Favorite Albums of 2007
My 2007 best of list was originally separated out into individual posts for a blog I was writing for at the time. I have combined the posts here, with date stamps to indicate order.
To kick off the Top Ten Albums of 2007 Countdown (gotta shorten that name…) in style, let’s start with a seriously stylish and stylized band, [1]Spoon, and their latest album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.
Just so we’re all on the same page, my plan is to post my reviews of each of the 10 albums on my list in increments leading up to the end of the year, then, sometime around New Years, I’ll post the rankings of the albums, from 1 to 10…or 10 to 1, if that suits you better. In any case, let’s get this party started:
I downloaded a bootleg copy of this album. There, I said it.
Don’t worry, I paid for a copy when it came out. I’m not a heartless asshole. Indie musicians are skinny enough, I don’t want to deprive them of a well-earned meal. In fact, maybe the next time, instead of paying for an album, I’ll just send them some of that weight-gain powder.
I’ve been a fan of Spoon for years now. I have all of their albums and I have no problem cranking the stereo every time one of their songs comes up. The angular, minimalistic, jarring jams that these guys from Austin, Texas (now Portland, Oregon…YAY!!!) churn out are instantly, toe-tappingly catchy.
On this album, the band seems more loose. Long-time fans could see it coming after 2005’s Gimmie Fiction showed a band more willing to break out and expand their sound. Still, many of the tracks on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga were a very welcome surprise. From the 60’s-soul horn sections on ”The Underdog” and ”Got Yr Cherry Bomb” to the brooding pop of ”Black Like Me” and the driving, urgent rock sound of ”Finer Feelings,” you hear the sounds of a band, already 10+ years into their existence, unafraid to branch out and try new things. The funny part about these new directions, is that they seemed almost effortless, like the capacity to make songs like this was built into the groundwork of the band’s sound long before they were actually implemented. Spoon has a way of incorporating new sounds and ideas and making them uniquely Spoon-ish.
I love it when bands mix it up, as long as it doesn’t sound contrived, and this albums sounds anything but that. In the past, many of their songs sounded very claustrophobic and paranoid, just looking back to the albums Girls Can Tell and A Series of Sneaks will give you multiple examples of that.
I like this new Spoon. They seem to incorporate new sounds and styles into their already existing ”Spoon- sound” without any hiccups. It’d be fun to say that lead singer/songwriter Britt Daniel’s move from Austin to Portland facilitated some of that change, but it’s there’s probably much more behind it. Although, a change of scenery couldn’t have hurt. The changes that they made to their music appear effortless even where they’re sweeping. The mood of this record ebbs and flows and, in a scant 30 minutes, takes you on a wonderful ride. You can listen to each track over and over and hear some new quirk or hook that makes you love it for an entirely new reason.
There’s energy in this record. A certain freewheeling feeling surrounds the production, even when the lyrics are more staid and reserved. It’s the kind of record where you can tell the band had fun making it and enjoys what they’re doing, even if they are deadly serious about their craft. Its’ the kind of record that you’d want to make if you were in a band, and that’s why it makes my list for the Top Ten Albums of 2007.
(2007-11-26 12:04)
To continue the countdown of my Top Ten Albums of 2007, let’s talk about Radiohead’s In Rainbows…
My first real introduction to Radiohead, aside from being bombarded with the music video for ”Creep” every time I turned on MTV in the mid-90’s, was two burnt CD’s a friend of mine handed me during my sophomore year of college. As with many bands, I was a late adopter. Even though I was really into music from a very young age, I lived in an insulated music vacuum growing up. It wasn’t until I reached college that the doors were blown off and I started to realize how much great music had been kept from me. In a two year period, I was exposed to the greatness of Radiohead and Wilco and The Replacements (thanks, Kelly), the bedrock of my musical tastes to this very day.
Those two discs weren’t even proper Radiohead albums, per se. They were the collection of all the B-sides that the band had released on their singles and whatnot, a rag-tag collage of the band from their inception thru the release of OK Computer and beyond. My friend, Adam, described them to me as the two greatest Radiohead albums ever, and while he had a tendency to overstate things, every single one of those songs was a gem that I cherish to this very day.
