Best Songs of 2011

The Rules: The songs need to have been released this year and not be on any album that makes my best of the year list.

Final Fantasy - Hard to Explain

The internet has become great at facilitating bizarre cover songs. Thanks to blogs trying on Magazine-size scope and ambition, compilations of strange and marginal bands covering the hits they were influenced by has become something of a reliably pleasant surprise every few months. Several of those covers made have the sort of unrelenting pleasantness that make them unforgettable, a kind of pocket of urgency because the band needs to not only justify his inclusion in a Nirvana tribute record, but also justify the whole endeavor. Owen Pallett taking on The Strokes' "Hard to Explain" sounds utterly mad until you listen to it and indeed your glad Stereogum bothered paying tribute to a record that has amounted to a promise delivered broken regarding one of Rock's great unrealized debuts. But between those furiously sawing violins and Pallett's beautiful whine, this song is, to me, even more essential than the original.

Telekinesis - On A Plain

Except knowing that the AV Club adored them I'd no idea who Telekinesis was or why they were deemed important enough to cover one of the most highly regarded modern albums. Now, I don't go around singing the gospel of Nirvana. I'm a casual fan at best and I can only listen to them in waves. Yet something about Telekinesis' straight forward take on one of the band's lesser hits grabbed me in just right the way. It's simplicity is its saving grace, delivering the hook with a little of the band's personality as a filter, and passing it's running time quickly and with a kick.

Dum Dum Girls - September Gurls

It wouldn't be a best songs list around here without something from AV Undercover, the AV Club's great idea-turned-phenomena where they invite bands into their round room to play something from an ever-dwindling list of songs. The highlight this year (narrowly beating out Of Montreal doing "Fell In Love With A Girl," Sloan doing "Cars," The Fruit Bats doing "The Other Woman" and The Decemberists playing "If I Can't Change Your Mind") was definitely the sunglass-clad Dum Dum Girls doing a better job on Big Star's "September Gurls" than Big Star. The icy reverb that the girls seem to keep in massive store serves them splendidly as they harmonize their way through the easy rocker.

The Kills - Future Starts Slow

I wanted to like The Kills' new album more than I did because I'm sick to death of The Dead Weather and want everyone to go back to where they came froml; respectively The Greenhornes, The White Stripes and The Kills. I like those bands better than the sludgy side project they've become mired in. The White Stripes are no more and the Hornes are erratic at best, so I was definitely looking forward to the new Kills album. And I do really like it, but just not enough that it made my top twenty. Some of the group's best material is hidden throughout, including the growling opening number, which "Howls, screams and wails" in just the right way. This is what I want from Allison Mosshart.

The Chemical Brothers - Container Park

The Chemical Brothers joined Daft Punk in that odd section of purgatory labeled Bands Whose Soundtrack Work Kicks The Shit Out Of The Film It Was Composed For when they delivered a vibrant and angry electronic album to support the horrendous actioner Hanna. The film was a mess, a rash of embarassing stylistic choices, horribly earnest performances and cringe-inducing dialogue, but the score came this close to redeeming it. Take the film's unbearably pleased-with-itself action set pieces. In what should have been a thrilling, high-stakes fight scene Hanna and some thugs have it out in a Spanish shipping yard. Instead it barely registers because you everyone can't stop letting us know that they're making a film. The blistering song beneath the fight scene almost saves it. Almost.

Austra - The Beat & The Pulse

Austra's Feel It Break was almost compelling enough to make it on the list and I still love it dearly, for when the former Opera hopeful gets it right, it's a thing of beauty. "The Beat & The Pulse" is a dark wave wet dream, a latex-coated fantasia both old and thrillingly new. And when Katie Stelmanis goes for the full-throated chorus, my spine melts.

Susanne Sundfør - Black Widow

I didn't know anything about Sundfør when Cooper McKim handed me her album The Brothel. After hearing it, I chose not to do any research because the majestic otherness of songs like "Black Widow" might not have the same edge to them. I want to keep a blindspot up in front of her face so that I can continue to be confounded and tempted by her gorgeously warped voice and compositions.

