chris 15-11 15 "as far as forever goes."
i'm not a gun.
we think as instruments.
[city centre offices].

moment @ 3:15

as much as i love songs that build and build and build and build, because usually the payoff is so insurmountable and godly, but what blew me away about this song was its anti-climax. the pressure and tension rises and rises and rises as plastic drums blend effortlessly into smack-dabbing snare punches and the fragile guitar noodling fills itself with more and more swells and angry slides and hammer-ons. yet when we get to the last 45 seconds of the song, back to nothing. it was all a set-up. nothing's that rewarding. i realized the non-traditional arc of this song on my way home from student teaching earlier this spring after having heard it once before on my way to student teaching. depending on how you listen, it can either told pump you up or completely destroy all of your ideas of self-worth, doing things that matter, etc. i'm not a gun put the realism into pretentious instrumental music like none other.

14 "in my arms."
mylo.
destroy rock & roll.
[rca].

"is my heart beating? yeah."

for someone that doesn't dance unless it's at a wedding or a !!!/out hud show (RIP BTW), it definitely takes a lot for a true dance track to get under my skin (in a good way) and make me boogey on down physically and cerebrally. there are fluorescents on the album cover for a reason - you cannot ignore this AND it's the post-ironic mid-late 00s, so cheesy-to-the-extreme is cool again. at first sure, just let the ignorable 2-step multi-layered keyboard riffs sit in the back of your head, but like lemon jelly at their best, a loop slowly rears its head and gets all up in your business until your ears become your world. but what lemon jelly don't do is audio pulsations, gyrations, sweat nations, groove salutations. your smile is so bright it's blinding my eyes, so i will drop down and bust a worm on your asses as i inwardly celebrate life, loss, and being ridiculously crazy in love.

13 "i'm moving on."
human television.
look at who you're talking to.
[gigantic].

"i've got sand in my eye."

i usually never wait so long for a song to get going. at least not a power-pop song. and especially not a power-pop song that recalls a lo-fi mashing of gin blossoms and the band from the adventures of pete & pete (they're called polaris, if you were wondering). and usually when songs take this long to get going i recommend that listeners make sure to observe and absorb the ambience that the song requires you to endure before getting and funky in the pants once it finally peaks all over your face. but this song...this flawless flawless song...you've got to turn up your stereo/headphones as loud as they'll go and LEAVE IT THERE. i know i know, that sounds very detroit rock city of me, but when the steady yet depressed snare leads you through a valley of reverb and squiggly bass, you will follow blindly. there's no better song to listen to with your eyes closed than this one in 2006. you will know when to open them. trust me. OPEN.

12 "this harness can't ride anything."
chin up chin up.
this harness can't ride anything.
[suicide squeeze].

"we are one-night stands that can't walk away."

this song and this band in general so often glide swiftly between the categorizations of "competent yet un-noteworthy" and "mind-blowingly introspective and literally makes life more worth living" that it's really worthless trying to decide which one they fit into the most. the fact is, on the best of days, this song was there for me to put on repeat and go back and forth on over and over and over again. and no matter how mediocre i ever decided it was, it still had everything i've ever wanted in a pop band: a cacophony of pretty guitar and keyboard sounds, strings coming in at just the right time, perplexing lyrics that are more worried about sticking out than fitting in with the music, and an overall sense of overwhelming joy and fuck-it-all-i'm-gonna-rejoice-regardless-ness.

11 "long distance call."
phoenix.
it's never been like that.
[astralwerks].

"your capital letters keep me asking for more."

if you ever were enough of a white sissy to listen to new radicals (or hell, even worse innocuous skinny arms-rock like jason mraz), there is finally a song that you can love and still be considered a hipster. and while i have no idea why pitchfork would put their stamp of approval on a song so loaded with priss you can literally feel the faux-hawk forming on your head, i do know that this song is too immaculate to ignore. the crispness of every sound so carefully placed into its little spot, it almost makes you think maybe this guy doesn't miss this chick as much as his words suggest. but while the afore-blogged boat song is the most fun to sing along to throughout the whole song, this song boasts the most belt-along-able CHORUS, and if you get yourself to go along with his croon, you'll find that even the most immaculate of humans can feel on the edge, but as implied, poise is always more important. keep yourself together and you won't fall apart. simple, right?

