Songs Of The Year: Young Knives - Turn Tail

The Young Knives were never the most likely cup winners from the British post-punk/new wave revival of the last few years. A trio of geeky tweed wearing public schoolboys, they lacked the obvious glamor of your Franz Ferdinands and Bloc Parties. Yet, as many of these same bands jumped the shark on their second or (more typically) third effort (Long Blondes, Bloc Party, Futureheads, Kaisers, etc), Young Knives turned in a second album this year thats's arguably stronger, and certainly more varied, than the debut.

One of the highlights off Superabundance, "Turn Tail" sees the band changing styles from sharp-edged, sardonic post-punk as superbly named bassist The House Of Lords pairs up with brother Henry Dartnell on the vocal and a string section is rolled into the studio. The effect is to soften the edges, particularly when the strings kick in with an uplift that belies the defeated, uncertain mood, best summed up by the chorus: "We're all slaves on this ship/This ship's sinking/We will not reach the shore/I will turn tail and run."

It's an unexpected moment when first discovered on the album, surrounded as it is by the more typical spiky guitars and sarky lyrics, but it shows some progression and growth from the band that many of their peers either lacked completely or substituted with gratuitous, half-baked experimentalism or (conversely) sellout commercial sheen (or 45 minutes worth of character-free dross - hello, Kaisers). Great song from a terrific album. They also cover "Stand & Deliver" by Adam & The Ants live, which is worth valuable bonus points.

Songs Of The Year: The Raveonettes - Young & Beautiful

Good year for Denmark's underrated Raveonettes, who followed up an album, Lust Lust Lust, widely hailed as a return to form, with a string of four digital-only EPs* towards the end of the year. "Young & Beautiful" is the lead track from the third release, Beauty Dies, which blends a distorted New Order bassline with a quirky, wavering synth hook and a buried, ethereal vocal from Sharin Foo,  walking a line between My Bloody Valentine and The Ronettes. It's a kissing cousin to the album's "Dead Sound", but darker and more affecting. Brief, sinister and beautiful, it holds up as well as anything on the album.  

*The final EP of the year, the holiday-themed Wishing You A Rave Christmas, is also worth checking out, not least for a slow, synthesized "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."

Songs Of The Year: Toadies - So Long Lovey Eyes

Fort Worth's own Toadies finally stopped doing the annual Dallas St. Patrick's Day prick-tease thing and got back together properly for a whole (excellent) album, No Deliverance, this year, with a US tour that included a stop at Possum Kingdom Lake, out in the middle of fucking nowhere 60 miles west of FW, and the inspiration for the title of their biggest hit. You can see "Possum Kingdom" live at Possum Kingdom at Spin but the bastards won't let you embed it.

The leadoff track from No Deliverance was classic Rubberneck era Toadies - a touch of punk, a little Pixies, and a dash of chicken-wire Texas bar band. Entertainingly, it starts out like "Plane Crash," the lead track off their previous album, 2001's Hell Below/Stars Above, with a grungy riff erupting from the right speaker before the band rides in on top of a snare that's being beaten all to shittery. Vaden Todd Lewis drawls through the verses before demonstrating he can scream just as loud as ever on the chorus, and the rest of the band is on top form. Like they'd never been away, etc. Fucking hell they were good live this year too.

Live version of "So Long Lovey Eyes" below, followed by a live version of "Doll Skin" off Hell Below live in San Francisco in September.

Songs Of The Year: The Cure - Underneath The Stars

This year's Cure album, 4:13 Dream, only their fourth since 1992's Wish, is better than any of the other three released since that time, which doesn't necessarily excuse it from the disappointment category. A marked improvement over 2006's self-titled, Ross Robinson-produced funless grind, it's a fairly upbeat and diverse affair - the band in Kiss Me or Head on the Door mode, but it's too often Cure-by-numbers - here's the poppy first single, here's the wacky freakout, here's the shouty one, etc., many of which have directly recognizable progenitors, and, given it was supposed to represent the poppier side of the band, there's a marked lack of memorable tunes. 

"Underneath The Stars" doesn't exactly escape the formula trap (here's the Disintegrationy one), but rises above it with an epic, swirling track, a classic Cure long instrumental intro heavy on chiming guitar giving way to Robert Smith's vocals, buried and back masked in the mix.  Fat Bob's voice has improved over the years, more expressive and multi-faceted, a broadening of the palette even as the lyrical subject matter has continued to coalesce around familiar themes and vocabulary.  

If there's a criticism it's that the band as a whole continues to suffer from Smith's sudden aversion to synthesizer that saw the exit of longtime keyboardist Roger O'Donnell from the band a few years ago. It's somewhat less of an issue live, where sheer, muscular force and the welcome return of Porl Thompson on guitar compensate, but there's an atmosphere missing from widescreen efforts like this (on the subject of "Atmosphere", it's interesting that the one apparent synthesized tool still allowed in the box is the windchime effect...). A welcome return to form and the clear highlight of the album - will the rumored "dark side" half of the 4:13 Dream sessions, allegedly due next year, see more of this?

Songs Of The Year: M83 - Graveyard Girl

M83's third album, a self-confessed tribute to the 80s, was one half genius new wave pastiche, one half slightly overlong atmospheric instrumentals. This is of the former category - the oft-invoked "soundtrack to a movie John Hughes never made" pull-quote has its roots principally in "Graveyard Girl," which starts with a rapid drum machine roll straight into a track that could have fit quite easily on the Pretty In Pink soundtrack. Book Of Love synths swirl around Cocteau/MBV-lite guitar as M83 leader Anthony Gonzalez whispers the tale of a none-more-goth girl who "collects crowns made of black roses/but her heart is made of bubble-gum." 

