A couple of things I missed out of my list the other week:
Pros:
Brian Wilson's That Lucky Old Sun - A little mawkish in places, but the very fact he's writing again is something to celebrate. He also seems to have rediscovered 'Today!' - one of the very best Beach Boys albums.
The Decemberists at the Royal Festival Hall. I knew this would be a good gig, but I hadn't expected it to be this fun! Amusing to sit sheepishly in a corner at the aftershow party too.
Cons:
Kate Nash - Sorry, but no. Elementary school harmony combined with embarrassing lyrics (merely revealing how dull the woman's life is), all delivered in a mock-cockney accent. What is there to enjoy here?
Mika - No, you are not the next Freddie Mercury. Next please!
Happy New Year to all readers!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The Last Words on 2007
Not only has The Wire magazine made the boldest choice of album of the year amongst the print media with Robert Wyatt's 'Comicopera', it also continues to publish rather neat personal summaries of the closing year from both writers and artists. I rather like this - so here's my subjective take on 2007, in a similar style albeit much less concise! All in no particular order, entirely personal and NOT WRITTEN IN A WORK CAPACITY.
Pros:
Love in various forms.
Turnpike Lane – especially the late-opening Melish Supermarket.
The Tiffin Tin in Hornsey - A fine Indian takeaway and occasional life-saver.
Facebook - It sounds completely pathetic, but joining it might well be the most significant thing I did all year. It has its drawbacks, and the privacy concerns are valid - but I'm rather convinced that the positives still outweigh the negatives.
Charity Shops - I've built a substantial library from them this year!
Secure, gainful employment - during daylight hours!!
Discovering that self-expression really isn't actually all that hard and having the audacity to ask of my friends only what they ask of me.
Rediscovering the hunger to write music and lyrics - and finding new approaches towards both.
The Space Race album 'You Are The Guest' - few have heard it, but it might just be the best recorded work I've been involved with so far.
Daniel Lambert and Fake Sheikh - now on hiatus, but some great songs, videos and gigs earlier in the year.
Performing at the Isle of Wight Jazz Festival, The Vortex and The Ram Jam Club, amongst other venues.
Finally finishing as a student and becoming a teacher at WAC Performing Arts and Media College - there's no doubt I'd stuck around too long and should have moved on, but it was gratifying to be recognised so warmly and genuinely at the end.
Seeing Win Butler letting a group of ticketless teenagers in through the stage door at the Arcade Fire’s show at Porchester Hall. The band’s encore – moving from the venue foyer back upstairs and into the centre of the crowd was something very special, and helps explain the unique appeal of this band.
Tim Whitehead's Jazz Summer School at Battisborough House on the coast of Devon: A wonderful, confidence-boosting week of music-making and merriment completely free from worldly concerns. It brought a few things into sharp relief - namely that, although I haven't achieved much commercial success through it so far, playing drums is what I do best and is worth persisting with until I die or become incapacitated. Secondly, although we've never played a proper public gig and have never really ‘rehearsed’, the Millar/Marle-Garcia/Paton set-up has a real chemistry.
The restraint, dignity and honesty of Alan Johnston’s speech to World Service staff on his release from captivity and the strangely moving experience of gathering outside Bush House to campaign for his release and then celebrate his return.
The World Service in its 75th Anniversary year.
Rachmaninov’s 2nd Symphony paired with Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto at the Proms. Wonderful!
Madrid - an invigorating quick stop in one of Europe's finest cities. The restaurant that claims to be the oldest in Europe produced some particularly fine cuisine.
Shanghai and Nanjing - Two amazing weeks observing Shanghai and its blisteringly intense pace of life. The distinctly odd experience of being a Westerner in the East, superb cuisine, basking in the company of good friends, tea-tasting, aimless walking proving the best way to discover a city’s secrets, the beautiful auburn coloured trees in the National Park in Nanjing (especially when viewed from the top floor of a pagoda), relative peace of mind and a whole raft of rare DVDs to boot!
Two wonderful weddings and the joy of observing the happiness and fulfilment of the first of my University friends to tie the knot.
Joe Lovano peforming Streams of Expression and much more at the Barbican.
The Loop Collective and their regular Monday gigs at The Oxford in Kentish Town - at last a jazz club with blood, enthusiasm, clever programming and a sensible promotional strategy.
Meeting Paul Clarvis, Seb Rochford, Ingrid Laubrock, Bill Frisell and Mike Gibbs.
The London Sinfonietta's 'Ligeti Remembered' concerts.
Mark-Antony Turnage's 'About Water' - not his best work, but his understanding of the interconnections between various forms of contemporary music remains refreshing. The performance also introduced me to Barb Jungr, a talented and charismatic performer, whose reinterpretations of Dylan are splendid.
Tom Millar's Swinging and Shiva Feshareki's Dancefloor Distortions - two 'student' compositions as vibrant, engaging and sophisticated as any other new music I heard in 2007. The two composers are younger than me in years but may have taught me more than anyone my senior during the course of the year.
Bob Dylan at Wembley Arena - so good I went back for the second night. Easily the best gigs I've seen him play and that cracked voice genuinely sounds fantastic when he bothers to enunciate. He is essentially a rapper now. Superb renditions of Spirit on the Water, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and John Brown stick in the mind particularly.
Adrian Roye, Beth Dariti and Astic Borders - Two outstanding songwriters and their consistently enjoyable collective. They deserve more attention.
The perceptive songwriting of Simon Lewis. Hopefully more prominent in 2008!
Three Trapped Tigers - The most adventurous new band in London (Supersilent meeting Battles with a twist of Keith Jarrett) and my big tip for 2008.
The winter blankets at that Young’s pub by Tate Modern.
Polar Bear at the Museum of Garden History - Just observing that alchemical connection between Rochford and Herbert was worth a thousand jam sessions or workshops.
Becoming a committed reader of yet more blogs - Audiversity, Raven Sings The Blues and Free Jazz in particular.
Rediscovering a love of language and literature: Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' (which I underestimated considerably at first and to which I had to return), Philip Roth's 'Exit Ghost' (a fine novel undersold by critics envious of Roth's undiminished prowess) and Colm Toibin's wonderful story collection 'Mothers and Sons'. Also plenty with which I was previously shamefully unfamiliar - Reinaldo Arenas, Jose Saramago, Joseph Conrad, F Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Bowles, Elizabeth Smart, Patrick White (why are almost all his works unavailable at the moment?), Thomas Bernhard....Rian Malan's 'My Traitor's Heart', a brave and excoriating examination of Apartheid-era South Africa.
The print journalism of Henry Porter and Jenni Russell
Discovering Prospect magazine - a better source of informed debate than many of the broadsheet newspapers.
Comment is Free on The Guardian website, where all manner of weirdos, geniuses and insane people appear to dwell.
The writing and email newsletters of Alex Stein.
The film criticism of Peter Bradshaw and Jonathan Romney, the music writing of John Mulvey (especially on the Wild Mercury Sound blog), Philip Sherburne, David Stubbs, Marcello Carlin and more.
John Kell’s new blog proving more edifying and cogently argued than almost anything in print.
Great covermount CDs with Jazzwise, The Wire, Mojo and even The Word.
Tim Berne at the Vortex, Tom Rainey's inspired drumming.
Catching Joe Zawinul’s last ever London performance at the Jazz Café and recognising both reverence and enthusiasm in Django Bates’ outstanding tribute at the Barbican to close the London Jazz Festival.
Some cinematic treats - All About Eve on the big screen (nobody writes scripts so consistently razor sharp anymore), Edward Yang’s colossal ‘A Brighter Summer Day’ at the same cinema.
Discovering the cinema of Terence Davies, Tsai Ming-Liang (especially the exquisite 'I Don't Want To Sleep Alone'), Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Peter Watkins, Mikio Naruse and Jan Svankmajer.
Watching Shortbus and In The Mood For Love on DVD - respectively the best films about sex and love made during my lifetime?
Finally getting round to watching Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right Thing’ and finding that his appalling later films do indeed do their best to hide his talent.
Watching Derek Jarman’s ‘Blue’ for the first time – perhaps the most unfailingly honest self-portrait conceivable – a blue screen for 80 minutes and the most extraordinary soundtrack I can remember hearing. It combines to produce a profound, devastating but ultimately positive experience.
Quality new films a little thin on the ground this year - Climates, Syndromes and a Century, Zodiac, The Lives of Others, Knocked Up, Hot Fuzz, The Simpsons Movie, Control, Beyond Hatred, Ghosts, The Bourne Ultimatum but still more to see mercifully (Assassination of Jesse James, Into the Wild, Yella, Jindabyne, Silent Light, Paranoid Park, Lust Caution, I'm Not There).
Cape Wrath, Skins and House on Channel 4, The Wire on FX, half of Dr. Who on BBC, The Mighty Boosh, Spooks even at its most absurd. I avoided Heroes completely.
Continuing to work through DVDs of Northern Exposure seasons 3 and 4 and Peep Show 1-3, rediscovering the sheer blinding genius of Seinfeld and I’m Alan Partridge.
Bill Fay appearing onstage with Wilco, reticent and masked by a gigantic beard, but definitely him! Can Jeff Tweedy coax him into recording new material now? The astounding guitar playing of Nels Cline and adventurous percussion of Glenn Kotche also impressed.
The Smoking Ban - I was ambivalent to start with, but I'm a fully fledged supporter now!
Alexis Taylor's press release for the Robert Wyatt album.
Aphex Twin as The Tuss – an accidental but criminal omission from my albums of the year.
Steely Dan at Hammersmith Apollo and Daniel Johnston at the Union Chapel – two very different concerts in the same week, both surprisingly moving.
Daft Punk in Hyde Park - perhaps the most profound and exciting communal dance music experience I can remember. That pyramid spacepod thing was just amazing.
Dirty Projectors in support of Beirut at Koko – possibly the best support set I’ve seen this decade.
LCD Soundsystem's 'All My Friends' perfectly encapsulating the sensation of still feeling young, accompanied by a stark awareness of growing older and its accompanying poignancy. I would play this song at the start of any wedding DJ set. Where are my friends tonight?
Sly Stone’s bizarre appearance in Boscombe (for the 15 minutes he was on stage).
Vincent Cable - Perhaps the only decent thing to have emerged from the Liberal Democrat implosion - a politician of skill, intelligence and integrity. What a shame he was only a temporary blip on an otherwise tediously predictable landscape.
The courage and conviction of the Burmese monks.
The Hype Machine, now cleverly redesigned - an easy route to new music online.
Radiohead subverting the music industry.
The rejuvenation, however temporary it proves to be, of Ronnie O' Sullivan's incomporable genius.
Bosh! club
Rufus Wainwright - he may be camp, but there's also something unrestrained and defiant about him that I really admire. Seeing him sing 'Get Happy' in drag at the Hammersmith Apollo was certainly an experience!
Beth Ditto – one cannot possibly object to her becoming a superstar this year.
Misty's Big Adventure and Chris T-T at Club Fandango - simply superb!
Tim Whitehead’s birthday concert at the Ram Jam club and seeing the great Ian Carr enjoying a glass of red wine.
Bruce Springteen and the E Street Band at the 02 Arena: No Surrender, Because The Night, Racing In The Streets, Jungleland – pretty close to a dream set list. Magic!
A belated discovery of technology - especially iTunes, Digital Photography and MOG.
Knitted scarves.
Older sounds: Brotherhood of Breath, Arthur Russell/Dinosaur L, Young Marble Giants, The Boo Radleys, Ace Records’ Girl pop compilations, The Shangri-Las, Best of Ethiopiques.
Cons:
Love in various forms.
Confusion and inertia in a number of areas and the frequent failure to convert opportunities into reality.
A feeling of ‘safety’ and a concurrent futile lust for danger.
Insomnia and persistent colds.
The transition to ‘real’ adulthood continuing to be marked by form-filling, multiple bank accounts and institutional inefficiencies. Tedium ad nauseum.
Floods, fires and pestilence – What exactly is all this portending?
Au Revoir Michael Brecker, Alice Coltrane, Luciano Pavarotti, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Joe Zawinul, Ousmane Sembene, Edward Yang, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Ahmet Ertegun, Karlheinz Stockhausen and many more - far too many legends to lose in one year.
The 'oh-so-conveniently' timed departure of Tony Blair and the spineless 'coronation' of Gordon Brown, a ‘leader’ who has transpired to be every bit as gormless and lacking in judgment as sensible people suspected.
The idea of Tony Blair as a Special Envoy to the Middle East was so laughable it was inevitable that it turned out to be true.
The unsurprising revelation that our personal data is rarely safer in government hands than in the hands of corporations. At least it *might* wake people up to the huge technical and administrative flaws in the terrible ID cards scheme.
The unfolding disaster in Iraq whilst little is done to alleviate the problems in Darfur or Zimbabwe.
The Northern Rock crisis revealing the terrible vulnerability of our seemingly unbreakable ties to the US and its economy. William Hague still seems to be more worried about Europe!
The continuation of New Labour's authoritarian programme and the curse of mutual exclusivity in politics and society: Should we have civil liberties or national security? Individual freedom or a managed economy? I remain astounded at the need for 'debate' here. We can, and should have both! We need a political party bold enough to argue that economic factors can be a big restriction on individual freedom and that the true centre ground in Britain is not the current form of cowardly Thatcherism masked by misleading 'progressive' language. Surely that should be the Liberal Democrats? Oh dear, look what they've done....
Polly Toynbee and her steadfast refusal to criticise Labour on anything.
'Short-termism' - surely one area where we all need some form of government intervention is in planning for our futures. Individuals can all play a part, but a wholesale cultural and social change requires some courage, impetus and direction! International farces like the recent Bali talks on climate change (where an agreement was made to reach an agreement) merely expose world leaders as spineless and incompetent.
The McCann saga and Diana inquest - two lows for the British media this year. The Diana affair has been surrounded by obsessive and tasteless morbidity ('her last smile', 'her dying moments' etc), with no element of her sorry life left private. Reporting on the McCann affair made too many casual assumptions before any due legal process had been instigated. I sympathise greatly with any parents in those circumstances, but making them celebrities did not help anyone, least of all Madeleine.
Bono - Can he please live up to his own ideals before imposing them on everybody else?
Free London newspapers. Can't you see I'm carrying a book?
Andy Murray having to pull out of Wimbledon.
The crisis gripping the media over ‘deception’.
The continuing lack of any truly decent new British literature.
Crowded House in Hyde Park - they brought entirely the wrong kind of weather with them, a freak downpour so heavy it rained through my umbrella. At least Peter Gabriel was good.
Prince at the 02 - Perhaps the most over-hyped and disappointing live music experience of the year, delivering entertainment but little more.
The 02 Arena in general - quite possibly the ghastliest environment in which to see live music.
Sly Stone’s bizarre appearance in Boscome (for the hours and hours of waiting and the 50 minutes of chronic unprofessionalism when his band was onstage but he wasn't).
Band Reunions - Too many, please stop now.
Overpriced concert tickets - £86 to see Neil Young? You must be joking! I accept that market forces dictate prices to a certain extent, but can promoters not see that live music in this country is fast becoming elitist - entirely unafforable for most people on average incomes?
Ticket touts - for inflating ticket prices and preventing ordinary fans from seeing their musical heroes. The failure of the government to tackle the ticketing black market is shameful.
Overpriced sporting event tickets - see above.
The F1 spying saga. I enjoy the politics and soap opera to some extent, but this was a step too far and Fernando Alonso's behaviour seemed particularly questionable. There is a worrying sense that FIA judgements are increasingly arbitrary and inconsistent.
The continuing torment that accompanies being a Spurs supporter.
The lack of political respect for the Arts in Britain - the impossibility of getting funding unless you play some kind of industry game, the lack of interest in contemporary composition outside the music colleges, the continuing patronising attitude towards jazz and popular art forms. Cinema distribution also continues to decline markedly - the recent takeover of Artificial Eye (with some concurrent barmy acquisitions that seem far removed from AE’s established aesthetic) and financial peril of Tartan Films do not hint at a rosy 2008. Funding for serious filmmakers is even worse – Terence Davies is celebrated with a retrospective reminding people of his sublime genius, yet is no longer able to make a film in this country. The Film Council prefers to fund nonsense like the St Trinians remake, which is hugely depressing.
The 'work' ethos – please work to live, not live to work. It's no wonder that the Arts suffer when most people seem to have no interest or energy for going out during the working week!
A whole string of unimaginative and interminably average indie-rock being shamefully presented as something new - Babyshambles, Pigeon Detectives, The Cribs, The Twang, The Kooks etc... (even the names are terrible).
Other overrated charlatans - Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and much of this tedious freak-folk brigade, Portico Quartet.
The lack of any informed young music writers in print - particularly at the NME - which continues to display breathtaking ignorance of musical history. An easy target for sure, but one that's still worth highlighting – Morrissey seemed to think so anyway.
Talking during gigs - To the two people who audaciously asked me to save their unreserved seats for them at Cat Power's Forum show while they went to the bar - if you're going to ask a stranger a favour, do him the courtesy of not talking through the entire performance! Why pay £20 for the privilege? Go to a pub! Also, to the two women sitting behind us at Bruce Springsteen – whilst I’m sure one telling the other that she should ‘respect her body more’ was excellent advice, there’s a time and a place, and it’s not during a lovely and very quiet rendition of ‘Magic’.
Egotism and indecision amongst musicians - just get on with the business of making original music!
David Lynch's 'Inland Empire' - The more I think about it, the more it seems like an entirely unnecessary companion piece to 'Mulholland Drive' with too many convolutions and indulgences. Why try and complement a masterpiece?
Michel Gondry’s ‘The Science of Sleep’ – whimsical, superficial and silly and the most disappointing film of the year.
Inadequate public services, especially in London. The only posited solutions appear to be more investment or the extension of the unhelpful ‘market’ in service provision. Neither seems particularly imaginative to me in 2007. What would help would be if British government actually expressed some enthusiasm for the service ethos and emphasised its value, instead of consistently undermining the services, then dismantling them because they are failing.
The continuing misuse of words such as ‘modernity’ and ‘reform’ in political discourse.
The classically trained violinist who opened for Jools Holland at the Albert Hall: ‘Entertaining’ an audience with frankly vulgar displays of meaningless virtuosity in a crass attempt to ‘popularise’ what doesn’t need popularising – possibly the worst piece of live music I’ve ever sat through!
A lack of planning for New Year’s Eve yet again.
Pros:
Love in various forms.
Turnpike Lane – especially the late-opening Melish Supermarket.
The Tiffin Tin in Hornsey - A fine Indian takeaway and occasional life-saver.
Facebook - It sounds completely pathetic, but joining it might well be the most significant thing I did all year. It has its drawbacks, and the privacy concerns are valid - but I'm rather convinced that the positives still outweigh the negatives.
Charity Shops - I've built a substantial library from them this year!
Secure, gainful employment - during daylight hours!!
Discovering that self-expression really isn't actually all that hard and having the audacity to ask of my friends only what they ask of me.
Rediscovering the hunger to write music and lyrics - and finding new approaches towards both.
The Space Race album 'You Are The Guest' - few have heard it, but it might just be the best recorded work I've been involved with so far.
Daniel Lambert and Fake Sheikh - now on hiatus, but some great songs, videos and gigs earlier in the year.
Performing at the Isle of Wight Jazz Festival, The Vortex and The Ram Jam Club, amongst other venues.
Finally finishing as a student and becoming a teacher at WAC Performing Arts and Media College - there's no doubt I'd stuck around too long and should have moved on, but it was gratifying to be recognised so warmly and genuinely at the end.
Seeing Win Butler letting a group of ticketless teenagers in through the stage door at the Arcade Fire’s show at Porchester Hall. The band’s encore – moving from the venue foyer back upstairs and into the centre of the crowd was something very special, and helps explain the unique appeal of this band.
Tim Whitehead's Jazz Summer School at Battisborough House on the coast of Devon: A wonderful, confidence-boosting week of music-making and merriment completely free from worldly concerns. It brought a few things into sharp relief - namely that, although I haven't achieved much commercial success through it so far, playing drums is what I do best and is worth persisting with until I die or become incapacitated. Secondly, although we've never played a proper public gig and have never really ‘rehearsed’, the Millar/Marle-Garcia/Paton set-up has a real chemistry.
The restraint, dignity and honesty of Alan Johnston’s speech to World Service staff on his release from captivity and the strangely moving experience of gathering outside Bush House to campaign for his release and then celebrate his return.
The World Service in its 75th Anniversary year.
Rachmaninov’s 2nd Symphony paired with Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto at the Proms. Wonderful!
Madrid - an invigorating quick stop in one of Europe's finest cities. The restaurant that claims to be the oldest in Europe produced some particularly fine cuisine.
Shanghai and Nanjing - Two amazing weeks observing Shanghai and its blisteringly intense pace of life. The distinctly odd experience of being a Westerner in the East, superb cuisine, basking in the company of good friends, tea-tasting, aimless walking proving the best way to discover a city’s secrets, the beautiful auburn coloured trees in the National Park in Nanjing (especially when viewed from the top floor of a pagoda), relative peace of mind and a whole raft of rare DVDs to boot!
Two wonderful weddings and the joy of observing the happiness and fulfilment of the first of my University friends to tie the knot.
Joe Lovano peforming Streams of Expression and much more at the Barbican.
The Loop Collective and their regular Monday gigs at The Oxford in Kentish Town - at last a jazz club with blood, enthusiasm, clever programming and a sensible promotional strategy.
Meeting Paul Clarvis, Seb Rochford, Ingrid Laubrock, Bill Frisell and Mike Gibbs.
The London Sinfonietta's 'Ligeti Remembered' concerts.
Mark-Antony Turnage's 'About Water' - not his best work, but his understanding of the interconnections between various forms of contemporary music remains refreshing. The performance also introduced me to Barb Jungr, a talented and charismatic performer, whose reinterpretations of Dylan are splendid.
Tom Millar's Swinging and Shiva Feshareki's Dancefloor Distortions - two 'student' compositions as vibrant, engaging and sophisticated as any other new music I heard in 2007. The two composers are younger than me in years but may have taught me more than anyone my senior during the course of the year.
