Favorite Songs of the '00s, #1: "Disaster," The Besnard Lakes

2010 is upon us.

As I ease into a third decade, I feel it's appropriate time to document the music that has made an impression on me over the past 10 years. The great lie of all this, of course, is that "favorites" are constantly in flux and what I liked in 2003 (when I started to listen to music in earnest) has now warped beyond recognition. Likewise, I wasn't listening to The Argument or even Kid A in the early aughts, so there's definitely an element of retroactive revision attached to this process.

I haven't let taste off the hook entirely though. That is, a significant chunk of this music is not what I would label "the best music of the decade"--it's rather a mixture of songs that continues to affect me despite heavy wear-and-tear. The end result, I think, is a list that might seem obvious to some, but an honest one at that, even to the point of petty, irrational discomfort.

So with those qualifications in mind...

Come to think of it, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse was an incredibly apt title for this album. The Canadian sextet--initially formed by spouses Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas in 2003--released this charming album on Jagjaguwar in 2007 and have remained pretty quiet ever since. Like other notable Canadian indie-rock bands of the '00s (Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, et al), there's a grandiose feel to the work, due in large part to the amalgamation of orchestration and healthy portions of guitar reverb, but the band still manages to grind out their own aesthetic between the notes.

Album opener "Disaster," in particular, epitomizes the balance of grace and grit that the band strikes so well. Between the opening pizzicatos and mid-song glissandos, Nicole Lezee's gorgeous string arrangements play a large role here, working as a wonderful timbral and melodic counterpoint to the shoegazy guitars. Additional touches like the repeated flute phrase and interlocking vocals highlight what basically amounts to an incredibly delicate song that soars in spite of itself. Ultimately, the first two minutes of the song and the latter three stand alone as great ideas; the fact that they blend together so organically, building from a bedroom coo into a feverish swell is what keeps me coming back to this one.