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Best tunes of 2010: #2 Arcade Fire “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond mountains)”

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And here we are finally at the penultimate track on this best tunes of 2010 list and we have a second song from what many consider to be Arcade Fire’s masterpiece: “The suburbs” (the title track appeared at #12). For myself, I don’t know if I can decide between this one and their debut album, “Funeral”, it’s really too close to call. I liked both albums from the start, though they are quite distinctly different.

“The suburbs” is a bleak, post-apocalyptic rendering of suburbia, but it is done with love. In many cases, the songs are brighter and shinier than those on the darker “Funeral”. Indeed, “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond mountains)” is a perfect example of how Arcade Fire twists it’s subject matter into something more uplifting and almost joyous.

“They heard me singing and they told me to stop,
Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock,
These days, my life, I feel it has no purpose.”

The sixth and final single released off the album features Win Butler’s partner in crime and in life, Régine Chassagne, on vocals and she is star of the music video as well. She leaves her suburban home with a pair of headphones on and she starts the music immediately. Then, we see suburban folk doing typically suburban things, like hanging out in lawn chairs and watering the lawn, except they’re all wearing masks, some of them faceless, and all the while, Régine just sings and dances away any fear and loathing she might have. It all culminates in a fearless night time dance party on a football field, where she leads the way with cheerleading streamers.

I’ve often felt that she was channeling Björk a bit here and not just in the video, where the humdrum world becomes a sort of Hollywood musical, albeit a twisted one, once the music starts. But in the song itself and how she sings the song, right down to the vocal mannerisms.

And it is on “Sprawl II” more than on any other song on “The suburbs” that we get a hint at the direction Arcade Fire would take on future albums. Music that Régine could dance to was how Win Butler explained the sound on “Reflektor”. Well, she’s dancing all over “Sprawl II“ and it’s super contagious.

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

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #3 The National “Runaway”

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The National is a five-piece indie rock band that formed in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2001. They have since released seven full length studio albums and along the way have gained a serious following and managed substantial cred. They have already been seen in the pages of this young blog a handful of times, featuring in both of the Best Albums lists I have thus far compiled and appearing in this very list at the number 22 spot with “Conversation 16”.

There’s no saving anything
Now we’re swallowing the shine of the sun
There’s no saving anything
How we swallow the sun
But I won’t be no runaway

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the seemingly stream of consciousness lyrics are a massive draw to The National’s sound. They are literate and poetic and sometimes are images that balloon to a dream or a concrete moral epiphany and at other times, are as obtuse as trigonometry. It’s fun to try to unravel meanings in the randomness of Matt Berninger’s compositions, an inside joke in gravity’s rainbow.

“Runaway” is a dirge. Bass drums thumping and laying down life as we know it. Acoustic finger picking, lilting through the dry ice fog and suddenly there’s a hint of horns, a taps for a new generation, sad but uplifting. Berninger’s deep rumble like a calming massage to your temples, breathing life into all corners of your tired consciousness. And by the end of it, you want to run away with the band, willing to go with them, wherever they will take you. It’s all so sweet.

And I think that just about sums it up.

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

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #4 The Radio Dept. “This time around”

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For years and years and years, my good (old) friends and I have gone fall camping in Algonquin Park. We originally picked the fall, rather than the crazed, busy summer, so that it would be quieter, despite the fact that once we got drinking, we were often the loudest in the park. Over the years, it has gotten busier deeper into the season and we’ve had to push our date further, from early October to early November. And yes, we’ve had some really cold nights and often get snow, but we’ve learned a thing or two over the years and as our salaries have increased, we’ve invested in better gear. Our conversations around the usually massive campfire are never very deep. We catch up, relive stories, laugh, and talk movies and, of course, music.

One such trip, many, many, many years ago now, my friend Tim famously brought up an article he had read on The Charlatans (UK, for those of us in North America). Whoever had written the article suggested that though they survived the longest of their contemporaries, they were no one’s favourite band. Our friend Tim, emboldened by multiple beers, brashly went further, suggesting that they might not have had any lasting influence and that a few years after they stopped producing music, they might be forgotten altogether. There were raised voices and indignation, and I was amongst the two or three that disagreed with him. It has become a running joke ever since with Tim facetiously asking “Who?” whenever the band comes up in conversation.

Fast forward to 2010, I don’t know how many years later, and I am on bus, commuting home from work. I am perusing the latest album by this Swedish band I had just came across and something clicks. These guys may not be directly influenced by but they certainly sounded a lot like The Charlatans on their debut album, “Some friendly”!

The Radio Dept. formed in Lund, Sweden in the late 1990s and adopted a dream pop sound with an often danceable edge. “This time around” is track three off their third album, “Clinging to a scheme”. It was never released as a single but easily could’ve been. It is infectious beats, airy, laser show guitars, and lazy vocals, albeit fattened with effects, sounding so much like a young Tim Burgess. The major difference that is most obvious to me is that in the case of The Radio Dept., the lyrics are intelligible, and are often politically charged.

“You feel old like the fight
Learning new ways to be right
And how to cope with disloyalty
It’s not a song
That will prove them wrong
This time around.”

Enjoy! And to all you Charlies fans, let me know if I am crazy or not. You can hear it too, right?

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