Tracks of the year, 34 - 25

"Take a good look at my face, and if my smile looks out of place, then you could do worse than have a listen to my tracks of the year" - sing it, it scans pretty well.

34. Chairlift - I Belong In Your Arms



This may be another thing that got me into Fleetwood Mac, seeing a review of this that said it sounded like a Christine McVie song. So I listened to her songs off Tango in The Night and it really does, but with more of a John Hughes film vibe mixed into it too. Terrifying thing - the 80's revival has lasted longer than the 80's at this point. Even scarier, the 50's has been revived even longer. The second it goes, it gets revived, but I'm wondering what from the 2010s will be revived and revisited - possibly there'll be loads of stuff that sounds like Burial. Simon Reynolds is right again, but you all knew that. Retromania writ large. All that aside, what really matters is that this is a fantastic, wintry sounding synth-pop song, and I love it. There's an abundance of great hooks crammed into it's short running time; I hate the term "perfect pop" but if such a thing exists (and it doesn't) this is a great example of it.

33. Aht Uh Mi Head - Shuggie Otis (from Inspiration Information)



Another most certainly not from this year but it really sounds like it could be, doesn't it? All I knew about Shuggie Otis up to the point of listening to it was that he was an early adopter of the drum machine and you can hear a primitive drum machine sputtering away on this one along with an almost toy like organ sound. If you brought a track that sounded like this out now it would still sound fresh, and that could be said if it came out any year since 1974 when it originally did. There's a run on theme in these last two choices of sorts that's painful to write out but simple to just realise - Aht Uh Mi Head sounds both AHEAD of it's time and OF it's time. Just as with the Disco Inferno choice before, you get the impression that if Shuggie was making this record now he'd use the technology and equipment available to him, not engage in pointless retro fetishism, but even if he did his voice is soulful as all hell so you'd forgive him.

32. Usher - Climax (from Scream)



Ugh. "Alternative R&B". What an oxymoron - it has been the mainstream, the mainstay of the charts for years now. I can see the Reynolds argument that some of it is so sonically inventive you can't help but like it, and in a few cases I agree. A good pop song is a good pop song, and there are plenty of artists like James Blake, The Xx, How To Dress Well and the like for who R&B was a big influence on their work, and know what it's been a big influence on mine too, it being inescapable as it is. I just can't help but think that while artists should be kicking against the pricks what they seem to be doing is in fact slobbering all over them. Good pop is good pop, good music is good music but a lot of it isn't good music, it's just Guetta shite with ill thought out misogynistic drool all over it. Homophobia from the mouths of preening manicured vest wearing tarts. And frankly, who needs that?

My problem with a lot of the so called R&B stuff coming out now is there's no blues anymore in there, the soul influence is pretty much dead replaced with a mix of the worst novelty hip hop records and the worst (and there are very few good ones) in sidechained chart dance music. There's no blues, just a wall of neon, the blues replaced with a dead behind the eyes hedonistic nihilism. Which is fine if you sound good but it doesn't, it's designed to be the soundtrack to predatory men cornering lonely cokehead girls on the dancefloor, same in every town.

But this record you do need in your life. That strain of R&B-influenced post-dubstep stuff influenced this R&B chart smash, and it really is good. There's a strain of melancholy in a lot of this stuff that's quite easy to pick out - "Dance like it's the last night of your life", anyone, but this takes it to another level. The vocal performance and production are great - not a spot of Autotune, tasteful use of falsetto, gentle dubstep-esque rhythms in the chorus. I've not liked many of his tracks but this one is excellent.

31. Cocorosie - Beautiful Boyz (from Noah's Ark)



Not a new one. I'm going to stop saying that before every track that isn't, this one was new to me. It features Antony Hegarty, which improves most things - here he sings the chorus which passed the litmus test for a great pop song by lodging in my head whenever the song is mentioned. The woman from Cocorosie who sings and whose name I don't know is really good too, her delivery mirroring Antony's in its unhinged beauty. The song is about Jean Genet, apparently, a writer who I also investigated this year to see what the fuss was about and I found him quite interesting. In a parallel universe this would've went to Number One and stayed there for ages when it came out, a sane universe that is. I found this through How To Dress Well's Live Yourself mix, so thanks to that guy.

