Astronauts – “Flame Exchange”

There are the songs of the decade that you know, and then there’s the ones you don’t.

“Flame Exchange” is the emotional centerpiece of Astronauts’ 2014 debut album Hollow Ponds, a somber and all-acoustic record about the depression and hallucinations suffered by Dan Carney as he lied in a hospital, bed-ridden due to a severely fractured leg while in a nearly delirious morphine-enhanced state of mind.  He fantasized about Epping Forest in northeast London, and transformed his visions to a record.

“Flame Exchange” sounds like the best acoustic ballad that Brand New never wrote, with the caveat that this is actually quite a bit better than any of Lacey’s stripped-down crooners.  The bleakness of the atmosphere can be cut with a knife; I’m still in awe every time over how Carney manages to squeeze so much despair out of such a bare composition.  The gently picked guitar strings ring out with a sad eloquence, and Carney’s half-whispered vocals are spine-tingling and emotionally proximal all at the same time.  Lines like, “feels like I’m about to capsize…need some solid ground under my feet” speak to emotionally unhinged state that he was in while recording this album – this sensation of lost control, and a desire to re-attain balance.  The swelling strings and woodwinds that intertwine and dance across the song’s back half add splashes of color to the song’s densely morose aura, and when the song wraps up there’s this feeling that Carney just bared his soul…

Brand New – “In The Water”

When I consider what my favorite song is from Science Fiction – the only album Brand New released in the past decade – it always comes down to the same five songs, and an argument could be made for each one equally as well.  For the longest time I thought it’d be “Lit Me Up”, the slow burning crooner that depicts religious extremism and eerily foreshadows the demise of Jesse’s career.  “137” is always in the conversation for its nuclear holocaust theme and a guitar solo that rivals any other in the group’s discography, save for perhaps the untouchable apex of “Limousine.”  “Can’t Get It Out” is the song from this album I listen to the most simply because it’s so damn infectious.  “Same Logic/Teeth” combines everything I love about Brand New into one song, from the gritty screams to the pristine acoustic picking that meshes with it surprisingly well.  The album is an embarrassment of riches, but I have to go with my first love – the band’s epic, sprawling swan song.

“In The Water” feels like The Moon & Antarctica meets The Dark Side of the Moon.  It basks in its glistening, crystalline guitar work that shimmers like the surface of a lake on a hot summer afternoon.  The guitar licks in the beginning of the track almost feel old-western; a country-ish vibe emanating from each elongated slide.  There are two equally as beautiful choruses, the first “never had it any…

Damien Rice – “It Takes A Lot To Know A Man”

“If Damien Rice told me that the reason it took him eight years to release a new album was because it took him six years to write ‘It Takes A Lot To Know A Man’, I’d probably be okay with it.” -Me, in my 2014 review of My Favourite Faded Fantasy

There are some songs that just naturally belong on a decade list.  They’re the kind of songs that you remember years later, even if you haven’t revisited the albums from whence they came nearly as often as you’d like.  They combine winding, epic progressions with the length to accommodate such a journey.  They reach new artistic levels, touching the soul while objectively mastering the style they target.  If I were to bottle these traits and provide an example of what it means to define a decade, I might propose Damien Rice’s “It Takes A Lot To Know A Man” – a track that feels like it probably took longer to conceive and create than some other artists’ entire albums.

I still feel that the above quote is true.  “It Takes A Lot To Know A Man” doesn’t feel like just another song that Rice composed as a part of an album.  Even to call it a centerpiece feels like cheapening its worth.  The song is so emotionally powerful and melodically sweeping that it feels like its own entity, this nine minute epic that shifts from…

M83 – “Wait”

It’s a little bit of a relief when I know exactly what song is going to represent an artist for the decade.  Barring a last minute 2019 LP (which could happen – they teased that an album is coming ‘soon’), they’ve only released two albums in the last ten years – 2011’s mesmerizing Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming and 2016’s fun-but-cheesy Junk.  The former has more hits than the latter, but regardless of the presence of other contenders like ‘Midnight City’ or ‘Steve McQueen’, there was little question in my mind that ‘Wait’ was going to be the obvious choice all along.

And it’s for good reason.  ‘Wait’ is an absolute gut punch; an emotional wrecking ball that achieves astronomical poignancy with only skeletal lyrics.  Chants of “no time” make up the chorus, lending this dreamy, electronic atmosphere a sense of existential urgency.  With those two words, I immediately feel like my life is waning and that I need to get out of this chair and go do something meaningful and impactful.  It’s downright compelling, and the climactic shouts of “woow, woow” echo across the wide-panning reverb like desperate wails into space.  Frontman Anthony Gonzalez delivers the vocal performance of his life – he sounds sad, contemplative, visceral.  At the same time, he seems to say everything without really actually dictating much at all.  It’s a stream-of-consciousness rambling – a word here, a phrase there, but no overt narrative.  This leaves “Wait” open to emotional…

Childish Gambino – “Me and Your Mama”

I’m not a diehard Childish Gambino fan.  In fact, I’ll fess up and admit right now that I’ve never even listened to any of his hip-hop albums.  It’s a problem.  I’m working on it.  But in the meanwhile, I have heard his funk/soul album “Awaken, My Love!”, and it’s one of my favorite albums of the decade – so much so, that trying to choose between “Redbone”, “California”, “Riot”, “Stand Tall” (should I just name the entire tracklist?) was pretty problematic.  At the end of the day, we might see another track or two from this modern day classic sneak onto my decade list, but for now I have to roll with the cut that got me into Childish Gambino to begin with – the sprawling, neo-soul/funk/jazz highlight reel that is “Me and Your Mama.”

