Today I continue my ongoing feature showcasing my personal picks for the best songs of the past decade, posting ten songs at a time.
100. Peter Bjorn and John – Young Folks
From that catchy whistling to the shaking maracas, how could this song not have been a huge hit? I knew it was gonna be everywhere the first time I heard it. I’m a sucker for the boy-girl conversation songs (Johnny and June’s “Jackson” is probably my all-time favorite, and “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” is up there as well), and “Young Folks” is no exception. It’s a percussive, melodic “I Got You Babe” for the iPod generation.
Music, Movies, Television, etc. Pop culture reviews for the short-attention-span Internet age.
Daft Punk – Tron Legacy Soundtrack
When I heard back in February Daft Punk were doing the music for Tron, I was immediately excited – new Daft Punk? Awesome! In retrospect I don’t know why I thought producing a score for a Disney sci-fi film would sound anything like Discovery, and inevitably it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean this hour-long soundtrack doesn’t have its moments – the sound is great, the French duo’s first stab at composing orchestral tunes is to be applauded, and the combination of strings with Daft Punk’s trademark house crescendo is simultaneously creepy and, well, cinematic. And there are even a couple bangers hidden in here too, reminiscent of the good ol’ Daft Punk. There just aren’t enough for my tastes. In the end, it’s just a film score.
Where did all the chillwave go? If 2009 was the year for it, 2010 was the year for slow, boring indie snooze-rock galore. Once the xx got all famous, that sound (as pretty as it is) over-saturated our hipster culture. Damn it, sometimes I just gotta dance! — to music that chops up samples, mixes 80’s new wave with trip-hop and electro, and usually consists of indecipherable, reverb-heavy vocals. Love it! So thank God for Brothertiger, and now thank God for Games.
While I personally haven’t been a huge fan of Daniel Lopatin’s drone-heavy Oneohtrix Point Never project, I adore this collaboration with Tigercity’s Joel Ford. The crew’s latest EP That We Can Play (above) is a six-track synth-y treat. The highlight is, of course, the Cocteau Twins-channeling “Strawberry Skies” featuring vocals from Brooklyn singer Laurel Halo, while “Shadows In Bloom” sounds like something clipped and diced straight from a deep Phil Collins bootleg. So in short – the backlash is over; can we start hyping this stuff again? Please?
This is probably the newest collection of music I’ve done for Rocking Retro (Something to Crow About was released in 2003, not necessarily retro compared to other artists I’ve written about for this feature), but if 2009’s Underneath the Owl is any indication, the Riverboat Gamblers we know and love, that uninhibited, beer-swilling, brash Denton, Texas, punk band, are dead and gone. Luckily we still have this, their Gearhead Records debut, to swig Lone Star to.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve been crazy familiar with this group until a few months ago. I mostly knew them as a Texas punk group my buddy David Ward was in love with, but that was about it. Then someone put them on the jukebox at Shangri-La one Friday night. I ran to the machine to find out what the hell this badass sound was – I suppose we all get educated at one point or another – only to find this album as the selection. From a band whose name I heard a million times but had never listened to.
I’m almost certain most of the lyrics in this album are complete drunken gibberish, but that’s totally ok – it fits perfect with the sloppy hammered sound the Gamblers provide. Something to Crow About, I imagine, is a pretty great studio rendition of their energetic live show. The album slows only for the outro, “Lottie Mae.”
Today, as AllMusic has pointed out, they sound more like Sum 41 than a raw Texas punk group, as is the typical regression most bands of this caliber tend to make. Nevertheless, Something to Crow About remains a brilliant musical example of the independent and fist-pumping spirit of the Lone Star State. Makes me proud to be from here.
