We begin with the lead single from Leonard Cohen’s final album (to be released in his lifetime) which at the time summed up this cursed year aptly; we conclude with a meditative Velvet Underground cover that ended up Brian Eno’s first solo vocal track in over a decade. The year itself started with David Bowie’s death, infamously days after releasing his final album, represented here by “Lazarus” where he ponders his mortality with a directness almost revelatory coming from such an icon; many more high-profile deaths followed, from Prince to George Michael to Sharon Jones (here covering Greg Allman for a car commercial, a definitive version of that song) and Cohen himself.
Compared to 2015, this wasn’t as great a year for albums (except for this one) or singles. While long-awaited records like Tegan and Sara’s Love You to Death or Junior Boys’ Big Black Coat felt a little underwhelming in lieu of what came before from each duo, I played the heck out of both “U-Turn” and “Baby Give Up On It”. The Bastille single ended up as much of an earworm as “Pompeii” was a few years before. The Florence + The Machine song, a soundtrack cut, certainly didn’t feel like filler or a leftover from How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. Underworld returned with an album that often resembled little of they’d done before while still fully sounding like themselves.
Elsewhere, veterans from Ben Watt and Wilco to Pet Shop Boys and Andrew Bird caught my ear alongside newer acts such as Mitski, Michael Kiwanuka (one of the few singer-songwriters who meshes well with producer Danger Mouse) and The 1975, the latter epitomizing an audaciousness sorely missing in a lot of modern pop (even if it doesn’t always yield positive results.) I’ve chosen to highlight the last song on cult British brother duo Field Music’s fine album Commontime. A lullaby of sorts, rich with ambiguity (it could conceivably be sung to either a child or a romantic partner), it promotes empathy and generosity, the act of putting others first while still reveling in the joy it brings to you both–a feeling its melody practically radiates. Eight years on (and on the heels of another likely contentious election), I’d rather remember 2016 for signs of life than an excess of death.
A standout year for new music—I know, every year produces its share of great songs, but 2015 was for me another 1992 or 2004. I even sent out an annual mix CD to friends, something I hadn’t done since 2010 (and haven’t again at this writing.) The first half of this playlist mostly replicates that mix: a parade of perennials (Marling, Cracknell, Gryner, Sufjan, Metric, etc.) with a few one-offs and some newbies woven in (Vampire Weekend’s bassist’s side project Baio; Courtney Barnett cannily channeling The New Pornographers while still sounding like her eccentric self.)
The remaining songs are split between good stuff I couldn’t originally fit on an 80-minute CD (Grace Potter’s disco-rock extravaganza, Deerhunter’s cheeriest moment by far, the first good Madonna song in a decade) and, as always, gems I didn’t encounter until the following year or two: Susanne Sundfor’s superior Swedish synth-pop, Grimes’ ethereal, electro-sigh (still best in its “demo” form), Natalie Prass’ classy, out-of-time balladry, and of course, Carly Rae Jepsen’s blissfully, self-assuredly perfect and sophisticated teen-pop.
Mid-decade was a wonderful time for female-driven, left-of-center pop: Marina and the Diamonds referencing Kate Bush at her bubbliest, Florence + The Machine applying their power source to an irresistible Motown stomp, Christine and The Queens effortlessly inserting a rapid rap in French into their song’s bridge, Romy adding warmth and composure to her bandmate in The xx’s sampledelic anthem.
“Nobody’s Empire” deservedly leads off this selection. Released two months before my 40th birthday, hearing it was a shock in that, nearly two decades after If You’re Feeling Sinister, Stuart Murdoch showed he was still capable of greatness: the chiming piano hook, the melody’s immediacy, the organic build-up in the choruses that eventually soar with heavenly choral arrangements worthy of ABBA. He hasn’t come close to topping it since; that as of this writing he’s just published his first novel which is named after it tells you even he recognizes how special it is.
