We often assume that any artifact or relic sealed behind museum glass is impossibly distant from the present, an immutable piece of antiquity forever suspended in the past. Although interesting from an archival perspective, these objects have little to do with our everyday experiences. In fact, we're likely to forget all about them soon after. But history tells us otherwise. History introduces us to the context and circumstances that often aren't apparent in the objects themselves. Through this, we come to understand that the dusty museum pieces we view as amusing oddities are actually the pillars upon which modernity has been built. Music is the same way. Casual listeners tend to view old songs as quaint and nostalgic, using them to superficially travel to a supposedly simpler time without thinking about the complexities of the cultural moment from which they arose or the multifaceted ways in which they are continually re-contextualized.

With this mix, I wanted to trace the ripples of the female singer-songwriter tradition back to their origins, but by treating them as alive, invigorating, and potent rather than the mere seeds from which more exciting flowers burst forth. Keeping in mind that my knowledge of musical history is far from exhaustive, it's as much a way to showcase some bad-ass women as it is to kick-start further exploration. In the end, my goal was to frame originals and echoes as equals in a way that transcends chronology and emphasizes continual coexistence in a ceaseless cycle of invention, influence, and reinvention. If none of this makes sense conceptually, I hope it is at least enjoyable aesthetically. (As usual, the Spotify playlist, bar one unavailable song, appears below my endless rambling.)

1. Hurray for the Riff Raff - Living in the City


In the tradition of folk storytelling, "Living in the City" paints a vivid picture of a shabby Puerto Rican neighborhood populated by characters whose defining qualities are distilled into single lines: "Big Danny is wasted," "Mariposa's singing love songs," "Gypsy bit the dust." The resulting effect is like a film's opening credits, a warp-speed collage of small moments building up to something grander, a celebration of the complication and confusion and humanness of an entire city "standing on the roof tops" and "yelling till the morning." Alynda Segarra's nuanced vocal inflections sell the song's emotion, taking a page from the playbooks of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, whose words were always as important as the way they were embodied.

2. Joni Mitchell - Free Man in Paris


I doubt many artists working today can't trace their inspiration back to Joni Mitchell; her influence is as ubiquitous as the Beatles' or Dylan's, but she receives less credit. While perhaps not as seminal as the acoustic purity that preceded it or the challenging experimentation that followed, "Free Man in Paris" is a favorite for me because it's just so catchy. Over sunny guitars, Mitchell places herself in the shoes of music promoter and agent David Geffen, and I may be reading too much into them, but the lyrics seem to hold both admiration and contempt. Even as she envies his ability to become so easily "unfettered and alive," she is quietly critical of his privileged position "stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song."

3. Tracy Chapman - Why?


In 2017, the above lyrics may come off as simplistic or trite; in 1988, I expect they seemed more revolutionary, particularly coming from a young black woman with an acoustic guitar and a wise, gentle voice. Even now, it's hard to fault their directness when the message is still, unfortunately, very relevant. Beyond "Fast Car," I didn't hear Tracy Chapman until after I decided to start putting this mix together, but I knew immediately that she deserved a place. Chapman took the genres of folk and country, predominantly white in popular perception, and reoriented them to her own experiences as a woman of color. "Why?" is a demand to be heard, even (especially) in a culture that so frequently undermines the voices of its oppressed.

4. Laura Marling - Undine


Around her third album, A Creature I Don't Know, Laura Marling began shifting away from a more ornate English folk sensibility to a style more indebted to the effortless, bohemian Laurel Canyon sound of the '60s and '70s. Subsequent releases, Once I Was an Eagle and Short Movie, leaned even further in this direction, likely owing to Marling's brief relocation from London to Silver Lake, California. "Undine" comes from the former, a lilting and sprightly folk fairy tale about a woman who falls in love with a bewitching water nymph. In her low, rough-and-tumble accent, Marling sets the doomed infatuation to percussive acoustic guitar strums, which build like a crackling fire to a mournful realization: "Undine, you live for the sea/You cannot love me."

5. Paula Cole - Tiger


This song's lyrics seem torn from a rebellious teen girl's diary; its vocals, on the other hand, are ripped from the throat of a ferocious and confident woman. It's a jarring yet intentional dichotomy meant to mimic the immense, explosive release felt in the moment of breaking free from years of suppression caused by the societal trappings of gender. "No more sex-starved teachers trying to touch my ass," Cole snarls over rumbling piano and dark, propulsive drums, "I can finally be a teenager at age twenty-six." In the song's final minute, her raw, wordless vocalizations are the sound of unguarded and unapologetic liberation, the roaring of a pure animal being who refuses to be locked back into her cage.

6. Laura Nyro - Tom Cat Goodby


It may be an exaggeration to say that Laura Nyro single-handedly created the confessional-girl-at-a-piano genre but not by much. In 1969, at only twenty-two years old, she released New York Tendaberry, from which the bizarre, incendiary vocal stylings of women like Kate Bush and Paula Cole can be directly traced. Hell, it's essentially the blueprint for Tori Amos' Boys for Pele, released more than twenty-five years earlier. Passionate, shocking, and breathless, "Tom Cat Goodby" captures Nyro at the top of her game. Across a dizzying number of melodic permutations, she sings rapturously about murdering her adulterous lover and pounds furiously at the piano, as though her own life depends upon it.

