a year in music: two thousand and seven

god the cliche of a best of list…. 

anyway on with the show (in no particular order but shellac at the top.  obviously.) 

excellent italian greyhound by shellac. if you don’t dig albini, weston and trainer then you can go to hell.  buy everything they’ve released starting with this.  on vinyl.  with free throwaway cd.  then obsessively track down the other records.  you’ll try and fail, bitches. this sounds like something they’ve knocked out in a few hours following a twelve year wait and it’s still better than everything else released this year.  it’s as lean as (but more mean than) the dog on the sleeve.  and albini’s guitar still sounds like what electricity sounds like in my head.  guitar skinng indeed.

my heart has a wish that you would not go by aereogramme.  an album title so tearjerkingly apt so gutstabbingly exorcist-quotingly sad that i’m welling up thinking about it.  they’ve only gone and done it.  packed up their shit and scampered.  i want to hate them for it but they made such beautiful music.  the only band i’d ever want to reform.  possibly.  would’ve been my gig of the year too if the flaming lips hadn’t wandered into town and converted me like some mad haired jesuses.  see here also.

and their refinement of the decline by stars of the lid.  is it drone?  is it classical?  is it even music asks my dear old mum?  course it is you mad old hag.  it’s like peeling an onion or some such lazy simile.  stick with it and it rewards.  like falling asleep in the bath.  or a nicer version of c.i.a. water torture.

cross (can’t get the goddam symbol on here) by justice.  daft punk with the bass turned right up to a spinal tappian eleven.  if this doesn’t shake the fillings from yr neighbours teeth turn it up.  sexy french ladies like them and i like sexy french ladies.  result.  and they pissed off kanye west. 

we are him by angels of light.  this record; michael gira looks like yr curmudgeonly old uncle and roars stories from the old testament while akron/family noodle about in the background.  wearing capes and shit.  he’s better solo although he doesn’t seem to like it very much but this is prettay prettay prettay good.  see also love is simple by akron/family.  see here also.

woke on a whale heart by bill callahan.  never exactly a bundle of joy as smog but now he’s dropped the anonymity, found love with joanna newsom and released an album of gentle beauty.  not that it’s some wishy-washy namby-pamby pop-pap.  it’s a bit tom waits without the weirdness and mad croaky growl.

hibernaculum by earth.  used to sound like black sabbath on tranquilizers.  now sounds like ry cooder on tranquilizers.  ignore the ponderous dvd and luxuriate in the stark goodness of these reworked old tracks.  reminds me of being an old man.  in the woods.  in nineteenth century america.  on tranquilizers.

under giant trees by efterklang.  it’s danish.  it has trombones.  it rubs the lotion on its skin.  better than the albums that preceded and followed it.  it’s a wee bit pretentious which isn’t necessarily a complaint.

i’ll sleep when you’re dead by el-p. big competition in the genre i don’t much like this year.  dizzee rascal, saul williams, sage francis all coming close.  i chose this mainly because with that name i imagine him as a mexican bandido.  also because it has one of the mars volta on it and everyone hates the mars volta but me.  positively bristling with post-post-millenium tension.  it’ll all probably soon sound as anachronous as public enemy do these days but it’s not some fake thug r&b shit to probably (mis)quote dead prez so be thankful.

curses by future of the left.  from the ashes of two thirds of wales’ greatest band evaahh came this little beauty.  wonderfully uglier and spikier than my cactii collection this one. praise the lord it ain’t another post-mclusky disaster like the excellently monickered but shit sounding shooting at unarmed men.  not quite mclusky does dallas.  but then what is? huh?

carnavas by silversun pickups.  what they used to call alternative rock on mtv.  done proper.  like smashing pumpkins gish/pisces iscariot stylee before they became shit i.e. everything after siamese dream when corgan went bald and addams family and new romantic and industrial and fucked courtney (eeeeww).  mix in a bit of droney pop tunefulness and bobs yr uncle.  well, the seedy uncle, touching you when yr mums not looking.

book of bad breaks by thee more shallows.  the best thing on anticon.  lovely womblike electronics, poppy hooks, noise, guitars.  like the warm relief when you wet yourself.  not the self loathing and discomfort that inexorably follows.

