At the beginning of the year I set out on a project of sorts, “predicting” my favorite records of 2007 before any of them had officially been released. Albums were listed and ranked and highly anticipated, with the intent of looking back by the year’s end and seeing just what had become of my original outlook on things. I paused in July to take stock at the halfway point, and although many of the records I was so looking forward to had yet to be released, I had also encountered several surprises along the way. Most suprising of all, though, was an unexpected string of personal crises that blindsided me late in the year, prompting an extended blog absence of more than a month. I couldn’t bring myself to write about anything, much less music, but I did listen a lot more, and listen better. I’m back now, or for the moment at least, and here are my favorite records of 2007:
Of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse
Of Montreal - The Past is a Grotesque Animal
As a relatively new convert I feel bad for die-hard Of Montreal fans. Your favorite band releases an album that is in every way - stylistically, conceptually, totally - a departure from its original sound and it’s hailed as their greatest achievement. This is not the sweet little pop of Gay Parade. It’s a concept album of sorts, sure, but one that comes from a considerably darker place, one that understandably alienates. I can tell you that Hissing Fauna is about Kevin Barnes’ depression, about the unraveling of his marriage and wanting to “tear the fucking house apart,” but until you hear him confess it, until you get to where you start thinking about doing it yourself, you haven’t felt the full catharsis yet.
Jens Lekman - The Opposite of Hallelujah
Night Falls Over Kortedala is the album that hasn’t left my stereo, my car, or my computer for the last few months, and has inspired a similar run through Jens Lekman’s brief back catalogue. Though it has to contend with Person Pitch for the year’s best use of samples, what makes Kortedala so uniquely beguiling is the melancholy wit and wisdom of the crooning Swede at the center of it all. Jens has a natural knack for telling good stories, and an obvious affection for the people and places who inhabit them. This is a record full of joy and silliness and small, bittersweet pleasures.
Caribou - Melody Day
Dan Snaith’s best effort since he started going by the name Caribou, Andorra saw him turning what once seemed like mere barrages of percussion and swirls of sound into actual melodies and songs, and better yet, into a full-fledged album. In a year where the best pop music was tinged with psychadelia and ’60s revivalism, Caribou was no exception - he just did it better than most.
The National - Fake Empire
The National - Mistaken for Strangers
Since its release in May, Boxer has had one of its songs in constant rotation in my head. At first it was “Fake Empire” and “Mistaken for Strangers.” Lately it’s been “Apartment Story.” Somehow Matt Beringer as lyricist and the National as a band have tapped into a personal zeitgeist, making their latest album a sort of soundtrack for my life in the last seven months. Built around the core of Bryan Devendorf’s taut, anxious percussion, Boxer details the deadening procession of days spent in an endless routine. Wake, work, eat, sleep - “the unmagnificent lives of adults.”
Beirut - Nantes
Beirut - A Sunday Smile
Where the Lon Gisland EP finally saw Beirut grow into a full band, The Flying Club Cup allowed Zach Condon to stretch his new sound out over a full album, and with even more impressive results - a thrilling little French vacation, a pop dalliance in Nantes, a melancholy morning in Paris. Condon’s charm and endearing croon make the tourist pastiche work, make it fun, even. Owen Pallet’s evocative string arrangements and the deep warble of the brass lend it added grace. Much more than an adolescent’s indulgent field trip, The Flying Club Cup is a Gallic triumph.
Radiohead - Nude
Radiohead - All I Need
There’s a lot to praise about Radiohead’s long awaited seventh album, from the intruiging release strategy and rare communal listening experience to the way the music itself still managed to defy and exceed our expectations. What most impressed me about In Rainbows, though, is the way the band incorporate so many disparate genre elements into their core sound, making for a record that is at times one of the best dub, best soul, and best glitch-pop albums of the year.
Bon Iver - For Emma
Bon Iver - Skinny Love
It seems like every fall a lo-fi, bedroom pop album comes out that ends up standing in as the musical equivalent of leaves turning colors, falling from branches, and getting covered in snow. Last year it was Benoit Pioulard’s Précis, and this year it’s undeniably Bon Iver. In fact, tagging For Emma as the annual best bedroom album might be unfairly dismissive of its poignancy. Justin Vernon’s pleading, emotive falsetto elevates it beyond simple folk status to something remarkable and deeply affecting. This is the kind of album that makes blogging about music worthwhile, redeeming all the self-promotion, mass e-mails, and commodification by bringing us something genuine and rewarding that we wouldn’t likely have known about otherwise. Bon Iver is not one for embellishments or grandeur, so when the horns come in on “For Emma” and when, on “Skinny Love” he draws so much meaning from the repeated “my my my,” it kills me every time.
Okkervil River - Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
Okkervil River - Plus Ones
The first thing everyone wants to notice about The Stage Names, and Okkervil River as a band for that matter, is how talented a songwriter Will Sheff has become. It’s true, on songs like “Our Life is Not a Movie” and “Plus Ones” (the many pop allusions of which I tracked here) that he does have a remarkable knack for wordplay, and more than a little showing off, too. But it’s Sheff’s constantly maturing voice that gives those songs their emotional heft, the growl that puts the tension in the former and the bitterness that lends such acidity to the latter. Stage Names, ostensibly about the life of the performing artists - musicians, actors, poets - is also the year’s best album about failure, doubt, and disappointment, and carrying on in spite of it.
Panda Bear - Bros
Panda Bear - Comfy in Nautica
What else to say about this album, except that Panda Bear just gets everything right? Person Pitch is warm and happy and indelibly personal, and yet at the same time has all the makings of a truly classic pop record. It’s an album I cherish deeply and still manage to respect in an objective sense, both for the obvious craft with which it was made as well as for the incredible end results. One of the year’s earliest releases, and one that I kept returning to again and again.
Spoon - Black Like Me
When it came out in July, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was the great album with the funny title, the one that made me realize that Spoon just might be my favorite band. Then it became the album I never stopped listening to, the album that talked about how it felt to need someone to take care of me tonight. Confessions like that are important to a band like this, stripped down to minimalism and given to playing things tight. “Black Like Me” is one of my favorite songs of the year, charging forward on piano and percussion, begging and pleading, until it suddenly stops just short of the crescendo, just short of perfect. And that’s how my favorite album of the year ends.
