Best albums of 2007

[enjoy bell woods]

1.

Technically, Candylion isn't the first solo album by Super Furry Animals' frontman Gruff Rhys, but it's his first to be sung in English. More importantly, it has the form and feel of a pop album, which 2005's Yr Atal Genhedlaeth lacked. In that sense, it's a debut, but this 2007 venture also represents a slight break from SFA's recent past, too, even if it's not a radical break. Lighter and hardly as fussy as anything the Furries have done since Guerrilla, Candylion is lithe and cheerful, lacking both the proggy pomp and electronic eclecticism that rendered recent SFA albums alluring and maddening in equal measure. In their place are sunny melodies, propelled forward by flutes, gurgling synths, and acoustic guitars that never succumb to dippy folkiness. This is a breezy affair, almost drifting away in the breeze like so many needles from a dandelion, and that's the niftiest thing about it; it gives the album a cheerful, warm vibe. Ultimately, Candylion is the sound of Gruff Rhys relaxed, simply letting the music flow easily, and after hearing Super Furry Animals labor hard at crafting self-conscious masterpieces, this is a welcome reminder of the scruffy, clever charm of Rhys at his inventive peak

www.myspace.com/candylionmusic

[youtube=425,350]YShRy81bKms[/youtube]

2.

Sean O'Hagan and the High Llamas have been accused of emulating everyone from Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach to Steely Dan and Brian Wilson, along with Brian Wilson, as well as Brian Wilson (with a healthy dash of Brian Wilson in there too, for good measure). Really, it's ridiculous, but what's the harm that a few myopic reviewers can't say anything more telling than "Sean's a Brian Wilson clone"? It's a darn high compliment, given the stature Wilson has achieved, and says more about those music critics' inability to see beyond their own "Top Ten albums of all time" than any creative shortcomings on O'Hagan's part. Get off it! Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. If gorgeous arrangements, unusual instrumentation and innocent wit make you Brian Wilson then why doesn't Neil Hannon, Rufus Wainwright (hell...he's even got Van Dyke Parks on his records) and a host of other gorgeously arranged artists get pegged as Wilson wannabes? Could it be that O'Hagan is simply at the top of the heap -- that he's the pinnacle? Could he be (gulp) as good as Brian Wilson??!!?! He just might be, thank you very much. Pet Sounds, SMiLE and a scant handful of other prime Wilson works, verses O'Hagan and his ten-plus albums of exquisite beauty and detail could sway the (utterly preposterous and fictional) battle right there. But it is precisely O'Hagan's prolific nature that seems to irk his detractors most. "How can this guy keep cranking out these fab records?" (If four years between some albums can be referred to as "cranking it out") or "he's just coasting." Not likely -- but if he is, he's doing so marvelously.

Over the course of their career, the High Llamas successfully combined '60s pop sensibilities with burbling analog synth accents and laid-back, West Coast vibes with a NYC session cat's journeyman aesthetic. Every Llamas album has embraced these creative styles in varying degrees: from Gideon Gaye's decidedly '60s Brit-pop bent, to Hawaii's sprawling and breezy beaches, to Cold and Bouncy's warmly clinical brand of slickness, to Beet, Maize & Corn's detailed chamber pop, the Llamas have succeeded at every slight stylistic turn they have taken. Now, with 2007's Can Cladders, O'Hagan and the Llamas are bringing it all together. Every stylistic element that has ever graced the grooves of their past albums is present here, with synth blurbs and Baroque-via-the-beach string arrangements holding equal footing throughout. Bacharach-ian backing vocals and Wilson-esque instrumentation hold equal ground with Motown rhythms and Steely Dan slick-ery, but the whole thing sounds natural and familiar, rather than over-thought, forced and derivative. Four years in the making, Can Cladders could have come off the presses as an indulgent, overwrought opus. Instead, it simply (but oh-so-craftily) distilled a career's worth of creative tangents into one solid, focused effort that, if you're observant enough, holds its own amongst the likes of the Llamas' comparative "elite."

