- 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
JASON HELLER
1. Jesu, Conqueror (15)
2007 was Justin Broadrick's year. The former Napalm Death member and Godflesh mastermind rode in on January's Conqueror, a full-length that somehow upgrades the greatness of 2006's Silver EP from stunning to celestial. Broadrick followed the album with three incredible EPs and a compilation of previously unreleased songs, but Conqueror remains the apex: No metaphorical allusion to outer space, arctic wastes, or plate tectonics can do justice to the disc's heaviness, vastness, loneliness, and elemental grace. It took 16 years for someone to touch My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, but Broadrick pulled it off.
2. Nina Nastasia And Jim White, You Follow Me (15)
"I Write Down Lists" by Nina Nastasia and Jim White
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As indie-rock grew even more massive—both commercially and sonically—this year, songwriter Nina Nastasia made a hushed, unassuming record with Dirty Three's unparalleled percussionist Jim White. One voice, one acoustic guitar, one tiny drum kit: That's the entire recipe for You Follow Me. Yet within that cramped framework Nastasia and White thrive, even sprawl. White's jazzy intuition has never been more sympathetic and skittish, and Nastasia tumbles breathlessly with space, painterly chords, and plainspoken poesy. The disc's highpoint, "In The Evening," just so happens to be the song of the year: As simple as a scalpel and equally clean, it cuts into tender reservoirs of memory, drunken joy, and sublimated desire.
3. Pissed Jeans, Hope For Men (15)
Slathered in dissonance, misanthropy, and every manner of glandular discharge, Pissed Jeans' Hope For Men is a fucking wreck. But its homeliness doesn't just funnel the hardcore-spawned muck of Flipper and Scratch Acid, it's the ideal antidote to 2007's overabundance of bland indie-pop. "Wish I was a people person!" gibbers Matt Korvette on Hope's opener "People Person," but don't believe it for a second; throughout the album, a pustulant loathing of human idiocy and insipidness builds and bursts, over and over. Hand sanitizer, anyone?
4. Les Savy Fav, Let's Stay Friends (15)
"There was a band called The Pots And Pans / They made this noise that people couldn't stand / And when they toured all across the land / The people said, 'No, no, no' / But the drummer said, 'Yes, yes, yes' / This tour is the test." As barely veiled self-mythology, a statement of intent, and a smoldering anthem, "Pots And Pans"—the opening track of Les Savy Fav's Let's Stay Friends—is nearly perfect. The rest of the disc follows suit: The influential band's first full-length of new material since 2001, Friends cements Les Savy Fav's position as a band that paid its dues, stayed grounded, and never forgot how to deftly assemble prismatic, brainy pop.
5. No Age, Weirdo Rippers (15)
"My Life's Alright Without You" by No Age
In the '90s, everyone from Hood to Guided By Voices left clumps of injuriously distorted pop bobbing in lakes of acidic static. No Age, though, has updated the formula for a far more fearful and wired world. Cobbled together from a handful of EPs, the duo's debut Weirdo Rippers is aptly fractured and intriguingly inconclusive. Veering from washes of noise to nursery-rhyme punk—often in the span of a minute-and-a-half song—Dean Spunt and Randy Randall whip up an ionosphere full of coruscated feedback, fanged riffs, and fog-drowned melody.
6. Minus The Bear, Planet Of Ice (1)
Minus The Bear has always taken itself seriously, but that fact didn't use to be so obvious. As if humbly undermining its own majesty, the group's previous releases trafficked to some degree in silliness—but with Planet Of Ice, Minus' sinewy tangle of post-hardcore and classic prog finally came into its own. With open sonic acknowledgements to Yes, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson—and an ambitious overextension of its titular metaphor—Planet is bleak, sexy, brooding, and complex.
7. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above (1)
"No More" by Dirty Projectors
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Songwriter isn't quite the term for David Longstreth: The Dirty Projectors leader is much more of a composer and arranger, and Rise Above is his boldest and biggest accomplishment yet. Using airy harmonies, organically disjointed structures, and tightly wound instrumentals, the disc is a sparse-yet-lush stunner that shuffles somewhere between Scott Walker and Xiu Xiu. More than just a conceptualist, though, Longstreth is a mind-bending singer and guitarist—and Rise Above shivers around his alien voice and knotty virtuosity. Oh, and the album is also a radical, nearly unrecognizable reworking of Black Flag's Damaged. But really, who cares? Rise Above's songs stand on their own sure beauty and brilliance.
8. Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (1)
The gripes leveled at Wilco's Sky Blue Sky mostly center around Jeff Tweedy's apparent backslide into the classic-rock gospel. No argument there—but his sedate, loose-limbed jamming (aided by the godlike Nels Cline) is what makes Sky Blue Sky such an effortlessly warm, inviting listen. And the disc isn't nearly as conventional as some folks claim: While "Hate It Here" sounds like Glenn Tilbrook crying in Robbie Robertson's beer, there's still plenty of unraveled weirdness, and the disc's closer, "Let's Not Get Carried Away," rides on spine-scraping riffs, delicious tension, and one of Tweedy's greatest vocal disintegrations.
9. Dillinger Escape Plan, Ire Works (1)
Anyone who's heard "Unretrofied"—the almost Nine Inch Nails-like track from Dillinger Escape Plan's 2004 disc Miss Machine—shouldn't be that surprised about "Black Bubblegum," the pop-inflected oddity on the group's new Ire Works. Still, Machine only barely prepared fans for Ire's overall scope and ambition; with sweeping song arcs and an even broader sonic palette, the band picks up where Faith No More fell apart while conducting its own experiments in intricate, melodic aggression. There's still a grip of scorched, tooth-loosening tech-metal rockers, too, lest anyone try to claim that Dillinger has lost its killer instinct.
10. Parts And Labor, Mapmaker (1)
"Fractured Skies" by Parts And Labor
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A band's choice of cover songs can say a lot about its character. Parts And Labor picked the Minutemen's "King Of The Hill" on its recent full-length Mapmaker, and the result is an example the kind of avant-rock deconstruction that would've made D. Boon and crew proud. Like their heroes, the three men of Parts And Labor bypass the path of least resistance while yanking out contorted hooks and racket-rattled synths. Co-leader BJ Warshaw continues to indulge his fetish for Brian Eno's slashing early output—a fixation he wallows in on the recent debut of his solo project Shooting Spires—but Mapmaker transcends its influences like a rocket outracing Earth's gravity.
11. Georgie James, Places (1)
It rained indie-pop in 2007, and most of it was of the shrill, one-note, overwrought variety. Georgie James, though, accomplished luxury on a budget with Places. The Washington D.C. duo—which features former Q And Not U member John Davis alongside singer-songwriter Laura Burhenn—crafted its debut full-length out of a laundry list of vintage power-pop, piano balladry, high romance, and the kind of rich, languorous melody that turns inherently stiff indie-rock into something that sighs, shudders, and hyperventilates. And the disc's lashes-batting take on Saint Etienne-style Euro-disco knocks it out of the park.
12. Do Make Say Think, You, You're A History In Rust (1)
With its faded-in drum shuffle and plunked piano chords, Do Make Say Think's You, You're A History In Rust introduces itself in much the same way Ziggy Stardust did. But DMST's spacious introduction quickly establishes its own route to epic: The Canadian ensemble's fifth full-length is earthy and spacey at the same time, teeming with rustic grit and hymnal wonder. And it isn't post-rock business as usual—for the first time, the instrumental group solicited vocals from members of Great Lake Swimmers and Akron/Family, both of whom also released excellent albums in 2007.
13. Neurosis, Given To The Rising (1)
Since 1996's career-topping prog-sludge opus Through Silver In Blood and its nose-to-the-grindstone follow-up Times Of Grace, Neurosis has been content to stew in its own gloom. Given To The Rising isn't any different—it's just better than anything the band has released in years. Impossibly thick and atmospherically oppressive, the disc unearths every detonation of synthesizer and shard of corroded melody in its arsenal. But instead of an assault, Rising is a hypnotic and ultimately paralyzing immersion in Sabbath-worthy riffs and Swans-level noise. Finally finished with looking forward, Neurosis is now thankfully content with probing and refining its own primordial enormity.
