No particular order here, I just remembered a thread where America said the whole Caring About Indie Music scene really went off a cliff after the last decade and figured it's deep enough in the rear-view now to look back fondly on it.
Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks"
I never really understood the hype around Grizzly Bear. Most of their music just sounds like freeform mumbling and burbling to me. But for one shining moment, they decided to write a pop song, and it was glorious.
Some creative soul set it to scenes from Le ballon rouge and the result is so perfect that it's a shame the band didn't come up with it first.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps"
Feels like there's such a consensus on this song's place in the pantheon that I can't really add much except that I've been listening to this song on a regular basis since the summer of 2004 and only just a few hours ago did it dawn on me that Karen O sounds like Chrissie Hynde here.
Mountain Goats - "This Year"
I love the Mountain Goats and would have made sure to see them anyway back in 2012, but I went to that concert because I
desperately needed to hear and communally sing along to this song. I hadn't felt like that since high school when I went to Summerfest to hear Average White Band play "Pick Up the Pieces."
Modest Mouse - "Ocean Breathes Salty"
No, not "Float On," which is more "iconic" or whatever as a song of the decade because they said they wrote it to cheer everyone up about George W. Bush, but this was always the far superior song to me.
MGMT - "Time to Pretend"
Allowing this one as an Iconic Song Of The Decade: "This is our decision: to live fast and die young/We've got the vision, now let's have some fun/Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?/Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?" is millennialsruinedby2008.mp3
Broken Social Scene - "It's All Gonna Break"
My second-favorite art-rock epic with the lyric "when I was a kid, you fucked me in the ass." The 2005 s/t is near and dear to my heart, way more than
You Forgot It In People, and it was a tough call to pick one song. It came down to this and "Shoreline."
Radiohead - "Idioteque"
Well, it's the
Kid Aest song off
Kid A (surprisingly, this is not the second track, "Kid A"), and it's the album that set the whole decade of music in motion. I remember being bummed out that the chords are a sample from some ur-primitive electronic music and not original.
Arcade Fire - the entirety of
FuneralSeems unfair to pick just one cut off the album, picking from "Wake Up" which was the big hit, the Neighborhood suite, which itself can't be fairly partitioned, "Une année sans lumiere," which is my personal favorite, and "Crown of Love
Arcade Fire - "No Cars Go"
Even more unfair is that I'm double-dipping on the Arcade Fire, which I try to avoid doing on best-of lists, but if I had to pick one song that most purely encapsulated the band's entire artistic mission before James Murphy ruined them with hipster irony, this would have to be the one (the
Neon Bible version, not the EP version). It still gets me down to think of how awesome this band was before they took a lot of advice. The lead single from the new album just answers the question no one ever would have thought to ask: "what if General Public were shitty?"
LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends"
Old Crow Medicine Show - "Wagon Wheel"
You can probably blame the Mumfords and Lumineers on this song.
Belle and Sebastian - "Your Cover's Blown"
B&S had to dream it all up again a la U2 after
Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant was such a desultory album, but they didn't
really nail down the new sound until the EP for "Wrapped Up in Books." If I do a thread for LPs
The Life Pursuit will be near the top.
Tindersticks - "People Keep Comin' Around"
Some people might call this song a mere rewrite of "Riders on the Storm" but those people are stupid assholes. I'll never understand how Tindersticks was never more popular stateside than they were. I can't think of many bands that were firing on all cylinders in terms of instrumentation, musicianship, and lyricism the way they were from 1993-2003, especially once they potted down a lot of the baroque-pop influences in favor of jazz and blue-eyed soul. Bjork, maybe, but now you're talking singular vision versus a full band and the interplay there. Anyway, I think what makes this song a cut above the rest, besides the awesome bass line, Rhodes piano, and horn arrangements, is that it's one of the only times the lead vocalist defers some of the lead vocals to thhe guy who was their chief instrumentalist, and his vocals add as much as everything else he did.
Wilco - "Jesus, Etc."
The bridge when the pedal steel comes in might be my favorite eight (nine?) bars in all of recorded music.
The Weakerthans - "One Great City!"
Old 97s - "Designs on You"
The girl I was hopelessly in love with in high school sent me this song one time, which is funny because by rights I should have been the one sending it to her, but then she always was so much cooler than I was.
More as they come to mind and I beat myself up relentlessly for initially omitting them.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
