YEARS PAST: 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 N/A | 2012
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Mountain Goats - Dark In Here
Foxing - Go Down Together
Illuminati Hotties - u v v p
Big Red Machine - Latter Days
20. Sharon Van Etten - A Crime
"Because of all these triangles and squares / the memory we seem to share / replays a distant love That plays my records wrong."There is something about the specific jangle of the acoustic guitar at the beginnign of this song that brings to mind Neutral Milk Hotel. I’m sure there’s a very simple music theory lesson that a more educated person could pinpoint. Whatever it is, it’s a sound that I’ve routinely chased since the mid 2000s, when I first discovered Neutral Milk Hotel from message boards and torrent sites. “A Crime” fits the bill in a great way. Van Etten’s voice is less hysterical than Mangum’s, but just as vulnerable, and the spareness of two elements somehow fills up the whole world, just as “Two Headed Boy” did all those years ago.
19. Isaiah Rashad - Headshots (4r Da Locals)
"And the shots ain't bringin' my soldier back / from the noose to the drop and the ‘wop no diggity"The House is Burning is sixteen tracks of mid-tempo vibes underneath dark clouds. It is stupor music — the soundtrack of nodding off, of continuing to drink after the after party, of retreating into dark thoughts. A song like “Headshots” has the vibe of something you could cruise downtown to, were it not for all that fatalism and the air of death. It is a song about dying by guns and drinks, and living with this knowledge every day.
18. St. Vincent - …At The Holiday Party
“Pretend to want these things / so no one sees you not getting what you need”A lot of indie artists and singer-songwriters chase experimental sounds and weird aesthetics in order to exercise their counter cultural muscles. No shade here — it’s often a good instinct and produces genuinely fresh ideas. But it’s also a good move to sometimes strip things down to a Hall & Oates level with a song like this. Something a little soulful, a little old fashioned and traditional, but brings just enough of a youthful point of view and touch to the whole thing. Show us how easy it is.
17. The Antlers - Green to Gold
"All that summer worked to bud and bloom / Only to be swept up by a broom"The Antlers continue to be in a weird space. No one can deny their continued ability to build these beautiful, spacious musical worlds with genius flourishes of bass guitar and saxaphone. But fans like me were drawn primarily by the intense emotionality of Hospice in the mid 2000s and have never heard them even try to reclaim that peak. Still - their sound is undeniable. Lyrically, it’s a song about the quiet and eternal beauty of nature. And who can blame them? Who hasn’t taken a walk in the early morning and felt some sacred connection to the earth?
16. Bo Burnham - That Funny Feeling
“In honor of the revolution, it's half-off at the Gap”In his pandemic-informed film Inside, Bo Burnham fills his songs with movies, but because he’s primarily a comedian, they nearly all get center around a joke. Sometimes, the fact that they’re very good approximations of real pop music is the joke itself. The only time he lets himself be completely earnest, a pure singer songwriter, without cutting the tension with a joke, is “That Funny Feeling.” It’s an ode to the downward spiral of western culture and the very clear intuition that this is all leading to the end of the world one way or another. It’s a list song: verses are comprised of disconnected words and phrases that leaves you, the listener, with pure unfiltered reactions to the juxtaposition, or the concepts, or just the sound of the sentence. (“Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul.”) Is that the height of songwriting? Probably not. But Father John Misty was not above it in 2015’s “Holy Shit,” so in my mind this is a valid form of song construction if you can pull it off. In a monoculture, a song like this would’ve been a new generation “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but instead of listing the things that happened, it highlights things that will spring from the absurdities we live with today.
15. Low - Days Like These
“Know that I would do anything / Is it something that I can't see? / Everybody just chased by dreams / That's why we're living in days like these again”The sound of Low is a slow tempo, strumming electric guitar, soft drums and haunting voices. “Days Like These” answers the question, what would it even sound like if they were to get loud? Seconds into it, it is maybe the loudest song they’ve ever produced. And yet, it’s still entirely in their wheelhouse. They did not pivot to death metal so much as used effects to amplify their quietness with Bon Iver-esque multi-tracking played through a blown-out speaker. It’s a cinematic trick, but a refreshing one, that infuses the band with a new kind of bright light.
