“Alan” - Perfume Genius (Matador, 2017)
An ode to a soulmate. A celebration of the fragility of life. A declaration of devotion. Perfume Genius’ “Alan” is all these things and more. With a simple piano line and a few succinct lyrics, Mike is able to convey how steadfastly in love he is with bandmate Alan Wyffels, his boyfriend of more than a decade. There’s something ominous and incredulous about the line “I’m here / How weird,” as if Mike can’t believe he was actually able to overcome obstacles (addiction, Crohn’s) and settle down with Alan. But here we are, and it’s a beautiful song. - Hunter Moore
“It All Began with a Burst” - Kishi Bashi (Joyful Noise, 2012)
In high school, my mom bought my best friend and I tickets to an indie triple-threat: Deerhoof, Of Montreal, and Kishi Bashi. I only started listening to Kishi about 48 hours before the show, but his performance left the biggest impression on me. Kishi Bashi (full name Kaoru Ishibashi) has a unique ability to construct luscious, full compositions which at once feel grand and intimate. Plucked violins twinkle in front of a bubbling bassline. Ishibashi’s voice seems to have a constant presence, riding deftly on the swells of strings. It’s a man’s mind unleashed, its ornate complexities bursting forth, as the song name implies. - Bram Rickett
“All We Love We Leave Behind” – Converge (Epitaph, 2012)
The bass plods, each note played resolutely and allowed to ring out before the next one is plucked. Then the drums rush in, the toms building the rhythm of a militaristic march. When the guitar joins those two nearly a minute in, laying out a lightning-fast riff that practically begs for the Guitar Hero treatment, it’s almost too much. Converge had nothing to prove by the time All We Love We Leave Behind dropped in 2012; any band with an album like Jane Doe on its résumé would be forgiven for hanging up the instruments for good. But on tunes like “Sadness Comes Home” and “All We Love We Leave Behind,” Converge assert their dominance, and deliver some characteristically great sad-sack poetry. “And I lost you to time / A final goodbye / All we love we leave behind,” Jacob Bannon bellows in the chorus. Undeniably true, those words, though we’re lucky to have music like Converge’s, which sounds like it will last forever. - Brice Ezell
“Alley Cats” - Hot Chip (Parlophone, 2010)
“Alley Cats” is one of the more approachable, alt-pop songs in Hot Chip’s catalog, but loses none of their signature playful lyrics nor addictive, bouncing production. A simple, nursery-rhyme-like composition, with Joe Goddard’s soft, raspy voice guiding the listener through a journey from the mundane (“Two people are alley cats / We have an unhappy cat”) to the spiritual (“There is no pain I know”) through the song’s meandering, five minute long track time.
It is a testament to Goddard’s songwriting that Alley Cats can not only manage, but excel in its odyssey from the ridiculous to the heart-touching. Like the best work of poetry, it builds upward, buffeted and supported by steadily proliferating layers of music behind it, to a rapturous, climactic ending, only to bring the listener back down to earth in its final verse. In the end, it is worms, just as all buried bodies are. From simple, to complex, to religious, to calm, “Alley Cats” is the must-listen of Hot Chip’s impeccable 2010s. - Dante Douglas
“Antidote” - Travis Scott (Epic, 2015)
Travis Scott’s psychedelic sonic landscapes have proven more influential this decade than I ever expected. Who knew a hotboxing anthem could be such a high-energy, crowd-pleasing banger? This song makes me want to be not sober. - BR
“Anxiety's Door” - Merchandise (Night People, 2013)
Florida is indeed a strange locale. On one hand it has been the breeding ground for some of America's most joyous and dancefloor ready music. Disco thrived in the Sunshine State where KC and the Sunshine band were incepted and where Blowfly would write for and produce scores of artists and even find fame in his own right in the underground scene. Cue the mid-80s, when new brand of music took hold. Some of the most hateful, evil, and unabashedly violent music America had seen to date emerged. Florida was the unholy cradle of death. Bands like Deicide, Obituary, Death, and Morbid Angel reinvented metal, and Morrisound Recording became THE place to cut records of unrivaled blasphemy and horror. Onward through the 90s and early 00s, Florida offered up bands like Floor, Hate Eternal, and Cynic, all of whom offered their own take on misanthropy and grief. There is something about the incessantly sunny, beachside vibes and party culture of Florida that can have a profound effect on artists, whether it be an almost idiotic brightness or vicious antagonism. Enter Merchandise at the dawn of a new decade. They brought together these conflicting viewpoints. Their output was raucous and unpredictable, yet melodic and engaging. Total Nite is comprised of a short introductory track of sonic chaos and four six-plus minute long songs. With Total Nite we arrive at “Anxiety's Door,” the album's second track and a driving look at desperation and obsession filled with synths lines and guitar flourishes that would make New Order blush. Merchandise bring a new mood to their home. One of sadness, of heartache, of depression, but one that finds a joyous outlet. The isolation doesn't seem to matter as long as you keep moving. As long as the dance never ends, the creeping feeling can't get in. As long as you don't go home alone. - Joey Duke
