Qualler Can Do LIsts Too! (Qualler's Top 10 Songs of 2006 + Top 19 of 2005)
  ¶ posted by Unknown at 7:53 PM 0 comments

  chris 5-1 05 "bad news."
owen.
at home with.
[polyvinyl].

"whoever you think is watching you dance from across the room / they aren't."

out of anyone on the planet, i've been jealous of mike kinsella's (aka owen) guitar skills. his precocious yet experienced plucking grabbed my heart and mesmerized it when he was in american football and now his slowcore/softcore bedroom project continues to take me to a place where i am the only thing that matters. my heart wrenches to the beat of many many songs and artists, but owen songs like "bad news" are the only ones that do it simultaneously with a fresh breath of calm and cool air. i've never felt more relaxed and emotional while listening to music than i have while listening to owen. and this song, with its power to hypnotize and realize the self through airy coos and extended repetitive outro, makes me smirk as it says "fuck you" to the other and concentrates on bettering the self, away from all outside forces. this is as full as one man gets and oh if i could only be mike.

04 "apocalypso."
mew.
and the glass-handed kites.
[columbia].

"care-line / care-lines thumbed it up."

i have probably said "this is THEE best song to sing along to on this countdown" five or six times already due to absolutely killer choruses. well this isn't really a song to sing along to so much as it is a song where you literally feel like you're on drugs when the chorus comes blasting along, swirling through your eyes with demolishing guitars and rhythm section and the prissiest sounding danish voice to be the sweet whipping cream on top of your arsenal of a rock song. oh and is that a xylophone? YEAH IT IS THE BADDEST ASS XYLOPHONE YOU'LL PROBABLY EVER HEAR. some songs don't get down under your skin on a emotional or psychological level but just are so viscerally and aesthetically pleasing that you could listen to them on repeat until you pass out from playing air guitar. this is one of those songs. and i do think i'm making some sort of progress (possibly ironically) as i continue to enjoy the pleasantries of pop guilt-free. here's a song and even a band full of possible (nay, probably) pretense and i'm loving every second of it without pretense. this is wuss rock, without question, and i will love it for what it is, because yes - i am a wuss. who loves to rock.

03 "don't say you don't."
maritime.
we, the vehicles.
[flameshovel].

"there are bodies extending around us all."

the promise ring were one of my first forays into indie rock as a high schooler. listening to their succinct pop gems on very emergency never really made me think they'd still be part of my life at 23. but here we are and lyricist davey and drummer dan's new band maritime is going on like they haven't aged a day but have learned a fountain of wisdom since their heyday as "the milwaukee emo band." like our previous entry, this song's chorus packs a whallop i did not think i could handle the first time i heard it. and by this i mean my first initial reaction was "whoa this is the smoothest chorus i've ever heard davey's raspy voice choke out." more listens begat more listens begat more smiles on my face begat more lame attempts at me replicating holding notes out far longer than i could ever imagine holding notes out. but underneath this melodic maturation lies a song where urgency and emergency still lie, a man who wants the truth fast nowquickwithouthesitation. we've kinda accepted it because hey, we're out of college and high school now and our lives that we created back then are now controlling us rather than doing the actual creating that brought us here in the first place. don't forget to do what you got to do and be truthful to yourself and others. otherwise you'll just keep doing what you don't wanna do. and lord knows i'm doing some of that right now. geeze it's so simple it's like a novel my middle schoolers could understand! so why is it do hard to do?

02 "railroad cancellation."
don caballero.
world class listening problem.
[relapse].

moment @ 4:42

"what's going to be my #1 instrumental song of the year?" just like i never thought i'd still have the promise ring somehow still in my life, i never thought this would be a question i'd be dying to answer every year. the first "modern instrumental" i can remember listening to is "madman" by silverchair in the 7th grade. i didn't think much of it except "huh he sure likes to show off how much distortion he can put on his guitar" and "haha he's going crazy MUSICALLY like a madman might LITERALLY." somehow this has all come full circle with don caballero's song. one night before i went to DJ a wedding this summer, i was listening to this song for the first time, thinking it was merely going to be another solid entry in this "epic instrumental rock" genre i have so keenly become attached to since i first heard explosions in the sky and my heart broke in two with no misleading language confusing and covering the heartbreak. as i started thinking about how my life was going to change - i wasn't going to be able to sit here late at night "working" by listening to music before i went to get paid a nice sum of money by simple pressing "play" for four hours. i would have to leave this office full of music behind (at radio k) and go on to my next attempt at consuming time in my life - teaching. i starting doubting myself for the first real time. no language though - just emotions. just things bubbling up into my head, into my veins, into my face. i wasn't finished feeling, so i pressed repeat and started drumming with two pens on my desk. as the song went on, i drummed harder and harder, trying to get rid of all this thought, diminishing language one pen hit at a time. my arms started hurting and getting red from accidentally hitting them on the desk too. i wished i had real drumsticks. i'm not a drummer, but pounding the crap out of stuff while guitars conduct my thrashing sure makes everything feel better sometimes.

