2004

Animal Collective

"Winters Love"

[FatCat]

I played in bands in college like a lot of people played in bands in college. One of the bands I was in, Gulf Coast Army, opened for Animal Collective in March, 2004, about two months before Sung Tongs came out. The show was in the basement of a sushi restaurant; it's where most of the good shows in Charlottesville were. The restaurant's owner-- a Japanese guy who wandered around town in a black motorcycle jacket with the sad, displaced look people have in airports-- was a musician. I remember playing badly, but later I was told we played well considering how much beer we drank.

Afterwards, I saw Avey Tare in the hallway. "Sweet set," he said. "Sweet"-- the word was so bro, I couldn't believe he was using it, but I instantly felt shallow for even stopping to think about it. That's how it is: You see a cool person doing a supposedly uncool thing and you're left with your arbitrary little prejudices.

At the time I thought all weird music had to be tough and brainy in order to get a point across. But I was also getting bored of listening to tough, brainy shit because it wasn't really me-- I was an undernourished 21 year old working intensely on an honor's thesis, picking through books I half-understood, tripping on mushrooms, taking long drives through the dark hills of Virginia, crawling in girls' windows, and lying to people. The world felt fragile and runny, and Sung Tongs was its soundtrack-- this gentle, confused, unintellectual music that would occasionally fall apart and re-assemble itself, like it didn't know its own shape or size.

It reminded me of the feeling of opening my eyes in the backseat of my mother's car after visiting my grandparents as a small child, never sure of when I fell asleep but never scared, either. I didn't care that some people made fun of the band for sounding naïve because I thought most people were nasty and out of touch with what made life beautiful. I still think that sometimes, but I try not to.

Sung Tongs came out in May, a few weeks before I graduated. I brought it with me to Berlin, where I'd gone to visit a friend who was studying abroad. I still know him; we talk on the phone every couple of weeks, and on his birthday I take a six-hour bus ride to Richmond, Va., so we can walk up and down the historic streets and look at the grand old homes with their Christmas decorations. He's honest and intelligent and never falls for the new thing-- the kind of person who makes me feel at home.

When he first heard "Winters Love", he said, "It's like a sea shanty, right?" He swayed back and forth with an invisible beer stein in his hand and an exaggerated smile on his face. I hadn't heard it that way before: It's like I was so preoccupied with what made it strange that I hadn't thought much about what made it comforting and familiar. My life then was messy by design, geared toward intense and unfamiliar experiences because I thought they were more meaningful than simple ones. I told him I wasn't sure what he was talking about.

About six months later, having not thought about it for a while, it snapped into focus: a sea shanty, a drinking song, something low to the ground. I heard it. An insignificant thing-- the wisdom of friends and what they do to make you laugh-- but I still remember it, and while it'd be silly to blow it out into a grand metaphor, there's a reason, I think, why I heard "Winters Love" one way then and another way now, and why I'll never be able to hear it the way I heard it then again. --Mike Powell

2005

The Hold Steady

"Charlemagne in Sweatpants"

[Frenchkiss]

From time to time, I check up on the happy hours at the bars I spent college in: $2.50 for the Troegenator? It's a wonder I ever made it out.

It was low-level debauchery, really; a lot of last calls, a lot of floors in a lot of friends' apartments. At one point we reclaimed a beer pong table from a sorority dorm-- it was a joke at first, not that we didn't use the thing plenty. That cheap-vodka-through-the-Brita-filter thing? Totally works. I'm told my birthday that year ended with me standing on my roommate's couch, belting Sammy Hagar's "Eagles Fly" at a somewhat unreasonable volume, then falling into his bookshelf. I do love that song. We weren't enslaved, just enthralled. Well-meaning but wayward.

I went and saw the Hold Steady that summer at this little bar-under-a-bar a couple hours away. That first time, I dragged somebody along; the next time they came through, it felt like I knew half the crowd. Tramps like us saw something of ourselves in tramps like the Hold Steady, and their early songs got scratched into our souls. Fucking up holds a certain romance when you're that age-- a sweet, fleeting feeling when consequences seem less consequential. But after a while, doing stupid things all the time wears on a person. Besides, I was starting to get letters about the things I hadn't done.

We'd always play the Hold Steady at parties, but it was those late-morning spins of Separation Sunday-- lyric book in the hand that wasn't holding my head-- that really made dents. Craig Finn sometimes seems to be romanticizing excess but, in fact, he just happens to sympathize with those who do. Some of us may never get over this, he seems to be saying, but a lot of us will. And a lot of us did: Gideon's a librarian, Holly tends a kindergarten. As for that college that almost cut me loose? I teach there now. --Paul Thompson

2006

Excepter

"The 'Rock' Stepper"

[5 Rue Christine]

I've lived in the D.C. area for the past 15 years, but during the 2000s, it felt like I lived in New York, too. Part of that came from visiting-- I even subletted a Brooklyn apartment in 2002 to pass time between jobs-- but mostly it's because so much music I cared about was happening there. For a fan of underground weirdness, there was something special going on in noise, avant-rock, and post-IDM electronics. My memories of stopping by Mondo Kim's and Other Music to check out whether groups like Black Dice, Sightings, Gang Gang Dance, Double Leopards, and Excepter had anything new out, then going to see them play at Silent Barn or the Cake Shop, are still vivid.