qualler should DEFINITELY be coming in with his pre-written blog post on his top 10 songs and a re-cap of his list from last year. FOR SERIOUS THIS TIME. and #s 10-6 are coming up soon soon soon...

p.s. today's cat picture comes as a suggestion courtesy of mr. harry bram stroker's spankula  ¶ posted by chris at 5:31 PM 1 comments

  chris 20-16 20 "i believe in your victory."
this will destroy you.
young mountain.
[magic bullet].

moment @ 1:27

only really ethereal adjectives can describe how i feel when listening to this song. no words strangled together to make sentences make any sense to put here when referencing the gloriousness that is this perfect instrumental. so here we go: glistening, otherworldly, celestial, heavenly, transcendent, angelic, utopian, ghostly, apparitional, phantasmal, boundless, infinite, enduring....huh, i guess there is a sentence i could fangle together: if a song soared down from above to my dying body and jolted life into me one more time if only to look at my life as if it was not mundane and meaningless for one more newly born second before i became a pile of ashes, it would surely be this song.

19 "hearts and stars."
super xx man.
x.
[hush].

"i'll wait around until you calm down."

the shortest song on the countdown, it still packs a whallop. and i absolutely despise the flute, yet this song brings me down from whatever drama/stress/stupidness that may be interfering with my happiness and chilled-out-ness, no matter how absurd. "i'll do something for you no matter what." how hard is that? i'll be there and i won't freak out when you're freaking out. i'll talk to you if you talk to me. i'll be here with a smile on my face when you can't be. just freaking do it. i'm here, we're friends, in love, family, whatever, so see it. but i'm here if it's gonna take time, and sometimes it will feel like a chorus of me singing over a fairy elf-like piano riff like everything's a freaking larf (and it is), but eventually it will seem like it all happened in a-minute-and-a-half and it will be a blip on your radar. but you won't be a blip on mine.

18 "last cans of paint."
boat.
songs that you might not like.
[magic marker].

"i won't pick up the telephone / cuz there's 900 people and they're all alone."

quite possibly the most fun song to sing along to on this list. the vocal melodies are such a brilliant mixture of sadness, madness, and geeked-out glee that you just want to grab your hair and air drum a million times harder than the actual slacker that's doing the job, belting out the chorus like you're trying to turn yourself inside out through your mouth. and while the execution is far different, this song reminds me of why i'm still in love and always will be with pavement. you can care passionately about what you say, who you're talking to, what you think, but still not care about how it's received. this song is so tiny it hurts and yet it means the world to me. we are all little people with little voices, but we say things we mean. you choose whether or not to listen, not those sending the message.

17 "sweet sweet heartkiller."
say hi to your mom.
impeccable blahs.
[rebel group].

"we still both like the smell of anything night blooming / and she cuts through necks like a ginsu."

no that is not a metaphor, this song is actually about vampires!!! how cool is that?! i've always thought say hi to your mom were harmless pleasant indie pop, but this song is probably one of the best songs that tell a story that i've ever heard. don't you hate it when you're a creature of the night and you fall in love with another vampire and then the feeling becomes so strong that you have some wicked bloodlust and just give in and drink her blood, because you know that stuff will be the best tasting blood you'll ever get. but then ah dammit she's dead. and you've got to live forever (literally) without her! that's the pits. huh, i guess it could be a metaphor, but whatever, VAMPIRES!!!!!! you'll be smiling inside a minute if you take a minute and let these quiet popsters tell you this story - you might even join in on the handclaps.

16 "the warning."
hot chip.
the warning.
[astralwerks].