30. Whitehouse - Cut Hands Has The Solution (from Bird Seed)



I've not actually checked out much Whitehouse, what I have done I've liked but it falls into the trap a lot of noise acts do of the output being pretty homogenous. Which is fine if you like it but it's something I can take or leave. The problem I have with a lot of art that is aimed at challenging and shocking me is I just find it really funny and actually quite conservative in the way that it goes for the easy mission of "winding up liberals" which A) is like shooting fish in a barrel and B) having the same homophobic, misogynist, racist attitudes as the ruling classes isn't exactly a blow against the status quo, is it? On the other hand, in the interest of balance, you could make the point (as I sometimes do somewhat optimistically) that by juxtaposing these outdated attitudes with references to far-right politics, rape and serial killers, these artists are actually pointing out how harmful these mainstream but ugly views are. In the case of people like William Bennett and Dominic Fernow, I'd think this is actually the case as they're obviously very intelligent people.

Cut Hands Has The Solution does not fail, because with very few ingredients (I like cooking metaphors) it engenders a reaction in me which I found very surprising. Just one monotonous plodding drum beat trudging on, and on, and on, some whirring electronic tones and a voice alternatively shouting and speaking in a calm but slightly terse manner. The text read out mixes the language of self-help with references to self-harm and strange methods of torture, and as with the best records it's hard to explain why it's good. It just is. It may not be to your taste. It may be your taste. But I'll tell you, it's helping, I'll tell you, you're doing the right thing.

29. Holy Other - Touch



Again, I find it hard how to explain why I like this, but as with Burial, Holy Other is not a cult of personality act, just a guy anonymously making great music and manipulating (presumably) the sampled voice of others to speak his message. In a way this idea is another way of the listener projecting their own preferred meaning onto a text, whether it be a song or a photo or a literal text, inventing their own backstory and a whole inner life of the song. In this case the only lyrics are "I've been looking for your touch", and "Everything you touch" sang in that same androgynous alien cut-up way as the voice on Burial's Archangel (or loads of other Burial songs).

Holy Other's name read aloud is also Wholly Other and he both is and isn't. Loads of people are doing stuff like this, it's just they're not doing it on a trendy well promoted label (spot any bitterness?). To be fair, nor are they doing it as well as he does, presumably. There's got to be some kind of limit on music this transcendent. It's all build, build, but when it switches and gets more 2-steppy it's a real eargasm moment. Slinky and spooky, like the best in electronic music.

28. Grimes - Oblivion (from Visions)



The soul and R&B thing's big this year, eh? It certainly fed into Grimes, who listed two of her biggest inspirations as Mariah Carey and Marilyn Manson - but she's better than both of them, so that's okay. Oblivion is a lovely, sighing helium-high falsetto pop song that reminded me more than anything of something Annie would do when I first heard it. The wisps of alien backing vocals and self harmonies here make me a bit jealous, and if I sang along all the nearby dogs would join in with me. The R&B influence is less obvious than on, say, How To Dress Well but it's there in the inventive percussion and melismatic vocals it just happens that here it's accompanied by synths that could be from a peak era Depeche Mode track. Definitely not a bad thing at all.

Makes perfect sense that Grimes is signed to 4AD, there's a kind of continuity between her vocal style and that of Elizabeth Fraser, where the words are almost secondary. Here the phrase "See you in the dark night" flits around and refuses to leave your head. Litmus test for a great record passed - it's staying in your head whether you like it or not.