Since I received those two CDs, I’ve collected every album that Radiohead has ever released, searched out live bootlegs and rare tracks. I downloaded Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief before their proper releases (I bought each of them once they came out, honest) and I was ecstatic when the band announced that they would be releasing their latest, In Rainbows, for download before it was available in CD form.
Now, I’ll freely admit that I was a bit let down by Amnesiac and Hail To The Thief. They both had their moments. ”Knives Out” is a great track and ”There, There” leaves me speechless, but as albums, I never thought that Radiohead had met the expectations they set with OK Computer and Kid A. I know that those are lofty expectations, being that both of those albums are insanely great, but a guy can dream, right? So, when I downloaded my copy of In Rainbows, which I paid for ($9!), I was a bit apprehensive. I wanted it to be great from start to finish.
I was not disappointed.
While In Rainbows is no masterpiece, it is surely the best Radiohead album in years. For a band that is constantly searching out new and different avenues for their music to explore, you can’t really use the term ”return to form,” but this is certainly another step forward.
For the first time, Radiohead has some soul in their music. While the motif of cold, precise execu- tion is still found throughout this album, it swings a bit more, especially on tracks like ”Reckoner” and ”Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.” There’s a warmth to much of this album that has been missing. Instead of holding the listener at arms length, it invites you in and wraps itself around you. Every track sounds different from the next and all the songs have so many layers that you could listen to this record for days on end and still discover new things to love about it.
Songs like ”Videotape” and ”All I Need” just didn’t show up on previous albums. They tear at your emotions and beg to be placed prominently on a mix tape you give to someone you love. If you had told me a few years ago that I’d even think about doing something like that with Radiohead song, I’d have called you crazy. But, here I am, saying just that. I cherish being surprised by the musicians and bands that I love, and that’s exactly what has happened with In Rainbows.
Not only do I look at this album differently that I have other Radiohead albums, but listening to this record has made me go back and re-listen to all of the other albums they’ve released and hear them in a new light. In a weird way, my odyssey with Radiohead like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, all that time spent searching for a heart, only to realize that they had one all along.
(2007-11-28 15:56)
The White Stripes - Icky Thump
Like I mentioned in my last album review for Radiohead - In Rainbows, I owe much of my current taste in music to my friends. We all have people in our lives that introduce us to bands and music. My dad intro- duced me to such disparate artists as Jimi Hendrix and Hank Williams Sr. My grandmother is responsible for my love of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, as well as my unhealthy obsession with the Glen Campbell song ”Witchita Lineman.” ”By The Time I Get to Phoenix” is a great, too. I’m not even close to kidding.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I have a friend to thank for making me sit in his Ford Explorer and listen to this new band he had just heard about called The White Stripes. This was 7-8 years ago and I was totally blown away. I spent the next few months collecting their back catalog and playing them for as many other friends as I could. Thanks, Rausch.
Bringing us back up to modern times, as I was whittling down my favorite albums of 2007, I came across The White Stripes’ Icky Thump, a record that I really enjoyed when I first heard it and then, for some odd reason, totally forgot about a little more than a month later. Granted, it came out during the summer and a lot of good records came out during the summer, so in my mind at least, this is a totally understandable oversight. But boy am I glad I started listening to it again…
They had very much fallen off my radar after their previous record, Get Behind Me Satan, which I thought sounded forced and unoriginal. In fact, I hadn’t loved one of their records beginning to end since White Blood Cells. I guess that makes me a snob or something. I also stopped liking The Who after John Entwhistle died…go figure.
Icky Thump, though, marks a return to form for Jack and Meg. That’s not to say that there isn’t growth evident on this record, because there most certainly is. The songwriting on ”Little Cream Soda” is particularly good and ”You Don’t Know What Love Is (you just do as you’re told)” is perhaps the best song in any genre for the entire year of 2007. The title alone nearly merits that praise by itself. Very few songwriters are as good at cutting to the quick as Jack White.
Also back is the hard rocking, simplistic garage sound that they had slowly embellished over the past two records. Jack’s guitar has never sounded better on record and Meg seems to have at least sat through a few more drum lessons, adding some new tricks to her repertoire. Most importantly, Icky Thump has highs and lows, consonance and dissonance and some truly gut-wrenching guitar solos. A tour-de-force cover of ”Conquest” certainly helps, too. Patti Page has never sounded better.
