TOP 2010 SONGS: Emily Littler, STREET CHANT

Street Chant are great! They're one of our favourite bands, and this year they've released their debut album, Means, and played shows in three different countries (at least), including the unofficial CMJ showcase we put on with MME in Brooklyn in October. It was pretty amazing to go to the other side of the world and see literally THOUSANDS of good bands and have these three still be THE BEST, as usual. Anyway. We're real proud of them, and we decided to test their patience one more time and get frontlady Emily Littler to tell us what her ten favourite songs of the year were. Which she did!

10. Kanye West - Runaway
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy out through Roc-A-Fella Records // myspace

I used to be on Taylor's side, but now I'm not.

9. Hussies - Miss Anthropy
Grey Headed Ghosts out through MUZAI // facebook

Great song and great video.

8. Ty Segall - Girlfriend
Melted out through Goner // myspace

This song makes me happy, especially the bit about how she said he can use her new car.

7. Lady Gaga - Telephone
The Fame Monster out through Interscope // myspace

I enjoyed this song as soon is it came out 'cause I was into the cultural phenom that was the video but didn't realise how awesome it was until I listened to the whole thing without the video gaps. I love listening to ultra modern pop on headphones and buzzing out and this song/lyrics/production (and video) are sooo 2k10.

6. FATANGRYMAN - Wrapped in Plastic
FATANGRYMAN out through MUZAI // myspace

One of my favourite new bands of this year. Ary and Jess' vocals on this track reminds me of the twins out of The Shining.

5. Transistors - Flux Pentaphile
Flux Pentaphile EP out through Bandcamp // myspace

Rad song, rad lyrics, rad band. Remember when music had energy and not just reveeeeeeeeeeeeerrrbbbbbbbbbbbb?

4. Sharpie Crows - Trackpants and a Mitsubishi Galant
Mass Grave/Golf Course out through Bandcamp // myspace

Seemed appropriate for this list that I choose this song from Sharpie Crows. I first heard it when we played with them at a warehouse on a stormy Melbourne night at a New Years party '09-'10 and it kinda just stuck with me. I only just reheard it on their bandcamp a few weeks ago and it's amazing.

3. Surf City - Teacher
Kudos out through Popfrenzy/Fire // myspace

My favourite song from their album which I was looking forward to for years. Really dig the chorus and how huge and groove-y the whole thing sounds.

2. Rihanna - Rude Boy
Rated R out through Def Jam // myspace

Probs my favourite commercial pop track of 2010. Such a good groove and I luv the Caribbean buzz she's on. Sick drum fill too.

1. JEFF the Brotherhood - Diamond Way
We Are The Champions out soon through RCRD LBL // myspace

Such a cool sounding song, especially how dreamy it is at the beginning, and then it kicks in and gets rockin! One of my favourite bands that I discovered in 2010. This is the first single off their new album which is out next year. The Transistors went on tour with them in NZ a few weeks ago. I am jealous. Badass outro: wahh wahhh wahhhhh.

RQ x MME UNOFFICIAL CMJ SHOWCASE

FRIDAY, October 22, Shea Stadium
8pm / $7

An Unofficial CMJ Showcase Presented by MME x RQ (Microphone Memory Emotion x Rose Quartz)

:Andrew Cedermark
::Family Portrait
:::Street Chant
::::Ecstatic Sunshine
:::::Fluffy Lumbers
::::::Pigeons
:::::::Nude Beach
::::::::Live Visuals by e.suber
:::::::::DJs: Peace Sampras & Chicago Slime + more TBC

MP3s:

Andrew Cedermark - Moon Deluxe
Family Portrait - George
Street Chant - Stoned Again
Ecstatic Sunshine - Easy is Right
Fluffy Lumbers - Adoration
Pigeons - Wrong Man
Nude Beach - Nude Beach


| SHEA STADIUM |
20 Meadow St btwn Waterbury St & Bogart St | Williamsburg, Brooklyn
L-Grand, G-Metropolitan | 8pm | all ages | $7
http://sheastadiumbk.blogspot.com/

[Facebook Event]

NEW STREET CHANT VIDEO

Witness the ultra-photogenic NZ power popsters rock a subterranean grotto while fans in terrifying masks go sick. This beautifully shot video is as much of a step up from the earlier Scream Walk as the song itself: high fidelity, but still endearingly rough around the edges and catchy as fuck. Their debut album Means is out later this year.

