TOP 100 TRACKS OF 2014: Pt. VI: # 50-41

I went on vacation this past week, which is why this post is a little delayed, my apologies, but the vacation was pretty great, so I guess I’m not really that terribly sorry. We’ve now made our way into the realm of the lower half. The caste of songs that have earned the honour of being ranked amongst the Top 50 - exciting stuff, I know. So thanks for sticking with me up to this point. If you’ve enjoyed this list so far, rejoice, because it only gets better from here. If you haven’t enjoyed it, well you can rejoice as well, because its that much closer to being over with. So without further adieu, let us continue our auditory trek.

50. Saint Pepsi – “Fiona Coyne (Feat. Pell) [Caleb Stone x Dream Panther Remix]”

Saint Pepsi is the man. Over the last couple of years, from pioneering the Vaporwave movement to developing his own sound, he’s been able to earn himself a place within my heart. This jam is one of the first songs where he actually utilizes his own vocals, providing a humanity and intimacy that his previous sample-driven catalogue lacked. That being said, with Caleb Stone and Dream Panther at the helm for this remix they make sure that the track never strays too far toward the realm of lucidity.

The original is Pop at it’s finest. Pop that gleams and twinkles as it skips down the street, twirling and hopping its way from one note to the next. The remix takes the sunshine of the original and submerges it in a pool of viscous surreality. It turns the straightforward into an ethereal dreamscape, an environment void of gravity, where everything gets muddled and sedated. The skips turn into prolonged strides, something like lunar leaps that plod and bound their way forward, while the twirls find themselves leaving the ground, floating down the street a distance, revolving slowly and gracefully midair before finally landing and beginning their sluggish ascent once again. It’s a fitting soundscape, and one that required incredible vision when you consider what it emerged from. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the addition of Pell’s wonderful wordplay (he’s going to blow up, mark my words). Pell’s verse rides the surreality of this track beautifully. He navigates the viscous undulations with the perfect balance of wit and braggadacio, providing a burst of life and lucidity amidst the murkiness. The end product is an ideal remix, one where each artist’s contribution completely dismantles the original, only to rebuild a better, more complete and layered masterpiece.

49. Tobias Jesso Jr. – “True Love”

True love. It’s a term that comes steeped in nostalgia, like staring at the faded and wrinkled photographs of someone else’s life. A term so often only used in retrospect or from the outside looking in. Those who have lost it only recognize it in its absence, and those who don’t have it seem to see it in everything around them. Maybe it’s the result of self-doubt, or maybe it’s actually that intangible. It’s daunting really, something that’s always sought, but ever elusive. A feeling we all aspire to possess, but no one knows how to recognize once they’ve discovered it. Dwelled on throughout art and literature, romanticized and stylized to the point of impossibility. It’s one of the mysteries of existence, haunting and hypnotizing humanity, compelling and drawing the soul towards it. A notion equally prolific and obscure that it rubs elbows with the likes of god himself, sharing in his mystique and allure. Both become a power only known through their effects, like the wind rippling the surface of a placid body of water or rustling the leaves of a swaying oak, questioned by our parochial minds even when they’re staring us right in the face. It’s felt, you know its there, but you can’t grasp or define it, so you lose faith, missing the emotions and sacrifices it produces, and thus ignoring its arrival.

Tobias Jesso Jr. has managed to capture this elusive concept in a song. It’s a sparse piano ballad that could be the score for a lifetime of home videos, or better yet, a lifetime of memories. It’s warm and blurred around the edges, full of uncertainty and dripping in nostalgia, but most of all it’s firmly placed in reality. He doesn’t glamorize love at all - he humanizes it, breaking it down to its simplest form, defining love without the gratuitous use of emotion, sticking instead to the actions and desires it produces. In the end, True Love is reciprocal and sacrificial. Giving back what you get, and doing so not because you feel you have to, but because you want to, and you won’t allow yourself to do any less. The other person becomes your everything, occupying your mind constantly, their life becomes your life, taking precedence even over your own thoughts of self-preservation, an occurrence that defeats and negates millions of years of evolution in one fell swoop, the human mind conquering itself for the sake of an indefinable emotion.