Look at all the great tracks from this year: Cibo Matto’s (artistically) triumphant return (not to mention Ben Watt’s, and Erasure’s, and Tori Amos’ and even Suzanne Vega’s!), sterling debuts from Betty Who, Lake Street Dive, Alvvays and Sylvan Esso, breakthroughs from Perfume Genius and Owen Pallett, best-songs-yet from Jessie Ware and Lykke Li, a spooky Lana Del Rey gem and even a collaboration from two of my fave artists (The Both = Aimee Mann + Ted Leo) with a leadoff single about my hometown.
However, it’s difficult to predict where an artist’s career will go on the basis of one good song. Future Islands’ monumental, Letterman-impressing leap forward created a template they’d return to again and again (with diminishing results unfortunately, apart from the occasional great single), while slacker extraordinaire Mac DeMarco and Todd Terje (with his splendid Robert Palmer cover aided by an aged Bryan Ferry) have put out little of interest to me since (in the latter’s case, he has barely put out anything, period.) On the other hand, Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys seemed to crack the code on “American Interior” and his album of the same name while building upon it artfully with each of his subsequent releases, as did Nicole Atkins, whose “Girl You Look Amazing” is catchy fun further deepened by the genre experiments on her next two pretty great albums.
Still, while many of these remain on heavy rotation ten years on at this writing, “Late Bloomer” from Jenny Lewis’ The Voyager endures most convincingly. Clocking in at over five minutes, it’s almost a throwback to classic folk-rock story songs like “Maggie May” or “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” but filtered through Lewis’ delicately puckish demeanor; it also sports a melody so inviting and generous I’m surprised the song isn’t more of a standard a decade later.
On March 13, 2020, the new film First Cow both opened and closed in Boston, where I worked at a non-profit arthouse theatre that screened it. As was my custom on Friday afternoons, I snuck away from my desk to catch the 2:00 show. I suspected it might be my last chance to see it for a while (at least in a cinema); my fears were affirmed directly afterwards when, over a conference call with other staff and a few board members, we decided to shut down operations as of 6:00 that evening with the intent of possibly reopening by month’s end. This meant First Cow would receive one more screening, the last of three overall—the shortest theatrical “run” I can ever recall at this theatre. What was an anticipated and buzzed-about release of the latest feature from acclaimed independent director Kelly Reichardt ended up almost entirely derailed by COVID-19.
Over the next few weeks, then months, I was increasingly grateful for seeing First Cow when I did—not only for the opportunity to do so theatrically but also in that it was the last cinema screening I would attend for another eighteen months. At the time, I didn’t know that one of my favorite leisure activities would be involuntarily put on hold for so long. In the past two decades, I had watched an average of 75-100 movies in cinemas per year (working at one made this convenient), sometimes more (126 in 2005!). The only time I went more than a week or two without going to the movies was the month I got married and honeymooned in Santa Fe in 2013. Filmgoing was but one of many things the pandemic abruptly changed.
Upon lockdown, I was initially thrilled with all that extra time to catch up on movies at home (along with the privilege of working my mostly administrative job remotely.) With streaming more dominant than ever, I had no (and four+ years later, still have no) shortage of films to pick from. I made a watchlist that I’ve added to and checked off from ever since and used the two+ extra hours in my day (reclaimed from my back-and-forth commute) to begin a valiant but ultimately impossible task in whittling it down.
During those first weeks, I caught up on classics I hadn’t seen (Atlantic City, A Place In The Sun, Czech surrealist piece Daisies) and revisited other ones for the first time in decades (The Swimmer, now resonating more with me after having absorbed seven seasons of Mad Men.) I watched a few relatively recent titles (Mississippi Grind, which I dug and Hale County This Morning This Evening, which I found a slog) and others that I’d been meaning to check out such as The Myth of The American Sleepover (David Robert Mitchell’s pre-It Follows feature), The Last Waltz (I can still picture Van Morrison’s sparkly outfit!), Le Bonheur (an early Agnes Varda narrative that’s nearly as essential as Cleo From 5 To 7) and Day For Night, whose making-of-a-movie narrative struck a deep chord and encouraged me to check out other Francois Truffaut films I had missed (including, eventually, the entire Antoine Doinel cycle post-The 400 Blows.)
