My Favorite Songs of the Year, 39-21

39. The Low Anthem-Charlie Darwin: My mom’s favorite song of the year! A little disappointing live, but still really, really good.

38. St. Vincent-The Neighbors: St. Vincent sings this like a song that should be on the Desperate Housewives soundtrack if it were a show worth watching: “Ohhhhhh no / what would your mother say / what would your father do what would the neighbors think / if they only knew.” The chorus is cluttered with feedback off her guitars and vocals, putting the whole situation is perfect obscurity.

37. Bill Callahan-Eid Ma Clack Shaw: Great song about trying to forget an ex on a pretty amazing break up album. Bill Callahan tells us that “all these fine memories/ are fucking me down / I dreamed it was a dream that you were gone / I woke up feeling so ripped by reality.” So what is Eid Ma Clack Shaw? Here: “I fell back asleep / sometime later on / and I dreamed / the perfect song / it held all the answers / like hands laid on / I woke halway and / scribbled it down / and in the morning / what I wrote I read / it was hard to read at first / but here’s what it said: / “Eid Ma Clack Shaw…” Which either means nothing or means that there is no perfect song with all the answers to getting over someone which is fucking brilliant or means something else but I’ll take the middle answer.

36. Kurt Vile-Monkey: Heartfelt, sad love song to an upbeat tune: “Oh my darling I was born when I met you / if you don’t mind now / what’d I’d like / is could I get you / to redesign and redeliver me again.” Best comparison has to be Led Zeppelin—big guitars but not cliché, smart but not sappy lyrics. Later: “the other night you were away / I missed you so bad / I found me doing something desperate / I was so sad / I swore I held my own hand / pretending it was yours,” a line that rings true for anyone who’s ever had to work with a relationship over a distance.



35. Modest Mouse-Perpetual Motion Machine: This song reminds me of The Good Times Are Killing Me, the percussion begins as clapping hands (like, you know, actual ones as opposed to fake ones) and the whole thing has a fucking around in the studio feel to it. The song ends up as a cool little waltz with Isaac Brock talking about death—“everyone wants to be a perpetual motion machine / we all try harder as the days run out.”

34. The Dutchess and the Duke-Reservoir Park: Right, so, admissions first. Got this song from Aziz Ansari, who joked that he got it off of the end of an Entourage episode. Anyhow, doesn’t diminish how good this song is. It’s the same guitar I’ve been blabbing on about when I talked about the other D&D songs, and it’s even better here with more urgent vocals from the Duke. This is the Rolling Stones. But now.



33. Dirty Projectors-Stillness is the Move: Everyone’s favorite Dirty Projectors song, but not mine. Still very good though.

32. St. Vincent-Actor Out of Work: I think this is maybe the most direct track on Actor, there’s no Fantasia like opening to hide Annie Clark’s snarl here. The guitar work is similarly nasty, driving from the beginning.



31. Deer Tick-Friday XIII: How to creatively sing about not getting any: “I haven’t gotten the touch in a long long time / since Friday XIII Part 9: Going to Hell.” Then, somehow, the back and forth vocals between John McCauley III and Liz Isenberg turn this into a legitimate love song by the end. Awesome.

30. Atlas Sound (ft. Panda Bear)-Walkabout: How much music did I steal from Aziz Ansari this year? Ok, only two songs, this is the second. I never really dug on Atlas Sound/Deerhunter before this year but damn was I missing out. Throw that in on a collaboration with Panda Bear and you have a pretty fucking great song.



29. YACHT-Psychic City: The song that convinces you that you actually like this weird shit that YACHT puts out. Good stuff, catchiest song on the album, not quite dance pop but certainly not indie rock or even electronica. Just fun.

28. St. Vincent-The Strangers: Has a Feist/Mushaboom type feel to it and is just as good but much darker and with pretty fucking great guitar work on the end of it. Paint the black hole blacker indeed.



27. Joshua James-Coal War: A good old fashioned hymnal, I think. This sounds like something that could be sung in church, if you’re into that kind of thing, but catchier.



26. Modest Mouse-Satellite Skin: Nice juxtaposition of the normal rock song, here playing the vulnerable man: “well if you break these moth-wing feelings / well happy fucking congratulations.”



25. Coconut Records-Drummer: Who knew Jason Schwartzman wrote songs, and that they were actually good? This is great light pop, catchy and lyrically clever. Not to throw out Beatlesesque, but the tempo changes make this sound like a Sgt. Pepper’s song.

24. Kurt Vile-Dead Alive: This song makes me think they’re the 21st Century Zeppelin—great guitar, braggadocio, cleverness: “You tell me a good man is hard to find / well when you’re blind…” Later: “call me old dog when I’m gone / but when I’m there it’s always like / oh man where you been so long where you been so long.”

23. Monsters of Folk-Whole Lotta Losin’: Brilliant song finds a way to talk about all at once being cognizant of all the things you have, appreciating them, but still moving on and living your life (“Well I got a lot / but I got a lotta losin / one of these days I’ll be left with nothing / but memories and old times.”).

22. Animal Collective-Bluish: The closest thing to a love song you’re going to get from Animal Collective. Very, very well done.



21. St. Vincent-Marrow: Spoiler—One of my favorite albums of the year, yet no song is going to make the top 20. They’re all kind of held up and helped along by each other and this one is no exception.