Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part Three: 30-21

NUMBER THIRTY

I have not been quiet about my distaste for the last two Arcade Fire records relative to their debut masterpiece Funeral. Like Neon Bible before it, 2010's AF release The Suburbs was too mid-tempo, too quiet, too slow, too ho-hum for me to really connect with it in a meaningful way. More troubling are the songs, littered across both Bible and Suburbs, that call to mind Funeral's towering highs. "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" is one of those tracks. Though only carrying a little more shuffle than most of the humdrum album, "Sprawl II"'s engaging synth lines and vivacious Regine Chassagne vocal painted the suburban escape as somehow epic, where looking past the retail mountains beyond mountains was a glance through the looking glass.

Go beyond the click for numbers twenty-nine through twenty-one.

NUMBER TWENTY-NINE

I missed out on Freddie Gibbs last year, to the point where I almost felt like redacting my year-end lists just to give the Gary, Indiana rapper's tour de force mix tapes their due. This year, I'm making up for it. With both the Str8 Killa No Filla mix tape and the Str8 Killa EP dropping this year, Gibbs had a banner year both in terms of his own personal output and in commercial standing. The highest point of which was his, um, anthemic breakthrough "National Anthem (Fuck the World)". While not as verbose as some of his double-timed offerings, and not as dark as any Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik tracks or as tuneful as his The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs mix tape, "National Anthem" instead was the synthesis of Gibbs' talents: a peerless verbal artist, who knows how to choose and destroy a beat.

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NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT

The Wild Hunt, 2010's release from Tallest Man on Earth, didn't offer us anything particularly new from front man Kristian Matsson. He still spun delicate weaves of heartbreaking acoustic guitar melodies, he still sang with the passion of Blood On the Tracks-era Dylan, his lyrics were still obtuse, almost indecipherable, but obviously borne out of genuine emotion. So, it wasn't anything particularly surprising. But Matsson does his thing with such an undeniable excellency that even when he's at his most predictable, it's impossible not to be moved. When his throat tears singing "King of Spain"'s titular line, and the furiously strummed guitars fall out, everything else in your life just disappears.

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NUMBER TWENTY-SEVEN

Whoever the man is behind Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross, he's got the whole "mysterious artiste" thing down pat. Despite a few interviews, and a few songs posted here and there on the Internet, nothing much is known about the Chicago enigma. That's okay; a song like "Blacks" rises above the mystery. Definitely indebted to 2010's witch house movement, the smoky vocals and synth thwomps provide an engaging background that draws you in, only to knock you back with horror movie keys and some blown out drum runs. Like its title implies, "Blacks" is the sound of the power of darkness.

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NUMBER TWENTY-SIX

It's hard to understand anything of those beyond spliced vocal samples that run through London producer Gold Panda's "You". But, after repeated listens, a very simple message unfurls: "You and me" are the words that make up much of the song's first half. By the coda, however, the "you" is gone and all that's left are multiple repetitions of the word "me." There's no more efficient way to find the core of a break up song than that. And make no mistake, "You" is a break up song, packed as it is with dense, forlorn emotion. It's Prefuse 73's One Word Extinguisher packed down to four minutes; heartbreakbeats.

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NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE

Da Vinci is far from the only rapper on "The Beginning". The epic track also includes earlier list-inductee Big K.R.I.T., as well as Webbz and J. Rockwell. As packed as the billing is, as epic as the very title of the song is, as long as it is for a verse-chorus-verse rap track, "The Beginning"'s absolutely monstrous beat more than lives up to it. Featuring the greatest radio music sax solo since "Born to Run", and a earworm sample that's impossible to remove from your brain parts, the killer verses almost become icing on the cake. The fact that the insane double-time vocal performances, Big K.R.I.T.'s undeniable swagger, et. al could be considered mere window dressing is a testament to how solid "Beginning" is across the board.

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NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR

2010's buzzword genre witch house kind of started with "See Birds (Moon)". There had been oOoOO noddlings and Salem whispers around the blogosphere, sure, but when Pitchfork track reviewed "See Birds", talking about this new "drag" thing, the genre seemed to bloom overnight. It's not hard to see why. "See Birds" is immediately unique on its first listen, with its huge swells of layered vocals, the metronomic synths that manage to keep the otherwordly atmospherics in some semblance of order, the 8-bit explosions that provide an emotional anchor. "See Birds," as much (or, more accurately, as little) as it had in common with the rest of drag provided a spectacular first step for the haunted house genre.

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NUMBER TWENTY-THREE

There's nothing particularly difficult about "OOOO", a slice of relaxed ear candy from Australian producers Russell Fitzgibbon and Doug Wright. While tension makes some of the most interesting music, "OOOO" is all about lack of tension, providing immediate and accessible major key melodies, joyous beat making, and an island groove that engenders nothing but smiles and maybe the occasional bad dance move. If Star Slinger was the most consistent "Post-Dilla" beatmaker of 2010, Fishing's "OOOO" was its most enduring "Post-Dilla" track, waving its hands in the air unabashedly, swimming through warm tropical oceans and cloudless sunshine. Deep thinking is nice, but sometimes a hammock is even nicer.

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NUMBER TWENTY-TWO

Single piano notes haven't been this emotionally effective sine Death Cab for Cutie's "Passenger Seat". And, while it's difficult to imagine, "Automatic" from cosmopolitan group Yuck, is even more distressing than Ben Gibbard's lonely night on the road. "I was always in automatic/ Don't assume I'm in control," is the song's central line, painting pictures of people staring straight forward and dead-eyed, unaware or unconcerned with the world going on around them. The impassioned vocals, those broken pianos, even the static buzz of the recording quality seems to have a purpose here, reminding us of the false pretense of impeccable recording quality, the false pretense of trying to appear perfect at all times. Pretty impressive for single piano notes.

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NUMBER TWENTY-ONE

"USA Boys", the lone original track off of HEALTH's second remix album DISCO2, has the greatest synth line of 2010, and it fucking knows it. It rides that thing almost to the point of exhaustion, dropping it out right when we want to hear it just one more time, and bringing it back just before we're ready for it again. While HEALTH typically traffic in more punishing noise rock, the fact that they let off the gas just a bit on "USA Boys" gives it an even harder punch. You can hear the sinister undertones that the band usually pushes to the foreground of their songs burbling just under the surface, creating an American Pyscho sketch of someone holding it together on the outside, but falling completely apart underneath.