songs of the decade: part six

53. Bright Eyes - The First Day Of My Life



Listen to this, turning a globe in your ends, dotting the places you've been: I was born here, here and here.

52. Uzi + Ari - Don't Black Out

I've noticed I tend to be quite partial to anything that concerns itself thematically with the link between falling asleep and the cold. I'm not sure why, maybe some sort of Hibernian affinity for the idea of hibernation, or maybe because I'm lazy, or maybe because my family name actually means 'the sleepy'. Anyway, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, and that kind of thing is exactly what Ben Shepard does here, and he does it brilliantly. This song sounds like it was dreamt up, written and recorded in the midnight hours before slumber overtakes us. It's like a bed I keep coming back to.

51. Feist - 1,2,3,4



One, two, three, and four, like my four children surrounding me, gazing with whatever smile it was that won me, their mother's smile, maybe, simple and homely, and mine.

50. Múm - Green Grass of Tunnel



I cannot listen to this song unless it's dark outside, unless I'm somewhere sleepy and warm, and I can properly appreciate the way the singer here, here voice sounds like a blanket.

49. Efterklang - Cutting Ice to Snow

This song tries so hard to be cold. Look at that title! Hear the piano being tapped at like water dripping from icicles. Still, the sun keeps everything bright, glazing off in the distance, melting snow, warming hearts.

48. The Knife - Heartbeats



This song speaks about one night, but it's the same one night that everyone finds themselves going out looking for, a night of closeness and shared breath and warmth and feeling that we want to seek out. This song gets it so right, it could almost be shorthand.

47. Arms - Shitty Little Disco



A song which seems, when you really turn your head and listen to it, to be put together like some kind of constellation, guitar lines and streaking synths laid out and drawn together against a sparse black background, soft and big and beautiful, and telling some simple story ...in which Todd goes out, gets moody, drunk and sick, but ends up with a girl whose name he kinda forgets. This is the kind of story that sounds much, much better in a song, and he knows it, so he gives the story guitars that are angry yet catchy, vocals that are gentle yet insistent, and a beat that just won't fucking quit.

46. Page France - Say Wolf in the Summertime



Happy but not naive. Poppy but not cliched. Bouncy but not silly. Brilliant!

45. Peter Broderick - Games Again



This is the closing song to one of my favourite records of this year. It takes a melody first played in the album's first moments, and wraps itself up in it, making it bigger and bolder. It's like putting your little imprint on an apartment you've found somewhere when you move in, when you push your furniture at angles to the wall, when you've filled the kitchen with your food, when you've put up your posters and left your books on desks, when you've slept in your new bed until it's no longer new - and then the day comes when you leave. You pack up these things in boxes, tight and full and pressed down, like the feeling you get when you hold back tears. You pick up your clothes, and use the key a final time, and you undo all the things you did with such simple joy. You shut the door a last time, temporarily homeless. You bid farewell to a place you made part of you.

44. The New Pornographers - Myriad Harbor

This song in particular is really something, just for the way that opening melody has the strange effect of both knocking you off your feet and raising you up. It's an incredible piece of songwriting, and as with most Bejar songs, there's nothing good enough I can say about it.

43. Outkast - Hey Ya!



Don't let the laughter here fool you - this song is beautifully put together, and it pulls you together when you need it, with a chorus like a surprise party.

42. Frog Eyes - Bushels



This song is a country all of its own. It must be, because it doesn't sound like anywhere where regular people would live.

41. Sigur Ros - #4 {Njósnavélin}



Like sailing tall ships made of snow invading the sun, to borrow a phrase.

{I know this has been delayed well beyond the point of irony, but my reasons are good.}