Day For Night
By mid-April, it was obvious lockdown wasn’t going away anytime soon. I began anticipating the first of each month mostly to see what new titles had been added to The Criterion Channel (along with what would expire at the end of said month, prioritizing my watchlist so as not to miss anything.) I’d leap from genre to era depending on what was available and what struck my fancy on a particular day. I fell in love with first-time watches like It’s Always Fair Weather, Private Life, High and Low and The Best Years of Our Lives. I revisited comfort food favorites such as Waiting For Guffman, Moonrise Kingdom and The Out-of-Towners (original Lemmon/Dennis recipe) and headier stuff such as My Own Private Idaho, Derek Jarman’s The Garden and Scenes From a Marriage (Bergman version, naturally.) I’d devour curated series on Criterion such as early Martin Scorsese shorts (Italianamerican a must-see for anyone who adored him mom in Goodfellas), Abbas Kiarostami’s “Koker Trilogy” and Atom Egoyan’s pre-The Sweet Hereafter oeuvre, which I hadn’t watched since the late 90s.
Hopes of my theatre reopening to the public came and went after Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was indefinitely delayed. Gradually, titles that would’ve normally received theatrical releases began showing up directly on streaming services. I watched Josephine Decker’s Shirley the Friday in June it premiered trying to convince myself it was like one of those long-missed opening day shows I’d often attend at work. Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things followed (even if both were on Netflix where a theatrical release would’ve been limited anyway.) Theatres like mine learned to pivot, providing content for viewers to rent online as did film festivals such as PIFF, where I watched Black Bear (still Aubrey Plaza’s greatest film performance to date) and TIFF, which I was able to procure an industry pass for from work, seeing over 20 titles, Nomadland, Shiva Baby and Another Round among them.
Near summer’s end, a good friend from my film group emailed our discussion list; planning on watching one of these new video-on-demand titles, she asked if we wanted to do the same and then discuss it on Zoom. The movie in question, paranormal love story Burning Ghost was laughingly bad but it did kick off a weekly tradition that endures to this day. Happily, subsequent film picks were far better: South Korean coming-of-age drama House of Hummingbird, low-budget but visionary sci-fi The Vast of Night, ultra-indie gambling thriller Major Arcana and Bas Devos’ lovely work of slow cinema, Ghost Tropic (which could not have been further from Burning Ghost, aesthetically or quality-wise.)
About a month-and-a-half in, we saw a film that has stuck with me arguably longer than any other titles mentioned in the last paragraph. Ham On Rye, the debut feature from writer/director Tyler Taormina was now available to stream through the Brattle Theatre’s VOD service (dubbed “The Brattlite”.) Despite having played the festival circuit in the months leading up to lockdown, it was unfamiliar to me (perhaps IFFBoston might’ve screened it that April.) It had a unique title and intriguing promotional art, however, along with some comparisons to Richard Linklater and David Lynch.
Although filmed in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, the first half-hour could take place in any sun-drenched idyllic suburb. After a pre-credits sequence of abstract close-ups occurring at some sort of family picnic in a park (such as a handheld sparkler’s fuse burning out right after ignition), Ham On Rye resembles an ongoing, somewhat rambling montage of various teenagers doing ordinary things: painting their nails, pulling up their socks, lifting weights and cruising through neighborhoods blasting music (from classic soul to headbanging power-pop) from their car stereos.
Gradually, it shifts into focus that these kids are all in one way or another preparing for some kind of event that evening: a ritual not yet clearly defined for the viewer. Taormina inserts potential clues into nearly every scene: a group of girls gather together in long white dresses straight out of The Virgin Suicides while a gang of their male counterparts walk the streets decked out in mostly ill-fitting suits probably borrowed from their fathers. Maybe they’re all headed to a formal dance, like Prom? Whatever they’re anticipating, it’s still shrouded in mystery but also a Big Deal—when one kid gets picked up, heading off for the event, his dad fervently yells as the car pulls away, “Don’t mess it up! DON’T MESS IT UP!!!”
