#gnjsoty2k17

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 6/50 ]

“Dreams Tonite” by Alvvays

DV:

If it was only the opening lines, “Dreams Tonite” would be enough. “Rode here on the bus/ Now you're one of us/ It was magic hour” form as concise and allusive a short story as any Hemingway wrote, mingling place with feeling and atmosphere to construct an utterly indelible image. “Dreams Tonite” isn’t just those lines, of course; Alvvays are just getting started. Their tale of a lost, haunting love - of the confusing knowledge that something’s gone unaccountably and uncontrollably wrong, gets one of the year’s most welcoming productions. The kind where the synths and guitars combine into a warm embrace, as softly propulsive as the vocal, which situates itself between a chant and a whisper. "Dreams Tonite” is transporting and beautiful, a sensory oasis in a discordant world.

MG:

I expected “Archie, Marry Me” to hang like an albatross around Alvvays’s neck, diminishing each subsequent slightly, creating a mantle which could never be reached. I was wrong! I think in part because they are excellent at sticking to shorter album lengths, there isn’t much need to hem and haw over whether a song like “Dreams Tonite” is really breaking any new ground. It feels irrelevant because Alvvays don’t ask us to journey with them to some far away place. We’re all at home in the wheelhouse. Here it’s warm with familiar melancholy, the kind that allows us to fall into deeper pleasures -- like the opening line, which DV rightly suggests is indelible. It’s delivered like a snap of hypnosis; how can you resist “Dreams Tonite” when you’re under their spell?

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 1/50 ]

“33rd” by cupcakKe

DV:

I don’t want to seem trite by saying it was a rough year for many of us, some much more than others, that many of us found solace in music, that many of the year’s biggest narrative throughlines seemed to be as much about the climate around the music as the music itself. Because it was and we did and they were, but we all already know that and it doesn’t do much for me to restate it less artfully than many others already have. But I also can’t ignore it when talking about “33rd”, a song that doesn’t directly address any of that and yet became my favorite song of the year because also, in a way, it addressed all of it. With “33rd”, cupcakKe created the year’s most exuberant song, three and a half minutes of utter confidence and self-possession, and even on the worst days it shines like the damn sun. It’s a simple song, really, but the simplest things have the most room for error: here, cupcakKe spins the title conceit (“The day I fall off is the motherfucking 33rd”) into the most joyous “fuck the haters” anthem I’ve ever heard. You can hear cupcakKe beaming through each line, skipping along the chorus and dropping each line of the verses like a series of M-80s tossed through an alley. "33rd” finds her as gleefully filthy as ever, unassailable and unexpectedly funny by turns, and it finds her delivering a message: don’t even think about underestimating what she’s capable of. This year, especially, those were welcome words to hear.

MG:

It feels like we’re at one of these junctures, again. Not this one, not where everything is placated and regimented into dullness, but where it’s imperative to divorce from the norm and embrace something radical. I’m not sure Trainspotting really shook up the status quo (and one movie can’t) or even introduced this idea to its audience, but it definitely made the anarchic alternative to “choose life” seem, I guess, entertaining? And I don’t think there’s any connection between presenting heroin addiction as a viable alternative to cultural boredom and our current opiate crisis (the timing of T2 is much, much more suspect) but I do think, “here we are!” 

I don’t think it’s a binary: choose life or choose death. But most days feel defined by those partisan voices. They are so loud. So much of what’s available as art feels defined (and confined) by this sort of prescriptive apocalypse and/or salvation. Even after some assholes said the art would get better! It’s mostly not better, if it’s better, it’s not better because we’re constantly dangling over the precipice of doom. Of the almost infinite alternatives to order and chaos, cupcakKe offers one: joy. Not a mitigated joy, not a joy that resists succumbing to pervasive unhappiness, not a joy that denies its opposite, but plain joy. 

Is this the way forward? I’d never claim to know. I feel better when I hear “do the math, dumb bitch!” and I’m sure I’m not alone. “33rd” manages to feel neither blithe nor determined. It wasn’t the year’s most popular song, it didn’t define a narrow zeitgeist, and it rated about a medium+ on the hype scale. There’s no real point we’re trying to make by positing that “33rd” is the song of the year, except that nothing was capable of dimming its shine. We can all go back to being miserable tomorrow, but today we keep waiting. 

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 14/50 ]

“Someone” by Anna Of The North

DV:

Maybe it makes me a rube, but I still can’t resist a late-song key change. Like not even slightly! And “Someone” has the year’s most shameless, a shift that effectively takes up the place where a bridge should go, and I can’t help it: I was won over instantly. It helps that Anna of the North has crafted one of the strongest recent iterations of the deathless 80s revival, a reverb- and synth- soaked paean to one-night stands that’s produced with an immaculate touch that gradually reveals its layers: an Outfield-esque guitar here, a cascading background chorus there. It helps that the change hammers in the urgency and need behind her plea, emphasizing and heightening the directness of the lyric. Mostly, it helps that I’m an easy mark: may this trick, when done this well, never get old.

