Another Form of Relief

Let’s just put this whole silly mess behind us.

Homecoming is the story of an English guy and an American girl, and the way they each view their relationship. Neither of these characters are likeable. He comes across as a dick (”I fuck my American cunt“) while she proves to be so vacuous (thinking he’s the perfect guy - “I love my English romance“) that she wouldn’t be out of place in Nada Surf’s Popular. I reference that song largely because this song covers much the same ground in both style and endorsing the lifestyle of the terminally stupid. It’s all lo-fi guitar and vocals that alternate between the subdued and the sweet. Without knowing what the song was about in the first place, you could easily listen to it and not even realise the darker undertones.

The first track from Under the Blacklight manages to set the bar a bit too high for the rest of it, aiding in the crushing disappointment that follows. No matter though, Silver Lining remains one of the finest Rilo songs in years, a joy in it’s simplicity and “hooray hooray” choruses. So good that one could almost believe it was held over from a previous album.

Quite possibly the finest song ever concerning Sodom and Gomorrah. Probably the only song concerning Sodom and Gomorrah.

I struggled with the first proper Los Campesinos! singles (this and We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives) because they just sounded wrong at first. Covered in distortion, overproduced, seemingly losing some of the joy of the original recordings. I kept listening to them though and they soon became staples on my playlists. Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(s), over the course of the year, wormed it’s way into my favourite song list. I don’t really know how, but now it’s hard to listen to it without shouting out the words as loud as possible at the same time. And if that isn’t the mark of a great song, I don’t know what is.

Just close your eyes and listen to this song. Immerse yourself in it, take in every word. That should be more than enough to justify it’s place here.

Few bands have the kind of energy that Johnny Foreigner seem to bring to every song. Champagne Girls I Have Known is a noisy, confusing mess, with multiple vocals, guitars and drums all trying to be louder than each other. In other words, a glorious assault on the eardrums.

I’ll Kill Her is one of the those rare songs that will just sit on repeat for long periods at at time. SoKo Girl starts gently enough: she’s talking about how the guy she likes didn’t call her to go on their date. So far, so mundane. This evolves into anger as the song goes on about the “bitch” that is now in her place, through the eventual announcement that makes up the title of the song. The interesting part here though is that the narrator seems entirely unstable. It may all be as literal as it sounds on the initial listen, or it could be so much more. Even people bitter about a breakup don’t usually launch into detailed “what ifs” about the children they would have had (even naming them Tom and Susan). At the very least, this girl has some kind of issues. Listen again though, and you start to wonder if there was even a breakup involved. She never mentions one directly. For all we know, she has never even met the guy she’s bitter about losing to someone else. This could just be the most elaborate stalker scenario put to record. It doesn’t really matter exactly which scenario it is though. At the very least, it’s a fascinating stream of consciousness of a somewhat damaged person. It’s sung in such an informal (almost conversational) tone that it’s impossible to dislike her, no matter how crazy it may come across as at times.

I’ve been trying to write the blurb for this song for the last couple of days with little success. Which is a bit odd considering it’s my number one song of last year. I’ve listened to it repeatedly trying to pull some inspiration from it with no luck. Which isn’t a slight against the song itself. I adore it, probably more now than when I started listening to it last year. I just can’t seem to explain it in words. Sure, it has all of the hallmarks of what I like in music: vaguely twee, fragile yet amusing lyrics, even a trumpet. Yet I can’t seem to locate that “wow” factor which tips it over the top. Maybe, to it’s eternal credit, it doesn’t need one.

And.. stop.

Yay, we’re almost done. Which is good as I have a lot of other things I want to write about and I’m kind of bored of this list now.

Like Two Gallants earlier on in this list, Okkervil River are a band that I sort of like based on the songs I’ve heard, but have never been able to get hugely into. I never found the one song that managed to blow me away, despite vaguely enjoy the ones I did hear. Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe changed all that though. I don’t know what it is that does it, as it sounds like a lot of other Okkervil River songs, but something does it. Maybe it’s the gentle builds to lines crashing lines, the film referencing or the vague ambiguity of it all, I have no idea. But it works.

Opening lines don’t come much better than that. Granted, like me, you may have to look up ’solipsistic’, which incidentally is a great word, but one I sadly haven’t had the chance to drop into conversation yet. Laura Sings Liver is one girl (shockingly called Laura) with a guitar who makes these literate little songs that manage to evoke a an entire world in the course of three minutes. You know, kind of like Emmy, except great.

Far and away the biggest success story of 2007, Johnny Foreigner went from songs with potential that sounded awful to becoming the most exciting band in the country. Their debut EP type thing, Arcs Across the City, was my favourite release of last year, featuring six songs, all of which were stunning. Yes! You Talk Too Fast has always been a favourite, so it made the list, but like Laura Sings Liver above, any of those songs could have been here.

It’s almost as if Los Campesinos! had my checklist of things that make a song great when coming up with The International Tweexcore Underground. Sparring boy-girl vocals? Frequent time changes? References to seemingly forgotten twee artists? All present and accounted for. The song seems to be about a boy who likes twee and a girl who likes hardcore rock, and they come together by combining it to form tweecore? Something like that maybe? I really have no idea, as it’s far too tempting to ignore what the words are actually saying and just shout along with them anyway.

The first single from the second album by Brakes (I’m not calling them brakesbrakesbrakes, no matter how many promo emails try and get me to), and it’s better than anything that was on their impressive first album. Like most of their songs, it’s short and to the point, including a dig at our government’s draconian anti-terror legislation (”I woke up late and found my liberty lost / It had been written down in law as a security cost / 28 days and I’m presumed guilty”). It also scores extra points for being able to namedrop Scarlett Johannson, which must be something of an awkward name to work into song.

L’apathie de la bourgeoisie.

I was going to write about Conversational Karate, but since I started this list, 4 or 5 Magicians have put up a whole load of new songs on their Myspace. Just go there and listen to them instead. Every single one of them is fantastic. If these guys don’t get some kind of proper record deal and an album out sometime this year, there’s no justice in the world.

Get past their awkward name, and you’ve got a band that does genuinely invoke a 90s Americana kind of vibe from their music. Which is a pretty impressive for a band from London. The guitars guide the songs between the gentler verses to the bursts of noise that seem to prop up the choruses. It’s never over the top, giving a feel the whole time that they band could kick into high gear at any minute, but these guys are far too restrained for that.

A rather local band that has seemingly ended before it began, Andrej and Tim was two guys (can you guess their names?) who made fantastic Ben Folds Five style piano-rock songs. I’m don’t think Iraq ever made it past the demo stage, but it’s still an excellent song. The story of a relationship that’s falling apart while managing to pull in parallels to situation in a certain country, it remains one of the finest songs that I heard last year. The ninth finest in fact.