Listening Post: The 20 Best Singles of 2009 (18 & 17)

18. Doves -- Jetstream

Over the last decade, Doves -- like their Mancunian musical counterparts, the more melancholic and dramatic Elbow -- have very quietly made some of the most surprising, alluring music anywhere. Songs like Catch the Sun, Caught by the River and Snowden are lush pop masterpieces, pure and simple -- so it's no surprise that their 2009 album Kingdom of Rust continued the trend of recording the kind of material Coldplay only wishes they were capable of. While the title track from Kingdom of Rust was the first official single from that album, the band released the record's lead track -- the hypnotic, propulsive, seemingly New Order-inspired Jetstream -- on its website as a free download and the fans, having their say, took over from there. The response was so favorable that alternative radio began adding the song and that, thankfully, brought one of the best songs of the year to the masses.




17. Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- Heads Will Roll

When Karen O shouts "Off with your head!" about fifteen seconds into Yeah Yeah Yeahs' furious dance-art-punk anthem Heads Will Roll, it makes you want to run for cover. The track was the second single off their all-around spectacular 2009 album It's Blitz! and it shows the New York City-based band doing what they do best: delivering a cool-as-hell sonic blast that you can practically feel emanating like a clarion call across a crowded Lower East Side dancefloor -- the kind typically packed with people who try hard to look like they don't really give a shit what they're listening to. Both Heads Will Roll and the single that preceded it, Zero, actually stood out as being the only songs on It's Blitz! that really resonated with punk fierceness, but that's quite alright -- a jolt of adrenaline like the one Yeah Yeah Yeahs regularly provide is the kind of thing you want to be careful not to O.D. on anyway.



Tomorrow: 16 & 15

The 20 Best Singles of 2009: 19. Mos Def -- Quiet Dog; 20. Florence + the Machine -- Kiss With a Fist

The Reason for the Season

Listening Post: The 20 Best Singles of 2009

Ah, the single -- that staple of modern music. Admittedly the idea of having a hit single almost seems like it shouldn't matter anymore, given that any song from any album by any artist can be bought for around a dollar (or sought out and downloaded for free, if you're so inclined to stick it to the RIAA), basically making the general public the arbiters of what constitutes the most popular, or at the very least "listenable," track on a record. Still, we're Americans -- which means we love to be told what's good and what isn't and we'll follow that recommendation accordingly -- and so the single survives as an art form. Overall, 2009 wasn't the best year for music in recent memory -- which isn't to say that there weren't a few truly great records: Animal Collective, The Big Pink, Neko Case, The xx, St. Vincent, Tegan and Sara, Mastodon and quite a few of the artists whose music you'll hear here over the next twelve days all released spectacular albums -- but it was a very good year for that one great, catchy-as-all-hell tune from a record that made you want to hear more (even if the "more" wasn't always worth hearing in the end). It was a great year for women and bands fronted by women. It was a great year for power-pop of all stripes. It was a great year for little bands making big noise and new bands playing with the kind of assurance that made you think they've been around forever.

So let's get on with it and hear the best singles of 2009.


20. Florence + the Machine -- Kiss With a Fist

You gotta give Florence Welch credit: It takes serious balls to have your very first single -- your introductory bow to the public -- be a brash, two-minute screed about a couple of lovers who regularly (and affectionately) kick the crap out of each other, all set to a playful little dance beat. Such was Kiss With a Fist, the debut from Britain's Florence + the Machine. It's a cliché in rock to say that somebody bursts onto the scene and makes an unforgettable impression, but when you're a woman who's writing lyrics like "broke your jaw once before/spilt your blood upon the floor/you broke my leg in return/sit back and watch the bed burn" you're pretty much guaranteed to get attention. Who knows, maybe that guy who socked Jersey Shore's Snooki in the face was just taking the advice of Florence + the Machine. Either way, this is kick-ass music -- literally.




19. Mos Def -- Quiet Dog

The last time anyone heard a hip-hop album title perfectly sum up the album itself, it was last year's The Renaissance. Q-Tip didn't need to drive home the point that his work was a kind of rebirth of the artistic aesthetic he pioneered with A Tribe Called Quest; likewise, neither did Mos Def need to announce that The Ecstatic marked a return to the exhilarating technique and lyrical flow that made him a hipster hero and seemed to fill him with so much joy. The album's first single, Quiet Dog, was everything anyone's ever loved about Flaco: An evocative jump-up boogie beat that practically pulses in time with the heartbeat of the city -- and borough, Brooklyn -- he loves; verbal gymnastics made to look easy; an über-cool overall vibe that, mercifully, stands light years apart from 98% of the nonsense that passes for hip-hop these days. Quiet Dog got you on your feet, told you to "simmer down," and left you thrilled there are still a few visionaries working in a genre that's proven time and time again to be content to reward assholes over artists.