MG:

When compiling this sort of year end list, I’m inclined to pick songs that feel in some way magical to me. They’re easier to write about because they didn’t just entertain me, they transformed me. “Someone” is not one of those songs. DV reduces it to a trick; I’d say it’s workman-like, slotting each piece in the right space for a song that’s seamless and consistently enjoyable. The first listen didn’t blow me away and neither has any subsequent listen. Instead, they’ve all managed the same minor victory. They’re pleasant. "Someone” is never not what I want to listen to, I don’t skip it, I never get confused about what’s playing. This all sounds simple because it is simple, and yet, that’s no less an accomplishment. This is competent and satisfying and ageless. 

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 4/50 ]

“Take Me” by Aly & AJ

MG:

So, this was crowd funded. I think we expect different things from Kickstarters proposed by under the radar or lifelong independent artists than we do from semi-popstars or former popstars or sisters Aly & AJ Michalka. I know I do, at least. And their album financing campaign was basically a souped up version of the same kinds of fan club memorabilia that has existed since the Beatles. Still, that makes the Ten Year EP, and “Take Me,” a different sort of release than the bulk of what’s made up our list. There’s no need for, no point to, even, a critical examination of this song. It’s paid for by fans and created for fans and everyone who was supposed to like it already does. This includes DV and me, though we didn’t buy any shares. It’s obviously in our wheelhouse, it’s not like we were won over by something abstract and mercurial. That said, and I know it sounds like extremely faint praise, it’s also what makes “Take Me” such an effervescent rush. There’s no one to please, no real need to make likeable or popular music. “Take Me” isn’t dangerous (I mean, come on, the extremely dated vampire imagery?) but it’s confident and well executed and it’s exactly what it sets out to be. That’s so accomplished at a time when Charli XCX is peddling the Pop 2 mixtape and Joyride idled into the ocean! Not everything has to move the game pieces forward (or push the board off the table.) It’s enough to be good and fun. It’s enough.

DV:

Aw, I love the vampire line! It’s strange to say about the umpteenth 80s-synthpop song of the 21st century, but part of what immediately grabbed me about “Take Me” was how completely unexpected it sounds. I remember Aly & AJ primarily for “Chemicals React”, which seems to have been supplanted by “Potential Breakup Song” as their biggest track, but both songs feature the kind of perfectly-polished, AM-friendly buzz of mid-2000s Radio Disney. I expected more of the same from their return, or perhaps much worse: it had been a decade, after all. So “Take Me”, Tears for Fears guitar and massive snare hits and twinkling synths, was perhaps initially a beneficiary of the low stakes. The thing is? “Take Me” is actually great. It retains just enough of the attitude and sound of Aly & AJ’s early work - specifically the cheesy distortion on the bridge’s “First you gotta ask me out!” - to preserve their original charm, while updating their approach for a new era, even if it’s by evoking an old one. And as the internal monologue of the lyric unfolds, as they sing anguish and passion and longing, equally cheesy-and-effective devices like the deferred release of the drum beat command attention while lampshading the song’s urgent, unreturned obsession. This is post-Emotion pop, to be certain, but there’s an extremity to it that sets it apart from Carly Rae Jepsen’s more fraught narratives. In “Take Me” nothing is complicated, everything is crucial. Aly & AJ are irresistible force blocked by immovable object; their thirst both must and cannot be satisfied. In a year as strange as this one, of course one of the best songs came from the comeback least likely to.

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 19/50 ]

“Turn Out the Lights” by Julien Baker

MG:

I’ve come to really loathe the way other writers talk about Julien Baker, particularly in the focus on how “stripped back” her production is (or how, previously, apparently, small her budget was.) The idea is that there’s this grand sense of deliberately infused tension between the stakes of her lyrics and the minimalism of her arrangements. Bullshit. This is arena rock, it’s obviously arena rock. Imagine how cathartic and magnificent you’ll feel when Julien Baker shouts that titular line at you, a whole stadium filling with twinkling dots, some the execution of her spectacular stage set-up, the rest a sea of bobbing cellphones. That’s the tension! The tension of creating small in anticipation of playing it big. She won’t be in small rooms for much longer. 

DV:

I can really only echo MG here: “Turn Out the Lights” is all about the deliberate build from confessional darkness to explosive, strobing climax. It’s absolutely a song designed for venues ten times the size of the ones she currently fills, a sound big enough to catch the attention of U2 fans filtering through the concession lines. It works because she remains equally compelling in both modes: the verses, spare but taut, don’t feel like they’re just keeping time until the reveal, nor does the chorus give in to theatrics and lose touch with the intensely personal revelations that precede it. “Turn Out the Lights” is mixed dry, as if Baker knows the spaces it’s played in will provide their own ambiance. I want to hear it My Bloody Valentine style, where the venue hands out earplugs at the door.