Nothing triggers those memories better than Excepter's 2006 album Alternation and its single "The 'Rock' Stepper". The song's sideways lope and tranced repetition replicates the feel of walking around the city, excited to run into fellow underground trawlers. "He walks like his legs are broken/ And talks like he's never spoken," sings John Fell Ryan in his trademark zombie moan, capturing something intangible about New York's crooked energy.

"The 'Rock' Stepper" might be the catchiest thing Excepter ever did, but that somehow makes it even more representative of 00s NYC. For me, everything there felt positive and forward-moving, and every time I left I couldn't wait to get back. Most of those bands are still going at it, but the scene has splintered, and the vibes have evaporated a bit. Still, whenever I get a chance to walk around New York, I can count on "The 'Rock' Stepper"'s wormy beat to mirror my path. --Marc Masters

2007

UGK

"Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)" [ft. OutKast]

[Zomba]

It might seem jarringly odd, maybe even sad, that a song like this-- which features a poisonously misogynistic verse bragging of riches gained by exploiting women (read: a Pimp C verse)-- would ever serve as anyone's starry-eyed declaration of love. But such are the loopy ins and outs of being a rap fan-- context is a tricky thing in any pop music, but it can get really complicated with hip-hop. Ever seen a white guy stop short and nervously fumble his way around "n-word" land mines while rapping along to his favorite song in public? Ever witness a roomful of women scream along to the lyrics of Snoop's "Ain't No Fun"? Great pop songs are entirely what we make them; as with many imperfect things we love, we zero in on the parts we value and go gently soft-focus on the rest.

So maybe it's not that odd or sad that "Int'l Players Anthem" was on exultant loop in my mind the week before I proposed to my then-girlfriend in 2009. The proposal was no great leap of assumption, or of bravery, on my part; we'd lived together for over a year, and had already conducted several of those semantically awkward, elaborately triangulated conversations where we furtively confirmed each other's long-term expectations without using the words "children" or "marriage." (Such conversations involve a lot of ellipses, and would sound like a shorted-out connection if conducted over the phone.) I was about to tell the woman I loved something unbelievably great. She was going to say yes. I couldn't wait for either of us.

In the lead-up to something like that, everything goes down a couple of volume notches around you. I distinctly recall a feeling of quiet elation, a helium-swelling sensation that immediately took the shape of "Int'l Players Anthem". The song surfaced from my subconscious for a couple of obvious reasons: despite less-than-chilvalrous lines from Pimp C, Bun B, and Big Boi, the song opens on pure, moony romance. André 3000 plays the role of nervous groom with trademark wry bemusement. The line that leapt out of the song and fused with my brain stem was the poetically elusive, "Spaceships don't come equipped with rearview mirrors." It's impending blast-off, giddy vertigo, and queasy joy all combined; the fact that it takes place over a glorious sample of Willie Hutch hollering, "I choose you," again and again certainly didn't hurt. --Jayson Greene

2008

No Age

"Eraser"

[Sub Pop]

In 2008, I missed wanting things-- music, in particular. I missed the ecstasy of acquisition (in 1993, it took me seven weeks to sniff out a copy of Dinosaur Jr.'s Where You Been, and I spent the next seven memorizing every last crooked riff). I missed making literal investments in music, funneling all the time and cash and heart I could manage into the hunt. I had free CDs and illegally attained mp3s and lawfully purchased LPs, but unless I was being paid to render my opinion, I engaged with everything for six minutes and moved on. Listening to records felt like a cruel and absurd post-modern experiment in which discussion eclipsed everything else: Art was measured only by the amount of chatter it incited, and there was pressure to reference it all just to prove you were paying attention. I was underinvested and overwhelmed. I was trying my hardest to re-learn how to be a fan.

I don't know exactly when I heard Nouns, No Age's full-length debut, for the very first time, but I remember how it incited a mushy, knee-buckling feeling-- that awful/ecstatic nausea that accompanies falling rapidly and stupidly in love with something. I remember being spooked by that. I remember feeling like it was important, somehow, for Nouns to like me back. The record felt aspirational-- it articulated, quickly and spectacularly, what I'd always hoped my life would sound like (reckless, inscrutable, loud, rapturous, weird). I was 27 when I finally heard those dreams reflected back at me.

At home with the CD, I flipped through the photographs in the liner notes. I saw the detritus of fandom, celebrated: rows of cassettes (Slayer, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, "Dad's Hisao Shinagawa"), wheels of stickers, a living room crammed with too many LPs. It felt like an admonishment, or maybe a reminder.