48. Moonface – “City Wrecker”

Spencer Krug is one of my idols. My love for him first blossomed way back in high school, and has continued to bloom ever since, and if anything has only grown in intensity over the years. It’s a rare experience, because I feel like the world has become sort of devoid of idols, heroes, role models, etc, or maybe I’ve just grown more jaded and particular with age. Nowadays when I see somebody who I originally admire, I always end up eventually finding faults, chips and cracks in the façade, things I disagree with, or things I have no desire to emulate, things I can’t ignore or look past. I won’t say its impossible to find a genuine idol, it’s just incredibly rare. I think I’ve always been slightly fastidious about it, but when I was younger I feel like they were at least out there in the wild waiting to be found. Kind of like those fuzzy black caterpillars that used to roam Southern California, I haven’t seen one those in years, they’re just gone, and probably the only way you can see one now is in some carefully curated environment. That’s how it is with idols nowadays. They aren’t out living life, finding and becoming themselves in the process - they’re on the Internet, on Twitter and Instagram, carefully curating their image. It’s sad really. I remember there being so many dudes growing up that I admired as a kid and wanted to be, and it was because they were themselves and they did stuff they loved - art, fashion, sports - and they did them well. Spencer Krug was and is one of those dudes, one of only a handful to remain on the pedestal I originally placed him upon.

I feel as if I’ve grown up with Spencer. He’s functioned like some sort of older brother, or a young uncle, showing you through their actions what you can be, what life can be. It’s been a true journey. From my first introduction to the unabashed coarseness of Wolf Parade, followed by the poetic whimsy of Sunset Rubdown, and the chaotic eccentricity of Swan Lake and Frog Eyes, to the now austere maturity of Moonface. Not only have I grown, changed, and developed along the way, but so has Spencer. I feel like I witnessed him become a man. He’s now not so much someone I constantly want to exemplify, but someone who I admire and respect. I’ve seen his imagination, shared in his struggles, experienced the depths of his lows and the soaring heights of his highs, and I’m a better person because of it.

His latest release fits perfectly within that narrative. Spencer once again, armed only with his voice and a piano, is able to create a moving and beautiful collection of songs, full of honesty and introspection. It’s the type of record you can only get with age. An album born out of experience, a heart that has both torn others and been torn apart itself, a mind that has felt stimulation and ennui, anxiety and peace, anger and joy. It’s a self that through introspection has seen its flaws and strengths. There’s no pretense left, just beautiful and raw honesty. However, it’s an honesty that’s filtered through poetic brilliance. What emerges is exquisite poetry, mixing the straightforward with the allegorical like only he can. It’s a song about losing love, about watching it fade, staring helplessly at it while it slips out of your outstretched fingers, destroying everything in its wake. Love is pervasive. It has a way of permeating into your surroundings, infecting everything around you with its lingering scent. When you’re in love it only enhances those surroundings, yet when love leaves, everything you associated with it begins to reek. It’s nauseating. The garish world of color turns dull, its pallor reflecting your own sickly state. The lens of love giveth, and the lens of love taketh away.

47. Alice Boman – “Over”

Every now and then songs come along that just seem to get you. Almost as if the emotions and feelings inside of you circumvented your own ill-equipped brain to go find one that could properly convey what they’ve been trying to get across to you. This is one of those songs. I identify with it as if it were conjured up within my own insides. It’s about duality. Vacillating wants and needs that undulate like a flag blowing in the breeze. It’s the simultaneous desire for intimacy and distance, for validation and independence. The overwhelming impulse to fully immerse yourself in love one moment, and run away and hide from it the next. Confidence wrapped in insecurity, or passion hidden in apathy. It’s optimistic denial as you ride a burning ship into the cold and dark seabed, ignoring your problems until you inevitably drown in them.

46. Divorcee – “Law & Order”

A couple tracks ago I paid tribute to one of the last remaining artistic idols in my life. The air is definitely thin up on my pedestal of greatness, but it’s not completely void of life. Another artist that burst into my heart back in high school and remains within its hallowed halls is Yoni Wolf, the mastermind behind WHY? (the band that I often name when people force me to give a “favorite band/artist”). “Why bring up WHY?” you might be asking, simply because it’s a fun squestion to ask, or because you’re actually curious. Well let me explain. Back in 2008 WHY? released Alopecia, a record that is arguably the closest anyone can ever get to creating a perfect album, but hey, I might be a little bias. It’s a beautiful, creative, witty and inventive masterpiece, and was rightfully a critical success. At the time of this success Yoni was dating Anna Stewart. Anna Stewart and Yoni Wolf are Divorcee. Everybody know each other? Good.

