#This game hasn’t been some masterpiece all throughout the journey but how do you fuck up at the finish line that badly?!

[misterbaritone]

I beat Sonic Frontiers and yeah what the fuck was that?

[maxfreedmanwrites-blog]

My Favorite Songs of the First Half of 2017, RANKED

This year, I decided, you know what, fuck it? I’m gonna indulge myself. I like talking about music, writing about music, and just generally being able to turn the “oh my god this SONG” in my head into actual coherent prose. This is super informal though, I’m not trying to impress The Journalism Gods™, just doing this for me mostly.  And I’m also really curious how different my end-of-year list will look from this midyear list (and by extension, how my end-of-year list will compare to my end-of-decade list). Also we might all be blown to bits by the end of this year so I just wanted to do this for once okay????

ANYWAY I’m rolling out albums tomorrow, but here’s my songs of the year so far. I’m starting you off with an alphabetical honorable mention section of 10 songs, and then I ranked my top 10 songs. For the honorable mentions, I gave a four word description so that, if you haven’t heard the song, you know whether you might dig it. Then it’s full on WORDS for the ranked top 10. Oh, and did I mention each section has a corresponding Spotify playlist? BOOM

Honorable Mentions

Presented as Artist – Album (Label), and * = I work with this artist; ^ = I previously worked with this artist

Arca – “Desafio” (XL) (weird, beautiful electronic ballad)

Balun – “Teletransporte” (Good Child Music) (entrancing, ambient pop journey)

Blanck Mass – “Silent Treatment” (Sacred Bones) (hell on the dancefloor)

Blessed – “Headache” (Coin Toss Records/Kingfisher Bluez) (art punk with math)

Chelsea Wolfe – “16 Psyche” (Sargent House) (metal, but goth rock)

Fufanu – “Liability” * (One Little Indian) (post-punk in the club)

Leyya – “Zoo” ^ (Las Vegas Records) (sassy, smack-talking deep cut)

Shame – “Tasteless” (Fnord Comms (however, this band just signed to Dead Oceans)) (classic post-punk done modern)

Yoke Lore – “Only You” (Independent Label Alliance) * (late morning sunshine inspiration)

Zola Jesus – “Exhumed” (Sacred Bones) (overwhelming, symphonic electronic drama)

Honorable Mentions playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/126489514/playlist/2AzLWfVloJH07fnmV0QeOE

Ranked Top 10

Playlist at the very bottom

10) Big Thief – “Shark Smile” (Saddle Creek)

You’ll see in my albums list tomorrow that I’ve opted to exclude Capacity, Big Thief’s newest album, from consideration just because it’s so new that I can’t really hold it up to things I’ve been enjoying for much longer, even though it’s pretty fuckin’ goddamn great. I don’t have that dilemma with songs, since they’re much shorter, but either way, “Shark Smile” has been around for at least a month longer than the album, and it hasn’t entirely left my head since I first heard it. Last year, Big Thief’s Masterpiece was #9 on my albums of the year list, and Capacity sees the band moving further inward, far less pop-oriented, as vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Adrianne Lenker explores her formative traumas; “Shark Smile” sounds like Lenker negotiating the space between the sound she wanted to achieve with each album, and it’s overwhelming and amazing. It’s a searing, painfully detailed recollection of a pretty gnarly car accident, its intensity building over the song’s course just as one’s adrenaline might accelerate while they’re in a car going over the guardrail. This is the exact scenario Lenker describes at the song’s peak, when her snarl and the band’s racket come bursting from their seams, overtaking me so strongly I usually play this song three times before moving forward with the rest of the album. “Humans,” from Masterpiece, was in my Top 5 songs last year, and this shit makes that song seem like child’s play.

9) Gabriel Garzón-Montano – “The Game” (Stones Throw)

You could look like a piece of ham growing mold between two pieces of American cheese—which isn’t even real cheese!!—and still be sexy as hell if you were the person behind “The Game.” Jardín, Gabriel Garzón-Montano’s newest album, is rife with nu-soul influence, and “The Game” is its most addicting example of how Garzón-Montano toys with the genre’s pervasive sexuality. It starts by asking its central character why he’s comparing himself to some other guy (some real lame-o, it seems), then tells him he could just roll up with swagger out the ass and have no problems anymore. Musically, it’s a soundtrack to someone running into a casual, heavily seated jazz bar and weaving his way through scores of women—this is very straight music, honestly—hoping to magically recruit one to a sensual dance and follow that with a Miguel-style Coffee In The Morning. I wonder if snarling “now walk like a tangerine” on loop in the club could find me the love of my life…probably not, but that’s because I’m not an architect of lively, jittery soul anthems like this fuckin’ guy.

