"Halcyon" #119 ALTER.NATION.MiX - weekly favtraX 02-03-2021 (20trx 1h 15m)

 ALTER.NATION #119 (20trx 1h 15m)

Lost Horizons, François & the Atlas Mountains, Julien Baker,  Black Nash, Altin Gün, Nightshift, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Cloud Nothings, Alice Cooper, Mouse on Mars, Adrian Younge, Menahan Street Band

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"H a l c y o n"

Haunting indie pop from the duo of Bella Union label-runner Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins) and drummer Richard Thomas (Dif Juz), with singing guests.

Lost Horizons - In Quiet Moments / Halcyon feat. Penelope Isles /  Unravelling In Slow Motion feat. Ren Harvieu

When the duo of Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins) and Richard Thomas (Dif Juz) released Ojalá, their debut album as Lost Horizons, in late 2017, it marked a return to recording for both for the first time in 20 years. Motivated by a world in need of hope as well as a return to music-making, the 15-track set consisted of improvisation-based instrumentals that Raymonde (bass, guitar, keyboards, production) and Thomas (drums, additional keys and guitar) then passed along to collaborators, who were tasked with adding lyrics and vocals. They take the same approach three years later with the 16-song In Quiet Moments, this time with themes of death and rebirth suggested to the lyricists. (Raymonde's mother had died in the interim.)... In Quiet Moments begins with "Halcyon," featuring Penelope Isles. They're one of a handful of representatives here from Raymonde's Bella Union label, which also houses Lost Horizons. The song sets the mood with a haunting indie rock created with a low pitch range (established by bass guitar), ringing guitar tones, wistful chord colors, and ghostly, wordless vocals before the plaintive main melody even makes its entrance. At that point, the track remains atmospheric in nature -- as does the album -- with hard-to-discern lyrics, weeping guitar riffs, and a steady, middling tempo. The tone throughout In Quiet Moments tends toward an eerie, even foreboding poignance, if one with grooving rhythms and occasionally brighter arrangements... Ren Harvieu's "Unravelling in Slow Motion," which opts for a smoky, jazz lounge feel...

Globally-inspired indie pop ensemble formed in the U.K. and led by French singer/songwriter François Marry.

François & the Atlas Mountains - Banane Bleue / Par le passé / Tourne Autour

...Ironically, the sixth release by his longtime band is essentially another solo outing, this time in collaboration with Finnish synth pop producer Jaakko Eino Kalevi. Breezier and more playful than some of his recent releases, Banane Bleue (yes, that translates to Blue Banana in English) is also smaller in scale, with Marry often relying on borrowed instruments and makeshift recording spaces... Less busy than some of the group's mid-2010s albums, Banane Bleue opts for more minimal arrangements with softly pulsing synths, bright guitars, shimmering harmonies, and a surprising amount of pop hooks... 

Memphis-based singer/songwriter with a knack for finding the shaky ground between heart-wrenching and cathartic.

Julien Baker - Little Oblivions / Ringside / Favor

Julien Baker's third album, Little Oblivions, follows her first appearance on the Billboard 200 with 2017's Turn Out the Lights as well as a full-length collaboration with like-minded singer/songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus under the handle Boygenius. Giving the impression of being ready for bigger stages, Little Oblivions turns up the volume and expands arrangements, including notably adding a consistent rhythm section to her songs for the first time. Beyond mere "full-band arrangement," though, tracks like "Ringside" ... It's a sharp contrast to her sparse and brittle debut, though the music remains almost entirely self-made, with Baker performing all but an "additional instrumentation" credit from engineer Calvin Lauber and backing vocals by Dacus and Bridgers on one track ("Favor")... "How long do I have until I've spent up everyone's good will?" ("Favor") populate emo-adjacent songs about waning faith, drinking, depression, and doomed relationships. There are glimmers of gratitude alongside the masochistic ideation of entries including "Ringside," where she casts herself as her own opponent in the ring. That song also deviates from typically rising and falling, sine wave-shaped instrumentation patterns, opting instead of constantly churning accompaniment...

Solo project of versatile songwriter Jody Smith that began to take shape when he finished a five-year stint of military service.

Black Nash - Black Nash / Love Underwater / Burn My Body Down

...melding the daydreamy funk of Unknown Mortal Orchestra's danciest moments with the damaged, lo-fi production of artists like Homeshake or Cleaners from Venus. Smith doesn't stay in one mode for long, though, even within the same song. Album standout "Love Underwater" begins as a sunny acoustic tune and grows increasingly psychedelic as surreal lyrics about dolphins and the C.I.A. and layers of wild guitar overdubs or distorted drums enter the mix. Smith's songwriting style nods to insular, curious talents like Emmit Rhodes or Alex Chilton, but he always dismantles his songs before they get too easily digestible...