Bob Dylan at Wembley Arena - so good I went back for the second night. Easily the best gigs I've seen him play and that cracked voice genuinely sounds fantastic when he bothers to enunciate. He is essentially a rapper now. Superb renditions of Spirit on the Water, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and John Brown stick in the mind particularly.
Adrian Roye, Beth Dariti and Astic Borders - Two outstanding songwriters and their consistently enjoyable collective. They deserve more attention.
The perceptive songwriting of Simon Lewis. Hopefully more prominent in 2008!
Three Trapped Tigers - The most adventurous new band in London (Supersilent meeting Battles with a twist of Keith Jarrett) and my big tip for 2008.
The winter blankets at that Young’s pub by Tate Modern.
Polar Bear at the Museum of Garden History - Just observing that alchemical connection between Rochford and Herbert was worth a thousand jam sessions or workshops.
Becoming a committed reader of yet more blogs - Audiversity, Raven Sings The Blues and Free Jazz in particular.
Rediscovering a love of language and literature: Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' (which I underestimated considerably at first and to which I had to return), Philip Roth's 'Exit Ghost' (a fine novel undersold by critics envious of Roth's undiminished prowess) and Colm Toibin's wonderful story collection 'Mothers and Sons'. Also plenty with which I was previously shamefully unfamiliar - Reinaldo Arenas, Jose Saramago, Joseph Conrad, F Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Bowles, Elizabeth Smart, Patrick White (why are almost all his works unavailable at the moment?), Thomas Bernhard....Rian Malan's 'My Traitor's Heart', a brave and excoriating examination of Apartheid-era South Africa.
The print journalism of Henry Porter and Jenni Russell
Discovering Prospect magazine - a better source of informed debate than many of the broadsheet newspapers.
Comment is Free on The Guardian website, where all manner of weirdos, geniuses and insane people appear to dwell.
The writing and email newsletters of Alex Stein.
The film criticism of Peter Bradshaw and Jonathan Romney, the music writing of John Mulvey (especially on the Wild Mercury Sound blog), Philip Sherburne, David Stubbs, Marcello Carlin and more.
John Kell’s new blog proving more edifying and cogently argued than almost anything in print.
Great covermount CDs with Jazzwise, The Wire, Mojo and even The Word.
Tim Berne at the Vortex, Tom Rainey's inspired drumming.
Catching Joe Zawinul’s last ever London performance at the Jazz Café and recognising both reverence and enthusiasm in Django Bates’ outstanding tribute at the Barbican to close the London Jazz Festival.
Some cinematic treats - All About Eve on the big screen (nobody writes scripts so consistently razor sharp anymore), Edward Yang’s colossal ‘A Brighter Summer Day’ at the same cinema.
Discovering the cinema of Terence Davies, Tsai Ming-Liang (especially the exquisite 'I Don't Want To Sleep Alone'), Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Peter Watkins, Mikio Naruse and Jan Svankmajer.
Watching Shortbus and In The Mood For Love on DVD - respectively the best films about sex and love made during my lifetime?
Finally getting round to watching Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right Thing’ and finding that his appalling later films do indeed do their best to hide his talent.
Watching Derek Jarman’s ‘Blue’ for the first time – perhaps the most unfailingly honest self-portrait conceivable – a blue screen for 80 minutes and the most extraordinary soundtrack I can remember hearing. It combines to produce a profound, devastating but ultimately positive experience.
Quality new films a little thin on the ground this year - Climates, Syndromes and a Century, Zodiac, The Lives of Others, Knocked Up, Hot Fuzz, The Simpsons Movie, Control, Beyond Hatred, Ghosts, The Bourne Ultimatum but still more to see mercifully (Assassination of Jesse James, Into the Wild, Yella, Jindabyne, Silent Light, Paranoid Park, Lust Caution, I'm Not There).
Cape Wrath, Skins and House on Channel 4, The Wire on FX, half of Dr. Who on BBC, The Mighty Boosh, Spooks even at its most absurd. I avoided Heroes completely.
Continuing to work through DVDs of Northern Exposure seasons 3 and 4 and Peep Show 1-3, rediscovering the sheer blinding genius of Seinfeld and I’m Alan Partridge.
Bill Fay appearing onstage with Wilco, reticent and masked by a gigantic beard, but definitely him! Can Jeff Tweedy coax him into recording new material now? The astounding guitar playing of Nels Cline and adventurous percussion of Glenn Kotche also impressed.
The Smoking Ban - I was ambivalent to start with, but I'm a fully fledged supporter now!
Alexis Taylor's press release for the Robert Wyatt album.
Aphex Twin as The Tuss – an accidental but criminal omission from my albums of the year.
Steely Dan at Hammersmith Apollo and Daniel Johnston at the Union Chapel – two very different concerts in the same week, both surprisingly moving.
Daft Punk in Hyde Park - perhaps the most profound and exciting communal dance music experience I can remember. That pyramid spacepod thing was just amazing.
Dirty Projectors in support of Beirut at Koko – possibly the best support set I’ve seen this decade.
LCD Soundsystem's 'All My Friends' perfectly encapsulating the sensation of still feeling young, accompanied by a stark awareness of growing older and its accompanying poignancy. I would play this song at the start of any wedding DJ set. Where are my friends tonight?
Sly Stone’s bizarre appearance in Boscombe (for the 15 minutes he was on stage).
Vincent Cable - Perhaps the only decent thing to have emerged from the Liberal Democrat implosion - a politician of skill, intelligence and integrity. What a shame he was only a temporary blip on an otherwise tediously predictable landscape.
The courage and conviction of the Burmese monks.
The Hype Machine, now cleverly redesigned - an easy route to new music online.
Radiohead subverting the music industry.
The rejuvenation, however temporary it proves to be, of Ronnie O' Sullivan's incomporable genius.
Bosh! club
Rufus Wainwright - he may be camp, but there's also something unrestrained and defiant about him that I really admire. Seeing him sing 'Get Happy' in drag at the Hammersmith Apollo was certainly an experience!
Beth Ditto – one cannot possibly object to her becoming a superstar this year.
Misty's Big Adventure and Chris T-T at Club Fandango - simply superb!
Tim Whitehead’s birthday concert at the Ram Jam club and seeing the great Ian Carr enjoying a glass of red wine.
Bruce Springteen and the E Street Band at the 02 Arena: No Surrender, Because The Night, Racing In The Streets, Jungleland – pretty close to a dream set list. Magic!
A belated discovery of technology - especially iTunes, Digital Photography and MOG.
Knitted scarves.
Older sounds: Brotherhood of Breath, Arthur Russell/Dinosaur L, Young Marble Giants, The Boo Radleys, Ace Records’ Girl pop compilations, The Shangri-Las, Best of Ethiopiques.
Cons:
Love in various forms.
Confusion and inertia in a number of areas and the frequent failure to convert opportunities into reality.
A feeling of ‘safety’ and a concurrent futile lust for danger.
Insomnia and persistent colds.
The transition to ‘real’ adulthood continuing to be marked by form-filling, multiple bank accounts and institutional inefficiencies. Tedium ad nauseum.
Floods, fires and pestilence – What exactly is all this portending?
Au Revoir Michael Brecker, Alice Coltrane, Luciano Pavarotti, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Joe Zawinul, Ousmane Sembene, Edward Yang, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Ahmet Ertegun, Karlheinz Stockhausen and many more - far too many legends to lose in one year.
The 'oh-so-conveniently' timed departure of Tony Blair and the spineless 'coronation' of Gordon Brown, a ‘leader’ who has transpired to be every bit as gormless and lacking in judgment as sensible people suspected.
The idea of Tony Blair as a Special Envoy to the Middle East was so laughable it was inevitable that it turned out to be true.
The unsurprising revelation that our personal data is rarely safer in government hands than in the hands of corporations. At least it *might* wake people up to the huge technical and administrative flaws in the terrible ID cards scheme.
The unfolding disaster in Iraq whilst little is done to alleviate the problems in Darfur or Zimbabwe.
The Northern Rock crisis revealing the terrible vulnerability of our seemingly unbreakable ties to the US and its economy. William Hague still seems to be more worried about Europe!
The continuation of New Labour's authoritarian programme and the curse of mutual exclusivity in politics and society: Should we have civil liberties or national security? Individual freedom or a managed economy? I remain astounded at the need for 'debate' here. We can, and should have both! We need a political party bold enough to argue that economic factors can be a big restriction on individual freedom and that the true centre ground in Britain is not the current form of cowardly Thatcherism masked by misleading 'progressive' language. Surely that should be the Liberal Democrats? Oh dear, look what they've done....
Polly Toynbee and her steadfast refusal to criticise Labour on anything.
'Short-termism' - surely one area where we all need some form of government intervention is in planning for our futures. Individuals can all play a part, but a wholesale cultural and social change requires some courage, impetus and direction! International farces like the recent Bali talks on climate change (where an agreement was made to reach an agreement) merely expose world leaders as spineless and incompetent.
The McCann saga and Diana inquest - two lows for the British media this year. The Diana affair has been surrounded by obsessive and tasteless morbidity ('her last smile', 'her dying moments' etc), with no element of her sorry life left private. Reporting on the McCann affair made too many casual assumptions before any due legal process had been instigated. I sympathise greatly with any parents in those circumstances, but making them celebrities did not help anyone, least of all Madeleine.
Bono - Can he please live up to his own ideals before imposing them on everybody else?
Free London newspapers. Can't you see I'm carrying a book?
Andy Murray having to pull out of Wimbledon.
The crisis gripping the media over ‘deception’.
The continuing lack of any truly decent new British literature.
Crowded House in Hyde Park - they brought entirely the wrong kind of weather with them, a freak downpour so heavy it rained through my umbrella. At least Peter Gabriel was good.
Prince at the 02 - Perhaps the most over-hyped and disappointing live music experience of the year, delivering entertainment but little more.
The 02 Arena in general - quite possibly the ghastliest environment in which to see live music.
Sly Stone’s bizarre appearance in Boscome (for the hours and hours of waiting and the 50 minutes of chronic unprofessionalism when his band was onstage but he wasn't).
Band Reunions - Too many, please stop now.
Overpriced concert tickets - £86 to see Neil Young? You must be joking! I accept that market forces dictate prices to a certain extent, but can promoters not see that live music in this country is fast becoming elitist - entirely unafforable for most people on average incomes?
Ticket touts - for inflating ticket prices and preventing ordinary fans from seeing their musical heroes. The failure of the government to tackle the ticketing black market is shameful.
Overpriced sporting event tickets - see above.
The F1 spying saga. I enjoy the politics and soap opera to some extent, but this was a step too far and Fernando Alonso's behaviour seemed particularly questionable. There is a worrying sense that FIA judgements are increasingly arbitrary and inconsistent.
The continuing torment that accompanies being a Spurs supporter.
The lack of political respect for the Arts in Britain - the impossibility of getting funding unless you play some kind of industry game, the lack of interest in contemporary composition outside the music colleges, the continuing patronising attitude towards jazz and popular art forms. Cinema distribution also continues to decline markedly - the recent takeover of Artificial Eye (with some concurrent barmy acquisitions that seem far removed from AE’s established aesthetic) and financial peril of Tartan Films do not hint at a rosy 2008. Funding for serious filmmakers is even worse – Terence Davies is celebrated with a retrospective reminding people of his sublime genius, yet is no longer able to make a film in this country. The Film Council prefers to fund nonsense like the St Trinians remake, which is hugely depressing.
The 'work' ethos – please work to live, not live to work. It's no wonder that the Arts suffer when most people seem to have no interest or energy for going out during the working week!
A whole string of unimaginative and interminably average indie-rock being shamefully presented as something new - Babyshambles, Pigeon Detectives, The Cribs, The Twang, The Kooks etc... (even the names are terrible).
Other overrated charlatans - Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and much of this tedious freak-folk brigade, Portico Quartet.
The lack of any informed young music writers in print - particularly at the NME - which continues to display breathtaking ignorance of musical history. An easy target for sure, but one that's still worth highlighting – Morrissey seemed to think so anyway.
Talking during gigs - To the two people who audaciously asked me to save their unreserved seats for them at Cat Power's Forum show while they went to the bar - if you're going to ask a stranger a favour, do him the courtesy of not talking through the entire performance! Why pay £20 for the privilege? Go to a pub! Also, to the two women sitting behind us at Bruce Springsteen – whilst I’m sure one telling the other that she should ‘respect her body more’ was excellent advice, there’s a time and a place, and it’s not during a lovely and very quiet rendition of ‘Magic’.
Egotism and indecision amongst musicians - just get on with the business of making original music!
David Lynch's 'Inland Empire' - The more I think about it, the more it seems like an entirely unnecessary companion piece to 'Mulholland Drive' with too many convolutions and indulgences. Why try and complement a masterpiece?
Michel Gondry’s ‘The Science of Sleep’ – whimsical, superficial and silly and the most disappointing film of the year.
Inadequate public services, especially in London. The only posited solutions appear to be more investment or the extension of the unhelpful ‘market’ in service provision. Neither seems particularly imaginative to me in 2007. What would help would be if British government actually expressed some enthusiasm for the service ethos and emphasised its value, instead of consistently undermining the services, then dismantling them because they are failing.
The continuing misuse of words such as ‘modernity’ and ‘reform’ in political discourse.
The classically trained violinist who opened for Jools Holland at the Albert Hall: ‘Entertaining’ an audience with frankly vulgar displays of meaningless virtuosity in a crass attempt to ‘popularise’ what doesn’t need popularising – possibly the worst piece of live music I’ve ever sat through!
A lack of planning for New Year’s Eve yet again.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Tracks of the Year 2007
No, I’m not doing another top 100. If you’ll forgive me, it’s simply too draining. I’d certainly at least like to draw attention to some of my favourite tracks of the year though, particularly those that featured on albums that narrowly missed the cut.
Many have already written at length about LCD Soundsystem’s exquisite ‘All My Friends’, but no overview of 2007 would be complete without it. Expanding on the notion of wanting ‘to see all my friends at once’ that Arthur Russell introduced on the Dinosaur L dancefloor classic ‘Go Bang!’, the song deftly captured the poignancy that accompanies growing older, and not being able to party quite as hard as you once could. ‘We set controls for the heart of the sun’ said James Murphy, not merely dropping the Pink Floyd reference for cachet ‘…one of the ways we show our age.’ With its insistent one chord attack sounding like Steve Reich appropriated for the dancefloor, it managed to be both propulsive and touching.
I felt less inclined to follow the mainstream pop charts this year than ever before, but a couple of records were simply unavoidable through sheer ubiquity. Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ seemed to be at numero uno for ever and ever during a particularly drizzly mid-summer and it proved difficult to resist its infectious charms, even if its follow-ups proved disappointingly clunky. Girls Aloud continued their mission to squeeze as many ideas into one song as humanly possible with the deranged ‘Sexy Sexy No No No’, one of my favourite pop records of the year. Elsewhere in the pop world, I loved Robyn for being a most unconventional pop star, and one keen to take control of her own affairs. ‘Be Mine’ and ‘With Every Heartbeat’ provided insistent thrills. I rather lost touch with the world of mainstream R&B this year, but Amerie made two storming singles with ‘Take Control’ and ‘Gotta Work’ – she has a wonderful voice and resists the urge to show off beloved of many of the genre’s weaker artists.
Dance music didn’t exactly produce many wonders this year (with the notable exception of The Field and ‘Over The Ice’ in particular) – in fact, I was more likely to turn to LCD Soundsystem for toe-tapping thrills. The Chemical Brothers and Underworld continued to repeat themselves ad infinitum, but can I confess getting a guilty pleasure from singles from David Guetta and Fedde Le Grand? Not my usual cup of tea for sure. Maybe Bjork’s embrace of dance music on ‘Declare Independence’ resulted in my favourite four-to-the-floor club track of the year.
I remain undecided about ‘Shake A Fist’, the taster for Hot Chip’s upcoming third album (well, fourth or fifth if you count the albums of unreleased material I have at home). This one might just have edged them too far into gimmicky territory for my tastes with its Todd Rundgren sample and intentionally tacky Casio sounds. I preferred the house-inspired ‘My Piano’ from their DJ Kicks set and I’m coming to adore the camptastic Erasure-soundalike ‘Ready For The Floor’, even though it’s a million miles from their early aesthetic. But that’s one for 2008.
For zany playful fun, there was synth and drums duo Shy Child. Their schtik became a little tiresome over the course of an entire album, but ‘Drop The Phone’ was an hilarious and zesty introduction to their brand of analogue electro (although not quite as wonderful as their obscene ode to auto-fellatio ‘Down On Yourself’ from last year). I also loved the delightfully titled ‘F*cking Boyfriend’ from The Bird and The Bee, a duo featuring the late great Lowell George’s daughter on vocal duties. It’s a marvellously sheened piece of alternative pop desperation.
Last night’s outstanding Club Fandango gig reminded me that Misty’s Big Adventure made one of the singles of the year with ‘Fashion Parade’ – a track that pulls off the very rare trick of being both satirically pointed and musically exciting. It’s a very accurate parody of the Franz Ferdinand British rock sound, emphasising the industry’s cynical, financially motivated interest in manipulating a post-punk revival. The group are also perceptive enough to note the rapid downfall of many a hyped band. Whilst they themselves may not be commercial gold, they may well outlive a number of their targets here, no doubt helped along nicely by their wit, originality and quirky charm. There wasn’t much else to get excited about in the British indie scene (I’m happy enough to ignore The Pigeon Detectives, The Wombats, The Twang et al), but Amy May and Paris Motel made a lush and enthralling album, with one beautifully romantic standout track, the beguiling ‘Catherine By The Sea’. The Broken Family Band have of course long been regulars on these pages, but ‘Hello Love’ featured some of their very best songs – I would particularly highlight the sex song ‘Leaps’ and the deliciously ironic ‘Dancing on the 4th Floor’. Bloc Party made a somewhat politically schematic and self-conscious second album, but its more personal moments dealing with loss and burgeoning sexuality respectively (‘Kreuzberg’ and ‘I Still Remember’) are brave and beautiful songs.
Inevitably, the Canadians were out in force yet again. The most incisive writing of the year came from Leslie Feist – a woman who seems to have all the wisdom and experience anyone could wish for in a songwriter. I particularly loved the silky smooth ‘Brandy Alexander’, as good an analysis of temptation and infatuation as I’ve heard, and the majestic ‘Intuition’, a song brave enough to ask counterfactual questions of the relationships that never were. Both are singularly brilliant, emotionally attuned songs of the highest order. Similarly brave was Rufus Wainwright’s ‘Not Ready To Love’, a rare tender ballad amidst more ornate surroundings, and a song with the courage to admit to insecurity and uncertainty. Whilst The New Pornographers disappointed with their ‘Challengers’ album, veering into orchestrated mush and plodding tempos, the opening track ‘My Rights Versus Yours’ still captured the jaunty, dexterous and intricate power pop they do best.
US songwriters and groups also produced some magic too. Will Sheff, with his revolving cast in Okkervil River, wrote a clever but affecting little gem in ‘Plus Ones’, dissecting relationship break-ups by adding one to famous songs with numbers in their titles – ‘the 51st Way to Leave Your Lover’ etc. Sam Beam continues to write some of the most elegant, literate and engrossing songs in the modern American canon – there were two major works on ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’ – ‘Resurrection Fern’ and ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’. Ben Bridwell’s Band of Horses are improving rapidly – ‘No One’s Gonna Love You’ was a moment of pure spine-tingling beauty. Rilo Kiley’s album was full of polished pop gems, but I particularly liked the cautionary ‘15’ and the slinky disco number ‘Breakin’ Up’.
I often prefer Radiohead for their musical intuition than their songwriting – but ‘In Rainbows’ did much to broaden my view of the band. Especially impressive were the jazz-tinged, spiteful ‘Reckoner’ and the beautiful adultery song ‘House of Cards’. Needless to say, both songs approached subject matter some distance from Thom Yorke’s usual technophobic, paranoid vision of urban alienation, and benefited greatly from the change in approach. Equally brilliant was ‘4 Minute Warning’ from the bonus disc, a song of spine-tingling directness and simplicity.
I’ve not yet had a change to digest the entirety of the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy covers album that has only recently slipped out with little or no fanfare, but his version of R Kelly’s ‘The World’s Greatest’ is one of the best things I’ve heard all year. Will Oldham is one of the world’s great contrarians, but I sense this interpretation is one hundred per cent sincere. Oldham has already expressed admiration for Kelly’s saccharine chart-topper ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ (a sentiment shared by Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, who used to cover that song at gigs). I find R Kelly a most preposterous figure occasionally tinged with genius, as anyone who has seen all 500,000 parts of ‘Trapped In The Closet’ will surely attest, but Oldham finds a vulnerable majesty at the heart of Kelly’s song of steely conviction.
Maybe even I heard a little too much from Bruce Springsteen in 2008, with the live album jostling with the E Street Band comeback for my attention. There’s little denying that ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ is one of his very best songs though – harking back to that Phil Spector-infused sound that dominated ‘Born To Run’, and featuring a careful balancing act between euphoria and poignancy. It’s absolutely tremendous, and one of a handful of moments on ‘Magic’ where the sheer quality of the man’s writing cuts through Brendan O’ Brien’s muddy and undeveloped production.
Springsteen wasn’t the only elder statesperson to come up trumps in 2007. I could pick almost any track from the Robert Wyatt album, but ‘A Beautiful War’ and ‘AWOL’ are probably my personal favourites. Nick Lowe also made another relaxed and refined record, included a deliciously spiteful piece of casual misogyny on ‘I Trained Her To Love Me’. 2007 also proved another great year for valiant soul survivors – particularly notable were Mavis Staples’ powerful reworking of ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ and Bettye LaVette’s extraordinary version of Elton John’s ‘Talking Toy Soldiers’, injecting more passion and conviction into that one song than Elton himself has managed in the whole of the last 20 years.