Tomorrow: 18 & 17

And Now, a Message for John McCain from Chez's Evil Twin, Garth

Look, you doddering old douche, I get that Alzheimer's robs you of your ability to form a coherent thought, to say nothing of rendering you unable to remember what you said and did 20 minutes ago. But for fuck's sake, don't you at least pay a couple of "old guy handlers" to stop you when you're about to spout something shockingly stupid and completely detached from reality? If you do, you should fire their asses, because they didn't stick a tube sock in your mouth before your appearance on "Fux News Sunday" this morning.

Since you probably don't have the slightest idea what you said, seeing as how it's now several hours after the interview, let me refresh what little is left of your memory: You claimed that Barack Obama has fostered a "more partisan" environment than the one that existed during the Clinton administration. You said:

"At least under 'Hillarycare' they tried seriously to negotiate with Republicans. There's been -- there has been no effort that I know of that -- serious across-the-table negotiations, such as I have engaged in with Democrats and with other administrations. And that was the commitment that the president made."

Wow -- really? Really?

That's interesting there, John, because I could've sworn that just a few months ago I watched Obama give a health care address on national television and speak in nothing but the most conciliatory and respectful tones toward the opposing party -- that would be yours -- only to have some disrespectful asshole from that party shout "YOU LIE!" at him like a drunk at a fucking redneck bar.

And you know something? Obama continues to reach out to Republicans. He continues to try to compromise with them and appease them -- to his own detriment, if we're being honest. This guy is still trying to make nice with the people who, since before he even won the election, have called him a dangerous, terrorist-sympathizing, socialist who wants to kill our grandmothers and who wasn't even born in this country. You fucking lunatics literally paint him as some kind of illegitimate pretender to the office -- you're so beavershit terrified that your precious country is slipping away from the control of white, Christian oligarchs and oligarch-enablers like yourselves. Your True Believers organize hilariously bombastic celebrations of willful ignorance and provincial know-nothingness -- you call them "tea parties" -- where they hold up signs declaring "Obama is a Nazi!" They bring guns to places where the President of the Fucking United States is speaking, tacitly threatening him and his supporters with "violent revolution," irresponsible nonsense that's consistently stoked by Republican lawmakers both on Fox News and, occasionally, in person. All this -- all this -- and you have the fucking gall to say that Obama's the one creating a toxic political climate?

Have you been mixing your anti-depressants with Cindy's Demerol?

Look, I get that after being stomped like a kid at a Cincinnati Who concert last year, you decided that it was time to get on your knees, open wide and start swallowing load after load of the GOP Kool-Aid again -- otherwise you'd have no friends -- but you can't really believe the horseshit you're shoveling. Obama's gone so far out of his way to make a group of people who are never going to like him happy that he's actually losing the support of a lot of people who thought they could like him no matter what he did. Even the spineless twerps across the aisle from you in Congress cede both the floor and their testicles to you every chance they get.

Oh, and by the way, I've got two words for you: Sarah Goddamned Palin.

Yeah -- this morning's little pearl of wisdom comes from the guy who unleashed the Retard Kraken onto the world. Sorry, but I'm not giving credence to one fucking thing you say until you apologize for taking a cynical political gamble that would've put a petty, feckless ex-beauty queen -- Idealogue Barbie; someone with more shameless, naked ambition than brains -- just one of your steadily faltering heartbeats away from the highest office in the free world. You wanna talk about somebody who's really fostered partisan enmity -- even in her current role as, well, a fucking reality TV star? Sarah Palin.

And you shot her into the American political system's veins like so much bad smack.

Thanks for that, John. Oh, and fuck you very much for emphatically embracing your party's current ethic of shitloads of hypocritical psycho-projection. You guys are right: It's everyone else's fault. Do yourself a favor, pal. The next time you think that, instead of announcing it on Fox, just go take a look in the mirror and address that person.

But first eat your oatmeal, then it's good-night for you. 5 o'clock. Way past your bed time.


Because you're old.

Interlude

Sunday Sacrilege(?)

Daily Mail: Semi-Nude Joseph and Mary Billboard Draws Outrage/12.17.09

Bot Out

Another of those obnoxious housekeeping notes from the Management: I've enabled the word verification feature on the comments, so from here on out you'll have to take the extra, admittedly annoying step of typing out a CAPTCHA word before leaving a comment.

I obviously don't want to have to do this, but it's gotten to the point where almost every other comment I find in the for-approval queue begins with "I guess , your wondering, how you to make money at home by..." or "FREE VIAGRA" (which, at 40, I may actually need, but that's neither here nor there).

Bottom line, it's become too much of a hassle having to weed through that crap, so I'm giving the electronic middle finger to the bots. Sorry it affects you nice folks negatively.