"hot chip will break your legs / snap off your head."

oh man i can just feel the love for these songs getting stronger and stronger as we inch toward the top. and i apologize for this doubleshot of violent songs, but as everyone knows, friendly music + violent lyrics = inevitable genius. plus, if there's one thing that's better than a song about vampires falling in love and then one drinking the other's blood, it's a song about a malfunctioning musician android thinking it's human and then going on a killing rampage when it finds out it's not. the story here is a little more subtle, and i'm mostly extrapolating this from the uber-poetic lyrics, but c'mon...you've got bobbly wobbly keyboards and the kiddish click-clack of the percussion taking you on a little trip through the song as our humble narrator bumps into strangers and introduces himself as a "mechanical music man," and every time brings him to chorus about his band beating you up to the point of funeral. and then the malfunctioning high-pressure high-volume bridge that's so painfully disjointed it hurts? but don't worry, those sparks/xylophones are notes of acceptance of living in a world without true melody, as long as you know we're all going to die from it.

we're getting close, #s 15-11 will be up soon!!  ¶ posted by chris at 11:38 AM 1 comments

  chris 25-21 25 "anti-anti."
snowden.
anti-anti.
[jade tree].

"getting down in the town that makes no sound / you say there's nothing wrong but i can't hear it."

one of the few songs on the countdown where at first i was like, "this is tolerable," and then upon a ridiculous amount of forced listenings thanks to radio k, it eventually changed my life. ESPECIALLY when i was like, "i wonder if i'd like this more with headphones on. so i scrounged through some mp3 blogs and found a high bit-rate copy of the song, put the 'phones on, and almost immediately orgasmed thrice. from the just-outta-the-bag-crisp drumming to that simple guitar melody that hits just the right notes to curl my heart like toes during sex, i had been had by slacker interpol wannabes. but the difference is rather than merely sounding like brightly giving up (antics), it sounds like giving up brightly and longingly (turn on the bright lights).

24 "the first song."
band of horses.
everything all the time.
[sub pop].

"we've suffered enough."

very appropriately, this was the FIRST song that changed my life this year. 2006 had come along and i was starting to feel everything i had worked for at radio k was coming to an eventual close and due to 2 years of musical overexposure, i had basically disliked all music, longing for my high school days of death cab and d-plan where i was passionate and crazed. i remember it clearly - i was in my office at the station, exhausted beyond belief from grad school and working mundane music director tasks. i put in another random cd, seeing that the best music assistant i could have ever asked for (pushkar, now music director) had highly recommended this band of horses cd. as my ass hit my chair from doneness-with-life and this song's sprawling sparkling chords started a sudden and steady beat, i felt comfortable. when the chords started building and the joan of arc guitar line accompanied a six parts seven lapsteel to an epiphany of a chorus, i literally FELT resurgence in my body. music is good. music is there. music in me.

23 "nefi + girly."
asobi seksu.
citrus.
[friendly fire].

"awaiting an audience /we're waiting on ornaments."*

this song was probably going to be more like 30-something or 40-something on the list. then i played it for my great friend pat while visiting him in chicago. one of my favorite things about my great friend pat is how he reacts to and falls in love with music. ever since i've known him, pat and i and his car have had many interactions with both awesome and terrible music. whether it was in his geo metro listening to the self-titled verve pipe album trying to make it through "kiss me idle" without pressing "next track" or playing mum at full blast and laughing joyously when the harmonium kicks in, listening to music with pat in the car is the BEST. and when i played him this song thinking it was a surefire way to win pat's heart (ridiculous drumming, spacey guitars, and a cute-as-all-get-out female singer) and his eyes widened and he slapped his forehead when the hi-hat was tickled faster than a cheetah, i said, "thank you asobi seksu." *i don't care if this is actually what they're singing or not. it's what i hear.

22 "what's the altitude (feat. hymnal)."
cut chemist.
the audience's listening.
[warner bros.].

"she gave me head / phones / said, 'have you heard this sound?'"

whoooaaaa that's pretty high on the countdown for a hip-hop song on a list compiled by a suburban white kid who felt nervous buying "license to ill" on cassette. this is one more reason why hip-hop by djs FEATURING rappers is so much better than a single rapper's attempt at overshadowing mediocre dj work with mediocre lyrics. especially when it's some guy named hymnal who's a brilliant cross between mf doom and del tha funky homosapien, AND actually has something to say while being goofy and fun at the same time. let's not forget the demented acoustic guitar lick and cowbell that will become an automatic reprise throughout your day if you listen to this song even just once. the dirty fake-vinyl crackle and old-school "YEAH!" in the background are just two more reasons why this is, to date, my favorite hip-hop song ever. obviously not too big of a deal, since it's still just #22, but it's one more step toward me wanting to listen to and absorb more and more hip-hop in the future.

