#195-#191

#195. Arcade Fire - Afterlife (#54, 2013)

35th of 2013

There's the opening lyric to "Afterlife" that goes: 'Afterlife, oh, what a terrible thought'. That's a lyric that's always stuck out to me. Not for the poignancy, but because I was sure I'd heard it before. It wasn't quite there, but it was something similar. This is the part where I reveal that I did not just quote Arcade Fire then, but rather a song from 2017 that closes the album from another band. I'm not able to mention them as they're one of a very small handful of artists with multiple entries that haven't appeared yet. If you do manage to solve that puzzle though, check the two songs out because it's just so strange that they did the same thing so similarly. Arcade Fire don't quite end their 4th album with "Afterlife" though, as there's a lengthy reprise after it.

In the world of Canadian indie rock, I happened upon something I wrote back in 2013, where I was surprised to find out that Born Ruffians were still around, a band I hadn't thought about since 2008. I'm here to say that in 2026, they're still around. They had a cameo in a movie I saw recently where they were talking about Lizzy Goodman's book "Meet Me In The Bathroom", about the rise of the New York indie scene in the early 2000s. I haven't finished reading the book yet but I saw the film and generally find it funny how this band with two songs I vaguely remember have taken control of my purchasing. Hopefully I'll have finished it by the time the last Arcade Fire song comes up.

The relevance of this is that James Murphy naturally comes up quite a bit in the book. It talks about how he started DFA Records and started looking after The Rapture. They put out "House of Jealous Lovers" to a lot of excitement, but there's trouble getting the album released. James Murphy starts wanting to get very involved as if he were a member of the band but they don't seem as interested. The great pay off to all of this in the movie is that you get a lengthy spiel from Murphy when he discovers Napster and starts seeing younger DJs start playing tracks that weren't released or available. It's the most predictable but satisfying needle drop to start playing "Losing My Edge", and go into the origin of LCD Soundsystem.

If you're going to remember this Arcade Fire album for anything, it's how involved James Murphy is in everything. He's credited as a producer on almost every track. This all happened shortly after LCD Soundsystem had supposedly disbanded, and I can't help but think about this controlling, egotistical version of Murphy when I look at the result. It's absolutely still an Arcade Fire album, but the influence is clear, and we've got a slightly more danceable version of what might otherwise have been much more morose.

"Afterlife" feels like the clearest example of this. What might otherwise be hostile confusion turns into something a little more cathartic here. It's an exact meeting point between these two bands that feels like it shouldn't work as well as it does. Maybe it is revealing the downfall of Arcade Fire in hindsight because I'm not sure where they're supposed to go from here, but it was a fun experiment in the moment.

#194. Thelma Plum - Not Angry Anymore (#78, 2019)

14th of 2019

It's definitely not the first one, but I want to vaguely cast back to 2007, when that very popular British band released an album and let everyone pay whatever they want for it. As far as the Hottest 100 was concerned, the most popular song on that album at the time was the one about puzzle pieces or something. It's a song that I grew to really love and it's a prime example of songs that use a higher tempo to make even an acoustic guitar sound intense. It's something I'm often falling for. "Second Chance" by Liam Finn, "Gold Guns Girls" by Metric, "Six Months In A Cast" by The Trouble With Templeton, that kind of thing. I don't know if anyone's ever isolated this as an idea and acknowledged it but I like it a lot.

Naturally, "Not Angry Anymore" is also one of these songs. I don't know if it's necessarily a mark of success. Maybe at a stretch you could count "Little Lion Man" by Mumford & Sons but I don't think it fully fits the mold. There's another song that'll appear in this list that also applies, and that was something of a hit. "Not Angry Anymore" feels like more an also-ran, a song that completely got pushed aside by a later single that'll appear on this list. Maybe it's not a fair comparison anyway. "Not Angry Anymore" only starts tapping that momentum on the second verse. A very clear example, but not as prominent as it could be.

I've cooled on this song a little but at the time it was my favourite song she'd put out. A song where the hook just jumps right out at you and never lets go. Contrary to all I just said before though, I also love all the switch ups, it's this never ending thrill ride of new ideas. Much like me when I run into another song without much of a story to tell. Who knows where these entries will go next? Not even I do, usually.

#193. DZ Deathrays - Gina Works At Hearts (#88, 2014)

23rd of 2014

It bothers me so much that this song just makes me think of Gina Rinehart. Or more so, it bothers me that I thought the same thing when the song first came out. She was the wealthiest person in Australia back then, and once again is now. Just the same awful people controlling everything until they're in the ground. And of course recently, she's hitched up her wagon of support to Australia's even longer lasting attention stain. That's speaking of folk who just love the attention.

Anyway, have you got time and space for another surprisingly loud group consisting of just two members? Well I have to break the illusion because actually they've been a trio since 2018. I first heard of them around 2012 with their first album, and was pleasantly surprised to see them get considerably more popular from that point on. This was their first Hottest 100 entry but they'd rack up a couple more afterwards.