Part Dutch, part Turkish combo dedicated to updating the psychedelic sounds of '70s Turkey, adding deep funk and synthesizers to the mix.

Altin Gün - Yol / Ordunun Dereleri

On their second album, Gece, Altin Gün perfected their updated version of the Turkish psychedelia of the late '60s/early '70s. The group of musicians from Holland and Turkey gave familiar Turkish folk songs a gleaming upgrade that combined bouncy rhythms with soaring electric saz lines, heartfelt vocals, and an overall feel of psychedelic warmth that was at once comforting and thrillingly new. Not content to repeat themselves, the band altered the approach and sound on 2021's Yol in a couple important ways. Thanks to the global pandemic, they weren't able to work together in a studio and instead traded ideas over email and shared files... It's a little shocking the first time "Ordunun Dereleri" -- which has all the rain-streaked windshield melancholy of Chromatics...

The band that became NIGHTSHIFT formed in 2019 in the ecosystem of Glasgow’s current indie scene...  The band was formed by David Campbell (guitar), Andrew Doig (bass), Eothen Stearn (keyboards/vocals) & Chris White (drums) as a “No Wave/No New York/early Sonic Youth/This Heat-esque” group, but their sound quickly evolved once guitarist/vocalist/clarinetist Georgia Harris joined (as the band was writing “Zöe“).

Nightshift - Zöe / Outta Space / Power Cut

After an album that saw the Glasgow combo Nightshift diving deep into noisy, off-kilter post-punk, they return with something more tightly wound and sparse that separates them from other bands plying a similar trade. Due to restrictions on recording in studios, the group worked remotely on Zöe, laying down loops and adding parts piece by piece in their respective homes. Whatever might have been lost by subtracting the energy of people playing together in the same room is offset by the home-cooked care put into the construction of the songs. Each track feels like it was painstakingly assembled out of scraps of sound, sewn together seamlessly and in fascinating ways.... This may only be Nightshift's second album, but it feels like the work of a well-seasoned group who have perfected their approach and sound.

Australian psychedelic collective with an intense work ethic and a wildly experimental outlook that reaches from synth prog to folk rock.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - L.W.  / East West Link / O.N.E.

While in lockdown, the dudes in King Gizzard spent their time recording songs. No shock there since that's just about all they seem to do given the prodigious output. In fact, they made enough for two albums... but 2021's L.W. somehow succeeds in ways that K.G. didn't. Maybe it's simply that the band might have saved the better songs for this record. Almost everything here sounds like they are firing on all cylinders; whether it's the rambling road-trip rock of "East West Link," the funky clavinet jam "If Not Now, Then When?," boogie rock-adjacent "Ataraxia," or 100 mph psychedelic blowout "See Me," the band come across with more vigor and verve than they did on K.G. Even when they slow things down, like on the evil-sounding swamp rocker "O.N.E."...

Cleveland, Ohio band that balances hardcore intensity and deceptively sweet melodies.

Cloud Nothings - The Shadow I Remember / The Spirit Of / A Longer Moon

Since Attack on Memory, Cloud Nothings have more than proven themselves as a formidable rock band. However, there's always been something special about Dylan Baldi's pithy, poignant pop songs. While most of the group's albums featured at least one or two of these gems, The Shadow I Remember is the first to focus on this side of Baldi's music since Cloud Nothings moved out of his bedroom. Baldi and company also come full circle with the album's creation: they recorded it with Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studio, where they made Attack. In their own way, The Shadow I Remember's compact, hooky outbursts are just as potent as the slow-burning epics on Cloud Nothings' other albums. They're so seasoned that they can shift from bouncy to crushing and back again in a blink on "The Spirit Of," ... "A Longer Moon" give the song an impressively cosmic sweep. By revisiting their past, Cloud Nothings find something new in it, as well as something timeless, and The Shadow I Remember is a full-throated, full-hearted triumph.

Pacific Northwest doom-grunge gods who were legendarily Kurt Cobain's favorite band.

