My 2010 Mix, Part Two

Violens
(Tom Hines)

As I have in years past, I’ve gone back through my iTunes library and sorted through the stacks of CDs on my desk, and have compiled a list of my favorite songs of the year. They’re not ranked in any sort of order, but rather, listed in such a way as to make for a nice listening experience if you were to listen to them as an actual mix.

Part one my 2010 mix can be found here.


10. Soundpool — “But It’s So”

There was a stretch of about two weeks earlier this year where my playlist was essentially dominated by this song, which I often listened to via Soundpool’s MySpace page. The shoegazer aesthetic of the band’s earlier work is still very apparent thanks to the swirling guitars and Kim Field’s alluring voice. But what really gets me is the song’s bad-ass groove. Recalling Stereolab at their funkiest, e.g., Dots and Loops, with hints of late ’90s trip-hop, “But It’s So” just coasts along like some interstellar dance party from the year 2145. The band calls it “discogaze,” which would normally cause me to my roll my eyes… but I’m just too busy getting down to be nitpicky and snobbish like that.

11. The Radio Dept. — “Memory Loss”

When Clinging To A Scheme came out, folks probably paid the most attention to the album’s obvious singles, e.g., “Heaven’s On Fire” and “David,” and for good reason. The Swedish outfit are nothing if not pros at crafting solid synth-pop songs. That being said, I’ve always been equally drawn to the band’s slower, more toned down material. A song like “Memory Loss” may not be as catchy as some of the other tracks in the band’s oeuvre, but thanks to the band’s lo-fi aesthetic, it drips with a sort of nostalgia that is much more than the merely aping of one’s influences. Mix the airy synths and pining guitar riffs with lyrics that tap into teenage ennui and the desperation of young love — or maybe it’s the troubled thoughts of a murderer — and the song generates an impact that belies it’s seemingly sedate nature.

12. Sufjan Stevens — “Djohariah”

I’m sure it took a lot of people by surprise when Sufjan Stevens not just one, but two new recordings this year, especially given some of his earlier statements about being fed up and discouraged with music in general. Most people focused on The Age of Adz, and understandably so: it was an rough, shambling, discordant, audacious monster of an album, musically and thematically. And though I was initially put off by the album, it has really grown on me in recent weeks. However, “Djohariah” — the final track on All Delighted People EP — was my favorite Sufjan moment of 2010. Over the course of 17 minutes, the song moves from fiery, Neil Young-style guitar pyrotechnics to a gentle, poignant singalong about the trials and tribulations of a single mother. It’s an exhilarating song, but also one that, like the best songs in Sufjan’s catalog, lovingly details humanity in all of its glory and frailty.

13. Keith Canisius — “People’s Faces”

I’m still figuring out how I feel about Keith Canisius’ latest full-length, This Time It’s Our High, especially when compared to his earlier recordings. Canisius’ career seemed to be undergoing a clear progression, but his newest has thrown me for a bit of a loop. That being said, the album’s opening track, “People’s Faces,” is a real monster… albeit, a dreampoppy sort of monster. I’ve previously described it as something akin to a Mew/Manual collaboration, if that gives you a better idea of what I’m talking about. And no matter how many times I listen to the song, I get an absolute thrill out of the breakdown that occurs approximately half-way through the song, when Canisius’ synthesizers begin to disintegrate the song’s seesawing guitars and noisy textures.

14. Violens — “Feel It All Around The Space Station”

A mash-up of Slowdive’s “Souvlaki Space Station” (the band’s most celestially minded track) and “Feel It All Around” by chillwaver Washed Out put together by “it” band Violens (originally for their 2010 Summer mixtape)? Yes, yes, and yes. Violens speeds up Slowdive’s unmistakable guitar riffs — which sound just like spaceships plunging into the distant reaches of the Large Magellanic Cloud — and Washed Out brings the beats and grooves. On paper, it sounds just about perfect, and when you actually listen to it… you realize that’s precisely what you’re listening to: perfection.

15. RadioSeed — “Kissed Your Galaxy Goodbye”

RadioSeed is Peter Wikström, who you may know as one-half of Ecovillage. As such, it shouldn’t surprise that there are an awful lot of sonic similarities between the bands, i.e., a washed out bliss-pop sound that owes a lot to the Darla, Clairecords, and Morr Music crowds. But on “Kissed Your Galaxy Goodbye,” I think Wikström outpaces his other project a bit thanks to a nicely placed beat that propels the song out of this world. As I wrote earlier, “it’s like listening to Studio and the rest of the Balearic scene, if they got a good, swift kick in the drum machine.”

16. Arcade Fire — “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”

Truth be told, I haven’t listened to Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs nearly as much as as my indie cred, such as it is, tells me I ought to. And I can’t quite explain why. That being said, there’s no denying that “Sprawl II” is an absolute monster of a track, and one that contains everything we love about Arcade Fire: it’s both a searing look at a soulless, materialistic society and a poignant cry for an existence that is deeper, truer, and more real than what we so often experience in the day-to-day. (I’ve written some additional thoughts on the song over at Christ and Pop Culture.)

17. Pieter Nooten — “Glow”

At first, Pieter Nooten’s Here Is Why seems like something akin to a musical time machine, one that takes you to the glorious days of 4AD when they released albums by the Cocteau Twins, Clan of Xymox, This Mortal Coil, and of course, Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook. But after a few listens, Here Is Why still feels like something of a mixed bag, due largely to the uneven collection of vocalists. The instrumental tracks, on the other hand, are all uniformly lovely, especially “Glow.” Here, Nooten takes his atmospheric synthesizer-based sound and blends it with Oriental textures. The result is music that is exotic, sensual, poignant, and thoroughly entrancing.

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