2. The Sea and Cake, “On a Letter”

- From the 2008 album Car Alarm (Amazon mp3 link).
- Official website.

I’ve loved the band The Sea and Cake for a long time now, but don’t ask me which of their albums I like the best. They’re a bit of a blur, quite frankly, and not because I haven’t listened to them carefully. It doesn’t help that their words have never made very much sense – all chosen, I think, simply for how they sound and what they evoke, and Sam Prekop’s slurred vocals have always hovered, barely intelligibly, only just a tiny bit over the mix.

So why all this affection? The adjective “tight” in indie rock is usually reserved for music on the faster, chord change-filled range of the spectrum (think Battles, or Don Caballero), and not for music that, for lack of a better word, more or less swings. Car Alarm is the sound of a sleek and efficient ensemble tightly but effortlessly coloring within the lines.

Okay, all this sounds like I’m dealing out backhanded compliments; words like “sleek and efficient” sound like a liability, and make it seem like I’m describing late-period Steely Dan or something. I think it’s indicative of the paradox within their music: the Sea and Cake seem to exemplify both a breezy offhandedness (Prekop’s breathy vocals) and a marvelous, controlled precision.

The Sea and Cake doesn’t exhibit the brawnier athleticism of drummer John McEntire’s other band, Tortoise; instead, it’s a calculated, subdued grace. You can hear it in “On a Letter”, a particularly fine work of musical craftsmanship: the instruments in gentle lockstep, the guitar tentatively teasing out lines to introduce the main theme, one last minimal guitar filigree a minute before the end, and then it’s gone.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

3. Pinback, “Loro” (2008)
4. Quantic and His Combo Bárbaro, “Linda Morena” (2009)
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% [?]

3. Pinback, “Loro”
- Official website.
- From the 1999 album Pinback.

Hmmm. I suppose I can continue writing about why it’s so much easier to write about movies than it is to write about music: for the former, the lazy, fallback option is to simply answer the question “So, what is the movie about?” (And yet: writing a movie synopsis is probably the most challenging and quite frankly burdensome part of the process.)

For something like Pinback’s “Loro” –- well, it’s clear that “What’s the song about?” is the wrong question, and even the folks on the bulletin boards have their theories about what “49531” might mean, but again: wrong question. I can tell you, at least, that further listenings don’t exactly reveal much, not that it truly matters: those simple (maybe even simplistic) ascending and descending guitar figures, the electronic twinges that surface in the first minute and are never heard again, the voices mixed just barely above the instruments, a vocal progression from the individual to the collective.

So here’s my fallback option: I can tell you exactly when I first heard it — July 26, 2009, 6:06 pm. (I’m apparently the last person in the world – well, between myself and my brother, anyway – to know about “Loro”; I played it for my brother in the Philippines, who recognized it immediately after the first few notes.) I was driving home from a bar, waiting at a traffic light on Telegraph and 51^st in Oakland. It was a warm evening, and still early; the ironing boards were in the process of being folded up in front of Bakesale Betty’s. I had just popped into the stereo a mix CD given to me by my anthropologist concert buddy, who had just taken off for fieldwork in Buenos Aires via Mexico City (hi Xochitl!).

And it was one of those “who is this?” moments, when you punch the eject button on the cassette player and pull out the tape to squint at the label and figure out what the hell you just heard. I don’t know how many times I listened to this mere wisp of a song this year, immersed in something like bliss. Bubbles floating and disappearing in air. Early-morning sunlight winking behind leaves.

—–

The rest of the list so far:

4. Quantic and His Combo Bárbaro, “Linda Morena” (2009)
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: 2% [?]

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.

—–

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% [?]