Melvins - Working With God / Negative No No

As the years turned into decades, grunge forecasters the Melvins became more and more mercurial in their overall concept of where the band began and ended... Los Melvins were an incarnation including founding Melvin King Buzzo, longtime mainstay Dale Crover, and original drummer Mike Dillard. Working with God reunites this lineup (also sometimes referred to as "Melvins 1983" due to Dillard and Buzzo's 1983 formation of the band) for an album that includes returns to the band's early, sludgy power as well as some of the goofy juvenilia and lighthearted freakery of their 2010s output... With nothing to prove and never having seemed too concerned about impressing anyone, the Melvins continue to take their wild-eyed chaos anywhere they choose -- Working with God goes to some places that are strange and unforeseen even for them.

Pioneers of heavy rock and masters of shock rock in the early '70s, whose titular lead singer became a successful solo artist.

Alice Cooper - Detroit Stories / Rock & Roll (Lou Reed - The Velvet Underground cover)

.On his 2019 EP Breadcrumbs, shock rock pioneer Alice Cooper paid tribute to his hometown of Detroit... Cooper's longtime producer Bob Erzin delivers the same thick, powerful sound he's achieved on many of Cooper's post-2000s albums, with booming heavy metal drums, walls of guitar, and Cooper's sinister vocals high in the mix... Detroit Stories is stuck in a confusing limbo somewhere between tribute to Detroit and another album of the kind of campy, theatrical, radio-geared hard rock Cooper has been turning in since Hey Stoopid...

Highly inventive, genre-defying duo who became German electronic music legends.

Mouse on Mars - AAI / The Latent Space

On AAI, Mouse on Mars once again reinvent the tireless creativity that's driven them since the beginning of their career. After chopping up the vocals and performances of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and the National's Bryce Dessner and abstracting them into electronic anonymity on their previous album Dimensional People, this time Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner take the opposite approach: They synthesize the soul of artificial intelligence and give it a voice... The narrative style Mouse on Mars flirted with on Dimensional People blossoms on AAI's fully formed world-building: On "The Latent Space," wild electro-acoustic polyrhythms and sprightly vocalizations evoke a virtual gestation that sets the stage for the AI's evolution over the course of the album...

All-around talent with an uncanny ability to transform his obsession with late-'60s and early-'70s music into unique, impeccably made projects.

Adrian Younge - The American Negro / Rotten Roses

The American Negro is an unapologetic critique, detailing the systemic and malevolent psychology that afflicts people of color.  This project dissects the chemistry behind blind racism, using music as the medium to restore dignity and self-worth to my people.  It should be evident that any examination of black music is an examination of the relationship between black and white America.  This relationship has shaped the cultural evolution of the world and its negative roots run deep into our psyche. .. Vocals: Performed by Loren Oden, Chester Gregory and Sam Harmonix

This loose-knit crew of Brooklyn soul and funk players is comprised of members of the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, the Budos Band, and others.

Menahan Street Band - The Exciting Sounds of Menahan Street Band / The Duke

Proud sons of the extended Daptone Records family (though they officially record for their sibling label Dunham Records), the Menahan Street Band often get lumped in with the neo-soul revival, largely thanks to their label associations and their work backing up powerhouse R&B vocalist Charles Bradley. However, while 2021's The Exciting Sounds of the Menahan Street Band sounds very soulful indeed, it doesn't often sound like soul music. On these 14 instrumental tracks, the band's music frequently plays like a collection of soundtrack pieces to forgotten movies and television shows of the '70s... and if you're looking for cool atmospheres for your home or automobile with a large percentage of vintage flair, this is an ideal aural backdrop, not to mention a showcase for some excellent instrumentalists with an appreciation of things past and present.

Lost Horizons, François & the Atlas Mountains, Julien Baker,  Black Nash,Altin Gün, Nightshift, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Cloud Nothings, Alice Cooper, Mouse on Mars, Adrian Younge, Menahan Street Band

PnM.mix 1st: 33 from stereogum / the 200 best songs of 2010s

PnM.mix 1st: 33 from stereogum / the 200 best songs of 2010s

(82) David Bowie – “I Can’t Give Everything Away”
The final song on David Bowie’s final album, “I Can’t Give Everything Away” is one more winking, wistful transmission from one of the most iconic and important songwriters we’ve ever known. Spacious and somehow at peace, quoting the classic Low instrumental “A New Career In A New Town,” it was a goodbye that nodded to history and what Bowie had left us while also alluding to the new adventurous future that could have been. –Ryan Leas