The grand destination in question for all these youth is soon revealed as Monty’s Deli (“relishing the moment since 1952” reads a sign on its front window.) Suddenly, the film’s title seems slightly less incongruous, although I’ll leave possible allusions to the Charles Bukowski tome of the same name to those more familiar with that literary work. Early on at Monty’s, there’s a jump cut of one of the boys signing some sort of official-looking contract to close-ups of various sandwiches, followed by a dining room exclusively populated by dressed up teens eating silently. Once the food is polished off, music appears (to my ears resembling a pastiche of The Association’s 1960s sunshine pop classic “Cherish”) and the kids get up to dance, again rather casually as if at a house party than anything like a formal event.
All of a sudden, the dramatic 1960s girl group sound of The Teardrops’ “Tonight I’m Going To Fall Again” (note the title) loudly begins and all the kids line up in a circle. Each person takes their turn stepping out of the circle and choosing someone by pointing at them. If the recipient offers them an upturned thumb, they go off and dance together. An array of rapidly edited up-turned and down-turned thumbs follows, heightening the tension. It’s all too much for Haley (one of the girls featured in the lead-up to this sequence), who abruptly breaks from the circle and runs out of the deli. Those not given an up-turned thumb are no longer allowed to participate. The chosen ones, however, remain as couples in the shared circle and begin a procession of sorts, clapping incessantly as a short kid wearing a fez and a modified matador-like costume leads the charge.
The mood turns joyful verging on manic, even as the couples fall into a slow dance and the deli becomes suffused with atmospheric lighting and colors that were nowhere to be seen when everyone was simply munching on their sandwiches. Then, a circle of gleaming, bright light appears above the chosen kids. Each couple kisses and the mood grows practically euphoric. The happy couples all leave the deli and blissfully walk down the middle of the street in the direction of the suburban enclaves from which they came. Gorgeously backlit in silhouette as twilight nears, one by one they begin vanishing into thin air! Hold on a minute—is this the rapture? What was in those sandwiches? (Also, is this similar to what happens to Mormons?)
This entire deli sequence is unquestionably the film’s climax, but it arrives at its exact midpoint—there’s another half-hour to go. Everything that follows is a comedown but by design as we spend time with all those left behind, like Haley, who can no longer reach her presumably raptured best friend by phone. Or the boy in the too-small suit whom we next see sharing a glum dinner with his mom at a fast-food joint. Or another kid who didn’t even make it to the deli because he accidentally fell into a pothole on the way there. A floppy-haired runt of a kid asks his fellow rejects, “Do I get a second chance?” and no one says a word as if to explain how numbingly obvious the answer is to such a question.
Even after the film reveals its “purpose”, it remains not entirely knowable. With an eye drawn towards liminal spaces and ambiguous imagery, Taormina not only relays a strange tale but does so rather unconventionally, favoring mood and texture over logic or any sense of narrative fulfillment. The film’s first half is one of anticipation but also dreamy reverie such as the sun-kissed lighting in nearly every shot and stylized touches like the folky, pan flute-heavy score accompanying the white-sheathed girls as they ride their scooters all around their verdant community. What comes after the deli sequence is relentlessly drab, a bit melancholy and often cloaked in darkness. We see the activities the unchosen partake in for what they are: simply unremarkable, such as a “rager” which consists of burnouts lounging around a campfire, swigging beer and dispassionately playing a hand of Uno.
Between these two poles, the deli sequence itself is a marvel. First encountering it six-plus months into lockdown, I got caught up in its sense of awe and mounting excitement unlike anything else I had recently seen. I didn’t really know exactly what I was watching as the couples vanished into nothing but I didn’t care, feeling nearly as blissed out as they appeared to be. The sobering aftermath for those who remained also resonated—it’s not much of a stretch to say it mirrored my own disappointment with no longer being able to do previously taken-for-granted activities such as, um, going out to the movies. I related all too well to this restlessness brought on by the despair of being stuck in limbo, unable to participate in life outside my house. Taormina could not have had any pandemic-specific ideas in mind when devising this film since it entirely preceded the whole shebang, but this hit differently for me than it might have had I seen it a year earlier.