Humans are imperfect beings full of flaws, faults and weaknesses. Yet despite this basic truth, we nevertheless spend every day trying to suppress this notion. The darkness scares us, because vulnerability is frightening. In society, amongst the cold harsh judgment of the cruel hard world we protect ourselves by constructing a façade. Moats of humor, walls of sarcasm, battlements of silence, and gates of lies, a whole castle of defensive mechanisms to cover up the vulnerable and flawed essence of who we truly are. For the most part we’re successful. Keep everyone at arms length and no one can ever truly hurt you, but nor can they truly appreciate you, understand you, love you. It’s why intimacy is so hard. Intimacy shatters that façade and invades the proverbial castle. The imperfections and flaws, once so handily covered, are put on display, sitting there to be gazed upon like some hidden treasure of filth - handled, inspected, scrutinized, and ultimately accepted or rejected, because the true self leaves no room for blithe indifference or willful tolerance, within a relationship it must be confronted and dealt with, and then emerge either alive or dead.

Alopecia was an album where Yoni put himself on display, and in doing so put Anna on display. Their lives had become so intertwined that he could no longer talk about himself without alluding to her. The only problem is, while a relationship may take on a life of its own, it’s composed of two different entities, two different opinions, and ultimately two different perspectives. Alopecia gave us Yoni’s perspective, all his fears, weaknesses, and insecurities candidly delivered and wrapped together within clever witticisms and creative anecdotes. Divorcee gives us Anna’s perspective. It’s the missing piece to a narrative I’ve long adored, something akin to finding an historical account that was actually written by Cleopatra or Joan of Arc. It’s a brutally honest perspective that slices, cuts and eviscerates Yoni, showing the problems and pains of living so closely with someone who has their own share of problems and pains. It’s a beautiful masterpiece of aired grievances, a retrospective account of a broken relationship that resonates with anyone who has experienced the pain of getting buried beneath a crumbling relationship. The fact that the antagonist of every song was involved in it’s making and produced the album makes it all the more powerful. It shows a maturity, a recognition of one’s own faults, and a willingness to make things right, to cross back over the dilapidated bridge and refurbish it. The result is a truly unique project, one where both the antagonist and protagonist work together to construct a complete and compelling narrative of lost love.

45. Michael Jackson – “Love Never Felt So Good (Original Version)”

It’s not often that artists release brilliant material post-mortem. In most cases after one’s passing, it seems that any work that gets released is just a poor attempt by family or record label to make even more money off of a famous name - image and vision be damned. That is not the case with this gem. This raw and sparse demo featuring Paul Anka was recorded around the same time that “Thriller” was first beginning to make its titanic climb towards Pop ubiquity. Since such an unabashedly bright and innocent jam didn’t really fit the new image of the heir apparent King of Pop, the song was never released, and remained in hiding until this past year.

However, luckily for all of us, after the scandal-ridden, dark and tarnished waning years that often eclipsed the overall brilliance of such an illustrious legacy, we’ve been given a glowing glimpse of the King of Pop’s true glory. This track is Michael at his best (fuck all of the terrible remixes). This original version removes all of the distractions, and were left with the powerful and beautifully untainted voice of a true legend. It’s a voice unlike any other. A voice that effortlessly soars, emitting an aura of warmth that truly resonates over Anka’s sparse piano and Michael’s own snap and clap induced percussion. It’s the voice that the world fell in love with, and a voice that will continue to live on forever.

44. SALES – “Getting It On”

You wake up to an empty room, clothes strewn across the floor, desk unkempt, drawers lying haphazardly open. As you roll over, you’re greeted by a barren crater, an indentation or fingerprint of the past, an empty tomb of sorts, a place once occupied by a lover that has now vacated the scene. All you’ve been left with is a lumpy mattress, a mattress that much like your heart, once conformed itself to two, but is now only occupied by one, empty, with the emptiness causing a sharp and incessant pain in a place that once brought you so much joy. The warm light of the late morning sun bursts through the cracks in the blinds above you, highlighting this harsh reality. Reality welcomes in regret, the reprieve of dreams drifting away along with the brief happiness they once possessed. The knots build in your stomach as you get up to stumble past a room full of belongings, keepsakes, and innocuous objects, all of which find a way to conjure up memories of your connected past. The haze of heartbreak smothers everything and you’re left there to swim amongst it, always gazing through the painful lens of retrospection.