There's a marvelously cheesy spoken breakdown where the titular deathrockette (surely inspired by Ally Sheedy's Breakfast Club "Basket Case") explains the cemetery is her home, etc., before those fantastic breath-like synths and the specter of Kate Bush bridge back to the chorus.  It's a fantastic, utterly swooning moment (review 2:32, if you will), that perfectly evokes the movies and the era without ever coming across as anything other than totally sincere. You can picture where this crops up in the hypothetical film, which I've just decided stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and myself, perfectly. 

It's a great trick - and a highly focused one; Gonzalez isn't paying homage to 80s music in general or new wave in particular, but very specifically mid-late period glossy synthpop from around '84 to '88.  If there's a weak spot, it's the lead vocal; not so much on its own terms but in fully evoking the mid 80s feel Gonzalez is clearly going for.  What this song needs isn't French and whispered, but German and bombastic - Alphaville's Marian Gold would fucking kill this thing.  Terrific nonetheless - stick it on your TDK AD-90* between Book Of Love's "Modigliani" and OMD's "Dreaming".

* Real men used normal bias. Chrome is for the ladies.

Songs Of The Year: Oasis - Falling Down

Oasis used to be a great indie guitar band with occasional lapses into 60s-influenced Beatley mediocrity; a lot of Lydon and La's with a little Lennon. Too often this decade they've been precisely the opposite, with albums mired in mid-tempo dirge, weighed down by cod-psychedelic guitar flourishes and those inevitable fucking Beatles lyrical references (and, occasionally, a motherfucking sitar, which I am quite positive we'd all collectively agreed absolutely no one was ever to use in a popular music context ever again).

This year's Dig Out Your Soul, unfortunately, is too frequently more of the same, but "Falling Down" is a stunning exception, four minutes of rolling drums faintly reminiscent of the Chemical Brother's collaboration "Setting Sun," restrained guitar and keening strings surrounding a fragile vocal from Noel (good, though as ever, you can't help wondering what Liam might have done with it). There's a lightness of touch apparent in the melody and approach here that's missing from much of their recent output, which far too often seems phoned in according to a series of familiar templates*. OK, there's probably some "Tomorrow Never Knows" here, so it's not entirely Beatles free, but it's one of those rare moments where the weight of history, of writing Oasis songs and performing them in an Oasis style, doesn't seem to be in play, and it's all the better for it. The lyrics are utter balls, of course, but in the good way ("Wonderwall") rather than the other way ("Magic Pie").

Could just about have been a 94-95 era b-side, and you can't pay much of a higher compliment than that, can you? Know what it fades into on the next track though? A fucking sitar.

* Those templates in full:
1. The mid-tempo sludgy dirge with no discernible tune at all. Probably has (parentheses in the title).
2. The big lighters-in-the air pale imitation of Don't Look Back In Anger ballad.
3. The lead-off single that sounds exactly like the last lead-off single with an exclamation point or clumsy contraction in the title.
4. The Liam-written Lennon solo career tribute.
5. The one written by either Gem or Andy Bell that makes you wonder why Noel suddenly discovered democracy. And exactly who in Ride was responsible for all the good songs.

Songs* Of The Year: MGMT - Time To Pretend

(Yes I know it came out on an EP in 2005 but it was a different version altogether and fuck off, etc). Madly and utterly euphoric, from the whooosh into the opening verse to the "Yeah Yeah Yeah"s that bring it to its close. For the four-odd minutes in between, spaced-out synth pads and bleeps, janglepop guitar and liberal use of a horn section**  wrap around a brilliantly cynical lyric about shooting smack, banging models and choking on vomit, delivered double-tracked and drenched in reverb with a catch in the voice that offsets the irony, all driven by distorted, propulsive drumming. 

It's a kitchen-sink production, four and a half minutes of hugely imaginative psychedelic electro-pop. Sticking it right at the front of the fucking album is a supremely ballsy move - it's a testament to the strength of Oracular Spectacular that the rest of the record isn't a huge letdown. "Time To Pretend", meanwhile, is a genuine classic. Shitting hell, I think there's actually an oboe in there too. Astonishing.

*Songs. See, it's fucking plural. More than one.

** There is simultaneously not enough brass in today's popular music and vastly too much on any given Bruce Springsteen album.

Songs Of The Year: Goldfrapp - A&E

The newly pastoral Alison Goldfrapp coos all prettily over the sort of synth melodies Vince Clarke used to knock out for Innocents-era Erasure (check out the little sequencey bit at 1:47). A lovely mid-tempo number that on closer inspection, and in typical Goldfrapp form, actually appears to be about overdosing on pills. Cracking remix by Maps on the single too. Live version below because the actual video's terribly short of Alison Goldfrapp.

Songs Of The Year: Manic Street Preachers - Umbrella

The Manics have always made great covers out of unlikely songs - the live acoustic "Last Christmas" and the post-Richey comeback "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" come to mind - but this year's cover of Rihanna's "Umbrella" is an utter classic, stripping back the dance production to reveal a storming pop song underneath.

The key here is the total commitment on Bradfield's part - there's no self-aware "we're covering a pop tune aren't we clever and ironic" shit here - he just fucking goes for it like it's the most profound lyric ever written. "If You Tolerate This" style Moog, massive power chords and a great guitar solo at the end round it out. Should have been a gigantic international hit around the world rather than a one-off mp3 for a charity comp. The mood change between this and the forthcoming Albini-produced Richey-lyrics funfest ought to be fairly dramatic, but this is throwaway pop Manics at its best.