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Year-End Coverage

Top 50 Albums 2007

The Staff :: 8 January 2008 |                

Bright Eyes
Four Winds EP
(Saddle Creek)

The sound of Bright Eyes gets less strange and more accomplished with every passing album. On the heels of the critically adored I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005), the Four Winds EP (and follow-up full-length Cassadaga) is the closest Conor Oberst and crew have ever coming to sonically deserving that New Dylan tag he's always been sidled with. So why did people stop paying attention? It's also the closest he's ever come to sounding like the Counting Crows, but I digress. Without the trademark self-indulgent bullshit that Oberst feels compelled to open every album with, Four Winds is a concise document of an evolving musician.

Filled with shades of Blonde on Blonde (1966), it's a traditionalist folk-rock album that draws on producer/band member Mike Mogis' considerable experience with the genre as the frontman of forgotten group Lullaby For the Working Class. For perhaps the first time, Oberst doesn't sound like he's forcing anything. For fans of harder alt.country (or maybe just me), I'm Wide Awake often felt like an invasion, authenticity-granting Emmylou Harris backing vocals and all. With Four Winds, he's settled into a sound that feels anything but artificial. He's grown up as a singer, no longer as prone to that deal-breaking emo-waver; likewise, his songwriting has expanded beyond the confines of his own broken heart. It's stirring to hear him deal with political issues on the title track, just as it is to hear him deal with his own missing direction on "Tourist Trap" -- one of the best songs he's ever done -- without slipping into typical sad-sack mode. Dude may have Blood on the Tracks (1975) in him yet.


Media
Four Winds [Stream]
Four Winds [Video]
Tourist Trap [Stream]

David Greenwald

David Thomas Broughton
David Thomas Broughton vs. 7 Hertz EP
(Acuarela)

David Thomas Broughton is on the fast-track towards making one hell of an album. It's been EPs and collections and the 2006 CMG Fantasy Podcast covers since his debut The Complete Guide to Insufficiency (2005) laid the striking blueprint; this EP/mini-album/side project/whatever-we're-supposed-to-call-it may be his finest work to date. Here Broughton's flushed ache of a voice and acoustic guitar and their looped selves are embellished all too aptly by the strings of the 7 Hertz posse, resulting in music that feels simple yet titanic, intimate yet sweeping, a host of revelatory moments occupying the span between those poles.

"Weight of My Love" and "River Outlet" are monolithic bookends. The former's ten minutes eviscerate a love ballad; it grows and churns and echoes itself before falling upon a solemn resolve, of course. I mean, who has a love that'll weigh more than DTB's? Nobody, that's who. The twenty-two minutes of "River Outlet" are gripping and astounding; the three-chord repetition at the heart of the track becomes a mantra around which the arrangement clusters and then unfurls, depicting the spell Broughton's falling under. With his final utterance of "my mind is an open sky" the song's wisp of a funnel cloud touches down with the ocean whirlpool below and becomes a hurricane. Although that core progression is technically a descent, its totality amounts to an ascent into oblivion. Mind = blown.

So, almost inevitably, "No Great Shakes" and "Fisted Hand" feel like lesser reflections of their neighbors; luckily, the minute-long "Jolly" cuts through the center of this collection like the slight and charming wink that it is. It's as if David's telling us not to take all this too seriously, that he's just warming up -- an attitude that's probably the only real reason this is being marketed as a "whatever" and we're not counting an hour of music as one of the year's official full-lengths. But if vs. 7 Hertz is just some stretching, I'm shaking at the thought of David Thomas Broughton getting his game on for really real.


Media
N/A

Chet Betz

Leonard Cohen
Songs of Leonard Cohen / Songs From a Room / Songs of Love & Hate
(Sony/BMG)

Classic buyer’s remorse: I don’t know why the label put out these re-issues: maybe it was just that time to cash in on Ole’ Man Cohen, you know, send a couple of engineers into the archives, re-master some shit, find some alternate takes. Throw together some liner notes and touch up the artwork. For whatever reason they put this stuff out (It is, after all, like the 40th anniversary of the debut record.), it seems to me that, beyond any logical corporate moves, re-issues, at their untainted core, are intended to help or even encourage us to reconsider an important artist. Approaching these three albums from that angle, I find myself a changed man absolutely blown out of my bunker, fully stoned from the Kool-Aid. Like any number of classic artists, Cohen was one of those people I had listened to and respected – perhaps out of obligation -- but for one reason or another had glossed over in order to throw my eggs in the Bob Dylan or Lou Reed basket, thinking I had heard enough smarty-pants, edgy lyricists to get through a lifetime.