My Morning Jacket - Circuital

After Evil Urges I'm just thankful that Circuital wasn't a goddamn tragedy. Better still, there are great songs on this new record, most notably the rollicking title track which starts as smoke wafting through mirrored halls until it explodes into the kind of rocker I'd come to expect from the hairy southerners captaining the ship known as My Morning Jacket. It's good to have them back, even if it's only for seven awesome minutes.

Radiohead - Staircase/Little By Little [Shed Remix]

As it wouldn't exactly be fair to give two spots to songs by band whose album made my best of the year list, I've decided to split it halfway between their b-sides and gargantuan remix album. There was enough Radiohead to fill a cruise ship this year and though it wasn't all gold...a lot of it was. "Staircase" is my favourite of the non-album tracks and never more entrancing than when they performed it on SNL. And from the Remix album, I like Shed's remix of "Little By Little", maybe the least genius song on the album. To see it given a make-over that me appreciate its original context better was rather exciting.

Feist - Undiscovered First

Feist came this close to nailing the album form this time around, but someone keeps telling her to put those watery jazz numbers in between her soul-scorching rock songs. There are great songs on Metals ("The Bad in Each Other," "Graveyard," "How Come You Never Go There," "A Commotion") and then there's "Undiscovered First," which I'm prepared to say is her best song. Primal, loud, boisterous and catchy, it's everything she's good at, cranked up loud enough to kill someone.

Sondre Lerche - Private Caller

Yes, it's a wafer-thin little pop song, but sometimes that's all I need from Sondre Lerche. He's already given me an album that is a fusion of his best instincts in Phantom Punch, so I can't ask him for another masterpiece and am just thankful for every little gem like "Private Caller". God speed you beautiful Norwegian boy. Your pop songs make me smile.

We Avalanche - Ornette

Admittedly I don't know when this song was actually written, but I'm including it because I heard it for the first time this year and the band's only got one album, so I'm calling it kosher. The three folk shredders of We Avalanche are never more fleet fingered than on this song and Brady Custis' voice soars over the weaving and winding string playing, all deft, brazen and warm.

Devotchka - All The Sand In All The Sea

It's a hundred miles from what their known for, but the echoing, screaming, galloping "All The Sand," the song that properly kickstarts DeVotchka's little loved but pretty great 100 Lovers, is just as heartsick and loveable as their best early material.

The Decemberists - Calamity Song

For the record, no I don't hate or even dislike The King Is Dead, it's just a massive comedown from the nerdgiastic heights of The Hazards of Love. Hazards was a career-defining epic that outdid and expanded on everything they'd ever done. It's probably their best album to date. So no it's that there's anything wrong with The King Is Dead, per se, it just isn't nearly enough after The Hazards of Love. The case in microcosm is "Calamity Song". It's a great little pop song with its guitar sound borrowed from early R.E.M. albums (indeed they even borrowed early R.E.M.'s guitar player to do it) and it's impossible not to hum after you've heard it, but it sounds like it could have been written and recorded at any stage of the band's career. It sounds like it could have been a Tarkio song. Which, when you consider how massive a step The Hazards of Love was after The Crane Wife, is as good as a step backwards. They can do better than this, even if they don't have to. They sound good when they tread water, I just wish they'd tackle giant waves again

Dan Mangan - Post-War Blues

I don't know what you'd call the production on this song, it's definitely its own thing and dozens of artists have adopted the sound before, but I don't know what to call it. Anyway, Mangan's "Post-War Blues" is like a classic Dylan tune supercharged and shot through space. I love its momentum, I love Mangan's voice and how it builds on top of itself.

Coldplay - Hurts like Heaven

I'm not the biggest fan in the world of Coldplay's latest album, but shit can they write a pop song when they care to. "Hurts Like Heaven" is what I've taken away from Mylo Xyloto and if it was the only song on the album, it'd still be an achievement. I love how sweet Jonny Buckland's guitar sounds when he plays the lead-melody thing after the first chorus. And there is a hugeness that these guys just get right everytime. That pre-chorus instrumental build-up is unbeatable. The chorus itself ain't bad either.