7. Kate Bush - The Wedding List


Singing without remorse about killing a cheating lover in 1969 was probably a touch unusual; singing a jaunty pop song about seeking revenge against the man who shot your husband on your wedding day was probably similarly out of the ordinary ten years later. Can you imagine witnessing Kate Bush's dramatic lip-sync reenactment of this song's events as it unfolded on television for the first time? When she released Never for Ever, the album upon which this song appears and her first true masterpiece, Bush was the same age as Nyro, making her fearlessness and creativity all the more staggering. The album's wide-eyed, exploratory weirdness, like a girl playing dress-up with her mother's clothes for the first time, is wildly charming.

8. Perfume Genius - Wreath


While I wanted to primarily emphasize the contributions of women, which are too often overshadowed by those of men, the influence of performers like Kate Bush and Tori Amos on many gay male singer-songwriters today cannot be overstated. Perfume Genius' recently-released No Shape is, in spirit, the most Bush-esque thing I've heard in years while belonging entirely to itself in sound. On "Wreath," Mike Hadreas not only inhabits a surreal technicolor soundscape indebted to Bush's weirdest album, The Dreaming, but directly references her biggest hit, "Running Up That Hill." With quavering conviction, Hadreas struggles against the uncomfortable confines imposed upon his body and sexuality by both society and self.

9. Lorde - Writer in the Dark


Weird and subversive pop music doesn't always have to exist on the fringes. In 1978, Kate Bush topped the UK charts with "Wuthering Heights," a creepily possessive retelling of a classic novel sung entirely in a banshee-like shriek. A more contemporary example is Lorde, whose 2013 breakthrough "Royals" sounded nothing like its radio contemporaries but blasted up the Billboard Hot 100 anyway. Like Bush, Lorde needed to prove with her second album that she's more than a teenage wunderkind, and Melodrama delivers in spades. The brooding and ominous "Writer in the Dark" is a piano ballad that builds on the lineage of Bush and Amos in its abrupt melodic twists and raw, impassioned vocal harmonies.

10. Tori Amos - Siren


I've always thought this deserved to be more than a random soundtrack song, but it wouldn't fully fit into any of Tori Amos' albums either. A tightly-constructed pop maelstrom, it somehow takes advantage of Amos' free-form, impressionistic vocal meanderings while simultaneously reigning them in, turning her outbursts of syllabic glossolalia into ritualistic melodies that push constantly forward. With its thunderous looping piano motif and balmy percussive atmospherics, it bridges the gap chronologically and stylistically between the improvised intensity of Boys for Pele and the dark, cool electronics of From the Choirgirl Hotel. The flashes of collage-like imagery, enigmatic yet evocative, further contribute to the sense of urgency.

11. Bat for Lashes - Laura


Even though the songwriting is fairly straightforward, "Laura" is probably one of my very favorite songs. It's a brooding, sparse piano ballad with a touch of theatricality, which are a dime a dozen by now, so to do something so simple in a way that still feels timeless and novel is impressive. The subdued, slow-burning nature of the track reminds me of early Tori Amos gems like "Mother" and "Yes, Anastasia" but more streamlined and sensual. Natasha Khan's rich, throaty voice is gorgeously understated, straining with emotion every time she repeats the title line. "You're the train that crashed my heart/You're the glitter in the dark," she forcefully insists, imbuing a drunken after-party pep talk to a girlfriend with the gravity of revelation.

12. Nadine Shah - Big Hands


One night, a month or two ago, I was listening to my Spotify library (which is primarily composed of albums I want to hear but haven't gotten around to yet) on shuffle and this song stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to play it four or five times in a row before moving on. It's a lot like "Laura" in its glimmering, sultry cinematic spread, and Nadine Shah and Natasha Khan even share a similar velvety vocal tone. But there's something singular about it, too, particularly in the way it expertly builds into a complex, layered gut punch of a climax. The lyrics are non-specific enough to be ambiguous in meaning, but the chorus especially seems to hint darkly at domestic abuse and more broadly the god complex that turns men into monsters.

13. Mary Margaret O'Hara - Body's in Trouble


Mary Margaret O'Hara is one of music's biggest enigmas. In 1988, she released a bizarre and wonderful abstract pop album entitled Miss America that failed to take off like it deserved. She hasn't exactly gone into hiding since, having kept busy with film scoring, acting, and contributing background vocals for friends, but she's also expressed seemingly no interest in releasing a proper follow-up. You can't fault her, though: the particular magic of Miss America, which has steadily gained a small cult following, would be difficult to recapture. Across this song's five minutes, O'Hara's voice is a writhing, tempestuous creature that refuses to remain still, instead cooing and moaning seductively atop a minimal and angular '80s rock backdrop.