(168) Charlotte Gainsbourg – “Deadly Valentine”
Not to play into stereotypes, but there is something so incredibly French about “Deadly Valentine” and its ability to be sexy, cool, and heartbroken all at once. A swirling synth-pop song from the matured perspective of a middle-aged Gainsbourg, it fights back against the world-weariness of age and all its accumulative struggles by seizing onto a dream newly lush and newly invigorated, abandoning mourning for the thump of a nightclub’s never-ending pulse. –Ryan Leas

(131) Leonard Cohen – “You Want It Darker”
By the end of his career, Leonard Cohen’s ever-wizened voice sounded beyond our reach — an aged poet who had seemingly gained the ability to see through the fabric of time. On You Want It Darker, he was writing his goodbye, and as funereal as its title track might be, it’s also a strikingly beautiful final message. The song sounds ancient, pulled from the ether; the singer, like he’s trying to grasp a lost wisdom one last time. –Ryan Leas

(130) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Jubilee Street”
Nick Cave has built one of the truly rare late-career passages in pop music. Already a cult icon 10 years ago, he ascended to a new level this decade with three albums that rank amongst his very best. Amidst it all is “Jubilee Street,” a career peak that also functioned like a mission statement for his elder-statesman years — a surreal, haunted myth, eventually shaking loose the gravity of time to roar into the night, “I’m transforming! Look at me now!” –Ryan Leas

(78) Radiohead – “True Love Waits”
Once a giddy romantic paean from Radiohead’s 2001 live album, “True Love Waits” emerged on a studio release 15 years later, its warm acoustic strums replaced by frigid piano chasms. In the interim, Thom Yorke split from his longtime partner, who later died of cancer. All this completely recontextualized Yorke’s central plea: “Don’t leave.” Even without details, it’s devastating — the sound of first a romance and then a life dissolving into nothingness. –Chris DeVille

(85) St. Vincent – “Strange Mercy”
Amidst all of St. Vincent’s self-conscious performance-art posturing, it can be hard to get a handle on Annie Clark the human being. But the title track of her 2011 album Strange Mercy is St. Vincent at her best and her most personal, an emotional, perspective-shifting response to her father’s imprisonment for financial crimes. It’s strange and merciful, yes, and powerful. –Peter Helman

(73) Sufjan Stevens – “Death With Dignity”
A multidimensional treatment of the residuals of love and grief and their interlocking frayed edges, framed within a series of immaculately-realized arrangements that still strike with the raw immediacy of peak Elliott Smith, Carrie & Lowell is the clear classic in a career strewn with masterpieces. The album’s stirring overture tracks Sufjan Stevens’ journey from fear to acceptance of what follows immutable loss. –Pranav Trewn

(181) Mac DeMarco – “Chamber Of Reflection”
Mac DeMarco has cooked up some great songs on guitar, but his greatest achievement may be a synth hallucination that demarcates the blurry line between chillwave and avant-garde hip-hop instrumentals. The further you retreat from consciousness, the better it sounds. –Chris DeVille

(140) Chromatics – “Cherry”
Chromatics, and Italians Do It Better at large, are architects of a particular ’10s sub-trend: a hazy echo of an ’80s that never quite existed, a cinematic and strung-out romanticism. “Cherry” was the perfect distillation of this, that “Drive soundtrack sound,” all yearning night drives through cityscapes drenched in lush, imagined neon glow. –Ryan Leas

(179) Cloud Nothings – “Wasted Days”
Dylan Baldi has written lots of great songs at the intersection of pop, punk, and indie rock, but his crowning achievement remains these nine minutes of body-clenching tension, carried along by a mantra that will resonate with anyone who’s ever disappointed themselves: “I thought I would be more than this!” –Chris DeVille

(136) Caribou – “Odessa”
That bassline, though. Dan Snaith has managed to successfully reinvent himself with every new album, shifting from IDM to krautrock to neo-psychedelic pop. But in terms of pure bangers, he’s never done better than “Odessa,” the off-kilter nocturnal dance song that kicked off the Swim era with verve and style to burn. –Peter Helman

(161) Gotye – “Somebody That I Used To Know” (Feat. Kimbra)
A Belgian-Australian songwriter coos post-breakup bitterness over a sample from an old Brazilian instrumental from the ’60s. A New Zealand singer howls them right back at him. In the video, the two of them paint themselves up in abstract time-lapse. The result: a global smash that Prince copped to loving when he handed Gotye the Record Of The Year Grammy. These days, Gotye is just somebody that we used to know. But his one hit established how, in an internet economy, a catchy viral jam could conquer the world. –Tom Breihan