01 "noi boi."
the velvet teen.
cum laude.
[slowdance].

"the night will pass on and we'll no longer think on / what it was or what it wasn't."

i had this whole long this written trying to forcibly connect all of these varied and equally important reasons why this song has resonated with me so much this year to the point of becoming my favorite song of 2006, but i threw it all away (unlike the other entries, which are merely unedited ramblings that i don't look twice at before i press "publish"). the truth is, i can't make it all come together for this song. i've thought about and listened to this song probably the most in comparison to the other 49 and yet still no words make sense for it. so i'll just start listing the things that make me love this song so much and most of them i think don't really make any sense when just listed but somehow pertain to me on some kind of level that i do not have the ability to articulate: this year their drummer died of cancer, there are no surprises with this song structure, there is so much passion behind his voice and his simple words, the keyboards remind me of a dear friend who i hope to someday write music with again, i tremble with love, sadness, joy, loneliness and my bones turn to jello when i listen to this song. it's everything i've ever wanted and everything i'm deathly afraid of into the most concise 3.5 minutes ever recorded in audio form.

thus concludes this year's countdown for me. bring it on qualler! you still got it? please keep checking the blogulator as i plan on starting a new music-related regular feature called "new song / old record" in which i do pretty much exactly what it sounds like: tell you about a new song i'm into and an old record i've rediscovered and fallen in love with all over again.  ¶ posted by chris at 6:23 PM 0 comments

  chris 10-6 10 "been here before."
jeremy enigk.
world waits.
[reincarnate].

"only in your eyes a sudden need denied / i sympathize."

you might notice that as we get higher on this list, the more deeply personal these songs get. i may or may not be adequately giving glimpses into how these songs affect and reflect my life in motion throughout the monumental year that was 2006 (but isn't every year?), and this is something i want to remedy for these top 10 songs. jeremy enigk symbolizes a lot in my life but first and foremost, he is intrinsically attached with the feeling of my eyes welling up and enduring an unbearable amount of emotion. he is responsible for two of my best friends meeting and falling in love (if only on a infinitesimal level). and that's heavy, because i love both of those friends so much that my heart starts beating fast when i think about how much they love each other. also, when seeing him perform this song live with my dearest jerksica by my side, i think it was the only time this year where at the artist's concert i sang along at the show to the point of overwhelming emotion and connection with the music (ESPECIALLY that organ stab) and had my girlfriend next to me smiling at me while i was being ridiculously entrenched in the moment. and not smiling just because she thought i was being ridiculous. hence why they used to call me captain emo.

09 "bering."
talkdemonic.
beat romantic.
[arena rock].

moment @ 0:35

the first time i heard that string riff that hits at the above moment, my eyes blinked in slow motion, the camera panned around me until it centered on me and did a vertigo shot until we cut to a flash-forward of me running down a leafy sidewalk. still in slow-motion of course, the camera followed my lower legs as my black dress shoes hit the pavement over and over while my pants fluttered in the crisp air like sheets hanging out to dry. when the keyboard kicks in, i abruptly stop and gasp for air, lurching my body backwards in my tracks, looking like i've just seen a ghost. my mouth agape, i drop my tan leather bag to the ground, the strap flailing in the air, sliding gently off my fingertips. the camera switches to a shot of ______ slightly out of focus, but it's there. i've just noticed it. i need to get a grip. i need to think. i need to act. i need this life, this _____, this _____, this _____, because without it, i will sink. every once in a while a song comes along that makes my life feel like a character revelation scene in a film, and this is indeed one of those songs. luckily it also kicks me in my ass and gets me to end my escapist film and get living.