43. Foxygen – “Cosmic Vibrations”

Nobody can do psychedelic nonchalance quite like Foxygen. Their music is an exploration of eccentricity that manages not to slip up on the usual pretentions asscoiated with such activity. Instead were simply left with fun, enjoyable, and unique creations. Almost like you brought a group of talented slackers together, got them really high, and told them to create whatever they felt (which is probably what happened).

The whole song is like a late night, heavy-lidded exploration of oneself in the mirror. It’s an outward reflection, or embodiment, of the hazy churning of the inner self. It’s the drugged mind finding joy within the ordinary, turning the mundane into the extraordinary. In this new realm, the mere sight of your own exaggerated facial contortions and the unexpected sound of your slow, drawn-out syllables becomes a fount of entertainment, something akin to speaking through the blurred cyclone of spinning fan blades as a child. It’s a simple pleasure, an unexpected escape from the doldrums of the status quo. When this whimsical and detached voice is then paired with the sincere earnestness of its lighter counterpart it results in a sort of existential elasticity, like the mind stretching back and forth between reality and distortion. Sobriety is impending, yet the fleeting joy of high abandonment clings on.

42. A$AP Rocky – “Multiply (Feat. Juicy J) [KM Remix]”

If you guys couldn’t tell by now, I’m quite fond of jams that are submerged in a thick haze. Tracks that are chilled almost to the point of lethargy, languidly swimming their way forward through the viscous soundscape, buried deeply beneath a veneer of gooey filth. It’s music that makes you want to dance while reclining half asleep on the couch, music that compels the arms and head to move while leaving the rest of the body content to remain in inertia. I like to call it baby dancing, and I’m pretty good at it, but enough about me.

A$AP Rocky is one of the few rappers of his generation that actually fully deserves his success. Ever since his inception he’s crafted his own style, melding his incisive New Yorker wordplay with the chopped and screwed vibes of the South, resulting in a wholly unique sound that sets him apart from his peers. His flow in particular is unreal. Effortlessly slicing it’s way through the sluggish beats like a knife through warm butter, and DJ KM accentuates his skills perfectly. KM creates a remix that surpasses the original, adding to the overall vibe rather than detracting from it. It coats A$AP’s wordplay in a cocoon of warmth, plunging it into a pool of ethereal reverb where his flow is then the only lifeline, teasingly making its way through the soundscape as you slowly and blissfully swim after it.

41. Men I Trust – “Stay True (Feat. Helena)”

Inner musings have never sounded so groovy. It’s almost like you’re dancing with your own thoughts and emotions, a slow interpretative progression, full of sidestepping, sinuous arm movements, and rolling body contortions. They’re organic, yet in unison with one another, conforming to a tradition that has yet to be defined. It’s an existential love song, a confession of sorts, “How am I to know what love is, when I don’t even know what I am?” It’s initially a crisis, yet the unknown can be so intriguing, so inspiring, that in the end there seems to be solace in it, an abandonment of logic, a desire to reach out and cling to something more, something bigger than you. I think therefore I am - I feel therefore I am, but existence, and its product of emotion, can never be reduced to mere words. It’s like tapping into an ancient, supernatural power that has always existed, yet always been beyond your grasp. Like gaining sight to a higher plain of existence, sharing in a new vibration, a gateway to emotions previously obscured. It’s the admittance that there’s something more, despite the knowledge to prove or define it, and accepting – no, rejoicing - in your place within it all. Love, just like existence itself, finds you, in the same way that its found countless human beings before you, tracing its way back to the very first utterance of life on Earth, the proverbial Adam and Eve, the original microbe to defiantly say “I choose life!” and then begin on the eventual path toward the pain and pleasure of sentience. It’s the continuous chain of love and life to follow, of which your own menial existence is just small link. Does that render you insignificant, or does it make you a necessary piece that’s holding together something far more significant than you could ever hope to understand or achieve on your own? You’re a part of it all. Are you a pessimist or an optimist?