14. CocoRosie - Child Bride


CocoRosie's earliest recordings were lo-fi folk songs constructed from sampled children's toys, affectedly girlish vocals, and grimy lyrics about delinquents, outcasts, and vagabonds. Their more recent work polishes the rough edges of these qualities, while incorporating electronic and hip-hop influences. None of it sounds like it should work, but more often than not, it does. Here, creeping piano and pulsating programmed drums provide the backdrop for Bianca Casady's naively emotive drawl, which is disarmingly suited to the song's subject matter. "The man with the black hat will take me home tonight/I wash my body, five years grown," she warbles above the ghostly atmosphere provided by her sister Sierra's operatic wail.

15. Linda Perhacs - Parallelograms

Linda Perhacs doesn't exactly sing the phone book in "Parallelograms," but she does center an entire song on the light, playful intonation of the names of geometric shapes, which also requires insane vocal charisma to pull off. Luckily, Perhacs has it. Although slight, her winsome croon lulls the listener into serenity - that is, until the song abruptly switches gears two minutes in, transforming into an abstract minimalist tone poem. A minute and a half later, it fades once more into unassuming folk like the return to dream from a brief but vivid nightmare. It's a genius combination of tradition and innovation that went unappreciated in its time but would be rediscovered and imitated by an entire folk movement more than thirty years later.

16. Joanna Newsom - Divers (not on Spotify)


I would go so far as to say this song exists in a world beyond ours entirely. Joanna Newsom's voice has never held more depth, her lyrics have never been more evocative, and, together with the hypnotic confluence of harp, piano, and mellotron, they stir deep but unnameable emotions. For seven minutes, I have the closest thing to an out-of-body experience I've ever known. Newsom is as indebted to her forebears as any singer-songwriter of her generation, but she internalizes their influence in a way that completely reinvents it. The most gripping imagery occurs at the song's climax: "I dream it every night/The ringing of the pail/The motes of sand dislodged/The shucking, quick and bright/The twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white."
17. Parenthetical Girls - Oh Daughter/Disaster


Parenthetical Girls is an outlet for Zac Pennington's gender non-conformity and his interest in exploring more feminine perspectives, which presumably takes root in his admiration of artists like Bush and Amos, whom he has covered and emulated. On Safe as Houses, a painful concept album about the complicated, trauma-filled relationship between a mother and daughter, their inspiration is apparent in his warbling vocal delivery, vividly potent lyrics, and mercurial song structures. Amidst the cacophonous swelling of strings, synthesizer, and glockenspiel, Pennington's unorthodox voice is as wearied as the mother he embodies, who mourns her daughter's suicide: "Oh my daughter/Life rushed from you/And split in ways you weren't meant to."

18. Fiona Apple - Sullen Girl


Many of these women rose to prominence possessing a talent beyond their years, and Fiona Apple is no exception. She was just nineteen when she released her debut, Tidal, and wrote the bulk of its songs at sixteen, which explains why it feels so close and intimate. "Sullen Girl" in particular stings like an open wound. A brutal account of the aftermath of Apple's sexual violation as a young teenager, its soothing vocals and languid piano-playing go down easy, but the words cut deep. She's called "sullen" in an off-handed, dismissive way by those who know nothing of her real pain, which she can only dull by plunging into willful ignorance. "It's calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion," she repeats with increasing insistence, like a desperate mantra.

19. Antony and the Johnsons - For Today I Am a Boy


Although Anohni hadn't yet publicly changed her name or revealed that she was a transgender woman at the time of its release, I Am a Bird Now is a frank and gripping document of gender identity exploration, remarkably human in its ugliness and beauty, its complexity and contradiction. "For Today I Am a Boy" is constructed as a tug-of-war, its simple, repetitive lyrics sounding alternately like hopeful anticipation for a future in which the narrator can finally be her true self and weary resignation toward her present state. Even the music imitates this sense of emotional whiplash, with Anohni's swelling voice and dramatic piano chords rising and falling in messy, discordant tandem.

20. Nina Simone - I Put a Spell on You


In many ways, Nina Simone is the woman who started it all. I hear the echoes of her rich, soulful vocals, which cracked and rasped as often as they soared, in the quavering, heart-on-sleeve delivery of Fiona Apple and Anohni and the impressions of her weighty, intense piano-playing in pretty much every singer-songwriter who's touched the instrument after her. While "I Put a Spell on You" may not be the greatest representation of her many talents, being a fairly conventionally-interpreted standard, it somehow just fits as a closer. Amid an ornate arrangement of strings, piano, and saxophone, Simone's voice easily outdoes them all, imbuing the simple lyrics with impossible power and passion.

Mew's 2005 release And the Glass Handed Kites is known as their breakout album for a reason. While its predecessor, Frengers, contained plenty of driving, eccentric pop songs with occasional prog-rock leanings, And the Glass Handed Kites dials the ambition and scope up to eleven. I feel like prog-rock, no matter how technically well-done it is, is always vaguely embarrassing and cheesy by design. Mew know this but embrace it rather than try to work around it: they're sincere but not self-serious, a mindset which comes across in the unabashed elaborateness and bombast of their music.

It's difficult to play favorites on And the Glass Handed Kites because it's crafted as an epic symphony composed of various interrelated movements, with each song transitioning seamlessly into the next and melodic motifs recurring throughout. It's the kind of album that's better as a complete experience than parceled out in piecemeal. But some individual standouts do make themselves known, particularly "The Zookeeper's Boy," which is not only the album's most memorable track but possibly Mew's ultimate masterwork.

