SONGS OF THE YEAR: "Racehorse" by Wild Flag

Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn't come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we've asked City Paper's critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs - be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves. (Ignore the video, this is about the audio.)

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SONGS OF THE YEAR: “Racehorse” by Wild Flag

POSTED: Friday, December 23, 2011, 9:00 AM

Filed Under: Music Song

Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves.

Snakecharmed in a sonic maze, you are swaying left to right. The grit and swagger of Carrie Brownstein’s “I’m a racehorse … You put your money on me” disorients and enchants further. The focus of the ears (and the eyes during their sublime live sets) infinitely shifts between the paradoxically dueling and complementary guitars of Brownstein and Mary Timony and the flicker bombast of Janet Weiss’s drums and the organ eccentricities of Rebecca Cole. As a declaration by the most exciting confluence of talent in rock and roll in recent memory, Wild Flag’s “Racehorse” rightly desires jam status, extending to nearly the 10-minute mark in their flagship Philadelphia performance at Johnny Brenda’s in March. And the words “Pony up, pony up” were never before woven together with such power, popping into eternal music consciousness without any politics; just pure aural pleasure bestowed here, raw and timeless.

Posted by Chris Sikich @ 9:00 AM Permalink | Post a comment

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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