2007 In Review: The Top 30 Albums (Part 1: 30-11)

(fig.1)

Hold music close, against your side with its head in the crock of your arm under your armpit
(see figure 1).

Down with 2007! It’s time for Lazercat to throw his hat into the year-end list madness. I've narrowed down the best of the year down to a smooth 30. Please feel free to post your own lists, argue about your favs, and placement. I've been listening diligently for a year now, and here is the list of my favorite albums of 2007:

Second Tier (30-16):

30. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights
29. No Age - Weirdo Rippers
28. Apparat - Walls
27. Muscles - Guns Babes Lemonade
26. The Honeydrips - Here Comes the Future
25. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
24. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
23. Dirty Projectors - Rise Above
22. Christ. - Blue Shift Emissions
21. King Khan and the Shrines/BBQ Show - What Is?!/King Khan and the BBQ Show
20. Ghostface Killah - The Big Doe Rehab
19. Times New Viking - The Paisley Reich
18. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
17. Caribou - Andorra
16. Fennesz - Endless Summer

First Tier: Part 1 (15-11):

I began dating Jessica just a month or so after first hearing the leak of Drum’s Not Dead. I recall visibly perceiving the anxiety that the record caused her every time I tried to play it around her. Despite her otherwise generally cultivated tastes, Liars are one of the very few bands that still gets under her skin (e.g., one time she actually passed out at a Liars/Apes show). Among many other reasons, that’s because Liars abhor things like femininity and pixar-cute-animal-quest movies.

Yes, Liars is not as good as Drum’s Not Dead, but neither are most albums of 2007. In tracks like “Houseclouds,” “Leather Prowler,” and “Freak Out,” the band shows itself capturing the portions of their live intensity, while still trying to maintain the artfulness of Drum’s. Liars clearly don’t give a fuck about our expectations, and that’s precisely what will probably make them one of the best bands of the 2000’s.


Because of the sheer amount of great albums released this year, I’ve decided to leave compilations off my list. Among the most notable missing, Italians Do It Better After Dark, Manteca’s The Very Best of Éthiopiques, and Kompakt’s Total 8. One of my favorite tracks from that Kompakt comp is the Robert Babicz mix of Gui Boratto’s “Mr. Decay”. Unlike other acts this year that primarily depend on remix and edit culture for the best examples of their work, such as Justice or Klaxons, Boratto stands competently on his own two feet. Gui Boratto, a Brazilian architect and DJ, represents Kompakt’s expanding identity as a label—growing into “pop” sensibilities while maintaining much of the minimalist convictions of Michael Mayer’s label.

I’ve been listening to Boratto since he released the Arquipélago 12”; moving beyond that deep cerebral sound, Boratto has created an instant minimal masterpiece with Chromophobia. Running a smooth 4/4 the whole duration, Boratto masterfully controls layered sounds, and runs what seem to be Trance terms into beautiful sprawling pop epics. Without question, “Beautiful Life,” the only track with vocals on the album (sung by his own wife), will convince your friends, your mom, dad, and strangers on the street that electronic music has something astonishing to offer: pure unbridled hopefulness. Other tracks like “Gate 7,” “Xilo,” and “Acrostico” offer radiant and ingeniously produced hooks that push all “pop” boundaries of electronic music.


The real national debt is owed to Sweden, for consistently providing the world with great music (I think there are five Swedish outfits that made my top 30—not bad for a country of 9 million). This time last year, I was writing this same list (with Knife as my choice for the best album of 2006) and had just downloaded the New Waves EP. “Silly Crimes,” and “Mine was Real” robbed most of my attention of early 2007. “Mine was Real” is a cover of a great soul track by Rozetta Johnson I remember my grandmother listening to often. That cover, like the band’s cover of Primal Scream’s “Velocity Girl,” with its cut-and-copy production, Caribbean percussion, and erratic sound effects, somehow recreates the earnestness and ardor of the original. The Tough Alliance’s variation of détournement easily fits the discussion of a Situationist aesthetic (which appears in various unsubstantiated mentions and references throughout douchey reviews across the internets).