In the end, the fact that over half of this album is instantly in my ”classic tracks” bin put it over the top. I could listen to ”Icky Thump,” ”300MPH Torrential Outpour Blues,” ”You Don’t Know What Love Is,” ”Conquest,” ”Bone Broke,” ”Little Cream Soda,” ”Rag and Bone” and ”Catch Hell Blues” over and over again. It’s quite the line-up for a band that keeps moving forward while keeping a foot suck firmly in their roots. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about: (via the White Stripes Wikipedia entry)
In regards to rare recordings of the band:
The most rare recording has yet to be discovered. According to Jack White, he recorded an as-yet unheard song on a record. White and Brian Muldoon hid 100 records in 100 pieces of furniture in 2004 in cele- bration of Muldoon’s 25th year of upholstering furniture in Detroit. Says White, ”we put 100 records in 100 pieces that year, and maybe, one day, they’ll be found. This is a record no one has ever heard and maybe will never hear, but it’s a nice time capsule. I’m sure a lot of upholsterers would open up a chair, pull out that record and throw it away, so that’s the funny part about it.”
Now, that, my friends is reason enough for me to include them on this list. Truly awesome.
Speaking of truly awesome…
(2007-12-05 14:10)
I was all set to finish up my review of the next album on my Top Ten list, The Apples In Stereo’s New Magnetic Wonder when I started listening to a record that I just downloaded the other night, Caribou’s Andorra.
I was halted in my tracks, breathless.
I’ve long been a fan of orchestral pop music. It’s been making a comeback in the past few years, with Sufjan Stevens’ state-theme albums and all, which I like. I mean, I have the Beach Boys ”In My Room” on my Top Five All-Time Songs. I habitually listen to tracks from their unreleased opus, Smile. I don’t necessarily have an obsession as much as a healthy respect and admiration for the genre, let’s put it that way.
Now, I know jack shit about Caribou, aside from the fact that it’s one guy, Daniel Snaith. Kind of like Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor…except not unnecessarily angry about everything. In fact, most of this album, and most orchestral pop in general in my opinion, alternates between two distinct emotions: bliss and melancholy.
An example of the melancholy side on Andorra is the song ”Desiree,” which plays out like a pleading letter to a lost love, se to a heartbreakingly beautiful backdrop of harp and woodwinds, of course.
On the other side of the coin is ”Melody Day”…wait, that’s also melancholy. It has it’s uplifting moments, though. Actually, for the most part, this is a beautifully melancholy album, full of lost loves and missed opportunities. It evokes memories of the Beach Boys orchestration and harmonies (even if he is harmonizing with himself, which is totally cheating) and Elliott Smith’s beautiful defeat and pain. It melds these and many other influences that I’m not even close to savvy enough to catch into a wonderful end result.
Since I started writing this review, I’ve listened to Andorra twice through. The second time around, it was just as captivating and gorgeous as the first. I can’t imagine what the third listen will bring, and that’s something you can’t say about a lot of records these days. That’s why, at first blush, I decided to throw Andorra up on my Top Ten Albums of 2007 list.
(2007-12-06 10:15)
Apples In Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder
It had been almost five full years since the last proper Apples In Stereo album when I was up late one night in December of last year, watching The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Stephen was conducting a guitar solo competition between himself and the lead guitarist for The Decemberists. The back story is readily available, if you’re interested, but I’m not going to get into it here. The important thing about the show that night was that, the opening act was musician Robert Schneider, who performed the playfully irreverent (and completely objective) ”Stephen, Stephen.”
I was shocked.
Other people, important, on-TV kind of people knew and loved Schneider enough to have him on their show five years after his band, The Apples In Stereo had released their last album?! What the hell?
Not too much later, I heard that they were, in fact, back together, with a slightly different line-up and that a new album was imminent. Joy! I was a huge fan of their last two records, Discovery of a World Inside the Moone and Velocity of Sound, which were still in my heavy music rotation. Go check them out, they’re that good.
Two months after the impromptu appearance on the Colbert Report, Schneider’s Apples In Stereo released New Magnetic Wonder. It was everything I had been waiting for.
