Live & Local Top 100 Countdown: 60-51

Aaron Keck’s Live & Local Top 100 Countdown continues! You can check out the complete series here, only on Chapelboro.com!

We’ve already covered some amazing, even legendary tracks, and we’re still not quite halfway through our countdown of the top 100 local songs of all time. Lots more to come, starting now.

Reminder of the ground rules: Orange, Durham, and Chatham-based artists only; no more than three songs per artist; covers are allowed but originals are preferred; and the songs have to be radio-friendly.

Let’s go!

60. The Mountain Goats, “Damn These Vampires”(2011)

“Let the whole town hear your knuckles crack…”

I want to celebrate as many artists as possible on this list, so it’s probably for the best that the Mountain Goats had already recorded albums like Tallahassee and The Sunset Tree by the time John Darnielle moved to Durham. (“This Year,” in particular, is one of the best songs ever written, and we’ll have no more debate about that.) But even if they hadn’t recorded a thing before then, the MGs’ nine post-Durham albums alone (with themes ranging from Mexican wrestling to Bible verses) would be enough to cement their indie-god status.

Darnielle’s at his best in his moments of raw introspection, though, and so I keep coming back to this gut punch of a song that opens the MGs’ Tarot-themed 2011 album “All Eternals Deck,” looking back at darker times (aren’t they all?) and lamenting drugs and parasitic friends and the damage they both can do. “Someday we won’t remember this,” he sings, but that’s a total lie: Darnielle’s curse – also his superpower – is that he remembers everything.

59. The Old Ceremony, “Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide”(2012)

“But I for one can see I found the one for me…”

How do you choose one Old Ceremony track? I’m also partial to “Pennsylvania,” one of their earliest – a quiet Gillian Flynn novel of a song that reveals its darknesses in a few quick words at just the right moments. Ultimately, though, I’ll go with “Fairytales,” an equally dark song that sounds fittingly ominous at the outset and then buries its depth under a rousing, joyous, and bitterly ironic chorus. Django Haskins’ speaker is fully aware that ‘true love’ is a trap, but he’s also convinced himself that his own relationship is pure and perfect – even as he smells the “poison gases” around him. “All right! All right! All right!”

Luckily it seems to have all worked out in the end: we’ll see Django again later on in this list, with a more recent song that’s also much happier and more unironically optimistic.

58. The Connells, “Scotty’s Lament”(1987)

“It’s you, I swear; it’s you, I swear; I delight in my despair…”

First, an instrumental that lulls you into thinking you’re just listening to the house band at some rowdy Irish pub – and then a pause, and then a 90-degree turn, and then simply one of the best jangle-pop songs ever made. Produced by Mitch Easter, one of the icons of that genre (we’ll see him again in a few paragraphs), “Scotty’s Lament” is smart and enigmatic and catchy and plain damn fun, all at once.

“Boylan Heights” was not the Connells’ first album; they already had 1985’s “Darker Days” under their belts (produced by another local jangle-pop icon, Don Dixon) when they went into the studio in 1987. But I still think of this song (Boylan’s opening track) as their first shot fired, a new voice emerging in full maturity and immediately setting the bar for every Chapel Hill band to come. It’s a bar that not many have surpassed.

57. Wye Oak, “Fortune”(2019)

“The truth is always when it’s gone, it’s gone…”

Like the aforementioned Mountain Goats, Wye Oak had already amassed a big following and a mountain of great music by the time they moved from Baltimore to Durham. (Merge Records brings all the boys to the yard.) But they haven’t missed a step, and with “Fortune” they made one of their best: Jenn Wasner’s wistful yet powerful vocals combine with Andy Stack’s big beat for a melancholy song of longing and regret that’s dreamy and sad, but also catchy and fun and danceable as well. Like a great Wye Oak song should be.

56. The Bad Checks, “I’m Paranoid”(1982)

“Everyone is looking at me/like I was Johnny Carson, on TV…”

Robin Mann, Clifton Mann, and Larry Talley channel the Ramones in this catchy, straight-ahead rocker from the heyday of 80s punk. Like their NYC forebears, the Mann brothers wink and sneer at the world around them, but they’re not misanthropic and they’re not bad – just a couple of affable guys who only want to hang out and do their own thing, if only those shadowy agents of power would just get off their damn backs. Living in our 21st-century surveillance state, we can sympathize. “Do you feel like they’re watching you too? I wouldn’t doubt it if they do.”

