Digg this storyPART III (#25-#1)
OMG.
2007 has been the greatest year of new music in my lifetime. When I began writing this, I had over 140 albums to whittle down into some sort of cohesive, OCD-styled best-of list. I chose 75 because that is where the cutoff appears to be (the albums I absolutely love vs. the albums that were just okay). There were so many disgustingly good albums this year, it makes me want to puke with joy and convulse with happiness. I love music, and I love each of these albums.
You should, too:
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025 | Okkervil River The Stage Names [Jagjaguwar/Aug 7] |
| Artsy Austin band’s fourth full-length is rife with angular hooks and intellectual wordplay, brimming with a cool nonchalance that slays its surroundings with droll wit.
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024 | Boat Let’s Drag Our Feet [Magic Marker/Jul 10] |
| Seattle lo-fi rockers’ second full-length is a breezy, anticlimatic ride through the midwestern plains and northwestern forests and small towns along the way that effortlessly combines (and updates) the influences of the past 15 years into a refreshing, original album.
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023 | Dinosaur Jr. Beyond [Fat Possum/May 1] |
| Reunited vetaran stoner rockers’ eigth studio album (and first in ten years) is a sludgefest of guitar solos fronted by J. Mascis’ typically nasal vocals that still manages to sound completely new and different.
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022 | Voxtrot Voxtrot [Playloudrecordings/May 22] |
| The long awaited full-length debut by these neo-Spoon, Austin up-and-comers delivers on the promises hinted at by their multitude of EPs and singles while continuing to experiment with a more piano-soaked, chamber pop sound.
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021 | Modest Mouse We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank [Epic/Mar 20] |
| Brilliant Pixies heirs’ fifth proper full-length reverts slightly back to the rugged, abrasive quality of their earlier albums while retaining the poppy hooks of their recent past to form yet another unbridled indie rock masterpiece.
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020 | Film School Hideout [Beggars Banquet/Sep 11] |
| A droning dream of moody neo-shoegaze that explodes and implodes in a speedball of ketamine and doom, this San Franciscan band’s third record infinitely loops and encircles its own ambitions and fears.
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019 | Moros Eros Jealous Me Was Killed By Curiosity [Victory/Oct 16] |
| Georgian Les Savy Fav disciples offer up second album of brash, confrontational melodies and vigorous song structures that refuse to lay down or even shut the hell up while they dance in circles and vandalize their enemies.
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018 | New Young Pony Club Fantastic Playroom [Modular/Jul 9] |
| English hipsters’ debut is a créme brûlée of art punk/new rave á la mode — its detachedly sassy vocals flawlesly emasculating the über-hip hooks to add a foxy, art-school risque.
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017 | Circa Survive On Letting Go [Equal Vision/May 29] |
| The latest full-length from Anthony Green is a frozen icescape of spacey harmonics and gorgeous melodies trapped in a timeless cave of ambiguity, exquisitely afloat and hovering somewhere between hidden and frostbitten dimensionality.
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016 | Dax Riggs We Sing of Only Blood or Love [Fat Possum/Aug 21] |
| Prolific metalhead’s first official solo LP is a smattering of Roy Orbison-like rockabilly and Glenn Danzig-styled crooning mixed with southern metal roots that coalesce into a glorious, neo-retro machismo.
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015 | Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [Merge/Jul 10] |
| Renowned Austinites return with a brand new helping of bubbly, jangly indie rock that swanks with stoned grooves and shimmies and shakes like a zombie on PCP; altogether blasé, sluggish, rhythmic and danceable.
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014 | Kings of Leon Because of the Times [Hand Me Down/Apr 3] |
| Third full-length from southern garage rockers is a booze-addled introduction to life’s asskickings, replete with raucous guitars, clever wordplay and a brilliant understanding of Pixies-esque dynamics and southern rock & roll.
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013 | You Say Party! We Say Die! Lose All Time [Paper Bag/Mar 20] |
| Canadian dance-punks’ second effort is an unapologetic onslaught of deliberately vapid keyboards and defiant vocals set to danceable beats that wears its hipster cred on its sleeve.
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012 | Radiohead In Rainbows [TBD/Oct 10] |
| Musical superheroes’ seventh full-length is glorious unification of past and present releases that introduces new directions whilst simultaneously appeasing history’s universal acclaim.
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011 | The National Boxer [Beggars Banquet/May 22] |
| Churning with pounding rhythms and an air of murk, acclaimed Brooklyn band’s fourth album is despondent, disconnected and serves to darken the already gloomy and dejected (and sophisticated) lyrics even moreso.
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010 | Arcade Fire Neon Bible [Merge/Mar 6] |
| Canadian indie rockers’ sophomore album builds on the promise of a near-perfect debut and delivers a second helping of gorgeous orchestral anthems and complex instrumentation that’s subdued, majestic, poppy, dignified.
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009 | Minus the Bear Planet of Ice [Suicide Squeeze/Aug 21] |
| Seattle band’s third LP showcases sophisticated songwriting, witty lyricism and complex time signatures as dynamic and innovative as a room full of drunken M80s and crackpipes with guitars.
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008 | Thurston Moore Trees Outside the Academy [Ecstatic Peace/Sep 18] |
| Eminent experimentalist’s second solo release is a stunning display of deceptively poppy avant-garde noise catharsis adrift in a sea of unwinding, melodic complexity.
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007 | The Ponys Turn the Lights Out [Matador/Mar 20] |
| The Ponys’ third record is another brilliantly cool slathering of vintage rock ‘n’ roll attitude updated with post-punk tendencies that churns like a ‘79 Trans-Am with t-tops and a huge fucking yellow Firebird logo on the hood.
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006 | The Raveonettes Lust Lust Lust [Fierce Panda/Nov 12] |
| Drenched in a minimalistic hurricane of reverb and Jesus-and-Mary-Chainsian harmonies, these neo-shoegazers’ third album is a midnight-tinged exposé of leather jackets and 50s-style diners backed by thick beats and nervous, pulsating desire.
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005 | Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti Underground [Vinyl International/Nov 6] |
| The mysterious first Haunted Graffiti album from lo-fi cult hero is another strange, hallucinatory journey through a collage of twisting melodies, noisy interims and brilliant songwriting that combine together to form a surprisingly coherent, cohesive whole.
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004 | A Place to Bury Strangers A Place to Bury Strangers [Killer Pimp/Sep 17] |
| Exploding with brain-melting guitars, barely-audible vocals and pulverizing drum machines, NYC’s loudest band offer up a debut of ten thunderously melodic homages to shoegaze and noise pop that nearly break the sound barrier.
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003 | Les Savy Fav Let’s Stay Friends [French Kiss/Sep 18] |
| Seminal post-hardcore outfit return from 6-year hiatus with renewed brilliance — showcasing a greater attention to production and adding even more melody to an already defined pair of angular, post-punk fists of fury.
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002 | Sexton Blake Plays the Hits [Expunged/Jul 7] |
| Portland singer/songwriter’s sophomore album is a collection of jaw-dropping acoustic renditions of classic 80s anthems that salivates at the seams with unparalleled brilliance; genuinely astonishing.
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001 | Blonde Redhead 23 [4AD/Apr 10] |
| Seminal indie-rock trio’s seventh proper album is their moodiest yet; twisting and heaving and dying like some kind of drugged-out fairytale from a doomstricken Japanese netherworld, its mortality as ambiguous as ever.
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Part I (#75-51)
Part II (#50-26)