That Not So Fresh Feeling

I really do just love this song. The Oregon-based band sounds a bit like debut album-Fanfarlo or Arcade Fire if you saw them in a tiny venue. One voice, a bunch of instruments, some plaintive lyrics.

If that’s all this song was, it’d probably still make my top 10.

But that’s not all there is. It’s the little touches.

The quiet voices that start the song before the guitar kicks in.
The horns coming in and making the whole thing seem bigger.
How simple the song seems with the guitar and drum beat and horns all echoing the simple, repetitive lyrics.
How wrong you are to think the song is simple, as it opens up both vocally and sonically.
How the entire song is preamble to the last 90 seconds.
The first female backing vocal just tipping the bands hand.
The chorus.

The final minute of this song is one of the most wondrous minutes of music in the past few years. There’s no way you don’t hear this song and smile. And what more can you ask for from a little bit of music?

Amazon’s little 30 second preview doesn’t do this song justice, so here’s a live version from Letterman. You’ll get goosebumps.

The last of our female fronted bands, this is the biggest rock song on the list. It’s a big and brash song that sort of starts out like a loud pop song that could have been made for Katy Perry. Then it just blows up into this insane mess of guitars, drums, bass, and everything else good that should be in a rock song. It’s so driving that you can’t help but play the bass drum with your foot. You will, I guarantee it. There’s a 2 minute coda to the song that is needlessly excessive, but by the time you get there, the band has earned it.

This is a song that wouldn’t sound nearly as good with a male vocal. It’s a song built on the dichotomy of this big male guitar and drum sounds next to a female voice. And it works incredibly well on the entirety of The Big Roar, which is The Joy Formidable’s debut album.

Maybe seeing is believing …

At this point, a pattern has emerged. With St. Vincent and Florence + the Machines as predecessors (and Mates of State, if you want to pull in the Honorable Mentions), we’re on our 3rd female fronted rock bands. This is also another song that fills that previously mentioned niche of starting out slow and quiet and slowly building until it breaks out.

The insane part of it, when you hear it break out, you have no idea that Wye Oak is a duo. The sound is so much bigger and fuller. The mix of this album is truly great, putting sounds and instruments in places that fill your ears and make them seem so sprawling.

The Onion A.V. Club named this album the best of the year, and I don’t think that’s a stretch. It’s a really good record (there are a few more stellar tracks) and one that will probably get a lot more notoriety in 2012 when Wye Oak blow up.