Year's End: Sounds Beyond Our Borders
Sometimes Music From Outside Of Athens Filters Into Our Little Bubble. These 25 Albums Were Worth A Little Attention And More Than A Couple Of Listens.
originally published December 26, 2007
1. Art Brut
It's a Bit Complicated
Art Brut's It's a Bit Complicated got pegged as Bang Bang Rock 'n' Roll: Part Two, but it's a different beast altogether. Where Bang blasted bipolar adolescence, Complicated gives startlingly unromantic voice to the post-collegiate wasteland years. We had months to appreciate the group's debut before making our judgments; that so many missed the mark on Art Brut's follow-up just goes to show how careful and complex a writer Eddie Argos is.
Art Brut moves from early to late adolescence, perhaps a better time, but maintains essentially the same concerns: girls, pop music, laziness. Note that it's only "a bit" complicated, which is all that's necessary. Someday these guys may yet grow up, but I'm not looking forward to it.
2. M.I.A.
Kala
Kala is the year's greatest act of thievery, or at least the best use of a musical loan. The best tracks here are built from bits of other songs - "Paper Planes" from The Clash and Wreckx-N-Effect, "20 Dollar" from New Order's "Blue Monday" and Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" - but in M.I.A.'s hands they become something else entirely, something both familiar and alien, like musical déjà vu.
3. The National
Boxer
Languid, modest and tremendously satisfying, The National's newest album does nothing more so than get right into your head and slide its way down to your heart. Matt Berninger's lovelorn voice balances with occasional moments punctuated by piano, string and brass (those horns on opener "Fake Empire"!), making Boxer a riffy slow-burn for a reliably poetic band.
4. Panda Bear
Person Pitch
God only knows there've been too many odes to the Beach Boys in the last several years; by now, Brian Wilson's face must be permanently flush from all the flattering. But Person Pitch is probably the best yet, a nearly peerless symphony to God by way of Wilson. Trebly jams and meandering ambient grooves gel into the greatest pop album of the year. Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox surpasses anything his band Animal Collective has ever done.
5. Arcade Fire
Neon Bible
You who said, hey, it's just not as good as their first album? Wrong!
6. Dinosaur Jr.
Beyond
Reuniting for its first album by the original lineup since 1988's Bug, the influential indie trio created a collection of sludgy guitar-rock wedded to harmonious pop. Between J. Mascis' virtuosic solos and words of indifference, he's matured enough to allow Lou Barlow two melancholic breather tracks. Mascis' production shines, and we're left with the exact stunning album three men at this age and with their baggage could have made.
7. R. Kelly
Double Up
It wasn't about more "Trapped in the Closet." If anything, Double Up was about proving R. Kelly could make a remarkably coherent and consistent album, probably the best he's put out, although it may not end up in many "best of" lists. Usually, guest stars show up the main attraction, but it's Kells who shines most here.
8. Stars of the Lid
And Their Refinement of the Decline
The eons that floated by while waiting for this album were used by Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride to further drift into the ether, paring their warmest tones down to wisps of orchestral drift. More minimal than any of their previous work, yet more beautiful for it. Check out "December Hunting For Vegetarian Fuckface," the perfect, er, refinement of ambient music.
9. The White Stripes
Icky Thump
The White Stripes are no longer the brash Young Turks they were five years ago, no longer the underground heroes coming to save Rock from the Britneys of the world. They've settled into a comfortable middle age as the coolest band your parents have heard of. But somebody forgot to tell Jack and Meg that their moment has passed, because Icky Thump is as dark, weird and funny as anything they've ever recorded. If this is what middle age sounds like, bring on the Propecia.
10. Castanets
In the Vines
With its country-rock ramblers, feedback deluges, and eerie folk songs, Castanets' third album demonstrates just how catholic Ray Raposa's taste is. Better yet, he channels his many influences not into a pastiche, but into a charitable aesthetic conversation.
11. LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver
When a band can build a career on the strength of one song, it's a small miracle that James Murphy's group can come up with a three-song sequence as exciting, moving and funny as "North American Scum," "Someone Great" and "All My Friends," three songs that, if heard at the right moment, can tell you exactly who and where you are. That all of LCD's second album is nearly as good is just a bonus.
12. Kanye West
Graduation
As a rapper, West has somehow managed to get worse since The College Dropout - he said he wanted to make his lyrics less specific and therefore more accessible to a wider audience, but he only succeeded in making them more generic or even laughable (e.g. "I'm like Charles Barkley meets Gnarls Barkley"). But when West puts his mind to it, he can brag like nobody else, and he's got a sense of humor and humility that keeps his boasts charming and his social commentary cutting. When his words match up to the alternately glittering and mournful Southern synths on tracks like "Can't Tell Me Nothing," the effect is staggering.
13. Electric 6
I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master
Dick Valentine, lead singer of the Electric 6, is the Walt Whitman of 2007, insofar as his voice sounds like America: loud, cartoonishly masculine and obsessed with sex, appearance and pop culture. Whitman could be lyrical and starry-eyed, but today's America sings all self-obsessed and sexist. Full of great lines and great rock music, Exterminate is the smartest critique of deluded decadence you'll ever dance to.