"Eraser" was my favorite track. It felt like daybreak; something jangly, something ominous, that fucking tambourine. Dean's vocals don't slip in until the song's already half over, and besides, I still can't figure out most of what he says. What I could discern came in muted snippets: "I wonder what I get paid." "Wait and see the list of shit you made." "Watch him die." I had no desire to contextualize or parse any of it-- I didn't even want to understand it. This is how you love something. Stop talking. --Amanda Petrusich

2009

Japandroids

"Young Hearts Spark Fire"

[Unfamiliar/Polyvinyl]

By 2009, indie rock was well into its middle-aged phase. At decade's end, the touring circuit was clogged with reunited 80s veterans, while many of contemporary indie's most celebrated new acts (Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear) favored a more pastoral approach that suggested they couldn't wait to get old, too. It was also the year I gracefully exited (or, rather, was forced out of) the hallowed and eternally youthful 18-34 demographic. All the time, energy, and money that I used to invest in buying records, going to shows, and seeking out new music was now being redirected towards home-insurance policies, consolidating debts, and baby gifts for friends' newborns. And when given the choice between going out to a see a hotly tipped local band at a nearby bar or catching up on "True Blood", the DVR was starting to win out on a regular basis. (As Paul Rudd attests, in "I Love You, Man", "Have you ever watched Sunday night programming on HBO? It's spectacular.")

In light of these circumstances, it follows that my favorite new-band discovery of 2009 didn't materialize by scouring my local record store's new-releases bin or through intense online research, but rather sheer laziness. I didn't find Japandroids-- they found me, at a Saturday-afternoon day party held during the previous year's POP Montreal festival. The event was held at a performance/squatter space located above a bike-repair shop in an industrialized Old Montreal neighborhood, and I was there to see a Vancouver friend's band play. But rather than cut out immediately afterward, I opted to stick around (the beer was cheap).

Next up were Japandroids, who did not turn out to be the dorky synth-pop band their name suggested, but rather a guitar/drums duo who, in their introductory banter, projected a surprising amount of smart-alecky cockiness for a couple of guys about to play for 12 people. I expected them to kick into some Blues Explosion-grade skronk-punk heavy on slop and attitude. Instead, the first song began with a rousing, ringing riff and patient, warm-up gallop reminiscent of Tom Petty's "American Girl" (albeit as covered by a young Superchunk) and the verse that followed seemed to celebrate a similar sort of youthful abandon. But just as the song reached full steam, guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse hollered a suckerpunch chorus-- "Oh, we used to dream/ Now we worry about dying"-- that cast its triumphant spirit with neuroses and uncertainty. On "Young Hearts Spark Fire", Japandroids weren't so much testifying to their passion as expressing the fear of losing it, effectively admitting that the young hearts they so lionize no longer belong to them.

I could relate, despite the fact that, when you're in your 30s, dying actually ranks pretty low on your list of worries behind things like eating healthily, getting sufficient exercise, and hiding receding hairlines. Months after our initial encounter in Montreal, I watched Japandroids play the same song, only this time to a sing-along crowd of thousands in Chicago at the 2009 Pitchfork Festival, where the duo's anxieties about aging were transformed into a communal celebration of adolescence-- arrested and otherwise. --Stuart Berman

Japandroids: Young Hearts Spark Fire

2010

LCD Soundsystem

"I Can Change"

[DFA/EMI]

In the summer of 2010, I was still pretty convinced that the tortured non-relationship I was in was eventually going to work out. I had no good reason to believe this, but I had invested so much time and emotion that the idea of giving up and moving on was too painful to consider. By this point, our deep affection for one another was almost entirely drowned out by a near-constant state of conflict. In retrospect, the fighting had become our perverse way of proving that we still loved each other.

When I first heard "I Can Change", I strongly identified with James Murphy's willingness to bargain-- "I can change if it helps you fall in love"-- and his desperate need to cling to a dying relationship. As I fell out of love and regained some degree of self-awareness, I eventually realized that these were foolish, tragic words. The song takes place just before you know you have to quit, when you recognize that the happy times are long over and you've so thoroughly poisoned the present that there's no hope of a future. The tension is in knowing that all of Murphy's promises and attempts to negotiate are totally futile. He sings about wanting to change, but he really just wants to turn back the clock.

Every relationship, romantic or platonic, lives and dies depending on whether you can change along with the other person. I made the mistake of planning for a future without thinking about this inevitability. I thought about how I wanted to change or how things could change to meet my expectations, but I didn't think about how I would change or how I cannot change. I was blind to this, too afraid of how I'd deal with what Murphy refers to as "dashing the hopes and smashing the pride."

In the end, the feeling just went away. When I hear "I Can Change" now, I remember all of this angst, but I feel relieved. When I saw LCD Soundsystem perform the song at their final concert at Madison Square Garden in April, it seemed as though its meaning had changed a bit for Murphy as well. His phrasing was more relaxed, and the emotional stakes seemed much lower. In this final rendition, the phrase, "I can change," took on a different resonance. It wasn't the sentiment of a guy desperate to appease someone else anymore. It was more like an affirmation. --Matthew Perpetua