| 10. | ‘scribble‘/underworld |
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| one of those tracks that was in my head long before i knew what it was or who it was by. the kcrw djs were playing it like crazy, and for one reason or another it got in my brain and stayed there. finally after catching myself humming this nameless hook over and over at the gym one night, i ended up sitting in my car for 2 hours listening to the radio just so i could shazam it. if that’s not a catchy song, i don’t know what is. |
| 9. | ‘O.N.E.‘/yeasayer |
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| after loving their last album, i was initially pretty disappointed by ‘odd blood’. but 10 friends, 2 pounds of queso manchego and 1 crazy hollywood bowl dance party later, i saw the light. (getting a hold of this sweet vinyl demo cut didn’t hurt either.) |
| 8. | ‘everything‘/kids & explosions |
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| TJ turned me on to this guy no more than 3 weeks ago. and for something to make the top 10 tracks of the year after less than a month of listening is pretty remarkable. granted, he totally cheated by mashing up bryan adams, eminem, guns n roses and biggie. but still. |
| 7. | ‘ready to start‘/arcade fire |
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| i don’t really know what else i can say about these guys that hasn’t already been said. so i’ll just stick to the track. it perfectly sums up the morose energy of the entire album. there’s a sad uneasiness to it, but also a drive to do something about it. there’s nobody like em. |
| 6. | ‘lost in the world‘/kanye west feat. bon iver |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| as rad as this track is, it’s really just emblematic. i wanted to put ‘monster’ on here. it’s easily the best song on the album, and one of the best hip-hop songs of the last 5 years. it’s also pretty coarse. i considered posting the clean version, but it’s bad. like, totally bastardized. so i put this one on here because you don’t lose anything in the clean version. and the track isn’t without its merits. it’s an awesome collaboration, it does belong here, and it probably belongs at number 6. i’m just saying if i’d posted ‘monster’, i would have had to fight myself to keep from at least tying for number 1. |
| 5. | ‘simple graces‘/delorean |
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| undeniable basque dance music. this song has single handedly made me happier than any other track this entire year. that’s more than enough to merit a spot in the top 5. |
| 4. | ‘come talk to me‘/bon iver |
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| what appears to have been a favor in exchange for letting peter gabriel cover ‘flume’ in his latest album, resulted in one of the most perfect pairings of song and style in memory. play it loud. |
| 3. | ‘everlasting light‘/the black keys |
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| i’ve heard rumors that this is the last album they’re making together. that they took the best songs they’d never recorded and put them all into one world beating album. so now we have the dilemma of the goose and the golden eggs. clearly they have laid us a perfect golden egg. but if it means the end of the goose that laid it, was it worth it? or would we have settled for just a good egg, knowing that there were more good eggs to come? i really don’t know. this was just such a good egg… |
| 2. | ‘midnight directives‘/owen pallett |
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| such a wonderful, unique sound. it was one of those tracks that froze me in place the first time i heard it. not sure what to make of it, not even sure how it was made, but totally electrifying. and lest you think his brilliance is all in the boards, i saw him open for the national last year, and with little more than a violin, he blew the roof off. keep your eye on this one. |
| 1. | ‘sinking friendships‘/jónsi |
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| cut back to march 2010. i’m sitting in my old office at my old job, waiting for something to happen, and i decide to clean out my cd cabinet. i find an old sigur ros album, the one w/ the fetus-like thing on the cover. i get to wondering what they’re all up to. i get to searching. i find my way to jónsi’s website, and with no warning, a streamer starts playing ‘go do’. i think i might have audibly gasped. it was the first in a long series of visceral responses to this stunning album, the most profound of which took place during a thunderstorm inside the fox theater last october. this is the track of the year. |
