Heatseekers
I've waited long enough to do another Top 40 that I've had pretty strong turnover on the charts (I also gave Sleigh Bells and Los Campesinos! a break from my ipod for awhile). Let's do it!
1. "Estate Sale Sign" -- The Mountain Goats
2. "Damn These Vampires" -- The Mountain Goats
The list kicks off with my two favorite songs off of All Eternals Deck, which I'll tell you right now is the current list's dominating album. Darnielle said that when he wrote/recorded "Estate Sale Sign" he knew it would become an encore staple, and I somehow wasn't sure if it would measure up to that lofty "No Children"/"This Year"/"Palmcorder Yajna" standard after listening to it once or twice. But he's right. The best Mountain Goats songs really get under your skin after five or six or ten listens. "Damn These Vampires" doesn't blast off with such force, but it, too, got to me the more I listened to it.
3. "Teenage Dream" -- Katy Perry
4. "What the Hell" -- Avril Lavigne
5. "Satisfied" -- Liz Phair
Hey, exactly the company Liz wanted back in 2003! By the way, nothing I've heard from Katy Perry since "Teenage Dream" has really done it for me, though I do like "Firework" and "TGIF" more than "California Gurls." Also, I think I misheard the "Teenage Dream" lyric I thought was most hilariously bad: I guess she's saying "you'll be my valentine," not "you'll bring me valentine." But can you blame me?
6. "Can't Keep Johnny Down -- They Might Be Giants
And if my ipod even knew how many times I heard this song while watching those videos! Between that, CD listens of Join Us, and ipod stuff, this is probably my legit most-listened-to-song of the summer right now.
7. "Cinco de Mayo" -- Marnie Stern
8. "It Doesn't Have to Be Beautiful" -- Slow Club
A new Slow Club album drops in September. I am really hoping Los Campesinos! will bring them along on a North American tour when the LC! record comes out.
9. "Don't Carry It All" -- The Decemberists
10. "My Mistakes" -- Eleanor Friedberger
In all of the talk of They Might Be Giants and Beyonce, I may have overlooked talking about how much I looooove Eleanor Friedberger's album Last Summer. "My Mistakes" is one of the best songs, but it's mainly this high up because it was the first single and I got a jump on listening to it. I've been listening to the whole thing constantly, and it's this great little ultra-specific New York summer record. I freely admit that I may love it even more because it mentions things like Manhattan Avenue and Governors Island, but I also adore Eleanor's phrasing and the way she closes her stripped-down (at least compared to the Fiery Furnaces) songs.
11. "Giving Up on Love" -- Slow Club
12. "Our Most Brilliant Friends" -- Slow Club
"Our Most Brilliant Friends" is actually two songs in one because it also includes "Boys on Their Birthdays" as a secret track, and those two songs together may actually comprise my favorite Slow Club song, a slower gainer on the likes of "Giving Up on Love," but fantastic all the same. "Giving Up on Love" is what made me like the Slow Club record; "Our Most Brilliant Friends" is what made me fall in love with the band in general.
13. "Angela Surf City" -- The Walkmen
This is on the list of songs the Walkmen absolutely must play when I see them open for the Fleet Foxes in September.
14. "Calamity Song" -- The Decemberists
15. "The Weekenders" -- The Hold Steady
16. "Canajoharie" -- They Might Be Giants
I am obsessed with this song. It's a good feeling, being obsessed with a TMBG song again. This song has caused me to double-check how to pronounce "Canajoharie," look up how close Canajoharie is to Saratoga (it's not far from Amsterdam!) (the one in New York, without prostitutes, where we went to see Jesus' Son) (well, it might have prostitutes), and look up the lyrics because I should know the words better than I do for maximized car singing.
17. "Birth of Serpents" -- The Mountain Goats
18. "High Hawk Season" -- The Mountain Goats
19. "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich" -- The Dismemberment Plan
I lost this song somewhere around the great computer fuck-up of summer 2002 and it's not the kind of song you can just pick up again on a music blog because it actually came out in the year 2000. Then Rob got the vinyl reissue of Emergency & I which came with a remastered download and some B-sides. I asked him to send me this one in advance of the reunion shows, I fell back in love with the Outkast-inspired craziness and belatedly stuck it on a bunch of mixtapes.
