So my good friend Dave asked me for my most 50 listened to songs of 2011. The rogue. I told him that was an outlandishly large playlist to request of me, and so negotiated him down to a paltry 10 songs. A handpicked, finely honed and scrupulously sculpted selection of my 10 most favouritist songs of the past 12 months.
These are those delicious tracks that I have returned to time and time again this year. Songs that I put on the stereo and keep turning the volume up and up until the whole room is throbbing and thrumming and cartwheeling with the beautiful vibrations of air. Songs that snare and twist up my heart through my earholes. Songs that curl their lyrics around my soul, burning their words into me with a heady mix of honesty and poetry and reality. Songs that make me tap my foot and contort my limbs and scrunch up my eyes in luscious disbelief. Songs that make the world pause for a minute, that transport me beyond the frailty of my own tentative existence into something bigger and more glorious and lovely. Songs that make me jealous that I haven’t written them, but thankful beyond measure that someone else has.
They are also all (barring Shad’s older offering and Ben Abraham’s stunning demo) taken from albums that have been released this year. So the list also happens to pretty much map onto my most favourite albums of 2011. I hope you like them. I make no claims for their objective greatness, but trust that at least one of these will resonate in your bones and marrow in the way they do mine.
1. Holocene- Bon Iver (stunning cinematography to match a stunning track) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE
2. Wooden Heart- Listener (hard to know whether to post the live video or album version. Both are awesome in different ways, so check them both ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8k9rD7lx9c
3. Eyes Wide Open- Gotye (the whole album really needs a listen, and it was a toss up between this and the fantastic ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ for the top spot.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyVJsg0XIIk&feature=related
4. The Bad In Each Other- Feist (What a beat and an absolute cracker of a riff to open an album with. Simple but genius.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV8BrMDtOjY&feature=related
5. Wolves At The Door- David Bazan (One of my top lyrics of the year, “You’re a Goddam fool but I love you.” Also, it’s free to download, so what’s stopping you?) http://www.davidbazan.com/wolves-at-the-door/
6. Reach A Bit Further- Wild Beasts (Taken from ‘Smother’ which is, to my ear, an even stronger album that the Mercury nominated ‘Two Dancers.’ This live acoustic version is stark and haunting but the album version is lush and beautifully produced) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYC4imLJRYQ
7. Keep Running- Gemma Hayes (this acoustic version is perfect. Also, I am a little bit in love with this woman.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDEAALkPpyw
8. A Heavy Abacus- The Joy Formidable (an unashamedly generic chord progression I know, but the soaring chorus makes me want to stomp about the room every time it kicks in. Or punch the steering wheel when I drive. In a good way.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsGg_07VrX0
9. Compromise- Shad (yes from an older album, but perhaps my most listened to hiphop track this year. The horns, the beat, the lyrics and the musicality never fail to get me up and dancing. This was thus a hazardous track to listen to when I had a busted knee). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TaFqPYLjZw&feature=related
10. Speak- Ben Abraham (this pretty much unknown Australian artist has played a blinder with nothing more than a piano and his voice. I don’t think I could ever tire of listening to this.) http://soundcloud.com/benabraham/speak-demo
Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/balakov/