The more progressive, adventurous end of the rock spectrum enjoyed a very encouraging year, with Yeasayer’s wonderfully harmonised, Tears For Fears- referencing ‘2080’, The Besnard Lakes’ espionage tale ‘Disaster’ and the extraordinary ‘Atlas’ from Battles being essential inclusions in any overview of the year’s best tracks.
Far too much great jazz to mention in detail here – but I particularly admired the driving energy of Michael Brecker’s ‘Tumbleweed’, the wonderful ‘Aftermath’ from the Curios album, John Surman’s beautiful ‘Winter Wish’, David Torn’s terrifying and intimidating ‘Structural Functions of Prezens’, ‘Giant’ from those mirthful troublemakers The Bad Plus, Led Bib’s storming deconstruction of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, Gwilym Simock’s polyrhythmic rendering of ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ and the outrageous piano trio take on Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ from Yaron Hermon. That rather flippant bombshell of a track seems a good note on which to conclude!
Many have already written at length about LCD Soundsystem’s exquisite ‘All My Friends’, but no overview of 2007 would be complete without it. Expanding on the notion of wanting ‘to see all my friends at once’ that Arthur Russell introduced on the Dinosaur L dancefloor classic ‘Go Bang!’, the song deftly captured the poignancy that accompanies growing older, and not being able to party quite as hard as you once could. ‘We set controls for the heart of the sun’ said James Murphy, not merely dropping the Pink Floyd reference for cachet ‘…one of the ways we show our age.’ With its insistent one chord attack sounding like Steve Reich appropriated for the dancefloor, it managed to be both propulsive and touching.
I felt less inclined to follow the mainstream pop charts this year than ever before, but a couple of records were simply unavoidable through sheer ubiquity. Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ seemed to be at numero uno for ever and ever during a particularly drizzly mid-summer and it proved difficult to resist its infectious charms, even if its follow-ups proved disappointingly clunky. Girls Aloud continued their mission to squeeze as many ideas into one song as humanly possible with the deranged ‘Sexy Sexy No No No’, one of my favourite pop records of the year. Elsewhere in the pop world, I loved Robyn for being a most unconventional pop star, and one keen to take control of her own affairs. ‘Be Mine’ and ‘With Every Heartbeat’ provided insistent thrills. I rather lost touch with the world of mainstream R&B this year, but Amerie made two storming singles with ‘Take Control’ and ‘Gotta Work’ – she has a wonderful voice and resists the urge to show off beloved of many of the genre’s weaker artists.
Dance music didn’t exactly produce many wonders this year (with the notable exception of The Field and ‘Over The Ice’ in particular) – in fact, I was more likely to turn to LCD Soundsystem for toe-tapping thrills. The Chemical Brothers and Underworld continued to repeat themselves ad infinitum, but can I confess getting a guilty pleasure from singles from David Guetta and Fedde Le Grand? Not my usual cup of tea for sure. Maybe Bjork’s embrace of dance music on ‘Declare Independence’ resulted in my favourite four-to-the-floor club track of the year.
I remain undecided about ‘Shake A Fist’, the taster for Hot Chip’s upcoming third album (well, fourth or fifth if you count the albums of unreleased material I have at home). This one might just have edged them too far into gimmicky territory for my tastes with its Todd Rundgren sample and intentionally tacky Casio sounds. I preferred the house-inspired ‘My Piano’ from their DJ Kicks set and I’m coming to adore the camptastic Erasure-soundalike ‘Ready For The Floor’, even though it’s a million miles from their early aesthetic. But that’s one for 2008.
For zany playful fun, there was synth and drums duo Shy Child. Their schtik became a little tiresome over the course of an entire album, but ‘Drop The Phone’ was an hilarious and zesty introduction to their brand of analogue electro (although not quite as wonderful as their obscene ode to auto-fellatio ‘Down On Yourself’ from last year). I also loved the delightfully titled ‘F*cking Boyfriend’ from The Bird and The Bee, a duo featuring the late great Lowell George’s daughter on vocal duties. It’s a marvellously sheened piece of alternative pop desperation.
Last night’s outstanding Club Fandango gig reminded me that Misty’s Big Adventure made one of the singles of the year with ‘Fashion Parade’ – a track that pulls off the very rare trick of being both satirically pointed and musically exciting. It’s a very accurate parody of the Franz Ferdinand British rock sound, emphasising the industry’s cynical, financially motivated interest in manipulating a post-punk revival. The group are also perceptive enough to note the rapid downfall of many a hyped band. Whilst they themselves may not be commercial gold, they may well outlive a number of their targets here, no doubt helped along nicely by their wit, originality and quirky charm. There wasn’t much else to get excited about in the British indie scene (I’m happy enough to ignore The Pigeon Detectives, The Wombats, The Twang et al), but Amy May and Paris Motel made a lush and enthralling album, with one beautifully romantic standout track, the beguiling ‘Catherine By The Sea’. The Broken Family Band have of course long been regulars on these pages, but ‘Hello Love’ featured some of their very best songs – I would particularly highlight the sex song ‘Leaps’ and the deliciously ironic ‘Dancing on the 4th Floor’. Bloc Party made a somewhat politically schematic and self-conscious second album, but its more personal moments dealing with loss and burgeoning sexuality respectively (‘Kreuzberg’ and ‘I Still Remember’) are brave and beautiful songs.
Inevitably, the Canadians were out in force yet again. The most incisive writing of the year came from Leslie Feist – a woman who seems to have all the wisdom and experience anyone could wish for in a songwriter. I particularly loved the silky smooth ‘Brandy Alexander’, as good an analysis of temptation and infatuation as I’ve heard, and the majestic ‘Intuition’, a song brave enough to ask counterfactual questions of the relationships that never were. Both are singularly brilliant, emotionally attuned songs of the highest order. Similarly brave was Rufus Wainwright’s ‘Not Ready To Love’, a rare tender ballad amidst more ornate surroundings, and a song with the courage to admit to insecurity and uncertainty. Whilst The New Pornographers disappointed with their ‘Challengers’ album, veering into orchestrated mush and plodding tempos, the opening track ‘My Rights Versus Yours’ still captured the jaunty, dexterous and intricate power pop they do best.
US songwriters and groups also produced some magic too. Will Sheff, with his revolving cast in Okkervil River, wrote a clever but affecting little gem in ‘Plus Ones’, dissecting relationship break-ups by adding one to famous songs with numbers in their titles – ‘the 51st Way to Leave Your Lover’ etc. Sam Beam continues to write some of the most elegant, literate and engrossing songs in the modern American canon – there were two major works on ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’ – ‘Resurrection Fern’ and ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’. Ben Bridwell’s Band of Horses are improving rapidly – ‘No One’s Gonna Love You’ was a moment of pure spine-tingling beauty. Rilo Kiley’s album was full of polished pop gems, but I particularly liked the cautionary ‘15’ and the slinky disco number ‘Breakin’ Up’.
I often prefer Radiohead for their musical intuition than their songwriting – but ‘In Rainbows’ did much to broaden my view of the band. Especially impressive were the jazz-tinged, spiteful ‘Reckoner’ and the beautiful adultery song ‘House of Cards’. Needless to say, both songs approached subject matter some distance from Thom Yorke’s usual technophobic, paranoid vision of urban alienation, and benefited greatly from the change in approach. Equally brilliant was ‘4 Minute Warning’ from the bonus disc, a song of spine-tingling directness and simplicity.
I’ve not yet had a change to digest the entirety of the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy covers album that has only recently slipped out with little or no fanfare, but his version of R Kelly’s ‘The World’s Greatest’ is one of the best things I’ve heard all year. Will Oldham is one of the world’s great contrarians, but I sense this interpretation is one hundred per cent sincere. Oldham has already expressed admiration for Kelly’s saccharine chart-topper ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ (a sentiment shared by Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, who used to cover that song at gigs). I find R Kelly a most preposterous figure occasionally tinged with genius, as anyone who has seen all 500,000 parts of ‘Trapped In The Closet’ will surely attest, but Oldham finds a vulnerable majesty at the heart of Kelly’s song of steely conviction.
Maybe even I heard a little too much from Bruce Springsteen in 2008, with the live album jostling with the E Street Band comeback for my attention. There’s little denying that ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ is one of his very best songs though – harking back to that Phil Spector-infused sound that dominated ‘Born To Run’, and featuring a careful balancing act between euphoria and poignancy. It’s absolutely tremendous, and one of a handful of moments on ‘Magic’ where the sheer quality of the man’s writing cuts through Brendan O’ Brien’s muddy and undeveloped production.
Springsteen wasn’t the only elder statesperson to come up trumps in 2007. I could pick almost any track from the Robert Wyatt album, but ‘A Beautiful War’ and ‘AWOL’ are probably my personal favourites. Nick Lowe also made another relaxed and refined record, included a deliciously spiteful piece of casual misogyny on ‘I Trained Her To Love Me’. 2007 also proved another great year for valiant soul survivors – particularly notable were Mavis Staples’ powerful reworking of ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ and Bettye LaVette’s extraordinary version of Elton John’s ‘Talking Toy Soldiers’, injecting more passion and conviction into that one song than Elton himself has managed in the whole of the last 20 years.
The more progressive, adventurous end of the rock spectrum enjoyed a very encouraging year, with Yeasayer’s wonderfully harmonised, Tears For Fears- referencing ‘2080’, The Besnard Lakes’ espionage tale ‘Disaster’ and the extraordinary ‘Atlas’ from Battles being essential inclusions in any overview of the year’s best tracks.
Far too much great jazz to mention in detail here – but I particularly admired the driving energy of Michael Brecker’s ‘Tumbleweed’, the wonderful ‘Aftermath’ from the Curios album, John Surman’s beautiful ‘Winter Wish’, David Torn’s terrifying and intimidating ‘Structural Functions of Prezens’, ‘Giant’ from those mirthful troublemakers The Bad Plus, Led Bib’s storming deconstruction of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, Gwilym Simock’s polyrhythmic rendering of ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ and the outrageous piano trio take on Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ from Yaron Hermon. That rather flippant bombshell of a track seems a good note on which to conclude!
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Buried Treasure #4 and #5
The Dramatics - A Dramatic Experience
Chairmen of The Board - Skin I'm In
For this feature, I’ve decided to bundle together two of the more casually undersold soul vocal group albums. It may just be a matter of audiences and critics expecting soul vocal groups to stay in their place – specifically, to deliver simple, infectious two and a half minute pop songs rich in luxurious harmony. Yet The Temptations very successfully expanded their approach with Norman Whitfield behind the controls – and many now rightfully view the likes of ‘Cloud Nine’, ‘Psychedelic Shack’ and ‘Masterpiece’ as classics of the genre. My mind has been jolted back to ‘A Dramatic Experience’ thanks to Mojo’s refreshing inclusion of ‘The Devil Is Dope’ on their Stax covermount CD this month. Both that and the Chairmen of the Board record left a lasting impression on me during my childhood.
The Dramatics’ claim to a place in soul history has not been helped by their timing. Part of the expansionist phase of Stax Records, a costly experiment that ultimately destroyed the label – critical assessments of their output have tended to be tied up with the label’s unfortunate fate in the mid-seventies. Similarly, ‘Skin I’m In’ was Chairmen of the Board’s final long player, and by some distance their most musically ambitious and audacious. It too became tied up in the demise of a record label – in this case Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Invictus label. The label’s star, Freda Payne, had effectively been on strike for much of 1971-2 in a dispute over artistic control, whilst Chairmen of the Board themselves launched litigation against the label in 1972.
Both albums are clearly indebted to the crucial role of their producers. The Dramatics had already forged a strong relationship with producer and writer Tony Hester, but his somewhat autobiographical stamp is all over ‘A Dramatic Experience’, along with his preference for lavish string arrangements and sound effects. Jeffrey Bowen not only brought in the original line-up of Funkadelic to perform as Chairmen of the Board’s imperious backing group, but also made the mellotron the domineering presence on several tracks.
Both albums have a somewhat schizophrenic identity. Half the tracks on ‘A Dramatic Experience’ represent a proto-concept album addressing the evils of drug addiction and drug pushing. The remaining tracks are rather saccharine ballads in the manner of The Stylistics. ‘Skin I’m In’ also devotes nearly half its tracks to romantic ballads dominated by falsetto singing, but the remaining half is futuristic aggressive funk, incorporating a masterfully produced suite of music centred around Sly Stone’s ‘Life and Death’. Taken as a whole, this four song suite is one of the best pieces of pop music ever crafted. The under-appreciation of these records has inevitably centred on their supposed lack of focus, although such a perspective ignores the necessity for light and shade, and indeed neglects to emphasise the careful balance between confrontation and reconciliation that both these albums achieved brilliantly.
‘A Dramatic Experience’ more than lives up to its title, achieving a unique drama by veering unexpectedly from the violent and terrifying to the lush and romantic. I would argue that there is a place on the same album for the exquisite ‘Fell For You’, the angry ‘Hey You Get Off My Mountain’ and the palpably uneasy ‘Beware Of The Man (With The Candy In His Hand)’. With age and experience, I’ve come to realise that this is an album that neatly parallels the addictive properties of narcotics and physical attraction, and is therefore a good deal more complex than simply being a piece of anti-drugs propaganda. Indeed, writer and producer Tony Hester apparently became a drug addict himself! The balance on ‘Skin I’m In’ is less thematically and conceptually advanced, but there’s little doubting that the group and their outstanding musicians imbue the ballads with as much nuance as they provide energy for the party tracks. Funk writer Dave Thompson describes ‘Skin I’m In’ as ‘hard funking and almost gratuitously aggressive’ – but one wonders whether he simply skipped over its more tender moments.
I remember a Geography teacher at my school, who was a kindred spirit to me due to his love of 70s soul, funk and blues, being somewhat staggered that I had enjoyed the music of BT Express as a child, such were the unashamedly sexual implications of their music and lyrics. I protested that I had no idea what the ‘It’ of ‘Do It ‘Til You’re Satisfied’ might have been at that age – I was more than happy to accept that it could be merely innocent dancing (or indeed anything you wanted it to be – I don’t think I was missing the point!). Perhaps though, it’s these two records that best capture the contradictory impulses of the musical education my father offered me. If you’re desperate to stop your children experimenting with narcotics, I would strongly advise you to present them with a copy of ‘A Dramatic Experience’ at a formative age. The cover image alone is positively terrifying (a portrait of a particularly beastly Devil) and the music is psychologically intimidating too. Ushered in by a wave of crackling hellfire and anguished torment, ‘The Devil Is Dope’, a mind-blowing track on so many levels, is enough to convince any child that all drugs are inherently evil and should be avoided at all costs. By way of contrast, ‘Life and Death’ and ‘Everybody Party All Night’, with their defiantly minimal lyrics, are superb rallying cries for hedonism – ‘if it feels good it’s alright’ apparently. The hit single ‘Finders Keepers’ also seems to urge a rather guilt-free, unrepentant stance on sexual morality (‘I’ve found the love you lost and I’m gonna keep her!’).
Both albums benefit from a concerted attention to detail. The string and horn charts that lavishly adorn ‘A Dramatic Experience’ emphasise its theatrical qualities, a technique echoed by the extraordinary mellotron orchestration on ‘Morning Glory’ and ‘White Rose (Freedom Flower)’ from ‘Skin I’m In’. Similarly, the slinky groove of ‘Finders Keepers’ rests not only on its Stevie Wonder-inspired Clavinet pattern, but also on the occasional interjection of offbeat handclaps and the creeping menace of The Dramatics’ ‘Beware Of The Man (With The Candy In His Hand)’ is underlined by a sudden switch to a high-end bassline in the song’s chorus.
Another strong quality of both albums is the ability of the group’s dominant vocalists to thoroughly inhabit the worlds of their songs’ protagonists. Ron Banks and William “Wee Gee” Howard developed the gritty end of their vocal stylings for the ghoulish drug nightmares of ‘A Dramatic Experience’ whilst General Johnson, handling 90% of the vocals on ‘Skin I’m In’ captured palpable desperation in the face of injustice on the title track, and a driving sexualised urgency on ‘Life and Death’. By way of contrast, on ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ he sounded sweet and vulnerable.
These two enduringly powerful albums are rich in visionary ideas, with expertly produced, brilliantly executed musical foundations. Both records belie the notion of the vocal group as a charisma-less entity – with all the tracks oozing personality, conviction and theatrical expression. Released within a year of each other, the records provide sterling proof of just how adventurous the soul music of the early seventies could be. If Timbaland and The Neptunes might be the Holland-Dozier-Holland and Norman Whitfield of contemporary soul – who exactly are the Tony Hesters and Jeffrey Bowens? And are there any vocal groups now who could match this standard of delivery?
Chairmen of The Board - Skin I'm In
For this feature, I’ve decided to bundle together two of the more casually undersold soul vocal group albums. It may just be a matter of audiences and critics expecting soul vocal groups to stay in their place – specifically, to deliver simple, infectious two and a half minute pop songs rich in luxurious harmony. Yet The Temptations very successfully expanded their approach with Norman Whitfield behind the controls – and many now rightfully view the likes of ‘Cloud Nine’, ‘Psychedelic Shack’ and ‘Masterpiece’ as classics of the genre. My mind has been jolted back to ‘A Dramatic Experience’ thanks to Mojo’s refreshing inclusion of ‘The Devil Is Dope’ on their Stax covermount CD this month. Both that and the Chairmen of the Board record left a lasting impression on me during my childhood.
The Dramatics’ claim to a place in soul history has not been helped by their timing. Part of the expansionist phase of Stax Records, a costly experiment that ultimately destroyed the label – critical assessments of their output have tended to be tied up with the label’s unfortunate fate in the mid-seventies. Similarly, ‘Skin I’m In’ was Chairmen of the Board’s final long player, and by some distance their most musically ambitious and audacious. It too became tied up in the demise of a record label – in this case Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Invictus label. The label’s star, Freda Payne, had effectively been on strike for much of 1971-2 in a dispute over artistic control, whilst Chairmen of the Board themselves launched litigation against the label in 1972.
Both albums are clearly indebted to the crucial role of their producers. The Dramatics had already forged a strong relationship with producer and writer Tony Hester, but his somewhat autobiographical stamp is all over ‘A Dramatic Experience’, along with his preference for lavish string arrangements and sound effects. Jeffrey Bowen not only brought in the original line-up of Funkadelic to perform as Chairmen of the Board’s imperious backing group, but also made the mellotron the domineering presence on several tracks.
Both albums have a somewhat schizophrenic identity. Half the tracks on ‘A Dramatic Experience’ represent a proto-concept album addressing the evils of drug addiction and drug pushing. The remaining tracks are rather saccharine ballads in the manner of The Stylistics. ‘Skin I’m In’ also devotes nearly half its tracks to romantic ballads dominated by falsetto singing, but the remaining half is futuristic aggressive funk, incorporating a masterfully produced suite of music centred around Sly Stone’s ‘Life and Death’. Taken as a whole, this four song suite is one of the best pieces of pop music ever crafted. The under-appreciation of these records has inevitably centred on their supposed lack of focus, although such a perspective ignores the necessity for light and shade, and indeed neglects to emphasise the careful balance between confrontation and reconciliation that both these albums achieved brilliantly.
‘A Dramatic Experience’ more than lives up to its title, achieving a unique drama by veering unexpectedly from the violent and terrifying to the lush and romantic. I would argue that there is a place on the same album for the exquisite ‘Fell For You’, the angry ‘Hey You Get Off My Mountain’ and the palpably uneasy ‘Beware Of The Man (With The Candy In His Hand)’. With age and experience, I’ve come to realise that this is an album that neatly parallels the addictive properties of narcotics and physical attraction, and is therefore a good deal more complex than simply being a piece of anti-drugs propaganda. Indeed, writer and producer Tony Hester apparently became a drug addict himself! The balance on ‘Skin I’m In’ is less thematically and conceptually advanced, but there’s little doubting that the group and their outstanding musicians imbue the ballads with as much nuance as they provide energy for the party tracks. Funk writer Dave Thompson describes ‘Skin I’m In’ as ‘hard funking and almost gratuitously aggressive’ – but one wonders whether he simply skipped over its more tender moments.
I remember a Geography teacher at my school, who was a kindred spirit to me due to his love of 70s soul, funk and blues, being somewhat staggered that I had enjoyed the music of BT Express as a child, such were the unashamedly sexual implications of their music and lyrics. I protested that I had no idea what the ‘It’ of ‘Do It ‘Til You’re Satisfied’ might have been at that age – I was more than happy to accept that it could be merely innocent dancing (or indeed anything you wanted it to be – I don’t think I was missing the point!). Perhaps though, it’s these two records that best capture the contradictory impulses of the musical education my father offered me. If you’re desperate to stop your children experimenting with narcotics, I would strongly advise you to present them with a copy of ‘A Dramatic Experience’ at a formative age. The cover image alone is positively terrifying (a portrait of a particularly beastly Devil) and the music is psychologically intimidating too. Ushered in by a wave of crackling hellfire and anguished torment, ‘The Devil Is Dope’, a mind-blowing track on so many levels, is enough to convince any child that all drugs are inherently evil and should be avoided at all costs. By way of contrast, ‘Life and Death’ and ‘Everybody Party All Night’, with their defiantly minimal lyrics, are superb rallying cries for hedonism – ‘if it feels good it’s alright’ apparently. The hit single ‘Finders Keepers’ also seems to urge a rather guilt-free, unrepentant stance on sexual morality (‘I’ve found the love you lost and I’m gonna keep her!’).
Both albums benefit from a concerted attention to detail. The string and horn charts that lavishly adorn ‘A Dramatic Experience’ emphasise its theatrical qualities, a technique echoed by the extraordinary mellotron orchestration on ‘Morning Glory’ and ‘White Rose (Freedom Flower)’ from ‘Skin I’m In’. Similarly, the slinky groove of ‘Finders Keepers’ rests not only on its Stevie Wonder-inspired Clavinet pattern, but also on the occasional interjection of offbeat handclaps and the creeping menace of The Dramatics’ ‘Beware Of The Man (With The Candy In His Hand)’ is underlined by a sudden switch to a high-end bassline in the song’s chorus.