Where to start? There is so much going on in this song, and all of it is gloriously over the top. For bands with a less formidable vocalist, the instrumentation would stand as the center of attention, a relentlessly charging and complex interweaving of muscular guitars, gauzy synths, and booming percussion. But Jonas Bjerre refuses to allow himself to be drowned out. As light and angelic as his voice is, it is also exceedingly commanding. He never audibly strains or struggles to reach the joyous, childlike falsetto in which he spends so much of his time and shows impressive control when he glides into lower octaves, too. He uses his voice as an expressive instrument in and of itself rather than a mere vehicle for lyrics and melody, in a way reminiscent of Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser.

By the same token, the lyrics become less about meaning and more about sound and emotion. They don't grow nearly as abstract as Fraser's impressionistic babbling, but they rarely make literal sense, instead leaning toward the bizarre, occasionally silly imagery of dream and hallucination (matching the band's equally eccentric album covers). In "The Zookeeper's Boy," the chorus recalls a children's rhyme in its playful description of the titular character: "You're tall just like a giraffe/You have to climb to find its head/But if there's a glitch, you're an ostrich/You've got your head in the sand." At the same time, surrealism is occasionally off-set by more coherent strings of thought. In the first verse, Bjerre intones solemnly, "If I don't make it back from the city/Then it is only because I am drawn away." By song's end, he repeats the ominous declaration, "I could not be seen with you," presumably to the "lady" referred to throughout. Is Bjerre himself embodying the character of the zookeeper's boy, using animal metaphors to explain his trepidation to a romantic partner? Possibly, but it's also hopeless to attempt to piece it all together in a coherent way. It's better just to sit back and enjoy the ride.

And what a ride it is, from beginning to end. Even as it begins intensely, it somehow ends even more so, expertly building up into a final torrent of sound, a whirlwind of competing vocal melodies, that results in an immensely satisfying sense of release that transcends the song itself. By my count, this grand finale encompasses at least four or five different vocal lines, which complement each other in their disparity. In the final moments, when the rest of the instrumentation drops out, Bjerre's self-harmonies converge into a singular capsule of beauty that sends shivers down my spine every time.

For me, personally, there are two distinct types of nostalgic music. First, there's the music I liked when I was a kid, which was either radio country of questionable quality or radio pop of questionable quality: it's fun to hear again every now and then, but it's not exactly anything I can return to frequently or still find the magic inside. Then there's the music I first got into 10-15 years ago, when I actually began to develop distinct taste beyond whatever I heard on the radio. A lot of this is still in my musical library, even if I often neglect it for newer discoveries, and I'm occasionally struck by a specific song's brilliance all over again whenever I hit shuffle or grab a CD at random to listen to in my car.

The latter is what happened recently with Tilly and the Wall's sophomore album, Bottoms of Barrels. Back in 2006, when it was released, it was actually what got me to reconsider my opinion on the band, who I had previously dismissed as overly twee and vaguely annoying. From front to back, it's a stunningly consistent album, with some of the catchiest, most joyous and energetic music I've ever heard. I actually still play it quite frequently, but it had been several months, long enough for me to forget just how brilliant it really is - particularly "Bad Education." Hearing that song for the first time was a revelation, a feeling that almost replicates itself every time it crops up again, except that, by now, I know every word and beat by heart.

"Bad Education" isn't the most thought-provoking or emotion-stirring song ever, but it's not intended to be - it's intended to be plain old fun, and it succeeds at that ten times over, a four-minute encapsulation of everything that makes the band's music so enthralling. Kianna Alarid, Neely Jenkins, and Derek Pressnall team up for gang vocals so exuberant and lively you would swear they come from twenty people, not just three. The pace is relentless, driven full speed ahead by percussion in the form of Jamie Pressnall's tap-dancing (the band's signature trait) and plenty of infectious handclaps. The track also draws on world music influences in its flamenco-flavored flourishes and unlikely amalgamation of piano, accordion, strings, and horns.

Catchy verses lead into catchier choruses lead into an even catchier bridge. The lyrics fly by in such a blur that you don't immediately pick up on their surreal imagery, but it fits the kaleidoscopic, cartwheeling atmosphere perfectly: "You're running in the wild, a horse carrying a child," Alarid and Jenkins sing in the first verse and, in the second, "You broke your fingers in the climb, scuffed up all your pretty shine." The chorus ups the ante even further, sounding like a cheerleader chant on steroids: "I'm tugging at the seatbelt/I'm jumping out the saddle/I'm shuffling my feet around/I'm kneeling at the steeple." In its final iteration, it culminates in a dance floor mantra: "I hope you feel it in your hands."

Despite the lengthy explanation I just gave, you really have to hear it to fully get it, and then you may never stop wanting to hear it. Honestly, "Bad Education" may be my favorite song of all time; at the very least, it's near the top of the list. I can't say that many other songs still feel as vital, fresh, and exhilarating for me after a couple hundred listens (at least) as this one does. Sadly, Tilly and the Wall's most recent album, 2012's Heavy Mood, seems to have been their last, as most of the members have moved on to other endeavors now. Still, at least they left "Bad Education" in their wake, not to mention a dozen other songs that threaten to rival it.