08 "too much happy wet hair."
love of everything.
superior mold and die.
[record label].

"you oughta be on top of me, but you're just too bloody."

this was one of the last of many in-studio performances i had the pleasure of witnessing as i ended my time as music director at radio k this summer, and it quickly became my favorite in-studio performance EVER because of the version of this song that bobby burg and his ragtag band put together for us on tape. bobby looks exactly like what you would after hearing this song: cherub-like, shy, modest, unassuming, etc. but the passion he exudes when performing is absolutely unequivocal to 99% of musicians, even the really emo ones that cry when they sing. while his music is twinkly and all those other lo-fi and twee adjectives you would normally attach to this kind of music, the pure feeling of joy eventually overriding all feelings of regret and shoulda-been-shoulda-dones splattered every limb of my body and every artery of my heart when he sang this song for us. cale parks of aloha purposefully stumbled through his piano part to bring back the clumsy feeling of youth and tourmate cex (and his accompanying female singer) crooned the highlight lyric of the song without mics while sitting cross-legged on the dingy radio k couch with gigantic grins on their faces. and bobby, with his eyes closed, meticulously (yet allowing for hisses and pops of course) looped his guitar and his mouse-like voice (singing both through the mic and through his guitar pickups) and then set his guitar down, took out what looked like a fisher-price camera and took pictures of us recording them in the sound engineer's booth. when he did that, with his baseball cap sitting loosely on his head, and sampled the sound of the flash going off through the song, and then deconstructed it all to bits, i was the one with gigantic smile on my face. and i had never felt youth and innocence so pure rekindle back into my body and heart than i did at that very moment. thank you bobby.

07 "many times i've mistaken."
joan of arc.
eventually, all at once.
[record label].

"off-white is the new white."

geeze these things keep getting longer, don't they? if you're still with me, i'll buy you a drink sometime. bobby is also a friend, labelmate, and sometimes-member of this collective, which if you're really my friend, you should know that joan of arc's singer, tim kinsella, is my favorite lyricist and frankly, poet, of all time. the way he twists words carelessly/carefully and effortlessly/effervescently has always made me view him as the ultimate artist that (while many many people and critics despise him) is the best as straddling the line of experimentalism and accessibility. and everybody should also know my deep hatred for the acoustic guitar, so i was wary when i heard about a joan of arc album based mostly around it. thank god sam zurick is also one of my favorite guitarists and can make even the blandest of instruments sound alive and sputtering/spattering across your ears like a flimsy raincloud bursts around town, almost as if it's following you. and the strings, dear god the strings, gently rise the song up toward normality and sea-level at every chorus, but soon enough, like everything in life, it drops out. eventually, all at once, we are left with the same as what we had before, only tinted differently. it may look the same, feel the same, taste the same, sound the same, but it's the same old crap we've always had and will have for all time. bof!

06 "always for you."
the album leaf.
into the blue again.
[sub pop].

"i've chased this day."

damn, i haven't actually READ these lyrics until now and now i'm tearing up. i am usually a member of the faith that believes instrumental bands should stay instrumental (and some vocal-based bands should try going instrumental), but the album leaf is one of the only exceptions to this rule. yes, his voice is mediocre. and yes, i also thought that his lyrics were mediocre and could get more across with a simple keyboard melody or guitar repetition. i specifically thought this about this song for a long time. and then for some reason, it all hit me. TAL's brilliance at sound production makes his voice into a looming omniscient voice of reason and the lyrics are so simple that you might just miss their significance if you glance over them or just let them go in and out of your ears as "another love song." but after much inspection, i have discovered an important connection between my love for music and my love for the people in my life. we listen to music that makes us comfortable (and for some that might be music that is not inherently "comfortable" to listen to for most), music that reminds us of what we love, of what's worth living for. same goes for people. we surround ourselves with people that make us comfortable (and sometimes those people aren't necessarily considered "comfortable" to everyone), and like music, if we spend enough time with these people, we will never forget them. everything will start reminding us of them. like a song like this one with a catchy hook that doesn't leave your head for hours on end. i'm glad my loved never leave my head and everything reminds me of them.

check back for the LAST five songs of the countdown very soon!!! and then finally you will indeed get what i'm sure you have ACTUALLY been waiting for -- qualler's top 10 songs of 2006.  ¶ posted by chris at 3:58 PM 0 comments