Not Safe for Work...

...if you happen to work in a place that frowns upon one weeping from laughter and spitting out muffin pieces due to hilarity:

And the Best Album of 2007 Is...

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4

I'm tired. Bedheaded Jr. is a finicky sleeper. He usually goes for a couple hours, and then has to burp or something, and then gets upset because he's awake, and one of us has to go in to his room and rock him to sleep, because unfortunately no one told us that if you put a baby to sleep that way, then that's the only way they'll go to sleep until you straighten it out. There are lots of little lessons like that about babies that no one really sits you down and tells you about. Fortunately, one of the best decisions we made before he was born was to forgo buying one of those ridiculously rickety glider/rockers you see lined up at a typical Babies-R-Us and instead purchased an overstuffed faux-leather La-Z-Boy and put it in his room, so that when he wakes up, all we end up doing is pick him up, get him cradled in the arm, and kick back on the recliner, and usually end up sleeping that way for the rest of the night, or until he gets hot or burps again. Seriously, if anyone ever asked me for advice before becoming a parent, that's the best I could give them. Those stupid gliders are overpriced death traps; your 300 bucks are better spent getting a big fat recliner you can pass out on without worrying about the baby falling out of your arms or the whole thing tipping over sideways. Whoever gave me that advice, thank you.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was going to finally finish up this list of the best albums of 2007. Man what a mess this turned into. Maybe I should have just picked five. I don't think that would have been possible, so we move on.

Before I name the toppermost of the poppermost, indulge me as I bore you with two worthy runners-up to the title....

Patton Oswalt - Werewolves and Lollipops
Sub Pop

To be honest with you, I probably listened to this album more times in a row than any other record this year. The first time I tried listening to it, I was driving on the Eisenhower, which was a bad idea, so I'd recommend not trying to listen to this while driving unless you've heard it about twenty times or you can drive with tears in your eyes and your face contorted in a rictus of laughter. The first bit, where he riffs on KFC's "famous bowls," pretty much finished me before the thing even got halfway started. Stay tuned while he compares Bush and Cheney to Bo and Luke Duke, meets Brian Dennehy, deconstructs why Episodes 1 through 3 sucked, and tells the story of Death Bed: the Bed That Eats People.



VietNam - VietNam
Kemado Records

If you could criticize this band for any reason, the main one is that their name makes Googling them or finding them on YouTube something of a chore. That's about the only criticism I can think of; this is a great old-fashioned rock record and a solid debut. Their lead singer has a memorably whiskey-stained voice, and their sound is all kinds of swampy blue psychedelia done just right. I remember about ten years ago reading a whole lot of crap about how guitar bands were going the way of disco; the harbinger of that sound's doom was none other than Marilyn Manson, who declared "Rock Is Dead," for some mysterious reason doing so at the end of The Matrix, a film I recall engaging in little by way of a debate about the viability of the rock music genre in its preceding hour and a half. Well luckily, folks, it looks like Marilyn was wrong, not least about this point, and rock is here to stay, thanks to bands like VietNam, Dungen, Sonic Youth, Gravenhurst, Brief Candles, man the list goes on and on.



Without further ado, I present to you:

The Best Album of 2007


Picture: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/37709-pitchfork-music-festival-2006

Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
Secretly Canadian

I may be prone to hyperbole, but I think I can safely say that Gothenburg, Sweden's Jens Lekman is poised for international superstardom. OK, maybe it won't be that easy; how successful can a skinny, lovelorn troubadour cut from the cloth of Jonathan Richman and Stephen Merritt expect to be in a world where the biggest pop stars are churned out of the rancid karaoke freakshow that is American Idol? Thing is, Jens Lekman makes it look so goddamn easy. This is a man that constructed a memorable hook out of the couplet "She said it was-all make believe / but I thought she said maple leaves." Lekman's songs are full of great, memorable lines, and damned catchy and hummable at that thanks to his Morrissey-by-way-of-Stockholm croon and ace, dreamy samples from the likes of The Left Banke. I count "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing At Your Wedding)", one of the songs off of his first album, When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog, among the most perfect ever written ("I know every song, you name it / by Bacharach or David / Every stupid love song that ever touched your heart / Every power ballad that ever climbed the charts"). There's an irresistible irony between the hangdog image of himself he paints in songs like "A Postcard to Nina," where he recounts having to act as a beard for a lesbian friend, and the tympani-laden bombast of album opener "And I Remember Every Kiss," while the album cover depicts him getting a heavenly haircut by hands emanating from above..not to mention him gazing longingly over some mountain sunset before getting in a red and white Cessna and taking to the sky. Yeah. This guy's got everything figured out. If you've seen him play live with his band of Swedish girls in skirts, you'd think the same damn thing.