27. The Weekend - XO/The Host (from Echoes of Silence)



From a free mixtape last year but re-released with added tracks as part of the Trilogy album, XO/The Host is the extended prog-R&B centerpiece of the Echoes of Silence tape from around this time last year (you've gotta love it - release three great free albums last year then reissue them "remastered" as a physical release. The remasters sound worse than the originals too). The lyrical content of this one is pretty standard, unabashed victim blaming, misogyny and cash-flashing as you'd expect. It's a world I want nothing to do with but The Weeknd makes it interesting by acknowledging the ugliness of it all. Technically it's lyrically well crafted and Abel Tesfae has a great voice, but it's all about the production for me.

The stabs of distorted guitar, wavering synthetic strings, semi-dubstep drum programming (soon to be R&B's new tiresome trope but for now it still works), ghostly backing vocals and that segue into the The Host section where the regular drums drop out to be replaced by a slow, intermittent tattoo, that's what it's about for me. In this production what could be the thing of a tiresome Chris Brown stupid-fest takes on a whole new dimension, but the importance of Abel's phrasing and nuanced delivery definitely helps. It was hard to pick just one Weeknd track for me, so there'll be another later, as the House of Balloons and Echoes of Silence tapes are fantastic.

26. Scritti Politti - The Boom Boom Bap (from White Bread and Black Beer)



See, this guy knows where I'm coming from. Green Gartside, another reason to be proud of having Welsh roots, went from post-punk to producing lushly produced soul/R&B with lyrics a step up from the usual R&B fare (like "true as the Tractatus"), before getting more and more into hip hop and collaborating with hip hop. Part of the appeal for him could easily be the same as my own aesthetic attraction to The Weeknd and stuff of that sort - it's exotic, because you know that you'll probably never go there yourself. Green is also pretty heavily into folk music, and of course hip hop was a late 20th century form of folk music, one not as beloved by the real ale and beard stroking crowd but folk music nontheless just the same as punk was and dubstep is.

The Boom Boom Bap is lushly produced and I recoiled from it on first listen, that late 90's/early 2000's R&B sheen combined with his androgynous tenor made me think of some boyband atrocity. Then as the song progressed the real, beating heart of the song emerged. The lyrics are, again, excellent: "The yes yes y'all was the siren call to come around to our life", progressing through a verse consisting of Run DMC songtitles (Hard times, Sucker MCs) to the closing lines "I love you still, I always will". It's open to your interpretation I guess who that's addressed to. Is it addressed to hip hop; is it addressed to the listener, or someone he knows; or is it addressed to music itself? I don't know. It doesn't matter.

25.  Julian Cope - Roswell (from Psychedelic Revolution)


The thing I like about Julian Cope is the same thing I like about The Fall and hip hop. I like prolific artists who weed things out less, who don't abide by the one 10 - 13 track album every 3 years schedule. With more and more artists releasing independently there's less and less need to stick to the release model of a rapidly fading industry. Well, it pretends it's fading, the sales of the Adele album and some others recently speak for themselves. Albums don't outsell Dark Side of the Moon in a time when people aren't buying music, people! Some people are still buying music - just a shame record company employees are being sacked to make up for the funds lost and shops are closing instead of the executives taking fewer holidays and living in, say, just one house. Downloading is a convenient excuse to behave like an avaricious pig.


Now onto talking about the artist. Julian Cope is a great singer and songwriter, and this gets overlooked in favour of talking about his madness. He reminds me a lot of Bowie, which isn't because he sounds a lot like him but because they have roughly the same two big prominent influences - Scott Walker and Iggy Pop, even if he doesn't like Scott much anymore. As important as Cope's madness is to his work, the fact he's a stone cold genius is too often ignored. I think the reason a lot of critics ignore him is that not only is he an immensely talented artist but he does their job better than them too! This track reminds me a bit of a more meditative Safesurfer which can only be a good thing, but here he keeps a less is more approach right until the end. Whatever I wrote about this song itself wouldn't do it justice, so just play it.

