#10: Eerie Wanda – “Hum”

I’ve decided to start giving out a Trish Keenan Memorial Trophy for the artist each year who comes closest to emulating the Broadcast singer. This year’s goes to Eerie Wanda frontwoman Marina Tadic, who reminds me of Trish with her gentle psychedelic songs that strike a perfect balance between being charming and weird (or, I suppose, eerie).

Eerie Wanda’s actual sound isn’t much like Broadcast’s; there are no electronics, with songs always built off Tadic’s guitar and some light percussion and bass. The arrangements are simple, meant to showcase Tadic’s vocals while providing a tranquil, daydreamy vibe that evokes the 60s.

Tadic’s voice is the real defining instrument here: it has a warmth and dreaminess to it, but also somehow always sounds off-kilter and distant, which gives Hum its underlying strangeness that makes it stand out from other guitar pop albums this year.

#11: Kælan Mikla – “Kælan Mikla”

I can’t understand a word on Kælan Mikla’s self-titled debut album. The beauty of it is that I don’t feel like I need to. After taking the poetry slam circuit in Reykjavik by storm, the trio worked on setting their poetry to music, and came up with the sound heard here: an ominous, synth-driven throb that makes it clear they aren’t singing about sunshine and rainbows.

The band sings/speaks in their native Icelandic, and it’s possible I’d enjoy this album less if I could understand the words, or even more since I’m not getting the full picture. But I enjoy having some element of the music left to my imagination, and sometimes think lyrics can be a distraction. Instead of trying to piece together the “meaning” of these songs, I could focus purely on this album’s sound, and I loved the way the language sounded with the music and how haunting and mysterious it was.

There is an intensity and urgency in Kælan Mikla’s performance that crosses any kind of language barrier. Even if I don’t understand it, I think I can feel what they’re trying to convey, and part of music’s power is in that ability to express feelings in a very visceral way. Despite the sometimes witchy vocals and the oppressively dark sound, Kælan Mikla also make songs that are enjoyable to listen to, with real hooks and mesmerizing bass lines. Their music leaves a mark, even if I’m not entirely sure what that mark is.

#12: Field Mouse – “Episodic”

Episodic, the third full length from Field Mouse, is what I usually group into the “crowdpleaser” genre of album, with me being the crowd. Because as much as I enjoy trying to key in on specific things I love in music and being hyper-critical about everything, at the end of the day, I’m pretty happy if a band delivers nice melodies, plays the guitars pretty loud, and has a good singer.

Field Mouse does all of that: they play a melodic, straight-forward amalgam of basically every style of 90s music, can get loud when they need to, and are led by Rachel Browne, a talented singer who makes their songs memorable with her clear, bright vocals. Nothing about Episodic is going to catch the listener by surprise, but part of its appeal is that it gets the fundamentals of this dreamy rock sound right, and sometimes I just want to listen to something that is really catchy and unpretentious.

This might come off as me damning Field Mouse with faint praise, but one of my takeaways from spending so much of this year on Bandcamp is that it’s much harder than I realized just to make music that is listenable, much less albums like Episodic that are nearly impossible to stop listening to.