The psychedelic production, the starry-eyed lyrics, the boundless enthusiasm were all still there. How someone can’t listen to a song like ”Energy,” with lyrics like ”the world is made of energy and there’s a lot inside of you and a lot inside of me” and not have their mood turned around is beyond me. But that’s not all, the entire album is full of gems, from ”Seven Stars” to the blatant enthusiasm of ”Sun Is Out” and ”Can You Feel It?” this is an entire record made to put you in a good, toe-tapping mood.
In fact, just about the only bad thing about this album is the cover art, which, let’s face it, is pretty damned ugly. I like to think that it’s a defense mechanism, put there to guard against those people who wouldn’t truly appreciate it.
(2007-12-10 12:26)
The Post Where Nate Decides to Give Up On Music Reviews and Just Do A List Already
So, I was sitting around the other night, re-reading some of my posts here on Sod. I do this often. It’s a great way to bask in my glory. But seriously, I was re-reading my music reviews so far, so I could decide which to review next. After reading through them all, I realized something that I had alluded to earlier, these aren’t so much reviews of the albums as they were blatant adoration of them. Essentially, I was taking 5-8 paragraphs to tell you all how much I loved these records, which should already be obvious. I mean, they’re on my list, for crying out loud.
So, in lieu of another post where I make sweet, sweet love to each and every one of my favorite albums from 2007, I’m just going to do the entire list right here, right now. Each album will be recapped with a quick paragraph and possibly an mp3 or a Youtube link. For those records that I’ve previously reviewed, I will simply link to my earlier article about them.
That is all. Let’s do this.
10. Caribou-Andorra
9. Les Savy Fav-Let’s Stay Friends
This is just a kickass rock record that will have your feet tappin’ and your head thrashing from start to finish. I first heard ”The Year Before The Year 2000” on the radio and I was immediately hooked. The utter forcefulness of this record is just captivating.
Just for the record, this is a fan-made video. Also, it’s the shit.
This album made me cry the first time I listened to it. I’m not even kidding. Between the high-registered, wailing voice and plaintive guitar and the highly personal subject matter, I was a total mess. Sounding little a slightly effeminate Hank Williams Sr., Grand Forks, ND native Tom Brosseau lays out a tribute album to the 1997 Red River flood on its tenth anniversary, and its brutal in its beauty. For those of us that lived through The Flood, this album stands as a testament to the perseverance of our hometown. It also happens to be a great record.
7. The White Stripes-Icky Thump
The fact that this album made my Top Ten is evidence that I’m getting old. Eschewing the studio chicanery and sonic messing-around and getting down to beautiful melodies, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy is at the top of his talents and is surrounded by possibly the most talented group of musicians in rock at the moment. It’s really quite a sight to behold. So, never mind the fact that it sounds like a record straight out of the ’70’s. It’s good music that’s good for you.
5. Apples In Stereo-New Magnetic Wonder
4. The Weakerthans-Reunion Tour
The Weakerthans are the kind of band that your English professors would start, if they had spent as much time practicing guitar as they did reading Faulkner. Every time I listen to one of their records, it takes me right back home to the plains, with the high blue skies above me and the welcoming desolation all around. John K. Samson is one of the best songwriters around and the band more than ably surrounds his words in 4/4 time. Plus, they’re from Winnipeg!
3. Spoon-Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
2. Radiohead-In Rainbows
The slow, intricate build to a cathartic release, again and again. The slightly awkward lyrics that are sung with such conviction and passion. The ominous feeling that hangs in the air, surrounded by earnest passion. This is the New York City band The National in a nutshell. To tell the truth, I’ve barely listened to the actual studio recording of this album. Right after the release of Boxer, one of the mp3 blogs that I frequent posted an entire live session the band did on French radio. [11]You can find it here. It includes performances of most of the songs from Boxer and proves that The National is the kind of band that can be best appreciated in a live setting. I’ve had the extreme pleasure of seeing them twice in the past year and both times, I was blown away.
Honorable Mentions
Jens Lekman-Night Falls Over Kortedala - He’s Swedish and knows how to make a genuinely en- joyable record, which is more than you can say about The Hives.
John Vanderslice-Emerald City - His second best record about 9/11, so far.
Little Lebowski Urban Achievers-Is This A Party or An Intervention? - the band that reminds me of my years in college, in a good way. And, they’re from Minneapolis!
MIA-Kala - Surprised? Don’t be. She rocks.