Favorite Songs of All Time #100

Favorite Songs of All Time #100

Modest Mouse
"Black Cadillacs"
from Good News for People Who Love Bad News

It was really hard choosing a favorite Modest Mouse song, and it shouldn’t be considered some kind of slight to say that I like 99 other artists’ songs better than my favorite of their songs. “Black Cadillacs” is on an album I bought because I liked “Float On.” I bought it at a time when I still considered CDs a worthwhile expenditure and still considered one song a good indicator that I'd enjoy a whole record. With Modest Mouse, that’s a dangerous assumption, but the album is terrific and they have at least three others that I think are even better. This song was stuck towards the end of the album but it has one of the more gripping choruses of any of their tracks and probably could have been a fairly successful single. It's one of those songs whose meaning is at least somewhat abstract, yet I have little trouble identifying with the sentiment, at least in part. I love the way Brock starts hollering in the chorus as well.

The list so far:

100) Modest Mouse - Black Cadillacs

EXITMUSIC - "The Hours"

EXITMUSIC
Passage
"The Hours"

Dream pop can be really boring. EXITMUSIC are moodier than most, which really made this record a lot more interesting to me. They're a bit unique in that they don't rely as much on guitars as many of their contemporaries. Rather it's the heavy low end, bass and synths, that create the atmosphere. It's a noisier dream pop album than most, but not in a hazy or a noisy way, it's really gloomy. It makes for more vividly emotional music than the simple shimmery guitars and disaffected female vocals formula does. Passage is their second album, coming out a full five years after their first, and it's a chilling listen from start to finish. I get the sense that the atmosphere really fills the room; it's engrossing and lovely.