8) Dream Wife – “Somebody” (Lucky Number Music)

“I am not my body/I’m somebody.” This song came out two months after the Women’s March, yet its chorus could’ve been the basis for so many of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of signs boldly donned across the world’s major cities. This line is preceded by vocalist Rakel Mjöll’s sarcastic reciting of some dude who doesn’t believe in rape culture’s bullshit justification for some scumbag’s actions—“You were a cute girl standing back stage/it was bound/to happen”—one of the most memorable and clearly audible lyrics to grace rock music recently, perhaps intentionally so because the point of view it’s shitting on is so despicable. Of course, even the most pointed social commentary in music is still music, so it helps that the gently overdriven guitars here are just as natural to latch onto as Mjöll’s chameleonic voice. Dream Wife don’t have to reinvent rock to make it enjoyable; mining its longstanding strengths and not beating around the bush on a frustratingly omnipresent social issue in music do that just fine.

7) Lorde – “Green Light” (Republic)

Melodrama is nearly as good as the hype says, but it’s also a June release (see Big Thief above), and I also don’t always make it past the first track 'cause godDAMN this song is impossible to dislike. “Green Light” is like if the overproduced bullshit “gracing” the airwaves on Top 40 radio had a conscience, seriously great songwriting, and a semi-intentionally clunky lyric or two to give it character (‘she thinks you love the beach/you’re such a damn liar” should’ve been the basis of more memes this year). The chorus is accessible as fuck, and by that I mean, teenage girls, pop critics, electronic fans, and straight up alternative listeners should have no trouble finding catharsis in how that enticing piano bop from the pre-chorus goes full-steam big party singalong in the chorus. Can’t you imagine this song just lighting up diverse folks occupying the same karaoke bar? Don’t you just want to get out of your seat and start dancing every time this song comes on? It’s as graceful and innately thrilling as big-bucks pop gets; even someone as pretentious and picky as myself is absolutely helpless when I hear it.

6) Perfume Genius – “Wreath” (Matador)

“Wreath” trembles throughout its entire, far too short run. There’s a constant shaking, the semblance of a heart beating its very fastest, in these incredibly fascinating synths that are equal parts bony and glitzy. This song is as celebratory as it is uneasy (a pretty apt description for No Shape at large), riveting in its experimental sounds and dramatic vocal delivery. As though Mike Hadreas’ descriptions of sunsets and sunrises demarcating new days weren’t unusually harrowing, the way his voice transforms from a relatively gentle bellow into an all-consuming howl is nothing short of arresting. Does it sound like he gradually shifts from singing the word “grave” to the word “death” in the song’s outro, or is that just me? This is seriously rattling shit, the kind of transformative experience that’ll take you out-of-body for a hot moment before you dive right back into it, because there’s no playing this song just once.

5) Palm – “Walkie Talkie” (Carpark)

Palm’s gotten its finite yet rabid fanbase from its deconstruction and subsequent repair of rock norms. There is no verse-chorus-verse, no common time, no mere sequence of eighth notes with Palm; instead, there are incredibly brainy runs of guitar-drum polyrhythms, passages where the only thing more difficult to trace than the beat is the reason you keep even trying to trace the beat when you know how futile that is. Also, there are flares of dissonant, fanged noise rushing at you from every conceivable angle. 

“Walkie Talkie” is one of Palm’s most compelling runs to date, a portrait of an art-rock band continuing to focus equally on art and rock. Whereas so many new releases depart in some manner, subtle or otherwise, from their predecessors, “Walkie Talkie” doesn’t too fundamentally fuck with Palm’s established domain of janky, demanding noise rock. It’s just another incredibly strong entry into the Palm canon, and since this band has spent its existence doing something that so few other artists are doing, that’s really all we can ask for. And I’m pretty sure the phrase “trading basics,” which is the title of their stellar 2015 album, pops up a couple times on this song, and I don’t remember hearing it ever said on the album. So sometimes sticking with what made you amazing in the first place is the right move.

