Year's End: The Best Local Albums of 2007

There Is A Difference Between Liking Something Because It's Good And Thinking Something's Good Just Because You Like It. Here's What Was Good. Here's What We Liked.

originally published December 26, 2007

1. Telenovela

Saffron Songs

If (and perhaps only if) you hold Royal Trux, Carole King and Caetano Veloso in equally high regard, then Saffron Songs will make perfect sense to you. Otherwise, you're bound at some point to feel uneasy. Which is fine, because this album constantly asks difficult aesthetic and spiritual questions. Like Walker Percy's best novels, Saffron Songs works to hammer out a third path, a route safe for those who doubt as strongly as they believe. And if all that sounds too heavy, you can at least enjoy the righteous guitar solos.

Phillip Buchan

You never really forget about Telenovela once you've listened closely. The band's perfect little songs, like "Crazy Love" and "Surrogate Magic," come back to you at the strangest times, little bursts of sunshine intruding happily on your dreary day. They are perhaps out of place in indie music's year of grandiosity, but the fact that Joanna Newsom gets more attention just because her songs are longer - while doing the same thing, but worse - is a sign of our misplaced priorities.

Michael Barthel

2. Of Montreal

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

Icons, Abstract Thee! EP

Taking prescription drugs to make music to take prescription drugs to, Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes gave birth to Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? in Norway, where his wife was doing the same to their daughter, and in Athens, where the rest of his problems lived. Writing songs about real predicaments and setting them in the real world, however, didn’t diminish the music’s weirdness, just ratcheted up the immediacy of Of Montreal’s Beatles-meets-Prince grooves. The accompanying Icons, Abstract Thee! EP only proved Barnes had as many hooks as issues.

Stephen Deusner

3. Vic Chesnutt

North Star Deserter

Sometimes friends and family know you better than you know yourself, so when Vic Chesnutt put his latest album under the auspices of longtime pal and film director Jem Cohen, North Star Deserter distilled what's been most affecting about Chesnutt's songwriting. Pairing Chesnutt's haunted Southern gothic approach to certain songs with musicians from epic acts like Godspeed You! Black Emperor allowed for gravity without bombast, while not entirely excising Chesnutt's ribald tendencies. Matchless.

Chris Hassiotis

4. The Lolligags

Wired Up EP

Leslie Dallion and Ryan Breegle got wired on sugar and started a band, and the world is a better place for it. These four songs provide a clearer, cleaner high than much of the fuzz and mope that's around, but they aren't so twee as to remove the sex from music. Think Emily Watson telling Adam Sandler she wants to eat his eyeballs in Punch Drunk Love.

Hillary Brown

5. Madeline

The Slow Bang

Should works stand on their own, free of other trappings? Can they be just as satisfying? Madeline Adams' early '07 album The Slow Bang stands as a firm argument that watching an artist over time can only enhance appreciation for an already strong statement. That the same young songwriter whose early recordings charmed with sincerity could grow into such a cohesive performer and own her own melancholy is more than rewarding. Her lambent lyrics and incandescent vocals combine here as they always hinted at in the past. More, more to come.

Chris Hassiotis

6. King of Prussia

Save the Scene

No band besides King of Prussia could relaunch the Kindercore label. (That's a compliment.) Complex and thoughtful without making sure everyone knows it's complex and thoughtful, you can relate to King of Prussia's songs as cutesy tunes or as meticulous songcraft, sometimes both at the same time. With local bands, it's easy to overlook the album in favor of live shows, but make no mistake: Save the Scene is one hell of a pop album, and the rest is just gravy.

Michael Barthel

7. Phosphorescent

Pride

So Matthew Houck split town back in February and now Brooklyn gets to claim him as a resident, but most of Pride, Phosphorescent's third full-length, was written, recorded and wrestled with here in Athens. The looping, ethereal album looks at things wide-eyed and takes nothing for granted, all wistful and hopeful and jittery and elevating. Houck's voice winds its way through the songs' vowels as only a born-and-raised Southerner's can, sounding like an early morning's coffee as much as the night before's rougher stuff. Our little Athens, GA, excels at those sounds.

Chris Hassiotis

8. The Ginger Envelope

Edible Orchids

It can be dangerous doing indie-folk, which lends itself to dull self-regard, but the Ginger Envelope’s stately debut full-length is subtle, never slight, thanks to the relative strengths of its two founding members, who tend to these songs as obsessively as a horticulturist to his own orchids. Patrick Carey delivers his softly self-reflective lyrics in an introverted voice that sounds like he engages the world only reluctantly, and Matt Stoessel’s pedal steel sweeps through these songs adding unexpected country yearning.