Tracks of the Year, 2012, 45 - 35

The usual proviso/disclaimer with these things - this list is not in any order of value, some of these tracks I like more than others but that's about it. It's been a good year for music but every year is a good year for music, there'll be none of this "Things were better in (insert year)" false nostalgia from me. Some of these aren't actually all that new, just new to me, so if you're reading it to scoop up stuff you've missed this year from just this year then you will definitely, definitely be disappointed. But if you really want to get technical about it, plenty of songs released this year weren't recorded last year anyway, were they? Quite a few of these songs aren't new but they're new to me. So if you're reading this (highly unlikely, I only write things like this to get it out of my system and avoid boring my friends, family and strangers) you may still discover something great. There are 45 songs in this multi part, and there may well be multiple tracks by the same artist but I'll try to keep it down per entry. Definitely only one per album.

45. The XX - Chained (from Co Exist) 



No beating around the bush here, this year's XX album sounds just like the first XX album sounded - sparse, saying nothing really but said it beautifully. When I heard the first new track Angels I liked it a lot, but this second track provoked the age old "this is brilliant" reaction - I put it on again, and again, and it's lost none of its splendour (which SHOULD go without saying, yeah, but there're plenty of songs that provoke the repeat listening reaction only to be drained by that burst of replaying). This is sparse but there're always new details I pick out, even if I'm picking them out for the 10th time. That Burial-esque "2step with one foot in the grave" rattle that underpins the whole thing, loads of people are doing it (I'm one of them) but Jamie XX is one of the best among them to my mind, even if Far Nearer by him has a sample that sounds like someone singing "I fell down a well" all the way through it. He's far better with The XX, especially the Tracey Thorn-esque longing in Romy Madley Croft's voice.

44. Patrick Wolf - Vulture (from Sundark and Riverlight)



I'm not one for the "rework your own material" glorified best of album, Kate Bush's attempt last year, while interested, didn't really add anything to most of the songs. Vulture only came out a few years ago, too, on the Bachelor album that it's trendy to slag off (possibly as he's an openly bisexual artist who makes political statements and is sonically inventive, not the done thing these days). I loved the perv-pop of the original but this version actually moved me. I'm really interested to see what he does next, after what was to me the misstep of Lupercalia he's definitely back on form it seems. Maybe he's realised that trying to be too "normal" doesn't suit him.

43. Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night (from Tango In The Night)



Not a new one by any means, in fact it's from before I was born but after seeing a documentary on Fleetwood Mac I realised how nuts their story was and Lindsey Buckingham's contributions were, are and will continue to be. Also Pictureplane's Seven Wonders sampling for the track Goth Star pushed me to check out this album, and when I finally listened to it this track blew me away. The strange operatic chorus consisting of the word "Tango" stretched out for ages, the dated synths playing off his trademark fingerpicking, the vague but evocative lyrics and the closing solo where he shows why he's the envy of and a huge inspiration for guitarists who hear him - what's not to like? It's great that a band who were this big had moments this odd on their records. The weird glitziness of this has rubbed off on me a bit.

42. Death Grips - I've Seen Footage (from The Money Store)



I'm not your typical "spell everything out" journalist so if you're reading this and don't already know about the No Love Deep Web fiasco/promo stunt then look it up, it's exciting stuff and a great shooting yourself in the foot punk gesture. People who're prepared to risk legal battles to defend their right to be prolific, I can't knock that. It'd be more powerful if this had been one of the tracks on No Love Deep Web, instead of the (subjectively, to me) inferior material on it. I've Seen Footage reminds me, in a weird way, of Replicas by Tubeway Army, and that whole period of Gary Numan's career. You can't get much higher a compliment from me (unless I'm comparing you to one of the instrumentals which marrs Replicas). Is there more hip hop that sounds like angry crackheads shouting over late 70's - early 80's Numan outtakes? Please find me some if so.

41. Angel Haze - New York (from Reservation)



If this was in order of merit this'd be near the top. The second I heard Angel Haze I fell in love with her delivery but this track (which happily everyone else has picked up on and realised how brilliant she is) is just something else, isn't it? Jamie XX rears his head again, a track from his Gil Scott Heron remix album sampled as part of the beat - it's a pretty minimal beat but it needs to be to make room for her performance. When she half-sings "I run New York" you believe she could if she wanted to, and due to her delivery "I'm Satan and I'ma take your ass to church now" is one of the lines of the year for me. Hard to pick a track off Reservation, there's so many good ones on there, it was this or the remix of Das Racist's Jungle Fever.