Jens Lekman - "And I Remember Every Kiss"
Jens Lekman - "A Postcard to Nina"
From Night Falls Over Kortedala

Jens Lekman - "Maple Leaves (7" Version)"
From Oh You're So Silent Jens

Jens Lekman - "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing At Your Wedding)"
From When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog

Buy Jens Lekman Albums Here




(Mmm, Swedish girls...)

As we drool over Jens Lekman's band, I want to take this time to thank you for bothering to slog through this nonsense. You're awesome. I'd also like to list all (or all that I can remember at the moment) of the other records that I enjoyed this year; this is the Honorable Mention section, and this Honorable Mention means a lot more than when you'd win an honorable mention for getting eliminated first in your grade school chess tournament, trust me.


~ Honorable Mention ~

Air - Pocket Symphony
Amiina - Kurr
Bat for Lashes - Fur and Gold
Battles - Mirrored
Black Sabbath - The Dio Years
Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation
Blonde Redhead - 23
Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow
Burial - Untrue
Caribou - Andorra
Castanets - In the Vines
Cass McCombs - Dropping the Writ
The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur
Deerhunter - Cryptograms
Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond
Dr. Dog - We All Belong
Earth - Hibernaculum
El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
Field Music - Tones of Town
John Fogerty - Revival
Gravenhurst - The Western Lands
Menomena - Friend and Foe
My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me the Workhorse
The National - Boxer
Neil Young - Chrome Dreams II; Live at Massey Hall 1971
The Occupants of Six Across - Holding Hands with Prince Vacuum (which you can download absolutely free right here)
Scout Niblett - This Fool Can Die Now
Steven Wright - I Still Have a Pony
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
Wooden Wand - James and the Quiet

The Best Albums of 2007, pt. 4

Part I ~ Part II ~ Part III

We're getting down to the wire. The year is almost over, and I'm nowhere near finished telling you about the best recorded music of 2007, at least as far as my ears were concerned. And my, is this thing ever getting unwieldy. OK, let's try to get this thing over with. Here is the last part of the list, before I unveil my pick for the absolute best album of the year. Bear with me....


The Besnard Lakes - Are The Dark Horse
Jagjaguwar

I want to call this the best debut album of 2007. Trouble is, The Besnard Lakes did in fact release an album titled Volume 1 back in 2003, but it only 1000 copies were released, and it was re-released in the U.S. after Are The Dark Horse came out, so...The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is the best debut album of 2007. And lo, they're on my new favorite record label, who along with sister label Secretly Canadian, have fashioned themselves as the new Matador thanks to a hip roster comprised of acts such as Black Mountain, Jens Lekman, Magnolia Electric Co., Antony and the Johnsons, and many others. As for the Besnard Lakes, they're built around husband and wife duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, and their songs hinge on the eerie Beach Boys-like falsetto of Lasek, as well as a collision between the haunted psychedelia of Syd Barrett and the rocking emotional catharsis of Sigur Ros and Godspeed You Black Emperor! Listen to "Disaster", one of the best songs of the year, or "For Agent 13," and prepare to get chills.



David Vandervelde - The Moonstation House Band
Secretly Canadian

Didn't I just say that Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar are the hippest record label this side of Matador in the mid-nineties? Look here, it's another great release from Secretly Canadian. This one's from a wunderkind Chicago multi-instrumentalist whose sound might make you think that Marc Bolan never died.

"Jacket" - from The Moonstation House Band
Buy it Here

Richard Swift - Dressed Up for the Letdown
Secretly Canadian

OK, seriously, think back to when all the best bands in indie rock were all on one label, like Touch and Go, or Sub Pop, or Merge, or 4AD. Now look at this: ANOTHER GREAT RECORD FROM SECRETLY CANADIAN/JAGJAGUWAR. It's almost too good to be true. But it is true. I read someone else describe Richard Swift as some dude wearing a poncho and channeling Harry Nilsson, and since I'm a lazy, plagiarizing music reviewer, I'll just echo his words. Like Vandervelde, Swift is a multi-instrumentalist seemingly transported from a long-gone era. His music is as appealingly old-fashioned as it is touchingly beautiful.



PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Island

When I mentioned Radiohead's In Rainbows earlier in this list, it sparked a little bit of a debate between me, Paul and Jeff about whether that group relied too much on a "formula", and whether that formula had become boring. Though fans of PJ Harvey's music might have some idea what to expect when faced with a new record of hers, she can't truly be said to fall on a formula, and she's certainly never boring. For White Chalk, she forced herself into a creative corner by composing all of the songs on piano, an instrument she had to learn from scratch to play. That challenge paid off in the form of one of her best records, totally different from anything else in her catalog.



Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Merge

Boy am I repeating myself here, but here goes: you kind of know what to expect when you get a new Spoon record, right? Great big hooks, sparse instrumentation, Britt Daniel's haiku-like lyrics. But goddammit if Spoon doesn't take that formula and make it sound like you've never heard anything like it with each ensuing album. That must surely be a sign of genius in art: taking a limited set of variables, like squares of primary colors or a 12-tone scale of notes, and constructing something new and interesting with it on a consistent basis. I don't know how it's possible, but Britt Daniel has done it again and that's why Britt Daniel is a genius and I am not.



Dungen - Tio Bitar
Kemado

Dungen makes heavy psychedelic music that sounds practically lifted from some foggy meadow circa-1967. Someone might read that and think, "who in the hell wants to listen to psychedelic music in 2007." Let me ask you this: who doesn't want to listen to psychedelic music in 2007? Aren't the times absolutely begging for music that transports someone away from the fucked-up mess that surrounds them? Wasn't that exactly what happened in 1967? The world might not think so (and according to the whispers I've heard on the internet, Dungen's home country of Sweden doesn't exactly think so either). But I look at the turmoil in the world--the quagmire in Iraq, the pending Armageddon in Iran, political assassinations in Pakistan, a tanking economy at home--and I think, why aren't there more bands like Dungen out there right now? The protest movement has gotten off the streets and gone online, but why doesn't it have a soundtrack like the movements of the sixties? Well, for those of you who wonder the same thing, let Dungen be your Jefferson Airplane.



Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Paw Tracks

For those psychedelia skeptics that I imagined into existence in the previous paragraphs, here's a psychedelic record that makes sense in the 21st century, soaked in reverb but built with sampling technology. Others have mentioned Brian Wilson when describing this record, so again, being lazy, I'll do it too: this sure as hell reminds me of Brian Wilson when I listen to it. Maybe if Brian Wilson were born in the seventies and decided to stay in his room and replace his brothers with his Mac, it would sound like Person Pitch. It works, in a way that Panda Bear's other gig, Animal Collective, hasn't worked for me as yet. Now I'll admit that I haven't listened to much of their stuff, but what I have listened too sounds jarring and contrived, whereas this sounds organic and fluid. When I heard about this record, and I heard that Panda Bear was living in Portugal with a wife and child, I thought, well, it looks like this Panda Bear is starting a solo career. I thought that even though I knew nothing about him or his other band, which he has not left, but when I thought it, and then listened to this record, I thought, man, what a great move. This guy is a genius, he doesn't need anyone else. Not being totally versed in Animal Collective, I won't come right out and say he should quit Animal Collective and be a cool solo artist based out of Lisbon (how cool is that?), but I will say this: of all his colleagues in Animal Collective, Panda Bear has the best nickname. I mean, they're Animal Collective: how come he's the only one who is named after an animal?



Man has this list gotten huge. It isn't even a list...I haven't counted, but I think I've named a lot more than 10 albums already, and aren't all lists supposed to come in tens? Perhaps that's just my western mind trying to hold me down. And get this: I'm not done yet. No, I still have to name the best album of 2007. I don't know if you're even still with me, but stay tuned: it'll get here soon (though possibly not in the actual year 2007).

Oh, and if you haven't let me know yet, tell me what you think were the best records of the year. I'm all ears.