And you know what, I’m really glad I ignored Cohen for this long. If I hadn’t put this love affair off, I would have been possibly denied my greatest musical moments of 2007. That act of discovery is touching, reinvigorating, and an essential part of the musical experience. When you stumble upon an artist, not by way of some snarky music site, dinosaur print magazine, or some unbearable music-head at the bar, but just because some charming re-issues showed up on your lap, it’s akin to the musical gods gently lifting your heart from your chest and taking a life-changing bite out of it, infecting your soul with the elevated knowledge encased in their saliva. Like, OK, I finally “get” it.

What is there to really say here? If you already know Leonard Cohen, like the way I know Dylan and Reed, then heck you’re content that someone still cares and, I dunno, maybe you’ll get a kick out the alternate versions of “Bird on a Wire” and “The Dress Rehearsal Rag.” If you’re a relative virgin like I was, then why should I ruin the initial infusion of startling, meek awe? At least: imagine a songwriter that designs his music as intimately as he can, at times uncomfortably so with the basest means possible. The arrangements range from sparsely picked acoustic guitar and loping bass to the sweet swell of strings and the carnival-esque pounding of drums. The lyrics and their earnest delivery are stunning, much more approachable than anything you read in the Pynchon-aping Cohen novel Beautiful Losers. If that description doesn’t work, let me put it in more concrete terms: consider those contemporary New York music intellectuals, the Walkmen, stripped of their fierce electric gear and forced to play with wooden noise and practice amps and made to rely on the directness of thoughtful lyricism and beautifully simple songs and you’ll get a sense of what you’re in for. Ultimately it makes me wonder why the Walkmen didn’t cover one of these records instead of Pussycats. Hamilton Leithauser, I sure hope you’re reading this.

Media
Stranger Song [Live on the Julie Felix Show]

Andre Perry

Danny!
Danny! Is Dead EP
(Badenov Record/1911 Music)

Here. Go read Clay's review because methinks you may have stepped over it. Plus, Danny! raps enough about himself, so precisely mind you (over every sample [sue me if this EP, to me, recorded quickly like a Christmas gift basket of nuts and teas, half-expected but always welcomed more than a demo cheese log or B-side card bouquet, works like a cleverly laced series of breaks; pockets of cool, comfortable witticisms all with the same purpose in mind] like a guy totally in love with himself and every tic of what he's creating on his own) that he moves absurdly, even cartoonishly, past the point of arrogance into ridiculous indulgence. Soon, it's true, we'll all be on Def Jux's jawn.


Media
The World is Yours [Stream]

Dom Sinacola

Hot Chip
DJ Kicks
(!K7)

A definitive party mix, you just knew Hot Chip's contribution to the DJ Kicks series was going to be fun. An endearing jumble of classic funk, old school rap, Motown and techno, the mix conveys the genuineness (and nerdiness) with which Hot Chip curate and testify to their love of music. Eccentrics like Tom Zé and crate-diver's treasure Wax Stag share seamless moments with populist dance anthems like New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" and Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out." This is one of the more coherent -- and consistently good -- listening and dancing experiences of the year.

Media
My Piano [Stream]

Andre Perry

Grizzly Bear
Friend EP
(Warp)

In a recent discussion of this EP, a friend who's presumably never heard In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998) called Grizzly Bear's Yellow House (2006) a "landmark album." I don't know if I quite agree with that and I gave the damn thing an 86%; still, they're easily one of the most fascinating new bands of the last few years. Friend continues in the vein of its predecessor, cloaking the band's arching harmonies and chunky guitar lines in reverb and rustic sepia-tones.

"He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)" - a Phil Spector cover - is even better on record than it was live, all sparse subtlety until the inevitable climax the band's become so good at. The same sense of experimentation that informs the group's live performances is at work here: drummer Christopher Bear's funky chops on Yellow House's "Little Brother" were a highlight both on stage and in this electric version. With 10 tracks and 43 minutes to play with -- almost as long as their LP! -- one wonders why the band didn't just make this a true follow-up, but then they couldn't have included three covers by their -- forgive me -- friends. CSS's "Knife" is the farthest removed from the original, an electro-pop take that's reminiscent of the Postal Service; it's a tribute to the band's songwriting sensibilities that the song works removed from its dusty linen and shoved into slick plastic. As a record that's half odds-and-sods, half new material, Friend may not be a landmark, but it certainly stands out.

Media
He Hit Me [Stream]

David Greenwald

Sin Ropas
Fire Prizes
(Shrug)

Chet Betz has argued that Fire Prizes takes the Everybody Knows this is Nowhere (1969) sound straight to the 21st century. That's some crazy, potentially hyperbolic shit to be writing, if only 'cause there are few bands that don't suffer in comparison to Crazy Horse. Still, Betz is dead-on. Tim Hurley and Danni Iosello don't sound like Neil Young and his cadre circa '69 (that'd hardly make sense), but they take that exploratory vibe and reckless, inspired technique and make its modern applicability extraordinarily clear.