40. Kanye West featuring Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz - Mercy



Yes, 2012 was when I really got hip hop, mainstream or otherwise, and picked up on the mixtape phenomenon really late in the game. It was a natural progression as I'm a lyric man - I like lyrics to look good on the page and sound good too, but the meaning is almost secondary as because I'm usually not au fait with the life of the artist and what went into the song I'm going to be projecting my own meaning onto it anyway. Even if I know the artist's intentions, I'm going to project another meaning onto it anyway. I also like a bit of arrogance, and there's spades of that in hip hop, miles apart from the "muttering into their sleeves, waiting for approval of their opinion" indie mileu. DON'T tell me you're just like me in interviews and in your songs, it's insulting to both of us. If Bowie had done that, we wouldn't have Ziggy, Low or even the much underrated 1.Outside. It's okay to have dreams and aspirations!

All this is lending false profundity to Mercy which is basically your standard bitches and money mainstream chart-rap brag. Of course it sounds good, a hell of a lot of people worked on it, most of them making more in a day than we would in a decade. The chopped up hook is good, even if it is basically an advert for Lambourginis, but there's a real energy about this track. It's impeccably produced, with the Shakespeare sample, the synths and the piano line that gets stuck in your ears like wax, but there's still something off about it as there often is with Kanye's stuff, whether it be 808s and Heartbreak and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy clipping all over the shop or as here the way the drums are slightly out of step and 2 Chainz drop happens before Kanye's even stopped rapping. This just adds to the appeal, for me. Funny how he gets main billing on what is basically a posse track as he only does one verse and also shares production duties, but quibbling aside it's great - I especially like how the beat changes for his verse (and "Most rappers taste level ain't at my waist level" shouldn't be as good a line it is but it's all down to delivery).

This record is so good because when I write it down I don't get why I like it so much but when I play it I do.

39. Perfume Genius - Hood (from Put Ur Back N 2 It)



Now this track hit me full in the heart when I first heard it and still does. It's short and very bittersweet and again, shows how a good lyric can be something majestic with the right delivery. Very few music videos are actually worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned, but the bold, beautiful video to Hood (Mike Perfume Genius playing the twink dressed up in drag and later as Freddie Kruger by a large, hairy, musclebound porn star) is a piece of art in it's own right. The video also showed the homophobia/sexual wrongheadedness still shamefully prevalent even in more purportedly liberal quarters of society - this video judged inappropriate by Youtube, but you can listen to songs like ET by Katy Perry where she sexualises the idea of abduction without censure, don't worry about that. All that pales into insignificance when you hear the sub-2 minute girl-group-pop via David Lynch song itself. The sentiment "You would never love me if you knew me truly" is one that's easy to relate to, but the yearning he somehow pours into the line "I wish I grew up the second I first held you in my arms" is indescribable so just listen to it. I'll even forgive him spelling his album title like a twat.

38. Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (from Born To Die)



Strictly speaking last year, but I only heard it this year and it's lodged in my head today so here it is. Someone else using that now trendy Lynch aesthetic, someone else to spark the hoary old authenticity debate - for the last time, The Beatles, Pistols and Elvis were all controlled by their managers and Springsteen's had more plastic surgery work done than her so stop going on about her lips, the multi-millionaire symbol of the working man was going bald in the 80s and now has a lower hairline than I do, go figure. Smeone else doing great pop songs that lodge in your head. Lana is a hip hop literate Doris Day, I would've put Video Games in the list, obvious and great as it is, but I just like this one more. The high concept video does the opposite to me that the last track does, glorifying as it does women being drawn to physically abusive "bad boys" - but not showing that it happens isn't going to stop it, really.

