Tracks of the Year - Raj

This week, the SRS dudes will be posting about their favorite tracks of 2010. The SRS BZNZ Top 25 Albums of 2010 will be counting down starting next week.

Here at SRS BZNZ, we like rap and electronic music. A lot. So much so, in fact, that in our list of the top 25 albums of the year (to be revealed next week!), around 80% of the list falls into those two genres. We're not going to apologize for that, since a) rap and electronic music are so, so good, and b) that list composition has at least something to do with a broader shift towards electronic elements indie music as a whole (even resolute folkie Sufjan Stevens made an electronica album this year!). But since you'll be getting plenty of all that here pretty soon, I've limited this best songs of the year post to other genres of music. Although, for the record, the following songs are so, so good: Kanye West - "Lost in the World", Curren$y - "Michael Knight", Big Boi - "General Patton", Sleigh Bells - "A/B Machines", Joker - "Tron", True Tiger f. P-Money - "Slang Like This".

"Drag the Lake, Charlie" - Drive-By Truckers



What the Drive-By Truckers lack in sonic ambition (they're devotees to the Lynyrd Skynyrd school of meat-and-potatoes three-guitar rock attack), they've always made up for with the soaring lyrical ambition of their albums (this is the band that made Southern Rock Opera, which is what it sounds like and happens to star Skynyrd, the Truckers themselves, segregationist governor George Wallace, and Satan). Their latest album The Big To-Do was a step down from past efforts, but it has a few vicious standouts. "The Wig He Made Her Wear", about the real-life murder of a minister by his wife, is brutally effective in a deadly-solemn kind of way, but I preferred the pitch-black humor of "Drag the Lake, Charlie", which tells the story of an exasperated small-town sheriff investigating a disappearance who's "almost out of Valium/courage and self-respect".

"Eyesore" - Women



Song engineering at its finest, a frothing mix of enough hooks for three or four singles all packed into one gloriously disorienting mixture. I'm going to go ahead and say that the way the song's structure is constantly in a state of weird but alluring flux makes this the indie rock equivalent of the part in "Inception" where Ellen Page learns how to make dreams.

"Born Free" - M.I.A.



Kind of a cheat, I guess, since this is based on a sample , but the feel of this thing is punk all the way. After making Kala, which is still one of my favorite albums of the past decade, M.I.A. has had a pretty rough time of things - her new album is pretty terrible, the New York Times runs hit-job profiles of her, her live shows have become train-wrecks. Even this song isn't untainted - the "provocative" attention-grab video for the song is boneheaded on many, many levels (although very well executed cinematically). But this track still is pretty strong (which may have something to do with its being recorded during the Kala sessions). M.I.A. and punk is, in retrospect, a thoroughly obvious mix and she sounds great sloganeering over those completely-out-of-control drums.

"Good Intentions Paving Company" - Joanna Newsom



Yes, that sometimes-chirpy sometimes-screechy voice of hers can be a problem, and it's basically why I never listened to this album all the way through (I mean, come on, a double album of that voice, too?). But as this song shows, when she reins in her more precious vocal affectations, she can make one hell of a pop song, catchy enough to make you actually want to pay attention to the so-highly-regarded lyrics- which reveals a pretty ingenious in-and-out-of-love story.

"A More Perfect Union" - Titus Andronicus



Bruce Springsteen looms pretty heavily over the indie rock scene nowadays (see: Arcade Fire), but no one this year grappled with The Boss more openly than Titus Andronicus - singer Patrick Stickles literally just announces, mournfully, that "I've destroyed everything that wouldn't make me more like Bruce Springsteen" at one point in the album. The shocking truth, though, is that "A More Perfect Union" is a rock song completely worthy of that legend's legacy. "Tramps like us, baby we were born to die" announces Stickles in the first verse, and off we go into an ambitious mix of punk energy, classic American melodies, and references to everything from Billy Bragg to The Dark Knight (bonus New Englander points for referencing the Fung Wah Bus and the Merritt Parkway). I'll have more to say about the album proper later, but this was undoubtedly its peak.