What a Fool Believes

20. Light Asylum: “Dark Allies” — Christian imagery turned devilish over sinister Dark Wave and the greatest vocal performance of the year. Somewhere, in a dank underground lair of smoke and stone, where women in BDSM leather and cruelty in their eyes prowl its tunnels, the only light coming from blood-red candles whose wax covers the surrounding surfaces like kudzu, sits Andrew Eldritch of the Sisters of Mercy, sunglasses on, fingertips tented, grinning with pride.
19. Fucked Up: “A Little Death” — Though la petite mort is acknowledged in the title and lyrics, it’s the guitar riff that’s truly orgasmic.
18. Cloud Nothings: “No Future/No Past” — As if “A Steve Albini Production” wasn’t enough, this smoldering paean to the present features creepy-cool cult member vocals and a volcano of a pay off.
17. M83: “Midnight City” — Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a teenage android, the hormones program running at full capacity, aimless in a hover car between the neon towers of Midnight City? It’s just like being a human teenager, only much, much shinier.
16. Shabazz Palaces: “A treatease dedicated to The Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 questions, 1 answer)” — I’ve never liked “The Shit.” How is that a term of endearment? Even if you’re The Shit, King Shit, you’re still shit. I bring this up because Ishmael Butler uses the term in this track but I still love it. Why? Because this shit is romantic! “Her hair smell like April showers”, “See, in you only baby is a place / And I want to be there”, and “You’re the shit like early summer / The breeze, the birds, the bees, they humming”.
15. Toro Y Moi: “New Beat” — An Amazonian banger—all sticky heat, dripping fronds, and writhing bronze flesh.
14. Oneohtrix Point Never: “Replica” — Normally, an ambient track like this would have me thinking of a landscape, something futuristic I’m passing through in a monorail—life from a digital metropolis buzzing, switches clicking and clacking, crossing lights beeping and blinking. But there’s something very human about this track—that piano figure. You feel the presence behind each note. So it still could be a landscape, just one that’s anatomical, internal.
13. Future Islands: “Balance” — Some of the best and most danceable advice of the year. Warm new pop romance with phenomenal vocals by Samuel T. Herring that are the perfect mix of comfort and true grit.
12. Iceage: “Remember” — A glacier that’s fashionably late making up for a lost age with a speed and hunger that’ll level a continent in minutes.
11. Kavinsky: “Nightcall (feat. Lovefoxxx)” — Now I don’t know that I’d be filled with all of the strong and silent cool I feel when I hear this song had I not seen Drive—it soundtracks the opening credit sequence—but that strong and silent cool says, “I don’t care.”*
10. Atlas Sound: “Te Amo” — Though “Mona Lisa” is the Parallax track that sinks its hooks in first, “Te Amo”—with “Terra Incognita” close behind—is the most exciting track. Here Bradford Cox pushes his vocals without the usual swaths of heavy reverb and delay, sounding his most direct. He’s vulnerable out there, but confident. Accompanying him is a lovely dancing-up-the-staircase piano loop melody that, when heard through headphones, is actually three separate figures, playing from the left, right and center, that combine to form the melody. This crystalline direction is one I’d love to hear him pursue further.
9. Charli XCX: “Stay Away” — How do you expect me to stay away, Charli XCX, when I just want to hear your T’Pau-referencing kiss-off again and again and again?
8. tUnE-yArDs: “Bizness” — On an album that is ridiculously lively, this is its beating heart. Loops of Merrill Garbus’ voice lead into a number whose melting pot of various genres recalls ZE Records in its heyday, with lyrics that should make it an Occupy Wall Street theme song.
7. Destroyer: “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker” — An amazing collaboration. Kara Walker, a phenomenal artist who creates scenes of African-American history with black paper silhouettes, provided words to Dan Bejar, who then adapted them for this track. It’s a lush séance, Walker’s cues turning Bejar into a medium channeling abstractions from Antebellum South out into modern NYC, ghosts mingling with the present in a fog of ambient new pop.
6. Yuck: “Get Away” — For a song whose anguish and storms of fuzz and sludge proclaim it incapable of escaping to the summer sun, the pop of its chorus shows that the light’s gotten through and it’s reveling in it.
5. The Joy Formidable: “Austere” — One of the first songs I heard during my first trip to California earlier this year. I was stopped to take a photo of the street sign for Inland Empire Blvd, before a backdrop of giant blue and green mountains, when this song came on. The huge sound of it went perfectly with the landscape and the repeated, childlike “ah“‘s matched the elation I felt at being there. I’ve been listening to it steadily since, its loud, freak-out climax raising those mountains in my mind every time.
4. Beyoncé: “Countdown” — A countdown even more exciting than New Year’s. With New Year’s there’s the promise of what’s to come, but often just as much uncertainty. “Countdown” is all promise. When you hear these numbers, you know they’re only ticking down to fun and love.
3. St. Vincent: “Surgeon” — Clinical detachment expressed with expert precision. And when the surgeon arrives to slice open Annie Clark’s cool, alabaster exterior, what spills out? Squiggly grooves and slick funk in tropical tones.
2. Charli XCX: “Nuclear Seasons” — Here’s how I was seasonally annihilated by this track: Spring: The big bad night stalker synth line; Summer: The seductive delivery; Fall: The rapid Contra Spread Gun/whipcrack/satisfied “aah” samples at the beginning of the chorus; Winter: “We survived nuclear seasons”.
1. The Rapture: “How Deep Is Your Love?” — It’s hard to find the right words for such a loss. It’s better to use rhythms and have everyone show their love by dancing with death at the wake.

One song per album rule. Except for Charli XCX. But she didn’t even have an album, just a couple of singles. And they’re both awesome.

*Technically 2010. [I wanted to include Milk Music’s “Beyond Living” to this list. But whereas I could justify “When It’s Over”, for arriving on the cusp of 2010/2011, and “Nightcall”, for being a part of a 2011 soundtrack, my (admittedly ridiculous) self-imposed rules wouldn’t allow “Beyond Living”. Had I allowed it, it would have been top ten, possibly top five. It’s awesome. Hoping to give it it’s own piece.]