Other than cold weather, final exams, and an old, fat, white guy sneaking into your house, the month of December brings with it wrapping paper begging to be torn, stockings yearning to be stuffed, family get-togethers gone awry once the yuletide spirits are let out, and annual, end-of-year, “best of” and “top ten” lists.
Well, the UP is no different. So, here are the top ten albums of 2007 as picked by the UP‘s resident audiophile and muse-sick critic.
1) Radiohead – In Rainbows (inrainbows.com)History is full of great inventors, great thinkers, and great musicians. Until now, there has never been a lone, singular moment in time when all of these types of men were in one location or group. Of course, I’m talking about none other than the five, musically-prodigious lads from Oxfordshire, England, that form Radiohead.
Radiohead has made perhaps one of the finest sound recordings in the history of mankind -again. In Rainbows is right up there with their first masterpiece, OK Computer, and yet it also stands well all on its own, quite well actually. Aside from the band’s savant-like business approach for this album that left the major-label-monsters of the music industry collectively scratching both their big heads and even bigger arses, In Rainbows is as right as rain. In Rainbows is 10 tracks of musical, lyrical, and satirical brilliance. Quite simply, if In Rainbows were a piece of candy and your brain was a tooth, you’d have one hell of a cavity in your head.
Focus Tracks: THE ENTIRE ALBUM.
2) Bjork – Volta (Atlantic)The Icelandic songbird’s sixth full-length studio album may well prove to be her finest work to date. Volta increases the sonic intoxication of the listener each and every time he hears it – which is the unspoken benchmark of all great albums. Each track on this album is unlike the other, yet each track seems to be penned into the same niche of auditory-stock by its creator, Bjork herself. Vocally, stylistically, and musically Bjork continues to personify the true definition of what an artist could, would, and should be.
Focus Tracks: “Earth Intruders” / “Innocence” / “Declare Independence”
3) Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (Merge)The unity of marriage is noted for many things – love, mid-life crises, families, divorce – however, sonic unity achieved through near-perfect sonic communication is not amongst them. That is, unless you’re talking about the husband and wife team that form the very core of Arcade Fire. This Canadian septet reminded everyone that the term indieshouldn’t necessarily mean “suck.” Neon Bible is one of the freshest albums to come out these past few years and even prompted the Davids (Byrne and Bowie) out of semi-retirement to play sets with them.
Focus Tracks: “Black Mirror” / “Ocean of Noise” / “Windowsill” / “No Cars Go” / “My Body Is a Cage”
4) White Stripes – Icky Thump (Warner Bros.)Very seldom has an album come about that requires no alliteration, quirky descriptions, or technical deconstruction from the myriad music critics populating the globe. Icky Thump is unquestionably one of these albums. In fact, Icky Thump was labeled a surefire Grammy award contender by yours truly (check out a UP issue from Summer ’07). Nonetheless, the White Stripes need no further descriptions; in fact, trying to tell you that Jack White is one of the finest guitarists out there and that Meg White is one of the most sound, technically speaking, percussionists would be like telling you that there’s bubbles in beer. Get it? Got it? Good.
Focus Tracks: “Icky Thump” / “Little Cream Soda” / “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues” / “Conquest”
5) The Shins – Wincing The Night Away (SubPop)The Shins – yes, that band from Garden State – are a quintet of noise-makers who make indie films bearable while at the same time making near-flawless records. With melodies reminiscent of The Beach Boys and electric-goodness that feels warm and fuzzy The Shins latest and greatest, Wincing The Night Away, picks up right where there last album left off: somewhere over the rainbow, in that dreamlike land between sleeping and taking a morning shower. This album was almost entirely excluded from “best of” lists around this great, big, ball of dirt we call Earth. Who knows why these things happen – who knows why clouds sometimes look like cars or animals? But, then again, those clouds might just be the place where the Shins get their sound.
Focus Tracks: “Sleeping Lessons” / “Phantom Limb” / “Red Rabbits” / “Turn On Me” / “Girl Sailor” / “A Comet Appears”
6) Kanye West – Graduation (Roc-A-Fella)2007 proved to be a year in which hip-hop/rap made a brief comeback. Unquestionably, the two largest reasons it did so were Kanye West and Jay-Z. Jay-Z’s album, American Gangster, was a quiet little masterpiece that made waves both great and small, but was ultimately nothing like the tsunami that Mr. West unleashed on the world. Graduation proved to be one of the overall stellar albums of the year that continued to make white men dance and black men dance even better. Coupled with appearances by Daft Punk, Chris Martin, and John Mayer, Mr. West’s fresh lyricism, devoid of ghettoisms, makes one hell of an album.
Focus Tracks: “Stronger” / “Homecoming” / “Bittersweet Poetry”
7) Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger (Lost Highway)The 33-year-old singer/songwriter penned this solidly-crafted album of love, loss, and redemption as he finished up his latest stint in rehab. Easy Tiger was both largely autobiographical and, unfortunately, largely missed by most of the public. However, numbers alone rarely speak for an album, and that’s a good thing, because Mr. Adams has proved yet again that he is one of the finest songwriters currently walking the earth. Ladies love him and men want to be him. Let’s just hope he’s the one doing the writing.
Focus Tracks: “Two” / “Halloweenhead” / “Tears of Gold”
8) Smashing Pumpkins – Zeitgeist (Martha’s Music/Reprise)The Smashing Pumpkins have long been hailed as one group of alternative rock’s savants. However, after too many esoteric albums in which only diehard fans and true audiophiles could stomach, and internal creative differences, the band broke up and was thought to have gone the way of many a jack-o’-lantern. Well, in 2006 the band announced they were reuniting and working on a record, much to the pure adulation of jaded, flannel-wearing, ’90s youths everywhere. Zeitgeist was not only a return to the Pumpkins of old with its raunchy-riffs and haunting vocals, but was also a return of to the Billy Corgan of yesteryear. Other than Radiohead’s outside-the-box opus, Zeitgeist was one of the finest alternative rock albums in a few years.
Focus Tracks: “Doomsday Clock” / “Bleeding The Orchid” / “Tarantula” / “Starz” / “United States”
9) Eddie Vedder – Into the Wild SoundtrackFresh off touring from his other project, Eddie Vedder was approached by actor/director Sean Penn to write a few songs for Into The Wild, which is a film based on the 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer. According to Mr. Vedder this soundtrack stopped becoming one when he became entrenched in the hardships and adventures of Christopher McCandless – the protagonist of the film. The Pearl Jam frontman claims that the songs on this soundtrack wrote themselves after a few bottles of red wine – at least he thinks so. Well, the songs on this album are anything but drunken scribblings by one of alternative rock’s supreme deities. Mr. Vedder’s rogue-like vocals and lyrical, mystic-realism make this soundtrack one of the most unlikely, but most deservedly, best albums of 2007.
Focus Tracks: “No Ceiling” / “Far Behind” / “Hard Sun” / “Society” / “Wolf” / “Guaranteed”
10) Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Some Loud Thunder (self-released)Relatively obscure to everything and anything deemed commercially viable, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a Philadelphia/New York-based quintet of the utmost, highest possible caliber noise-makers who sound like nothing and everything you’ve ever, or never, heard. That is to say if the everything you’ve heard sounds something like an amalgam of early Talking Heads, early to mid-years David Bowie, and highly-experimental avant-garde, new-wave rock. Their second album, Some Loud Thunder, built quite a following rather quietly with numerous music publications and venerable who’s whos of the music industry.
Focus Tracks: “Love Song No. 7” / “Satan Said Dance” / “Yankee Go Home” / “The Sword Song”