“Bad Kingdom” - Moderat (Monkeytown, 2013)
If Moderat were anything other than a niche collaborative project between the German electronic projects Apparat and Modeselektor, “Bad Kingdom” would have been a massive global hit. The three Moderat albums, released between 2009 and 2016, contain numerous potential chart toppers, including III’s “Running” and the early highlight of II, “Bad Kingdom.” With a scuzzy bassline and a soaring chorus vocal by Apparat mastermind Sascha Ring, “Bad Kingdom” represents the best of Moderat’s songwriting, and does so without sacrificing the unique origins of all the contributing members. Through the bass we hear Modeselektor, and through the moody chorus Apparat’s melancholic style shines. - BE
“Ben’s My Friend” - Sun Kil Moon (Caldo Verde Records, 2014)
“Ben’s My Friend” is Benji’s capstone—something of a runt, musically, a sore thumb decked with Flamenco footprints and saxophone streaks, but also a backwards sort of culmination to the album’s themes. It’s the rare new Mark Kozelek song where nobody is diagnosed with cancer or abruptly perishes in a senseless episode of violence. Yet death is as immanent, and imminent, here as in any other cut on Benji. It’s in the brittle whiffling of the nylon guitar, and in the steady, round slap of the percussion.
It’s just ahead of the vocal cadence, too: cantering forward in blind hurry, Koz mumbles his way through work, worry, dating, eating, frustration, depression, meditation, productivity. The simple doing of things bears him forward through time, perhaps to no end. Only here and there, at peculiar moments, does Mark tap the brakes, ease back and stop to smell the crab cakes. “Ben’s My Friend” reproduces better than any other song the banal, heavenly ennui that Kozelek’s music has so long sought to encapsulate.
Look outside while the shutter’s unshut, the song argues, because you don’t know when the chance will come again. Even if all you can see out there seems tedious and ordinary, look. Everything is beautiful if you really look. - Ben Peterson
“Blood of the Fang” - clipping. (Subpop, 2019)
As the incisive centerpiece of 2019’s There Existed an Addiction to Blood, clipping’s “Blood of the Fang” drips with sweat, schlock, and history. MC Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jon Snipes present their daring thesis in the form of high-concept horrorcore, a track so cinematic that the primary sample comes courtesy of Sam Waymon via Bill Gunn’s classic Ganja & Hess (remade in 2014 by Spike Lee as Da Sweet Blood of Jesus). The movie posits vampirism as an allegory for slavery, racism, and addiction; Diggs takes this and runs with it, as he is wont to do. At an ingenious intersection of lyricism and production, Diggs digs deep into mid-20th-century American systems of oppression, going so far as to compare the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter movement and even criticizing and critiquing figures like George Jackson and Eldridge Cleaver (rightly so). The beauty of “Blood of the Fang” is that it never feels didactic; the track is a perfect marriage of lyrical diatribe, choice sampling, and scary-ass instrumentals, which is all to say: it’s clipping, bitch. - HM
“Bloodbuzz Ohio” - The National (4AD, 2010)
In the late ‘00s/early ‘10s output of the National, you can chronicle the entire arc of Barack Obama’s presidency. Early on, there’s promise: see “Mr. November” from 2005’s Alligator, a song which the National ended up playing at Obama rallies. Then came the brutal realization that the Obama administration would do virtually nothing to hold Wall Street to account following the 2008 financial crash. “Bloodbuzz Ohio” summarizes the economic existence for those living in such financially precarious times: “I still owe money / To the money / To the money I owe.” Years later, the National has come a long way from its days of blue-collar grit; as of late, the band has made highfalutin art films and performed songs of theirs at galleries for six hours straight. But “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” almost a decade after its release, still rings true, for better and worse. - BE