14 & 15. Deerhunter
Cryptograms
Fluorescent Grey EP
Atlanta was center stage somewhere other than the hip-hop world in '07, and Deerhunter's mostly the reason why. A young frenetic group of five suddenly clicked into a band that had a firm grasp on everything: songwriting, texture, atmosphere and the right influences. Blending early shoegaze and gloomy post-punk while smearing a liberal dose of drone and lo-fi avant-garde grit over it all, Deerhunter not only released Cryptograms, a stunning album full of moody beauty, but had enough left over to fill an EP that was equally stunning.
16 & 17. Lil Wayne
The Drought is Over 2
Da Drought 3
As fans eagerly await Tha Carter III, rap's most bizarre, and at times silliest, lyricist released seven (!) mixtapes of original songs this year. These two are the pinnacle, as Weezy lays out drugged-out and boastful raps, slaying all competition in the process. The Drought is Over 2 features "I Feel Like Dying," with a stunning verse espousing the metaphysical joys of painkillers. On Da Drought 3, Young Carter spits ferocious verses over the year's most recognizable beats, referencing Harry & the Hendersons and Gremlins. Like many, he's fond of calling himself the best rapper alive, but with discs like these, he comes closer to actuality with every release.
18. Grinderman
Grinderman
A healthy rebuke to the it's-gotta-be-new-to-be-good attitude of too much music writing, the self-titled debut of Nick Cave's hard-charging Grinderman kicks down the doors of predictable rock-and-roll tropes. Cave just turned 50, and while other bands sing about wanting girls, he's already had 'em all and moved on. Thankfully, Grinderman's guitar caterwauls and rollicking basslines counterbalance Cave's still irksome indulgence in silliness (the lyrics in "No Pussy Blues," the vocal bee imitation in "Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars").
19. Britney Spears
Blackout
Critics have seemingly allowed themselves to embrace Blackout by hearing it as a producer's album that Britney had little part in. Then again, most critics have never made an album. Everything about Blackout sounds meticulous, including and especially the singing; Britney didn't write it, but she embodies it. That's the pop machine at full output, and Brit's a part of it as much as the producers. Moreover, she's the center of it. Without her, there's nothing.
20. Growing
Vision Swim
Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria continue to shrug off labels. Vision Swim is the first release from the duo to move away from drone almost entirely, and while it's easy to miss their pastoral power, wherever they go is exciting. Shards, bleeps, shimmers, tsunamis - they wrench so many unexpected sounds from their guitars, channel-fading and reverbing them all into a irresistible rhythm soup.
21. Charalambides
Likeness
22. The Field
From Here We Go Sublime
Stylistically, these two artists are worlds apart - Charalambides plays percussionless, almost-amorphous music for guitars and voice, while The Field creates ecstatic minimal techno by looping millisecond-long clips from pop songs. But on their most recent albums, both remind us of the same truism: repetitive music's only as good as the notes being repeated. Rather than attempt to alchemize the mundane into the sublime through faux-tribal incantation, Charalambides and The Field mine richly suggestive fragments of sound for all they're worth.
23. Linda Thompson
Versatile Heart
Versatile Heart, from the woman best known as the onetime spouse of guitar genius Richard Thompson, was quietly one of the best records of 2007, steadily munching its way toward your heart, leaving holes that were both painful and beautifully patterned. Here's hoping she steps up the pace a little for the next one.
24. Wolves in the Throne Room
Two Hunters
Black metal can rarely pull off the epic thing and remain black metal, but Wolves in the Throne Room has created a huge and majestic album that will appeal to pretty much everyone. Maintaining a tightrope balance of grim and lovely, warm and cold, the Olympia, WA, forest-dwellers hit the ethereal vibe, post-rock out, then pummel you with black fury.
25. Grand Buffet
The Haunted Fucking Gazebo EP
On the white-rapper spectrum, this Pennsylvania duo falls somewhere between straight-up nerdcore (MC Chris, Athens' own Flip Scoldjah) and thesaurus-memorizing backpackers like those of Aesop Rock. The dense, hyper-literate rhymes are eminently quotable, but it's the beats - thumping, joyous, restless, equally reminiscent of both videogame music and Rage Against the Machine - that keep bringing me back.
Other Shit That Made 2007 Better Than You Remember
- Bebel Gilberto Momento
- Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga
- New Pornographers Challengers
- The Octopus Project Hello, Avalanche
- Black Lips Good Bad Not Evil
- Mavis Staples We'll Never Turn Back
- The Frames The Cost
- Bat For Lashes Fur and Gold
- The Go! Team Proof of Youth
- Prince Planet Earth
- St. Vincent
- Mavis Staples We'll Never Turn Back
- Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings 100 Days, 100 Nights
- A Fine Frenzy One Cell in the Sea
- Mika Life in Cartoon Motion
- Cass McCombs Dropping the Writ
- Bettye LaVette Scene of the Crime
- Bonde do Rolê With Lasers
- Bill Callahan Woke on a Whaleheart
- Björk Volta
- Modest Mouse We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
- Once soundtrack
- P.J. Harvey White Chalk
- Radiohead In Rainbows
- Loudon Wainwright III Strange Weirdos
- Pink Reason
- Cleaning The Mirror
- Times New Viking Presents the Paisley Reich
- Magnolia Electric Co. Sojourner
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