21 "it fit when i was a kid."
liars.
drum's not dead.
[mute].

"i aim my eyebrow into a question."

when the singer with the lowest unaltered voice in the history of avant-rock (and probably rock music in general) "sings" the aforementioned silly yet admittedly creepy lyric, the pause that precedes it always scares the CRAP out of me. i've never heard a song that has made me feel so tense and scared AND was pleasurable to listen to at the same time. the methodic and barbaric percussion and low-end in this song do something to one's listening experience that film music does a subconscious level when you're engrossed in the cinema experience, but this song DEMANDS your attention. it will slit your throat and drink your blood if you ignore it. and if you think it's over before the doom organ slinks on out of nowhere, then your life will be over before you know it. the looming baritone singer will forget about scaring you and hypnotize you with his thom yorke falsetto until you submit to his lulling, swooning, transfixing death tune. BEWARE!

qualler might show up any second with his top 25 songs of 2006 so keep on the look out if you're sick of reading my pathetic diary entries!!! oh and of course, #s 20-16 are on deck.
  ¶ posted by chris at 4:06 PM 2 comments

  chris 30-26 30 "in the morning."
junior boys.
so this is goodbye.
[domino].

"too young."

the perfect synthesis of glitch and pop sweetness. it's like if the postal service wrote songs you could make love to, rather than writing songs in response to not getting any. the kickdrum swoops backwards into your brain and the slits and swipes of the production make the vocal breathing percussion tingle in your ears and speak depths of sexual tension and frustration to the simple yet neverendingly problematic question of: "why does age matter?"

29 "way out."
ellen allien & apparat.
orchestra of bubbles.
[bpitch control].

"way out is hard."

i can't help but think of this song as a response to the dumb-dude-just-doesn't-get-it jerktronica of the aforementioned junior boys song. rather than getting uptight, ellen does exactly what the title says: finds a way out. it may be just as dark and tense as the narrator's faux reality in "in the morning," but it's also smooth, revelatory, and slightly/continually blooming. this is as techno as orchestral/epic electronica gets, with beeps and non-stop kick-claps, but the processed bass-heavy strings and the mildly distorted guitar hint at a life without another like oneself (that is, a life worth living).

28 "party."
el perro del mar.
el perro del mar.
[control group].

"i just want to be a part of you."

like benoit pioulard recently demonstrated, and now el perro del mar, singer-songwriters would really be taken more seriously and would be a lot less boring if they learned how to multi-track their boring guitars and boring vocals. luckily el perro del mar has one up on benoit because her voice is NOT BORING AT ALL. the waver, the quiver, the sexy hesitance crawl up my spine like a weeping spider. and then the chorus of specifically placed boop-boops and la-las back her up like an army of "fuck yous, we're going to party by myself"s. the right-left division of the electric and acoustic guitars make this the perfect anthem for when you're trying to be yourself, but you can't help but be yourself. division of the self is the new unity of the self.

27 "peloria."
decembers architects.
,apiary ennui and curiosas. the brew shakes.
[say & stay said].

"good riddance to genius."

originally recorded in 2001 (finally released in a VERY small dose in 06) and it shows. i heard this band do a live session on radio k's local music show when i first moved into the dorms and i remember unpacking my ridiculous vhs collection and hearing this band and thinking "oh man do all minneapolis bands love mineral and the dismemberment plan?" unfortunately, they didn't, but i never forgot this band and when i received this cd just weeks before retiring my post as music director at radio k, this song floored me and brought every moment i've loved about music throughout my entire college career rushing through my head and my heart, and i died from being just THAT emo.

26 "tuscan."
ecstatic sunshine.
freckle wars.
[carpark].

moment @ 0:33

ah, youth. poorly recorded and poorly played rudimentary guitar hooks plague this song and yet it literally implants copious amounts of ecstatic sunshine into my ears. with only two electric guitars stuck on an exact clean/distortion combo, this song goes through more phases than the moon, never getting complicated, but never concentrating on one delightful phrase for more than is necessary. it's so freaking simple and doesn't really tug at anything or stick with you yet it's the most refreshing instrumental song i've heard this year.

i'll bring #s 25-21 to you right quick! keep checking in and thanks for humoring me.  ¶ posted by chris at 5:32 PM 0 comments

  chris 35-31 35 "triggering back."
benoit pioulard.
precis.
[kranky].

