TOPS, currently comprised of Jane Penny, David Carriere, Riley Fleck and Marta Cikojevic, hail from Montreal and have released four albums thus far in their careers. Each album has seen the band hone their blend of danceable, punchy pop music, usually drenched in a melodramatic 80s / 90s cinematic flair. The perfect songs to soundtrack fictional, romantic moments in your life. They’ve been one of my favorite bands since their debut in 2012, where songs like “Turn Your Love Around” and “Diamond Look” were introduced to me via Gorilla Vs Bear and would in turn be on my radio shows nearly every week.
Their sophomore 2014 record Picture You Staring was a landmark college album for me, providing a pure, unfiltered fun soundtrack to put on while having friends over or just to have a good time on my own. The amount of times I listened to “Way To Be Loved” with my friends or with my partner, just dancing around in our kitchen or living room, is too high to count. 2017 came Sugar At The Gate, a effervescent increase in fidelity with no dropoff in song quality and to me also pointed towards a huge leap in the band’s trajectory on the horizon. 2020 then yielded my favorite album of theirs (at the moment), I Feel Alive, full of the band’s most rocket-powered tunes to date, with every element the band did well on previous records coming together in some sort of freaky pop masterpiece.
I’ve seen the band live five times at this point, one of which being when I booked them to perform at my college in 2015. They’re all sweet people, put on great performances and make consistently fun music. It was hard, but I decided to rank my Top 10 favorite TOPS songs to help the uninitiated dip their toes into this spring of buoyant, carbonated guitar pop tunes. You will not regret it.
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