Best Songs of 2011

[claps hands together] Okay, let's talk about the year in music. The albums have been listened to, the articles have been read, the annual "Best Of" lists have been scoured, and my personal mixtape has been made: it's time to think about how the most interesting and even perplexing music of 2011 addresses--or, as was often the case this year, argues--with where music has been and where we think music might be going.

Before we get to the point of this article--a rundown of my picks for the best songs of the year--I want to take just a second to offer some thoughts on the year as a whole, as well as the processes by which these songs were selected:

First, the year in review.  For me, 2011 was one of the most jarringly different years in music since I started paying closer attention to annual trends in 2004.  The move towards programmed synths, pop-ambience, and dance this year hit me as a total surprise, and as the year progressed, I found the indie-mainstream's (can that be a thing?) total embrace of chillwave in particular and reverb in general to be perplexing.  Of course, the solidification of chillwave as "a thing" this year also points to what made this year so fascinating, namely: it's not really new.  The sounds embraced in 2011 by bands like Cults, Lykke Li, Foster the People, and Youth Lagoon all have immediate predecessors in Animal Collective, Deerhunter/Atlas Sound, Panda Bear, etc., all of whom have been making records with similar sounds (meaning similar uses of drone in pop song structures, reliance on spectral vocals and heavy reverb, common moves away from traditional rock song structures and arrangements) for half a decade.  In short, there's not that much new in 2011's new sounds.  And yet, the year felt not just different, but almost revolutionary.  Why?

I think the answer is in the diversity of ways the chillwave and dance movements of the past 5 or 6 years are now impacting the development of newer bands.  Even more precisely, I think the reason 2011 felt different is because 2011 was the first year in almost 2 decades that didn't bear the distinctive imprint of the alternative music movement.  For 20 years, musicians have been responding continuously--in both direct and indirect ways--to the revival of DIY, 3-chord, distorted rock-and-roll...but 20 years after Nevermind, we're running out of 30-somethings who are still willing to live with those old ghosts.  What we're hearing in 2011 is a new wave of kids, really, who seem utterly intoxicated by the scope of what rock-and-roll has been, and what we're seeing now is not a shift in allegiances, but a multiplication of inspirational sources: blues (Black Keys), folk (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, et. al.), country, (Wye Oak), R&B (Beirut), dance (The Weeknd), electronica (Cut Copy), teen-pop (Cults), 60s garage (Secret Cities), flat-out Bruce Springsteen impersonations (The War on Drugs).  In 2011, the game changed: it ceased to be about taking indie/alternative rock approaches to your parents' record collections--which is to say, making something from back then sound like something from more recently back then--and became about incorporating the sounds of those record collections into something that sounds like now.  Of course, "now" has its keystones (the most important of which is, apparently, REVERB!), but there's still a growing sense that the music of the 2010s wants to be a thing unto itself.  And that's something we haven't really seen since, well...1991.

As for how I arrived at the "mixtape" song-list below: this year, I tried to put together songs that sounded less like what I love about rock music and more like what 2011 seems to love.  I avoided a lot of my favorite artists, and even among artists I do love (Bon Iver, Dave Bazan, Efrim Manuel Menuck), I tried to select songs that sound like this year...even if they weren't my favorites.  Anyway, enough of my rambling.  I've listed the songs below with links to YouTube for each of them.  I've also written a few sentences about why I selected each song.  I hope you like the list, and most of all, I hope you listen to it.  If you have thoughts, type them up here or shoot me an email: I would love to talk.

Take care, all.  Enjoy 2012.

Oh!  One more note: if you listen to this mix, listen to it loud.  Trust me: it's better.


1)  Cut Copy -- "Need You Now"
2 things: 1) Cut Copy is definitely not my typical cup of tea.  2) This is one of my favorite album-openers ever.  The slow build-in mixes rock-synth rhythms and dance in a way that is propulsive without seeming artificial, and peak at the second chorus is, well, wonderful.  This song changed my mind about this band--I hope it does the same for you.

