#5 - The Non-Commissioned Officers - "Frozen Tongue" (from Make-Out With Violence)
The Non-Coms made last year's list too - without even releasing a proper album. This year saw the band return to the stage, along with the long-anticipated release of the Make-Out With Violence soundtrack - forty-four tracks strong and loaded with more gems than most bands produce in their entire careers. Aside from the tracks I was already familiar with, "Frozen Tongue" was the standout for me - you can't deny that delectable guitar riff.
#4 - Miike Snow - "Animal" (from Animal)
Every year has to have its "Over and Over" - and 2009 brought Miike Snow's "Animal" to fit the bill. The original kept me bopping, the remixes kept me running, and the countless appearances in Gossip Girl kept a smile on my face. It's that song I should be sick of by now, but it somehow hasn't happened.
#3 - Phoenix - "Rome" (from Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix)
It's random that this ended up being my favorite song on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but all it took was the proper BPM (so it fit perfectly into a workout mix) and all those repeat listens, plus a heartstring-tuggingly great melody, capped off with one perfect line - "I thought I couldn't do this without you" - and I was in complete and total love. It's the perfect combination of beauty, beats, buildup and breakdown.
#2 - Ramona Falls - "Clover" (from Intuit)
"Clover" has pretty much everything I ever love in a song that I'm crap at actually describing - we can start off with the melody and rhythm, simply enough, but beyond that I lose the ability to pair words with feelings. There's the lyrics, but it's not just the words, it's the fact that certain lines seemed perfectly and cryptically and specifically aligned to pierce something within me. then there's the sense of epic-ness that I'm always drawn to - the building and receding and swelling and changing, like a musical sand dune. And of course there's whatever makes me hit repeat, again and again like an addict with a near-physical dependency. I ended up loving everything on Intuit this year, but it was "Clover" where everything fell into place.
#1 - Grizzly Bear - "All We Ask" (from Veckatimest)
I could easily put five different Grizzly Bear songs in this spot - or the whole album, really - but rules are rules, and I have to stick with only one and choose my favorite from Veckatimest to top this list. This album seemed head and shoulders above anything else I listened to this year - and silly as it sounds, I feel like it changed my life a little. It certainly changed the way I listen to music, and subtly shifted the way I feel about music, and presented me with the opportunity to see and hear one of the best live shows of my entire life. If years have animals, 2009 was the year of the Grizzly Bear, and this one followed me through every season.
So simply, here we have the song I loved the most off the album I loved the most this year. "All We Ask" hit me in a melancholy spot early this year, and deeper emotion always means deeper bonds with the music we're listening to at the time. This one feels like tumbling through space, being swept and buffeted and falling, always falling - but one simple declaration at the end brings it to the perfect resigned conclusion.