Following Ham On Rye, our discussion group continued Zooming every week, coming together to dissect and debate more new-ish films like Kirsten Johnson’s meta-doc about her ailing father Dick Johnson is Dead, Miranda July’s typically, delightfully odd third feature Kajillionaire, and the meticulously edited and effective documentary Time. Outside the group, I found even more films to love both new (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets; David Byrne’s American Utopia) and old (Claudia Weil’s pioneering indie Girlfriends; early Laura Dern vehicle Smooth Talk.) Taormina would follow Ham On Rye with a real pandemic project, the Long Island-shot, 62-minute tone poem Happer’s Comet and eventually, a second narrative feature, the forthcoming Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.
As for me, at the end of 2020 I abruptly found myself unemployed for the first time in over 15 years. Naturally, I spent the first 90 days of 2021 watching (at least) 90 movies at home—through all of this previously unfathomable change, films remained my refuge, my constant, my church. None of us had any idea when or even if theatres would ever reopen; streaming and physical media would have to suffice until they did.
Between the Boston Marathon Bombing in April, a trip to Cuba (via a rare opportunity through work) in December and my getting married in September, this was an exceptionally busy year, though as always I still made time for music. Random Access Memories was easily my favorite LP of the year, but Heartthrob, Tegan and Sara’s aim-for-the-fences dance pop effort wasn’t far behind. While I don’t return to it as frequently today, leadoff track “Closer” is the first song that comes to mind when I think about 2013.
I also recall Haim’s Fleetwood Mac-goodness, Eleanor Friedberger’s disarming ode to being clumsy in love, unusually strong comeback singles from Alison Moyet, Pet Shop Boys and Paul McCartney(!), the loveliest Vampire Weekend song to date (though the later “Harmony Hall” gives it a run for its money), the most blissful melody you’ll ever hear from Washed Out, the year’s best, most idiosyncratic actual number-one hit (“Royals”), a choice cut from Goldfrapp’s better-with-each-year, atypically pastoral Tales Of Us, a Sam Phillips song as classic as anything on Martinis and Bikinis and Laura Marling convincingly staking her claim as a “Master Hunter”.
This was also a time when happily anonymous pop singles (Atlas Genius, Fitz and the Tantrums, Capital Cities) carried the same weight for me as more eccentric and/or distinct declarations from Jessy Lanza, Sky Ferreira and London Grammar (both with and without Disclosure) and I’m not sure I could make the same claim a decade-plus later.
Speaking of eccentric/distinct, on my first listen of John Grant’s “GMF”, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing (the title is a NSFW acronym), but I knew it was a superb, self-deprecating anthem for the ages before it was over.
2013: Love Me While It’s Still a Crime
Tegan and Sara, “Closer”
Bastille, “Pompeii”
Haim, “If I Could Change Your Mind”
Daft Punk feat. Julian Casablancas, “Instant Crush”
John Grant, “GMF”
Disclosure feat. London Grammar, “Help Me Lose My Mind”
Many of these tracks were culled from two Spotify playlists originally posted at the end of said year: Someone Who Looks Smashing In Athletic Wear (a lyric from Sinead O’Connor’s ferocious (and not currently streaming) cover of John Grant’s “Queen of Denmark”) and You Enjoy Sucking On Dreams (a lyric from “Serpents”, the first Sharon Van Etten song I ever heard.)
Scanning my music library, I came up with a dozen more tracks I encountered in subsequent years (some of ’em in 2013, like “I’m Getting Ready” and “The Diaz Brothers”) and also made a few substitutions (“Sovereign Light Cafe” a more enduring Keane song than “On The Road”; Of Monsters and Men’s “Dirty Paws” one of my favorite songs ever as opposed to the merely catchy “Mountain Sound”) and a handful of subtractions (Deep Sea Arcade, The Shins, Regina Spektor)—by limiting this to three dozen tracks, process of elimination inevitably sets in (although I now fully, properly appreciate “Call Me Maybe”.)