2)  Cults -- "Oh My God"
This song mixes all the things Cults does well into a single track: '50s-reminiscent, dream-pop female vocals; cute-but-not-precocious teenage lyrics; big-time hooks; and a crazy-good bassline.  If you like this, you'll like everything they do.

3)  Foster the People -- "Houdini"
Foster the People won this year's Vampire Weekend award (taking the crown from reigning champ, Phoenix) as the crowd-pleasing and quirky footstomper of 2011.  I echo pretty much everyone in saying "Pumped Up Kicks" is the weakest song on Torches, but I think I'm out on an island a bit by suggesting this is the best.  I absolutely love the clipping lead guitar line, and FtP demonstrates here that they can control their dynamic ranges better than either of those other bands.  This band--and this song--deserve a pretty big share of the praise they've been getting.

4)  St. Vincent -- "Cruel"
St. Vincent has now made three really, really good albums in a row, and, for me, the element that keeps getting stronger and stronger is her confidence in her guitarwork.  If you've seen her live, you know she shreds...and her produced material is catching up.  This song is great for the story, great for the hooks, but mostly, I love it because it fuses St. Vincent's penchant for the abrasive and disjunctive with rock-solid pop song structure.

5)  Hospital Ships -- "Carry On"
This song wins the "Buyer Beware" award for 2011: great song by a mediocre band with a sub-par album. Lonely Twin is, frankly, weak...and the biggest reason is because the guitar that explodes halfway through "Carry On" is nowhere else to be found on that record.  Listen to this, love it, and use it in all your future mixtapes...but steer clear of the record.

6)  Youth Lagoon -- "Cannons"
Speaking of awards, Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernation wins my inaugural "Sleigh Bells Award."  Here's the thing (before you get too excited): Youth Lagoon doesn't flat-out rock the way Sleigh Bells does...but man, I cannot stop listening to this record.  It's not all that helpful to describe it--filled with teen angst, immature, melancholy, uncomfortably close to what you imagine your ex might cook up with GarageBand in their college dormroom over a weekend--but there's just a simple sonic balance to this record.  This song gets everything right: the vocals are hushed (as are just about all the vocals this year), the keys are simple, and the guitar line is maybe 5 notes altogether...but "Cannons" proves that if you've got the right melody, sometimes the most important trick is restraint.  I love this song, and I love this band.

7)  Beirut -- "East Harlem"
I love what happens with the drums and the piano at the beginning of this song.  I find the horns during the turnaround to be a bit much, but you know what: this is some of the most confident songwriting we've seen from Beirut in the last 4 years.

8)  Akron/Family -- "Light Emerges"
This one (and the next one) were the tracks I wrestled with the most for this mix.  Here's the dilemma: I totally love Akron/Family.  But, aside from my friend Graham (with whom I share half of my brain), nobody else really seems to care about them.  This tells me that when it comes to A/F, my musical sensitivity compass (or MSC, natch), is broken.  So, my thinking here is that 1) you'd be a fool not to love the bass/electric guitar drive in this song, 2) the drums are unavoidably killer, and 3) the lines "Alley cat behind a garbage can / I bet you'll never catch him / Chase him up and down the alleyway / Faster feline" is the most awesome quatrain of the year.  Anyway, I hope you dig this, and I hope you dig this band; if it helps, you should know that Graham and I are almost always right.

9)  Deerhoof -- "Super Duper Rescue Heads!"
This song is weird, sure, and it's awesomeness is also fairly apparent, right?  But the reason it's on here is that I think, in addition to being one of the most cohesive Deerhoof songs I've heard in a few years, it's a great example of where things seem to be going: the wonkiness of the synths that drive this song are not something Deerhoof would have done 5 years ago...but it makes total sense now.  There's less of a rock underpinning here and more of something else...and that something else (whatever it is) is a lot more fun for this particular band.  I like "SDRH!" because it sounds like Deerhoof enjoying themselves; that's something I hope we see more of.