(77) Beach House – “Myth”
Beach House excel at putting a melody to incomprehensible feelings. They paint the atmosphere with cascading guitar riffs that overlap into a blur of twilight. Being conscious, being human, lends itself to a sometimes paralyzing temporality and life’s unknowable meaning. “What comes after this momentary bliss?” Victoria Legrand asks, her voice glowing. –Margaret

(182) Colleen Green – “TV”
“TV is my friend,” Colleen Green sings. “And it has been/ Always there for me/ In times of need.” Her noise-pop ode to prioritizing television over actual human connection, “TV” is both tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious, a painfully relatable modern sentiment for loners and pop-culture addicts alike. –Peter Helman

(155) Waxahatchee – “Never Been Wrong”
Out In The Storm is a tremendous breakup album, detailing pain, resentment, and, ultimately, growth. “Never Been Wrong” is its moment of interim murk — bitterness, unresolved conflict, being aware that you’re acting out and only doubling down. Katie Crutchfield is biting amidst major-chord rock, finding triumph in the unraveling. –NM Mashurov

(159) EMA – “California”
“Fuck California. You made me boring.” That’s a hell of a way to introduce yourself to the world. Erika M. Anderson, former howler for the great and unheralded blues-drone trio Gowns, made a dizzy leap into the unknown with “California,” her solo statement of intent. It’s a bruised, confused, half-rapped statement of rootless, reduced personal darkness, an itinerant millennial’s unmoored plea, a Bo Diddley quotation transformed into a damaged noise-folk lament. It’s really something. –Tom Breihan

(144) Phoebe Bridgers – “Motion Sickness”
Phoebe Bridgers renders the nauseating mindfuck of humiliation and heartache that follows a toxic relationship using details both morbidly funny (fake orgasms, a fake British accent) and deeply unsettling (“You said when you met me you were bored”). As the song’s sinister edge has become clearer, it plays less like a “breakup anthem” and more like a survivor’s testimony. But revelations about her inspiration only prove how effective Bridgers is at turning emotional paradoxes into stunning music. –Jael Goldfine

(143) Black Midi – “953”
What could easily be mistaken for a machine going haywire and melting down is actually four warm-blooded human beings achieving superhuman levels of bizarro synchronicity. Nonetheless, you should probably still wear protective gear while listening. –Chris DeVille

(149) Fontaines D.C. – “Too Real”
Fontaines D.C. are beginning as the decade is ending, with one of the more implausible rock success stories in recent memory. “Too Real” represents why. Brainy but brawny, arty yet raw, the band’s best moments are like this, barely-controlled engines of chaos that force you to pay attention. –Ryan Leas

(89) Parquet Courts – “Stoned And Starving”
“Stoned And Starving” is the signature song from Parquet Courts’ 2012 sophomore album Light Up Gold, the track that laid the framework for the New York band’s brand of brainy post-punk catharsis. It’s loose, but fidgety and restless — bothered, but ultimately apathetic. –Julia

(132) Kurt Vile – “Pretty Pimpin”
Kurt Vile is a modern-day troubadour who soundtracks his yarns of the troubled — himself included — with such beguilingly breezy guitars you almost forget to ask: “You okay, man?” Dissociation is the theme on “Pretty Pimpin,” and losing your sense of self has never sounded so easy. –Harley Brown

(93) Courtney Barnett – “Avant Gardener”
Courtney Barnett is a winded wordsmith, a playful poet, and “Avant Gardener” is ceaselessly clever. Her deadened delivery hammers the song home, approaching the end of the world with a sardonic casualness. It’s about trying to sink into the pleasure of something methodical, like gardening, making new life in a world that feels like it’s dying every day. But the apocalypse is a constant reminder, a shadow that makes those tomatoes on the front steps wither and die. Seems like enough of a reason to have trouble breathing in. –James Rettig

(133) Big Thief – “Cattails”
Big Thief can find the magnetic and beautiful world of a speck of dust and hide it in a song. “Cattails” captures Adrianne Lenker’s natural mysticism as she remembers the beauty of her Minnesota home. Big Thief conjure the easy sway of the wetland plants with fingerpicking fuzz and sunlight trickling in as piano keys sputter at the track’s closing. It’s as gentle and mindful as a deep breath. –Margaret Farrell

(115) Ought – “Beautiful Blue Sky”
The rare post-punk epic, wracked by the rote, deadening rhythms of our lives — “How’s the church? How’s the job? How’s the family? Beautiful weather today” — but refusing to accept suffocation under our late-capitalism lives. Instead, Ought earnestly relocate some sense of wonder, some sense of peace. What begins in anxiety blooms into a catharsis that arcs, well, skyward. –Ryan Leas

