Dalliance Tracks of 2010 – Dawn broke out the window, The glass filled up with pink…

  1. Ghost Train - Summer Camp
    Everything that singles should be Ghost Train is instantly loveable, endlessly replayable and imbued with all the right sentiments reach deep and caress the heartstrings as it energises the feet.
  2. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - Arcade Fire
    Songs do not come more alarmingly powerful as this commanding statement which caps the theme of the album in a way that is both wearisome and wonderful. A cautionary tale of course, and one of escape and recapture. It is atypical of the band, and the album, but the difference renders it bright and brilliant.
  3. Taxi Cab - Tracey Thorn
    Thorn's cover of the Vampire Weekend track replaces preppy optimism with the sound of a woman battered by experience to create something more heart warming, but more harrowing.
  4. The End of the World is Bigger than Love - Jens Lekman
    Lekman's pop is a personal take on all consuming concerns. He sings about the specifics set against common concerns and in The End of the World is Bigger than Love he sets Obama's election against the end of something which he describes as "About a girl, and yes it hurt."
  5. Marathon - Tennis
    Tennis's moody, romantic wooziness to is sweet, not saccharine and edged with a darkness which could see them settle into a David Lynch soundtrack.
  6. I Don't Know What To Say - The Magnetic Fields
    There is a sublime intelligence to Stephin Merritt's work which separates it from even his peers in the upper echelons of song writing. This murder ballad of an increasingly desperate lover combines a razor wit with a moody edge that concludes in a swift demise.
  7. Write About Love - Belle & Sebastian
    ...and when Stuart Murdoch was good he was very, very good. A babbling success of a tune that sees Murdoch play off Carey Mulligan's vocals although one is left with the enduring feeling that there is a God Help the Girl song here waiting to get out.
  8. A Little Lost - Paul Smith
    The Maximo Park front man covers Arthur Russell staying closer to the original than Jens Lekman - who did this tune a few years ago - and breaking out a melancholia.
  9. Oh, the Divorces! - Tracey Thone
    Music that has an earnest statement to make is seldom appreciated but Thorn's single - and album opener - is a detailed and rich talk about the changing tides of lives as they pass forty. As troubling as it is triumphant.
  10. Them That Do Nothing - Field Music
    Smart, intelligent pop.