CONSTANTLY WANDERING, DOING... SOMETHING

Sorry I've been away. Here are too many songs I've liked this year to count, in some kind of order that could totally change after I've had a few more months to process 'em:

• Japandroids: "Young Hearts Spark Fire"
• Bat for Lashes: "Daniel"
• Atlas Sound [ft. Noah Lennox]: "Walkabout"
• Neon Indian: "Deadbeat Summer"
• Big Pink: "Velvet" [simply, huge]
• Delorean: "Seasun"
• Black Eyed Peas: "I Gotta Feeling" [i heard Erika's "Relations" and DJ Sammy's "Heaven" again last weekend at a wedding reception. i want to go out and hear this song and have it feel the way those dumb-sounding but euphoric and catchy dancepop songs did when i was going out more. this one is way better.]
• Fever Ray: "If I Had a Heart"
• jj: "my life, my swag"/"my swag, my life" [grouping these two together is kind of cheating, i know]
• Yo La Tengo: "More Stars Than There Are in Heaven"
• Animal Collective: "My Girls"
• Taken by Trees: "Watch the Waves (Memory Tapes version)"
• Thom Yorke [ft. Andy Yorke]: "All for the Best"
• Young Jeezy [ft. Jay-Z] : "My President Is Black (Remix)"[my iTunes has this from January... but was I late?]
• Gloriana: "Wild at Heart" [pretty sure this group has not one iota to do with the Quickspace song "Gloriana". i found this song through the tumblr blog of a teenage girl whose other musical loves were apparently Taylor Swift and John Mayer (not sure how i found the blog, but anyway). as i've written elsewhere, this is just a happy song that makes me wish i was a 15-year-old just out of school for the summer, thrilling to the warmth and the wide open possibilities ahead, aware i'm about to grow up but not quite able to comprehend it just yet. and utterly twitterpated on a hopeless crush that's not so hopeless after all, at least for one song.]
• Das Racist: "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper Remix)"
• Drake [ft. Bun B and Lil Wayne]: "Uptown"
• Black Eyed Peas: "Boom Boom Pow" [i wish i liked the Gucci Mane and 50 Cent version better, because I feel like that one is, well, COOLER, but i think this original is more coherent and fun-- "HD flat"! and of course, there's ingeniously crafted seeming casualness: "i'm so 3008, you're so 2000 and late"]
• Phoenix: "1901"
• Major Lazer: "Keep It Goin' Louder [ft. Nina Sky and Ricky Blaze]" ["Girl, I wanna party with you" --> Diplo is the new Black Eyed Peas, and that's a GOOD thing] [title is awfully forgettable tho]
• Morrissey: "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore"
• Röyksopp [ft. Robyn]: "The Girl and the Robot"
• Nodzzz: "Is She There?"
• Atlas Sound [ft. Laetitia Sadler]: "Quick Canal"
• Neon Indian: "Should Have Taken Acid With You"
• Gucci Mane: "Gorgeous" ["have ya seen me lately?"]
• Dan Deacon: "Snookered"
• Air France [ft. Roos]: "GBG Belongs to Us"
• Joker: "Digidesign"
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs: "Skeletons"
• John Rich: "Shuttin' Down Detroit" [The bailout is already yesterday's issue, and I can't ride for Rich's ignorance-flattering model of populism anyway. But Naomi Klein once went on Maddow and called the financial rescue "the greatest heist in monetary history." She hasn't been invited back. And Rich manages to stage a great old-fashioned protest here, catchy and emotionally resonant, with the likable if slightly wrong-headed bravado of a late-1960s country standard like "Okie from Muskogee".]
• Rich Boy: "Drop"
• jj: "ecstasy"
• Deerhunter: "Famous Last Words"
• So Cow: "Shackleton" [no blood on HIS hands, Villalobos]
• Animal Collective: "Brothersport"
• Delorean: "Deli"
• Roy Davis Jr. [ft. Erin Martin] : "I Have A Vision (The Juan MacLean Remix)"
• Phoenix: "Lisztomania"
• Skooda Chose [ft. Twista and Mikey Rocks]: "Loungin'" ["still hated by internet bloggers ... i'm just makin' money and loungin'."]
• Taken By Trees: "My Boys"
• Drake [ft. Trey Songz and Lil Wayne): "Successful"
• Morrissey: "Something Is Squeezing My Skull"
• The Embassy: "You Tend to Forget"
• Dum Dum Girls: "Catholicked"
• The Smith Westerns: "Be My Girl"
• Super Furry Animals: "The Very Best of Neil Diamond"
• Salem: "Redlights"
• Jeffrey Lewis: "Roll Bus Roll"
  
• Passion Pit: "Moth's Wings"
• Real Estate: "Black Lake"
• avner: känslor [the title means "feelings". this is the swedish electropop "clocks" meets the swedish electropop "some things last a long time" plus full-on psych/noise coda]
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs: "Zero"
• Big Pink: "Dominoes"
• Basement Jaxx: "Raindrops"
• Breeders: "Fate to Fatal"
• Wilco: "You and I"
• John Talabot: "Sunshine"
  