9. Sarah Slean - Day One

Sarah Slean has never found the success she deserves in the United States or her native Canada; if it were up to me, she'd be ranked popularity-wise alongside other contemporary piano-pop songwriters like Regina Spektor, Ingrid Michaelson, and Sara Bareilles. During her peak period, 2002's Night Bugs and 2004's Day One, Slean was writing smarter and catchier songs than any of them. Although many fans decried its more mainstream tendencies at the time, Day One has always been my personal favorite. It's full of effervescent pop tunes with a theatrical flair, like the soundtrack to the next hip Broadway production everyone will be clamoring to see. Slean's dramatic vocal inflections, rich cabaret-inspired tone, and bright piano-playing further add to this impression, from the bubbly title track to the brooding noir of "The Score." Even the lyrics are rife with stage-ready calls to action: "Fight the war!/What are your hearts and your wheelbarrows for?/Lean on me, man, I don't keep score," she crows on "Out in the Park." The imagery, too, seems tailor-made for intricate production, as on the dark, frenetic highlight "When Another Midnight," where Slean warns, "All the commuters will hear our words and hide in garages like frightened birds/But you can't stop the moaning of the earth and the midnight crackling of my nerve!" Such high drama wouldn't work were it not rooted in an unshakable foundation of composition. Even potentially schmaltzy ballads like "Mary" and "Your Wish Is My Wish" shine like jewels for their spare intimacy and understated sincerity.


8. Deas Vail - Birds & Cages

Deas Vail can be a hard sell because of two polarizing words: emo and Christianity. However, they're really only emo by association and more accurately make beautiful melodic pop, and if the God thing bothers you, it's easy enough to focus on music over lyrics. The real draw is Wes Blaylock's voice, which could sing the McDonald's drive-through menu and still leave you dabbing tears from your eyes. His falsetto is one of the most pristine and effortless I've ever heard. He glides through octaves as smoothly as a knife slicing through hot butter - just try listening to his performance on the slow-burning closer "Atlantis" without getting chills. It isn't only the technical proficiency of his vocals that stuns but the emotional potency behind them, and the mid-album one-two punch of "Cages" and "Birds" is a powerful display of both. These songs, along with "Sunlight" later on, serve as the pinnacle of the band's songwriting by emphasizing all of their greatest strengths at once: a seamless transition from driving, aggressive rock to lushly orchestrated swells of pure beauty; gorgeously intertwined vocal harmonies; surprising melodic turns; and choruses that refuse to vacate your head for days at a time. This band has more hooks than they know what to do with, which means that even their most straightforward songs ("Growing Pains," "Excuses") never grow any less exhilarating than they are the first time through. After releasing Birds & Cages in 2009, the band struggled to match its greatness before falling off the map completely; even with that knowledge, the album still bursts with ceaseless potential.


7. Nerina Pallot - Fires

When an album isn't even available on Spotify, you know you're onto a real hidden gem. Nerina Pallot had just crossed the threshold of her thirties when she released her sophomore album, Fires, in 2005, which doesn't come as a surprise once you've heard it. The album has the descriptive lushness and emotional specificity of a sprawling bildungsroman: it tells the story of a bright, neurotic woman coming of age in a society where her place and worth are not always clear. "I've played a role so long that I've forgotten myself," she admits frankly and elsewhere, "You say you see heaven/I see hell but want to try." Instead of buckling under the pressure, though, she transforms her battle wounds into badges of courage: "I'll scream until I'm hollow/I'll carve it in my skin/Save it for tomorrow." But the personal resonance of Fires is only half its story because it also happens to be one of the catchiest, tightest pop albums I've ever heard - it's pop music for adults, but in a way that still has fun with itself rather than being stodgy or stilted. Pallot's effortlessly lightweight vocals are the perfect vehicle for the breathless melodies of "Everybody's Gone to War" and "Heart Attack," which remain buoyant even as their lyrics go dark ("I've got a friend, he's a purebred killing machine/I think he might be dead by Christmas"). At the same time, her voice holds enough emotional weight to sell the more somber moments, too, from the brooding and atmospheric "Damascus" to the driving piano-led furor of "Idaho" to the reflective tenderness of "Sophia."

6. The Rosebuds - Loud Planes Fly Low

Musical couples are always a precarious thing because if one relationship falls apart, the other likely will, too. However, breaking up seems to have been mutually beneficial for Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp, the musical duo known as the Rosebuds. After all, they wrote and recorded an entire album about it in Loud Planes Fly Low, which is arguably their best work to date and ranked as my top album of 2011. It's a painful listen (the lyrics are brutally honest in their heartbreak), but it's also oddly uplifting, in not only the laid-back effervescence of the music but also the fact that it has the feel of a final bloodletting, from which Howard and Crisp emerge newly-formed. The gentle, breezy opener, "Go Ahead," hints at the necessity of balance between letting go of the past and fondly recalling old memories, particularly in its closing metaphor: "Go ahead and leave two notes/And place them down inside old library books/And fold back the pages/Put them back in their spaces, undisturbed/And we'll come back and see inside/Who checked them out and if they replied/Or if they're still there, unread and unanswered." More impressionistic tracks like "Limitless Arms" serve as dreamy counterpoints to their emotionally potent surroundings. In the '70s pop-styled "Come Visit Me," Crisp makes a desperate plea in the guise of a catchy chorus: "I want to feel something way out here/I need something happy now/Even if it fucks me up." And the wistfully romantic swells of "Waiting for You" are tinged with regret by Howard's freshly post break-up confession: "In the middle of the night, I don't know who I am."