Looking over what’s left, I sense a lack of cynicism and weariness I’ve cultivated in the years since—to me, this looks like an utopian ideal of an annual mix: career highlights from Saint Etienne and Stars (both of whom I saw in concert that year), great returns from such veterans as Aimee Mann, Dr. John, Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith and an excess of “rock” songs one can easily dance to, including Django Django’s Beach-Boys-on-Mars aesthetic, both Wainwright siblings (relatively) letting loose and Diamond Rings’ queered-up postpunk (which Marc Campbell at the time lovingly referred to as “Boy Division”.)
A few oddities here have continued to age beautifully: Claudia Brucken’s late-period Bowie cover, Fiona Apple’s round-robin that spectacularly closed out her fourth album and a cheeky, sublime novelty from The Ting Tings’s flop follow-up LP to their 2008 hit debut: “Next time I’m gonna get it right / I’m gonna paint my face like the Guggenheim,” yelps Katie White, incessantly. Fun fact: for a long time, I thought she was singing “play my bass at” instead of “paint my face like”; either way, it’s glorious gibberish.
2012: My Life Has Just Begun!
Saint Etienne, “Tonight”
Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe”
Tanlines, “All Of Me”
The Magnetic Fields, “Andrew In Drag”
Django Django, “Default”
Diamond Rings, “Runaway Love”
Stars, “Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It”
Jens Lekman, “Some Dandruff On Your Shoulder”
Jessie Ware, “Wildest Moments”
Rufus Wainwright, “Bitter Tears”
The Ting Tings, “Guggenheim”
Hot Chip, “These Chains”
Aimee Mann, “Labrador”
Imperial Teen, “Out From Inside”
Twin Shadow, “Run My Heart”
Martha Wainwright, “I Wanna Make An Arrest”
Leonard Cohen, “Darkness”
Fiona Apple, “Hot Knife”
Calexico, “Splitter”
Sharon Van Etten, “Serpents”
Gossip, “Move In The Right Direction”
Dr. John, “Revolution”
The Gaslight Anthem, “Here Comes My Man”
Keane, “Sovereign Light Cafe”
Bat For Lashes, “Laura”
Michael Kiwanuka, “I’m Getting Ready”
Ben Folds Five, “The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind”
Patti Smith, “April Fool”
The Mountain Goats, “The Diaz Brothers”
Bettye LaVette, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”
David Byrne and St. Vincent, “Optimist”
Of Monsters and Men, “Dirty Paws”
A Fine Frenzy, “Now Is The Start”
Field Music, “(I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing”
Kaputt and in particular, its title track is one of those perfect pieces of music I didn’t know I wanted until I first heard it, Dan Bejar’s previously irritably mewling vocals zeroing in on an ideal setting via a gauzy but urgent wash of electronics, yacht rock guitars and horn flourishes. Released weeks after the death of Gerry “Baker Street” Rafferty, it sounded like a passed torch, instantly negating all that time in between when such sounds were deeply unfashionable.
Some years back, I crafted a playlist called “21st Century Eighties” due to the sudden proliferation of stuff like M83’s 2011-meets-1986 anthem, Junior Boys’ glass-eyed take on a slowed-down ABC or Spandau Ballet (in music if not vocals) and Kavinsky’s perfectly icy throwback synth-pop made indelible by its placement over the opening credits of my favorite 2011 film, Drive. I suppose Iron and Wine’s Christine McVie pastiche and Washed Out’s Limahl homage could slot in, too, although Ivy’s house-pop resurrection owes more to the subsequent decade. Transcending any decade: Wilco’s catchiest tune (without Billy Bragg), k.d. lang’s finest ballad, Lana Del Rey’s still-startling debut, Emm Gryner’s breathless, crystalline pop and R.E.M.’s sweet last gasp. As for The Rapture’s urgent, exuberant dance-rock opus (also a last gasp from them), it’s not a Bee Gees cover—it’s much better than that.
And that’s not all! Don’t forget Jens Lekman’s cautionary note to the lead actress of a Lars von Trier film, spirited one-shots from alt-country rocker Jessica Lea Mayfield, garage punks Those Darlins’ and Aussie duo An Horse (it was the golden age of discovering new music through iTunes’ free Song of the Week), a skeletal, haunted Feist cover from James Blake, Beth Ditto making a beeline for the diva house dancefloor, My Morning Jacket offering rare words of wisdom that resonated with my then-36-year-old self, the eerie, Norah Jones-led “Black” (made immortal by Breaking Bad late that year), and of course, Kate Bush delectably daft as ever (if a little more subdued than in her The Dreaming days.)
