Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Shiba's Top 10 Songs of 2010


10. Blind Guardian - At The Edge of Time - "Curse My Name"

Found it on some forced listening thread on a forum a while ago, maybe halfway through this year. Listening to the album and becoming a fan of the band made me a lot of friends with Blind Guardian fans, and some Blind Guardian fans out of friends after I forced the band on them until they bothered to listen to the full 9 minutes of Sacred Worlds and realised that they love it and that 9 minutes isn't too long for a song, which is what they told me over and over while I played the song and they covered their ears, denying change and screaming at the top of their lungs.



9. Les Discrets - Septembre et ses dernières Pensées - "Une matinée d'hiver"

Noctus was the one that got me into this band, I'm pretty sure. I took on a metal challenge of 200 bands I'll never listen to and Les Discrets was one of the bands I managed to listen to. And this was the one song that I latched onto and haven't let go of since I first listened to the album. It would get a higher position if it wasn't for the fact that it was fairly new to me, and I'm discriminative of new music.



8. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs - "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"

The Suburbs is a fantastic album, but the downside is that no track really gets me like with a lot of albums. It's an album where I love the whole thing, every single song together. "Empty Room" and "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" are the two tracks I prefer above the others, likely because I love female vocalists.



7. Jónsi - How To Train Your Dragon - "Sticks & Stones"

As with American Beauty and Grey's Anatomy, it's the soundtrack that got me into the movie or TV series it was featured on. Following my phase of listening to Jónsi's album Go a whole lot, I decided to go hunting for some B-sides or unreleased tracks or something, and I came upon this. Why is it so much better than his whole album?



6. God Is An Astronaut - Age of the Fifth Sun - "In The Distance Fading"

This was the first song with a real climax I ever listened to. And by 'real climax' I mean euphoric eargasm climax and not just "this is as good as it gets, you're not going to enjoy it any more than this and if you aren't enjoying it now you never will enjoy it at any other point in the song". It was also a wake up call in that I never realised people could dislike something so absolutely glorious.



5. Kate Nash - My Best Friend Is You - "Don't You Want To Share The Guilt?"

Kate Nash, being mainstream alternative-pop was probably something close to the first band I listened to while getting into music, after a 15 year period of "I will listen to music when it's on but I don't care for it" rubbish. So I got her newest album when it released earlier this year. Having been warped beyond recognition by depressing music, I looked over the poppy stuff and really got into the other stuff that everybody else didn't like. I hate Kate Nash's fans for letting this track become the least listened track on Last.fm. I like to think it's because people love it so much they buy it on vinyl and don't listen to it on their computer because they're convinced that vinyl is the only way to fully appreciate how good this song is.



4. Vampire Weekend - Contra - "I Think Ur A Contra"

Okay so Vampire Weekend I vaguely remember my sister liking in the times of their debut album. I never really thought much of them then, but when Contra was released I remember FP talking about them, and I decided to give it a listen. A few months later I bothered to listen again and this one caught my attention, because I like the slow sad kind of ones. This and "Taxi Cab" are my favourite tracks from the album for just that reason.



3. The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! - I Love You! I Love You! I Love You and I'm In Love With You! Have An Awesome Day! Have The Best Day of Your Life! - "[Ride Friendship.]"

FP again, from back when he posted it on the blog. It makes me so absolutely happy and I want nothing more than to pack my bags and become a massive hippy. I think it had the negative effects of making me feel really carefree about life and now I don't care about growing up I just want to be a kid forever as a big fuck you to the system. And then I listen to The Suburbs to make me feel awful about growing up just to bring me back a little bit. I can sing the whole song "grouphug!" and I've listened to it much more than this, but "[Ride Friendship.]" really is where it's at.
I would be a part of you would you please be a part of me.



2. 65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway - "Tiger Girl"

I have no idea when I found 65daysofstatic, but I did and I love them. And "Tiger Girl" is another one of those songs that puts me in a state of euphoria. And I'm still waiting on the day when a band comes along and decides that they really love making songs like this. That build up to a huge sharp colourful climax that somehow exceeds your idea of the best sound you could ever hear. And every time you listen to it, you don't understand how they could get even better than what you just heard seconds ago, but it continues getting better and better. This and "Hoppípolla" by Sigur Rós are the only two songs that do that for me.



1. Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks - "Not Miserable"

Frightened Rabbit are my favourite band ever. They were one of the first bands I listened to back when I started getting into music and they're still my most listened. And if I didn't want to limit this list to 10 different artists, so many more tracks from The Winter of Mixed Drinks would be on here. I love all the tracks from that album, but I absolutely adore build-up songs like this.



--BONUS--


00. Holy Fuck - Latin - "Stilettos"

I, in my rush to get this post up and done, totally forgot about the incredible rush of adrenaline which is 2:50 onwwards.

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