10) Fever Ray – “If I Had a Heart”
If I were a record company manager (assuming that position even exists anymore), I probably would have fought to remove “If I Had a Heart” from the opening slot of Fever Ray. Nothing happens, I’d say. One eerie guitar note loops over and over, as does a discreet seven-note keyboard progression, while a few blips of “drum” eventually find their way into the mix. Listeners are going to be turned off, I’d say. Nope, quite the contrary. The boldest is also perhaps the best opening track of 2009.
Give Mos Def 1:23 of your time and he won’t waste it. What most rappers take just to introduce their album (name, album title, the year “and forever”), Mos Def uses to prioritize what philosophers might call “ultimate ends.” That’s right: peace, God, love, realness, home, truth, and then everything else. The best part: if you get in the way, he’s also not afraid to call you a biatch.
The critiques of Mr. Lif’s I Heard It Today were that it was already dated upon its release: all the Bushisms were just a year and a half too late. “Head High” though, at first seemingly by luck but then clearly more purposefully with every listen, is forward-looking to the point of soothsaying. Compared to the heady Yes We Can days, Obama’s troublesome recession, couplet of wars, health care debacles, and swarms of vocal critics feel about as strange as this beat to this jam. But slow down, give the man some time. For Mr. Lif, sometimes it’s about smoking some pot and trying to keep your head up.
7) Phoenix – “Fences”
Just when you think there’s no way Phoenix can sustain any of the pummeling energy of 1-2 punch “Lisztomania” and “1901,” along bounces “Fences.” There is no level of volume that can satisfy my white boy desire to flail my limbs and thrash my head to the bass-iest portions of this serene electro-pop, thankfully(?) spaced out across several interludes of indie rock normalcy. Again and again. Louder and louder. C’est magnifique.
The greatest phone-call turned fantasy ballad of all time feels appropriately Where the Wild Things Are. There are so many things to love: imagining Karen O’s thought process between the “make this type of sound” requests and her actual attempts, trying to figure out what’s human and what’s machine, the laughter, the pauses, the way the song feels spontaneous and new on the twentieth listen, the collaborative snippet at the of the end of the track that reminds you that these are two professionals, the way Wayne sort of giggles when he sings “I can be a wolf,” and the way it somehow creates its own perfect humorous niche within the sprawling, frenzied Embryonic.
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