I greatly enjoy that second album, "Black Rat". It's a little bit anachronistic, sounding like dance punk from about a decade earlier, but definitely leaning more into the rock side of things. "Black Rat" almost feels like all you ever need to hear. It's a tightly packed set of mostly bangers. My favourite songs on it are definitely "Reflective Skull", "Tonight Alright" and "Night Slave". They set a standard so high that I struggled to get back on board to the same degree with later albums. I guess it's amusing to say that when the later entries have landed higher here, and I've also ruined the illusion lately, as the title track to their latest album, "Easing Out Of Control" might be my favourite song I've heard from them to date.

I wouldn't say that "Gina Works At Hearts" really exhibits their dance punk tendencies, it's just the kind of straight up rock that you might see highlighted on a Green Day promotion. It's a big barrel of fun though. I find the most distinctive sound of it is just the drumsticks being tapped together for the hook. The mixing was very expertly done though. I think this has the potential to just sound like a distorted mess but the guitar's prominence is shifted around enough to give it the appropriate flavour for the moment.

#192. Fred again.. (feat Delilah Montagu) - Delilah (pull me out of this) (#14, 2022)

10th of 2022

I keep going back to the same thought over and over again. Can Fred again.. be considered counterculture? It seems odd to think about, especially for someone so evidently popular, but I'm always thinking about the machinations of it. When you look at the top 40, it's probably reasonable to assume that everything there is popular, and fed into by the pop machine that reinforces this. For as long as I have done this though, I've found there are often quirks flying around to question this assumption. Decades ago it'd be ardent fanbases. People who would very quickly buy up new releases and force their way into a conversation they weren't necessarily invited to. There tended to be a general audience for most of the top 40, which is anyone who primarily heard music from the typical sources of radio & TV. Maybe even people who specifically checked the charts, though I suspect that's a more niche audience than we might sometimes think.

Generally speaking, when something unusual does come up, it needs to make certain that it has the legs to stick around, to become something that can't be ignored. Otherwise it will just be ignored. Sometimes it feels weird, but if you lock yourself into that top 40 ecosystem, it starts to make more sense. There are certain sounds and styles that just seem completely alien, and counterproductive for programming. When I had my teenage discovery of the wider world of music, it felt at the time like a Truman Show style awakening, as if all of it had been deliberately obfuscated to placate me and others. I don't really see it that way, sometimes it's just the more lazy, obvious 'evil' that the people in charge just don't want anyone to turn off the station.

When Fred again.. comes up in discussion, it's often with an air of mythos. Like, you've got to make it to one of his Boiler Room sets, have this generational experience with an undeniable talent at the top of his game. Either he's played a ridiculous street team con or it's something genuinely special with the way he gets spoken about. I can't speak to what it's like since I haven't experienced it, and live music is always considerably better in person than just watching a video. It's that mythos that's taken him to the top, only getting bigger in the years since this list got cut off. He's still almost a complete non-entity on commercial radio though. "adore u" is the only song of his that ever touched top 40 airplay, and then only briefly. He could have one of the biggest hits of the year and still not be let in if he's not playing by the rules. Actually that happened last year.

When it comes to "Delilah (pull me out of this)", it's where I start to wonder if these assumptions have gotten in the way of looking at things objectively. I listen to it with the mindset of how I understand Fred again.. and I think he's in his typical element. Undeniably catchy songs that still sound a bit too different for the mainstream. You're looking at a song with a strange title, with sampled vocals that might stay in your head, but don't feel like mantras to sing along with. The chorus is almost completely wordless, and structurally it just doesn't fit in. Another one for the pile to be ignored, even if it was one of his bigger hits.

Maybe we've got it all wrong though. I can't remember when I saw the observation (I don't think I came up with it myself), but when I listen to "Delilah (pull me out of this)", I just hear "Another Chance" by Roger Sanchez. Remarkably similar instrumentals, and as a bonus, that's a song that's even harder to understand the words to. I could maybe vaguely replicate the hook, but there are very few words I can confidently make out. "Another Chance" is a massive radio hit. It's bread & butter for trance at the turn of the century. Sometimes it's marketing (I'll admit Roger Sanchez is absolutely winning in the music video department here), but it's fascinating to me that with the slow passage of time, something so obviously marketable at one point in time, has just stopped fitting that mark. Obviously this happens a lot with genres that aren't in their heyday, but we're talking about something that is genuinely doing numbers, yet feeling like it's completely unsuitable.

It all goes into a greater point about how I look at music as a whole, and why I'm hesitant to be so negative all the time. So much negativity I do see is rooted in a similar mindset. It's that side-eye I want to do when someone hates something. Do they hate it because the execution is subpar, or are they just out the room immediately upon pegging either a genre or a level of perceived cool that isn't compatible with them. Ideally, I just like to see things met at their own level, looked at for what they're trying to do, who they're trying to do it for, and going into that mindset. Like, I can just imagine a world where the same people who like Fred again.. have instead heard the music and thought it was boring radio dance music, and the same people who reject his music are perfectly content with it. The music won't need to have changed at all, just the way you look at it.