http://myspace.com/highllamas

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Euros worth more than a monkey (
Euros Childs' first solo effort, 2006's 'Chops', was disappointing, considering how great his previous band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci had been. But the good news is Childs has made a quick and infinitely superior follow-up. 'Bore Da' (which translated into English means "good morning") comes across as a much more confident record. And it's a catchy bugger on the whole too, even though it's sung entirely in Welsh - his native tongue. That won't stop anyone enjoying the pop rush of 'Henry A Matilda Supermarketsuper' or the folky singalong 'Ar Lan Y Mor'. Best of all, the title track and album opener recalls classic Gorky's by switching from a sun-kissed pop gem into a haunting Celtic lament. Seems like Childs has had to go back in order to find a future.

Alan Woodhouse

http://myspace.com/euroschilds
[youtube=425,350]MnsGot86Ji0[/youtube]




4. (Image removed from quote.)

Sometime after Radiator, Super Furry Animals began exploring a wide sonic world, eventually drifting far out into orbit with albums like Rings Around the World and Phantom Power, albums so ambitious and so packed with celeb cameos that they brought the band attention from the respectable press. As accomplished as those albums were, they found SFA losing their divine gift of suggesting that anything could happen, the very thing that made their first four albums so divine. While they didn't get as overstuffed and lethargic as Mercury Rev or Flaming Lips did when they turned all serious -- an impish sense of humor always pulsated underneath their music -- Super Furry Animals did turn a bit ponderous, which made the relative levity of Love Kraft welcome even if the album was uneven, but that warm, hazy record in no way suggested the full-fledged return to pop power that is 2007's Hey Venus! By far the tightest record SFA has released since Radiator -- boasting no song over five minutes and four clocking in under three -- this is a concise, song-oriented record, which is somewhat ironic since it began its life as something as a concept album. The narrative was ditched during the recording as the group culled together 11 songs that hold together as an intensely colorful, insanely catchy pop album. Such a claim may suggest that this is the return of the frenzied rush of Fuzzy Logic, which isn't exactly true, because after a flurry of hooks at the outset -- "Run-Away," "Show Your Hand," and even the cleverly tossed-off opener, "The Gateway Song," all hold their own with "God! Show Me Magic" and "Herman Loves Pauline" -- the record settles into softer territory, trading on the lush Beach Boys, Bacharach, and ELO of their turn-of-the-century records. But if those albums were gauzy, as much about the texture as about the tune, here the focus is solely on the song, with each of the 11 tracks standing on its own yet working together to create an addictive 37-minute pop album. And just because this is disciplined in a way that Super Furry Animals haven't been in years doesn't mean they've ceased to progress -- they've never had songs as lazily soulful as the closing "Let the Wolves Howl at the Moon" or "The Gift That Keeps Giving" with its electric sitars, and "Baby Ate My Eightball" threads their electronic fascinations into a lean rocker, the kinds of subtle innovations that prove that the Furries can still surprise as they enter their second decade. That reclaimed sense of unpredictability is as easy to embrace as the simple pop pleasures of Hey Venus! as a whole.

[youtube=425,350]GR2ty-DlTKI[/youtube]
www.myspace.com/superfurry

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The Montreal-based husband-and-wife duo of the Besnard Lakes really work some of the old yin-and-yang magic on their debut release The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse. Throughout the eight tracks, the push-and-pull of crunchy guitars versus delicate, stringy instrumentation seems to reflect the dynamic between Olga Goreas and Jace Lasek themselves (with wife Goreas, seemingly the prime instigator for the power chords). It's a slightly indulgent affair, but the only way to get these seemingly disparate qualities to play nice on an album together is to sweat over it -- and sweat they did, but not on somebody else's timecard. Utilizing their own studio, Goreas and Lasek could, and did, take plenty of time getting their vision to come through in the mixes, and the ebb-and-flow between abrasive and lilting isn't half as jarring as you might think. It's like a Beach Boys album when it's calm and a Queen album when it's crunchy, but all filtered through what must be one hell of a record collection over at the Goreas-Lasek homestead.

