Monday, December 24, 2018

Best Of 2018




Dear reader, please tread with grace and restraint, for it is likely that you will have 10 entirely different songs to contribute to this list. And you will be absolutely correct in that assessment too. The purpose of lists such as these is not to rate or rank or reach any kind of consensus. The spirit here isn’t competitive, especially in a world where we all have access to some 45 million songs on our phones, as also the opportunity to develop, direct, and curate our listening habits based exactly on what we might like. Instead, it is to guide others to new music, to aid the process of discovery, and to personally discover something new in the process as well. With that out of the way, here are the 10 best songs that were released in 2018, and the writer of this piece can safely say that there is not a single song out there which can top any one of these.

--



Courtney Barnett – Charity

Courtney Barnett is a treasure, for she brings to the world joy and hope, perhaps even happiness, with her music. Barnett sing-speaks over folksy guitar lines, interspersing a postmodern sense of casual detachment, wit, and irony with an intimate, rambly, endearing, confessional, storytelling mode of delivery; it’s a unique style that’s won the Aussie singer-songwriter many loyal fans. Her second album, 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel, sees Barnett taking a slightly more measured, maybe even polished, approach, yet it retains the carefree essence that props up her music. It remains as thrilling and free as ever.

‘Charity’, unlike her chattier, more ponderous treks, is focused and structurally concise, though her ability to pack in generous textual detail between the lines—even within confined structures—shines through here as well. It has a huge chorus, with a very high singalong quotient, and big guitars and drums. Again, it’s superficially a whopping alternative rock song, almost Nirvana-like in spirit, but Barnett elevates, or resists, or inverts, conventional genre labels through her signature creative voice. “You don’t have to pretend you’re not scared / everyone else is just as terrified as you”, she sings, reminding the listener, and herself, to take a breath.


--


Childish Gambino – This Is America

‘This Is America’ is an Important song; for an American audience, it’s arguably the most important song of the year. In an exhausting and increasingly volatile year—you know, politically and shit—Childish Gambino released what has to be described as a Statement, a critique of modern society at large. Its fiery video, which is almost impossible to separate from the song itself (and has some 440 million views on YouTube and over half a million comments) leaves a chilling impact with the sardonic commentary it offers on racism and gun culture in America. The song, too, shuttles in moods from the joyful, frolicking cold open to an increasingly sinister trap rhythm that drives it toward its intended goal. The contrast, aesthetically, is so perfectly in sync with the meaning of the words here. Each time Childish Gambino takes a gun and shoots someone in the video, the song flips, ditching its playful energy emphatically as he declares, over a drilling bassline: “This is America / Don’t catch you slippin’ up / Look at how I’m livin’ now / Police be trippin’ now / Yeah, this is America.”


--


Thom Yorke – Unmade

With the reluctant admission that Radiohead as a band no longer rule the world of radical experimentation—that most of their latter-day forays are still broadly challenging and ever so scintillating, but somewhat self-limiting in design—there’s no denying that Thom Yorke is a beautiful bastard. Even in 2018, he’s messing about like he always has, as the score for horror remake Suspiria so clearly displays. But we’re reserving a spot on this list for one of the few song-songs from the soundtrack, ‘Unmade’. It’s classic Yorke: some background strings and a mischievous, flittering piano line, over which Yorke juggles both his regular human voice and his superhuman falsetto, assuring the listener that “there’s nothing under my sleeves”. Tangentially, I happen to believe that Yorke has one of the most sublimely ‘musical’ voices ever and, as he ages—he’s 50 now—the slight cracks and shivers that have started to appear add an entire new dimension to his melodies, a quality he seems to have harnessed in his new works.


--


Jonny Greenwood – House Of Woodcock

While we’re on the subject, ‘House Of Woodcock’ is gorgeous and ever so fluffy. Delightful piano melodies hold this piece together, keeping at bay the threat of the big strings and the wailing violas in the back, showcasing yet another side to Greenwood’s formidable compositional repertoire. Greenwood, also known as the floppy-haired guitar player from Radiohead, has in his own right become one of the most important voices in film music, thanks in no small part to his regular collaborations with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. The latest in that very fruitful partnership is the Daniel Day-Lewis (of “SLLLRRRP I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!” fame) starrer Phantom Thread, the soundtrack for which sees Greenwood deviating from his previously established trope of resonant tension for a more expansive, big-hearted, colourful, sort of cloud-like motif here.


--


Aphex Twin – T69

Like all things Aphex Twin, ‘T69’, too, is a clusterfudge. A journey into parts of the brain that should ideally remain sealed shut. There’s the dizzying video with its rapidfire technicolour visualisations, which—to my untrained eyes—seems to illustrate the slow collapse of a digital civilisation. (Just to drive home the point, the video is made by Weirdcore.)