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 17/50 ]

“Anxi.” by Kelly Lee Owens ft. Jenny Hval

MG:

“Anxi.,” to me, has always been an abbreviation for “anxiety,” though that’s nowhere explicit in the song. Instead, it shapes and then explores a collision between the gossamer and the mechanical. Jenny Hval builds the opening section, a pile of breathy, clipped bits of words falling to the ground and creating a pillowy landing for her spoken word interlude. The thoughts are both nonsense and potent: dream dialogue. Kelly Lee Owens doesn’t so much cut in, or even juxtapose, her more concrete techno passage -- it’s a gentle swerve, a lane change. With both modes established, the song weaves between its two channels in a brief resolution that’s both tense and spiritual. It’s not about anxiety, it’s about dancing up the ether. 

DV:

“They started talking again”, Owens repeats at the end of “Anxi.” It’s a phrase weighted with portent, delivered as if it’s a giggle, and I realize: it’s only weighted because the track before it has me so keyed up that anything could seem that way. Anxiety can be like that, the swing between tension and release, and “Anxi.” seems to capture that contrast in the shift between Hval and Owens’ leads. What that last line manages to do is synchronize the two sides of the balancing act, meshing the stress and solace into a single line encompassing both. Encapsulating the worst part of anxiety: even when it lifts, it’s never actually gone.

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 28/50 ]

“Don't Delete The Kisses” by Wolf Alice

MG:

It’s too clever by two that “Don’t Delete The Kisses” ends exactly where it started, a ceaseless flipping of the vulnerability coin. So which is it -- missing the metaphorical bus (actually, Rowsell makes it but the bus is fear and it hurtles towards familiarity) or turning into proverbial mush? The song’s title is a clue, written to past self from a future self. The message isn’t just risk it, fall in love. The message is temper yourself, stop there. The best part of love or lust or crush or infatuation or any of the million feelings “Don’t Delete The Kisses” feels isn’t the merry-go-round of one stage to the next, it’s the soaring height of each individual twist. That urging, from the part of you that knows best, that knows when to stop and how much is enough, is the opposite of soaring. “Don’t Delete The Kisses” is a song about finding that stability, leaving behind the back and forth, while feeling fond of a former self, a former life, and a still living love. 

DV:

There were a few songs more purely romantic than “Don't Delete The Kisses” in 2017, but only a very few. It starts with self-doubt, the lyrics tumbling out of Ellie Rowsell’s mouth in an unbroken stream, uncertainty and paralysis leaving her alone and overwhelmed. But as the track builds, she finds herself: by the time “When we catch eyes at that stupid party”, she delivers “I know exactly what to do” with a precision and confidence the feels nearly as triumphant as the final, transformed chorus. Wolf Alice embody that confidence as they deliver a song like a four-minute play, a series of escalating vignettes that resolve in well-earned catharsis. Like the very best romcoms, “Don’t Delete The Kisses” laughs in the face of cliche and leaves me both teary-eyed and exhilarated.

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2017 ]]

[ nO. 31/50 ]

“13 Beaches” by Lana Del Rey

MG:

There’s no shortage of dystopian panic over the hell technology has wrought upon humanity. Everything from predictions that robots will merge with or outright overtake their sentient creators to theories that our lives as we know them are a simulation meant to inform and/or entertain a higher life form to the belief that our smartphones are hijacking our brains is threatened by philosophers and scientists alike. It’s hard to tell whether constant fear of the future is our hell or if a real future hell awaits. Is our fear of the robot species any different from our grandparents’ fear of Communist Russia? Maybe civilized society is the dystopia. 

Regardless, at a time when it’s less and less possible to escape anything and yet our brains are labyrinthian mazes of distraction and fantasy, it feels beyond important, beyond urgent -- a fucking emergency -- to have a place where our personas don’t exist and we aren’t experiencing a constant secondary alienation from monetizing our selves on social media. Is the 13th beach a real place or just another room in your mind? In Lana’s way, it’s both. When she finally finds that place that doesn’t demand camera-readiness she’s still not alone because then she confronts herself. “13 Beaches” isn’t utterly hopeless, but it’s abruptly pragmatic. We do this and we keep doing this, it’s just the way we are. 

DV:

This was the year Lana Del Rey turned political, whatever that means, as if she wasn’t before, as if anything could have been otherwise. I’m not sure I quite agree with that narrative, though at least it provided a break from another round of questions about how “real” she is. What I appreciate most about “13 Beaches” is that it quite explicitly disengages with these questions in order to seek and establish a space for Lana to just exist, alone and unbothered. None of us can deal, probably, and sometimes not dealing means you need to retreat into yourself. And even as Lana admits and confronts herself it’s in a song that’s full of stately grandeur, quiet and calming and intimate: do you not want to take the same step, at least not now, at least not yet? “13 Beaches” is the place to hide away from the world. It’s functional music that accomplishes the precise opposite of what its lyric suggests, and I needed that this year.