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20 Favorite Songs of 2013, #11-20
[11] Disclosure feat. Sam Smith – “Latch” (from Settle)
Settle effaces its vocal performers the same way Stephin Merritt did on the first 6ths album, and they return to us with enchanting anonymity. I guess that makes “Latch” the “Puerto Rico Way” of the album, a little flamboyant but still under the firm control of the arranger.
[12] Kelela – “Floor Show” (from Cut 4 Me)
I had no idea about this album’s bass (!!!) until I heard it while driving, but even if you don’t have access to a 2007 minivan, the treble’s incredibly deep, too, like on this song’s haunting fadeout, the finale of its jaw-dropping array.
[13] Pet Shop Boys – “Love is a Bourgeois Construct” (from Electric)
Their wordiest song ever on their least wordy album ever, it’s amazing it only takes seven minutes to reconcile that fact, to assemble a great club anthem out of overabundant idle musings. Being a Pet Shop Boys song, it’s never as lyrically or musically dense as, say, R.E.M.’s (astonishing, remember?) “Hope,” but it has the momentum to get there, if they wanted.
[14] Neko Case – “Man” (from The Worse Things Get…)
The “man in the fucking moon” part excites me so much that I’ve started to hear the whole song as a series of moments designed to increase its impact. I’m okay with that.
[15] The Men – “Half Angel Half Light” (from New Moon)
Angelic chorus where the guitar solo should be, this band is as unpredictable as they are efficient.
[16] Jeremy Jay – “Covered in Ivy” (7”)
Silent, kid, this song’s energy accumulates in a way that sounds entirely accidental, like Jay wandering out of his own musical past, the awesome instrumental coda his first sight of his destination.
[17] No Age – “An Impression” (from An Object)
Parts of the album confuse, will have to be replayed forever, but these guys’ continued ability to whittle down infinite possibility into strange, beautiful, heretofore unheard fragment-songs like this one makes them the band of the year, every year they exist.
[18] Chance the Rapper feat. Noname Gypsy – “Lost” (from Acid Rap)
“My Drug Buddy, Pt. 2” – I can only wrap my mind around Chance the (in this instance) Non-Rapper’s awesome delivery in isolated three minute doses, hence this excerption. But really this is here for four words, Buddy’s “naked in my dreams,” perfect example of the song’s rare, non-stylized intimacy.
[19] Kurt Vile – “Girl Called Alex” (from Wakin on a Pretty Daze)
“Dawn’s early light…” I’d forgotten Vile’s statement about the irrelevance of punk ideals and have been going around inwardly proclaiming Pretty Daze the only punk album of the year, as a way to reach past its mellifluous surface and understand why so many of its lines (like this song’s opening scene: same light, 200 years later) sound like casual transgressions.
[20] Kim Deal – “Are You Mine?” (7”)
It’s a good song, a 20 years wearier sorta sequel to “Do You Love Me Now?” but the gift here is the presence, energy, and voice of someone you really loved and then didn’t hear or forgot how to hear.