[Street Chant MySpace / Facebook]

YOU DO THE MATH

Street Chant - Yr Philosophy

Psyched to grab another don't-give-a-fuck smash from Auckland's Street Chant who seem to revel in these short bodacious hard pop hits. There's just the right amount of sloppy guitar shredding and straight-up drum-work here, also sounding a bit Vivian Girlsy on those harmonies which is cool - it's totally bossy and kind of sounds like getting punched in the face.

[Street Chant Myspace]

[Debut album out later this year through Arch Hill]

MAX'S TOP 20 SONGS OF 2009

Hey bros! Thanks for checking out my list of 20 songs I liked this year. I hope you like them too. This week, you can check out similar lists from all us Rose Quartzers; next week, we give you our top albums of 2009 - WITH A TWIST. We'll tell you about it next week. Anyway, here are the songs:



1. Bachelorette - Dream Sequence
from My Electric Family

I'd use the word magical to describe the way this masterpiece balloons and unfolds as you listen: tinny beats become drums, synthesiser brass becomes a technicolour Sgt. Peppers horn section. It's fitting that this lush pop imaginarium is called 'Dream Sequence': it treads (actually, waltzes) the line between reality and artifice, incredible flights of fantasy mingling with vivid & eclectic flashes of memory.

[MySpace / buy]

2. Monsters of Folk - Say Please
from Monsters of Folk

So much to love in this song - the swaggering 3/4 time signature, Conor/Jim/Matt trading vocals - but best of all is the motherfucking guitar solo which is both melodic and face-melting in a way I thought only J. Mascis remembered how to do.

[MySpace / buy]

3. Royal Headache - Girls
from Demo cassette

“This absurdly FUCKING good garage pop gem is full of lovestruck madness, but in a way that you can, y’know, respect, because it’s all loose and raw and kinda manly. Girls... is all joyful, lust-fuelled abandon... with its transcendental Guided By Voices supermelody.”

[MySpace]

4. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Come Saturday
from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

In about 10 years when everyone who's cool right now is making overly-sentimental films about their life circa 2009 they're gonna use this song because it's such a golden indie rock gem it's making me nostalgic for this year now.

[MySpace / buy]

5. Washed Out - Feel It All Around
from Life Of Leisure

"...rather than producing big, shiny, plastic beats that sound custom-made to blare out of lousy car speakers, tracks like Feel It All Around have the noise and the dust and the charm turned way up, like Ariel Pink for the dancefloor... all heavenly and shit with twinkly synths and spacewalk harmonies."

[MySpace / buy]

6. No Through Road - Party To Survive
from Winner.

"This is a ridiculously classy jam, like Guided By Voices fucking around with Pavement, and it’s the kind of thang you’d play at a party if you wanted to make sure that it turned out to be UNBELIEVABLY memorable."

[MySpace / buy]

7. Lightning Dust - Antonia Jane
from Infinite Light

The bar's always high for Black Mountain side projects, but this record was even more terrific than I was expecting: narcotic, noir-ish alt.country with a melancholy vibe.

[MySpace / buy]

8. Grizzly Bear - While You Wait for the Others
from Veckatimest

I thought that Veckatimest deserved the hype, but I love While You Wait For The Others because it reminds me the most of Yellow House, which deserved it more but didn't get it.

[MySpace / buy]

9. Yo La Tengo - Periodically Double Or Triple
from Popular Songs

I interviewed Ira Kaplan earlier this year and I was like, "lulz, how did you think of such an amazingly dorky and neurotic and cerebral character for this song?!" and he was like "...". White boy funk is the best and so is the weird Casio breakdown in this song.