The Best Albums of 2007, pt. 3

Part 1 ~ Part 2

Even though I've mentioned many times that I don't listen to stuff that gets played on the radio, I've realized that some of the stuff might actually get played somewhere on the radio. Big as this country is, there just might be some commercial radio station out there that plays Okkervil River all day long, but wherever that it is, it isn't anywhere I know (unless you're counting college radio, which I'm not...which isn't to say college radio isn't awesome, which it is, especially if you live within the usually short broadcasting radius of your typical college radio station). Ironically, it seems that I often hear cool music being played or talked about on NPR programs such as All Things Considered or Fresh Air; often times they'll profile an interesting group or musician, and plenty of times I've heard cool stuff being played as bumper music on some of their programs. Sometimes, in the more snobbish sectors of music fandom, I hear "NPR Music" being referred to in derisive terms, as in "that sounds like the kind of music you would hear on NPR," ironically (but isn't it always?) being said by people who are in fact the kind of people who would listen to said music, as well as the kind of people who listen to NPR regularly--I guess we can chalk it up to the tendency for "hip" and educated people to engage in self-loathing as a habit (hi, I'm Jake, and I loathe myself...) Ah, if only we could all live in Southern California and be able to listen to KCRW whenever we felt like switching on a radio.

Y'know, on second thought, I think I'll skip SoCal and just listen to Morning Becomes Eclectic over the internet....

Today's segment of the Best Albums of 2007 focuses on music that is just mainstream enough, in some cases more mainstream than others, to possibly be played on the radio, or to be purchased at your local Target, or to appear in a Passat or iPod commercial.

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Nonsuch

This is the best album Wilco has ever done. If ever I'm asked what album to buy if someone has never listened to Wilco, I'm going to recommend Sky Blue Sky (then Being There, then Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, then Summerteeth, then A Ghost is Born, no maybe Ghost before Teeth...) I say this with no reservations. This sounds like the album Jeff Tweedy has been trying to make for his whole career. Everything works, everything sounds great. It's that simple. I can hear the self-loathing hipster in me making all the standard arguments against Wilco (actually, now that I'm a homeowner and a parent, that hipster's voice is a lot harder to hear). He's gonna say something about the Volkswagen commercials, something about the band not being the same now that Jay Bennett's not in it, something about them sounding like the Eagles (actually, Jeff heard that one)...WHATEVER, DUDE. Here you go: selling out means nothing anymore. In fact, considering that you essentially never have to pay for music anymore, selling your songs to Volkswagen is about the only way a non-billionaire musician can make money. Jay Bennett: tell you what, I don't really like Summerteeth that much. It's overproduced. I can listen to Pet Sounds if I want to hear Pet Sounds. And have you listened to a Jay Bennett solo album? It's great if you're interested in the production of music, but if you want to hear great songs? Not so much. And the Eagles? Screw that noise. This is plain great music. And Nels Cline's guitar work is beyond sublime; a coworker of mine complained that Cline was handcuffed by Tweedy and never gets the chance to really shred, but if you listen closely to Cline's fretwork on a song like "Impossible Germany," you'll agree that virtuosity sometimes has more to do with what one doesn't play rather than what they do.



Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
Rounder Records

This might be the musical equivalent of stunt-casting. When I saw the two of them on the cover of this album, I just knew I wanted to listen to it. And to know that it was produced by T-Bone Burnett, the Coen Brothers' resident musicologist? Yeah, I was signed up at the gate. Part of my admiration for this has to do with my being a fan of the male/female duet, for instance: Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, Johnny & June Carter Cash, Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, and so on. The difference between those duos and this one is the fact that in the rest of them, there was a male voice and a female voice, and y'know, I think Plant's voice might just be higher than Krauss's. We could go on about this, and honestly, this is a record that invites that kind of contemplation and more. There is plenty to like here, and plenty to keep you coming back. Along with this: they've got to be, ahem, "together," right? I mean, if you look at the back cover of this record, I'm pretty damn sure that one of them has their hand down the back pocket of the other's jeans...or maybe both of them do?