"turn off the station to multiply the tension."

hushed vocals and acoustic guitar? yawn. multi-tracked vocals, atmospherics, crossfading percussion, and acoustic guitarz? that's more like it. uppity and downity together at last. the cover of this record is forest green and washes of that color swirl through my head whenever i listen to this song.

34 "phantom limb."
the shins.
phantom limb [ep].
[sub pop].

"follow the lines and wonder why / there's no connection."

i have had a "they're pretty good" attitude toward the garden staters ever since i heard "know your onion!" the first week of my freshman year at college, and once the aforementioned zach braff barfatron blinded my eyes for eternity, i never thought i would ever think any more about the shins ever again. damn them to hell. this song is soooo boring if you wait for the good parts. so don't wait and listen to this song. do something else. the good parts will catch you. they're too simple for their own good, but the last 30 seconds in particular will cease your blinking and other activities if you let it enter your ears in just the right way. just give it a shot. i was skeptical too.

33 "the sky is everywhere, part 1."
actual birds.
vive la fantastique avec actual birds and friends. [casanova temptations].

"you can always touch the sky."

do not listen to this song with anyone else in the room/car. i did and it just made the song and the moment too awkward. this is a song so fragile that even the slightest of company will cause its purpose and function to elude you. it's tinier than the dust on your old cassettes, but it wants to be your friend so bad. it's the closest i'll ever get to hippie music/ethic and it almost scares me how grimey and "free" i feel when i listen to the scuzzy organ and gritty drums, but it's worth it when you can forget yourself for just a second to be by yourself and with this song and this song only.

32 "it is the law."
envelopes.
demon.
[brille].

"it is the law."

watch the adorable little guitar line wander around and prance and be harmless! keep watching...keep listening...WACKO SOCKO! here come his entourage of bright buzzy sounds that blast in your face with slop and silly, pitch-bending every which way as long as there's candy involved. wait, where'd it go?!?!?! where did all my smiley friends rush off to?!?! oh, it's the law that you can't be that ecstatic for too long...i understand. that's too bad.

31 "i never lose. never really."
belong.
october language.
[carpark].

moment @ 0:46

i don't know whether thinking of this song as "noise" makes it better or worse than considering it as "music." i've always disliked "noise music," everything from "noise rock" to "noise-core" - i've just never even considered myself pretentious enough to think music should hurt and you're only cool if your music hurts you as a listener because all other music is pleasant and has been done and "noise" is the only thing left to make. well these two guys somehow find a way to balance the two in the most gorgeous way imaginable. make yourself get through the whole song. if you wondered what the most truthful and unapologetic soundtrack to katrina would be (and these guys experienced it and wrote this album as a response to it), look no further. find hope and tragedy encompassed without using only pleasant sounds. it can be done, and still be pleasant.

i'll have #s 30-26 up later this week! check back!  ¶ posted by chris at 11:26 AM 0 comments

  chris 40-36 40 "please visit your national parks."
oxford collapse.
remember the night parties.
[sub pop].

"forget forget forget those times / always cut through so easily."

if there is any song on this countdown that you should listen to as loud as possible and shoud along as loud as possible, it's this one. it reminds me of my days of being 12-years-old and jumping around, playing air guitar, spit shooting out of my mouth as i make so much racket in my room i get a headache and my mom checks on me to make sure i'm okay. and instead of me having this really "i'm so mad i'm so into this angry rock music" devil-look on my face, i've got a giant adorable grin and my hair's all messed up.


39 "something isn't right."
herbert.
scale. [!k7].

"and if the details are too much to comprehend / an e-mail's there on your laptop to see."

you just can't get much sexier than this. this cheese is so elegantly and minutely sculpted that you'd swear it was pure audio ivory. the pulse is your heart, the strings are her eyelashes fluttering through the air, the horns and guitars are your hands making the perfect moves around her flawless hips, the smooth verse is your entry to the dance floor, the stuttering chorus is your hesitation to make the move, and the hasty outro is your decision to dance alone. because it's not like you can do much with another human when you're making love to your headphones.

