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