However, this album won’t be making everyone’s year-end list just because of its supposed Situationist alignment. Their work is infectiously crafted, replete with major key-chords, catchy vocal arrangements, and pop sampling. “Something Special,” the opener for New Chance, is emblematic of the unique dualism found in TTA’s work: perfectly crafted pop music combined with subversive political undertones. Using a sample from Arabic pop music, Henning Fürst and Eric Berglund, sing “Not much left to care about/Work full time to shake the doubt”. While functioning as a damn good pop song, “Something Special” seems to subversively confront the pressing issues of immigration in Sweden (and Europe largely). Followed by “Miami,” an unfussy dance song with beautiful texture and equally dissident lyrical content (the only comprehensible words being “Ecstasy!/Miami!”), Tough Alliance despite it’s beautiful pop structural form, somehow appears to be critically engaged (can we really count on Carl Newman to attend to the distresses of capitalism?). Lastly, TTA consciously performs these songs live over a taped recording. Without the theatrics of their Swedish brethren the Knife nor the shame of Ashlee Simpson lipsyncing on SNL, the Tough Alliance further complicates the SI question. I'll admit they do fit the basic bill of a “Situationist”: Plasticity of identity (two “punks” or “rockstars” singing pop songs)—check; unity of cultural capital (integrating sampled elements from various outlets of culture, sound clips, foreign musical elements, etc., into Western pop song structures)—check; and the playful manipulation of the spectacle (aforementioned “punks” singing over pre-recordings)—check. Tough Alliance may be Situationist by Greil Marcus' terms, however, Prince or Paris Hilton may qualify as well. The fact that the music could pose these sort of questions of identity-politics to the listener, while still abide so closely to conventions of pop music is incredibly profound. This band has terrible potential; this is an extraordinary album.

p.s. if you don't believe me, go download their collaboration with Victoria Bergsman entitled "Taken Too Young". It will change your mind.



Firstly, I’d like to thank my friend Dan Solberg for exposing me to Battles just a couple years ago. If it weren’t for him, I would have never got a hold of their EP C/B EP, or Tras EP and realized what Battles meant to me. Every so often, I still listen to “Bttls” on EP B and think about having Dan (and Kyle—when we weren’t tiffing) just down the hall to chat with about music, film, Resident Evil 4 and Soul Calibur. Moreover, “Bttls” (the track and the band) has served as major conversational stepping stone with my now good friend Denny. Denny is a Battles superfan (one more committed than I) so we quickly hit it off over the EPs and Mirrored.

My personal Battles partialities aside, Mirrored represents exactly how technically adept and conceptually brilliant the band truly is. Broken free from those previously masturbatory math and kraut-rock bonds of their EPs (peace be upon them), Mirrored moves the band only upward. The arithmetical depth of those EPs still shines through in tracks like “Tonto” and “Rainbow,” however the strongest tracks on the album are those willing that inventively take on pop refrains and choruses. “Leyendecker” is unquestionably a dance song above all else. “Atlas” drones on joyously for four minutes, contained in complete pop structuring of refrain-chorus (albeit, one of an indistinguishable squirrel voice). Is it wrong that I always envisioned “Atlas” scoring a scene from Spiegelman’s Maus in which the fascist cats are goose-stepping pass the Arc de Tríomphe? Call me tasteless, but don’t take anything from Mirrored.


I’ve been avoiding a substantial amount of year-end lists, as I finish my own, however, I accidentally drifted over to Mikel’s place to see Yearbook 1 received high marks there as well. However, every year there seems to be a great album or two that his held up in distribution limbo. This always seemed unfathomable to me given how many shitty bands find good (enough) record deals and distributors. Needless to say, just as Junior Senior’s masterful Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, Studio’s Yearbook 1 may not get the acclaim it rightfully deserves at year-end due to non-existent distribution (I have a dilemma paying $15-$17 for vinyl, yet alone $25-$35 for import discs).

Yearbook 1 has it all. Combining aspects of krautrock (seems to be a reoccurring theme in the past few years), electronic pop, postpunk, and new wave synth pop, Studio creates a diverse and epic (over seventy minutes) sound. I will spare you a description of “No Comply” (one of my favorite songs of the year), however “Out There” illustrates this amalgamation perfectly. With outmoded drum machines and dry bass akin to Joy Division, the braided synth and guitar create a sound like A Certain Ratio, the Durutti Column, and The Human League. The Durutti reference makes even greater sense after you listen to “Life’s a Beach”. Above all, these songs jam hard, ranging from four minutes to over 15; creating four to five minute pop songs (“Self Service” and “No Comply”) shifting styles to complete twelve to fifteen minute jams (“Out There” and “No Edit”), the sonic scheme of Yearbook 1 never seems to break from its natural style and continuity. Again, I wish truly wish I could place this album higher on my list, but it's been a good year.