4) Run the Jewels – “Thursday in the Danger Room (ft. Kamasi Washington)” (self-released)

Literally nobody came to RTJ3 to cry. Everyone who loved RTJ2’s potent mix of absolute bangers and still-necessary, eternally relevant political commentary—it’s honestly so frustrating that, even though we’re having such good conversations and Black Lives Matter has gained serious political weight (and used it amazingly), Philando Castile’s murderer was nevertheless just recently entirely acquitted—came to RTJ3 expecting the same. And they got no less of the commentary, but generally, the album is less bombastic. Not that these are ballads or anything, but holy fuck is “Thursday in the Danger Room” beautifully close to that. (Also, before we go any further, yes this song/album were technically released in 2016 but FUCK IT (also more on this in my albums list tomorrow))

I remember seeing El-P tweet that he and Killer Mike almost left this song off the album since it’s so goddamn personal. El’s verse about watching a friend slowly die—heavily implied to be a battle against something like cancer or another fatal disease—ends with some seriously tear-jerking shit, and then these two have the audacity to throw in a chorus with not just Kamasi Washington’s most solemn sax run to date, but these actual lyrics oh my god:

And I guess I'd say I'll see you soon

But the truth is that I see you now

Still talk to you like you're around

And I guess I say you left too soon

But the truth is that you never left

'Cause I never let myself forget

And then there’s Mike’s verse about a friend he lost to a mugging, and how he tried to help this friend’s family through the emotional and financial turmoil in the fallout. If somehow RTJ2’s tales of police brutality weren’t thoroughly humanizing—“Early” is especially moving—this song right here will slap the shit out of your tear ducts and really get you going. This song is as devastating as it is gorgeous, and I can’t really think of another hip-hop song with the capacity to make me tear up like this one.

3) Kelly Lee Owens – “Anxi (ft. Jenny Hval)” (Smalltown Supersound)

To be perfectly clear: the best song on Kelly Lee Owens is “CBM,” which stands a good shot at making my Top 30 or so Songs of the Decade, but since “CBM” first appeared on last year’s unreal, near-perfect Oleic EP, it doesn’t count for this list. “Anxi” is pretty fucking stellar, though, so I’m actually glad I didn’t have to decide between the two. When I chatted with Kelly Lee Owens for FLOOD Magazine earlier this year, I mentioned to her that she and featured vocalist Jenny Hval have startingly similar voices, and before I could even ask her if that’s something she gets a lot, she went off on how even she remains fascinated by how much the two sound alike. As blasphemous as this is to say, Jenny sounds even more natural on this beat—the year’s best electronic beat, in my opinion—than KLO herself might. “Anxi” is two immensely talented experimentalists bringing out the best in each other.

“Anxi” starts out innocuously enough, with a beat so subtle and murky only Kelly Lee Owens could’ve crafted it. It’s pretty amazing that KLO’s already such a distinct beatmaker this early on in her career, and having Jenny’s voice here—both in singing and spoken word form—makes the beat all the more alluring. Anyone in tune with KLO’s soundalikes—namely, IDM and especially Aphex Twin—might gauge that more is to come, so the handful of chugs that come after Hval wraps up her main appearance aren’t surprising. But that bass-heavy groove that comes in about 10 seconds later? That shit slaps, even though it’s more restrained than about 99% of electronic music. It’s a great example of KLO’s charm: her beats are really, really tightly tethered, yet they’re as body-shaking and freak-out-worthy as something by, say, Grimes or Caribou. “Anxi” is methodical, ominous, and just a fucking banger, even though it’s incredibly quiet. For lack of a better word, it’s magical.

2) (Sandy) Alex G – “Brick” (Domino)

“Brick” is a shitty song, and I mean that as high praise. It’s really just Alex G having a temper tantrum; its lyrics detailing the final stages of a relationship are clunky as shit, and there are moments where it’s just him screaming against a drum machine, and also the guitars are so muddy and loud they’re indistinct, and also these are the exact things I love about it. It verges on being bad by way of just being immature and petulant, but honestly in this era when we all want to punch everything in the face and everything is infuriating, who am I to judge? Instead, when “Brick” comes on, I give in to my visceral, unpretentious senses and go out smashing windows, toppling over newspaper stands, knocking pedestrians to the sidewalk, and lighting shit on fire.

