Panopticon Blog

In indie rock circles, 2008 was the year of sensitive guys with beards in flannel shirts singing glorious harmonies (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, etc.), 2009 has moved in an even more psychedelic direction. The beards and the harmonies are still here, but things have gotten weirder, with more and more echoes of the drug-soaked music of the mid-70s. Of course, genres of all shapes and sounds should be considered when trying to sum up a year in music. Coming up with a list of 10 great songs will admittedly overlap a bit with my upcoming Top Ten Albums, but I have tried to make an effort to expand my reach a bit. Here’s ten great songs that would make a great 2009 retrospective playlist:

10. Bon Iver – Blood Bank

Justin Vernon went out of his way to confound expectations in his follow-ups (the band Volcano Choir and the EP Blood Bank) to the instant classic For Emma, Forever Ago. Unfortunately for him, “Blood Bank,” off the EP of the same name, sounds like a great undiscovered track from For Emma and is the strongest work Vernon has done in that album’s wake.

9. Franz Ferdinand – Ulysses

Franz Ferdinard kind of got a bad rep by being lumped in with the likes of The Killers and Interpol in the grand skinny-jean, post-punk wave early in the aughts. But of all those bands, it’s only Franz Ferdinand who could pull off this paranoid, disco-infused rant — catchy as hell and subversive in ways most major label bands wouldn’t dare.

8. Cursive – Mama, I’m Satan

On his best days, Tim Kasher of Curisve is one of our best songwriters, and “Mama, I’m Satan” off of Mama, I’m Swollen is one of those days. As on the whole album, Kasher is obsessed with sex and societal power structures – but on “Satan,” he backs these lyrics with a rollicking barnstormer of a song that shows more clarity of the Curisve voice than anything the band has done since “Art is Hard.”

7. Future of the Left – Arming Eritrea

Travels With Myself and Another is a series of gut-punches, none better than album opener “Arming Eritrea.” Starting with a string of defensive bleats against someone named Rick, the song hiccups between a craggy guitar riff and a naked, nasty drumbeat. Then suddenly the song soars into a cascading wall of sound, before dropping back into its syncopated groove with singer Andy Falkous upping the ante his glass-in-the-throat howl. All in three minutes.

6. Grizzly Bear – While you Wait for the Others

Veckatimest is a collection of great songs, first and foremost, so selecting just one from the album is a bit difficult. “While You Wait for the Others” turns out to be the best distillation of the band’s power – Daniel Rossen’s off-kilter guitar stabs, Ed Droste’s killer croon cameo during the song’s bridge, Chris Taylor’s bubbling bassline and Chris Bear’s off-kilter drumming, and, of course, the whole band joining in for their glorious harmonies.

5. Lightning Bolt – Transmissionary

In a somewhat left-handed compliment, most people say that a record simply cannot capture the live fury of a Lightning Bolt concert. “Transmissionary,” the 13 minute epic finale of Earthly Delights, certainly comes close. Behind Brian Chippendele’s relentless drumming and Brian Gibson’s detuned, repeating bassline, the song somehow feels like it’s going at hyper-speed and slow-motion at the same time.

4. Bat For Lashes – Siren Song

Two Suns is ostensibly a concept album about two sides of singer Natasha Khan’s personality – the loyal partner and the wild lover. “Siren Song” not only illustrates this lyrical concept the most coherently of any song on the album, but it also produces the record’s most haunting sonic journey. Khan’s echoey 50s girl-pop voice in the verses eventually gets swept away on a wave of galvanizing, rolling tympanis and double, triple and quadruple looped vocals.

3. The Flaming Lips – Watching the Planets

The climax of The Flaming Lips’ spectacular Embryonic is “Watching the Planets,” a thunderous barnstormer; the most propulsive song the Lips have recorded in ages. Embryonic boasts hypnotic musical and existential lyrical through-lines that are summed up in “Watching the Planets’” only quiet moment – the music subsides, Wayne Coyne whispers “oh oh oh, finding the answer/oh oh oh finding that there ain’t no answer to find,” and, with a breath, the music roars back in.

2. Isis – Threshold of Transformation

Isis albums always climax well (see “Hym” on Oceanic and “Grinning Mouths” on Panopticon) and “Threshold of Transformation,” which closes out Wavering Radiant, might be the best song the band has ever written. A maturation of their quiet-loud dynamics, “Transformation” sees the crunchy riffing of The Red Sea and the stately post-rock of In the Absence of Truth sitting comfortably together, before spiraling out into a shoegaze coda that builds layers upon riffs upon layers before ending two bars too soon. It’s a calculated move – it makes you want to replay the song immediately and take the 9-minute journey again.

1. Animal Collective – My Girls

“My Girls” was released when 2009 was but days old, but no other song this year has come along to knock it off its high perch. A thrilling introduction to the hallucinatory domestic bliss brilliance of Merriweather Post Pavillion, “My Girls” is more than a great, bouncy pop song – it was also the sound of Animal Collective finally letting down their guard, both in the accessibility of the music and the direct simplicity of the lyrics. In the past, Animal Collective had buried much of the emotion of their music within intentionally difficult layers of electronic noise. The new, 2009 model of Animal Collective combines electronic music, galvanizing percussion and soaring melodies as they always have, but now they’ve allowed room for unabashed joy. This is not only the year’s best song, but also a turning point for one of music’s most unique bands.