Another strong quality of both albums is the ability of the group’s dominant vocalists to thoroughly inhabit the worlds of their songs’ protagonists. Ron Banks and William “Wee Gee” Howard developed the gritty end of their vocal stylings for the ghoulish drug nightmares of ‘A Dramatic Experience’ whilst General Johnson, handling 90% of the vocals on ‘Skin I’m In’ captured palpable desperation in the face of injustice on the title track, and a driving sexualised urgency on ‘Life and Death’. By way of contrast, on ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ he sounded sweet and vulnerable.
These two enduringly powerful albums are rich in visionary ideas, with expertly produced, brilliantly executed musical foundations. Both records belie the notion of the vocal group as a charisma-less entity – with all the tracks oozing personality, conviction and theatrical expression. Released within a year of each other, the records provide sterling proof of just how adventurous the soul music of the early seventies could be. If Timbaland and The Neptunes might be the Holland-Dozier-Holland and Norman Whitfield of contemporary soul – who exactly are the Tony Hesters and Jeffrey Bowens? And are there any vocal groups now who could match this standard of delivery?
Friday, December 07, 2007
Albums Of The Year Part 4: 25-1
Just before I kick off the final instalment, a quick reminder of the previous albums of the year here:
2006: Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
2005: Acoustic Ladyland - Last Chance Disco
2004: Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
2003: Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People (in a piece written for John Kell's Unpredictable Same fanzine - this blog started in March 2004)
I'm not sure I stand by some of those choices now! Without further ado, here's the Top 25 of 2007...
25. Tinariwen – Aman Iman: Water Is Life (Independiente)
The Tuareg Desert Blues masters reached a substantial audience here in the UK with this stirring and potent set. Demonstrating just how much life and vitality can be drawn from very minimal harmony, the group exploited the unfamiliar tones and scale constructions of their native music to colossal impact. This is fervent and righteous music, its political motivation and unapologetic rebelliousness evident in spite of the language barrier.
24. Rufus Wainwright – Release The Stars (Polydor)
Initial impressions of ‘Release The Stars’ might suggest that Rufus indulged all his camp fantasies across one dazzling, totally over the top collection, but there’s more to ‘Release The Stars’ than meets the eye. Like the rest of his best work, it somehow manages to be simultaneously frivolous and profound. Whilst he’s certainly not one to resist the temptation to over-egg the pudding, the lavish treatments adorning the songs here seem appropriately ostentatious rather than merely extravagant. Best of all, his voice continues to develop into a really powerful instrument – there’s less of the exaggerated slurring and much more personal conviction this time around.
23. El-P – I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (Definitive Jux)
Whilst there were no hip hop albums in the league of ‘Liquid Swords’, ‘The Cold Vein’ or ‘Fishscale’ this year, Definitive Jux’s production maestro El-P came pretty close with this brooding, unsettling collection. It’s certainly a hip hop album where the focus is as much on the music as the lyrics – the dark, tense and claustrophobic atmospheres that El-P conjures have become something of a signature sound. Added to this are some original, occasionally surreal words that push well beyond rap’s usual braggadocio and machismo.
22. PJ Harvey – White Chalk (Island)
There’s something genuinely creepy, disturbing and malevolent about ‘White Chalk’. It seems, at least in part, to be a document of the corruption of innocence and the end of childhood, and its language is dark, foreboding and unrepentant. The presentation is similarly uncompromising, with Polly mostly abandoning guitars in favour of very skeletal, untutored piano playing. ‘White Chalk’ seems to constitute a deliberate repudiation of virtuosity from one of our most accomplished artistes, but the results are dependably vivid and unsettling.
21. Olafur Arnalds – Eulogy For Evolution (Erased Tapes)
Iceland’s freshest export has been highlighted as the obvious next step for lovers of Sigur Ros’ composition with rock dynamics. Where Sigur Ros sometimes veer into plodding rhythmic banality, Arnalds avoids this pitfall by frequently jettisoning rhythm in favour of mood and atmosphere. These are remarkably pure and elegantly simple compositions, full of space and silence and with individual notes held as long as feels necessary. Themes are repeated and developed rather than merely stated. The result is a concise but meaningful collection of profound and aching sadness, unrepentantly desolate and mournful.
20. Efterklang – Parades (Leaf)
With ‘Parades’, Danish group Efterklang crafted one of the most original and fascinating releases of the year. There’s something of the collective joy so beloved of The Polyphonic Spree in their layered choral vocals and chamber arrangements, but their nimble incorporation of marching rhythms and furtive textures marked them as several leagues above that most pretentious of bands. Their occasional preference for melancholy calm over quasi-religious fervour also results in a less overbearing, more immersing sound. This is adventurous music that veers between the mysterious and the extraordinary, brilliantly arranged and executed with formal restraint. There are now so many acts keen to find that intersection where electronics and acoustics subsume each other that it would be too easy to neglect those bands that hit that very spot perfectly. Efterklang are certainly one of them.
19. Iron and Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog (Transgressive/Sub Pop)
I’ve been harping on about Sam Beam’s literary brand of songwriting for some time here, but ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’, comfortably his most consistent album to date, sees him expand his musical outlook too. Softly spoken and well versed in the art of understatement, Beam’s new vision of American folk is now not just rich in gothic imagery and allusive language, but also able to incorporate a wide range of musical infusions from dub reggae to African rhythms with adroit tenderness. Members of Calexico embellish Beam’s ensemble with a pioneer spirit. As usual, a handful of the songs here are effortlessly moving, and the whole album coheres beautifully.
18. Curios – Hidden (Jazzizit)
Acoustic Ladyland have garnered considerable publicity over the last couple of years for their insistent, media-friendly fusion of punk and jazz, but their quietly gifted and unassuming keyboardist Tom Cawley crafted a magisterial record of his own in 2007, to a sadly much less significant fanfare. It’s a great time for the piano trio at the moment, and Curios are among a number of groups really pushing the format well beyond its obvious limitations. With a near perfect balance of elegiac, emotional ballads, palpable swing and rhythmically propulsive energy, the group adds real muscle and impressive interplay to Cawley’s sophisticated compositions. Veering from the frantic to the sensuous, ‘Hidden’ is a multi-faceted and deeply rewarding work.
17. Battles – Mirrored (Warp)
With Tyondai ‘son of Anthony’ Braxton and members of Helmet and Don Caballero amongst their number, Battles were always going to be an adventurous proposition. Yet the more predictable math rock of their initial EPs gave little preparation for this confounding and exceptional debut album proper. ‘Mirrored’ is off-kilter but thoroughly groovy, and full of all manner of interesting sounds. It’s a supremely technical music by most rock bands’ standards, but it also encapsulates the basic, elemental thrill that comes from the best rock and roll.
16. Bruce Springsteen and The Sessions Band – Live In Dublin (Columbia)
It’s a bit of an indulgence to include this fantastic live recording in addition to Springsteen’s E Street comeback, but it’s just such a thrilling, celebratory document that it couldn’t have been omitted. Springsteen’s shows with the Sessions band may not have reached as many people as the E Street stadium extravaganzas, but they certainly rivalled those shows for intensity and unrestrained mass celebration. Digging deep into musical history, Springsteen channelled his characteristic fervour and grit through the great American canon, reinventing many of his own original songs in the process. Best of all was his biting rewrite of Blind Alfred Reed’s ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live’ to reveal George W. Bush’s incompetence and thinly veiled indifference in the face of Hurricane Katrina. ‘He’s the best of what America could be…and should be’ according to Jon Landau. Damn right.
15. Yeasayer – All Hour Cymbals (We Are Free)
‘World music that doesn’t make you want to puke’ according to our only viable music weekly (how about actually looking to the wider world for some more of that?), Yeasayer’s debut was an exhilarating rush of rhythmic and harmonic invention, equal parts Crosby, Stills and Nash and King Crimson. Here is a band set to build their profile considerably in 2008 – very much pursuing their own distinctive path, and creating some rich, positive and intoxicating music in the process. So often do their abundant ideas bear fruit in reality, Yeasayer’s ambitions are lofty but never embarrassing or misguided.
14. John Abercrombie – The Third Quartet (ECM)
John Abercrombie is one of the master guitarists, and ‘The Third Quartet’ is yet another peerless example of his artistry. It’s an evocative, expressive and fluid collection demonstrating both the exemplary technique of the group leader and the combined prowess of his outstanding ensemble. This is elusive, subtle music that takes time to weave its peculiar and haunting web. It creates a distinctive feeling of weightlessness and drifting that is both challenging and satisfying.
13. LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver (DFA/EMI)
James Murphy remains an intriguing proposition – a man who makes hipster music despite appearing defiantly uncool in demeanour. It’s easy to see how Hot Chip have found a happy home on his DFA label. ‘Sound Of Silver’ is a massive improvement on his promising but rather cobbled together debut album. He has absorbed a massive range of music, from the driving Krautrock of Neu! to the primitive grooves of Dinosaur L or ESG, via minimal composers such as Steve Reich. Murphy is astute in unpicking the thorny problem of attempts to regress back to adolescence, emphasising the poignancy that accompanies growing older. Musically, it is minimal but relentless and propulsive – it satisfies both the impulse to dance and the cerebral demand for conceptual thought.
12. Gwilym Simcock – Perception (Basho)
I want to hate Gwilym Simcock. Prodigiously gifted as a composer and soloist, a top class ensemble player, young and distinctively handsome to boot – there’s just too much to envy. Yet ‘Perception’ is such a breathtakingly inspiring debut – theoretically grounded but also full of feeling, freedom and meaningful ideas. The group playing (featuring John Paricelli and Stan Sulzmann amongst other first rate musicians) is invigorating and thrilling, whilst Simcock’s writing is consistently inventive, particularly with time and metre. He’s also a skilled interpreter too, breathing thoroughly new life into his version of ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. He shares a sensibility with the revered American Brad Mehldau in his combination of technical mastery (established through rigorous classical training) with the spontaneity of improvisation. Yet his ballad playing is also supremely sensitive and he has a more playful and exuberant side that Mehldau sometimes lacks. Only the unflattering cover photograph does Simcock a disservice here. To say the future looks bright for him is something of an understatement.
11. The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse (Jagjaguwar)
A good friend of mine described this as ‘the album the Arcade Fire should have made next’. He has a good point there. Whilst the Arcade Fire opted to amplify their grandiose side, fellow Canadians The Besnard Lakes modestly crafted a slow burning, but ultimately towering second album that has begun to make a deserved international impact for them. With its spy theme and enthralling juxtaposition of progressive arrangements with very unfashionable 70s rock influences, the elaborate, twisting songs here placed the band in its own unique and unconventional space. That their live performances proved devastatingly loud and earth-shaking was a bonus.
10. Radiohead – In Rainbows (W.A.S.T.E./XL)
In a year when British group-based guitar music is notable by its almost total absence from my end-of-year round-up (only The Broken Family Band, Super Furry Animals, Paris Motel and The Twilight Sad make for the other entries), thank goodness for the return of Radiohead. There is no other British rock group working at this level of creativity and ambition. The minimal arrangements of these songs work through creating space as much as sound, and this may eventually stand proud as the most focussed of Radiohead’s post-‘OK Computer’ releases. No longer do they sound like a band merely appropriating a wide range of influences, but rather a living, breathing creative unit subsuming their reference points within a clear and consistent vision. Whilst I’ve been critical of Thom Yorke’s alienation-by-numbers lyrics elsewhere, he excels himself on two unusually personal standouts here – the confessionals ‘House Of Cards’ and ‘Reckoner’. The bonus disc added some more conventional balladry to satisfy less adventurous fans, but also continued the seductive, broadly erotic qualities that dominate the main release (indeed, I pre-empted Yorke himself – he has now called these ‘seduction songs’). With echoes of AR Kane, Talk Talk and Brian Eno, ‘In Rainbows’ built upon some judicious foundations with characteristic invention and audacity.
9. James Blackshaw – The Cloud Of Unknowing (Tompkins Square)
A student of the John Fahey ‘Takoma’ school of guitar playing, James Blackshaw is a homegrown instrumental talent worth celebrating. His sheets and layers of sound create effects that will be more familiar to students of contemporary classical music than folk or rock guitar playing. As a result, ‘The Cloud Of Unknowing’ has a spiritual, prophetic resonance at its heart and is one of 2007’s most unusual and idiosyncratic offerings. It’s actually Blackshaw’s fourth album, and with digital re-releases of the previous three now promised, it looks like a catalogue worth taking the time to explore further.
8. Panda Bear – Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
As mirthful and mischievous as Animal Collective’s ‘Strawberry Jam’ undoubtedly is, they were trumped by this solo offering from their percussionist in 2007. In fact, this was by some distance the best record yet from the entire Paw Tracks staple. Taking the summer harmonies of Brian Wilson as its starting point, Noah Lennox filtered his infectious, insistent vocal lines through urgent, propulsive rhythms and quirky home studio manipulations. By linking these fragments together, Lennox crafted a song cycle that sounded at turns eerily familiar and purposefully alien. Lennox appeared to be warping something comforting into something unknown and unforgiving. Not to be confused with Seb Rochford’s Polar Bear of course.
7. Robert Wyatt – Comicopera (Domino)
I can’t do much more here than to underline Marcello Carlin’s brilliant exposition on the underselling of this album by professional music critics in Britain (in a similar way, he argues, to the way writers approached ‘The Drift’ by Scott Walker last year). It took Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, in a characteristically erudite press release, to elucidate this album’s sheer brilliance clearly. Robert Wyatt is such a unique and distinctive voice (both literally and figuratively) that it has become all too easy to take him for granted. That much of ‘Comicopera’ emphasises how warm and accessible he can be is therefore no bad thing. Far from being too quirky and idiosyncratic to have a hit, Wyatt can be playful, sincere, warm and affecting. The writing here is incisive and the execution exquisite. Whilst much of the music feels like a statement of personal freedom, Wyatt’s strong sense of humanity and community is also evident and every note is carefully judged and timed. The sudden switch away from the English language represents the clearest expression of political frustration with Western foreign policy yet committed to disc (considerably more eloquent than Neil Young’s hamfisted and overpraised ‘Living With War’, for example). ‘Comicopera’ is a beautiful and disorientating suite charged with as much empathy and insight as anger and rage.
6. Burial – Untrue (Hyperdub)
Disorientating and unsettling, yet also grounded by real emotional depth and a soulful streak, Burial’s second album successfully upgraded the template of his astonishing debut. Although the album is largely wordless, its edited snatches of vocal samples and lingering synth pads combine to say more about a sense of urban dislocation than the self-conscious lyrics of either Thom Yorke or Kele Okereke. ‘Untrue’ is an uneasy but affecting listen to rival Tricky’s ‘Maxinquaye’ or Massive Attack’s ‘Blue Lines’.
5. Michael Brecker – Pilgrimage (Heads Up)
What a towering achievement this album is, not least because Brecker effectively kept himself alive whilst terminally ill to complete it. Brecker surrounded himself with a dream line-up (with both Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau, a more-than-usually tasteful and expressive Pat Metheny, complemented and completed by the driving union of Jack DeJohnette and John Patittucci), the sterling support no doubt advancing him to the very peak of his own powers. Whilst ‘Pilgrimage’ does not add anything particularly new to the jazz idiom, it expands the existing language with peerless panache and flair. The themes are incomparably strong and memorable, the group dynamic virtually faultless and the improvising strident and powerful. It’s a muscular group performance, but also tender and mournful in all the appropriate places. ‘Pilgrimage’ is an inevitable future classic and, fittingly, one of Brecker’s very best albums.
4. David Torn – Prezens (ECM)
What is this extraordinary noise exactly? Is it jazz? Is it improvised metal? Is it electronica? Frankly, who cares how it’s classified? It’s much more important that it’s terrifyingly original and, by implication, absolutely terrifying. With an unfathomably inspired line up of free improvisers (Tim Berne, Craig Taborn and the world-class drummer Tom Rainey), ‘Prezens’ is brutal, confrontational and provocative all in the best possible way. It’s unpredictable and thrilling, primal yet also devilishly intricate. It’s some way removed from the more serene and meditative sound normally associated with the ECM label. Best of all, it’s an inspired combination of collective improvisation and studio processing that sounds palpably dangerous. It sounds like an auditory hallucination – a graphic and disturbing musical vision of hell.
3. Bjork – Volta (One Little Indian)
The tribal drums that usher in ‘Earth Intruders’ also neatly symbolise the onward march of Bjork’s musical career. Here is an artist who has never looked back and, at least in part through judicious collaborations, has continued to refine, develop and innovate in all aspects of her work, from production values to artwork. After the experiments with vocal effects on ‘Medulla’, ‘Volta’ adopted an earthier strategy, focussing more on rhythm and on that extraordinarily resonant all-female brass section (all the more striking in the moments when beats were abandoned). It also liberally picked and mixed musical styles from around the globe, with Toumani Diabate’s Koura adding depth and Congolese maestros Konono No. 1 making sonic trouble. With her voice frequently at its most uncompromising, this is not Bjork’s most conventionally melodic statement – but then conventional melody has never been her priority. With every release she continues to stretch her mind and her talent, this time synthesising the rigours of modern composition with the primarily sexual impulse of dance and soul music. It was a signpost of the woman’s magisterial talent that the Timbaland produced tracks are arguably the least successful here. Thematically, ‘Volta’ is a defiant and inspiring celebration of love and life, brave in its exhortation to embrace all opportunities and cast aside misgivings.
2. Feist – The Reminder (Polydor)
Has there been a more insightful, compassionate and sympathetic collection of songs in the last ten years? On ‘The Reminder’, Leslie Feist encapsulated the overwhelming, sometimes stifling power of memory on human relationships with nuance, subtlety and grace. The overall sound was stately and refined but never bland (so the Dido comparisons are entirely misleading) - a highly sophisticated confection unafraid to venture into areas of personality and consciousness that most pop songwriters prefer to avoid. It’s a beautifully produced, captivating and powerfully moving record, and that ubiquitous ipod advert at least made sure that we didn’t miss out on her this year.
1. Dirty Projectors – Rise Above (Rough Trade)
Dave Longstreth’s weird and wonderful masterpiece has hardly even been noticed by the British music press. If it were not for his sterling set in support of Beirut at Koko earlier in the year, I may never have even heard this subversive, bold and fearless music. It’s supposedly a re-imagining of Black Flag’s classic ‘Damaged’ album in its entirety. This could so easily have been a grand folly extraordinaire, but Longstreth, retaining the album’s inlay but not the cassette itself from his youth, worked entirely from personal memories and interpretations. Direct flashbacks to that band’s sound are, perhaps as a result, really only apparent in the unexpected bursts of hardcore thrashing that sometimes perforate the meticulously crafted arrangements. There are hints of Afrobeat, country-rock and the avant garde, all melded into a rigorously controlled yet unspeakably thrilling melting pot. It’s both original and radical, making the rest of 2007’s rock music look timid and tepid by comparison.
2006: Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
2005: Acoustic Ladyland - Last Chance Disco
2004: Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
2003: Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People (in a piece written for John Kell's Unpredictable Same fanzine - this blog started in March 2004)
I'm not sure I stand by some of those choices now! Without further ado, here's the Top 25 of 2007...
25. Tinariwen – Aman Iman: Water Is Life (Independiente)
The Tuareg Desert Blues masters reached a substantial audience here in the UK with this stirring and potent set. Demonstrating just how much life and vitality can be drawn from very minimal harmony, the group exploited the unfamiliar tones and scale constructions of their native music to colossal impact. This is fervent and righteous music, its political motivation and unapologetic rebelliousness evident in spite of the language barrier.
24. Rufus Wainwright – Release The Stars (Polydor)
Initial impressions of ‘Release The Stars’ might suggest that Rufus indulged all his camp fantasies across one dazzling, totally over the top collection, but there’s more to ‘Release The Stars’ than meets the eye. Like the rest of his best work, it somehow manages to be simultaneously frivolous and profound. Whilst he’s certainly not one to resist the temptation to over-egg the pudding, the lavish treatments adorning the songs here seem appropriately ostentatious rather than merely extravagant. Best of all, his voice continues to develop into a really powerful instrument – there’s less of the exaggerated slurring and much more personal conviction this time around.
23. El-P – I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (Definitive Jux)
Whilst there were no hip hop albums in the league of ‘Liquid Swords’, ‘The Cold Vein’ or ‘Fishscale’ this year, Definitive Jux’s production maestro El-P came pretty close with this brooding, unsettling collection. It’s certainly a hip hop album where the focus is as much on the music as the lyrics – the dark, tense and claustrophobic atmospheres that El-P conjures have become something of a signature sound. Added to this are some original, occasionally surreal words that push well beyond rap’s usual braggadocio and machismo.
22. PJ Harvey – White Chalk (Island)
There’s something genuinely creepy, disturbing and malevolent about ‘White Chalk’. It seems, at least in part, to be a document of the corruption of innocence and the end of childhood, and its language is dark, foreboding and unrepentant. The presentation is similarly uncompromising, with Polly mostly abandoning guitars in favour of very skeletal, untutored piano playing. ‘White Chalk’ seems to constitute a deliberate repudiation of virtuosity from one of our most accomplished artistes, but the results are dependably vivid and unsettling.
21. Olafur Arnalds – Eulogy For Evolution (Erased Tapes)
Iceland’s freshest export has been highlighted as the obvious next step for lovers of Sigur Ros’ composition with rock dynamics. Where Sigur Ros sometimes veer into plodding rhythmic banality, Arnalds avoids this pitfall by frequently jettisoning rhythm in favour of mood and atmosphere. These are remarkably pure and elegantly simple compositions, full of space and silence and with individual notes held as long as feels necessary. Themes are repeated and developed rather than merely stated. The result is a concise but meaningful collection of profound and aching sadness, unrepentantly desolate and mournful.
20. Efterklang – Parades (Leaf)
With ‘Parades’, Danish group Efterklang crafted one of the most original and fascinating releases of the year. There’s something of the collective joy so beloved of The Polyphonic Spree in their layered choral vocals and chamber arrangements, but their nimble incorporation of marching rhythms and furtive textures marked them as several leagues above that most pretentious of bands. Their occasional preference for melancholy calm over quasi-religious fervour also results in a less overbearing, more immersing sound. This is adventurous music that veers between the mysterious and the extraordinary, brilliantly arranged and executed with formal restraint. There are now so many acts keen to find that intersection where electronics and acoustics subsume each other that it would be too easy to neglect those bands that hit that very spot perfectly. Efterklang are certainly one of them.