Lykke Li - Silent My Song

Lykke Li's Wounded Rhythms was 21 on my list. It's very good. My only issue was that all the songs weren't as good as "Silent My Song". And frankly my issue with that song is that it doesn't sound as good on the record as it does live. I've listened to her performance on the Late Show at least a dozen times since I ripped it from a youtube clip. Her well-deep voice carries you ever downward as the brilliantly minimalist arrangement clangs in the deep, half-whale song, half-bell from hell.

The Dears - Thrones

I feel for The Dears. They make consistently great albums that are constantly compared to their first album, as if somehow they've been tarnishing their own legacy. Fuck that. Every album since No Cities Left has been achingly human and heartbreaking and stays with me for a long, long time. "Thrones" has a huge chorus that's not even as good as it's paranoid verse. A fine song in a career full of them, as always under-appreciated.

Cults - Abducted

Cults are occasionally too saccharine for me, but "Abducted" has enough sneer to cut through the sweetness. This is hands down my favourite song from their self-titled debut, a will-they-won't-they tale of hearts stolen and lost again.

Bonus:
Ok Sweetheart - Before You Go

Ok Sweetheart are a little out of my area of expertise and if it weren't for tragic news I'd never have heard of them. TCM's touching In Memorium segment was scored by the Tulsa, OK band's sweetly melancholic "Before You Go" this year and something about it stuck with me as I was watching the faces of actors I'd never work with, craftsman I'd taken for granted and directors who I'd never be able to tell how much they meant to me.

Commitment to Sound

I like music criticism about a fifth as much as I like music, which is still a lot. I love reading about albums, I love misguided and wrongheaded music lists because I have fun disagreeing with people probably more than I do having my opinions validated by folks in high places. My friend Tucker Johnson's running Rolling Stone's astonishingly stupid 500 best albums list right now and I like reading his take as much because I disagree with the list as I do because I want to hear him eviscerate/agree with their choices. And to be frank the list is a joke; there are more best ofs than proper albums and no distinction between live and studio and probably one black artist for every ten whites (to say nothing of the dearth of music from the continents of Africa, Asia and South America). It shows no creativity and an embarrassing lack of periphery from a bunch of people who claim to be the authority on rock and roll. Though, in their defense I know their MO and still repeatedly go looking for things they publish knowing they'll make me furious. They're euro/ameri-centric and pretty patriarchal as well, so expecting that they'd place The Scientists or Sister Carol or Mulatu Astatke in the same esteem as Eric Fucking Clapton isn't worth the effort. You have to get a grip on the style of the source before you can take issue with their bias. There's just going to be no real music reporting from Rolling Stone - their focus is on .08% of the music put out today.