10)  Efrim Manuel Menuck -- "i am no longer a motherless child"
This song is the most confident thing Menuck has done since Silver Mt. Zion's Horses in the Sky and maybe the most confident thing he's done since Godspeed You! Black Emperor, if only because this doesn't sound like GY!BE.  Instead, the song is divided nicely into two pieces: the first half is a mournful solo guitar bit that's tighter than most of Menuck's recent work with Zion, and the second half is a looped, reverse-guitar track with a beautiful singing-in-the-round bit laid on top of it.  The refrain itself is just the right mix of mournful and ambiguous, but the layers of vocal harmonies do just the right trick: it's Menuck singing both with himself and over himself, and as the layers compound, the melody is eventually crushed and lost; it's a beautiful piece of work, and, for what it's worth, my favorite song in this mix.  A great, great piece.

11)  Lykke Li -- "I Follow Rivers"
First of all, I just found out that Lykke Li has been dubbed a "crossover success" this year; I willingly accept the hit on my hipster cred.  Also, this won't be a long entry: this was one of the first songs I loved this year, and I felt it earned its way onto this list.  I dig the chorus, and mostly, I dig Lykke Li's growth as a pop artist: her last album had beautiful moments ("Dance, Dance," for example, which was on my best of 2009 mix), but it seemed to veer alternately towards atonal songdrifts or repetitive bites of pop; this record is more developed and effective.  "I Follow Rivers" is just one of the record's standouts.

12)  Dave Bazan -- "Eating Paper"
Listen to this song 3 times in a row: tell me it's not the most bold and tattered song you've heard this year.  This is the song Bazan needed to open last year's Curse Your Brances--his vaunted "breaking with the faith" album--with.  It's raw, emotional, and ultimately flawed not through naivete but through ambition: there are too many chords, too many melodies, and too many hooks, and its Bazan's effort to wrange these elements in the song's structure which give his lyrics (and the crisis of faith they portend) so much weight:

       Why would you sweat my confession
       what I claim to be
       when you see the fruit as it hangs on the tree?
       While this may be the rare occassion
       where high tide lifts all boats
       I'm keeping my head down under the water
       'cause man, I've gotta get there on my own.


13)  Bon Iver -- "Calgary"
Here's what I hear about this song all the time: "I didn't think I liked that song..."  Exactly.  Bon Iver is this year's biggest indie crossover success story: he released a fuller, more complete, and intricately-produced album which received mainstream praise and enjoyed solid sales, and he did all of this while not only staying true to what fans loved about his first record, but also expanding and complicating his sound.  In short: Bon Iver is awesome, and this has certainly been "his year."  But the thing "Calgary" gets that other standout tracks like "Holocene" don't is that Bon Iver's songs have never really been about hooks; instead, they've always been about textures and moments.  It's easy to forget Justin Vernon's other band, Volcano Choir, but in many ways, that group "gets" him more: the dude loves creating vivid and affecting pieces of music...and then assembling them into musical "pieces."  Bon Iver is just such a piece, and "Calgary," although it may lack the hooks of a few other tracks, gets the parts right.  Listen closely: you'll be rewarded.

14)  The Antlers -- "I Don't Want Love"
Bad news first: This year's Burst Apart was a pretty big let down.  The Antlers' last record, 2009's Hospice, was my pick for the best record of that year (and one of the best of the decade), and so my hopes for this year's outing were incredibly high.  But Burst Apart trades quite a bit of the gravity of Hospice in for a more (relatively) upbeat tempo throughout and a heckuva lot more processed synths.  The highs are all still here: quavering, impossible male vocals; simple but effective clean guitar work; propulsive bass and complimentary drums.  But this time through, synths take over for acoustic guitars and do the bulk of the heavy rhythmic listening.  The results are at their best in songs like "I Don't Want Love," which finds a pop center in the midst of post-rock-esque instrumentation, and ultimately ends up as one of the more compelling pieces of evidence for my post-grunge thesis about 2011.