19. Iron and Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog (Transgressive/Sub Pop)
I’ve been harping on about Sam Beam’s literary brand of songwriting for some time here, but ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’, comfortably his most consistent album to date, sees him expand his musical outlook too. Softly spoken and well versed in the art of understatement, Beam’s new vision of American folk is now not just rich in gothic imagery and allusive language, but also able to incorporate a wide range of musical infusions from dub reggae to African rhythms with adroit tenderness. Members of Calexico embellish Beam’s ensemble with a pioneer spirit. As usual, a handful of the songs here are effortlessly moving, and the whole album coheres beautifully.
18. Curios – Hidden (Jazzizit)
Acoustic Ladyland have garnered considerable publicity over the last couple of years for their insistent, media-friendly fusion of punk and jazz, but their quietly gifted and unassuming keyboardist Tom Cawley crafted a magisterial record of his own in 2007, to a sadly much less significant fanfare. It’s a great time for the piano trio at the moment, and Curios are among a number of groups really pushing the format well beyond its obvious limitations. With a near perfect balance of elegiac, emotional ballads, palpable swing and rhythmically propulsive energy, the group adds real muscle and impressive interplay to Cawley’s sophisticated compositions. Veering from the frantic to the sensuous, ‘Hidden’ is a multi-faceted and deeply rewarding work.
17. Battles – Mirrored (Warp)
With Tyondai ‘son of Anthony’ Braxton and members of Helmet and Don Caballero amongst their number, Battles were always going to be an adventurous proposition. Yet the more predictable math rock of their initial EPs gave little preparation for this confounding and exceptional debut album proper. ‘Mirrored’ is off-kilter but thoroughly groovy, and full of all manner of interesting sounds. It’s a supremely technical music by most rock bands’ standards, but it also encapsulates the basic, elemental thrill that comes from the best rock and roll.
16. Bruce Springsteen and The Sessions Band – Live In Dublin (Columbia)
It’s a bit of an indulgence to include this fantastic live recording in addition to Springsteen’s E Street comeback, but it’s just such a thrilling, celebratory document that it couldn’t have been omitted. Springsteen’s shows with the Sessions band may not have reached as many people as the E Street stadium extravaganzas, but they certainly rivalled those shows for intensity and unrestrained mass celebration. Digging deep into musical history, Springsteen channelled his characteristic fervour and grit through the great American canon, reinventing many of his own original songs in the process. Best of all was his biting rewrite of Blind Alfred Reed’s ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live’ to reveal George W. Bush’s incompetence and thinly veiled indifference in the face of Hurricane Katrina. ‘He’s the best of what America could be…and should be’ according to Jon Landau. Damn right.
15. Yeasayer – All Hour Cymbals (We Are Free)
‘World music that doesn’t make you want to puke’ according to our only viable music weekly (how about actually looking to the wider world for some more of that?), Yeasayer’s debut was an exhilarating rush of rhythmic and harmonic invention, equal parts Crosby, Stills and Nash and King Crimson. Here is a band set to build their profile considerably in 2008 – very much pursuing their own distinctive path, and creating some rich, positive and intoxicating music in the process. So often do their abundant ideas bear fruit in reality, Yeasayer’s ambitions are lofty but never embarrassing or misguided.
14. John Abercrombie – The Third Quartet (ECM)
John Abercrombie is one of the master guitarists, and ‘The Third Quartet’ is yet another peerless example of his artistry. It’s an evocative, expressive and fluid collection demonstrating both the exemplary technique of the group leader and the combined prowess of his outstanding ensemble. This is elusive, subtle music that takes time to weave its peculiar and haunting web. It creates a distinctive feeling of weightlessness and drifting that is both challenging and satisfying.
13. LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver (DFA/EMI)
James Murphy remains an intriguing proposition – a man who makes hipster music despite appearing defiantly uncool in demeanour. It’s easy to see how Hot Chip have found a happy home on his DFA label. ‘Sound Of Silver’ is a massive improvement on his promising but rather cobbled together debut album. He has absorbed a massive range of music, from the driving Krautrock of Neu! to the primitive grooves of Dinosaur L or ESG, via minimal composers such as Steve Reich. Murphy is astute in unpicking the thorny problem of attempts to regress back to adolescence, emphasising the poignancy that accompanies growing older. Musically, it is minimal but relentless and propulsive – it satisfies both the impulse to dance and the cerebral demand for conceptual thought.
12. Gwilym Simcock – Perception (Basho)
I want to hate Gwilym Simcock. Prodigiously gifted as a composer and soloist, a top class ensemble player, young and distinctively handsome to boot – there’s just too much to envy. Yet ‘Perception’ is such a breathtakingly inspiring debut – theoretically grounded but also full of feeling, freedom and meaningful ideas. The group playing (featuring John Paricelli and Stan Sulzmann amongst other first rate musicians) is invigorating and thrilling, whilst Simcock’s writing is consistently inventive, particularly with time and metre. He’s also a skilled interpreter too, breathing thoroughly new life into his version of ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. He shares a sensibility with the revered American Brad Mehldau in his combination of technical mastery (established through rigorous classical training) with the spontaneity of improvisation. Yet his ballad playing is also supremely sensitive and he has a more playful and exuberant side that Mehldau sometimes lacks. Only the unflattering cover photograph does Simcock a disservice here. To say the future looks bright for him is something of an understatement.
11. The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse (Jagjaguwar)
A good friend of mine described this as ‘the album the Arcade Fire should have made next’. He has a good point there. Whilst the Arcade Fire opted to amplify their grandiose side, fellow Canadians The Besnard Lakes modestly crafted a slow burning, but ultimately towering second album that has begun to make a deserved international impact for them. With its spy theme and enthralling juxtaposition of progressive arrangements with very unfashionable 70s rock influences, the elaborate, twisting songs here placed the band in its own unique and unconventional space. That their live performances proved devastatingly loud and earth-shaking was a bonus.
10. Radiohead – In Rainbows (W.A.S.T.E./XL)
In a year when British group-based guitar music is notable by its almost total absence from my end-of-year round-up (only The Broken Family Band, Super Furry Animals, Paris Motel and The Twilight Sad make for the other entries), thank goodness for the return of Radiohead. There is no other British rock group working at this level of creativity and ambition. The minimal arrangements of these songs work through creating space as much as sound, and this may eventually stand proud as the most focussed of Radiohead’s post-‘OK Computer’ releases. No longer do they sound like a band merely appropriating a wide range of influences, but rather a living, breathing creative unit subsuming their reference points within a clear and consistent vision. Whilst I’ve been critical of Thom Yorke’s alienation-by-numbers lyrics elsewhere, he excels himself on two unusually personal standouts here – the confessionals ‘House Of Cards’ and ‘Reckoner’. The bonus disc added some more conventional balladry to satisfy less adventurous fans, but also continued the seductive, broadly erotic qualities that dominate the main release (indeed, I pre-empted Yorke himself – he has now called these ‘seduction songs’). With echoes of AR Kane, Talk Talk and Brian Eno, ‘In Rainbows’ built upon some judicious foundations with characteristic invention and audacity.
9. James Blackshaw – The Cloud Of Unknowing (Tompkins Square)
A student of the John Fahey ‘Takoma’ school of guitar playing, James Blackshaw is a homegrown instrumental talent worth celebrating. His sheets and layers of sound create effects that will be more familiar to students of contemporary classical music than folk or rock guitar playing. As a result, ‘The Cloud Of Unknowing’ has a spiritual, prophetic resonance at its heart and is one of 2007’s most unusual and idiosyncratic offerings. It’s actually Blackshaw’s fourth album, and with digital re-releases of the previous three now promised, it looks like a catalogue worth taking the time to explore further.
8. Panda Bear – Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
As mirthful and mischievous as Animal Collective’s ‘Strawberry Jam’ undoubtedly is, they were trumped by this solo offering from their percussionist in 2007. In fact, this was by some distance the best record yet from the entire Paw Tracks staple. Taking the summer harmonies of Brian Wilson as its starting point, Noah Lennox filtered his infectious, insistent vocal lines through urgent, propulsive rhythms and quirky home studio manipulations. By linking these fragments together, Lennox crafted a song cycle that sounded at turns eerily familiar and purposefully alien. Lennox appeared to be warping something comforting into something unknown and unforgiving. Not to be confused with Seb Rochford’s Polar Bear of course.
7. Robert Wyatt – Comicopera (Domino)
I can’t do much more here than to underline Marcello Carlin’s brilliant exposition on the underselling of this album by professional music critics in Britain (in a similar way, he argues, to the way writers approached ‘The Drift’ by Scott Walker last year). It took Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, in a characteristically erudite press release, to elucidate this album’s sheer brilliance clearly. Robert Wyatt is such a unique and distinctive voice (both literally and figuratively) that it has become all too easy to take him for granted. That much of ‘Comicopera’ emphasises how warm and accessible he can be is therefore no bad thing. Far from being too quirky and idiosyncratic to have a hit, Wyatt can be playful, sincere, warm and affecting. The writing here is incisive and the execution exquisite. Whilst much of the music feels like a statement of personal freedom, Wyatt’s strong sense of humanity and community is also evident and every note is carefully judged and timed. The sudden switch away from the English language represents the clearest expression of political frustration with Western foreign policy yet committed to disc (considerably more eloquent than Neil Young’s hamfisted and overpraised ‘Living With War’, for example). ‘Comicopera’ is a beautiful and disorientating suite charged with as much empathy and insight as anger and rage.
6. Burial – Untrue (Hyperdub)
Disorientating and unsettling, yet also grounded by real emotional depth and a soulful streak, Burial’s second album successfully upgraded the template of his astonishing debut. Although the album is largely wordless, its edited snatches of vocal samples and lingering synth pads combine to say more about a sense of urban dislocation than the self-conscious lyrics of either Thom Yorke or Kele Okereke. ‘Untrue’ is an uneasy but affecting listen to rival Tricky’s ‘Maxinquaye’ or Massive Attack’s ‘Blue Lines’.
5. Michael Brecker – Pilgrimage (Heads Up)
What a towering achievement this album is, not least because Brecker effectively kept himself alive whilst terminally ill to complete it. Brecker surrounded himself with a dream line-up (with both Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau, a more-than-usually tasteful and expressive Pat Metheny, complemented and completed by the driving union of Jack DeJohnette and John Patittucci), the sterling support no doubt advancing him to the very peak of his own powers. Whilst ‘Pilgrimage’ does not add anything particularly new to the jazz idiom, it expands the existing language with peerless panache and flair. The themes are incomparably strong and memorable, the group dynamic virtually faultless and the improvising strident and powerful. It’s a muscular group performance, but also tender and mournful in all the appropriate places. ‘Pilgrimage’ is an inevitable future classic and, fittingly, one of Brecker’s very best albums.
4. David Torn – Prezens (ECM)
What is this extraordinary noise exactly? Is it jazz? Is it improvised metal? Is it electronica? Frankly, who cares how it’s classified? It’s much more important that it’s terrifyingly original and, by implication, absolutely terrifying. With an unfathomably inspired line up of free improvisers (Tim Berne, Craig Taborn and the world-class drummer Tom Rainey), ‘Prezens’ is brutal, confrontational and provocative all in the best possible way. It’s unpredictable and thrilling, primal yet also devilishly intricate. It’s some way removed from the more serene and meditative sound normally associated with the ECM label. Best of all, it’s an inspired combination of collective improvisation and studio processing that sounds palpably dangerous. It sounds like an auditory hallucination – a graphic and disturbing musical vision of hell.
3. Bjork – Volta (One Little Indian)
The tribal drums that usher in ‘Earth Intruders’ also neatly symbolise the onward march of Bjork’s musical career. Here is an artist who has never looked back and, at least in part through judicious collaborations, has continued to refine, develop and innovate in all aspects of her work, from production values to artwork. After the experiments with vocal effects on ‘Medulla’, ‘Volta’ adopted an earthier strategy, focussing more on rhythm and on that extraordinarily resonant all-female brass section (all the more striking in the moments when beats were abandoned). It also liberally picked and mixed musical styles from around the globe, with Toumani Diabate’s Koura adding depth and Congolese maestros Konono No. 1 making sonic trouble. With her voice frequently at its most uncompromising, this is not Bjork’s most conventionally melodic statement – but then conventional melody has never been her priority. With every release she continues to stretch her mind and her talent, this time synthesising the rigours of modern composition with the primarily sexual impulse of dance and soul music. It was a signpost of the woman’s magisterial talent that the Timbaland produced tracks are arguably the least successful here. Thematically, ‘Volta’ is a defiant and inspiring celebration of love and life, brave in its exhortation to embrace all opportunities and cast aside misgivings.
2. Feist – The Reminder (Polydor)
Has there been a more insightful, compassionate and sympathetic collection of songs in the last ten years? On ‘The Reminder’, Leslie Feist encapsulated the overwhelming, sometimes stifling power of memory on human relationships with nuance, subtlety and grace. The overall sound was stately and refined but never bland (so the Dido comparisons are entirely misleading) - a highly sophisticated confection unafraid to venture into areas of personality and consciousness that most pop songwriters prefer to avoid. It’s a beautifully produced, captivating and powerfully moving record, and that ubiquitous ipod advert at least made sure that we didn’t miss out on her this year.
1. Dirty Projectors – Rise Above (Rough Trade)
Dave Longstreth’s weird and wonderful masterpiece has hardly even been noticed by the British music press. If it were not for his sterling set in support of Beirut at Koko earlier in the year, I may never have even heard this subversive, bold and fearless music. It’s supposedly a re-imagining of Black Flag’s classic ‘Damaged’ album in its entirety. This could so easily have been a grand folly extraordinaire, but Longstreth, retaining the album’s inlay but not the cassette itself from his youth, worked entirely from personal memories and interpretations. Direct flashbacks to that band’s sound are, perhaps as a result, really only apparent in the unexpected bursts of hardcore thrashing that sometimes perforate the meticulously crafted arrangements. There are hints of Afrobeat, country-rock and the avant garde, all melded into a rigorously controlled yet unspeakably thrilling melting pot. It’s both original and radical, making the rest of 2007’s rock music look timid and tepid by comparison.
Albums Of The Year 2007 Part 3: 50-26
50. Aesop Rock – None Shall Pass (Definitive Jux)
Aesop Rock still remains one of my favourite rappers, and he hasn’t yet really put a foot wrong. His language is flighty, verbose and unconventional, and the music never settles for the familiar. Instead, it veers across all sorts of unpredictable, occasionally even uncomfortable terrain, and the results are visceral and exciting. Like his kindred spirits in the Anticon collective, Aesop Rock infuriates those who like their hip hop baser and more aggressive. Yet, if this is a genre based largely on poetics and voice inflections – why should it not incorporate wild flights of fancy and imaginative whims just as much as gritty dissections of reality?
49. Antibalas – Security (Anti)
This one seemed to miss the radar of most UK publications, but it’s a rather joyful and exuberant contemporary take on Afrobeat. Merging the preoccupations of Fela Kuti with the more cerebral outlook of Tortoise (whose John McEntire produces and mixes the entire set), this is a multicultural extravaganza of rhythm and feel. It’s tightly organised, but also thrillingly raw, burningly intense and organic, driven in equal parts by the crisp rhythm and horn sections.
48. Cinematic Orchestra – Ma Fleur (Ninja Tunes)
Here’s an album that has grown on me considerably over the course of the past few months. This is perhaps because it’s Jason Swinscoe’s most subtle musical statement to date – now as enthralled with folk music as with jazz and hip hop. It’s a lighter, more vulnerable record than its predecessors, and a sweetly intoxicating one too. Fontella Bass again guests, apparently now quite unwell, and her damaged but undefeated vocals are quietly devastating. Elsewhere, the intricate shuffle rhythms and slow building atmospheres are masterfully handled. There are some exquisitely judged contributions from some of London’s finest jazz musicians, including keyboardist Nick Ramm and percussionist Milo Fell.
47. Basquiat Strings – Basquiat Strings feat. Seb Rochford (F-IRE)
Whilst Seb Rochford is certainly a crucial figure here, underpinning the music with subtle brush strokes and a uniquely sensitive swing, this is really Cellist Ben Davis’ project. Rightly nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, but inevitably denied its deserved victory in favour of the far more superficial Klaxons, this album is an original fusion – chamber music that grooves.
46. The Bad Plus – PROG (Heads Up)
Now that The Bad Plus’ power trio reversions of rock classics have lost their novelty value, there seems to be an increased risk of taking them for granted. This surely neglects the group’s remarkable technical ability, and their own creative impetus. Over the course of their last couple of albums, their original compositions have become more muscular, occasionally even fiery, and they polyrhythmic invention on display on ‘Prog’ is mind-boggling. Of the interpretations, David Bowie’s ‘Life On Mars’ becomes even more theatrical through a merciless extension by pianist Ethan Iverson and Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ is imbued with reflective regret.
45. Susanna – Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos (Rune Grammofon)
Oh Susanna! What icy elegance, what subtlety, what restraint! I don’t even have any idea what Susanna looks like, but her voice is one of the most beautiful and alluring sounds to pass my ears in the last couple of years. If last year’s album of perverse covers with her Magical Orchestra hinted at Susanna’s singular vision, this absurdly titled ‘solo’ work realises this with purity and majesty. These songs are supremely understated and their grief and sadness cuts through the austerity of the arrangements.
44. Paul Motian, Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell – Time and Time Again (ECM)
Paul Motian’s bassless trio is one of the most original groups in contemporary jazz. Frisell and Lovano seem like radically different musicians on paper. Lovano is well-versed in jazz language and produces a masterful, dominating sound. Frisell is more interested in the intersections between jazz and American folk music, and his trademark sound is more atmospheric and spacey. Yet Motian directs them into a very free and liberating creative space where, whilst restraining some of their more individualistic tendencies, they integrate in a quite remarkable symbiosis. Motian’s drumming is a language all of its own – his nimble, elongated strokes are unique among modern drummers.
43. Pharoahe Monch – Desire (SRC/Universal)
In spite of his breathtaking arrogance, after eight years of almost complete silence, Pharoahe Monch made one of the most taut and least indulgent hip hop albums in some time with ‘Desire’. It’s audacious in the extreme – how odd it is that hip hop seems the one genre of music so supremely personalised that covers are unthinkable. Monch destroys these casual assumptions with ingenuity with his version of Public Enemy’s ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’. In its genre-busting, cerebral force, ‘Desire’ seems almost like a lost classic from an earlier era, but it’s also so savage and confrontational as to resemble nothing else. He’s not shying away from key issues here – ‘Desire’ deals with gun crime, war and poverty amongst other weighty subjects. It’s an attacking, unrepentant blast from a major talent now thankfully back in the game.
42. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Raising Sand (Rounder)
It was extremely irritating that all attention was focussed on the superficial Led Zeppelin reunion at the expense of either its chief motivation (the sad death of Atlantic records founder Armet Ehrtegun), or their frontman’s superb contemporary work. Plant is clearly determined not to let Zep get in the way of this fascinating collaborative project (he plans to tour with Krauss next year), but it was always inevitable that it wouldn’t have quite the same commercial impact. Plant has been delving deeper into his musical heritage over the past few years, the result being a complete diminution of rock posturing in favour of sensitively handled interpretations of an American folk canon. That Plant can immerse himself in this world convincingly is testament to his thorough understanding of the music. Whilst Krauss can sometimes be a little pristine or twee in her own work, she sounds more otherworldly and compelling here, and the combination of her voice with Plant’s is surprisingly exotic. With a band that includes the consistently innovative guitarist Marc Ribot, things were never going to get too conventional – and there’s a dark undertone to many of these inspired reworkings.
41. Okkervil River – The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar)
Will Sheff continued his blisteringly intense, highly literate songwriting mission on this powerful collection, mixing brutality and tenderness in equal measure. He’s an absolutely superb lyricist, full of ideas delivered in the form of narrative prose-poems rather than conventional verse-chorus-verse songs. His vocal delivery is also savage and impassioned, although he’s increasingly capable of exercising restraint too. Once again, the arrangements were sublime, and his carefully constructed world completely absorbing.
40. Jim Hart’s Gemini – Emergence (Loop)
Those privileged few ‘in the know’ about London’s jazz scene would no doubt assert that the self-promoting Loop Collective represent one of the most promising prospects in some time. Yet Jim Hart’s Gemini, alongside Outhouse, are one of only a handful of their bands to get funds together for national tours. In spite of this, there’s not a great deal of publicity about them, and little recognition that ‘Emergence’ is one of the most confident British jazz albums of the year. Hart is a drummer and percussionist, but he concentrates exclusively on vibraphone and marimba here. He combines creative composing with adventurous improvising. There’s also a remarkably strong rapport between the musicians, driven along nicely by the swinging drumming of Tom Skinner.
39. Supersilent – 8 (Rune Grammofon)
One feels there’s probably as much myth as reality about Norwegian free improvisers Supersilent. Do they really not communicate with each other aside from making this completely unplanned music? It seems unlikely – but, as with all their previous releases, there’s a weird and unforced alchemy to this manipulated, twisted electronic noise. If anything, ‘8’ seems a little more focussed than their previous output, with each track single-mindedly developing a clear idea to its logical conclusion.
38. Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam (Domino)
Animal Collective have progressively been restraining some of their more gonzo tendencies in favour of a more infectious sound that has become increasingly saccharine. ‘Strawberry Jam’ is therefore the perfect title for this sweeter-than-sweet set, but their handling of this jaunty, chirpy music somehow keeps it firmly on the right side of the fine line between insistent and irritating. There’s still a madcap experimentalism at their core, and with some surreal imagery and highly unusual sounds, they delivered their most boundlessly joyful, blissfully lysergic statement so far.