Not actually, but that’s what “Brick” makes me want to do, and I love songs that can make me do that without sounding gross. As I described before, “Brick” should sound gross, overdone, tawdry, and all that, but it somehow finds a perfect balance of aggression and homespun emotion to be an endlessly replayable song. Honestly, I didn’t even know what its lyrics were before I looked them up; I was enthralled enough having a punching bag song, the sort of anthem that can sympathize with me on my bad days, remind me that the world at large sucks on my good days, and drown out the hysteria of the subways on any ordinary day. I’m not really much of a mosh pit guy, but “Brick” brings out the animal in me and makes me want to run headfirst into a crowd of angry showgoers and punch some faces. Everyone’s got some anger in them, and this song brings out the minimal amount that lies in me.

Also, this is essentially a hardcore punk song on Rocket, a country-lite album?! Yooooooooooooo

1) Priests – “JJ” (Sister Polygon)

“JJ” is like “Shut Up Kiss Me” but punk. I just had to say that because it’s me writing this, regardless of any true analogy there might be. But there kind of is one. (Also, yeah this song came out in late October 2016, but it’s the best song on Nothing Feels Natural, which came out in January, don’t @ me).

My eternal “Shut Up Kiss Me” obsession comes from many places: its tongue-in-cheek pop tropes; its catchy-as-hell guitars; its fiery, thrilling vocals; its joke-filled lyricism that can also be taken at face value as wholly serious; its incessant replayability. “JJ” has all this, but in an entirely different context. It’s a post-punk song with surf rock elements infused throughout, and its structure affords some novelties even though it’s mostly familiar terrain; still though, after long enough, the way Katie Alice Greer snarls “When I met you/you were just a bad attituuuuuude!/You dated a model/one time she stuck her finger in a light socket” feels more like an in-joke than a send-up of some bad ex’s even worse ex. “You were just a rich kid/low-life in a very big jacket in a very big way” precedes a diss about the entirely commonplace cigarettes this guy—let’s call him JJ—smokes, and then Katie disses her own cigarette habits before moping, with more than a hint of satirical self-pity, “You thought I was disgusting/You thought I was disgusting.” Of course, this can also be taken as an entirely serious remark, one relating her own self-image issues to this ex’s abusive words. When Katie tells us that “all the jock frat boys” called JJ a “hipster fag,” she’s simultaneously mocking him, mocking herself for dating him, and lambasting the frat culture that allows homophobic slurs to be so commonplace in the first place. As the song moves into its final chant of “Who ever deserved anything, anyway?/what a stupid concept,” it’s just as easy to imagine an angsty teenager shouting this as a friendship ends as it is to envision Katie seriously lamenting the fact that she actually held JJ to any sort of high standards. So yeah, that whole “what’s a joke, and what’s serious?” thing is on full display here.

And then, of course, there’s the music. As tongue-in-cheek pop tropes go, they’re a bit fewer and farther between here than on “Shut Up Kiss Me,” but the assertiveness that Katie presents on what’s a relatively standard structure song fits that mold. G.L. Jaguar’s catchy-as-hell guitars and Katie’s fiery, thrilling vocals and especially the incessant replayability are real as fuck, though. The guitar line that opens the song and later commands its second verse is stupidly catchy, and even when the six-string takes a bit of a backseat, its faint melancholy is pervasive; when guitars introduce the interlude following the second verse, they’re pure firebrand. Katie’s voice throughout is loaded with vibrato and drama, at times veering on parody—“I wrote a bunch of songs for you” sounds like she’s teasing JJ rather than castigating him—and it’s also a stellar fucking performance. Here’s someone who can belt, sing straight from the gut, and mutter introspectively as she sees fit. And you know what’s really great? Everything happening here goes down in under three minutes, so of course you’re gonna hit replay. I’m gonna be listening to this song constantly through the end of the decade, when I expect it’ll crack my Top 10 Songs of the Decade list. “Shut Up Kiss Me” will still be #1, but god I’m happy to have a punk version.

If you think the “Shut Up Kiss Me” comparison is a huge stretch (it definitely is, let’s be real), I have an argument in your favor. I still don’t hear the pianos on “Shut Up Kiss Me” that Angel Olsen details on Song Exploder, even though I’ve listened to that goddamn song like 500 times. Pianos on “JJ”? Everywhere, baby. And they really make all the difference.

Ranked Top 10 playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/126489514/playlist/4gt4kP3aZ5bEJoJNvn6zGH