Which is all to say that Fire Prizes is one of the best albums of 2007 (and 2005), and that, despite being nearly impossible to find even with a sort-of-release here in the States earlier this year, you should be doing everything in your power to find it. This is the best Sin Ropas have managed to date, which makes it pretty much on par with the best that Califone has managed, which, if you're paying attention to modern music in the last five years, makes this indispensable. The fiery, glorious freak-out of "Crown to Stutter" alone makes the record, but the entire back half of the disc finds Hurley at his strongest as a songwriter. It's the album that some of us have been waiting years for, and it does not disappoint.

Media
Crown to Stutter [MP3]
Seventeen Times [MP3]




Peter Hepburn

Elliott Smith
New Moon
(Kill Rock Stars)

Describing the Elliott Smith Sonic Experience to anyone our age is moot. If you were at the time of Smith's death a sophomore in college of any stripe, you knew bits of X/O (1998) and certainly "Needle in the Hay" and "Miss Misery." You knew that shattered voice, those careful words, those quick, dancing guitar lines, and (if you were a listener) you knew their combined might. You had seen his austere missives level buildings; you had on occasion been one of those buildings, earbudded and sludging hungover toward some brick repository of stale sociological ideas. You were smoking a lot of weed then, and listening to a lot of music while doing so, but for some reason (even though you were going through an Elliott Smith phase at the time) you listened to him alone, clear-headed, at strange hours. You felt like a ghost; Smith sang like one. You were writing bad short stories about things he was capturing in half-lines ("With a broken sink for a face").You found in Smith a shard of certainty that, though sharp, was precious; it radiated with a misery that you would've cherished in high school but it did so now in autumnal, unsparking shades, unlike the emo you were listening to way back then and were now shaking with Smith's help.

Now that I think about it, you were probably a lot like me as a sophomore in college. We should've hung out.

Anyway, you know the Elliott Smith Sonic Experience. You have connected with Smith on a cerebral and emotional level. New Moon is probably one of the best odds-and-ends posthumous collections ever because it recaptures over the course its two discs the feeling of hearing Elliott Smith. Depending on your fandom, you will have heard quite a few of these tracks in various forms before. But it is still (although old) new Elliott Smith music. And this is something we could all use, right?

Media
High Times [MP3]

Clayton Purdom

Various Artists
After Dark
(Italians Do It Better)

The full appeal of the Italians do it Better label took awhile to sink in, but when it did it was almost entirely thanks to After Dark. The label comp is one of those genres that, in a lot of cases doesn't work so well. Secretly Canadian, Merge, Matador, and Thrill Jockey have all tried their hand at it in various ways over the last few years, but none of the results have been particularly good. Italians do it Better has the advantage of being a one trick pony label, and these songs work well together simply by dint of similarity. Chromatics and Farah work a lot better together than, say, squeezing Cornelius between Yo La Tengo and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (as on Matador at Fifteen). The disc also benefits immensely from the small differences between these groups. Where a full hour of the Chromatics Night Drive can be rather tiring, mixing it up between the six groups represented here keeps it interesting. We'll see how long icy disaffection and minimal disco beats stay cool, but for now this is the best place to start.

Media
In The City - Chromatics [Stream]
Law Of Life - Farah [Stream]
Miss Broadway - Glass Candy [Stream]

Peter Hepburn

Velella Velella
Flight Club EP
(Hush)

Words can only rubber up the electricity of this thing, though the EP pushes more vocal lines through the buttercream spaceMIDIs of “Flight Cub” than on all the tracks from Velella Velella’s debut combined. Bay of Biscay (2005) had a lot of tracks, so the concision of their EP -- flaunting an official four members with the addition of Sylvia Chen and Jeremy Hadley assigned to Korg, clavinet, and the occasional Wurlitzer fills -- seems impossible for the stomach of self-ingesting genres they cobble together. The names escape me: while cuts like “Brass Ass” and “Your Name Here” curse the very notion of restraint with wah-wah and falsetto, the band shoulders the pain of a cratedigger gone geriatric in the basement while eliding the actual breaks and breaking vinyl; funk and soul, or new wave and R&B and cock rock pieced intuitively into something simply, relentlessly movable, samples only consulted like blueprints. That’s fandom unleashed, twenty-three-point-eight minutes to tangle the viscera of all walks of life until this flaccid blurb is just an attempt to label the crates, to poorly copy band logos with magic marker (the true sign of a devotee and nothing more).

Media
Alex Boom Selector [MP3]
Flight Club [MP3]




Dom Sinacola