5. The Anniversary - Designing a Nervous Breakdown

I bet you didn't know you needed early '00s Midwestern emo backed by '80s-influenced synthesizers galore in your life, did you? Well, I'm here to tell you that you definitely do. The Anniversary is so ridiculously slept on, even by supposed aficionados of their scene/era, who seem to be too busy waxing nostalgic over bigger acts like Sunny Day Real Estate, American Football, and Mineral to branch out. The band released their debut, Designing a Nervous Breakdown, in 2000, and, in my opinion, it actually holds up a lot better than many of their contemporaries' albums do. I know I'm always raving about hooks but, my god, the hooks. This is one of my go-to albums for dialing my emotions, positive and negative, up to eleven because every song sounds like it was assembled in a factory specializing in pump-up music. "All Things Ordinary," "The D in Detroit," "Emma Discovery," "Till We Earned a Holiday," "Without Panasos" - pick any one of these out of a hat and you're guaranteed power pop perfection. You can easily make the same argument for the other half of the album, too. The vocals are split three ways between Josh Berwanger, Justin Roelofs, and Adrianne Verhoeven. What any of them lack in technical proficiency they make up for in volume and energy, often capitalizing on call-and-response and gang vocals for maximum impact. Their lyrics are occasionally clunky and juvenile, but, oddly enough, this makes them even more cathartic. For example, a line like "Dear Dad, I'm having trouble feeling sad" looks ridiculous on paper but feels great when shouted along to at the top of your lungs.


4. Carissa's Wierd - Songs About Leaving

There are a lot of things about Carissa's Wierd that shouldn't really work. Their purposely misspelled band name (they even have an album titled I Before E, that's how serious they are about it). Mat Brooke's apathetic baritone mumble, often barely audible over its musical accompaniment. Jenn Ghetto's equally elusive voice, so slight and haunting it seems to float like an apparition. Their song titles, which alternate between sounding like the product of a bratty teenager ("Ignorant Piece of Shit," "Sofisticated Fuck Princess Please Leave Me Alone") and a pretentious teenager ("September Come Take This Heart Away," "Low Budget Slow Motion Soundtrack Song for the Leaving Scene"). The way their quivering, classical-leaning piano and string arrangements clash with their blunt, confrontational lyrics. But, somehow, they mesh these disparate components together in a way that makes complete sense, especially on their standout album, 2002's Songs About Leaving. Emotionally, the album alternates between utter despair ("Won't tell a single soul that my soul's gone/It's hard to write this song/It's all a joke/It's all been wrote down by someone who's probably dead") and tongue-in-cheek cynicism ("Telling everyone you know/Maybe I'll be bad for you/Maybe you're too good for me/Everyone is getting screwed"). It hurts to hear, but it's also too beautiful not to. The soaring instrumentation and delicate vocal harmonies turn each song into a tiny heartbreaking symphony. Even after you think you've got a handle on the band's patented formula for build-up, they take your breath away every time.


3. Mandy Moore - Wild Hope

Public awareness of Mandy Moore is fairly scattered these days. You may know her as the disembodied voice behind Rapunzel in Disney's Tangled or as the teenage pop star who sang the uncomfortably oversexed one-hit-wonder "Candy" or, most recently, as a Golden Globe-nominated actress on NBC's This Is Us. People rarely seem to connect the dots and realize she's actually accomplished a great deal for being just over thirty years old. This includes a nearly forgotten period from about 2003-2009 when she reinvented herself as a folk-pop songstress part Joni Mitchell, part Carly Simon. While this wasn't a commercially successful move, in 2007, she managed to craft an utterly perfect album in this style called Wild Hope. With assistance from Americana and folk heavyweights like Chantal Kreviazuk, Lori McKenna, Rachael Yamagata, Sara Watkins, and the Weepies, every song becomes a masterclass in pop composition. You've got kiss-offs for every mood, from quirky mid-tempos ("All Good Things") to slightly twangy alt-rock ("Most of Me," "Latest Mistake") and from jazzy missives ("Ladies' Choice") to stark balladry ("Gardenia"). But the songwriting and vocal support of these collaborators always boosts rather than supplants Moore's individuality. As it turns out, her rich timbre is perfectly suited to the style. She's particularly adept at delivering barbed one-liners: "In time, you will fade into the nothing that you are;" "the burns on my fingers were all that was left of the spark." I've still got my fingers crossed she'll follow up 2009's nearly-as-good Amanda Leigh eventually.