37. John Surman – The Spaces In Between (ECM)
Very little frustrates me quite as much as the notion that Classical and Jazz are mutually exclusive musical disciplines. As Hugh Masakela exclaimed at a recent London concert: ‘It’s not true that a symphony orchestra can’t swing!’. John Surman, one of British jazz’s finest talents, has long been honing his brand of part-composed, part-improvised chamber music. ‘The Spaces In Between’ is another collaboration with double bassist Chris Laurence and the Trans4Mation String Quartet, and may be the best example yet of this peculiarly effective cross-breeding. The music is richly melodic, elegiac and touching, and the quartet accompaniments veer from the languid to the surprisingly sprightly. Best of all, there’s plenty of space for exposition, and Surman has rarely sounded more in control, drawing a tremendous range of sounds from his range of saxophones and clarinets.
36. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)
Whilst I’m really no techno expert, every so often there’s an album that passes within my radar and makes me wonder what I’ve been missing. In spite of the music’s US heritage with the likes of Derrick May and Jeff Mills, most recently, these albums have mostly emerged from Europe. Laurent Garnier’s ‘Unreasonable Behaviour’ was an almighty classic and a couple of years ago, Isolee’s ‘We Are Monster’ enthralled me with its elegant constructions. Now Swedish producer Axel Willner has produced one of the most captivating electronic albums of 2007. Some have emphasised that this album shares as much with the shoegazing techniques of My Bloody Valentine and Ride as with the minimalist work of Steve Reich or indeed Mills and May. ‘From Here We Go Sublime’ is not really about clever beats (it’s almost entirely four-square), but more about mood, texture and atmosphere. Willner weaves subtle changes into his cumulative repetitions with skill and craft.
35. Erik Friedlander – Block Ice and Propane (SkipStone)
The Cello is still rarely used as an improvisational instrument, which is odd given its depth, versatility and resonance. Yet Erik Friedlander is the highest ranking of three Cellists to appear in this list. He’s one of the instrument’s master technicians, both in ensemble format and as a solo artist, as on this remarkable recording. He has collaborated with artists as diverse as John Zorn and Courtney Love and clearly has little respect for conventional musical boundaries. Sometimes his sound his harsh and grating, sometimes it is dreamy and languid. Perhaps most interesting of all is his deconstructed blues pizzicato, by which he makes his instrument sound more like a guitar. Much of this is folk music, but it is folk music completely revitalised, and imbued with a wonderfully childlike and naïve curiosity.
34. Mavis Staples – We’ll Never Turn Back (Anti)
Ry Cooder brought his magic production touch to this collection of protest songs from the determinedly gritty former Staple Singer. ‘We’ll Never Turn Back’ demonstrated modern America could still sustain a fiery tradition of rebellion and saw Staples sermonising tirelessly against injustice wherever she saw it. Revitalising these civil rights songs so that they now applied to the impoverished and abused anywhere, she imbued her music with a righteous energy and powerful sense of community.
33. Stars Of The Lid – Stars Of The Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline (Kranky)
This is some of the strangest, most haunting and beautiful music of the year, yet it achieves this by abandoning most established musical conventions. There’s little melody or harmony and no real underlying rhythm at all – the music instead relies solely on drones and pulses, with only very slight variations in tone and pitch. Yet the bizarre song titles suggest they are not too po-faced in their approach, and the results strongly bear this out. There’s a powerful and entrancing mood, and a carefully controlled ebb and flow that takes this into weird and wonderful territory.
32. Nels Cline Singers – Draw Breath (Cryptogramophone)
Whilst the merits of Wilco’s ‘Sky Blue Sky’ divided opinion somewhat, few could argue with the extraordinary vision and talent of their lead guitarist. With an effortless mastery of the fretboard, Nels Cline is a fearsome improviser rooted in both rock and roll and free jazz. ‘Draw Breath’ is an audacious and thoroughly engaging record, with some lengthy extrapolations that take numerous risks and raise the tension to fever pitch. The group’s name is a quirky misnomer though – there’s no singing whatsoever!
31. Sylvie Lewis – Translations (Cheap Lullaby)
With a slight taste for whimsy and a genuine enthusiasm for a songwriting tradition incorporating cabaret, jazz and musical theatre, Berklee-trained Sylvie Lewis proved one of the major discoveries of the year. Deceptively light and airy, many of these songs were sweetly observed and contained real wit and emotional substance. Her voice, always admirably restrained, never exaggerated or overstated her themes. With a talent for drawing convincing characters and imbuing them with much of her own endearing personality and charm, Lewis remains one to watch.
30. Fennesz Sakomoto – Cendre (Touch)
The combination of Christian Fennesz’s laptop guitar manipulations and Ryuchi Sakomoto’s lingering, unresolved piano chords created a haunting and melancholy atmosphere. Whilst not quite as singularly brilliant as Fennesz’s ‘Endless Summer’, this was still improvised electronic music at its most human and least cloying, invested this time not with warmth, but with a frosty heart.
29. Fraud – Fraud (Babel)
With a strikingly unconventional line-up (no bass, baritone guitar and two drummers!), Fraud proved one of British jazz’s most enticing prospects for some time. This debut was unpredictable and unstoppable in its foraging for new sounds. The chattering, intricate dynamic, chiefly dictated by Tim Giles’ unstoppable, constantly interjecting percussion, provided much more than a fleeting source of excitement.
28. The Broken Family Band – Hello Love (Track and Field)
The cherished cult indie heroes changed direction slightly with this fourth long player. They mostly abandoned both their gently parodic take on country and its more aggressive punk-infused counterpart in favour of some more sincere musings about love and loss. These songs were certainly earnest, but they were also unsparingly candid and unsentimental, and frequently wise in their conclusions and platitudes. There also seemed to be a new sophistication in both production and performance, resulting in ‘Hello Love’ being the group’s strongest and most satisfying work to date.
27. Marnie Stern – In Advance Of The Broken Arm (Kill Rock Stars)
Marnie Stern certainly took no prisoners with her furious, rapid fire, passive-aggressive music. Yet there was also a gift for melody lurking beneath the confrontational poise and the battering-ram assault. These shockingly immediate songs may well prove highly durable. Stern’s strong and distinctively feminine artistry was occasionally reminiscent of a more avant-garde Sleater Kinney. ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’ has ushered in a fascinating and thrilling new talent.
26. Apostle of Hustle – National Anthem Of Nowhere (Arts and Crafts)
Anyone who thought Yeasayer were unique amongst Western groups in incorporating world music influences should head here. Andrew Whiteman’s project is one of the very strongest of the Broken Social Scene axis (certainly more interesting than Kevin Drew’s slightly underwhelming ‘Spirit If…’) and this is a dense and ambitious album characterised by intricate arrangement, subtle melodic craftsmanship and rhythmic dexterity. It’s adventurous rock music, striving admirably to push this still young musical form in exciting new directions.
To be continued...
Aesop Rock still remains one of my favourite rappers, and he hasn’t yet really put a foot wrong. His language is flighty, verbose and unconventional, and the music never settles for the familiar. Instead, it veers across all sorts of unpredictable, occasionally even uncomfortable terrain, and the results are visceral and exciting. Like his kindred spirits in the Anticon collective, Aesop Rock infuriates those who like their hip hop baser and more aggressive. Yet, if this is a genre based largely on poetics and voice inflections – why should it not incorporate wild flights of fancy and imaginative whims just as much as gritty dissections of reality?
49. Antibalas – Security (Anti)
This one seemed to miss the radar of most UK publications, but it’s a rather joyful and exuberant contemporary take on Afrobeat. Merging the preoccupations of Fela Kuti with the more cerebral outlook of Tortoise (whose John McEntire produces and mixes the entire set), this is a multicultural extravaganza of rhythm and feel. It’s tightly organised, but also thrillingly raw, burningly intense and organic, driven in equal parts by the crisp rhythm and horn sections.
48. Cinematic Orchestra – Ma Fleur (Ninja Tunes)
Here’s an album that has grown on me considerably over the course of the past few months. This is perhaps because it’s Jason Swinscoe’s most subtle musical statement to date – now as enthralled with folk music as with jazz and hip hop. It’s a lighter, more vulnerable record than its predecessors, and a sweetly intoxicating one too. Fontella Bass again guests, apparently now quite unwell, and her damaged but undefeated vocals are quietly devastating. Elsewhere, the intricate shuffle rhythms and slow building atmospheres are masterfully handled. There are some exquisitely judged contributions from some of London’s finest jazz musicians, including keyboardist Nick Ramm and percussionist Milo Fell.
47. Basquiat Strings – Basquiat Strings feat. Seb Rochford (F-IRE)
Whilst Seb Rochford is certainly a crucial figure here, underpinning the music with subtle brush strokes and a uniquely sensitive swing, this is really Cellist Ben Davis’ project. Rightly nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, but inevitably denied its deserved victory in favour of the far more superficial Klaxons, this album is an original fusion – chamber music that grooves.
46. The Bad Plus – PROG (Heads Up)
Now that The Bad Plus’ power trio reversions of rock classics have lost their novelty value, there seems to be an increased risk of taking them for granted. This surely neglects the group’s remarkable technical ability, and their own creative impetus. Over the course of their last couple of albums, their original compositions have become more muscular, occasionally even fiery, and they polyrhythmic invention on display on ‘Prog’ is mind-boggling. Of the interpretations, David Bowie’s ‘Life On Mars’ becomes even more theatrical through a merciless extension by pianist Ethan Iverson and Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ is imbued with reflective regret.
45. Susanna – Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos (Rune Grammofon)
Oh Susanna! What icy elegance, what subtlety, what restraint! I don’t even have any idea what Susanna looks like, but her voice is one of the most beautiful and alluring sounds to pass my ears in the last couple of years. If last year’s album of perverse covers with her Magical Orchestra hinted at Susanna’s singular vision, this absurdly titled ‘solo’ work realises this with purity and majesty. These songs are supremely understated and their grief and sadness cuts through the austerity of the arrangements.
44. Paul Motian, Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell – Time and Time Again (ECM)
Paul Motian’s bassless trio is one of the most original groups in contemporary jazz. Frisell and Lovano seem like radically different musicians on paper. Lovano is well-versed in jazz language and produces a masterful, dominating sound. Frisell is more interested in the intersections between jazz and American folk music, and his trademark sound is more atmospheric and spacey. Yet Motian directs them into a very free and liberating creative space where, whilst restraining some of their more individualistic tendencies, they integrate in a quite remarkable symbiosis. Motian’s drumming is a language all of its own – his nimble, elongated strokes are unique among modern drummers.
43. Pharoahe Monch – Desire (SRC/Universal)
In spite of his breathtaking arrogance, after eight years of almost complete silence, Pharoahe Monch made one of the most taut and least indulgent hip hop albums in some time with ‘Desire’. It’s audacious in the extreme – how odd it is that hip hop seems the one genre of music so supremely personalised that covers are unthinkable. Monch destroys these casual assumptions with ingenuity with his version of Public Enemy’s ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’. In its genre-busting, cerebral force, ‘Desire’ seems almost like a lost classic from an earlier era, but it’s also so savage and confrontational as to resemble nothing else. He’s not shying away from key issues here – ‘Desire’ deals with gun crime, war and poverty amongst other weighty subjects. It’s an attacking, unrepentant blast from a major talent now thankfully back in the game.
42. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Raising Sand (Rounder)
It was extremely irritating that all attention was focussed on the superficial Led Zeppelin reunion at the expense of either its chief motivation (the sad death of Atlantic records founder Armet Ehrtegun), or their frontman’s superb contemporary work. Plant is clearly determined not to let Zep get in the way of this fascinating collaborative project (he plans to tour with Krauss next year), but it was always inevitable that it wouldn’t have quite the same commercial impact. Plant has been delving deeper into his musical heritage over the past few years, the result being a complete diminution of rock posturing in favour of sensitively handled interpretations of an American folk canon. That Plant can immerse himself in this world convincingly is testament to his thorough understanding of the music. Whilst Krauss can sometimes be a little pristine or twee in her own work, she sounds more otherworldly and compelling here, and the combination of her voice with Plant’s is surprisingly exotic. With a band that includes the consistently innovative guitarist Marc Ribot, things were never going to get too conventional – and there’s a dark undertone to many of these inspired reworkings.
41. Okkervil River – The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar)
Will Sheff continued his blisteringly intense, highly literate songwriting mission on this powerful collection, mixing brutality and tenderness in equal measure. He’s an absolutely superb lyricist, full of ideas delivered in the form of narrative prose-poems rather than conventional verse-chorus-verse songs. His vocal delivery is also savage and impassioned, although he’s increasingly capable of exercising restraint too. Once again, the arrangements were sublime, and his carefully constructed world completely absorbing.
40. Jim Hart’s Gemini – Emergence (Loop)
Those privileged few ‘in the know’ about London’s jazz scene would no doubt assert that the self-promoting Loop Collective represent one of the most promising prospects in some time. Yet Jim Hart’s Gemini, alongside Outhouse, are one of only a handful of their bands to get funds together for national tours. In spite of this, there’s not a great deal of publicity about them, and little recognition that ‘Emergence’ is one of the most confident British jazz albums of the year. Hart is a drummer and percussionist, but he concentrates exclusively on vibraphone and marimba here. He combines creative composing with adventurous improvising. There’s also a remarkably strong rapport between the musicians, driven along nicely by the swinging drumming of Tom Skinner.
39. Supersilent – 8 (Rune Grammofon)
One feels there’s probably as much myth as reality about Norwegian free improvisers Supersilent. Do they really not communicate with each other aside from making this completely unplanned music? It seems unlikely – but, as with all their previous releases, there’s a weird and unforced alchemy to this manipulated, twisted electronic noise. If anything, ‘8’ seems a little more focussed than their previous output, with each track single-mindedly developing a clear idea to its logical conclusion.
38. Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam (Domino)
Animal Collective have progressively been restraining some of their more gonzo tendencies in favour of a more infectious sound that has become increasingly saccharine. ‘Strawberry Jam’ is therefore the perfect title for this sweeter-than-sweet set, but their handling of this jaunty, chirpy music somehow keeps it firmly on the right side of the fine line between insistent and irritating. There’s still a madcap experimentalism at their core, and with some surreal imagery and highly unusual sounds, they delivered their most boundlessly joyful, blissfully lysergic statement so far.
37. John Surman – The Spaces In Between (ECM)
Very little frustrates me quite as much as the notion that Classical and Jazz are mutually exclusive musical disciplines. As Hugh Masakela exclaimed at a recent London concert: ‘It’s not true that a symphony orchestra can’t swing!’. John Surman, one of British jazz’s finest talents, has long been honing his brand of part-composed, part-improvised chamber music. ‘The Spaces In Between’ is another collaboration with double bassist Chris Laurence and the Trans4Mation String Quartet, and may be the best example yet of this peculiarly effective cross-breeding. The music is richly melodic, elegiac and touching, and the quartet accompaniments veer from the languid to the surprisingly sprightly. Best of all, there’s plenty of space for exposition, and Surman has rarely sounded more in control, drawing a tremendous range of sounds from his range of saxophones and clarinets.
36. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)
Whilst I’m really no techno expert, every so often there’s an album that passes within my radar and makes me wonder what I’ve been missing. In spite of the music’s US heritage with the likes of Derrick May and Jeff Mills, most recently, these albums have mostly emerged from Europe. Laurent Garnier’s ‘Unreasonable Behaviour’ was an almighty classic and a couple of years ago, Isolee’s ‘We Are Monster’ enthralled me with its elegant constructions. Now Swedish producer Axel Willner has produced one of the most captivating electronic albums of 2007. Some have emphasised that this album shares as much with the shoegazing techniques of My Bloody Valentine and Ride as with the minimalist work of Steve Reich or indeed Mills and May. ‘From Here We Go Sublime’ is not really about clever beats (it’s almost entirely four-square), but more about mood, texture and atmosphere. Willner weaves subtle changes into his cumulative repetitions with skill and craft.
35. Erik Friedlander – Block Ice and Propane (SkipStone)
The Cello is still rarely used as an improvisational instrument, which is odd given its depth, versatility and resonance. Yet Erik Friedlander is the highest ranking of three Cellists to appear in this list. He’s one of the instrument’s master technicians, both in ensemble format and as a solo artist, as on this remarkable recording. He has collaborated with artists as diverse as John Zorn and Courtney Love and clearly has little respect for conventional musical boundaries. Sometimes his sound his harsh and grating, sometimes it is dreamy and languid. Perhaps most interesting of all is his deconstructed blues pizzicato, by which he makes his instrument sound more like a guitar. Much of this is folk music, but it is folk music completely revitalised, and imbued with a wonderfully childlike and naïve curiosity.
34. Mavis Staples – We’ll Never Turn Back (Anti)
Ry Cooder brought his magic production touch to this collection of protest songs from the determinedly gritty former Staple Singer. ‘We’ll Never Turn Back’ demonstrated modern America could still sustain a fiery tradition of rebellion and saw Staples sermonising tirelessly against injustice wherever she saw it. Revitalising these civil rights songs so that they now applied to the impoverished and abused anywhere, she imbued her music with a righteous energy and powerful sense of community.
33. Stars Of The Lid – Stars Of The Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline (Kranky)
This is some of the strangest, most haunting and beautiful music of the year, yet it achieves this by abandoning most established musical conventions. There’s little melody or harmony and no real underlying rhythm at all – the music instead relies solely on drones and pulses, with only very slight variations in tone and pitch. Yet the bizarre song titles suggest they are not too po-faced in their approach, and the results strongly bear this out. There’s a powerful and entrancing mood, and a carefully controlled ebb and flow that takes this into weird and wonderful territory.
32. Nels Cline Singers – Draw Breath (Cryptogramophone)
Whilst the merits of Wilco’s ‘Sky Blue Sky’ divided opinion somewhat, few could argue with the extraordinary vision and talent of their lead guitarist. With an effortless mastery of the fretboard, Nels Cline is a fearsome improviser rooted in both rock and roll and free jazz. ‘Draw Breath’ is an audacious and thoroughly engaging record, with some lengthy extrapolations that take numerous risks and raise the tension to fever pitch. The group’s name is a quirky misnomer though – there’s no singing whatsoever!
31. Sylvie Lewis – Translations (Cheap Lullaby)
With a slight taste for whimsy and a genuine enthusiasm for a songwriting tradition incorporating cabaret, jazz and musical theatre, Berklee-trained Sylvie Lewis proved one of the major discoveries of the year. Deceptively light and airy, many of these songs were sweetly observed and contained real wit and emotional substance. Her voice, always admirably restrained, never exaggerated or overstated her themes. With a talent for drawing convincing characters and imbuing them with much of her own endearing personality and charm, Lewis remains one to watch.
30. Fennesz Sakomoto – Cendre (Touch)
The combination of Christian Fennesz’s laptop guitar manipulations and Ryuchi Sakomoto’s lingering, unresolved piano chords created a haunting and melancholy atmosphere. Whilst not quite as singularly brilliant as Fennesz’s ‘Endless Summer’, this was still improvised electronic music at its most human and least cloying, invested this time not with warmth, but with a frosty heart.
29. Fraud – Fraud (Babel)
With a strikingly unconventional line-up (no bass, baritone guitar and two drummers!), Fraud proved one of British jazz’s most enticing prospects for some time. This debut was unpredictable and unstoppable in its foraging for new sounds. The chattering, intricate dynamic, chiefly dictated by Tim Giles’ unstoppable, constantly interjecting percussion, provided much more than a fleeting source of excitement.
28. The Broken Family Band – Hello Love (Track and Field)
The cherished cult indie heroes changed direction slightly with this fourth long player. They mostly abandoned both their gently parodic take on country and its more aggressive punk-infused counterpart in favour of some more sincere musings about love and loss. These songs were certainly earnest, but they were also unsparingly candid and unsentimental, and frequently wise in their conclusions and platitudes. There also seemed to be a new sophistication in both production and performance, resulting in ‘Hello Love’ being the group’s strongest and most satisfying work to date.
27. Marnie Stern – In Advance Of The Broken Arm (Kill Rock Stars)
Marnie Stern certainly took no prisoners with her furious, rapid fire, passive-aggressive music. Yet there was also a gift for melody lurking beneath the confrontational poise and the battering-ram assault. These shockingly immediate songs may well prove highly durable. Stern’s strong and distinctively feminine artistry was occasionally reminiscent of a more avant-garde Sleater Kinney. ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’ has ushered in a fascinating and thrilling new talent.
26. Apostle of Hustle – National Anthem Of Nowhere (Arts and Crafts)
Anyone who thought Yeasayer were unique amongst Western groups in incorporating world music influences should head here. Andrew Whiteman’s project is one of the very strongest of the Broken Social Scene axis (certainly more interesting than Kevin Drew’s slightly underwhelming ‘Spirit If…’) and this is a dense and ambitious album characterised by intricate arrangement, subtle melodic craftsmanship and rhythmic dexterity. It’s adventurous rock music, striving admirably to push this still young musical form in exciting new directions.
To be continued...
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Albums Of The Year 2007 Part 2: 75-51
,In an attempt to make this more digestible, I'm dividing this into four chunks this year, so here's the second. The Top 50 will follow tomorrow.
75. Bettye LaVette – Scene Of The Crime (Anti)
The return of the soul survivor continued apace with this triumphant, defiant album, consisting largely of interpretations of songs written by men (her previous comeback album had been made up entirely of songs written by women). Best of all was a powerful transformation of Elton John’s ‘Talking Toy Soldiers’, which proved surprisingly fertile ground for LaVette’s gritty vocal style. It was given stiff competition by the one original here – a stylish, no-holding-back monologue detailing her life story and the injustices she suffered at the hands of a fickle and manipulative music industry. Maybe now she can finally put the past behind her.
74. Wheat – Every Day I Said A Prayer For Kathy and Made A One Inch Square (Empyrean)
Not many people noticed or indeed cared that Wheat had made another record – but delve beneath that infuriatingly pretentious title, and there’s an album of real quality and invention waiting to be discovered. It’s a little off-kilter, occasionally sounding somewhat drunk, but this is an inherent part of this rather unusual music’s quirky appeal. It’s more adventurous than most American alternative rock, and certainly more distinctive but the group now sadly seem to lack any hipster cachet.
