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#11 Hooded Fang – Hooded Fang / mp3: “Highway Steam”
Hooded Fang makes you want to stay in, be cozy and throw on your favorite sweater.
#10 Wild Nothing – Gemini / mp3: “Summer Holiday”
I wish I had this album when I was younger with all those hours that were lost into doing nothing. It’s an album I can easily get lost into while I sit at my old work corner.
#9 Vampire Weekend – Contra / mp3: “Horchata”
“Horchata” goes: “In December, drinking horchata / I’d look psychotic in a balaclava.” Well, it’s kind of funny how I’ve done both of these things this week.
#8 Marnie Stern – Marnie Stern / mp3: “The Things You Notice”
I discovered Marnie Stern in September and listened to her album a lot in the fall. I remember this one particular day when I was walking home in the afternoon: how her swift fretwork seemed to part grasses and pierce the broken leaves that were flying around on the ground.
#7 The National – High Violet / mp3: “England”
For me, Matt Berninger not only looks like Tin Tin – one of my favorite childhood cartoon heroes – but he’s also a man who says words so beautifully.
#6 Owen Pallett – Heartland / mp3: “Tryst With Mephistopheles”
Heartland became the soundtrack to my reading of Anne Carson’s “Autobiography of Red”, like they were somehow meant to be hemmed together. I still wonder if Owen borrowed some ideas from Carson.
#5 Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me / mp3: “Does Not Suffice”
I wrote a lot of essays and stories in the last year or so. There was something about Have One On Me and its trembling rhymes that made it so easy for me to focus and become inspired.
#4 The Radio Dept. - Clinging To A Scheme / mp3: “Heaven’s On Fire”
I really love this album. It makes me feel like those Sunday afternoons I spent on the livingroom floor when I was a child is not far away and that summertime is just outside the window, waiting for us somewhere.
#3 Beach House – Teen Dream / mp3: “Zebra”
I’ll always have a sad association with Beach House because of the time I spent Christmas away from my girlfriend that one year, a time I had spent pining for her return while listening to Devotion. But feeling sad is a beautiful thing sometimes.
#2 Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record / mp3: “Highway Slipper Jam”
Despite the fact I’m really tired of them, I admit that I still think about their dream concert at Harbourfront in 2009. Forgiveness Rock Record was an epic adventure, marking my girlfriend and I’s first apartment together, my final year in university and probably the last time I’ll see them live for a long time.
#1 Arcade Fire – The Suburbs / mp3: “Modern Man”
We saw Arcade Fire for the first time at Olympic Island in August, then we followed them to LA in October. There was good stretch this year, where I would wake up and have a different song from The Suburbs in my head.