One of my favourite sources for music criticism (in fact it's become nearly exclusive) is The A.V. Club. I figured I already got all my film reviews there (I do enjoy the frankness of Dave White at movies.com as well) I might as well see how their attitude toward music gels with mine. I've figured out that what they applaud more than a catchy song is commitment to a style or aesthetic. Just as head film writer Scott Tobias applauds ideological or stylistic decisions more than he does technical acumen, discerning direction or great acting, their music critics like it when someone picks a mode and sticks it out to the bitter end. This is sometimes a good thing as you know who's made a solid 'album' in the old fashioned sense like The Yardbirds or Miles Davis or even The Cure, a record that sounds like itself all the way through, the production doesn't change, it doesn't sound like a collection of songs by the same person given individual treatment to bring out the best in each song. They like it when someone sits down and makes a record in the same space that doesn't change rapidly from end to end. Know that and how your own tastes match up, and you and The A.V. Club can get along nicely. Case in point, my new favourite record Badlands by Dirty Beaches. A record that has the fuzzy expansiveness of early Suicide and the claustrophobic production of Sparklehorse, Badlands starts out awesome and stays that way, rarely straying from its chosen course. In defense of The A.V. Club's grade A review, the production and the attitude of its cooler-than-cool author make sure that the quality doesn't dip. I agree entirely with the review. It's a great album, but I could also see someone digging in and being weirded out based on the review and its high marks. They expect readers to be willing to sympathize with their appreciation of aural commitment, which I can sympathize with, as I myself have expected more from albums given the same grade based on their creators sticking with a chosen idiom. For instance Lisbon by The Walkmen wasn't quite the masterpiece they touted it as, but its sound is solid throughout. Love Remains by How To Dress Well is impressively produced and spooky to boot, but really isn't the sort of thing I want to listen to twice. Similarly the dour-to-boring High Violet by The National was compared to the Arcade Fire but has nothing of their dynamism. But they are just as committed to boring me to tears as Arcade Fire are to rocking the paint off the walls. The A.V. Club aren't as willing to go to bat for something like 100 Lovers by Devotchka which admittedly doesn't have the brains of say, Dirty Projectors, but a few of the songs simply outshine the most committed deep cuts from the under-appreciated producers they champion. That we agreed about Badlands is probably to do with coincidence as anything else. What usually happens is I'll listen to the records that they've given A grades to and appreciate/respect the record and agree that they deserve praising. And then I promptly forget to ever listen to them again. Staying power is something the AV staffers and I strongly differ on. Oh and I should say now that differences of opinion notwithstanding they are amazing writers and I visit the site ten times a day and constantly inspire me and I'm hugely in your debt.

But the reason I love Badlands has more to do with its influences, Link Wray and Suicide. It's the things that Dirty Beaches are committed to rather than that its sole member Alex Zhang Hungtai is as infatuated with them that draws me to listen again and again. Sounding like Bloodshot Bill as imagined by David Lynch, the record is an enthralling if haunting listen, but unlike How To Dress Well, its progressions and Hungtai's cracked howl are enough to warrant repeat listens even if you aren't in the mood for a nightmare. To paraphrase Tobias' on films like Oldboy and Army of Darkness, it's cool and that's more important than having discernible lyrics or depth. I would also argue that the same is true of The Kills who've made a career on being the badasses in leather you desperately want to like you. Alison Mosshart's dropped a touch in my estimation from unknowable leather jacket-clad cypher to girl who maybe also likes being liked, as evidenced by her less-than-stellar collaboration with Jack White on The Dead Weather, a band that sounded like a high school Kills cover band trying out new material for the first time. Mosshart belongs in The Kills because Jamie Hince understands her strengths and builds her a stage better than White did over two hastily recorded Dead Weather albums. Mosshart sounded out of her depth in The Dead Weather because they weren't cool, they were trying to be cool. All they ever managed was a kind of ugliness that has its charms if you'd thought The White Stripes were too polished and pretty. Die-hards wanted White back in the Stripes, but that dream's been forever shattered. At least there's a new Kills album to fall back on.

I'm interested to see what The A.V. Club makes of their latest, Blood Pressures, when it's released on Tuesday. I predict that it won't get the A- of more committed aesthetes even though at the end of the year I doubt I'll have heard songs I like too much more than "Pots and Pans" or "Future Starts Slow" sure there are ups and downs, but I think that this record is more winning than even Badlands because it's human and because there are some songs that you can listen to any day of the week in any mood. Badlands is what it is, but it's only what it is. "Pots and Pans" is a song that is bigger than the album it closes, not unlike "Dancin' on our Graves" by Cave Singers, a song so good it shed its initial context (the credits of Cabin Fever 2) and is now one of my favourite songs. I applaud someone like Dirty Beaches and I love his album, but I think that imperfection has its charm. Humans make mistakes and I like it when one song can be the best thing about a record, rather than the whole thing being pretty even from start to finish. I like it when an album is good but gives me one or two songs I know I'll revisit years from now. Maybe it could have used a more uniform style or more commitment to any one of its stylistic devices, but I think it's pretty cool the way it is.

Note: I was right.