73. Tord Gustavsen Trio – Being There (ECM)
Tord Gustavsen continued to refine rather than revolutionise his dignified, spiritual take on the piano trio for ‘Being There’. It’s still a potent sound though, with some bolder ventures into more rhythmically driven territory, although the volume remained defiantly controlled. Gustavsen’s improvising is not particularly complex, but then that style of playing may well have sounded vulgar in such a restrained context. Instead, his slow-paced development of his themes again worked perfectly and the mood was gracefully sustained from start to finish.
72. Empirical – Empirical (Destin-E)
Kit Downes is a remarkably assured, if perhaps slightly studied pianist – and he’s a lively player as part of a truly vibrant ensemble in the context of Empirical. With a debut on Courtney Pine’s label and plenty of press hype, the group have proved remarkably adept at playing the game and they certainly look the part too. There’s little point in resisting the energetic and engaging performances here for cynical reasons though, even if the group’s original contribution has perhaps been somewhat overstated at this early stage. The potential for greatness is certainly there though.
71. Boxcutter – Glyphic (Planet Mu)
If last year’s Oneiric felt like a slightly self-mocking, parodic take on dubstep (and was arguably enjoyable for precisely that reason), ‘Glyphic’ feels like a more fully-formed and weightier statement. It’s an audacious record that steers clear of the genre’s already tiring formulas in favour of something less tangible and more unusual. It’s a record refusing to follow trends, instead paving the way for this still burgeoning sub-genre to advance and develop.
70. Grinderman – Grinderman (Anti)
Well if this is simply Nick Cave kicking back, growing sinister facial hair, indulging himself and having a little fun, I’d like to hear more of it in the future. Untamed, aggressive, masculine and noisy, with outlandish and outrageous lyrics, this is a record in thrall to notoriety and provocation. Luckily it comes with a grim sense of humour too, which might just save it from accusations of misogyny. Those eagerly awaiting the next statement from The Bad Seeds will be satiated with a new album early in the new year. Cave is increasingly prolific these days!
69. Boris with Michio Kurihara – Rainbow (Blue Chopsticks)
Initially a Japanese-only release, and later afforded more widespread distribution, this collaboration between Boris and the outrageously gifted Ghost guitarist Michio Kurihara is stormy and impassioned. Yet it perhaps owes a good deal more to maverick 70s psychedelia than to the drone or metal with which Boris themselves might be more familiar. It’s no less revelatory for this though, and is another firm demonstration of the talents of this most exploratory of bands, adding a propensity for sensitivity in collaboration to their many-stringed bow.
68. John Scofield – This Meets That (Emarcy)
This is certainly among Scofield’s better efforts, combining his best trio set-up (with bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bill Stewart) with an expressive and meticulously arranged four part horn section. It’s arguable that the interpretations yield more interesting results than the originals, particularly with Bill Frisell guesting on a thoroughly revitalised ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. Still, the feel throughout the album is tremendous, and Scofield continues to marry blues-driven aggression with the wider language of jazz to quite brilliant effect.
67. Alasdair Roberts – The Amber Gatherers (Drag City)
Alasdair Roberts remains criminally unheralded here in the UK, gaining most of his accolades on the other side of the Atlantic thanks to his friendship with Will Oldham. With all this talk of the new folk music going on, it’s extraordinary that nobody seems to mention Roberts – his handling of the Scottish folk canon has demonstrated an unforced and original approach absent from some of the more self-conscious freakery. The sense of calm he brought to that material continues here, but there’s a warmer, less mournful tone here that makes ‘The Amber Gatherers’ almost breezy.
66. Band Of Horses – Cease To Begin (Sub Pop)
With a reconfigured line-up, Ben Bridwell’s Band of Horses stopped trying to play My Morning Jacket at their own game and developed a brighter, more distinctive sound for this excellent second album. There’s also more time for reflection and mood here, and the album takes a number of engaging and unexpected side-steps, from Appalachian traditional hoe-downs, to more sonorous and unpredictable textures.
65. Arve Henriksen – Strjon (Rune Grammofon)
Norwegian trumpeter Henriksen’s weird and eerie music is evocative of ritual and folklore and he is clearly a musician far more interested in sensation and feeling than in the expression of technique. As such, he’s often keen to manipulate the sound of his trumpet so that it resembles almost anything other than the instrument he’s actually playing. The result is a disorientating but breathtaking – a sound that combines the deeply intuitive with the completely synthetic in a profoundly intimate setting.
64. Elmore Judd – Insect Funk (Honest Jon’s)
Released on Damon Albarn’s label (irritating he may be, but his broader industry role is currently paying rich dividends), this delightfully quirky electro-funk gem is an outsider’s pop nugget. With hints of Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart, but also a gleeful smattering of the sexual urgency of Prince, it’s in part highly seductive, but its charms are also somewhat angular and awkward.
63. Myra Melford/Trio M – Big Picture (Cryptogramophone)
What a shame I’ve come rather late to the extraordinary music of Myra Melford. Her ‘Be Bread’ project was actually one of the standout jazz albums of last year, but I only heard it for the first time a couple of months ago after some particularly productive MySpace surfing. This trio album is a collaborative venture with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, less spiritual and reflective than its predecessor and dominated by adventurous playing. It’s an intensely serious workout, full of fire and brimstone. The group bend rules imaginatively and effectively, and there is much enjoyment to be gained from their collective malleability – veering between a variety of pulses and free time with gleeful abandon.
62. Bruce Springsteen – Magic (Columbia)
‘Magic’ seemed a little underwhelming on first few listens, not least because Springsteen had returned to Brendan O’ Brien for production duties. Yet again he blurs and muffles the E Street Band sound, subsuming the input of the individual musicians within a vague guitar smudge. Still, the songs are consistently powerful – and Springsteen remains a writer who can cut right to the heart of the American psyche. The political fury of recent outings was still present, although perhaps a little more blurred with the personal. Sometimes the lyrics were slightly convoluted (‘Livin’ In The Future’), but at their best, they captured that everyman melancholy for which Springsteen is rightly lauded (especially ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ and the title track). It’s a crowd-pleasing, driving, insistent record, but it needed time to, ahem, work its magic.
61. Colleen – Les Ondes Silencieuses (Leaf)
Parisian experimentalist Cecille Schott’s questing impulse manifests itself in the desire to perform on an ever more obscure and intriguing set of instruments. On ‘Les Ondes Silencieuses’, she added the viola de gamba and the Spinet to her collection. There’s a real sense of space and calm here, and the Schott imbued the music with humanity and emotional depth. The results were more mournful and plangent than her previous releases but also more absorbing.
60. Scott Colley – Architect Of The Silent Moment (CamJazz)
Bassist Scott Colley (who also played on Kenny Werner’s ‘Lawn Chair Society’) produced one of 2007’s most underrated gems with this effortless combination of academic musicality and carefully calibrated grooving. There’s a mysterious undertow to this dense and challenging music, and it has a fiercely contemporary mind behind it.
59. Wooden Wand – James and The Quiet (Ecstatic Peace)
James Jackson Toth’s first release for Thurston Moore’s burgeoning Ecstatic Peace label may well seem weirdly conventional to his most ardent followers. There’s little consciously weird or provocative about this set. Yet, in its very starkness and austerity, ‘James and The Quiet’ is a disturbing and vivid document, a psych-blues manifesto of the highest quality.
58. Exploding Star Orchestra – We’re All From Somewhere Else (Thrill Jockey)
The pompous liner notes touching on the music of Gyorgy Ligeti and the unity of the cosmos are somewhat off-putting, but this big band contemporary project from the Thrill Jockey staple (including members of Tortoise) is actually refreshing and exciting. In its most powerful, driving moments, it’s both relentless and rewarding, but the passages of abstraction are successful too. If the language used to describe it is rather pretentious, it’s lucky that the music itself does capture something of the sense of vastness and infinite space to which it boldly aspires.
57. Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus! (Rough Trade)
Some saw ‘Hey Venus!’ as something of a conservative retrenchment from SFA, but after the hazy, woozy and ultimately rather soporific ambience of ‘Love Kraft’, I found it a refreshing return to fun and games. It’s a mercilessly concise record that wastes no time and immediately buries itself deep beneath the skin. The lyrics remain uniquely zany. Who could possibly resist a line like ‘We may have fought with tooth and nails/But I still remember your banking details’? There are still no other bands who can match SFA for their palpable sense of adventure and fantasy.
56. Rilo Kiley – Under The Blacklight (Warner Bros)
Oh no! Every fey blogger’s favourite indie band had sold out and gone ‘a bit Fleetwood Mac’! Apparently, this provoked major consternation in the online music community. It’s all no bad thing in my book, even if late Blondie would seem a more accurate reference point for this disco-infused, remarkably polished pure pop wonder. It’s a great deal better than their previous pop music with indie affectations, and Jenny Lewis’ voice sounds increasingly purposeful and confident. That Rilo Kiley are a group of versatile and intelligent musicians helps too – these songs are well arranged, and the group are now avoiding the pitfalls of so much bland guitar pop music in favour of something insistent and rather slinky. If you’re an unconvinced indie kid – let Lewis herself tempt you in – after all, ‘what could be more indie than songs about gonzo pornography’?
55. Immaculate Machine – Immaculate Machine’s Fables (Mint)
Even the presence of Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and members of the ghastly, unfathomably popular Cribs couldn’t raise the profile of this charming album from these Canadian underdogs. This is as taut and crisp as its equally excellent predecessors, but some subtler, more melodic shades are added into the mix, making for a more balanced whole. This group manage to draw a lot of magic from the keyboard-guitar-drums format, and are blessed with an unrelenting energy. They deserve far more attention in this country, particularly as they crafted a more substantial and satisfying record than their more highly regarded associates in New Pornographers.
54. Murcof – Cosmos (Leaf)
‘Cosmos’ represents a fascinating refashioning of Fernando Corona’s classical-meets-electronica approach. His debut ‘Martes’ and its successor ‘Remembranza’ were haunting and beautiful amalgamations of beats and strings. ‘Cosmos’ mostly forsakes this synthesis in favour of gradual swellings of texture and noise. This is a darker record than its two predecessors, and one that only gradually reveals its true colours. It’s a mesmerising side step from one of the current pioneers of electronic music.
53. Caribou – Andorra (City Slang)
Dan Snaith's musical adventures continued on the doggedly hazy, summery path he’d been pursuing since ‘Up In Flames’ signalled a radical change of direction from his original IDM. ‘Andorra’ seemed like a more fully formed statement than ‘The Milk Of Human Kindness’ – warm, lush and irresistible, but also prone to the occasional bit of troublemaking. Snaith’s canny synthesis of 60s pop melodies with more free form elements and clattering rhythms made for a compelling and elevating work.
52. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup (Ba Da Bing/4AD)
Zach Condon consolidated his prodigious talents on this rather charming second album, a record that invites the listener into its own peculiar world. Condon’s exaggerated vocals perhaps owe something of a debt to Rufus Wainwright, but the music remains infused with a bawdy Eastern European sensibility, along with some more tentative forays into French chanson. It might all seem like affectation were it not for the rich mystery and insight of Condon’s wonderful songs.
51. Paul Bley – Solo in Mondsee (ECM)
The nameless variations on 'Solo in Mondsee' are impressive elaborations on clearly stated musical ideas and themes. Whilst he frequently hints at pages of the standard repertoire, Bley is more concerned with emotional impact than referencing or thematic deconstruction. In a similar way to how Paul Motian gets tonal variety from the drum kit, Bley is chiefly concerned with contrasts at the Piano, rather than persistence or insistence. The music on 'Solo in Mondsee' is lush and deeply romantic.
Come back tomorrow for the Top 50!
75. Bettye LaVette – Scene Of The Crime (Anti)
The return of the soul survivor continued apace with this triumphant, defiant album, consisting largely of interpretations of songs written by men (her previous comeback album had been made up entirely of songs written by women). Best of all was a powerful transformation of Elton John’s ‘Talking Toy Soldiers’, which proved surprisingly fertile ground for LaVette’s gritty vocal style. It was given stiff competition by the one original here – a stylish, no-holding-back monologue detailing her life story and the injustices she suffered at the hands of a fickle and manipulative music industry. Maybe now she can finally put the past behind her.
74. Wheat – Every Day I Said A Prayer For Kathy and Made A One Inch Square (Empyrean)
Not many people noticed or indeed cared that Wheat had made another record – but delve beneath that infuriatingly pretentious title, and there’s an album of real quality and invention waiting to be discovered. It’s a little off-kilter, occasionally sounding somewhat drunk, but this is an inherent part of this rather unusual music’s quirky appeal. It’s more adventurous than most American alternative rock, and certainly more distinctive but the group now sadly seem to lack any hipster cachet.
73. Tord Gustavsen Trio – Being There (ECM)
Tord Gustavsen continued to refine rather than revolutionise his dignified, spiritual take on the piano trio for ‘Being There’. It’s still a potent sound though, with some bolder ventures into more rhythmically driven territory, although the volume remained defiantly controlled. Gustavsen’s improvising is not particularly complex, but then that style of playing may well have sounded vulgar in such a restrained context. Instead, his slow-paced development of his themes again worked perfectly and the mood was gracefully sustained from start to finish.
72. Empirical – Empirical (Destin-E)
Kit Downes is a remarkably assured, if perhaps slightly studied pianist – and he’s a lively player as part of a truly vibrant ensemble in the context of Empirical. With a debut on Courtney Pine’s label and plenty of press hype, the group have proved remarkably adept at playing the game and they certainly look the part too. There’s little point in resisting the energetic and engaging performances here for cynical reasons though, even if the group’s original contribution has perhaps been somewhat overstated at this early stage. The potential for greatness is certainly there though.
71. Boxcutter – Glyphic (Planet Mu)
If last year’s Oneiric felt like a slightly self-mocking, parodic take on dubstep (and was arguably enjoyable for precisely that reason), ‘Glyphic’ feels like a more fully-formed and weightier statement. It’s an audacious record that steers clear of the genre’s already tiring formulas in favour of something less tangible and more unusual. It’s a record refusing to follow trends, instead paving the way for this still burgeoning sub-genre to advance and develop.
70. Grinderman – Grinderman (Anti)
Well if this is simply Nick Cave kicking back, growing sinister facial hair, indulging himself and having a little fun, I’d like to hear more of it in the future. Untamed, aggressive, masculine and noisy, with outlandish and outrageous lyrics, this is a record in thrall to notoriety and provocation. Luckily it comes with a grim sense of humour too, which might just save it from accusations of misogyny. Those eagerly awaiting the next statement from The Bad Seeds will be satiated with a new album early in the new year. Cave is increasingly prolific these days!
69. Boris with Michio Kurihara – Rainbow (Blue Chopsticks)
Initially a Japanese-only release, and later afforded more widespread distribution, this collaboration between Boris and the outrageously gifted Ghost guitarist Michio Kurihara is stormy and impassioned. Yet it perhaps owes a good deal more to maverick 70s psychedelia than to the drone or metal with which Boris themselves might be more familiar. It’s no less revelatory for this though, and is another firm demonstration of the talents of this most exploratory of bands, adding a propensity for sensitivity in collaboration to their many-stringed bow.
68. John Scofield – This Meets That (Emarcy)
This is certainly among Scofield’s better efforts, combining his best trio set-up (with bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bill Stewart) with an expressive and meticulously arranged four part horn section. It’s arguable that the interpretations yield more interesting results than the originals, particularly with Bill Frisell guesting on a thoroughly revitalised ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. Still, the feel throughout the album is tremendous, and Scofield continues to marry blues-driven aggression with the wider language of jazz to quite brilliant effect.
67. Alasdair Roberts – The Amber Gatherers (Drag City)
Alasdair Roberts remains criminally unheralded here in the UK, gaining most of his accolades on the other side of the Atlantic thanks to his friendship with Will Oldham. With all this talk of the new folk music going on, it’s extraordinary that nobody seems to mention Roberts – his handling of the Scottish folk canon has demonstrated an unforced and original approach absent from some of the more self-conscious freakery. The sense of calm he brought to that material continues here, but there’s a warmer, less mournful tone here that makes ‘The Amber Gatherers’ almost breezy.
66. Band Of Horses – Cease To Begin (Sub Pop)
With a reconfigured line-up, Ben Bridwell’s Band of Horses stopped trying to play My Morning Jacket at their own game and developed a brighter, more distinctive sound for this excellent second album. There’s also more time for reflection and mood here, and the album takes a number of engaging and unexpected side-steps, from Appalachian traditional hoe-downs, to more sonorous and unpredictable textures.
65. Arve Henriksen – Strjon (Rune Grammofon)
Norwegian trumpeter Henriksen’s weird and eerie music is evocative of ritual and folklore and he is clearly a musician far more interested in sensation and feeling than in the expression of technique. As such, he’s often keen to manipulate the sound of his trumpet so that it resembles almost anything other than the instrument he’s actually playing. The result is a disorientating but breathtaking – a sound that combines the deeply intuitive with the completely synthetic in a profoundly intimate setting.
64. Elmore Judd – Insect Funk (Honest Jon’s)
Released on Damon Albarn’s label (irritating he may be, but his broader industry role is currently paying rich dividends), this delightfully quirky electro-funk gem is an outsider’s pop nugget. With hints of Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart, but also a gleeful smattering of the sexual urgency of Prince, it’s in part highly seductive, but its charms are also somewhat angular and awkward.
63. Myra Melford/Trio M – Big Picture (Cryptogramophone)
What a shame I’ve come rather late to the extraordinary music of Myra Melford. Her ‘Be Bread’ project was actually one of the standout jazz albums of last year, but I only heard it for the first time a couple of months ago after some particularly productive MySpace surfing. This trio album is a collaborative venture with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, less spiritual and reflective than its predecessor and dominated by adventurous playing. It’s an intensely serious workout, full of fire and brimstone. The group bend rules imaginatively and effectively, and there is much enjoyment to be gained from their collective malleability – veering between a variety of pulses and free time with gleeful abandon.
62. Bruce Springsteen – Magic (Columbia)
‘Magic’ seemed a little underwhelming on first few listens, not least because Springsteen had returned to Brendan O’ Brien for production duties. Yet again he blurs and muffles the E Street Band sound, subsuming the input of the individual musicians within a vague guitar smudge. Still, the songs are consistently powerful – and Springsteen remains a writer who can cut right to the heart of the American psyche. The political fury of recent outings was still present, although perhaps a little more blurred with the personal. Sometimes the lyrics were slightly convoluted (‘Livin’ In The Future’), but at their best, they captured that everyman melancholy for which Springsteen is rightly lauded (especially ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ and the title track). It’s a crowd-pleasing, driving, insistent record, but it needed time to, ahem, work its magic.
61. Colleen – Les Ondes Silencieuses (Leaf)
Parisian experimentalist Cecille Schott’s questing impulse manifests itself in the desire to perform on an ever more obscure and intriguing set of instruments. On ‘Les Ondes Silencieuses’, she added the viola de gamba and the Spinet to her collection. There’s a real sense of space and calm here, and the Schott imbued the music with humanity and emotional depth. The results were more mournful and plangent than her previous releases but also more absorbing.
60. Scott Colley – Architect Of The Silent Moment (CamJazz)
Bassist Scott Colley (who also played on Kenny Werner’s ‘Lawn Chair Society’) produced one of 2007’s most underrated gems with this effortless combination of academic musicality and carefully calibrated grooving. There’s a mysterious undertow to this dense and challenging music, and it has a fiercely contemporary mind behind it.
59. Wooden Wand – James and The Quiet (Ecstatic Peace)
James Jackson Toth’s first release for Thurston Moore’s burgeoning Ecstatic Peace label may well seem weirdly conventional to his most ardent followers. There’s little consciously weird or provocative about this set. Yet, in its very starkness and austerity, ‘James and The Quiet’ is a disturbing and vivid document, a psych-blues manifesto of the highest quality.
58. Exploding Star Orchestra – We’re All From Somewhere Else (Thrill Jockey)
The pompous liner notes touching on the music of Gyorgy Ligeti and the unity of the cosmos are somewhat off-putting, but this big band contemporary project from the Thrill Jockey staple (including members of Tortoise) is actually refreshing and exciting. In its most powerful, driving moments, it’s both relentless and rewarding, but the passages of abstraction are successful too. If the language used to describe it is rather pretentious, it’s lucky that the music itself does capture something of the sense of vastness and infinite space to which it boldly aspires.
57. Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus! (Rough Trade)
Some saw ‘Hey Venus!’ as something of a conservative retrenchment from SFA, but after the hazy, woozy and ultimately rather soporific ambience of ‘Love Kraft’, I found it a refreshing return to fun and games. It’s a mercilessly concise record that wastes no time and immediately buries itself deep beneath the skin. The lyrics remain uniquely zany. Who could possibly resist a line like ‘We may have fought with tooth and nails/But I still remember your banking details’? There are still no other bands who can match SFA for their palpable sense of adventure and fantasy.
56. Rilo Kiley – Under The Blacklight (Warner Bros)
Oh no! Every fey blogger’s favourite indie band had sold out and gone ‘a bit Fleetwood Mac’! Apparently, this provoked major consternation in the online music community. It’s all no bad thing in my book, even if late Blondie would seem a more accurate reference point for this disco-infused, remarkably polished pure pop wonder. It’s a great deal better than their previous pop music with indie affectations, and Jenny Lewis’ voice sounds increasingly purposeful and confident. That Rilo Kiley are a group of versatile and intelligent musicians helps too – these songs are well arranged, and the group are now avoiding the pitfalls of so much bland guitar pop music in favour of something insistent and rather slinky. If you’re an unconvinced indie kid – let Lewis herself tempt you in – after all, ‘what could be more indie than songs about gonzo pornography’?