[MySpace / buy]

10. Street Chant - Scream Walk
from Scream Walk 7"

Maybe one day New Zealand will teach everyone else how to make three-minute pop songs sound like the freshest, most incredible things ever invented, even better than the chewing gum with the liquid centers.

[MySpace]

11. Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
from Merriweather Post Pavilion

Man, how about that Animal Collective?

[MySpace / buy]

12. The Daredevil Christopher Wright - Clouds
from In Deference to a Broken Back

"There’s highs and crashing lows, falsetto and handclaps, fucking polyrhythms. Constant surprises: references to the pastoral pop that’s going crazy right now as well as vintage pop and 70s guitar heroism. And really, really good songwriting."

[MySpace / buy]

13. Here We Go Magic - Fangela
from Here We Go Magic

Feels like Here We Go Magic got kinda lost in the hypnagogic pop avalanche despite a) being one of the best things about it and b) touring with Grizzly Bear, which at this stage is pretty much the best thing that could happen to any band. The album's solid but this is an amazing song with basically the best use of that kind of production I've ever heard.

[MySpace / buy]

14. Faux Pas - Silver Line
from Noiseworks

"...rich, lush melodies are kind of a Faux Pas hallmark but Silver Line mirrors the Flaming Lips' recent transition to a more muscular kind of pop glory. It floats and shimmers and throbs, surging forward and dissolving and surging again, all wondrous and cosmic but with a vibe that's ever so slightly unnerving."

[MySpace / buy]

15. Saudade - Hidden Talented
from Lookouts' Journal

"This is some hazed out space-age shit, like getting high through a motherboard in 2200. Pretty fucking creepy, too: the white noise builds and builds and the whole time there’s this melody way up high that’s all noble and righteous yet out of reach, like the human spirit facing the apocalypse or a lone astronaut adrift in a galaxy of evil."

[MySpace / buy]

16. Neon Indian - Terminally Chill
from Psychic Chasms

It's sweet that a Brooklyn band made the perfect record for us here in the Southern hemisphere to have the best summer ever to.

[MySpace / buy]

17. Telekinesis - Coast Of Carolina
from Telekinesis!

At first, Coast Of Carolina sounds like a perfect power-pop anthem but behind the percussive riffs and crunched-out guitars lies a gentle 60s pop gem.

[MySpace / buy]

18. Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard - Slogans
from Em Are I

This is like the ultimate combination of exuberant 90s indie rock and Jeffrey Lewis reining in his tendency to be totally verbose.

[MySpace / buy]

19. Ganache - In Pidgin
from A Halter Pardon Him and Hell Gnaw His Bones!

This song is so hilariously wordy and boppy I pretty much listened to nothing else for about a fortnight after I heard it the first time. Feels good to know if anything should ever happen to Stephin Merritt we've got another hilarious dude with a badass baritone to turn to.

[MySpace / buy]

20. Weezer - Can't Stop Partying
from Raditude

I only like this song ironically, but it's such an intense blast of irony it makes my knees weak and I refuse to belive this isn't the way Rivers intended.

[MySpace / buy]

SADGASM

Street Chant - Scream Walk

Like previously covered Auckland, New Zealand band Surf City, Street Chant owe a lot to 80s/90s alternative rock mixtapes w/ Pixies, Nirvana, The Breeders, Sonic Youth written in black biro pen alongside some crude drawings of yin yangs or grunge rock suns. I saw them live at the start of last year and it was pretty raw, but also had a kind of early post-punk tautness which they seem to have left behind on this debut single. I'm pretty glad really, cos this bossy "hard pop" is real fun and begging to be sung/shouted along with. Street Chant 'keep it real' in a city where heaps of bands seem to fall into lame fashionability and late trendiness, it seems to fuel them really; incorporating all sorts of Auckland city bullshit, frustrations and weird trash culture into these belligerent pop anthems. Lead singer Emily has really cool t-shirts, too.

[Street Chant Myspace]

[Buy Scream Walk 7" from Cheese on Toast Boutique]