2. Now It's Overhead - Dark Light Daybreak

No one truly knows me until they know one of my darkest secrets: I am unnaturally obsessed with Andy LeMaster. This is a difficult obsession to maintain because he no longer seems very interested in pursuing his own music. I can't say I blame him when his pet project, Now It's Overhead, has never broken free from the shadow of his behind-the-scenes work with others, which you've probably heard at some point. He's most commonly associated with Saddle Creek mainstays like Bright Eyes, Azure Ray, and the Good Life, but he's also worked with R.E.M., Drive-By Truckers, and countless more. But this isn't about them. This is about Now It's Overhead and a perfect little electronic album called Dark Light Daybreak, which, released in 2006, remains the band's most recent output. It's one of those albums I think everyone should listen to, even though I have trouble articulating why. The primary draw for me is LeMaster's voice: I have a thing for sort of cerebral, nerdy, nasally male vocals, a style which LeMaster encapsulates to a T. Oddly enough, his twangy delivery, often coupled with subtle harmonies courtesy of labelmates Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink, marries perfectly to the icy, detached atmosphere cultivated in many of the album's songs ("Believe What They Decide," "Night Vision"); it's also a perfect fit for the soaring intensity of the title track, where every syllable seems ripped directly from some deep interior chamber of emotion. In the end, though, the best track here isn't even electronic in nature: instead, it's the acoustic-based "Let Up," the toe-tapping nature of which obscures some serious pain.


1. Rainer Maria - Long Knives Drawn

Like the Anniversary, Rainer Maria is another underrated band that rode out the final wave of late '90s/early '00s emo before the genre came to be erroneously associated with "edgy" teens and the bands that commercialized their angst. (Not that I have anything against these bands or the people who loved them; they were just never for me and unfairly colored my perception of the genre for too long.) Honestly, I think a lot of it comes down to misogyny, intentional or not, as the band definitely deserves to be listed alongside other greats of their time. Caithlin De Marrais is a vocal phenom; the power and urgency she conveys is staggering, and 2003's Long Knives Drawn finds her in top form. Songs like the title track, "Ears Ring," and "CT Catholic" have this intensely anthemic quality that I've never found quite replicated in anything else. In large part due to De Marrais' lung-emptying vocal performances, this is just as much a result of the blistering guitars, chaotic drumming, and full-speed-ahead melodies. The melodies are especially intriguing because they initially seem to follow very straightforward, no-nonsense rock structures - that is, until the band reconstructs them and fits them back together in ingenious ways that keep the listener constantly guessing. The lyrics, too, are memorable for the off-balance feeling they convey; cryptic declarations ("Have faith in the blue lady") coexist alongside gut-punching confessions ("Maybe now we can lay our weariness down"). But it's not all bluster and bombast: in moments of vulnerability ("The Awful Truth of Loving," "Situation: Relation"), De Marrais' voice becomes a muted murmur, quietly straining beneath the lyrics' emotional weight.

In late 2009, a series of cryptic viral videos began to be uploaded to Youtube by a mysterious account with the teasing riddle of a name, iamamiwhoami. These short clips centered on imagery that was often unsettlingly sensual: a woman, identity obscured by face paint and visual distortion, twitches and writhes ritualistically in a dark woodland setting to the pulse of warped electronica. Once the videos were discovered, guesses as to the identity of their creator(s) inevitably cropped up, the most popular being Christina Aguilera, who vaguely resembled the woman in the videos (mostly because she was blonde) and who had been teasing her upcoming album (which would become the disappointingly bland Bionic) as futuristic electropop.

At the time, I followed the videos avidly but never participated in the feverish decoding and theorizing that occurred in certain corners of the Internet. My interest lay less in uncovering the performer's identity and more in immersing myself in the audiovisual aesthetic, a cross between Goldfrapp and the Knife that was discomfiting, otherworldly, and entirely captivating. After months of teasing, iamamiwhoami's first full-length song, a hauntingly distorted piano ballad titled "B," was released in early 2010. In the video, the woman from the earlier clips sits at a keyboard inside a claustrophobic wood-panelled room, her body and face entirely wrapped in plastic. Both song and video are as beautiful as they are disturbing.

With the release of further singles, followers collectively settled on Jonna Lee as the project's face and voice. As unlikely as this seemed, Lee being a barely-known Swedish singer/songwriter whose previous music was of the safe acoustic folk-pop variety, the evidence, gathered largely through social media stalking, was compelling. By the final installment in the sequence that would come to be known as Bounty, the moody electronic epic "Y," the truth was in plain sight. Even if Lee would remain coy about her involvement, not officially confirming it until late 2011, the mystery was more or less solved.

Many lost interest when it became clear that iamamiwhoami was not, after all, a vehicle for the reinvention of some current pop superstar like Aguilera or, another common guess, Lady Gaga. This is unfortunate because at the root of the project's mystery and obfuscation lies, in my opinion, some of the most engaging and creative electronic music to emerge in recent years. Lee and her producer Claes Björklund reached the pinnacle of their genius with 2012's Kin, released as a series of nine audiovisual singles over the course of the year, beginning with the muted "Sever," its lilting synth opening recalling the somber piano of "B." The visuals are cleaner and more organic, free of visual trickery, with Lee's bare-faced anguish front and center as she is terrorized by an odd woolly beast. The rest of the album plays like a remarkably cohesive greatest hits, every song better than the last.