14. Japanese Breakfast - Kokomo, IN
“Now that you're away / I'll just spend my life not knowing”I will always be receptive to dead center indie music, and this song is 2021’s textbook example of it. Michelle Zauner’s singing glides seamlessly over an elegant string arrangement, a mid-tempo rhythm section, a guitar solo that sounds like it was borrowed from Wilco — this is what the mid 2000s were all about.
13. James Blake - Famous Last Words
“You’re the last of my old things / The cast from my broken limbs”I’m not yet ready to unfurl the “James Blake is Back” banner, but this song connected with my pleasure centers more than anything he’s done since 2013’s Overgrown. I don’t know what it is about his recent output; sometimes it seems like he’s chasing a more popular sound, sometimes it seems like he’s rebelling against pop and zagging into experiments. It produces things that I respect and enjoy but rarely crave. “Famous Last Words” is closer to what I liked about him in 2011: the hypnotic effects of a minimalist beat, the departures for beautiful singing, and some words about loss.
12. Adult Mom - Adam
“I thought about the first girl I kissed / was a girl I wanted to kiss / but not the first girl I wanted to kiss”It’s got a light rock music touch, features a sweet guitar solo, and features sentimental nostalgia about the difference between your first love and your first kiss. It’s also not even 2 minutes long. For all these reasons, it’s a song that I listened to a lot this year, the way one can eat a lot of M&Ms.
11. Sufjan Stevens - Lady MacBeth in Chains
“Now the two allegories of pity and terror / One for the money, for trial and error”I admit, if you gave me a lyric sheet to this song and asked me what it’s about I would not know how to bullshit my way through an explanation. But the poetry is undeniable and the sound, including its brief *Age of Adz* stylistic shift at the end, carries the weight of emotion throughout. The influence of Angelo De Augustine on Sufjan’s songwriting seems to be bringing his unconventional impulses back toward singer-songwriter standards. It’s like the Sufjan songs that would play best on NPR, and you know what? It’s not half bad at all.
10. Kings of Convenience - Rocky Trail
“How am I to know about your problems and your load? / I am blind to what you show / I am waiting to be told”When the daily terror of the pandemic was reigning over us, I could not stomach my usual diet of depressing sad sack music. It was touching too many nerves and I needed something that actually lightened the burden of dread. What was that? It wasn’t until Kings of Convenience released the single for their first album in 12 years that I realized what it was.
Look: there are times when Kings of Convenience is corny. There is something about Nordic songwriters like them and The Tallest Man on Earth where they write very literal lyrics (“I wish you had been more of a talker Not the kind that is just flapping his lips”). Depending on the lyrics, it either cuts to the heart of the matter in a satisfying way or it sounds like clunky stenography. In any event, corny is something I welcomed in 2021, and when paired with KoC’s trademark posh string arrangements and bright, crisp acoustic guitar plucking, it was a true remedy to the year’s bad vibes. Thank god.
9. TORRES - Thirstier
“As long as I'm around, I'll be looking for nerves to hit / the more of you I drink, the thirstier I get”The best TORRES songs are the ones where she kicks ass with near rousing high drama (“When Winter’s Over”.) She does it again here, and it almost touches rock opera levels of power. On “Thirstier” I never get a full picture if she loves or hates the subject of her song; sometimes she inhabits a mode of resentment, and then switches into passion, then switches again into guilt. But it’s this complex rendering that makes the chorus all the more powerful. We go from uncertainty to confidence, from submission to domination. It’s a song with all kinds of heart, here for the taking.
8. Rostam - From the Back of a Cab
“And in the back of a cab we sit closer / and I rest my head down on your shoulder / from the back of the cab to the airport / I am happy you and I got this hour”Rostam is the master of inventing beautiful new sounds I have never heard before, and combining them with traditional pretty sounds like violins and acoustic guitars. Here, he combines the echoes of a grand piano with the bouncy, click beats of distorted drums and what sounds like a camera’s shutter. It is a destabilizing beat, set to an odd time signature. Either of these elements alone would make the song either predictable or dissonant, but together it just sounds fresh and sublime.