38 "air (featuring doom)."
dabrye.
two/three.
[ghostly international].

"at first he couldn't tell she had a chromosome missin / kept a spare somewhere."

last year, i introduced the first hip-hop song that made my favorite songs of the year list. this year, we've got two on the list and here's the first. apart from the general sci-fi spook-hop feel of this inspired yet modest masterpiece, there are two specific elements i think everyone should listen for, in order of obviousness: 1) the elongated keyboard walk up the scale that continually lifts the song into the back of your head and 2) the intricate po-mo tale that mc doom weaves possibly about a guy mistaking music for reproduction, religion, and drugs. see!!! hip-hop can be intelligent and still talk about runnin' smack, booty chasin' and thunkin' beats!!!! too bad the reverse is not true (i'm looking at you, pitchfork).

37 "1918-1926."
shogun kunitoki.
tasankokaiku.
[fonal].

moment @ 1:10

one drumkit, three keyboards, with mouths closed and aimed at the sky. oh and don't forget as many spoonfuls of syncopation that you can possibly come up with the aforementioned combinations of instruments, because you need as much as you can get in order to mess with one's brain as much possible while still feeling completely cohesive and unbelievably controlled. it is the melding and mixing of the machinations of humanity with the humanity of machinations, including all of the battles for achievement, progress, and hope that arise from this very conflict.

36 "rough gem."
islands.
return to the sea.
[equator].

"they want it fast but they don't want flaws."

it took me a while to forgive the unicorns for choosing the glossy over the lo-fi, but i think while the unicorns are better on an album level, this track blows any specific unicorns track out of the water due to its sheer magnitude and attention to the bones in our body that shake and rattle in giddiness in response to candy-coated orchestration. it's curiously downtrodden for being a confection for the ears, but when it all comes to a head in the last 30 seconds, it's made the slight trip down a greener-than-a-leprechaun grassy knoll a serene and unforgettable experience.

i love you because i know you'll come back to see #s 35-31 very soon!!!  ¶ posted by chris at 11:15 AM 0 comments

  chris 45-41 45 "stay."
small sins.
small sins.
[astralwerks].

"you can stay if you want to / but you can't sleep in my bed."

if this song came out in 1998 instead of "closing time," i would have liked it a lot more. this stuff is soooo for 15-year-olds but i can't help but shout so loud in an awful falsetto along with the chorus. i'm such a priss. oh well. and the whining guitar in the background that sounds like your college roomate's old laptop being really loud and obnoxious while you're trying to study? what a sound!

44 "turn to the assassin."
junip.
black refuge [ep].
[teme shet].

"go repress your prudent side / it's beautiful but plastic."

jose gonzalez is fine. beautiful voice, beautiful guitar, but i wanted more when i heard "veneer." his band junip filled that void and added church organ, click-clack drums, and what must be some kind of wicked field recording. it sounds like a hazy day where you feel unbreakable, totally meshing together when they should absolutely not by any means. kind of like a lite-rock song singing about how you should go hire a professional killer to solve your problems.

43 "sunlit & ascending."
the appleseed cast.
peregrine.
[the militia group].

"you must come out."

i finally feel like the appleseed cast are from a different era in my life, and yet, i was still incredibly excited to hear this record. this is the only track that stands out to me from peregrine, but oh boy does it stand out. the drumming almost equals their past drummer in precision and whatthehellwasthatness and the guitars pierce the sky, eclipsing the mediocre storytelling. i cannot listen to them without imagining the beautiful outdoor concert that changed my life forever, with the sun setting against the madison lake. i cannot wait to see them again in a few weeks.

