ring for My Halo] Buy at iTunes

On an album of insularity, insecurity and heavy-hitting everyday observations, Kurt Vile’s “Jesus Fever” stood out for tackling something bigger, cosmic, even mysterious. Questions of faith, death, the eternal and what remains when handled by a metal or prog-rock band would turn epic and oblique, but for Vile it comes across as a friendly chat over a beer. With an infectious acoustic guitar riff to bolster his meditations, Vile sings, “Well I’d pack my suitcase with myself, but I’m already gone” and later leaving past reflection for a future date, as he notes, “You can write my whole life down in a little book/ when I’m already gone.” But even as Vile ponders being a ghost and religious fervor, he teases, “If it wasn’t taped you could escape this song.” There may be no afterlife, no reincarnation, no soul to be saved, but there’s a satisfying comfort in being able to live forever through your music. – Jeff Terich


37. David Lynch – “Good Day Today” (Sunday Best)
[single; from Crazy Clown Time]

As an artist who “wanted to make his paintings move,” we can forego the stigma we might attach anyone else’s trespasses from the specialty for which they’re famed, and into the medium of music Lynch pays more detail to the minutiae of his soundtracks and sound design than Michael Bay does the CGI in his sprawling Transformer orgies. Lynch has been integral to the production of each his film’s soundtracks since Eraserhead, as well as moonlighting beautifully on standalone collaborations with David Jaurequi, Julee Cruise, John Neff, Jocelyn Montgomery and the erstwhile Angelo Badalamenti – echoes of which can be heard today in Anna Calvi, and have been downright ripped-off by `The Bookhouse Boys.’ Still, he was met with equal parts support and suspicion when this song surfaced at the end of 2010. Teeming with trademark Lynchian themes such as fire, smoke, angels and fear, and underscored by alternating juxtaposed notes, such as those used to such devastating effect on Twin Peaks‘ “Laura Palmer’s Theme” (sampled so successfully by Moby on “Go”), “Good Day, Today” was a notable and welcome shot of hopeful neurosis injected into this year’s eclectic musical milieu. – Chester Whelks


36. The Horrors – “Still Life” (XL)
[Single; from Skying] Buy at iTunes

By all accounts Horrors should have been extinguished four years ago like any good NME-hyped, style-over-substance act, and yet they endured, in spite of their peers and in spite of themselves. It’s amazing what happens when one switches off the distortion pedals and actually thinks about what one is doing. What is the true nature of composition? What, indeed, is melody at all? Well, the first is delicate and crafted; the second is haunting, sad and a little deluded. Thank heavens for our delusions. – Chris Morgan


35. Oneohtrix Point Never – “Replica” (Software)
[from Replica] Buy at iTunes

Daniel Lopatin earlier this year indulged his taste for kitschy new wave pop with Ford & Lopatin, and in the past he’s proven just as likely to make disorienting and noise-ridden pieces of total chaos, like last year’s “Nil Admirari.” The title cut to Replica, his latest album as Oneohtrix Point Never, reaches neither of these stylistic poles but rather a melancholic serenity. Built on a gentle piano hook, a strangely sad-sounding synthesizer loop and the slowly escalating effect of distortion consuming all of its fragile beauty, “Replica” is a curiously affecting tapestry of delicate wonder. Even more wondrous is its source material – TV commercials, perhaps the most disposable art form next to highway billboards. Through the gimmicks, Lopatin somehow unearthed an unexpected subliminal device: real emotion. – Jeff Terich


34. Gang Gang Dance – “Glass Jar” (4AD)
[single; from Eye Contact] Buy at iTunes

There is always something to be said for beginning an album by encircling the listener in deep space vibes for over five minutes, slowly meandering and clandestinely building until a song coalesces out of swirling cumuli of sound. When “Glass Jar” finally hits and begins crashing forward, dazed but resolute, the frantic, jittered rush is all the more satisfying for the overdose of vaporized emotion just swallowed down. The song begins with the declaration that it’s “everything time” and by the time it’s over something approaching a sense of everythingness has blown like a mixed bag of aleatorically ignited fireworks. – Tyler Parks


33. Foster the People – “Pumped Up Kicks” (StarTime)
[single; from Torches] Buy at iTunes

Was that one-note sampled riff hanging out in the background some sort of modified horn or a helium-filtered voice? Can that total earworm of a bassline transcend and lift up a producer-heavy, ready-for-licensing, otherwise middling debut in Torches? And what dark passenger was Mark Foster transporting that he needed to use handclaps and whistling to shroud lyrics suggesting gun-toting revenge against the hipsters of Los Angeles? On so many levels, “Pumped Up Kicks” was a successful exercise in sonic camouflage. – Adam Blyweiss


32. Mastodon – “Curl of the Burl” (Reprise)
[single; from The Hunter] Buy at iTunes

In a future in which masculinity is little more than a GOP buzzword and when Metallica can’t get a simple collaboration with Lou Reed right, it is good to have a band like Mastodon to bridge the muscular vigor of the past with the atrophied, flaccid present. Sonically it’s the equivalent of having a hard-on for life, but rather than pummel mercilessly it pounds its feet, clenches its fist and bellows cavernous bellows calling everyone who hears it to “self-actualize” which might lead to someone being pummeled mercilessly. Welcome to the era of Lisbeth Salander. – Chris Morgan


31. Shabazz Palaces – “Free Press and Curl” (Sub Pop)
[from Black Up] Buy at iTunes

More than a decade ago Zev Love X put on a tin mask, retreated into Marvel Comics and may or may not have sent out stunt doubles at performances, but on a purely musical level, Digable Planets’ Ishmael Butler’s formation of Shabazz Palaces represents an even more radical reinvention. “Free Press and Curl,” the cosmic opening track from Sub Pop debut Black Up is part rap, part dubstep, part space exploration and part out-of-body experience. It moves quickly and heavily, Butler running a gauntlet of synth-heavy rhythms and hyper-speed verses, standing up and declaring, “I run on feeling, fuck your facts/ deception is the truest act.” Abstract? Definitely. Highbrow? Sure. But this is art that fucking bumps; the first spin in my car rattled the doors and windows just as vigorously as any Southern bounce. This track right here opens the portal to the future of hip-hop. I’m just surprised something this advanced arrived so early. – Jeff Terich

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