[youtube=425,350]K_DQX3ewxLo[/youtube]


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The quiet ones are always the scariest. Polly Jean Harvey's appearance on the cover of White Chalk -- all wild black hair and ghostly white dress -- could replace the dictionary definition of eerie, and the album itself plays like a good ghost story. It's haunted by British folk, steeped in Gothic romance and horror, and almost impossible to get out of your head, despite (but really because of) how unsettling it becomes. White Chalk is Harvey's darkest album yet -- which, considering that she's sung about dismembering a lover and drowning her daughter, is saying something. It's also one of her most beautiful albums, inspired by the fragility and timelessness of chalk lines and her relative newness to the piano, which dominates White Chalk; it gives "Before Departure" funereal heft and "Grow Grow Grow" a witchy sparkle befitting its incantations. Most striking of all, however, is Harvey's voice: she sings most of White Chalk in a high, keening voice somewhere between a whisper and a whimper. She sounds like a wraith or a lost child, terrifyingly so on "The Mountain," where she breaks the tension with a spine-tingling shriek just before the album ends. This frail persona is almost unrecognizable as the woman who snarled about being a 50-foot queenie -- yet few artists challenge themselves to change their sound as much as she does, so paradoxically, it's a quintessentially PJ Harvey move. The album does indeed sound timeless, or at least, not modern. White Chalk took five months to record with Harvey's longtime collaborators Flood, John Parish, and Eric Drew Feldman, but these somber, cloistered songs sound like they could be performed in a parlor, or channeled via Ouija board. There is hardly any guitar (and certainly nothing as newfangled as electric guitar) besides the acoustic strumming on the beautifully chilly title track, which could pass for an especially gloomy traditional British folk song. Lyrics like "The Devil"'s "Come here at once! All my being is now in pining" could be written by one of the Brontë sisters. On a deeper level, White Chalk feels like a freshly unearthed relic because it runs so deep and dark. Harvey doesn't just capture isolation and anguish; she makes fear, regret, and loneliness into entities. In these beautiful and almost unbearably intimate songs, darkness is a friend, silence is an enemy, and a piano is a skeleton with broken teeth and twitching red tongues. "When Under Ether" offers a hallucinatory escape from some horrible reality -- quite possibly abortion, since unwanted children are some of the many broken family ties that haunt the album -- and this is White Chalk's single. What makes the album even more intriguing is that it doesn't really have much in common with the work of Harvey's contemporaries (although Joanna Newsom's Ys and Scott Walker's The Drift come to mind, mostly for their artistic fearlessness) or even her own catalog. It rivals Dance Hall at Louse Point for its willingness to challenge listeners, but it's far removed from Uh Huh Her, which was arguably more listenable but a lot less remarkable. In fact, this may be Harvey's most undiluted album yet. When she's at the peak of her powers, as she is on this frightening yet fearless album, the world she creates is impossible to forget, or shake off easily. White Chalk can make you shiver on a sunny day.

 

7.(Image removed from quote.)

erhaps unsurprisingly, Kevin Ayers's first album of new material in 15 years is largely concerned with the passage of time, its songs reflecting on lost loves, wrong turnings and missed opportunities. Which isn't to say it's in any way downbeat or depressing in tone: there's an equanimity about the past that does Ayers credit, and which may be due in part to the relaxed Mediterranean lifestyle he's pursued for the last three decades.

Indeed, the album would never have existed, had Ayers not bumped into a British painter near his home in the South of France. He didn't know who Ayers was, but he knew a record company boss who did – and the former Soft Machine singer and psychedelic pop icon was lured out of retirement to record these ten songs with a team of old friends like Robert Wyatt, Phil Manzanera, Robbie McIntosh, Hugh Hopper and Bridget St John, and young fans including Euros Childs, Bill Wells and members of Teenage Fanclub.