14. Bill Callahan, Woke On A Whaleheart (1)
"Have faith in wordless knowledge," deadpans Bill Callahan on Woke On A Whaleheart's "From The Rivers To The Ocean." He sounds as sage and salty as Lou Reed—and while that might have been a bit uppity of Callahan earlier in his Smog career, he's settled into his encroaching middle age with ragged dignity. Whaleheart is Callahan's first record under his own name, and that forthrightness cuts to the album's bone: Set against lush instrumentation and even a flash or two of pure pop, songs like "A Man Needs A Man Or A Woman To Be A Man" and the stiffly funky "Diamond Dancer" conjure plenty of ghosts alongside a sick laugh or two.
15. Battles, Mirrored (1)
It takes a while to get used to Tyondai Braxton's singsong, heavily processed vocals on Battles' debut Mirrored. But once that bit of weirdness is properly digested, the album opens up into sheer magnificence: Amid antiseptic textures and maze-like arrangements lies what might be the apotheosis of math-rock, a cerebral batch of songs whose components interlock with abstract, seamless complexity. Even when it rocks and grooves—which it does hard and often—Mirrored is fragile in its gemlike exquisiteness. And while you'd expect the son of Anthony Braxton and former members of Helmet and Don Caballero to be fairly progressive, Battles obliterates and utterly rebuilds, molecule by molecule, the whole idea of jazz-rock fusion.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Against Me!, New Wave
Best punk-rock sellout since Jawbreaker's Dear You.
The Apples In Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder
Crystal clear and teeming with gee-whiz, The Apples are aging amazingly.
Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
Yes, I actually loved it—just not half as much as Funeral, and not quite enough to make my top 15. A nice batch of majestic radness to tide us over 'til they make their Rattle And Hum.
Art Brut, It's A Bit Complicated
Eddie Argos keeps the wit and hooks in the red on Art Brut's sophomore effort. I can stand this sound the second time around.
Beaten Awake, Let's Get Simplified
Dudes from The Six Parts Seven, The Party Of Helicopters, and Harriet The Spy try their hand at roots-rock. The result is very drunk, very weird, very wobbly, and a whole mess of fun.
Between The Buried And Me, Colors
Dillinger Jr.? Nonetheless, these guys beat their own weird path to metalcore pomp and circumstance.
Big Business, Here Come The Waterworks
Great, galloping thunderbolts from 50 percent of Melvins. Freakin' catchy, too.
Black Cross, Severance Pays and Coliseum, No Salvation
Two of Louisville's finest kept the heavy, horrifying vibe going strong.
Botch and Coalesce reissues
Thanks, Hydra Head! Now can you beat up Atreyu for me?
brakesbrakesbrakes, The Beatific Visions
British post-punk and, uh, countrified folk? Brakes are no Mekons, but they still get the job done.
The Broken West, I Can't Go On, I'll Go On
The greatest sandy-eyed, sandy-shoed pop record since The Tyde first rolled in.
Die! Die! Die!, Die! Die! Die!
The upcoming disc from these Kiwi noiseniks is a wee bit of a letdown, but this one rips. Wire guts Unwound.
Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade
Rebounding from a few years of missteps, Earle got back on the horse he rode into El Corazón on—Serenade brims with joy, bile, and one of the best voices God ever let rip.
Earth, Hibernaculum
Listen to this while watching Planet Earth with the sound turned down.
Fucked Up, Year Of The Pig
Two massive, amazing tracks that somehow wound up being more satisfying than 2006's full-length Hidden World.
Gallows, Orchestra Of Wolves (Epitaph)
If the hype is to be believed, Gallows is the second coming of Refused—but really, they play hardcore on their own terms: pissed-off, rock-fueled, and jittery.
The Go, Howl On The Haunted Beat You Ride
I'll never understand the savage underrating this band constantly gets. Glam-splattered garage rock that's oddly progressive and nourishingly meaty at the same time… Yes, Jack White used to be in this band, and he clearly learned a lot about pop songwriting from them.