Stephen Deusner

9. Long-Legged Woman

Newtown Nights EP

Months later and this mini-album still gets thrown on the stereo; what Gabe Vodicka and Justin Flowers have hit upon here impresses. Here's hoping they stay wrapped in this ghostly gauzy grainy shroud for some time, while still pushing the louder boundaries they've lately dived into. Hushed guitar, soft noise, buried vocals, everything echoed into a blur. Like an old security camera tape of the Velvet Underground in an endless hall of mirrors.

Michael Wehunt

10. Titans of Filth

Feats of Strength EP

On last year's sardonically titled Best Behavior EP, Sam Grindstaff and his Titans of Filth weaved pretty damn vivid tales of Southern youths rejecting narrow-minded social mores and, instead, "listening to the Rolling Stones' advice." Here they're taking a bit of the Stones' advice as well, but on the stylistic tip: remaining in the pop-rock realm but moving beyond B-chord-let's-go Square One into bits of genre experimentation. "Sympathetic Mind" has an early Elvis Costello shuffle that two-steps through the parallels between high school paranoia and Homeland Security bullshit, and "Swinging Lovers" is a disco-era Stones filtered through the Titans' built-in charm.

Jeff Tobias

Four Low-Profile Local Releases Deserving Attention

Chartreuse

Summit EP

To the 70 people who own this limited three-incher from Athenian Drew Smith: high-five! Creating the most impressive local ambient music out there, Chartreuse evokes grey afternoons and window fog while keeping the drones warm and cozy. Echoes of Rafael Toral and Fennesz also swirl into the sunshine that breaks through the cloud cover. Do your homework to this, then take a looooong nap.

Michael Wehunt

Broken Bits

Frangible Tangible!!!

A complete surprise, and a wonderful one, the second Broken Bits album is all Aaron Gentry all the time, creating pop songs that dazzle with their melodies and lyrics. It's sort of Magnetic Fields minus Stephin Merritt's jerk-ass attitude plus an ineffable Athenian something.

Hillary Brown

Jeremiah Cymerman

Big Exploitation

Too often, the jazz-based, genre-crossing music that comes out of New York City's downtown scene is frustratingly carnivalesque. Cymerman, a former Athenian who recruited a number of locals for this release, continues to gain prominence in that crowd without picking up its bad habits. Big Exploitation certainly mixes modes - its songs snap within seconds from heavy metal to free-jazz. But it also swings with a desperate-as-your-life abandon that makes it feel astonishingly sincere, a far cry from a postmodern grab bag.

Phillip Buchan

Jdown Valmont

The End of the Beginning mixtape

If there's anything to be said about local hip-hop in 2007, it's that when it comes to albums, we're definitely at the point where it's quantity over quality, with a lot of middle-of-the-road releases that promise more for the future than they deliver in the here and now. One standout is UGA student Jdown Valmont, a rapper whose nimble rhymes and refusal to be so catholic about scene politics are refreshing; in a crowd packed with posturing and mean-mugging, it's great to hear a grin.

