Trophy Scars – “Qeres”

This already feels like the riskiest inclusion on this list so far.  Trophy Scars don’t exactly have the clout of a band like Titus Andronicus or The Dillinger Escape Plan, yet here they are, nestled snug on my cement-as-fuck decade enshrinement.  But let me ease any concerns: they deserve to be here.  OK, feel better?

First of all, Holy Vacants is a nearly perfect album so I brought up the tracks in a playlist, put a blindfold on,and punched my keyboard to see which song would end up earning this honor.  Well, not quite, but it could have been that easy!  The real reason is that no song rocks nearly as hard as “Qeres” – sure, “Everything Disappearing” is a haunting penultimate track (for all intents and purposes it’s the real closer), and “Crystallophobia” is about the catchiest goddamn thing since the plague, but I think I’m talking myself out of the point I was trying to make so I’m going to stop.  “Qeres” dominates Holy Vacants before the clock even hits 00:01 – I kid you not, hit play and look at the timestamp.  Electric guitars are rollicking from the get-go; the song starts this high but then the drums kick in, along with that magnificent vocal duet, and it has already raised the stakes on itself like twenty measly seconds into the song.  And none of that even counts the best part – a dichotomous chorus which thrusts Jerry Jones’ comically gruff voice alongside those harmonious, angelic backdrops – each word highlighted by…

The Dillinger Escape Plan – “Farewell, Mona Lisa”

There’s no feeling in this place…

Whenever I think of the best metalcore acts of the decade – ha, nevermind – I never think about metalcore.  That almost – almost – led me to overlook what should be an obvious inclusion on anyone’s decade list.  The Dillinger Escape Plan are masters of art when it comes to their ingenious blend of mathcore and extreme metal; this very methodical, calculated madness.  They’ve proven over the span of their entire career to be one of the most important and consistently excellent bands of their subgenre, and to be frank, any number of cuts could have been chosen to represent them on this playlist.  For me, it’s “Farewell, Mona Lisa”, the jaw-dropping opener that kicked the doors down on 2010’s sensational Option Paralysis.

“Farewell, Mona Lisa” captures the despondence of modern times.  It’s a struggle to break free from the mundane paths that life blandly bestows upon us and access a true, original purpose: “Our role is clear, never stray far from the path.”  With the chaotic and complex riffing that swirls about the song’s backdrop, it plunges the listener’s senses into the sheer madness of trying to garner hope from the future during the 2010’s – a time where student loans essentially outweigh their benefits, young people are still living at home into their late twenties or beyond, wielding expensive book-smarts that may not even be applicable to real life, all while contending with unrealistic expectations as well as the intrinsic pressure of knowing that time is passing by.  There’s…

mewithoutYou – “Rainbow Signs”

God gave Noah the rainbow sign…no more water, is the H-Bomb next time?

There’s stark contrast in the implications carried by the phrase, “the end of the world.”  For those with a religious upbringing, it likely conjures images of plague, famine, and horsemen wreaking unfathomable devastation.  To others, they might imagine World War III – cyber warfare shutting down power grids, industry, and commerce, while increasingly desperate leaders launch nuclear missiles at each other from outer space.  mewithoutYou’s end-times scenario is a little of both, and their song ‘Rainbow Signs’ entails all of the intensity and destruction that could come if/when a Biblical and secular apocalypse were to cross paths.

What makes  ‘Rainbow Signs’ so effective isn’t its eccentric storytelling, it’s the personal anecdotes.  Aaron Weiss makes God seem like he has a twisted, sarcastic humor (in the above quote, it’s a reference to God’s promise to Noah that he would never again destroy the Earth with a flood — but he never said anything about nuclear bombs).  He also cracks wise about his hairline, comparing it to Napoleon’s receding hairline late in life after his exile to St. Helena, in what also happens to be the first/only time that the mostly Christian band drops the F-bomb on its listeners.  In the middle of the song Weiss prays in both Arabic and Hebrew.   He even ends the song by recounting an inside joke that only he and his deceased father ever shared.  There’s so much humanity and personality injected into what lesser…

Sufjan Stevens – “Impossible Soul”

though I know it’s small, I want love for us all

So, anyone got a spare 30 minutes to listen to a pop track?  I know, it’s easy to approach songs that lengthy with trepidation; usually they’re either a bloated mess, annoyingly repetitive, or worse yet – they do that pointless “hidden track” thing where they put 18 minutes of silence between two average-length tracks.  Thankfully, “Impossible Soul” is none of those things, and instead of viewing it as the final song from Stevens’ 2010 blockbuster The Age of Adz, I beg you to imagine that it is an album in and of itself.  After all, it’s more of a collection of movements than it is one drawn out song idea, with different concepts bleeding into each other effortlessly.

There’s a lot of inspiring messages floating around within the confines of “Impossible Soul”, but instead of rattling off all my favorite passages it would be more prudent to look at how the song evolves within itself.  It begins as this somber/electronic/dehumanized ballad, and gradually adds layers of warmth.  By the second “movement”, you can hear more audacious synthesizers zipping through space in the background, while Sufjan self-harmonizes to make it sound like he’s no longer in isolation.  Eventually, the song erupts into this celebratory dance — with a full crowd harmoniously chanting a series of choruses (“it’s a miracle..do you wanna dance” / “we can do much more together” / “it’s not so impossible”) that all brim with equal optimism.   Someone on Sputnik once said that The Age…

Titus Andronicus – “A More Perfect Union”

tramps like us, baby, we were born to die

The weight of 2019 is bearing down on us.  As the final stop in a 10 year waiting period – which started waaay back when the staff punctuated their 2000-2009 list with a Jane Doe victory – there’s an awful lot to think about this year.  A lot of 2019 will be spent reflecting, looking back on the last 3,650 days of music and beginning the impossible task of identifying what stood out as the very best.  Frankly, it’s a fool’s errand to even try.  That of course, is where I come in.  Even though I will continue to evaluate my top 100 albums separately – and eventually submit that list when it comes time to vote – this particular blog series will aim to spotlight my favorite songs.  That’s right, a whole decade of sowingcore at your fingertips.  I’m excited too.   For this series, I will incrementally add what I deem to be classic/essential songs to my spotify playlist [below] until there’s a list of only my very favorite songs from 2010-2019.  Please note that these installments are not ranked, but rather a compilation.

This first entry might come as a slight surprise.  Many associate “The Battle of Hampton Roads” with the very best that Titus Andronicus’ 2010 landmark record The Monitor has to offer, but I’ve always been partial to “A More Perfect Union.”  There’s a tremendous sense of political urgency that emanates from it, even though it’s not…