2014 was the year of Blue, a surprisingly tropical and poppy turn that, just as surprisingly, works rather well. Smoothed of the project's darker and more experimental edges, some of the magic is lost, but there are enough infectious hooks and burbling synth lines to make up for it. It remains to be seen if Blue will stand as iamamiwhoami's closing chapter, but its final video, "Shadowshow," serves as an effective swan song if so. Hearkening back to older imagery, Lee, draped in plastic, wanders through an eerie nighttime forest. Our final image of her is naked in broad daylight, sitting at the water's edge as shadowy figures file past to drown themselves one by one, a scene which seems to represent the coexistence of death and rebirth. However, it is left up to the viewer to determine what this symbolism means for the project's ultimate fate.

Nearly three years later, a clearer answer seems to be in sight as Jonna Lee, now successfully re-branded as an ethereal electronic goddess, is reviving her solo career with a new single, "Samaritan," released under the moniker of ionnalee. On first listen, it's not a far cry from anything she created in collaboration with Björklund as iamamiwhoami. Of course, her unearthly, heavily-processed croon has become so unmistakable that it's nearly impossible to divorce it from previous context, even if the music were entirely different. In this case, it's not, built on heart-pounding beats and heavy, sinister synths, with ghostly verses that crescendo in an effervescent, instantly infectious chorus.

The major difference is that "Samaritan" is driven by vocals rather than atmospherics; most of Lee's lyrics are decipherable on first pass, and their content is also clearer and more direct. In past interviews, Lee has defended the elusiveness of iamamiwhoami as a means for the work to speak for itself without distractions, meant to turn the listener's focus inward toward the music instead of outward toward her. Yet many fans have deified Lee, blurring the distance between her and her onscreen counterpart and holding her to unattainable expectations. In this context, the song's chorus reads as a pointed reminder: "I don't remember promising my life and soul to bring you all bliss."

Fittingly, the song's visual accompaniment (produced in association with Comme des Garçons) paints a chilling vision. Lee watches as her alter ego's story unfolds on a flickering television screen. Having found self-realization, as symbolized by interpretative dance, her expression of identity is misinterpreted by those around her as something to be feared and excised. "If I am what you say, I expect to be hanging on a wooden cross," she sings as, bound by rope, she is led into the woods, fitted with a crown of blazing candles, and seemingly burned alive. Meanwhile, real-life Lee changes into elaborate dress and rehearses the dance moves she has just witnessed in the mirror; despite having seen the grisly outcome, she appears willing to subject herself to judgment all over again for the sake of her art.

With such an elaborately-crafted aesthetic, it's difficult not to over-analyze every frame of the video and every second of the track. But while this adds a layer of richness, particularly for those who have been following iamamiwhoami for years, it is not at all necessary to the song's enjoyment. On its own, "Samaritan" is a fresh and catchy experimental pop song that new and old listeners alike should be able to appreciate. I also assume that it is only the beginning of what ionnalee has in store this year, and I will be anxiously awaiting the rest.

As recent protest songs go, "Not Gonna Say Your Name" is one of the few that has stood out to me as a genuinely great song beyond its political context. It also served as my introduction to Entrance, even though the band/project, often associated with "freak folk" artists like Devendra Banhart and Will Oldham, has been around in many permutations since the early 2000s. It's somewhat fitting, though, that this would be my first exposure, as bandleader Guy Blakeslee seems to be in the process of reinventing Entrance once again. He's releasing a new album called Book of Changes later this month, and its first single, "Always the Right Time," is also quite good, an infectiously upbeat homage to late '60s/early '70s-era folk-pop with rich, sunny harmonies.

"Not Gonna Say Your Name" operates within a similar musical landscape. It builds up gradually from an a cappella opening, instrument by instrument, until it becomes gorgeously lush, twangy, and warm. If you weren't paying close attention to the lyrics, the song might come off as an impassioned kiss-off to an ex-lover who caused the singer extraordinary pain. The melodies also happen to be incredibly catchy, with an effortlessly timeless quality that allows them to transcend time and place. You'll immediately want to sing along to the impeccably-constructed dual male/female vocal harmonies. Often, protest songs tend to sacrifice musicality for the message, so the musical perfection of this one is particularly refreshing. Ultimately, the actual lyrics might be the least compelling thing about it, as they're fairly straightforward and simplistic and don't offer much that we haven't heard before. Still, they're cathartic in the sense that they mirror what we're all thinking. The transition out of the second verse and into the chorus is particularly powerful: "I might have to see your face a hundred times every day, but I'm not gonna say your name." This is not a denial of reality but a denial of respect to someone who has proven himself undeserving of it many times over.

I urge you to purchase this track from Bandcamp today for maximal impact: Blakeslee's profits will go to Planned Parenthood and Bandcamp's will go to the ACLU. Several more artists and labels have joined with Bandcamp to pledge their earnings to the ACLU or other relevant organizations. Father/Daughter Records includes bands I've posted about in the past, like PWR BTTM and Sharpless, and has several promising upcoming releases up for pre-order, including Diet Cig and Vagabon. Saddle Creek is always a good bet, and you can't go wrong with anything from Los Campesinos! A full list of labels and bands participating can be found here. Just buy anything!