Then the song itself, which begins like any garden-variety Aphex Twin blip-bloopy song would, with a shit-ton of breakbeats and stuttering sounds and all those accompanying shenanigans. But then it persists, piling on layer upon sonically protesting layer, building up a mood of palpable tension that really needs breaking. Which the song duly does, pricking it casually in its final third, morphing into a more serene, more relaxed entity, and offering the listener some comfort and respite—a breather, perhaps—at the end of an exacting excursion.


--


Vennart – Immortal Soldiers

‘Immortal Soldiers’ is a fucking whirlwind. It’s hard to quite capture the immensity of the song, part of the new solo album by former Oceansize frontman and strident cult hero for a very vocal generation of fans of alternative and progressive rock, Mike Vennart. But let’s give it a try nevertheless. Loosely, it qualifies as progressive, psychedelic-ish, alternative guitar rock. There’s so much to unpack here in terms of songwriting craft, or arrangement, or structure, or the interplay between the instruments and the voice, or that absurd mid-song departure into a startlingly unexpected direction—it’s one of those special songs inside which you discover something new with each subsequent listen.

But let’s skip all that. What sets apart ‘Immortal Soldiers’, for me at least, is that, underneath it all lies just a really great song written with absolute honesty. It has heart. In a vocal performance that must rank somewhere near the top of a two-decade-long career, Vennart goes all out, singing with a kind of primeval emotion—roaring out each syllable, amping up his already hyperarticulate style of delivery—that eludes description. It’s one of those things you just end up feeling.


--


Mogwai – Scrap

Yet another entry from the world of film music. I guess the jig is up: I listen to lots of film scores. Though in fairness, Scottish post-rock band Mogwai’s regular work often overlaps with their film work, to the point where it’s hard to tell which is which. ‘Scrap’, from their soundtrack for KIN, loosely recalls elements from their phenomenal Les Revenants album, as a kind, compassionate spread of piano notes washes over everything. Underneath it lie the synths, adamant tremolo-picked guitar notes, this stubborn, horn-like effect, drums played with great care and restraint, all in nonchalant interplay with each other. The song comes together and falls apart at various different points, treading around a deliberate path with a detached purposelessness. And just before that point of completion, it stops. It finishes. ‘Scrap’ isn’t even three minutes long, which is a shame, but in that short burst alone it creates its own world.


--


Mitski – A Pearl

There’s something surreal about Mitski’s voice. She has a Beatles-esque flair for bright, well-crafted melodies plotted out over the guitar or piano. The undercurrent of sadness and self-reflection, both in her words and her unpredictable delivery, often hides the sheer calmness with which she sings. That dichotomy, that principal contrast which feels critical to any understanding of the Japanese-American singer-songwriter’s fascinating career trajectory, often makes for an uneasy (and rewarding) experience. On the hook-heavy ‘A Pearl’, she describes a toxic, abusive relationship—“Sorry I don’t want your touch,” she sings, “it’s not that I don’t want you / Sorry I can’t take your touch”— with a piercing determination, even as the song around her disintegrates. From its innocuous openings, sung over guitar chords strummed casually, the song continues to build and crumble, peaking with a loud, alt-rock chorus backed by howling guitars and Mitski Miyawaki’s intense, steely delivery.


--


Low – Fly

Marking their 25th anniversary, Low gave us the exquisite and much-revered Double Negative this year, a fluid, 11-song exploration of florid ambient pop punctuated by lo-fi, desolate, static interjections and departures. All the while, the synergic harmonies of founding members and husband-wife duo Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker form the heart of this record.

It’s one of those albums that flows seamlessly from one song to the next, best appreciated as a large whole, rather than a collection of individual songs. That said, it does have plenty of standout singles too, one of which happens to be ‘Fly’. This one, with a slightest of nods to trip-hop, is driven by Parker’s choral delivery and the gently insistent percussion at the back. “Well, I don’t know / And I don’t mind / Take my weary bones / And fly”, she sings. And she means it.


--


Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Motel & Casino

The Monkeys, and their greasy frontman in particular, have this special talent of seeming like trendy, manipulative, cunning, chameleon-like, slithering, wind-up-merchant knobheads. And somehow still writing nauseatingly sincere and honest songs. And still writing songs that rock. I can never decide between being a loyal champion of the band and the fun routes they often head off into, or a lifetime skeptic barking relentlessly at their whole shtick. They ditched the rock this year, going instead for a sexier, shimmering, speakeasy energy, alienating plenty of fans in the process. The titular single is both proof of concept of the leftfield direction the new record takes, as well as a droopy reminder that Alex Turner and friends remain really very gifted songwriters.



--

An edited version of this first appeared in Open magazine 


No comments:

Post a Comment