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Best tunes of 2010: #5 Bedouin Soundclash (feat. Cœur de pirate) “Brutal hearts”

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At number five on my Best tunes of 2010 list, we have the other band from Kingston, Ontario: Bedouin Soundclash. Now based out of Toronto, the reggae and ska group was formed in 2001 by Jay Malinowski, Eon Sinclair, and Pat Pengelly. They had a relatively big radio hit with “When the night feels my song” off their second album, 2004’s “Sounding a mosaic”, and have since released two more albums but have been inactive since 2010. However, a new single was released just last year with the promise of a new album, possibly this year.

“Brutal hearts” appears on their 2010 album “Light the horizon”, never released as a proper single but there were two videos made available on YouTube (one of which you can enjoy below). The track doesn’t sound much like the band’s usual reggae self and this is not just because it features Québec singer/songwriter Béatrice Martin (aka Cœur de Pirate) in a duet with Malinowski. It’s a mostly drum driven track. The drummer at the time, Sekou Lumumba, is the other star of this show, getting under our skin with his rim shot, ticky tacky rhythms. Bassist Sinclair sidles up beside him, giving this not so laidback beat some muscle. And all the while, the male/female, rough-hewn versus smooth like wine, trading vocals yearn for love, any kind, whether or not it’s true or good.

“I don’t mind at all
I don’t mind that you only call me when you want
And I’m just glad you want me at all”

The song is like a tango. A sweaty and needy dance, late at night, in a dark basement club. The drummer starts the aforementioned rhythm, tired from a night of playing but somehow finding his second wind. The bassist, and I’m imagining an upright bass here, leans heavily against a ledge and so does his instrument, his shirt undone a number of buttons, whiskey on the rocks close to hand. And from somewhere deep in the night, a cello joins in, a sad and plaintive call. They are all only playing for the couple on the dance floor. They’ve never seen each other before and will likely never see each other again. They are the song. And for this brief moment, they are love.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #6 The New Pornographers “Crash years”

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Here we are at number six on this Best tunes of 2010 list and we have the second appearance by The New Pornographers, who we saw months ago at the number twenty-eight spot with “Sweet talk, sweet talk”. Both that song and this one, “Crash years”, appeared on the New Pornos fifth studio album, “Together”, which was dedicated to Kathryn Calder’s mother, who had recently died and was, incidentally, Carl Newman’s sister. It’s an interesting story involving adoption and discovering family they didn’t know they had and if you’re curious, it’s easy enough to google. But back to the song.

“Crash years” was the second single released off the album and it’s a real humdinger. The words were written by Newman as are the majority of the songs on their albums but he leaves the lead vocals here to the unflappable Neko Case. The peppy rhythm section is kept honest by just there guitars and breezy staccato keys. And there’s the awesome use of whistling after every chorus that doesn’t sound at all out of place. This is all gorgeous, of course, but what really makes this song for me is the driving and thumping cello, smooth like a well oiled villain’s moustache, and if you’ve turned the volume on your stereo up just so, you can feel it deep within your soul.

“Crash years” could be a nod to the financial woes and economic slowdown at the time, a topic that could hardly be ignored. It’s hinting at the evils of stock markets and clocks and banks… oh my. But Newman doesn’t really point fingers. He just shrugs. The upbeat feel of the song suggests we’re all in the same sinking boat, all ruined, so why get down. Just hum along with the cello and everything will be alright.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #7 Stars “Dead hearts”

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In my post on “Fixed” (Stars other appearance on this particular list at #20), I wrote about my mad search to find a physical CD copy of the band’s fifth album, “The five ghosts”, on the day of its release. If you’ve already read that piece and forgot what I wrote, I’ll save you the trip back and let you know that I finally found a copy. “Dead hearts” was the first song I heard when I put the disc in my car’s player for the trip back home afterwards. I fell in love with it immediately, which set the tone for the rest of the album for me. It is also why it is ranked so high on this list, despite never being released as a single.

Quite a lovely track, albeit a haunting one. The gentle jingling guitars, the lonely tinkling piano, the string explosion, and Torquil Campbell’s and Amy Milan’s boy/girl, push/pull harmonies all call to mind a fantastical world of a creative child’s imagination. I’m thinking Never-Never land territory here, a dimension where logic and reality hold no truck. The idea of ‘dead hearts’ for me is an extension of the lyric in Arcade Fire’s “Wake up” that talks about children’s hearts getting torn up as they get older and bigger, which in turn seems to be a reference to Ally Sheedy’s line in “The Breakfast Club”: “When you grow up, your heart dies.”

So through all the mists and softness of the song, I see a group of children huddled around an impossibly massive bonfire while fireflies flit about in the sky around them. The curiosity of the younger ones full to bursting, breathlessly asking questions of their leader, the elder child that has been out and has experienced the bad old world. “Tell me everything that happened.” “Tell me everything you saw.” His news isn’t good. But maybe it’s a warning with a side of hope. .

Yeah. The lines “Dead hearts are everywhere” and “They were kids that I once knew” sound to me like Stars are hedging towards hope. And that sounds beautiful to me.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.