- Christopher Bahn
- Andy Battaglia
- Aaron Burgess
- Andrew Earles
- Scott Gordon
- Marc Hawthorne
- Jason Heller
- Steven Hyden
- Trevor Kelley
- Genevieve Koski
- Gregg Lagambina
- Michaelangelo Matos
- Chris Mincher
- Josh Modell
- Noel Murray
- Sean O'Neal
- Keith Phipps
- Nathan Rabin
- Kyle Ryan
NOEL MURRAY
1. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (15)
On album number two, Arcade Fire attempted something grand, evoking terror and transcendence via music a lot clearer than the clatter on the still-quite-good Funeral. Some have knocked the familiarity of Neon Bible's sound—and even some of its melodies—but the record's immediacy is primarily an attempt to plug into the common rock charge, and savor how it feels to make an audience feel good.
2. Radiohead, In Rainbows (13)
Because a lot of fans who downloaded In Rainbows were too lazy to burn it onto a CD or move it onto their portable MP3 players, the album became default listening when they were stuck in front of their computers for any length of time, and thus became woven into the pulse of the day. From the caffeinated jitters of "15 Step" to the arrhythmic zone-out of "Videotape," In Rainbows reflects almost any modern mood.
3. The White Stripes, Icky Thump (12)
It's hard not to be just a little in love with an album that includes songs as entertaining as the flamenco-core workout "Conquest" and the cheerfully pissy Faces-style shuffle "Effect And Cause." Icky Thump is an album of crushing riffs and winking bad-boy patter, steeped in the mythology of blues, country, and arena-rock.
4. Field Music, Tones Of Town (10)
After packing its debut album packed with fractured hooks and restless rhythms, this Sunderland art-pop trio presented a song-cycle of sorts for its second effort, running through a day in the life of an anxious urbanite who's "Working To Work." Field Music's complicated melodies are delivered with terse, almost robotic precision, like classic Elton John reinterpreted by Spoon.
5. Kings Of Leon, Because Of The Times (10)
Kings Of Leon's journey into deconstruction continued on a 13-song mood piece that sounds like it was cobbled together from spare bridges, codas, and reprises. Because Of The Times is an album of striking textures, following its own eccentric muse at its own fitful rate.
6. Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (10)
Inventive, rich, and likeably human, Sky Blue Sky circles gently and never fully lands. Again and again, Wilco starts a song that sounds like it could be a new pop-folk standard, then abandons it after a minute or two to go rooting around in the soil. Between the loud, jammy interludes, Tweedy coos sweet words of regret and reconciliation, poignant but never pat.
7. Rogue Wave, Asleep At Heaven's Gate (5)
"Lake Michigan" by Rogue Wave
Evenly split between the swing-for-the-fences ambition of Arcade Fire and the intricate miniatures of The Shins, Rogue Wave's third album serves up precisely paced and effortlessly poppy anthems that run on long enough to resonate, growing from ripples to waves.
8. The Twilight Sad, Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters (5)
Shimmering feedback, a circular cadence, and swoony memories of a desperately idle youth run through The Twilight Sad's signature song, "That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy," and establish a theme of reflecting on adolescence with a sense of perspective and hard-won wisdom. The songs on Fourteen Autumns are loud, and graced with long-line melodies that are easy to hum, but hardly quick or disposable. The band's biggest strength is its willingness to start a song in mid-sprawl—frequently with an opening line that continues a previously interrupted train of thought—and then to radiate out, untethered.
9. Tegan And Sara, The Con (5)
On album number five, Canadian pop-rock sisters Tegan And Sara defied conventional notions of rock rhythm by featuring songs that seem to go through at least three melodic changes before recycling. Throughout The Con, the music ticks along like a room full of malfunctioning clocks, while Tegan And Sara keep their own swaggering pace, maintaining an almost painful sense of intimacy and personal exposure in their lyrics.
10. Joni Mitchell, Shine (5)
Yes, it's strange for an artist so politically active and so prickly about the failings of the music business to release her album through Starbucks. And yes, Shine's deconstructed zydeco rendition of "Big Yellow Taxi" plays like a kind of aesthetic loss-leader, appeasing the impulse buyers so that Mitchell can blindside them later with the anti-war bombast of "Strong And Wrong." But the odd clunky lyric aside, Shine is a winningly smooth ride, integrating folk, jazz, and worldbeat into a tuneful neo-boho mix that suits Mitchell's maturing voice. It's only the best album in 30 years by one of the most important singer-songwriters in pop history.
11. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Living With The Living (2)
The narrow focus of Ted Leo's Billy Bragg-meets-The Jam-meets-Thin Lizzy style can make his albums sound kind of samey, but on Living With The Living, The Pharmacists expanded their range, drawing on the pop, soul and reggae influences that have always lurked below the surface of Leo's tuneful agit-punk. Leo strings together an assortment of love songs and protest songs, at once rousing the rabble and feeding their souls.
12. Feist, The Reminder (2)
Back in Paris with expatriate pianist Chilly Gonzales and an assortment of fellow travelers, Feist put together a set of assured, striking songs with an offhand, lazing-around-on-a-rainy-afternoon feel. Throughout The Reminder, Feist keeps the instrumentation spare, to clarify the way she plays old sounds against new, spiritual against secular, and theatrics against sincerity. The album sounds best on headphones, since its rich room tone and casual instrumental interplay is essential to the experience.
13. brakesbrakesbrakes, The Beatific Visions (2)
"Hold Me In The River" by brakesbrakesbrakes
The Beatific Visions pushed the pop-punk and roots-rock sides of Brakes—or "brakesbrakesbrakes" as they're called in the U.S.—in songs that are simultaneously muscular and wide-open. There's a lot of roadhouse kick and yelp here, propelled by friendly backbeat and breath-catching acoustic interludes. It's the best possible kind of casual, and a full-service entertainment machine.
14. The Zincs, Black Pompadour (2)
This unassuming-but-stellar Chicago outfit crafts tautly tuneful mood pieces, built on dark, sweet jangle and baroque imagery. There's a restrained-but-definite earnestness about The Zincs, best-expressed in Black Pompadour's opening song, "Head East, Kaspar," where the wayward rhythm matches lyrics that are cautionary yet reassuring.
15. Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity (2)
Friend Opportunity restored Deerhoof's reputation for listener-friendly avant-garde, adding hard-rock muscle to cooing melodies and artsy fragmentation. The arrestingly choppy songs that make up the first two-thirds of this 35-minute album contrast to the climactic 12-minute track "Look Away," a cosmic jam that does with formlessness what the rest of Friend Opportunity does with microscopic cuts and obsessive shaping—proving it's possible to blow minds without battering people with reckless atonality. This record is adventurous and strange, but never insular.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Band Of Horses
Jose Gonzalez
The High Llamas
The Ike Reilly Assassination
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
Nick Lowe
The New Pornographers
Oakley Hall
Spoon
Amy Winehouse
THE KEY EPS
Los Campesinos' twin minis Sticking Fingers Into Sockets and International Tweecore Underground announced the much-blogged-about Welsh indie-pop act's skewed sense of humor, along with their preference for glockenspiels and fiddles as well as overcranked guitars. Rarely have such grand melodies been delivered with such a surprising amount of aggression.
A WINNING REISSUE
The crate-digging heroes at The Numero Group shared Catherine Howe's airy 1971 folk-jazz curio What A Beautiful Place with fans of Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, The 5th Dimension, and Nick Drake, as well as everyone else who likes gentle, windswept ballads that sport their own bruised integrity. Howe's pretty, solemn songs couch hard truths in soft clothes, reflecting the mood of 2007 as much as 1971.
***
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