15)  tUnE-YaRdS -- "Bizness"
At last, a song that really does speak for itself!  Go.  Listen.  I can wait.

Back yet?  Cool.  That was awesome, right?  Yeah, the whole album (W H O K I L L) is equally awesome: bigger in scope than bIrDbRaInS without sacrificing even the slightest drop of manic energy.  Basically, it's the opposite of a sophomore slump: a follow-up that expands on the promise of the artist's debut album by giving them the tools and resources to complete the scope of their sound.  "Bizness" is a great song among great songs, and W H O K I L L is one of two great albums from this year.  Get yourself a copy.

16)  Secret Cities -- "The Park"
This song simultaneously represents the best and worst impulses of the chillwave movement.  On the "best" side of things, "The Park" has an almost unbelievably haunting and beautiful chorus, and this chorus is married to tight structuring, an unexpected (and awesome) organ, and an old-school garage rock lead line in the breakdown; even better, these parts are accompanied by a slipbeat drum part that allows the song to slide back into the 2 and 4 and roll itself forward like some kind of audio perpetual motion machine.  But there's the "worst" side, too, and it goes like this: "The Park" ought to be an anthem.  Take this song and put it in the hands of any of a 1,000 pop-rock bands in this world and it would have made it into a BP commercial by now at the very least.  The song has the hooks, but it's so submerged in the echo-cave of its production that feeling its groove is like tapping your foot to the band on the festival's third stage while the main stage is setting up the next act: it catches your ear, but not enough to sacrifice your seat.  If you're listening Secret Cities, I have a homework assignment for you: listen to more Deerhunter.  One of Cox's strengths is finding the balance between atmosphere and catchiness; you guys have the chops to take that skill a step further.

17)  The War on Drugs -- "Baby Missiles"
This was a late edition to the 2011 mix, as I only got my hands on this record about two weeks ago; however, I fell in love with "Baby Missiles" almost immediately.  This song might be the best song Bruce Springsteen never recorded: in fact, it's got so much energy it's hard to even listen to it without imagining Born to Run-era Boss dancing across a stadium stage while Stevie van Zandt sweats half his body weight into an oversized bandana.  During the song's chorus, Adam Granduciel sings, "I don't mind when all the pioneers go soft on me" in a Dylan-twang that's almost indecipherable; if "going soft" is the problem, "Baby Missiles" doesn't give any indication that The War on Drugs plans on giving in to it, or much of anything else.  Rock on.

18)  Wye Oak -- "Civilian"
This was a tough one, too.  I've had Wye Oak's Civilian for about 4 months, and during that time, I've probably listened to the record in its entirety at least a dozen times.  But despite all that time with the band, it's hard for me to put into words exactly what the band does so well.  On the surface, the appeal of the band--and why it fits in with a mix like this one--is pretty clear: they take country/folk and marry it to the reverb-heavy push of the contemporary indie scene, with results that are consistently winning but rarely memorable; as a result, their "sound" ends up being more important than their "songs," and the attention they have gotten and will continue to get in end-of-the-year lists reflects more of their effort than their accomplishment; to put it in teacher-speak, Wye Oak are the Honors-class kids in a subject where an AP-class is offered: likable, lovable, bright-enough B students.  But as a went through Civilian again this past week, I realized that "Civilian" is more than adequate; in fact, it's damn good.  The hook, I think, is the electric guitar, which rips in with a force the song never sets you up for.  It's a good trick...and it's one that speaks to where Wye Oak can go.

19)  Washed Out -- "A Dedication"
I'll end in uncharacteristically short fashion: this is just a beautiful, beautiful song: softly melodic, emotionally engaging, and driving, if only quietly; it's totally 2011...and maybe more, too.


Well, that's it, folks.  I hope this has been fun...and I hope you like this list.