• Mount Kimbie: "Maybes"
• Washed Out: "Feel It All Around"
  
• Memory Cassette: "Surfin' (Save a Whale Version)"
• Lil Wayne [ft. Pharrell]: "Yes"
• BBU: "Chi Don't Dance"
• Art Brut: "Mysterious Bruises" [they might be more of an albums list pick this year, though]
  
• Super Furry Animals: "Inaugural Trams"
• God Help the Girl: "Come Monday Night"
• Bill Callahan: "In Hindsight" [the best song I own about John Tyler]
• Floating Points: "K&G Beat"
• Bibio: "Fire Ant"
  
• The Flaming Lips: "Silver Trembling Hands"
  
• Zomby: "Fuck Mixing, Let's Dance"
• Rainbow Bridge: "Big Wave Rider"
• Sexy Kids: "Sisters Are Forever"
• Röyksopp: "Happy Up Here"
• John Mayer: "Heartbreak Warfare" (03/28/09, Lido Deck of the Mayercraft) [here's your lo-fi! "red wine and ambien/ you're talkin' shit again", "if you want more love/ why don't you say so?", strummy strum stum lighters strum]
• Pains of Being Pure at Heart: "Young Adult Friction"
• DJ Kaos: "Love the Nite Away (Tiedye Mix)"
• Gold Panda: "Quitters Raga"
• Guido: "Way You Make Me Feel (Punchdrunk)" [i still don't OWN this. which is a crime.]
• M. Ward: "Stars of Leo"
• Drake: "Best I Ever Had"
• Girls: "Lust for Life" [all right, all right-- this is sneaking up on me like the Strokes did]
• Sebastien Tellier: "Kilometer (Aeroplane Italo '84 Remix)"
• Decemberists: "The Wanting Comes in Waves (Repaid)"
• Jay Reatard: "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"
• The-Dream: "Kelly's 12 Play"
• Dan Deacon: "Surprise Stefani"
• El Perro Del Mar: "Change of Heart"
  
• Ganglians: "Cryin' Smoke"
• Wavves: "So Bored"
• Arctic Monkeys: "Cornerstone"
• Young Jeezy [ft. Lil Wayne and Drake]: "I'm Goin' In"
• A Sunny Day in Glasgow: "Close Chorus"
• K'Naan: "Kicked, Pushed"
• Tiny Vipers: "Dreamer"
• Gucci Mane [ft. f. OJ Da Juiceman, Rock City & LA the Darkman]: "Overboard"
• Kurt Vile: "Beach on the Moon (Recycled Lyrics)"
• Pissed Jeans: "Dream Smotherer"
• Rick Ross: "Rich Off Cocaine"
  
• Young Dro [ft. Yung LA]: "I Don't Know Y'all"
• Ellie Goulding: "Starry Eyed"
• Eve: "Me and My (Up in the Club)"
• Patten: "Version (Test Mixxx)"
• Pisces: "Drea One"
• Kurt Vile: "Freedom"
• Blue Daisy [ft. LaNote]: "Space Ex"
• YACHT: "Psychic City (Voodoo City)"
• HEALTH: "Die Slow"
• Name the Pet: "Get on the Bus"
• Bearsuit: "Muscle Belt"
• Best Coast: "Sun Was High"
• Future of the Left: "The Hope That House Built"
  
• Small Black: "Depiscable" Dogs"
• Nosaj Thing: "Coat of Arms"
• TVO: "Dwyer"
• Babe, Terror: "Summertime Our League" (I like this concept a lot-- theoretically, this would be the Loveless of the recent ethereal, electronically enhanced summer music thing-- but people are probably right to say it drags a bit unless you're in exactly the right mood)
• A Sunny Day in Glasgow: "Walking Pneumonia"
• Desire: "If I Can't Hold You"
  
• Jean on Jean: "Tonight"
• John Mayer: "Who Says I Can't" (05/06/09 at Hotel Cafe, Los Angeles)
  
• Kid Cudi: "You Can Call Me Moon Man" (OK, I really only like the last 20 seconds or so, but I really like those last 20 seconds)

My big non-current discovery of the year so far, through a covers compilation and a couple of reissue-ish promos in my pile, is Kath Bloom. Sad slow gorgeous simple folk from the 1970s and 1980s in New England (best known through filmmaker Richard Linklater). A little Joni Mitchell, a little Vashti Bunyan, a tiny smidgen Patsy Cline. I bet people who like Tiny Vipers will like this.

Still have a lot of new music to digest. Including new stuff by the Twilight Sad. Also need to listen to the new album by Des Moines locals Why Make Clocks, among others. And those last couple of Radiohead tracks will probably factor somewhere in the list... I don't have to file my final top 50 until after Thanksgiving, usually, so there's plenty of time to winnow these down. And to figure out what I forgot.

(Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" and "While You Wait for the Others" are both still on my playlist for further consideration-- I ain't givin' up that easy.)