2011: All Sounds Like A Dream
Wilco, “I Might”
Those Darlins’, “Screws Get Loose”
Atlas Sound, “Mona Lisa”
Beth Ditto, “I Wrote The Book”
Jens Lekman, “Waiting For Kirsten”
Jessica Lea Mayfield, “Blue Skies Again”
Destroyer, “Kaputt”
Emm Gryner, “Heartsleeves”
Bon Iver, “Calgary”
Iron & Wine, “Tree By The River”
PJ Harvey, “The Words That Maketh Murder”
Kate Bush, “Wild Man”
M83, “Midnight City”
The Kills, “Future Starts Slow”
Junior Boys, “Playtime”
James Blake, “Limit to Your Love”
Lykke Li, “Youth Knows No Pain”
Kavinsky featuring Lovefoxxx, “Nightcall”
Paul Simon, “So Beautiful or So What”
Lana Del Rey, “Video Games”
Ivy, “Distant Lights”
Lady Gaga, “Marry the Night”
Florence + The Machine, “What The Water Gave Me”
My Morning Jacket, “Outta My System”
Cut Copy, “Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat”
Raphael Saadiq, “Movin’ Down The Line”
Laura Marling, “The Beast”
R.E.M., “Uberlin”
kd lang & The Siss Boom Bang, “The Water’s Edge”
Danger Mouse & Daniel Luippi feat. Norah Jones, “Black”
My 2010 top ten albums list is a good example of how such things are forever in flux. Only Laura Marling (then #4) made my 100 Albums project. I still love the top three although there are other Tracey Thorn and Charlotte Gainsbourg albums I gravitate towards. A revised list would likely include Fitz and The Tantrum’s still-stellar-in-spite-of-their-post-2013-output debut and maybe The Radio Dept.’s Clinging To A Scheme, especially as they’ve only released one full-length since (in 2016!)
Most of the selected tracks below are predictable (Belle and Sebastian, The New Pornographers and Goldfrapp on one of my year-end mixes? Who saw that coming?) Still, a few curveballs remain: actual pop/EDM hit “Stereo Love”, which I might’ve heard on Boston’s Kiss 108 while getting a haircut; “Shark In The Water”, one of my favorite one-hit-wonders (and it wasn’t even a hit here!); “This Charming Life”, Joan Armatrading’s best song in well over twenty years (not that I’ve heard much in the interim); and “Melancholy Beach”, a Gorillaz song you’d easily mistake for Blur in a blind listening test (I know, like most Gorillaz tunes.)
The early Obama era truly looks splendid now, if a bit naïve—a space where retro-soul (Fitz, Sharon Jones), eccentric art-pop (Field Music, Janelle Monae) and new wave-flavored side projects (Broken Bells, the track from Here Lies Love (more a disco pastiche, actually)) intersected and nobody gave a hoot as to whether they fit together: streaming was around the corner and for the most part, we were more than ready for it.
“Dancing On My Own”, however, completely owns this year (and I didn’t even hear it until that November at the earliest.) As solid as Robyn’s most recent album (2018’s Honey) is, nothing on it compares to what will always be her signature crying-on-the-dancefloor anthem, about which I would change absolutely nothing.