20. "Lisa Forever Minneli" -- The Mountain Goats
21. "Under Cover of Darkness" -- The Strokes
Took me a little while to get this straight because most of Angles is pretty good at best, but "Under Cover of Darkness" is a tremendous fucking Strokes song. I mean, that's all it is, it is definitely nothing more than a Strokes song, but it is seriously one of the best Strokes songs I've ever heard. That should count for something.
22. "Down by the Water" -- The Decemberists
23. "And He Slayed Her" -- Liz Phair
24. "For Ash" -- Marnie Stern
I wasn't necessarily feeling the whole Marnie Stern album when I first heard it, at least not as much as the previous one, but once I got it down to bits and pieces, for some reason I found myself stopping on individual songs more often and I enjoy it more. I feel very post-millennial which is to say shallow.
25. "Dashboard" -- Modest Mouse
26. "Prowl Great Cain" -- The Mountain Goats
27. "Whip the Blankets" -- Neko Case
My favorite Neko Case album has changed a bunch of times over the years. When I got The Tigers Have Spoken and then Blacklisted, I thought maybe I didn't actually like her original songs as much as her covers or New Pornos songs, and thought my favorite would be Tigers. I reconsidered her songwriting after Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which I eventually decided my favorite, but sometimes battles it out with Middle Cyclone. I also got The Virginian on a lark and liked its more melodic stuff but also found it kind of silly and insubstantial. Furnace Room Lullabye was the last one I got (at the time; I don't know if Middle Cyclone was out yet), but it turns out, it might actually be my favorite. It has a perfect balance of indie-country, melody, and moodiness; if I had heard it first, I don't think I ever would've doubted her songwriting. Anyway, "Whip the Blankets" is a song from that record. It sounds like it would be fun to play on the guitar.
28. "John Allyn Smith Sails" -- Okkervil River
29. "Codex" -- Radiohead
I think I'm okay admitting that The King of Limbs is a little underwhelming. Not that it's not good -- on the balance, it's really good -- it was just kind of a long wait for eight songs that pretty much sound like they could've been on In Rainbows almost four years ago. I like a lot of them individually and the album has its own mood, but it's awfully slight for the sometime best band in the world. That said, "Codex" is a beautiful Radiohead ballad, as good as anything they've ever done in this vein.
30. "The Cap'm" -- They Might Be Giants
31. "Old Pine Box" -- They Might Be Giants
32. "On the Drag" -- They Might Be Giants
Hey, three post-nineties TMBG songs! "On the Drag" is awesome but I feel like it suffers from the same slight but audible problem as "Thunderbird," where for some reason they de-emphasize the guitars on the studio version, and over-emphasize the bass in a way that makes the song sound a little thinner and more rubbery than it should (for such an awesome song). "Rest Awhile" was written and belatedly recorded around the same time, and it's nice and noisy. "On the Drag" is still great, through. And "Old Pine Box" is probably Flansburgh's finest moment on Join Us.
33. "A More Perfect Union" -- Titus Andronicus
It's been a long time coming, this song making the Top 40, because I feel like I listen to it all the time, nay, am nigh-incapable of skipping it when it comes up on shuffle.
34. "Stuck Between Stations" -- The Hold Steady
35. "Rock Problems" -- The Hold Steady
I'm a little bit surprised this one in particular off of Heaven is Whenever still charts so high, but I think that's because what made it sort of a ho-hum song on the record (at least, that's my perception of what people think of it) also makes it sort of an archetypal Hold Steady song that stands alone really well.
36. "Monster" -- Kanye West
This is obviously the best song off of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and it is obviously because of Nicki Minaj. I actually really like everything else about it, too, but that Minaj verse is like the part in Inception where Joseph Gordon-Levitt fights the guys in the tilty hallway. It's weird, I'm generally pretty straight-up white-guy in really liking Kanye West despite (because of?) not really knowing very much about rap but I found the praise of this record a little over the top. It's kind of a chore to listen to straight through, even though a lot of the individual songs are great. I feel like Kanye comes off as crazy disciplined just for starting to do albums without skits. Which I applaud, but I would love to hear a rap album that doesn't feel bloated or padded in any way. I guess for some people this one is it.
37. "Age of Kings" -- The Mountain Goats
38. "Autopsy Garland" -- The Mountain Goats
39. "Beautiful Gas Mask" -- The Mountain Goats
40. "Soudoire Valley Song" -- The Mountain Goats
Aaaand five more from All Eternals Deck. Here's where we get to songs that I just listened to a bunch because I listened to the album a bunch. I eagerly await the Slow Club album to challenge its dominance on the next chart.
