Consider this list my “favorite new tracks of 2009” list.

Click here to listen to the selected tracks

Imagine this.

Leaning backwards in your chair to the point where it tips over, but instead of you hitting the ground with a hard thud, you go right through the ground and you get swallowed up and dropped into a dark cushiony endless abyss. What, this has never happened to you? Well it did to me, the first time I listened to Radiohead’s “These Are My Twisted Words.” From a purely tonal standpoint, the guitars present a smear of notes down a descending line that exist outside the realm of conventional tonality. From a more textural standpoint, the guitars layer the smear on thick with heavy delay and other time based effects.

To break down the instrumentation, it’s nothing out of the ordinary -especially for Radiohead: guitars, drums, thom’s voice, bass. The difference is what Radiohead manages to do with these instruments. We’re not talking about virtuoso technique or any truly incredible display of musicianship. The magic here is in the composition and the recording. Like I said, “These Are My Twisted Words” really delivered me to a place I’ve never been. Radiohead showed, through this song, that there are still sonic realms where standard rock instrumentation hasn’t been yet.

This is what listening to these songs looks like (taken from the inside of my car during a carwash).

There are hardly any recognizable instruments or components in Animal Collective’s “Guys Eyes” from their latest album Merriweather Post Pavilion. Regardless the song is something that Brian Williams Wilson (nice catch) would have been happy to have produced if he was still with the Beach Boys today. My sister said it perfectly when she that it was like Animal Collective created a new color. It was that groundbreaking for me when I finally figured out what the hell Animal Collective was. “Guys Eyes” has these beautiful vocal harmonies that swarm around like well choreographed bees. Any singular bee is hardly distinguishable from the rest but the result is a spinning pattern of thick vocal counterpoint. In this way, the only recognizable component of the song, the singing, becomes a mess in itself. This is the kind of mess that will make me listen to a song a hundred times over without ever deciphering the mess.

I’m going to throw Grizzly Bear’s “Slow Life” featuring Victoria Legrand into this list because it had a similar affect on me as the previous two songs. The moral of the story I guess is auditory experience. However, there have been some songs in the past that have had life changing effects for me in terms of how I listen to music. First is Beck’s 2002 song “Paper Tiger” form his album Sea Change. The song perfectly melts together the timbres of a guitar and an orchestra so that their interplay and “counterplay” creates a conversational effect that makes the song so bold. Lastly is the song “Oceania” from Björk’s 2004 album Medúlla. The album is an almost purely vocal album and this song is composed of a combination of Björk’s live vocals, and a professional beatboxer. Additionally, an indiscernible combination of sampled voices and a female choir take the part that a synthesizer would normally have. This kind of seamless mix is a strange sensation.

Well I hope that by sharing these tracks with you, you too can expand your musical palette.

Thanks and with love,

George