Chris Hassiotis

Over the Past 12 Months, Local Musicians Released the Following Albums

• A.R.S. Welcome 2 Clarke County…
• Adam Payne Band Untitled
• Aegis of Athena Code of Infamy EP
• American Cheeseburger American Cheeseburger 7"
• American Cheeseburger Modern Advice 7"
• Ayo Black Boy Lost
• BadKat Alternative Mix mixtape
• Better People Salvia Inside the Broken Home EP
• Blue Flashing Light Shadowboxing
• Bo Bedingfield & the Wydelles Cleargreen EP
• The Broken Bits Frangible Tangible!!!
• The Bros. Marler Songs for Pluto
• C-Fre$h Self-Made mixtape
• Captain #1 The Humble
• Celerity 180 Nowhere Rd. EP
• Chartreuse Summit EP
• The Cherokee Temporary Living
• Vic Chesnutt North Star Deserter
• Christopher's Liver Stop Apologizing EP
• Christopher's Liver Mon Voyage
• The Corduroy Road Diapason EP
• The Corduroy Road Don't Forget to Feel EP
• Crumbling Arches The Somnambulist
• Brantley De'Angelo I Did It for Love
• Don Chambers + GOAT I Got the Recollection of the Blood of the Lamb
• Dubconscious Stereotype EP
• Dylan Blues Project Possum Hollow Road
• Electa Villain untitled studio EP
• Elite tha Showstoppa A Hater's Motivation Vol. 1 mixtape
• Fabulous Bird Lead Me to the Troubadour EP
• Figaro Picture This Vol. 1 mixtape
• Folklore Carpenter's Falls EP
• Folklore The Ghost of H.W. Beaverman
• Georgia Guitar Quartet Puzzle
• The Ginger Envelope Edible Orchids
• Guff Symphony of Voices
• Gus D. The Search
• Ham1 The Captain's Table
• Hope For Agoldensummer Night Boat to Naxos EP
• Hope For Agoldensummer Ariadne Thread
• Patterson Hood Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
• Hot New Mexicans Wah… EP
• Drury Ingh Drawings
• Ishues Civil Unrest
• Japancakes Giving Machines
• Japancakes Loveless
• Je Suis France Afrikan Majik
• Kebert Xela kebert.xela EP
• King of Prussia Save the Scene
• Nick Light The World Forgetting by the World Forgot
• The Lolligags Wired EP
• Long Legged Woman Delay 2007 EP
• Long Legged Woman The End of False Religion EP
• Long Legged Woman 2 EP
• Long Legged Woman Newtown Nights EP
• Madeline The Slow Bang
• Mama's Love The Willow Street Sessions
• Martyr & Pistol The Misanthrope
• Maserati Inventions for the New Season
• The Matt Kurz One Impending Doom is No Excuse!
• Bain Mattox Bird in the Hand
• Ménage 'a Twang Ménage 'a Twang
• Misfortune 500 Before This Winter Ends
• Caroline Monroe Ghost Town
• Charles Ashley Moore Charles Ashley Moore
• Kate Morrissey Nobody, Too
• Mouser / Quiet Hooves Snakemouth Maintenance Man
• Mystro Digital Camouflage mixtape
• Nate Nelson Knobs Have Turned
• Of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
• Of Montreal Icons, Abstract Thee EP
• Old White Women Lil' Ronny EP
• Packway Handle Band Extreme: Live in 2006 EP
• Phosphorescent Pride
• Pegasuses-XL Third EP
• The Pendletons Oh, Me!
• Perpetual Groove LiveLoveDie
• Pride Parade V EP
• Producto Producto 3
• Pylon Gyrate Plus
• Rand Lines Trio Learning Sanskrit
• Red Legs The Iceberg Theory EP
• R.E.M. R.E.M. Live
• Rorshak Ghost of Frankenstein Rhyme
• The 63 Crayons Spoils for Survivors
• Scarlet Snow Inclined
• Son 1 The American Hero: A Soldier's Story
• The Suex Effect Faces of the Tree
• The Sum Everyone EP
• Summerbirds in the Cellar Druids
• Super Monkey Grunt EP
• Supercluster Special 5 EP
• Sweet Teeth From the Fourth Hand of the Buddha the Lotus Was Born For the Seventh Time
• Sweet-Tooth Simpleton & the Simple Tones Santana's Greatest Hits
• Telenovela Saffron Songs
• Timber For Never & Always
• Tishamingo The Point
• Titans of Filth Feats of Strength EP
• William Tonks Catch
• Valkyrie Feeding the Lesser Keys
• Jdown Valmont The End of the Beginning mixtape
• Jdown Valmont F.A.M.E. mixtape
• Various Artists AthFest 2007
• Various Artists AthFest 2007 Vol. 2
• Various Artists Classic City Connections
• Various Artists Collect THIS: The Ivywood Collective
• Various Artists Deeded to Itself: Athens Southernoise
• Various Artists Finest Worksongs: Athens Bands Play the Music of R.E.M.
• Various Artists Xmas-3: The War on Christmas
• Vereencorp Tangible Content
• We Versus the Shark EP of Bees EP / We Wanted a New Government Not Odd Time Signatures DVD
• Wedge Heavensville
• Allison Weiss An Eight Song Tribute to Feeling Bad & Feeling Better
• Travis Williams Reparations: The Rape Tape Vol. 1 mixtape
• Travis Williams Lean on Me mixtape
• Wilma Pieces of the Album Pieces EP