I think to go back to the Roger Sanchez comparison, that's what made me fall for this song. It's not that I remember having any particularly strong adoration for it, so it might just be nostalgia at this point, but finding a similar example that I knew worked, that made this click. Suddenly the disorienting rush of the chorus seemed perfectly in place, and from there, it unlocked the ability to witness the greater tapestry at work. Once you're locked in on the basic premise, it becomes a game of spotting all the other quirks, and listening out for them on repeat outings. You get a song you can enjoy on closer inspection, but also as background study vibe energy. On those grounds, I find Fred again.. to be an undeniable talent. I just don't know if this top 40 hit is a top 40 song.

#191. The xx - Say Something Loving (#80, 2017)

24th of 2017

Whenever I look at streaming charts, I tend to see a bunch of artists who don't play by the rules. You can try to put a cap on how popular they're going to be, just on vibes either internal or external to the music itself, but these artists just don't care. They have this undeniable aura that either keeps people coming back to them, or lucks out in a strange statistical way where it feels like everyone seems to like them enough and the numbers just blow out. This is how it seems like for Arctic Monkeys and The Neighbourhood right now. They're monolithic in a way that seems incidental.

Long before streaming was properly around, this is how I felt about The xx. I'd obsessively look at last.fm charts on a weekly basis. They were made usually from listener numbers and painted a pretty established picture. Bands like The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, they were mainstays. Just the accepted middle ground of the kinds of people who used the site. It's been a whole generation since then so those once immovable artists are largely out of the spotlight (aside from that same popular British band I brought up not long ago). A new set of stars, most of which were not in the picture in the late 2000s, or at the very least, didn't have the extensive catalogues they do now.

In this regard, I feel like The xx missed the boat. They'd have every chance to solidify themselves in the same way well into the 2020s but they haven't really, and they're a mile away from where they could be. Around 2009 and 2010, The xx were one of those bands. They were new, they weren't really on the radio, but their songs just left a long-lasting impression. Every week I'd look and see them endure unreasonably so. When I think about how long the biggest chart hits spend at or around the top nowadays, I think of The xx as the template that proved the system in the first place. This idea that a combination of word of mouth and gradually acquiring new listeners would just create an endless chart run. It's honestly how I got into them. Just this weekly fascination at how popular this "Crystalised" song is that I'd never heard, wondering if it really was that good, and then convincing myself that it was. How good it all is, almost feels immaterial, it's just a question of whether or not you get sucked in by the simplistic presentation and iconography. The album with a white cross on black background, called "xx" and with just 11 tracks whose titles mostly consist of a single word. It's getting rid of all the distractions. The xx became ultimate vibe music, the kind that could easily be sustaining random global Spotify top 200 hits to this day. Nothing sums this up more than the fact that their most popular song now is the instrumental intro to the album. That's just breaking all the rules. I also think Glass Animals' song "Youth" (#271) sounds quite a bit like it. I'm writing this before that post has actually gone up so I had the chance to just slot it in there but it's a lot easier to do this when I can actually name the band in question.

If all of it seemed like online puff that wouldn't amount to much, they proved they could come good on the second album. At a time when digital downloads were at their highest, and the charts were completely swallowed by loud, intentionally obnoxious pop music, The xx put out their next lead single "Angels", somehow even more minimalist than before, and scored a top 50 hit in Australia. It sat at #46 wedged between a Flo Rida song and a Pitbull song, both seemingly effortlessly part of the conversation at the time, but both songs now much less popular than "Angels" in the long run.

The annoying reality of it all is that I think The xx absolutely could've kept it all rolling but they only let themselves down by not feeding the pop machine and releasing a never-ending spree of new music. They've only released one album after 2012, and it houses two entries here. They feel like they're a band that just need to be put in the spotlight again to remind everyone how much they vibed or at least tolerated them before. They're the perfect kind of band for the streaming era. Perhaps a new album would see them right back into the conversation, but for now, "Say Something Loving" is their last Hottest 100 entry.

There's a very clear link between the two songs by The xx that I'm covering here, and it's the one thing that makes the third album, "I See You" sound a bit different to the other two. I'm of course referring to boomer soft rock. The other song has a much more famous sample, but this one feels considerably more random. The voice at the start of this song is a sample of Alessi Brothers' 1976 song "Do You Feel It?", the opening track to their first album. Not a hit, not even a single, while they're not exactly a band with a huge following. Just one minor hit around the world, "Oh Lori", that went top 10 in the UK & Netherlands but didn't do much else of note. It's a pretty cool song. It sits somewhere in the world of Chicago & Queen and goes surprising places with it. It all means that there was a great deal written about this otherwise completely unnoteworthy song in an interview with Genius that's worth reading. Also The Alessi Brothers are identical twins, just so many of those in the world of music.

Otherwise, this does also feel like a more grown up version of The xx. A band who are no longer content with just hiding behind moody sounds and lyrics, but coming at it with a bit more life and experience. The band has two main vocalists...one I realise I can't name yet. She showed a lot of vulnerability on "Angels" so I'm less surprised by her here, but Oliver brings his A-game here as well, and they've got undeniable chemistry. Maybe it feels like a betrayal of how The xx started, and maybe you can trace that to the fact that it wasn't as popular as what came before, but I see it as a band that have come a long way, and I'll certainly be interested to see what they might do next.