10. Diiv – How Long Have
You Known? (Oshin)
Inspired by krautrock and
drenched in reverb, Diiv turned in a solid debut album with Oshin but no other song on the record compared to “How
Long Have You Known?” The harmonized guitar riffs steal the show and are nearly
impossible to get out of your head.
9. Animal Collective –
Monkey Riches (Centipede Hz)
On every one of their
releases, Animal Collective have one song where all of their experimentation
come together to form one nearly perfect composition. On Merriweather Post
Pavilion it was “My Girls , on the
Fall Be Kind [EP] it was “What
Would I Want Sky?” and on Centipede Hz it is “Monkey Riches”.
8. Grimes – Genesis (Visions)
Though its impossible to
discern what Claire Boucher is actually singing, it takes nothing away from the
sheer beauty and longing in her voice. The unintelligible words weave their way
through the instrumentals and only poke their way through as she repeats the
one thing we’re able to understand; “everything”.
7. El-P – The Full Retard
(Cancer 4 Cure)
El-P takes us on a trip
through his paranoid, delusional fantasy of a futuristic, dystopian society
where “the bread lines are prisons” and we all have “chips under our wrist
skin”. Throughout the song, he changes up his flow and rhyme scheme at least 5
times and throws out lines that no one else even dares rap: “Fuck your droid
noise, void boys’, ‘noid ploy/Oi, Oi, I’ll rugby kick the shit out your groin
boy.” Simply put, there is no one quite like El-P.
6. Wild Nothing – Shadow (Nocturne)
Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum
has mastered escapism through music. With a light an airy atmosphere, a catchy
guitar riff and a resonant string section “Shadow” takes you away to your own
internal paradise.
5. Purity Ring –
Fineshrine (Shrines)
A song about unhealthy
obsession, Megan James sings the disconcerting but oddly romantic line “cut
open my sternum and pull/my little ribs around you” in an almost playful tone.
The deep bass and high vocal sample offset each other perfectly and provides
the perfect backdrop for James’ musings.
4. Titus Andronicus – Ecce
Homo (Local Business)
“Okay, I think by now
we’ve established/everything is inherently worthless/and there’s nothing in the
universe/with any kind of objective purpose”. The opening line of album opener
“Ecce Homo” is less a song lyric and more a way of life for the existential
nihilist rockers from Glen Rock, New Jersey.
3.Beach House – Myth (Bloom)
A transcendental kind of
song, Alex Scally’s ambient guitar along with the synthesizer drone provides an
idyllic soundtrack for your subconscious. Through the dreamscape comes a
radiant beam of light in the form of Victoria Legrand’s angelic voice; she encourages
to us to build ourselves a myth upon our own fleeting canvas.
2. Japandroids – Fire’s
Highway (Celebration Rock)
Japandroids play every
song like it’s the last song they’ll ever play. On “Fire’s Highway”, Brian King
and Dylan Prowse sound like their in competition one another for who can play
harder and faster than the other. The breakdown features a feverish guitar solo
over Prowse’s relentless drumming. It abruptly comes to end when King screams
“one night to have and to hold/to let live but never let go” with such
overwhelming passion, you get the sense that it might actually be the last song
anyone sings.
1. Cloud Nothings – Wasted
Days (Attack on Memory)
A 9-minute punk rock that
puts you through the ringer and leaves you battered and bruised at the other
end. The song begins its epic build up at 3 minutes with a nothing but a bass
guitar. Over the next 4.5 minutes, the tension builds to the earth shattering
conclusion where Dylan Baldi screams his throat raw with the generation
defining line “I thought I would be more than this.”
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