3. Quantic and his Combo Bárbaro, “Linda Morena”

- From the 2009 album Tradition in Transition.
- Official website

The closer I get to the top songs, the more ineffable they become; it’s as if the sheer pleasure of the listening experience as such robs you of wordsmithing faculties. (I think it’s why I prefer writing about movies; not having any musical background, I can’t describe what I’m hearing properly.) Maybe it’s because there’s a somatic quality to music that movies will never have; they’ll never make you pump your fists in the air as you drive, or dance until you’re out of breath, and when this happens, my words can only describe the experience.

The Englishman Will Holland has been knee-deep in the funk — and soul, dub, bossa nova, R&B, jazz, cumbia, you name it — for almost a decade now, under different guises, and his latest project, Quantic and his Combo Bárbaro, just might be the best of the lot. Tradition in Transition, recorded in Cali, Colombia, where Holland now lives, is already his 13^th album for the Tru Thoughts label.

“Linda Morena” is one unbelievably sizzling hot track; it jumped out of my speakers the first time I heard it and demanded I listen to it again. It’s not just a song that makes you want to dance, but a song that makes you want to dance to it properly. Panamanian soul singer Kabir’s vocals are fantastic, but when Alfredo Linares comes in with his piano solo halfway through the song, you wish it would never end.

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The rest of the list so far:

5. Passion Pit, “Folds in Your Hands” (2009)
6. Ximena Sariñana, “Vidas Paralelas” (2008)
7. Thomas Tantrum, “Work It” (2008)
8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me” (1968)
9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009)
10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

5. Passion Pit, “Folds in Your Hands”

- From the 2009 album Manners.
- Official website.

My other favorite album of 2009, Passion Pit’s Manners, dropped like, I don’t know, some sugarcoated candy-flavored meteor from heaven. My friend Laurel claims (I paraphrase here) that it’s “typical Wily Filipino music”, which I take to mean that “it features electronica roots, danceable beats, and unsyncopated ensemble rhythms.” Or perhaps she means that a) it’s happy, and b) that it’s sung in vocals way beyond my non-existent singing capabilities. Though, let me digress for a moment, the singers I like to sing along to – Neil Young, James McNew, Mac McCaughan (and on the more modulated side of the spectrum, Matthew Sweet and Dean Wareham) – all have that same pinched tenor.

Michael Angelakos’ falsetto, alas, doesn’t always hold up live, but the tooth-rotting goopiness of their keyboards is shamelessly, joyfully intact in concert. “Everything’s easy when you’ve never had to choose,” Angelakos sings, and quite frankly I had a difficult time choosing between “Folds In Your Hands” and just about every other song on Manners – the quest for spiritual uplift on “The Reeling”, that children’s choir on “Little Secrets”, the odd Catholicism of “Eyes as Candles” – but “Folds in Your Hands”, even with its inscrutable lyrics, wins this round for now.

Played live, it’s perfect because of the DJ dynamics engineered right into the song: the people singing “Like the sun and the moon I will circle you till you bloom”, hands raised to the ceiling, as the drums drop out, then the keyboards swell into a crescendo just before the beats kick back in. And that last refrain? “Feel it rain / Feel it rain / We’re alive / Feel it rain”? In a crowd of singing, jumping dancers with huge smiles on their faces? Didn’t I say it was perfect?

—–

The rest of the list so far:
6. Ximena Sariñana, “Vidas Paralelas” (2008)
7. Thomas Tantrum, “Work It” (2008)
8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me” (1968)
9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009)
10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

6. Ximena Sariñana, “Vidas Paralelas”

- from the 2008 album Mediocre.
- Official website.

Sigh – two years of Spanish classes in college have sadly failed me for this song, but my lack of comprehension hasn’t stopped me from loving it anyway. (Parallel lives – I got that, at least, but I never did figure out the conditional tense.) And I wonder, of course, whether my inability to understand the lyrics (cf. my affection for the Japanese band Puffy) is a good thing: that it allows me to focus instead on the craft of the song, written by Ximena Sariñana and Baltazar Hinojosa. And, it should be said, to perhaps blissfully ignore what may well be mediocre lyrics; let it not be said that she wasn’t playing with fire by titling her album as such.

Sariñana – the scion of a successful showbiz family, telenovela actress, and all of 22 years old when her debut album was released – arrived carrying the unfair burden of expectations regarding what talent she actually had, given her network. Surely this song – and the album’s later comparisons by critics to Come Away With Me – quells any such worries: a perfect slice of breezy, summery pop.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

7. Thomas Tantrum, “Work It” (2008)
8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me” (1968)
9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009)
10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

7. Thomas Tantrum, “Work It” (2008)
- Official website.
- From the 2008 album Thomas Tantrum.

From the best album I heard in 2009 – though it’s actually a photo-finish with Song #5 – comes the sassy, saucy, quirky “Work It” – words that should never be used in a dating profile, but are eminently applicable to Thomas Tantrum’s irresistible combination of jangly punk guitar and ooh-ooh refrains.

But who am I fooling: the charm of Thomas Tantrum is all about Megan Thomas’ vocals, her lips seemingly pursed in a perpetual pout, the singer ready to slam the door in your stupid face. And that accent! It was difficult to pick just one song – “Blasé”, “Swan Lake” (for that one it’s “ah ah ah”), or “Shake It! Shake It!” could have easily been on this list – but “Work It” wins the spot if only for the way she stretches the lone syllable in “it” into an impertinent six.

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The rest of the list so far:

8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me” (1968)
9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009)
10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]

8. The Zombies, “I Want Her She Wants Me”

- Official website.
- From the 1968 album Odessey and Oracle (Amazon mp3 link).

I fell in love with the Zombies only a few years ago – to think I’d lived so long without ever really hearing them, “She’s Not There” notwithstanding! — and it’s a relationship that continues to grow strong, particularly with their incredible 1968 album Odessey and Oracle – surely up there with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds as one of the great albums of the late ‘60s. (I’m reminded of how I finally “heard” Pet Sounds about a decade ago, once I really listened to it, and was floored at its beauty.) I still pull out Odessey and Oracle fairly regularly and I’m always surprised at the depth of its musical riches. Unfortunately, the Zombies would split up just before the album – and their biggest hit, “Time of the Season” – was released.

“I Want Her She Wants Me” wasn’t even released as a single, or even a b-side; it’s just one practically throwaway track tucked in between the baroque “Changes” and the sublime “This Will Be Our Year”. Recorded a few months after their biggest concert audiences at that point in their career – in the Philippines, as it happens, with Diomedes Maturan as one of their opening acts – the song is pure pop sweetness from Rod Argent, with impeccable harmonies and electric harpsichord. They constitute the only frills in what is otherwise an ordinary love song pared down to its very essence, to the simple logical proposition in the title. If only love was always that simple.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

9. Ben Kweller, “Old Hat” (2009)
10. Ida Maria, “Oh My God” (2007)
11. Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, “How Do You Judge Me” (2003)
12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ (2009)
13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009)
14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” (2008)
15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973)
16. Wonder Girls, “Nobody” (2008)

Popularity: 1% [?]