Songs 20-11 Have Never Been This Far Away From Home

Time for the top 20, wherein I heap an increasingly cheesy amount of praise on the songs that I really dug this year.

20. Liars, Freak Out (773 plays last week)

After three generally underrated but poorly-titled albums of dancy noise experiments (and one F review in Spin), Liars decided to make a proper old-fashioned rock album this year. Channeling the Jesus and Mary Chain, Freak Out clangs and buzzes its way into the top 20 thanks to its catchy hook and coolly delivered vocals. It’s not the kind of summer song you’d want to play at the beach, but it is the kind that’s perfect when you’re riding home trying to decide whether your sunburn feels better or worse with the air conditioning.

19. Mark Ronson feat. Lily Allen, Oh My God (1819 or so plays last week)

I’ve been singing the praises of Mark Ronson ever since he got Sean Paul and Tweet together for International Affair, from that fun stretch of 2003 when R&B duets were all the rage. His second album is all covers, which range from so-so (Stop Me, which was the first single for some reason) to predictably good (Valerie, with Amy Winehouse) to surprisingly awesome (the Robbie Williams track.) Lily Allen’s pretty, poppy take on the Kaiser Chiefs is the album’s best song, though.

[nb: In case you’re wondering where Lily solo is on the list, Everything’s Just Wonderful was #9 last year. Another of those annoying incidents of a really late US release date screwing up the countdown.]

18. The Go! Team, Titanic Vandalism (1303 plays last week)

I have no patience for the fickle people that loved the Go! Team’s first album but ignored the second one because it sounded like the first one. The middle of the CD–the stretch from Titanic Vandalism to the Wrath of Marcie–could have been the best EP ever. Titanic Vandalism might be their most energetic song yet, with the cheerleading and tinny horns cranked up to eleven while Marina from Bonde do Role yells about her hips moving from left to right. I think. The Go! Team sound, which sounds so all over the place, is actually so crafted that it’s hard to tell where the guest appearances ever are. And when your CD has Marina and the Glenallen Rappers Delight Club, that’s kinda crazy.

17. HEALTH, Glitter Pills (227 plays last week)

HEALTH are pretty a awesome band, sweaty LA homos in the good sense. But, aside from the many good musical qualities of Glitter Pills, this song will always have a special place in my heart because it reminds me of the one crazy weekend in August that I was driven, badly, around northern New Jersey so that an internationally famous poodle groomer could get spray highlights for his dogs before a runway show.

When the band came to Providence this fall I was totally excited to see them, not realizing that the show would sell out and half a block of Providence would be taken up by upset RISD kids* who stayed in line anyway so they could text-message each other about what a bummer that was.

(*who never go to anything, by the way.)

16. Marnie Stern, Every Single Line Means Something (221 plays last week)

Disguised as a catchy punk song, Every Single Line Means Something is a really abrasive rant by a very angry chipmunk. Her debut album, In Advance of the Broken Arm, wasn’t perfect, but the songs that are good are reeeeeeally good (like this one, and the wonderfully titled Put All Of Your Eggs In One Basket Then Watch That Basket!!, both of which had me flinging myself around and singing along in a really embarrassing imitation of her voice nearly every time they came on.) A word to the wise, though: Just don’t go out of your way to see her live. I talked up her show in Providence for a month before it happened and then it was kind of the most disappointing thing I’ve ever seen.

15. Tiny Masters of Today feat. Karen O, Hologram World (40 plays last week)

Any tweens that manage to get Karen O, Kimya Dawson, and Fred Schneider on their record obviously have some connected parents. But so? They might not yet appeal to the American Eagle set, since they forsake love songs in order to yell about the president, birthday party magicians, disco bombs and radio riots. It’s noisy garage pop that’s about as much fun (and at least 90% as silly) as anything Thee Headcoatees ever did. Hologram World, with Karen O’s hyper chorus, might be the most fun dance record of the year. And, you know, think about how much fun it was like to record–you know what Karen O gets like when she’s around kids.

14. Of Montreal, Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse (2930 plays last week)

Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? came out in January, which means there’s been almost a whole year to digest new sexy depressive Kevin Barnes. The man whose songs are now made into Outback jingles, who went from singing about happy yellow bumblebees to thinking about paying girls to hit other girls for him–the Kevin Barnes who all of a sudden got autobiographical and who, it turns out, is pretty messed up. It’s really fascinating. Probably not a coincidence, then, that according to my handy-dandy last.fm profile I’ve also listened to them the most of any band who put out an album this year.

Looking at pictures of Barnes, the styled magazine ones most of all, he looks really, really crazy, and it’s not just the makeup and the sudden drag. So I’m still a little uncomfortable liking the album as much as I do. But, regardless, the clunkily named Heimdalsgate is a really great single, an apostrophe to serotonin set to a perky keyboard line.

[nb: Looking to make sure I just spelled Heimdalsgate right, I just learned that the kooky-and-oddly-unsettling video was directed by the guys who created Homestar Runner. Weird.]

13. Bonde do Role, Geremia (214 plays last week)

Bonde do Role may or may not break up any minute now, but it sure was fun while it lasted! Geremia took last year’s continued marching band craze and made it better by adding Portuguese AND kazoos. Not yelled so much as barked, Geremia’s held up surprisingly well over the last eight months or so. (Also, according to my itunes, it’s the song from 2007 that I’ve played the most.) The group are best taken in small doses; their With Lazers album, despite having my favorite album ary of the year, didn’t get much play in my house after the first week or so. But still, this is the song to get through a slow work day and annoy the hell out of your co-workers.

12. Amanda Blank feat. MIA, Take It Easy (only 22 plays last week–is that possible?)

What do you get when you cross a crazy and often badly-dressed British rapper with a trashy and often badly-dressed Philadelphia DJ? One of the year’s hottest slowish-jams, that’s what. Overshadowed both by MIA’s Kala and Blank’s work with Spank Rock and Britney Spears, this song should have been huge, but from what I can tell, never made it much farther than Amanda’s myspace.

11. The Rosebuds, Night of the Furies (197 plays last week)

I discovered North Carolina’s Rosebuds on my favorite Swedish internet radio station*, who played the heck out of the band’s Birds Make Good Neighbors album about two years ago. Night of the Furies, the follow-up, is amazingly good, a really calm pop epic that’s a pretty strong contender for my album of the year (and with only nine songs, no less!) Quiet but not peaceful, Ivan and Kelly sing about cemeteries and dead aunts but rarely raise their voices about it until the grand finale. Ivan’s vocals on the title track soar hopefully above moody keyboards for six-and-a-half minutes, making Night of the Furies a disco anthem for lonely people who prefer to dance at home, but somehow the song’s so well-crafted on a pop level that it sounds about half that long.

(*Lyssna is Swedish for Listen, if you’d like to hear it.)