7. BROCKHAMPTON - The Light
“Losin' jobs and losing God, then everything is tumbling / feel heaven rumbling, the rapture is coming”An amendment to my aforementioned aversion to depression music: if it has blood pumping energy, I can get into it. It is also probably dumb to describe this song as depressing music. It’s hard edged, angry, and unpacking trauma. It is sad, maybe, but it’s not melancholy. It is sad the way horror movies are sad. The beat reminds me of something out of 2000s hip hop, but with the vibe that only BROCKHAMPTON can make. If it was shameless enough to include a pop sing-hook and hid more of its doomsaying, it might be a mainstream breakthrough.
6. Snail Mail - Forever (Sailing)
“I'll love you from the city to the stars / but nothing stays as good as how it starts”We have been living with Spotify’s algorithmic Discovery Weekly for about eight years now, and in that time, countless pop-punk-like indie bands have fallen into my lap. And a lot of the time, they’ll promptly fall out of my lap after a few months. This is the new shape of the one hit wonder. In my personal continuity, “Forever (Sailing)” and the album it appears on, Valentine, is when Snail Mail broke out of that classification and truly arrived. In this smoky, lounging, 70s-referencing ballad, Snail Mail takes on a totally new look that shows versatility that lasts.
5. Silk Sonic - Leave the Door Open
“I’m sipping wine / in a robe / I look too good / to be alone”A vintage soul record from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak almost seems too obvious. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that they’re able to do it together and share the spotlight. A song like “Leave the Door Open” feels like such a faithful pastiche, homage, recreation and in some parts straight up rip. Is that good or bad? I say it depends on the market. Right now, no one delivers new soul music in the vein of the classics — at least not anyone with access to the top 40 charts. It serves a need. Does it matter that these guys can probably churn out songs of this caliber in their sleep? That if you told me they did no more than three takes, I’d believe you? It’s immaterial to my listening.
4. Deafheaven - Shellstar
“A sublime wander through summer fire / the char, the ash, the cough, the roar”
Deafheaven broke through to “mainstream indie” by finding a way to juxtapose post-rock prettiness with grinding black metal in an emotional shoegaze package. But my favorite songs of theirs are the ones that just decide to lean fully into making something grand and beautiful. I know that’s a cop out in some ways, but they’re extremely good at it. “Shellstar” is, if I’m not mistaken, just a full on shoegaze song. The loss of a unique sound would be more concerning if what they were making instead didn’t turn out to be a powerful piece of work.
3. Tyler, The Creator - CORSO
“Remembered I was rich, so I bought me some new emotions”“CORSO” isn’t the start of “CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST,” but it’s the first time things really get rolling. Tyler does some of his most versatile rapping here: all kinds of flows, voices, rhymes, emotions. The scatterbrained mind of this song bounces from psychotic arrogance to maliciousness, to self-loathing and to heartbreak. It’s a contagion of madness, it will make you feel every bit as bitter and broken.2. Julien Baker - Repeat
“Say I miss you like a mantra / 'til I forget what it means / doesn't matter what you tell me / I just need to hear you speak”Blessed with the best wail in modern music, the best Julien Baker songs are almost always the ones with a bombastic crescendo, like the blastoff moment at a rocket launch. “Repeat” uses that as misdirection. The song is an exercise in constant momentum building, pace pick-ups and cultivating urgency. But to what end? A fizzle out, a phantom crescendo, the ground gone from underneath your feet. It may be unsatisfying and unresolved, but that’s also what makes it memorable and affecting. It’s an aural mood in lock step with Baker’s writing, which describes an entrenched longing, a state of constant want (“I just need to hear you speak.”) A perfect transposal of feeling from artist to audience.
1. CHVRCHES - Final Girl
“In the final cut / in the final scene / there's a final girl / and you know that she should be screaming”Screen Violence is probably my favorite CHVRCHES album, and “Final Girl” embodies all the qualities I love about it. It’s an exciting hybrid of “What if The Cure came up today?” and the first CHVRCHES album, The Bones of What You Believe. The album’s theme of 90s synth music with slasher films is also inspired — the concept of the final girl in horror movies, the survivor of all the bloodshed, and what that means in the tumult of relationships and love, is as sturdy of a metaphor as you can get in a pop song.