Wait, should I be typing this on Google Docs?

55. Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba, “Ndoli”(2018)

“Ndoli is coming…”

As a place and as an idea, the Triangle (at its best) is a crossroads through which all are invited to pass and in which all are welcome to lay down roots. That’s true of the Triangle’s music scene too – making for a wildly eclectic melting pot of rock, country, hip-hop, dreamy indie, folk, rockabilly, psychobilly, jangle pop, jazz, and punk, in which Senegalese griot and kora maestro Diali Cissokho is both wholly unique and an absolutely perfect fit.

“Ndoli,” with its hypnotic beat, is my favorite: a traditional children’s song about a “mythical character in Mandinka folklore,” it draws you in from the opening notes and lulls you into a trance. But as with many of these artists, Cissokho and Kaira Ba have a number of songs that are worthy of inclusion: don’t overlook the quiet, peaceful “Xarit,” for instance, off the same album, 2018’s Routes.

54. Charles Latham, “Will You Let Me Go”(2017)

“You see me in the movies…”

Sincerely genuine and gleefully sardonic all at once, with piercing lyrics and a weirdly beautiful off-kilter voice, Charles Latham rests comfortably in that dark alley between country and rock and folk and punk – “antifolk,” he’s called it – where so many of our best local musicians reside. “Will You Let Me Go” is emblematic, with its straightforward, show-don’t-tell lyrics about unrequited love (or post-breakup obsession? Is there a difference?) that look down on their subject but sympathize with them all the same.

Oh, and bonus points for the saw. Always bonus points for the saw.

53. Let’s Active, “Every Word Means No”(1982)

“It used to be no words could come between us…”

It opens so simply: a ten-note guitar riff, two quick drumbeats, and we’re off. What follows that iconic intro is one of the most important and essential tracks in the history of 80s pop. It’s also a pretty great song besides, with a catchy melody and a peppy, jangly beat ironically juxtaposed against Mitch Easter’s bitter lyrics about a couple drifting apart. (Oh, and if you like puppies, don’t miss this video.)

We’ve already met Easter, who went on to a legendary career as a producer for bands like R.E.M. and Game Theory (as well as the Connells). But Let’s Active also features another legend, drummer Sara Romweber, who joined the band when she was only 17. Sadly both Romweber and bassist Faye Hunter have passed away in recent years – but not before leaving a timeless musical legacy.

52. Mandolin Orange, “Hey Stranger”(2016)

“There’s no burden greater in life…”

One of the good arguments for believing that the universe has a design and a purpose is the fact that in this giant world, Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz found each other. Listening to Mandolin Orange is always an experience of intimacy: their voices are quiet, their instruments soft, their lyrics raw and penetrating. I don’t honestly know if Marlin has lived any of the experiences he’s describing or if he’s just a really insightful short-story writer, but it hardly matters in the end.

There are probably a dozen Mandolin Orange songs that could make this list, but “Hey Stranger,” the opening track of 2016’s Blindfaller, stands out: with Frantz taking the lead on vocals, the duo paints a picture of a world-weary traveler warning a young wayfarer not to succumb to the twin temptations of hedonism or despair. Don’t give in, and don’t give up: that’s the theme of many Mandolin Orange songs, though it’s often delivered by a speaker who’s frequently done both.

51. Lud, “Who’s To Blame”(2014)

“I really, really want to talk to that man…”

It was Kirk Ross who told me once that the Chapel Hill music scene has never been about breaking out and making it big on a national level, but staying home and pursuing perfection right here. Lud (with Ross on lead vocals) have been pursuing perfection for twenty-five years and still going strong, and they’ve earned a reputation as one of the best, tightest, hardest-working, most beloved and respected bands in town – with a heart, and an urgent message.

Different folks will have different Lud favorites, but “Who’s To Blame” is mine: a slow build to a banging climax, with not one but two rocking instrumentals, and lyrics that blend righteous anger with optimistic, hopeful, even beatific images of people joining hands and uniting together. They ain’t Pollyannas, though: even after showing us “two thousand men and women” swaying and singing hymns, they still end on a stark visual of homeless vets sleeping outside in the freezing cold. Every triumph for justice leaves more injustice yet to fight. Rev up the guitars.