Part of what appeals to me is the unabashed bleakness and nihilism of that statement - "we were born to die", true as it is, a subversion of "we were born to run" but it means exactly the same thing. There's a lot of bleakness and nihilism in the charts, sugarcoated in shitty Euro production that could be from any point in the last 20 years, music originating in gay clubs being danced to by beer sweating homophobes. The production is better on Born To Die, the songwriting is better, her voice is great, communicating so much in a sighing, numbed way and if Richey Edwards was alive he'd love it too.

37. Jesu - Tired of Me (from Jesu)



The two link up as far as I'm concerned, both are expressions of the same emotions, it's just Justin Broadrick's version is marginally less produced and sugar coated. It just so happens that instead of doomy trip hop beats and swaying strings he uses a doomy trip hop beat (but slower and through a few more pedals) and layers of distorted down tuned guitars. The melody is no less beautiful, and although many people categorise Jesu as metal I wouldn't as when I think metal I think purism and Broadrick's work is never totally straight ahead, there's always a lot of influences feeding into it - this is a man who's gone on record being equally enthusiastic about drum'n'bass 12"s, Teenage Fanclub, Celtic Frost, Public Enemy and Red House Painters. What he feels is what I feel - it's not about genres, it's about mood, and there's a melancholy running all the way through his work that really strikes a chord with me. "I'm so tired of me, withered and unclean, I'm too blind to see shit that is me". He's really not dressing it up but the soaring melody attached to it makes it uplifting, til the instrumental coda with the military drums confirms that tiny germ of an idea that it's going to be alright. That's always the point you may feel there's something in your eye, and your other eye, and your heart.

36. Odd Future - Oldie (from Odd Future Mixtape Vol. 2)



A 10 minute epic with most of Odd Future on it from this year's Odd Future Mixtape Vol.2 (mixtapes are supposed to be free guys, keep up). The album's not flawless, there's plenty of lazy shock tactics and as with a lot of hip hop albums it goes on way too long but it's better than Kanye's Cruel Summer (not saying much). Another one where written down I should hate it - it drags on too long, loads of cliches and dead wood, but the bits that're good are so very very good that it still winds up on the list (which again isn't in order of merit otherwise this'd be at the bottom. But still on there.).

The very very good bits are Tyler's verses and especially his second one that ends the song; Frank Ocean's verse - Ocean should do more rapping, he's got a real lazy golden age of hip hop voice; and Earl's verse, by miles. It's only been a year or two since his Earl tape came out but he's already developed so much that it's scary. This is best illustrated by the fact that his verse is longer than anyone else's, and he completely steals the show. The beat is pretty good, too, I'd swear it was made of old funk samples if I didn't know that Odd Future productions don't use samples.

35. Disco Inferno - Summer's Last Sound (from the 5 EPs)



This isn't a new band either and the fact that it isn't really made me sad. I heard this and thought "What the hell is this, it's brilliant", the bird song intro giving way to a steady build up that never quite crescendos with this voice ranting with great intensity but a kind of weary detachment too. "Fruits get bricks in windows and foreigners get hushed up trials", true as ever. There was something Joy Division like about it but if Joy Division formed now more informed about sampling and synthesis and immersed in the good side of shoegaze and hip hop, not a retro-fetishist glorified tribute to the great band. I wanted to hear more by them and then I looked to see this had been released the year I was born, and to be honest I felt quite angry because we've not moved on at all since then.

The lyrics are the thing about this, they look good on paper and they sound good low in the mix, half-ranted, but the meaning I'd project onto them seems to be the meaning Ian Crause intended. I read a great interview with him by Neil Kulkarni on the Quietus and his intensity seems undimmed, I bought a copy of the 5 EPs and excitedly played this track to someone I wanted to work on some music with, saying, "This is what we have to live up to". He just looked at me blankly, not getting why I was moved so much by it and to be honest this was around the point I realised it wasn't going to work. Not because he didn't like it but because he couldn't see the value of that or anything else I threw at him. Pop music telling unpopular truths, that's the stuff dreams are made of. If you're not touching people's hearts, then what's the point?

This touches mine. Thank you, Disco Inferno.