I think I am going to try to get a Beyonce ticket tomorrow.
1. "Estate Sale Sign" -- The Mountain Goats
2. "Damn These Vampires" -- The Mountain Goats
The list kicks off with my two favorite songs off of All Eternals Deck, which I'll tell you right now is the current list's dominating album. Darnielle said that when he wrote/recorded "Estate Sale Sign" he knew it would become an encore staple, and I somehow wasn't sure if it would measure up to that lofty "No Children"/"This Year"/"Palmcorder Yajna" standard after listening to it once or twice. But he's right. The best Mountain Goats songs really get under your skin after five or six or ten listens. "Damn These Vampires" doesn't blast off with such force, but it, too, got to me the more I listened to it.
3. "Teenage Dream" -- Katy Perry
4. "What the Hell" -- Avril Lavigne
5. "Satisfied" -- Liz Phair
Hey, exactly the company Liz wanted back in 2003! By the way, nothing I've heard from Katy Perry since "Teenage Dream" has really done it for me, though I do like "Firework" and "TGIF" more than "California Gurls." Also, I think I misheard the "Teenage Dream" lyric I thought was most hilariously bad: I guess she's saying "you'll be my valentine," not "you'll bring me valentine." But can you blame me?
6. "Can't Keep Johnny Down -- They Might Be Giants
And if my ipod even knew how many times I heard this song while watching those videos! Between that, CD listens of Join Us, and ipod stuff, this is probably my legit most-listened-to-song of the summer right now.
7. "Cinco de Mayo" -- Marnie Stern
8. "It Doesn't Have to Be Beautiful" -- Slow Club
A new Slow Club album drops in September. I am really hoping Los Campesinos! will bring them along on a North American tour when the LC! record comes out.
9. "Don't Carry It All" -- The Decemberists
10. "My Mistakes" -- Eleanor Friedberger
In all of the talk of They Might Be Giants and Beyonce, I may have overlooked talking about how much I looooove Eleanor Friedberger's album Last Summer. "My Mistakes" is one of the best songs, but it's mainly this high up because it was the first single and I got a jump on listening to it. I've been listening to the whole thing constantly, and it's this great little ultra-specific New York summer record. I freely admit that I may love it even more because it mentions things like Manhattan Avenue and Governors Island, but I also adore Eleanor's phrasing and the way she closes her stripped-down (at least compared to the Fiery Furnaces) songs.
11. "Giving Up on Love" -- Slow Club
12. "Our Most Brilliant Friends" -- Slow Club
"Our Most Brilliant Friends" is actually two songs in one because it also includes "Boys on Their Birthdays" as a secret track, and those two songs together may actually comprise my favorite Slow Club song, a slower gainer on the likes of "Giving Up on Love," but fantastic all the same. "Giving Up on Love" is what made me like the Slow Club record; "Our Most Brilliant Friends" is what made me fall in love with the band in general.
13. "Angela Surf City" -- The Walkmen
This is on the list of songs the Walkmen absolutely must play when I see them open for the Fleet Foxes in September.
14. "Calamity Song" -- The Decemberists
15. "The Weekenders" -- The Hold Steady
16. "Canajoharie" -- They Might Be Giants
I am obsessed with this song. It's a good feeling, being obsessed with a TMBG song again. This song has caused me to double-check how to pronounce "Canajoharie," look up how close Canajoharie is to Saratoga (it's not far from Amsterdam!) (the one in New York, without prostitutes, where we went to see Jesus' Son) (well, it might have prostitutes), and look up the lyrics because I should know the words better than I do for maximized car singing.
17. "Birth of Serpents" -- The Mountain Goats
18. "High Hawk Season" -- The Mountain Goats
19. "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich" -- The Dismemberment Plan
I lost this song somewhere around the great computer fuck-up of summer 2002 and it's not the kind of song you can just pick up again on a music blog because it actually came out in the year 2000. Then Rob got the vinyl reissue of Emergency & I which came with a remastered download and some B-sides. I asked him to send me this one in advance of the reunion shows, I fell back in love with the Outkast-inspired craziness and belatedly stuck it on a bunch of mixtapes.
20. "Lisa Forever Minneli" -- The Mountain Goats
21. "Under Cover of Darkness" -- The Strokes
Took me a little while to get this straight because most of Angles is pretty good at best, but "Under Cover of Darkness" is a tremendous fucking Strokes song. I mean, that's all it is, it is definitely nothing more than a Strokes song, but it is seriously one of the best Strokes songs I've ever heard. That should count for something.