Feist - The Reminder
Cherrytree/Interscope

Oh, Feist. There's something about this woman that makes her irresistible; no, scratch that, there's a hell of a lot about her that makes her irresistible, chief among them being her sultry, sexy vocal cords, which are living proof that the best, sexiest voices often aren't the ones that hit the most octaves or do the trickiest acrobatics. Take Al Green, Marvin Gaye, hell, Kylie Minogue, and for sure Goldfrapp and our very own Leslie Feist. Is she the most attractive woman in the world? She may be no Jessica Alba, and that might be a really good thing, but damn can she play guitar, and that voice. Oh man. I'm looking forward to her reading of the Greater Chicagoland phone book I heard she was going to do. Hey, here's an idea for a great vocal duo: Jarvis Cocker and Feist. Could give Serge and Jane a run for their money, no?

"I Feel it All" - from The Reminder
Buy it Here

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Self-released

Gotta hand it to Radiohead: they're the only band I can think of who can make headlines just for releasing a record, and the only ones who can back it up with music that merits the world's attention. Who else does it? U2? Nope, I don't think so. How much did I pay for this record? Erm, the same as I paid for most of the records I listen to...ahem, well, anyway, you could call this a return to form, but Radiohead has never lost its form: it just invents new ones.

"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" - from In Rainbows

Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
Ecstatic Peace!

Actually, you might not find Thurston's first solo record since 1995's Psychic Hearts at your local Target. But no matter where you have to go to find it, you by all means should seek out this record. It sounds different from anything he's done lately with Sonic Youth, thanks in no small part to contributions from J Mascis, Charalambides's Christina Carter, as well as from the always rock-solid perfect drumming of Steve Shelley, beyond any doubt SY's secret weapon since EVOL.



Ween - La Cucaracha
Rounder Records

You might call this record a return to form, but only if you didn't like Quebec, which I did, or Shinola, Vol. 1, which I did as well but apparently Dean Ween himself did not. Dean, I'm glad someone else, possible Geaner, has better sense than you. But anyway, Paul says this is their best since Chocolate and Cheese. I'm not sure about that, but it's pretty damn good. It says something when a band who used to be so subversive they improved a Leonard Cohen album cover by adding a Scotchguard bong to it nowadays is subversive for convincing lite-jazz icon David Sanborn to blow his sax over one of their tracks. That would be "The Party," which features the following lyric:

Later on when we were under the covers
I closed my eyes, then I drifted to sleep
I dreamt about me maybe throwing a party
And just how great that would be

And we said
We had the best time at your party
The wife and I thank you very much
We had the best time at your party
The wife and I thank you very much

And that's long after "Fiesta," which opens the album and sounds a lot like Herb Alpert playing the theme to Meatballs, and "Object," which hits all the scary-stalker notes like only Ween can do.

The Best Albums of 2007, pt. 2

Hi again. Here are a few more of albums I really enjoyed this year. That's all the criteria I have for this ongoing list, which is in no particular order.

The Takeovers - Bad Football
Off Records

I forget just how long Guided By Voices has been "broken up;" perhaps it's enough to say they broke up when Tobin Sprout left the band. Anyway, Robert Pollard soldiers on, just not as GBV, and you can count me as one who gave up paying too much attention after his first post-GBV solo record. Yet somehow I felt compelled to listen to his latest band-of-the-day, The Takeovers, where he's allegedly abetted by Stephen Malkmus, as well as members of Tad, Mudhoney, and the Decemberists. Whatever--this sounds like anything else that might have come out of the Captain's suitcase in GBV's salad years. For those of you who remember those days and still think fondly of them, Bad Football might just hit that spot for you; you know what spot I'm talking about. It might even inspire a whole new audience to discover Pollard's music; unlike most of his one-offs, this one seems like it might hold his attention for more than a few releases. For almost everyone else: well, as Bob himself says, "If you don't want it, don't buy it."

"Molly & Zack" - from Bad Football
Buy it Here


The Avett Brothers - Emotionalism
Ramseur Records

So you hear about this three-piece consisting of two actual, mostly bearded brothers who play guitars, banjos, and assorted other instruments, along with their friend on stand-up bass. And you think, OK, cool, here's another old-timey bluegrass throwback; this might be something I would recommend to my mom, who loved the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. But goddamn, just about anyone who loves great songwriting and good pop music would enjoy Emotionalism, so you can recommend this to all of your bearded and non-bearded friends, as well as your mom. Call it bluegrass-meets-power pop. That sound good to you?