PJ Harvey, White Chalk
Another PJ Harvey album, another lump of my heart down the shitter.
I Am The Ocean, And Your City Needs Swallowing
Not sure why this one didn't get more attention: Ambitious, textured post-hardcore that carves huge chunks out of your insides.
Intelligence, Deuteronomy
Did you see these guys on that episode of Food Network's Throwdown!, the one where Bobby Flay took on the singer of Red Aunts in a cupcake-making contest? That was sweet.
Jason Isbell, Sirens Of The Ditch
Isbell exited Drive-By Truckers as gracefully and tunefully as he entered. Immaculately grit-pocked roots-rock.
Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights
If you caught them live this year, you probably picked up on the vibe: Slower, slinkier, duskier, and deeper than ever.
Lewis & Clarke, Blasts Of Holy Birth
Lou Rogai finally puts the lame-ass freak-folk label to rest by making an album that's as grounded in real life as it is sublimated in ether.
Lifetime, Lifetime
From 108 to Damnation A.D., 2007 was all about East Coast '90s hardcore comebacks. But Lifetime put its name to the test and passed with flying colors, pumping out one more gem of melodic fury for the kids. Probably their own kids.
Minmae, 835
Minmae joins The Go in the consistently, inexplicably underrated department. Remember when Yo La Tengo wasn't just good, but really good?
The Octopus Project, Hello, Avalanche
I'm gonna throw a rave in a preschool and see how many times in a row I can play this before I get arrested.
Old Time Relijun, Catharsis In Crisis
Consistently kick-ass ethno-mysticism and free-rock (free-folk?) overload from the verdant brainstem of Arrington De Dionyso and friends.
Om, Pilgrimage
Third-eye, bass-and-drums drone from these ex-Sleep stalwarts. The meditative yin to Big Business' pants-down yang.
Pinback, Autumn Of The Seraphs
Another dose of Pinback's same old math-pop genius. I'll take a lifetime subscription.
Prize Country, Lottery Of Recognition
Portland boys make with the Jehu, and mostly succeed at removing my face.
Pylon, The Slits, and Young Marble Giants reissues
Just in time—since my early '80s, girl-staffed post-punk LPs have been worn to the bone over the last five years in an attempt to drown out Karen O.
Ringfinger, Decimal
Releases from Cave In-related projects—Clouds, Zozobra, Pet Genius—flew like crazy this year, but this one is the best. And the Cave In connection is only peripheral: Ringfinger is mostly the vehicle for Tracy Wilson of '90s emo powerhouse Dahlia Seed, the band that, for better or worse, planted the seeds for Rainer Maria, Denali, and Pretty Girls Make Graves (don't worry, I won't say Paramore). Here she goes digital and icy, and it's a gorgeous.
Ruiner, Prepare To Be Let Down
Thick, mean, fast, heavy, self-loathing rock. They used to call it hardcore.
Shellac, Excellent Italian Greyhound
Everybody has a Steve Albini story. What's that one about him bowling in the middle of the street in his bathrobe outside a rock club just to prove that his naked ankles were a bigger draw than the band playing inside? Did I just make that up?
Shooting Spires, Shooting Spires
BJ Warsaw gets back at his main band Parts & Labor—recipient of the coveted number-10 spot on my top 15—by making a solo record that soars like an eagle. An eagle, that is, fed through a lot of distortion pedals.
Songs Of Green Pheasant, Gyllyng Street
Bliss sells, but who's buying? I am. Claustro-folk of the highest, and I do mean highest, order.
St. Vincent, Marry Me
As nerdy and art-wrecked as Kate Bush, Annie Clark's debut is a fluttery, cluttered pop wallop.
Amy Winehouse, Back To Black
Besides confessing my ceaseless fascination with this woman, Mark Ronson's peerless production, and that utterly unearthly voice, I have nothing to add.
XBXRX, Wars
I saw these kids play a few years ago when they were, like, on Christmas break from high school and touring the country. It was Nation Of Ulysses atomized and reconstituted—and they band just keeps growing into its own noise.
***
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