5. "I Feel Better" - Hot Chip
Hot Chip have proven to be the most reliable creators of dancefloor anthems since Daft Punk in the early 00s. One Life Stand is full of inventive electronic tracks that work equally well outside of a club as inside. “I Feel Better” is marked by grandiose strings and liberal usage of a vocoder, and even some steel drums in the background. Though the backing track could be cheesy in the wrong hands, Hot Chip usually manages to straddle the line between the embarrassing and the sublime like no other, and “I Feel Better” falls squarely in the latter category.
4. "Go Outside" - Cults
Most of the bands on this list are established artists with at least one great album to their name, though it's often more fun when a great song comes out of nowhere. It's safe to say that "Go Outside" came out of nowhere. Cults doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. Riding a glockenspiel intro and a melody so simple and beautiful it seems impossible that it's never been recorded before, "Go Outside" is a beautiful summer anthem with airy, boy-girl harmonies and a gorgeous chorus/bridge.
3. "Round and Round" - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
"Go Outside" came out of nowhere and "Round and Round" blindsided me in a similar way. Apparently, however, Ariel Pink has been around for over a decade, making some pretty good music. When did this happen? Ariel Pink is a man? When Before Today (great album by the way) came out critics hailed it as a prodigious talent finally making good on his ability (sorta like when Kevin Garnett finally won a title). I approached Before Today without hearing any of his previous work and "Round and Round" stuck out immediately. Though some of Ariel Pink's work is a little rough around the edges, "Round and Round" is almost creamy, hearkening back to New Wave ballads of the early 1980s, or more recently to M83's Saturdays = Youth. Everything about this song is fun, from the xylophone or marimba (or whatever percussion instrument it is) that accompanies the drums, to the synthesized voices in the background of the verses and chorus and the falsetto harmonies in the chorus. "Round and Round" is the culmination of an entire life's work and of an artist appealing to his most basic pop instincts to create something wonderful. (The Youtube video I found, matching the song to an 80's John Travolta aerobics movie called Perfect, which is awesome.)
2. "I Can Change" - LCD Soundsystem
"I Can Change" is the best song on the best album of the half-year. No one in the history of pop music has had such a great ear for an irresistible groove as James Murphy. The key to LCD's success is that Murphy combines these grooves with fantastic lyrics that manage to poetically summarize the modern condition in five-minute slices. Here, Murphy attempts to fix a broken relationship over bouncy synths and churning guitar. Though the beat and lyrics are great, it's Murphy's voice that steals the show on "I Can Change" bending words to his will, high and low, turning repetition into an art form.
1. "Cousins" - Vampire Weekend
Everyone knew that Vampire Weekend could write a catchy, layered, 2 and a half minute pop song with tongue-twisting and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. "Cousins" certainly delivers on that front. What people didn't know: these guys can flat out PLAY! "Cousins" is a sonic assault, with machine gun drums, a ridiculously demanding bassline and rapid-fire streams of guitar. The music video does a pretty good job of breaking down just how complex the song is: more detail and invention is squeezed into these two and a half minutes than many bands have put on record during their entire careers. The idiosyncratic drum beat, with its snare rolls and what sounds like a washboard is fantastic to behold and gives the song a ferocious energy that does not let up until the very end. Just when it seems like the song is going to go into overdrive, in come the church bells, providing a perfect capper to one of the most ambitious and breathtaking songs of the past few years.
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