Welcome to the start of this year’s Song, by Toad Festive Fifty, where I list, in order, my favourite fifty songs of the year. As with the albums of the year, I have had to exclude Song, by Toad Records bands from this list. Partly this is to stop me inevitably wounding the pride of whichever bands fared less well than their label mates, and partly to stop the label collectively dominating this list too much.
I don’t think the concept of objectivity is possible, or even all that relevant, when it comes to discussing what music you like, but I am so closely involved with the music on our label that there would inevitably end up being so many of our songs on here that I think it might well run the risk of just boring people, honestly. You all know about the label by now, you all know where to find the music we release, and it pretty much goes without saying that I would only release it if I thought it was bloody brilliant to begin with, so no need to labour the point in my end of year lists.
31. Cotton Jones – Sail of the Silver Morning The weird collision of the modern and the old-fashioned on this record has its less successful moments, but is amazing when it really clicks. You end up with what should be fairly plain and lovely pop songs, yet with an elusively strange undercurrent to them. His voice is strange, and hers is fucking lovely, which also helps.
32. Titus Andronicus – A More Perfect Union This whole album, frankly, is fucking ridiculous. But it’s ridiculous with such joyful exuberance that I just couldn’t help but love it – after I’d overcome the ‘what in the precious bundle of cherry-flavoured fuck is this then?’ reaction of course. This track pretty much embodies the crazy brilliance of the whole record as well as anything, I think. Turn it up loud, and don’t be ashamed of punching the air like a fool.
33. Thirty Pounds of Bone – A Lesson in Talking There’s an extremely harsh edge to Method which my choosing this particular song for my Festive Fifty somewhat neglects. There is still plenty of bleakness in the lyrics of course, but the loveliness of the music rather overcomes it. Maybe that’s why I like the song so much – but there are plenty, plenty more where this came from on the album.
34. Liars – The Overachievers I am not sure why none of the more sinister songs on Sisterworld made this list, because it’s not all about battering the shit out of the guitars. But having had my fillings severely rattled by these lads at SXSW has rather come to dominate how I think of them. Loud please!
35. Broken Records – Home I can almost see the band rolling their eyes at me as once again I pick one of their quiet songs for my end of year lists. Broken Records are very much not a quiet band, but that’s probably why songs like this end up standing out so much, particularly when they draw the curtain on such a brilliant album. There’s a lot of tension in Let Me Come Home too, and this song really does feel like a release at the end of it.
36. Ringo Deathstarr – Imagine Hearts I haven’t heard anything from Ringo Deathstarr for years, but this is a wonky bit of excellence. There’s plenty of shoegaze here, and the backing sounds like it’s being played on a tape so old it has distorted to the point where it will barely play properly anymore. And this, of course, is a good thing.
37. The National – Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks I could no more explain why this song is now one of my favourite on High Violet than I could explain why I really didn’t like the album itself all that much for about three months after it came out.
38. Barton Carroll – Shadowman Apart from the fact that this is a gorgeous song in itself, I absolutely defy anyone to listen to the lyrics and not choke up. It is a bitter tale of mean-spirited weakness without a shred of redemption at the end of it. Truly brutal.
39. Broken Records – A Leaving Song A Leaving Song perhaps sums up the new Broken Records album as well as any other individual song on the album. It’s exuberant, tight and driven and manages to balance a definite air of confrontation with a real sense of focus. This may be because I know more about the personal emotions behind the album than I really should, as a straightforward music fan, but nevertheless the purpose of a band with a point to prove seems to have made this song, and the whole album, really quite excellent.
40. The Scottish Enlightenment – The First Will Be Last This song just builds and builds and is one of relatively few Scottish Enlightenment songs to end with something vaguely approaching a crescendo of guitars and noise. It takes bloody ages to do so as well,
41. The Driftwood Singers – Coco Ellis The production and arrangements are copied and pasted so directly from some old, romanticised version of the past that this borders just a little on parody, but that really doesn’t matter to me, I must confess, because the results are fucking great.
42. Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart There may be plenty of muffled electronica out there, working to reproduce the wobbly distortion of old analogue equipment, but this is easily some of the best I have heard. The construction of crackle and stumble, and the hints of the epic about the vocals, give this song an amazing dynamic between its anthemic and introverted lo-fi aspects.
43. Hurray for the Riff Raff – Slow Walk This is the flipside of a similar fascination with lovely old-time music as seems to motivate The Driftwood Singers, but in this case it’s clean and clear, with a lovely twang to the lead vocal, and a simple hook running all the way through the song. Anyone who loved Samantha Crain’s early stuff is almost certain to love this song.
44. Cotton Jones – Song in Numbers The way the rhythm of this song drifts into passivity before rattling itself into life is probably one of the key things which makes it special for me.
45. Keaton Henson – Oliver Dalston Browning There’s nothing at all to this song except the gentle rise and fall of the guitar, recorded in as raw and unaffected way as you could ask for, and then Henson’s gorgeous, trembling voice. To do so much with so little is really impressive, and this song is just beautiful.
46. Hot Panda – Mindlessnesslessness This might be the closest to a haircut song in this whole list – the band even have ‘Panda’ and ‘Hot’ in their name and everything. Hot Crystal Bear Fuck Owl Ghost Panda! Never mind the name though, this is a brilliant song, tucked away near the end of a varied and interesting but slightly inconsistent album. The thumping bounce of the start of it, compared to the odd epilogue (there is probably a technical term for this which I don’t know) which breaks in about two-thirds of the way through is just weird. And excellent.
47. Roy Robertson – Icing This is a spooky but lovely acoustic pop song for about a minute and a half, before handclaps and spacey swooshing noises raise it up to a euphoric finale. A bit like the Hot Panda song, but this gears the song up rather than down.
48. Tusk Tusk – Crazy Little Birthmarks Another song which starts as a simple, rolling acoustic pop track, but in this case the build is more gradual, as a choral backing swells and grows until it envelops the whole thing. The song then steadily crumbles until there is nothing but the choir and a simple electric guitar refrain, and then finally silence.
49. Silver Columns – Brown Beaten Pure, awesome disco-pop. I have never seen a single song generate so much interest in a band in my life (well, not amongst the kind of music I listen to anyway), and I have heard some people grumble about this being just a Bronski Beat knock off etc etc etc, but in all honesty, the only way you could dislike this song is if you hate fun in some fundamental and frankly unhealthy way. Pure. Pop. Genius.
50. Jason Lytle – Indie Rock Freestyle Alright, so something of a lighthearted one to end with. But this spirit of freedom and playfulness is precisely what gives Lytle’s album of cast-offs and mutants such liveliness compared to some of the more sticky stuff he’s released in the past few years. It may not be a proper album, as such, but the liberated approach that results is brilliant, and little embodies that throwaway attitude better than this.
Click here to download all these songs in one zip file.
1-10 | 11-30 | 31-50
I think I have figured out why Fence Records hate the internet. Or at least, I feel like I am starting to get some insight into what is an intensely troubled relationship. The two of them just don’t get along at all, and the mutual antipathy has boiled over into outright hostility this afternoon, with the rush to buy Homegame tickets from the Fence website actually breaking the whole internet.