42 "bibo no aozora/04."
ryuichi sakamoto, jacques morelenbaum, & yuichiro gotoh.
babel: original motion picture soundtrack.
[concord].

moment @ 3:38

those three piano chords literally break my heart when i hear them. they might as well turn the sky grey while they're at it too. while the fountain's music was all about the moment, this song is all about infinity. allness, oneness, blah blah. i feel like i'm getting smarter AND sadder when i'm listening to it. then the strings and keys fall apart, out of sync with each other and then i just feel sad. i LOVE it. i sit here and i can't think of a retort for why it's okay to make music this sad and movies this sad and feel this sad and want to feel this sad, but let's just say "it's therapeutic in small doses." don't listen to this on repeat. and if you do, warn me so i can at least call the paramedic for you.

41 "according to plan."
i love you but i've chosen darkness.
fear is on our side.
[secretly canadian].

"in a perfect world / there are perfect places with you."

by the looks of the ridonkulous band moniker and album name, it doesn't look like we're getting much happier, does it? but truth be told, while they embrace the lite-gotheatrics of the 80s, they boast terrific depression and terrific groove-a-thons. the bass lines make me ooze headbobbing and the stealth snare makes me projectile vomit fist-pumps. a twinkle of desperate hope expels all notions of sadness for the sake of sadness too. maybe this is the reason why this genre was so beautiful when it begun (and also the reason why only a few bands, including ILYBICD, can gently transform the mold to their benefit).

#40-36 are coming up soon. keep checking in, thanks!  ¶ posted by chris at 11:28 AM 0 comments

  chris 50-46 50 "light pollution."
dirty on purpose.
hallelujah sirens.
[north street].

"take the long way home / take the wrong roads."

possibly the worst live band ever and almost fell off the countdown because of this, but this recording is just too overbearingly and heartbreakingly beautiful to deny. their voices are almost broken and the drumming is barely competent, but the interweaving melodies and guitar sounds raise the song from "amateur" to "never-gonna-quit-my-dream" in under 4.5 minutes.


49 "andover."
bound stems.
appreciation night.
[flameshovel].

"we're headstrong / it's our fault."

speaking of on the brink of falling apart, this music is barely held together by its seams, but this time it's not coincidental. overly distorted chords, woozy keys, a drunken snare drum, and wavering male/female battle vox stumble through the stilted and almost-too-long song structure, until some incredibly layered catchier-than-thou master riffage brings the inebriation together and finally, you realize that it's got to go on for just a little too long, because missteps and wanderings are never concise. kind of like a run-on sentence.

48 "open cuts."
dwayne sodahberk.
cut open.
[tigerbeat6].

"i really want to hear the details / no, i really only want to hear the
sad parts."

don't crank up your speakers/headphones right away to hear the fragile acoustic plucking intro, because you will kill your eardrums when the washed-out fuzz busts in like it's the kool aid man. oh but what blissful and deathly romanticism becomes of this sadsack festival of a song. lo-fi and melodramatic, now that's real loneliness. never underestimate the strength of one man (and some haunting female backup vox), especially if he's got an arsenal of tools instead of a meager single acoustic guitar.

47 "death is the road to awe."
clint mansell with kronos quartet & mogwai.
the fountain: original motion picture soundtrack.
[nonesuch].

moment @ 7:36

never has a piece of a film score made me jolt out of my seat at a movie theatre. NEVER. until now. usually film scores get in my head and sit with me after the movie, but this score is all about the moment. just like the fountain itself, it's a flash before your eyes, just like how aronofsky manages to fit the ancient past, the present, and the distant future into a 90-minute music video. it breathes with you, but it's gone the instant the next second occurs, and suddenly the future is the present. and we've all lived nothing, but we are always living everything.

46 "lovers who uncover."
the little ones.
sing song [ep].
[astralwerks].

"won't you show us where your heart is?"

the longer i've gone without them, the more i miss sunday's best. thank god they've reinvented themselves, even if it's a new bright "indie-pop" sound, because their limitless energy can overshadow even the simplest of songs. when the verse, bridge, and chorus are all as catchy as each other, no listener loses. i bet they get tired from powerhousing the blasting chirping notes, and i even do just from listening to it, but that's a small price to pay for pop perfection.

check back soon for #s 45-41 and the initiation of qualler's top 25 songs of 2006 list!!! and please feel free to be even more nostalgic and look through our lists from last year, kept in mint condition below.  ¶ posted by chris at 8:45 AM 0 comments