(91) Sharon Van Etten – “Every Time The Sun Comes Up”
Sharon Van Etten has built a career out of mining commonplace failures. “I washed your dishes/ But I shit in your bathroom,” she sings on “Every Time The Sun Comes Up,” elongating the vowels like she’s at least trying to dodge the blows. After the song’s fadeout, you hear her headphones fall off. It’s an endearing trip-up, the kind that results in a dorky laugh. Sharon Van Etten is flawed, but she’s still fighting, and that’s more than most of us fuck-ups can say. –Nina Corcoran

(108) Lana Del Rey – “Venice Bitch”
When you’re a pop star operating at the top of her game, and when you’re fresh out of fucks forever, you write a luxuriant and pillowy 10-minute psychedelic elegy for peace, love, truth, justice, the American way, and human life on planet Earth. Nothing gold can stay. Signing off — bang bang, kiss kiss. –Tom Breihan

(70) The National – “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
The National’s post-recession anthem nails their signature balance between stately grandeur and raw vulnerability. Bryan Devendorf’s drums pound steadily, a brass section wafts upward into a swirl of melancholy guitar, and Matt Berninger toggles between surreal personal reflections and a more dispiritingly universal refrain: “I still owe money to the money to the money I owe/ The floors are falling out from everybody I know.” –Chris DeVille

(42) Father John Misty – “Pure Comedy”
Gifted with a natural instinct for classic songwriting but an eye and mind born for modern times, Josh Tillman was already running circles around many of his peers in the indie world. Then, on Pure Comedy, he really tried to say it all. Its title track might not encapsulate the full spectrum of FJM — it’s all big-picture mode, with none of the self-reflexive examinations that make his narrative so rich — but it’s the quintessential FJM song. In just a few minutes, Tillman grapples with the grand farce of our existence, and injects profundity back into a time-worn hope — in the end, we can only find meaning by showing each other a little bit of kindness. –Ryan Leas

(61) Tame Impala – “Let It Happen”
Kevin Parker reforged psych rock into a contemporary frontier, then set his sights on fashioning EDM as high art. “Let It Happen” is the intersection of acid house raves, Sgt. Pepper’s, and Diplo — a bold prototype for what the monogenre might have looked like if anyone else knew how to make music like this. –Pranav Trewn

(58) The War On Drugs – “Red Eyes”
In 2011, with Slave Ambient, the War On Drugs had already located an entrancing strain of classicism equally cosmic and world-weary. Back then, nobody could’ve imagined they’d become one of the biggest rock breakouts of the decade. But a couple years later, “Red Eyes” arrived — the band now barreling down the highway of generations of classic rock tropes, lighting the past up with new psychedelic colors born from our bottomless, hazy digital-era memory. And as soon as Adam Granduciel let loose that raucous, sublime “Woo!” you knew this band had found something else. You knew they were going to be way bigger than anyone thought. –Ryan Leas

(48) Boygenius – “Me & My Dog”
There are Boygenius songs that better display the talents of all three musicians involved, but none of them hit as hard as Phoebe Bridgers does on “Me & My Dog.” It’s a love song that’s highly specific, one that’s embarrassingly pure, one that makes you redden up with the sheer weight of it. “I wanna be emaciated/ I wanna hear one song without thinking of you,” Bridgers sings, wishing that love didn’t have to be so total, so immense, so devastating and yet something that we constantly crave, a connection we cannot live without. –James Rettig

(26) Lana Del Rey – “Video Games”
Though the work of Lana Del Rey has grown richer and more expansive over time, the project was already fully-formed when Lizzy Grant first made her proper introduction under the persona. Her doomed recontextualization of Americana tropes, her ability to communicate contemporary isolation in classical language — it was all right there from the start in “Video Games.” It’s a tragic song that sounded as if it could’ve been released 50 years earlier, and yet it spoke to the eternal aspects of the human condition in such a way that LDR immediately won a lot of people’s fervent devotion. –Ryan Leas

(18) Perfume Genius – “Queen”
“Don’t you know your queen?” Mike Hadreas crooned, a coronation worthy of a god. Up until “Queen,” Hadreas had been making affecting and beautifully still piano ballads, but this was a definitive level-up and Hadreas knew it. He was swooning straight into being one of our best experimental underground pop stars, with a statement of purpose bent on world domination: “No family is safe when I sashay.” –James Rettig

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