Pax Arcana’s Top 10 Songs of the Year

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We assume Father Scott’s still working on his list of the 2,072 most bestest songs of the year, but while we all hold our breath in anticipation, here are Pax Arcana’s totally half-assed top 10 songs of 2007:

10. Dear Confessor, Immaculate Machine. We usually hate male/female duets, because they’re typically sappy treacle about falling in love or some bullshit like that. Dear Confessor is a song about something deeper: What next? The song’s lyrics, set to a fast-paced back beat with fuzzy guitar and a sparkling synth riff, detail a quest for treasure, and asks the most important — and latest considered — question in any quest: “What you gonna do when you finally find it?”

9. Shame, The Avett Brothers. There may be better songs on The Avett Brothers’ 2007 album Emotionalism, but we think this one best represents the band’s unique combination of musicality and sense of humor. Plus, we love a good banjo. Boatloads of banjo.

8. You Got Yr Cherry Bomb, Spoon. We were long skeptical of Spoon, mainly because douchey rock critics have been tripping over themselves for years to heap ever-glowier praise on the Austin-based band, but then The Underdog found its way into our iPod. We took a chance on Ga, Ga, Ga, Ga, Ga, and now are committed Spoonists, with three albums and an EP on near constant play on our (shhh, company, shhhh) laptop. Most Spoon songs build tension and offer little release (that’s kind of their thing) but You Got Yr Cherry Bomb is an outright joy — a bouncy pop rock number set over a Motowns-style back beat with a ripe horn riff in the background. If Holland-Dozier-Holland moved to Austin and decided to rock with the white kids, this is what it would sound like. Here they are on SNL:

7. Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe, Okkervil River. We went a little overboard in our gushing praise for Okkervil River’s album The Stage Names this fall, but we haven’t fallen out of love with this number — which soars and snarls with rage and anxiety in a way that would have sounded like bad teen poetry had lead singer Will Sheff hit a false note in there. Fortunately he convinces us that he’s for real, and the hyper-literate ramblings of Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe are enough to keep you paying close attention. With better production (seriously guys, MORE FUCKING GUITAR) this would have been our favorite.

6. Paper Planes, M.I.A. In the world of Sri Lankan women rappers, M.I.A. stands head and shoulders above the rest. Her album Kala has been at or near the top of a lot of critics’ lists for 2007, and while we don’t own the whole album, we can say that Paper Planes is everything we want in a rap song. It’s bouncy, edgy, innovative, catchy, and funny. Here is the official video:

5. Gronlandic Edit, Of Montreal. Speaking of edgy and funny, Of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? is one of the strangest, lushest, and funkiest records we’ve heard in a while. Normally we reject machine-made beats, but the retro disco groove and ABBA-style harmonies of Gronlandic Edit make this an irresistible tune. Plus it’s got the second-greatest lyric of the year: “Physics makes us all its bitches.”

4. Intervention, Arcade Fire. We’ve said before that we were disappointed in the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible. This is partly because we are helplessly devoted to the fury and majesty of Funeral. But Intervention, with its snarling earnestness and lush and inventive instrumentation, is a bawling anthem of a song and represents everything we love about these (sort-of) Canadian rockers. Here’s them singing it on SNL:

3. Green Gloves, The National. For the longest time, we couldn’t put our finger on exactly what we liked about this song. Then one of the critics on NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast nailed it for us. It’s creepy.

Get inside their clothes
with my green gloves
watch their videos, in their chairs.
Get inside their beds
with my green gloves
Get inside their heads, love their loves.

The story of a guy wandering around a friend’s apartment while everyone else is out on the town, climbing in the bed and wearing bizarre clothing, Green Gloves speaks of our own capacity to freak ourselves out with our own morbid thoughts. Plus it’s got a really nice guitar riff.

2. Halloweenhead. Easily the most-often played song on Omeletteville (the official iPod of Pax Arcana), Ryan Adams’ Halloweenhead is a showcase for Adams’ ruminations on substance abuse. He has a “head full of tricks and treats,” and he doesn’t mind sharing what’s going through it over a serious crunch guitar riff. Pax has nearly split his windshield singing along to this song, and yes, as has been mentioned before, any song in which the singer ANNOUNCES the guitar solo is pretty bad ass.

1 . Turn on Me, The Shins. Pax Arcana clearly enjoys throwback drumbeats and guitar licks. First there was Spoon’s Motown-ish drum/tambourine and horn combo in You Got Yr Cherry Bomb. And in the top spot, our favorite song of the year, is the Phil Spector-style Turn on Me. The opening guitar riff sounds like a cover of The Crystal’s 1963 bubblegum-pop classic Then He Kissed Me, but then the song breaks into The Shins at their best — wildly innovative melodies, chord progressions, and lyrics strung together in a bouncy, bright package that opens up like tulips in the sunshine. God we love this song. Here they are singing on Letterman:

Honorable mentions:
North American Scum, LCD Soundsystem
What Light, Wilco
Two, Ryan Adams
Faust Arp, Radiohead
Young Folks, Kanye West
Falling Slowly, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
No One’s Gonna Love You, Band of Horses
Scenic World, Beirut
I Feel it All, Feist
Flightless Bird, American Mouth, Iron and Wine
Empty Hearts, Josh Ritter
Young Folks, Kanye West
Slow Show, The National
The Past is a Grotesque Animal, Of Montreal
Unless It’s Kicks, Okkervil River
Weird Fishes, Arpeggi, Radiohead
Sleeping Lessons, The Shins
Black Like Me, Spoon

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