Every single time I so much as hear the chimes in the opening seconds, I have to listen to this song in its entirety.  The way those proggy riffs come in moments later reminds me of Jimi Hendrix, maybe even King Crimson.  In Donald Glover’s voice, I hear Prince with a little D’Angelo sprinkled in those falsetto cuts.  Glover wears his influences on his sleeve here, but the way he fuses everything so seamlessly and modernizes it makes it fashionably derivative if anything; and I’d like to think said influences would be proud of this particular piece.  “Me and Your Mama” is a songwriting masterclass, and an…

Manchester Orchestra – “The Silence”

Every time I think I’ve heard the best that Manchester Orchestra has to offer, they surprise me.  In 2006, I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child floored me – the earnest vulnerability of “Colly Strings” sticking with me through many relationships.  In 2009 it was the raw simplicity of Mean Everything to Nothing, where the tragic storytelling of “I Can Feel a Hot One” practically reduced me to tears.  In 2011, it was the sweeping magnificence of Simple Math, its title track probing questions of faith and existence that I’d never pondered before.  I never thought they’d top a moment of such profundity, but lo and behold, 2017’s A Black Mile to the Surface did exactly that.  Trying to select a song by Manchester Orchestra to represent this decade was probably the toughest decision I’ve had to make yet, but when all the smoke finally settled, it was “The Silence” that was left standing.

At a towering seven minutes, “The Silence” brings closure to the emotional wreckage entailed by A Black Mile.  The album has several themes coursing through its veins – some obvious (such as Hull’s tales of abuse growing up) and some more subtle (allusions to miscarriage).  Through all of the recounted tragedy, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Andy wrote the song for his daughter – as both an apology and a promise.  “Little girl, you are cursed by my ancestry / There is nothing but darkness and agony”,…

Have a Nice Life – “Burial Society”

“Burial Society” teeters on the brink of life and death.  The narrator ponders both physical and metaphysical existence, graphically detailing his own suicide (“cut my wrists, slit my throat, take this body and string it up”),  while also watching his death from the spiritual plane  (“project myself into the air, and float in a weightless night”).  Set to a sinister beat, the echoed verses and distant/muted shouting makes it feel like it’s being recorded in a tomb, and there’s an obvious emotional intensity that simply can’t be feigned as he screams, “and I’ll never know what you said, because I’ll be fucking dead by then.”  It’s honestly one of the most frightening and fucked up things I’ve heard.  Have a Nice Life use this song to project a relentlessly haunting aura; this dark chasm of the human mind that’s been opened.  It’s not a song I revisit often because it’s genuinely disturbing – but every time I do, there’s no denying its place as one of the best tracks of the decade.  It’s as amazingly conceived and performed as it is unnerving – a glimpse into the thoughts of a suicidal man.  It isn’t real, but it feels real…

Read more from this decade at my homepage for Sowing’s Songs of the Decade.

https://open.spotify.com/user/sowingsputnik/playlist/5JjmQsvmmmOBFnUjP7FLu4?si=TfdnZNGXSiWIZcitxIJ3qg

The Jezabels – “Stand and Deliver”

I will always remember “Stand and Deliver” as the moment The Jezabels went from being a good band to a downright phenomenal one.  I’ve always loved Hayley Mary’s booming voice, whether it came in the form of Prisoner‘s rock or The Brink‘s 80’s synth-dance vibes, but untapped potential remained…her voice has the depth and range to unleash something otherworldly – something bombastic and unexpected.  As the introduction to 2016’s Synthia, that’s precisely what “Stand and Deliver” accomplished.

At seven and a half minutes in length, the song covers a lot of ground.  Riding in on glistening electronic keystrokes, it gradually increases in tempo while building towards Hayley Mary’s gorgeous, spoken-word introduction. The more the song unravels, the more her biting sarcasm begins to reveal itself, as Hayley beckons “come and give a bitch a kiss” during a precursor to a choral, almost operatic chant.  One of my favorite moments is when all the noise cuts out, and Hayley – sounding alone on the stage – sings “what’s a girl to do, standing in the spotlight?”  The answer is clearly to make the most epic song of her career, on a lengthy album opener that reaches almost Queen-levels of ambition.  The back portion then ascends into a cloud of percussive ferocity, overshadowing the electric guitar splashes that one can lightly make out in the background.  Finally, it all comes crashing back down to earth on a pillow of softly sung verses. The range in…

Copeland – “Colorless”

Normally I’d be wary of adding a 2019 track to such prestigious and long-standing company.  However, few songs in my life have had as immediate and profound of an impact as “Colorless.”  From the moment I first laid ears upon it, I knew it would be the epicenter of Blushing – a dreamy, romantic, and existential tour de force of an album.  “Colorless” is melancholic but powerful, as it mourns lost love with the unrivaled potency of passages such as “these days I’m terrified of silence, my thoughts unbearable in the quiet”, “now I can’t see you…were we colorless anyway?”, and “I’m never falling out of love, I fear.”  Even though pretty much all of Blushing serves as Aaron Marsh’s lyrical masterpiece, the aura of this track is especially poignant – it’s capable of reducing anyone enduring a breakup, death, or other form of loss to tears.

The track slowly builds to a cathartic release of energy, this relatively brief but downright explosive guitar solo that feels like a personal breaking point.  Its impact is only magnified by Marsh’s prelude of “when a colorless world goes dark”, which in context feels like an admission of total despair – it’s basically akin to saying that without the mysterious woman around whom Blushing‘s themes revolve, that everything’s gone dark.  Finally, the mayhem sticks a soft landing on this cloud of swelling strings and brass, as Aaron laments, “Ohh-ohh, I can’t save myself.” The entire song is a marvel to behold,…