fourteen autumns and fifteen winters by twilight sad.  if arab strap and mogwai fucked this is what they’re bearded baldy bastard baby would sound like.  it’s as loud and scottish as a drunk glaswegian on the last train home.

visqueen by unsane.  ground glass washed down with a shot of whisky.  take all the best bits of unsane and simmer angrily for a few years.  give it a raw production (but never lo-fi) and let them rip.  these filthy riffs’ll shred yr face off or some other metal journalism cliché.  see here also.

north star deserter by vic chesnutt.  a silver mt zion with tunes and songs and structure from the best kept singersongwriter secret out there.  and it’s on constellation so it’s chockfull of incestuous kanadian musician types.  but no mono-eyed banjo players.  sadly.

icky thump by white stripes.  where jack white rediscovers his guitar.  thank christ.

sky blue sky by wilco.  took a downright ass-raping from the critics but contrary bugger (pun intended) that i am, i bloody well like this.  as old fashioned and straight forward as a ghost is born wasn’t.  no krautrock exercises and plenty of widescreen americana.

you ain’t the man by young james long.  why is nobody buying pw longs albums or going to see him when he tours?  a sure sign that the world (and record buying public) are ninety five percent cunt.  it’s more of the same bluesy rocked up racket as mule and reelfoot which is no bad thing.  get this and keep him a-whoopin’ and a-hollering for a bit longer.  go on.  cunts.

the black and white album by the hives. the less popular they become the better they sound. the record the stooges should have made instead of they shite they did.

liars by liars.  whereby the creepy blair witch spooky shit is gone to be replaced by how the new stooges record should have sounded.  what the fuck iggy?

sound of silver by lcd soundsystem.  where james murphy goes all seventies bowie.  a man forever in the shadow of the best goddam single of the past ten years or thereabouts – losing my edge. 

latitudes.  so many little bitesized pleasures on this southern imprint doohickey that i couldn’t pick one.  so i picked them all.  miasma and the carousel of headless horsemen, blood & time, magik markers among others.  why all record labels don’t do this i don’t know.  probably coz the rest of them are owned by unilever or lockheed martin or something and want to harvest your organs incase the chairman needs a replacement lung after smoking million dollar notes every day while pissing on yr granddads grave.

the snow abides by michael cashmore.  everyones favourite guest singer antony (from antony and the johnsons) sings on this.  it’s eerily slinky.

we were dead before the ship even sank by modest mouse.  uh-oh major label alert.  am i kicked out the indie club?  even johnny marr couldn’t spoil this for me and i really hate the smiths more probably than any other band on this pointless planet.  really.  i hate them and every person who disagrees with this sentiment. and every band ‘inspired’ by them.  honestly.  just fuck off and die.

science fiction illustrated by mother and the addicts.  you can dance to this.  like brian ferry.  possibly.  the best thing on chemikal underground since well the last aereogramme record.  and before that well probably mogwai.  no wait, monday at the hug and pint by arab strap and they’ve split up as well.  sort it out chemikal underground.

loves miracle by qui.  yowser.  the return of yow.  more iggy than iggy.  the man who at my favourite ever gig came onstage wearing one rubber glove and a little girls cardigan and uttered these words: ‘my name’s david yow and i’ve had the presidents penis in my mouth’ before stripping off and crowd surfing nude across the heads of many weirded out punters.  yow indeed.

given to the rising by neurosis.  albini produces.  it’s epic.  it’s panoramic.  it’s systematic. it’s bigger than pavarotti’s coffin.

the narcotic story by oxbow. the best dressed album this year. classy ugly threatening and that’s just the two involved. like tom waits with a headful of crack and a rusted blade in each hand. this record, would fuck you in prison.

honourable mentions (and shit i’ve not listened to enough yet):

while my guitar violently bleeds by sir richard bishop

ask forgiveness by bonnie prince billy

strawberry jam by animal collective

shelter from the ash by six organs of admittance

living with the living by ted leo and the pharmacists

in rainbows by radiohead

man that’s a fuckload of links. 

happy hanukkah.