The results are replete with the languid charm that has been Ayers's stock-in-trade throughout his performing career, that unmistakable baritone croon - sometimes reminiscent of Nick Drake's - marked by an amiable world-weariness as he muses over things like social ease ("Walk On Water"), the redemptive power of love ("Wide Awake"), the value of dreams ("Brainstorm"), and how "Old shoulders become cold shoulders/Nothing left to dream on" ("Old Shoulders"). The latter is a theme he returns a few times, notably in "Friends And Strangers", a plea to be freed from an obsessional relationship, which comes draped in strings that start out like "I Am The Walrus" then shift into Forever Changes mode.

The arrangements furnish some of the most beguiling aspects of The Unfairground, from the strings undulating like a carnival calliope on the title-track, and the horns adding a stately mariachi tone to "Baby Come Home", to the nightmarish soundscape of piano, eerie vibrato strings and squally lead guitar that soundtracks his fearful reverie in "Brainstorm". But whatever the situation, Ayers's amenability shines through regardless, a wave of warmth that can lighten the heaviest soul.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=107076956

Reviews taken from Uncut, NME and Allmusic.

Worst of the year

1. In Rainb0s.

[bud]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[enjoy bell woods]

Bud's list

1. Radiohead
2. The Arcade Fire
3. Interpol

[Powerslave]

sorry I dont listen to new music

[MrAngryFace]

sorry I dont listen to 'weird looking covers' albums

muhahaha

[demi]

Your YouTubes arent working, you have to do it like OA does it, put just the letters in the [youtube] brackets

[enjoy bell woods]

I don't get it. 

[demi]

Looks like you fixed it, they werent working for me for a moment anyway, I am listening to them now

[enjoy bell woods]

Damn, I forgot Von Sudenfed's Tromatic Reflexxions: [youtube=425,350]iG-CLFPU6RY[/youtube]

[demi]

I like that Candylion song, very relaxing. Just something to chill to while doing some coding work.

[Gay Boy]

1. Feist - The Reminder


2. Lily Allen - Alright, Still


3. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga


4. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away



5. Rogue Wave - Asleep At Heaven's Gate


6. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank


7. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible


8. Radiohead - In Rainbows


9. Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block


10. M.I.A. - Kala

[Bloodwake]

IN RAINBOWS.

[etiolate]

The only problem with Fiest is that it is an album that I can no longer just listen to when I want to listen to it, since it is played everywhere. I just end up listening to it. It is more enjoyable to hear an album when you're in the mood for it.



And there is still some albums I need to hear or finish hearing.

[MrAngryFace]

Glad to see some Wincing the Night Away appreciation. Its a really solid album.

[Human Snorenado]

Glad to see some Wincing the Night Away appreciation. Its a really solid album.

[ebw]ARE YOU KIDDING IT'S TRAAAASH[/ebw]

[MrAngryFace]

True, it doesnt have some washed out 70s looking drug trip picture for a cover, but its still good stuff!

[etiolate]

You kids should check out that avett brothers album >|

edit: and that Euros CHilds song doesn't sound near as good as the Gorkys stuff. =/

[Phoenix Dark]

1. Radiohead - In Rainbows


2. Ghostface Killah - The Big Doe Rehab


3. Lily Allen - Alright, Still

[CajoleJuice]

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare

NIN - Year Zero and QOTSA - Era Vulgaris were pretty good too.

YEAAA MAINSTREAM

[enjoy bell woods]

You kids should check out that avett brothers album >|

edit: and that Euros CHilds song doesn't sound near as good as the Gorkys stuff. =/

It's not.
 
Gorky's lost their way, and Euros is still recovering. I think it's the most enjoyable thing he's done in a while, though. And I love Welsh-language music.

[TakingBackSunday]

Ahahaha the Shins

Person Pitch-Panda Bear!!!

[MrAngryFace]

u shut up

[Gay Boy]

the shins are awesome

[bagofeyes]

that new shins album was so boring

[MrAngryFace]

Just like your latest post! GTFO I AM RIGHT!

[bagofeyes]

just like most of my posts amirite? lolz

[MrAngryFace]

HAHA YOURE ALWAYS ONE STEP AHEAD OF ME!