2010: Spinning Around In Circles
The Divine Comedy, “At The Indie Disco”
The New Pornographers, “Crash Years”
Hot Chip, “Hand Me Down Your Love”
Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Dandelion”
VV Brown, “Shark In The Water”
Belle & Sebastian, “I Didn’t See It Coming”
Laura Marling, “Hope In The Air”
Tracey Thorn, “Hormones”
Vampire Weekend, “Giving Up The Gun”
Broken Bells, “The Ghost Inside”
Best Coast, “Boyfriend”
Fitz and The Tantrums, “Breakin’ The Chains of Love”
Corinne Bailey Rae, “Paris Nights/New York Mornings”
David Byrne/Fatboy Slim feat. Theresa Andersson, “Ladies In Blue”
Goldfrapp, “Alive”
Graffiti 6, “Annie You Save Me”
Janelle Monae, “Wondaland”
Laura Veirs, “July Flame”
KT Tunstall, “(Still A) Weirdo”
Morcheeba, “Even Though”
Spoon, “The Mystery Zone”
Field Music, “Let’s Write A Book”
Sade, “Soldier of Love”
Edward Maya feat. Vika Jigulina, “Stereo Love”
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, “I Learned The Hard Way”
Guster, “Architects & Engineers”
The Gaslight Anthem, “American Slang”
Gorillaz, “On Melancholy Hill”
Robyn, “Dancing On My Own”
The Radio Dept., “You Stopped Making Sense”
Scissor Sisters, “Invisible Light”
Joan Armatrading, “This Charming Life”
Deerhunter, “Desire Lines”
Arcade Fire, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
What was 2009 really like? Well, the oft-execrable Black-Eyed Peas spent 26 consecutive weeks leading the Billboard Hot 100 this year (with two songs); in happier news, Taylor Swift and the newly ascendant Lady Gaga also dominated radio, while Animal Collective topped the Village Voice Pazz and Jop album poll (no, really they did—never got their preciousness apart from a stray track here or there.) None of these appear on the below playlist, although it does feature artists who came in at #’s 2, 3 & 4 on Pazz and Jop (respectively, Phoenix, Neko Case & Yeah Yeah Yeahs.)
If any trend emerges from this mishmash of one-offs (who remembers “Sweet Disposition” and 500 Days of Summer?), indie singer/songwriter perennials (Metric, Jill Sobule, Andrew Bird) and still-hanging-on veterans (Pet Shop Boys, Chris Isaak, Super Furry Animals’ final album and what should have been Morrissey’s last hurrah), it’s an increasing propensity for lounge-pop, albeit in various guises: modern indie (The Bird and The Bee), jazzy easy listening (Pink Martini) and orchestral ’60s throwback (Camera Obscura), among others. Everything old’s also new (yet) again: Moroder-like synth-disco (Swedish duo Royksopp with Robyn’s crucial assistance), baroque retro-pop (Stuart Murdoch’s one-off imaginary-then-later-made-actual soundtrack via his God Help The Girl project) Kate Bush-influenced spooky splendor (Florence + The Machine, Bat For Lashes) and British new wave revivalism both snotty (Art Brut) and sublime (White Lies).
Throw in a handful of UK number ones (La Roux, Lily Allen, David Guetta with ex-Destiny’s Child-er Kelly Rowland) and you’ve got a shimmering time capsule of end-of-the-decade Anglophilia. Oddly enough, it took a few years for the one of the most Anglocentric, of-its-time tracks to fully register: Imogen Heap’s “First Train Home” is essentially Dido-influenced laptop music but those last, building fifteen seconds always get to me.
2009: Some Kind of Contact
The Tender Trap, “Sweet Disposition”
Florence + The Machine, “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)”
Camera Obscura, “French Navy”
Super Furry Animals, “Helium Hearts”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Hysteric”
Morrissey, “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris”
Jill Sobule, “San Francisco”
Chris Isaak, “We Let Her Down”
Bat For Lashes, “Pearl’s Dream”
Pet Shop Boys, “The Way It Used To Be”
The Bird and The Bee, “Polite Dance Song”
Lily Allen, “The Fear”
Metric, “Gold Guns Girls”
Emm Gryner, “Young As The Night”
St. Vincent, “Actor Out of Work”
Vienna Teng, “In Another Life”
La Roux, “Bulletproof”
Andrew Bird, “Fitz and the Dizzyspells”
Pink Martini, “Splendor In The Grass”
Neko Case, “I’m An Animal”
Kings of Convenience, “My Ship Isn’t Pretty”
Gossip, “Heavy Cross”
Phoenix, “Fences”
Royksopp with Robyn, “The Girl and The Robot”
White Lies, “Death”
David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland, “When Love Takes Over”
Haunted Jukebox 