22. "Down by the Water" -- The Decemberists
23. "And He Slayed Her" -- Liz Phair
24. "For Ash" -- Marnie Stern
I wasn't necessarily feeling the whole Marnie Stern album when I first heard it, at least not as much as the previous one, but once I got it down to bits and pieces, for some reason I found myself stopping on individual songs more often and I enjoy it more. I feel very post-millennial which is to say shallow.
25. "Dashboard" -- Modest Mouse
26. "Prowl Great Cain" -- The Mountain Goats
27. "Whip the Blankets" -- Neko Case
My favorite Neko Case album has changed a bunch of times over the years. When I got The Tigers Have Spoken and then Blacklisted, I thought maybe I didn't actually like her original songs as much as her covers or New Pornos songs, and thought my favorite would be Tigers. I reconsidered her songwriting after Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which I eventually decided my favorite, but sometimes battles it out with Middle Cyclone. I also got The Virginian on a lark and liked its more melodic stuff but also found it kind of silly and insubstantial. Furnace Room Lullabye was the last one I got (at the time; I don't know if Middle Cyclone was out yet), but it turns out, it might actually be my favorite. It has a perfect balance of indie-country, melody, and moodiness; if I had heard it first, I don't think I ever would've doubted her songwriting. Anyway, "Whip the Blankets" is a song from that record. It sounds like it would be fun to play on the guitar.
28. "John Allyn Smith Sails" -- Okkervil River
29. "Codex" -- Radiohead
I think I'm okay admitting that The King of Limbs is a little underwhelming. Not that it's not good -- on the balance, it's really good -- it was just kind of a long wait for eight songs that pretty much sound like they could've been on In Rainbows almost four years ago. I like a lot of them individually and the album has its own mood, but it's awfully slight for the sometime best band in the world. That said, "Codex" is a beautiful Radiohead ballad, as good as anything they've ever done in this vein.
30. "The Cap'm" -- They Might Be Giants
31. "Old Pine Box" -- They Might Be Giants
32. "On the Drag" -- They Might Be Giants
Hey, three post-nineties TMBG songs! "On the Drag" is awesome but I feel like it suffers from the same slight but audible problem as "Thunderbird," where for some reason they de-emphasize the guitars on the studio version, and over-emphasize the bass in a way that makes the song sound a little thinner and more rubbery than it should (for such an awesome song). "Rest Awhile" was written and belatedly recorded around the same time, and it's nice and noisy. "On the Drag" is still great, through. And "Old Pine Box" is probably Flansburgh's finest moment on Join Us.
33. "A More Perfect Union" -- Titus Andronicus
It's been a long time coming, this song making the Top 40, because I feel like I listen to it all the time, nay, am nigh-incapable of skipping it when it comes up on shuffle.
34. "Stuck Between Stations" -- The Hold Steady
35. "Rock Problems" -- The Hold Steady
I'm a little bit surprised this one in particular off of Heaven is Whenever still charts so high, but I think that's because what made it sort of a ho-hum song on the record (at least, that's my perception of what people think of it) also makes it sort of an archetypal Hold Steady song that stands alone really well.
36. "Monster" -- Kanye West
This is obviously the best song off of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and it is obviously because of Nicki Minaj. I actually really like everything else about it, too, but that Minaj verse is like the part in Inception where Joseph Gordon-Levitt fights the guys in the tilty hallway. It's weird, I'm generally pretty straight-up white-guy in really liking Kanye West despite (because of?) not really knowing very much about rap but I found the praise of this record a little over the top. It's kind of a chore to listen to straight through, even though a lot of the individual songs are great. I feel like Kanye comes off as crazy disciplined just for starting to do albums without skits. Which I applaud, but I would love to hear a rap album that doesn't feel bloated or padded in any way. I guess for some people this one is it.
37. "Age of Kings" -- The Mountain Goats
38. "Autopsy Garland" -- The Mountain Goats
39. "Beautiful Gas Mask" -- The Mountain Goats
40. "Soudoire Valley Song" -- The Mountain Goats
Aaaand five more from All Eternals Deck. Here's where we get to songs that I just listened to a bunch because I listened to the album a bunch. I eagerly await the Slow Club album to challenge its dominance on the next chart.
I think I am going to try to get a Beyonce ticket tomorrow.