[demi]

anberlin - cities
mae - singularity

that's all i got

[TVC15]

anberlin - cities
mae - singularity

that's all i got

What, were there no mentally ill clown-related albums this year, daddy?

[demi]

There were, but I don't listen to them anymore, I'm an emo boy now

[Van Cruncheon]

i see no emo finns wailing about the tragedy of life in demi's list

[demi]

i just want to have a good time

[Himu]

this year was beyond disappointing for hip hop 

[TVC15]

i just want to have a good time

would you like to deliver me a spankin?

[Gay Boy]

this year was beyond disappointing for hip hop 

There are endless more genres out there that made this a awesome year for music.

This is worthy of my top 5 this year but I am too lazy to go edit my old post:

[demi]

i just want to have a good time

would you like to deliver me a spankin?

Maybe next year

[chiller]

Best album of the year.  Real talk.

[Himu]

this year was beyond disappointing for hip hop 

There are endless more genres out there that made this a awesome year for music.

the only album i really liked this year was in rainbows. i'm not a big music freak.

[bagofeyes]

The National - Boxer


Wolves In The Throne Room - Two Hunters


Burial - Untrue


Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow


Jesu - Conqueror

[chiller]

Wolves in the Throne Room almost put me to sleep when I saw them live a month or so ago.

[enjoy bell woods]

this year was beyond disappointing for hip hop 

There are endless more genres out there that made this a awesome year for music.

the only album i really liked this year was in rainbows. i'm not a big music freak.

Don't any of you get that I'm really just joking anyway? I don't care what anyone listens to. I hardly even listened to most of what you guys like, and that's my own fault. There's so little time to keep up with 50 2007 releases when there's thousands of other albums I still need to hear. Coming up with seven discs that I enjoyed enough to put on a list was hard, and I feel really bad b/c three of them share pretty strong association, and I'm not even sure I love the last two.

My radio DJing thing is cool because we're forced to play from a bin that contains new stuff, so I'm frequently surprised by albums I would've never heard otherwise. I'm just now hearing some 2007 releases that I'd love to get to know better.


Just wanted to clarify.

I

[demi]

You're just that good of a troll, haters 0wnzorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd

[tiesto]

My favorites:

1. ISOS6 (surprise of the century!)
2. John Digweed - Transitions 3
3. Above and Beyond - Anjunabeats 5
4. Burial - Untrue
5. Joris Voorn - From A Deep Place

[Powerslave]

Hey tiesto, does Tiesto have more remixes from classical pieces like Adagio for Strings?

[ferrarimanf355]

Digitalism's new album is pretty good. You know them from that one song from the Pontiac commercials and that other song from the Midnight Club LA trailer. The whole album is pretty damn good and worth a listen. I didn't go through Year Zero or In Rainbows yet, but I want to, so I might come back to this thread later...

[tiesto]

Hey tiesto, does Tiesto have more remixes from classical pieces like Adagio for Strings?

Nope, but you might want to try "Forever Today" off the "Just Be" album, uses quite a bit of strings in its intro and breakdowns and such.

[Bloodwake]

There are one or two good tracks on the new Shins CD, but that's about it.

Look to their earlier stuff for great CDs.

[Robo]

I'm gonna call it like this:

1. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
2. Radiohead - In Rainbows
3. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
4. Air - Pocket Symphony
5. The White Stripes - Icky Thump
6. Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
7. The National - Boxer
8. Bjork - Volta
9. Blonde Redhead - 23
10. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

[Gay Boy]

Am I the only one who thought Icky Thump doesn't hold up to The White Stripes earlier work?

[Robo]

To De Stijl and White Blood Cells?  Those are phenominal albums and I can't say I think it holds up against either, but I do think it's considerably better than Elephant and Get Behind Me Satan and one of the best albums of the year regardless.

[CajoleJuice]

I'm gonna add Daft Punk - Alive 2007 to my list. It's a live album, but it counts because it's awesome and has mixes different from the album versions.

I never even listened to Daft Punk before because I'm not a fan of electronic music (I hate that LCD Soundsystem album)...they are fucking great.