55. Immaculate Machine – Immaculate Machine’s Fables (Mint)
Even the presence of Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and members of the ghastly, unfathomably popular Cribs couldn’t raise the profile of this charming album from these Canadian underdogs. This is as taut and crisp as its equally excellent predecessors, but some subtler, more melodic shades are added into the mix, making for a more balanced whole. This group manage to draw a lot of magic from the keyboard-guitar-drums format, and are blessed with an unrelenting energy. They deserve far more attention in this country, particularly as they crafted a more substantial and satisfying record than their more highly regarded associates in New Pornographers.
54. Murcof – Cosmos (Leaf)
‘Cosmos’ represents a fascinating refashioning of Fernando Corona’s classical-meets-electronica approach. His debut ‘Martes’ and its successor ‘Remembranza’ were haunting and beautiful amalgamations of beats and strings. ‘Cosmos’ mostly forsakes this synthesis in favour of gradual swellings of texture and noise. This is a darker record than its two predecessors, and one that only gradually reveals its true colours. It’s a mesmerising side step from one of the current pioneers of electronic music.
53. Caribou – Andorra (City Slang)
Dan Snaith's musical adventures continued on the doggedly hazy, summery path he’d been pursuing since ‘Up In Flames’ signalled a radical change of direction from his original IDM. ‘Andorra’ seemed like a more fully formed statement than ‘The Milk Of Human Kindness’ – warm, lush and irresistible, but also prone to the occasional bit of troublemaking. Snaith’s canny synthesis of 60s pop melodies with more free form elements and clattering rhythms made for a compelling and elevating work.
52. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup (Ba Da Bing/4AD)
Zach Condon consolidated his prodigious talents on this rather charming second album, a record that invites the listener into its own peculiar world. Condon’s exaggerated vocals perhaps owe something of a debt to Rufus Wainwright, but the music remains infused with a bawdy Eastern European sensibility, along with some more tentative forays into French chanson. It might all seem like affectation were it not for the rich mystery and insight of Condon’s wonderful songs.
51. Paul Bley – Solo in Mondsee (ECM)
The nameless variations on 'Solo in Mondsee' are impressive elaborations on clearly stated musical ideas and themes. Whilst he frequently hints at pages of the standard repertoire, Bley is more concerned with emotional impact than referencing or thematic deconstruction. In a similar way to how Paul Motian gets tonal variety from the drum kit, Bley is chiefly concerned with contrasts at the Piano, rather than persistence or insistence. The music on 'Solo in Mondsee' is lush and deeply romantic.
Come back tomorrow for the Top 50!
Albums Of The Year 2007 Part 1: 100 - 76
ingThere seems to have been rather a lot of negative whingeing about the quality of new music in 2007. All I can say to that is genuine music-lovers should forage over a wider area because I found plenty to like and even more to admire this year. In fact, this year’s list has one of the strongest top 10s I can remember compiling in some time.
Unfortunately, I can’t hope to process all the good music within any year – so I’ll start with a list of honourable mentions of artists who have not made the cut – either because they underwhelmed me slightly, came close but no cigar, or because I simply haven’t managed to hear the entire album. You can try and guess which category they each fall into!
Honourary Mentions
Amerie, Robyn, Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood, Steve Lehmann, Enrico Rava, Deerhunter, The Bird and The Bee, Dntel, Dizzee Rascal, Bloc Party, Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Blitzen Trapper, The Hold Steady, Von Sudenfed, Orchestra Baobab, Shy Child, Ry Cooder, New Pornographers, Kevin Drew, Om, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Six Organs of Admittance, Ghostface, Wu-Tang Clan, Jay Z, Sage Francis, Liars, Jens Lekman, Holy F*ck, Common, Klaxons, Manu Chao, Andrew Bird, Field Music, Kings of Leon.
Some of these will no doubt rear their heads in a ‘ones that got away’ feature at the start of next year. But I have to draw a line somewhere – and right now I’m clean outta cash!
100. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (Sonovox)
My increasingly ambivalent relationship with this record directed me to ponder whether to include it in this list at all. Arcade Fire remain a mouth-watering prospect in live performance, thanks in part to a uniquely symbiotic relationship with their fervent and devoted audiences (indeed, they played two of the best gigs of my live music year). On record, at least judging by this, their impact now seems somewhat diluted by a bloated and forced sense of ambition, and a rather muffled production that obscures the more effective of their grandiose proclamations. Still, a number of the songs remain vibrant and refreshing amidst the apocalyptic doom and gloom, particularly the affecting Mariachi swell of ‘Ocean of Noise’, which points in new and exciting directions, should the group opt to follow them. As one of the earliest and most ardent enthusiasts for ‘Funeral’, I’m saddened that this is one of those sophomore efforts doomed to some kind of noble failure simply by virtue of the grandstanding impact of its predecessor. By the standards of lesser groups, it might have been considered a triumph.
99. Fridge – The Sun (Domino)
I felt this was a little under-appreciated on release, actually representing a very successful synthesis of Fridge’s early post-rock explorations with the individual impulses behind Kieren Hebden and Adem’s solo work. It’s a highly percussive set, with melody often sidelined in favour of spacious electronic sounds and contrasting rhythmic clutter.
98. Menomena – Friend and Foe (City Slang)
Reliant as it is on its detailed and lavish production values, ‘Friend and Foe’ may not necessarily date too well. It shares a certain kinship with the questing likes of TV On The Radio and Animal Collective, but also has the beating pop heart of The Flaming Lips of ‘The Soft Bulletin’ or the Grandaddy of ‘The Sophtware Slump’. For now though, it’s a dazzling and glistening concoction, with a boundless drive to express novel and quirky ideas.
97. Fulborn Teversham – Count Herbert II (Pickled Egg)
Sebastian Rochford rides again, this time with a ‘punk’ project featuring the slightly mannered vocals of Alice Grant. She’s less irritating and more elastic here than on Acoustic Ladyland’s underwhelming ‘Skinny Grin’ album. It’s also somewhat ironic that saxophonist Pete Wareham gets much more space for improvising here than in his own project. Rochford’s rhythms are kinetic as always, but the unsung hero here is keyboardist Nick Ramm, who is one minute satirising baroque chamber music, and another producing a rampant assault on the senses.
96. Pole – Steingarten (~Scape)
Stefan Betke’s ghostly dub minimalism has a peculiar but concrete appeal – Philip Sherburne has described it as being ‘like the languid silence between two lovers who know that speech is moot’. It’s an intriguing and perceptive notion that hints at the romanticism and eroticism beneath this music’s scientific veneer – the space between the sounds constantly yielding new discoveries and adventures.
95. Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio – Terminal Valentine (Atavistic)
‘Terminal Valentine’ is in fact the third of a trilogy of valentine related albums, the first serving as a tribute to Fred Katz (another venerable Cellist) and the second covering interpretations of the works of others. This third release focuses squarely on Lonberg-Holm’s own compositions and is no less rewarding as a result. There is an intriguing contrast here between the flighty moments of abstraction and the more reflective, ruminative qualities of the central melodies. A Cello trio is still a unit of some novelty, and Lonberg-Holm exploits both the confrontational and the sensuous dimensions of his instrument’s versatile sound. The other members of the group offer fluent contributions and consolidating guidance.
94. The Shins – Wincing The Night Away (Transgressive)
‘Wincing The Night Away’ perhaps suffered that curious fate of timing that often befalls albums released in the first couple of months of a year. For whatever reason, people do not now seem to be discussing it with the same level of enthusiasm that greeted it at the end of last January. This is a shame, as it’s actually the group’s most consistent collection of winning songs so far, with James Mercer’s tendency towards lyrical verbosity firmly subordinated in the service of some infectious and addictive tunes.
93. Herman Dune – Giant (EMI/Capitol)
With their surreal lyrical escapades and cartoonish sense of fun, Herman Dune were in danger of becoming merely an unsung treasure – a cult band with a loyal following. Yet, with the addition of some brilliant cooing female backing vocals and some clever horn arrangements, ‘Giant’ succeeded in broadening their appeal considerably, even to the extent of getting their videos on daytime music TV. The songs are thoroughly charming and heartwarming throughout, and ‘Giant’ stands up as one of 2007’s most straightforwardly entertaining pleasures.
92. Nick Lowe – At My Age (Proper)
You’ve got to admire any elder statesman of rock who gives his album such a throwaway ironic title – it’s surely asking for a critical lambasting. But 2007 had brought with it so many great records contesting the lamentable belief that music has to be the sole preserve of the young. Lowe brings gentle humour and hard-won wisdom to this concise but insightful collection. It’s marginally slighter than its more soulful predecessor (‘The Convincer’), but still highly enjoyable in its warm, relaxed and debonair demeanour.
91. Paris Motel – In The Salpetriere (Loose)
Amy May’s revolving cast of chamber pop explorers are one of Britain’s most charming bands – from their tradition of Valentine’s Day gigs to the compelling narratives of their fairytale songs. ‘In The Salpetriere’ was long-awaited, but more than delivered on their initial promise, veering away slightly from tweeness in favour of something more ambitious and encouraging. Amy’s understated vocals are a particular source of joy throughout.
90. Richard Thompson – Sweet Warrior (Proper)
I’ve been meaning to unpick the back catalogue of Richard Thompson for some time, only really being familiar with those classic Fairport Convention albums to which he made such powerful contributions. Having still failed to achieve this ambition, ‘Sweet Warrior’ seemed as good a place to start as any. It’s a driving, cleanly produced record with a righteous energy that belies its writer’s increasing years. His voice seems to have suffered little or no degradation, and his powerful combination of folk melodic inflection with the spirit of rock and roll is undiminished.
89. Lucinda Williams – West (Lost Highway)
Opinions on ‘West’ depended on whether one preferred the raucous, rocking Lucinda or her more vulnerable, reflective side. I felt that with ‘West’, she wisely concentrated on the latter, in the process crafting a distinctly melancholy and haunting album tinged with a very real sense of loss. She didn’t neglect that surly sultriness completely though – and the best moments of ‘West’ were as thrillingly alive as anything else she has produced in her still developing career. If it’s good enough for Elvis Costello, it’s good enough for me.
88. Kenny Werner – Lawn Chair Society (Blue Note)
Known as something of an acoustic traditionalist, Werner set out to prove such assumptions entirely wrong with this first foray into electronics. It’s not such an about-turn as to constitute an embracing of dance music techniques though – the rhythms are very much the dexterous and adventurous variety unique to contemporary jazz, even when it veers into more straightforwardly funky territory. It is a more ‘produced’ work though, with the studio playing a considerably greater role. It’s also playful and zesty too.
87. Led Bib – Sizewell Tea (Babel)
Led Bib’s signature sound, based as it is on the gimmicky dissonance between their sparring saxophonists, is only likely to carry them a limited distance. For what is only their second album though, ‘Sizewell Tea’ is certainly both confident and confrontational, and it chimes conveniently with the DIY punk-inspired ethos at the heart of the new London indie-jazz crossover. There’s more free-spirited blasting here than on recent material from Acoustic Ladyland though – and it’s certainly no pop record. Instead, its relentless assault is somewhat fearsome and foreboding.
86. The National – Boxer (Beggars Banquet)
Morose, misanthropic and stark, but still developing their more melodic preoccupations, ‘Boxer’ downplayed the group’s aggressive dimensions in favour of some dour, gin-soaked barroom music. If this is balladry, it’s balladry of a particularly torrid kind, and The National have captured a peculiar brand of darkness all of their own. ‘Boxer’ is their most sophisticated and memorable album to date.
85. Manu Katche – Playground (ECM)
The reflective and calm nature of Katche’s compositions make his parallel career as a rock drummer for hire appear somewhat incongruous. Yet, after the beautiful ‘Neighbourhood’ and now this equally beguiling album, there’s little doubt that his own musical voice is deeply personal and highly sophisticated. He’s a player with little or no ego too. In fact, he subsumes himself so completely within the collective on this that he’s often the least prominent figure in his own group. Instead, he complements the talents of his finely tuned ensemble with subtle and redoubtable good taste.
84. Iain Ballamy – Anorak – More Jazz (Basho)
Ballamy, a former member of Bill Bruford’s Earthworks with Django Bates, is a rather undervalued British jazz talent. He returns to his jazz roots here after a number of years experimenting with common ground across genres, and the playing is scintillating. His frequent staccato passages in solos are striking, but he also has a tremendously lyrical sound when necessary. He shares a somewhat satirical bent with former playing partner Bates (just listen to his reworking of ‘My Way’, about as unsentimental a reading as could be imagined). He also gives his band plenty of space to make gestures of their own, and drummer Martin France is on bristling, prickly form.
83. Dinosaur Jr. – Beyond (Pias)
The reformed Dinosaur Jr. sounded, well, exactly the same as they had in 1987. It was as if nothing had changed in the American alternative musical landscape in the intervening twenty years. Yet, as a result, there was something thrilling about hearing the chemistry between J Mascis and Lou Barlow not just restored but enhanced, Barlow being afforded greater respect on this occasion. Mascis’ cracked vocals and primal guitar squall can sound thrilling in any context though, and he blessed ‘Beyond’ with a very strong batch of songs. ‘Beyond’ succeeded chiefly through delivering a made to measure fit for everyone’s expectations.
82. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch)
Wilco’s ‘Sky Blue Sky’ received something of a critical pasting for the wrong reasons. Dismissed as a conservative retreat, it’s actually an impressive restating of the group’s core values. At its best, it merges excellent craftsmanship with assured individual musical contributions (particularly from fiery avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone). As a result, this is the most exciting and dynamic Wilco line-up so far, with Jeff Tweedy’s voice also becoming a more confident and manipulative instrument in such solid company. Where the record could be criticised is in the dropping off of quality in its second half – it’s let down slightly by some under-par songwriting rather than any inherent weaknesses in the overall approach and sound. The positives still greatly outweigh the negatives though.
81. The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat)
With an intensity reminiscent of long-forgotten Irish rockers Whipping Boy, The Twilight Sad conjured a dour but ultimately inspiring world of teenage isolation for their debut album. With an atmosphere charged with disaffection and distaste, the music itself nevertheless had a powerful sense of purpose, and the results constituted a stark recasting of rock dynamics.
80. Bill Callahan – Woke On A Whaleheart (Drag City/Domino)
Well at least he got rid of those obfuscating parentheses, but why the loss of the Smog moniker altogether? It left fans and critics alike pondering whether ‘Woke On A Whaleheart’ might finally be presenting us with the real Bill Callahan (whatever that might be). Well, it might be warmer in places, but it’s certainly not a complete abandoning of his misanthropic musings. The influence of Leonard Cohen is still very evident, and his singing is remains distinctively mordant. There’s a greater attention being paid to detail though – and ‘Woke On A Whaleheart’ is, as a result, closer to the more accessible and tender highlights of the Smog catalogue (‘Supper’, ‘Knock Knock’) than the elusive frustrations of ‘Rain On Lens’.
79. Low – Drums and Guns (Rough Trade)
It’s entirely conceivable that every attempt Low make at reinventing their own wheel will be classed as a step in some radical and alienating new direction. Actually, this album may well be more in keeping with the grand tradition of Low than ‘The Great Destroyer’. Nevertheles, simply giving less prominence to guitars and more to classic analogue synths and keyboards works wonders for them. This is still a melancholy and haunting affair, but the occasional bursts into what might even be bright pop (‘Hatchet’) suggest there is new territory for this most dogged of bands to map out.
78. Abram Wilson – Ride! Ferris Wheel To The Modern Day Delta (Dune)
It didn’t accrue quite as much attention as label mate Soweto Kinch’s fusion of hip hop and jazz, but Abram Wilson’s dedicated, genuine tribute to the American jazz tradition and, especially, to New Orleans had a living resonance all of its own. Wilson cuts an intensely serious figure on stage, but there’s wit and heart in this narrative project as well as drama, and the excellent big band performances invoke a range of contrasting emotions. Most of all, it’s simply a driving, toe-tapping celebration of great music.
77. Kevin Ayers – The Unfairground (Lo-Max)
Unexpectedly emerging from his retirement pad in France, Kevin Ayers returned with a sweet and deceptively simply album contrasting neatly with the more obvious experimentalism of his former colleague Robert Wyatt’s ‘Comicopera’. Accepting that it had more modest ambitions, ‘The Unfairground’ was something of a melodic triumph though, and a powerful reminder of the qualities of Ayers’ songwriting. If a little less quirky than his early solo works, ‘The Unfairground’ was both whimsical and charming.
76. Phronesis – Organic Warfare (Loop)
It’s such a good time for the piano trio at the moment that it’s worth taking stock and paying attention to one of the lesser known acts in London. Although part of the Loop Collective, Phronesis have not been afforded the same press attention as their co-conspirators Outhouse or Gemini. Led by the exuberant and expressive bassist Jasper Hoiby, this album was recorded with Swedish musicians (although the band now incorporates other London-based players). It’s a distinctive, muscular work owing a little to the power-trio approach of groups such as The Bad Plus. It’s not averse to lyricism either though, and the complete whole is extremely promising, should anyone else notice.
To be continued....
Unfortunately, I can’t hope to process all the good music within any year – so I’ll start with a list of honourable mentions of artists who have not made the cut – either because they underwhelmed me slightly, came close but no cigar, or because I simply haven’t managed to hear the entire album. You can try and guess which category they each fall into!
Honourary Mentions
Amerie, Robyn, Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood, Steve Lehmann, Enrico Rava, Deerhunter, The Bird and The Bee, Dntel, Dizzee Rascal, Bloc Party, Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Blitzen Trapper, The Hold Steady, Von Sudenfed, Orchestra Baobab, Shy Child, Ry Cooder, New Pornographers, Kevin Drew, Om, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Six Organs of Admittance, Ghostface, Wu-Tang Clan, Jay Z, Sage Francis, Liars, Jens Lekman, Holy F*ck, Common, Klaxons, Manu Chao, Andrew Bird, Field Music, Kings of Leon.
Some of these will no doubt rear their heads in a ‘ones that got away’ feature at the start of next year. But I have to draw a line somewhere – and right now I’m clean outta cash!
100. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (Sonovox)
My increasingly ambivalent relationship with this record directed me to ponder whether to include it in this list at all. Arcade Fire remain a mouth-watering prospect in live performance, thanks in part to a uniquely symbiotic relationship with their fervent and devoted audiences (indeed, they played two of the best gigs of my live music year). On record, at least judging by this, their impact now seems somewhat diluted by a bloated and forced sense of ambition, and a rather muffled production that obscures the more effective of their grandiose proclamations. Still, a number of the songs remain vibrant and refreshing amidst the apocalyptic doom and gloom, particularly the affecting Mariachi swell of ‘Ocean of Noise’, which points in new and exciting directions, should the group opt to follow them. As one of the earliest and most ardent enthusiasts for ‘Funeral’, I’m saddened that this is one of those sophomore efforts doomed to some kind of noble failure simply by virtue of the grandstanding impact of its predecessor. By the standards of lesser groups, it might have been considered a triumph.
99. Fridge – The Sun (Domino)
I felt this was a little under-appreciated on release, actually representing a very successful synthesis of Fridge’s early post-rock explorations with the individual impulses behind Kieren Hebden and Adem’s solo work. It’s a highly percussive set, with melody often sidelined in favour of spacious electronic sounds and contrasting rhythmic clutter.
98. Menomena – Friend and Foe (City Slang)
Reliant as it is on its detailed and lavish production values, ‘Friend and Foe’ may not necessarily date too well. It shares a certain kinship with the questing likes of TV On The Radio and Animal Collective, but also has the beating pop heart of The Flaming Lips of ‘The Soft Bulletin’ or the Grandaddy of ‘The Sophtware Slump’. For now though, it’s a dazzling and glistening concoction, with a boundless drive to express novel and quirky ideas.
97. Fulborn Teversham – Count Herbert II (Pickled Egg)
Sebastian Rochford rides again, this time with a ‘punk’ project featuring the slightly mannered vocals of Alice Grant. She’s less irritating and more elastic here than on Acoustic Ladyland’s underwhelming ‘Skinny Grin’ album. It’s also somewhat ironic that saxophonist Pete Wareham gets much more space for improvising here than in his own project. Rochford’s rhythms are kinetic as always, but the unsung hero here is keyboardist Nick Ramm, who is one minute satirising baroque chamber music, and another producing a rampant assault on the senses.
96. Pole – Steingarten (~Scape)
Stefan Betke’s ghostly dub minimalism has a peculiar but concrete appeal – Philip Sherburne has described it as being ‘like the languid silence between two lovers who know that speech is moot’. It’s an intriguing and perceptive notion that hints at the romanticism and eroticism beneath this music’s scientific veneer – the space between the sounds constantly yielding new discoveries and adventures.
95. Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio – Terminal Valentine (Atavistic)
‘Terminal Valentine’ is in fact the third of a trilogy of valentine related albums, the first serving as a tribute to Fred Katz (another venerable Cellist) and the second covering interpretations of the works of others. This third release focuses squarely on Lonberg-Holm’s own compositions and is no less rewarding as a result. There is an intriguing contrast here between the flighty moments of abstraction and the more reflective, ruminative qualities of the central melodies. A Cello trio is still a unit of some novelty, and Lonberg-Holm exploits both the confrontational and the sensuous dimensions of his instrument’s versatile sound. The other members of the group offer fluent contributions and consolidating guidance.
94. The Shins – Wincing The Night Away (Transgressive)
‘Wincing The Night Away’ perhaps suffered that curious fate of timing that often befalls albums released in the first couple of months of a year. For whatever reason, people do not now seem to be discussing it with the same level of enthusiasm that greeted it at the end of last January. This is a shame, as it’s actually the group’s most consistent collection of winning songs so far, with James Mercer’s tendency towards lyrical verbosity firmly subordinated in the service of some infectious and addictive tunes.
93. Herman Dune – Giant (EMI/Capitol)
With their surreal lyrical escapades and cartoonish sense of fun, Herman Dune were in danger of becoming merely an unsung treasure – a cult band with a loyal following. Yet, with the addition of some brilliant cooing female backing vocals and some clever horn arrangements, ‘Giant’ succeeded in broadening their appeal considerably, even to the extent of getting their videos on daytime music TV. The songs are thoroughly charming and heartwarming throughout, and ‘Giant’ stands up as one of 2007’s most straightforwardly entertaining pleasures.
92. Nick Lowe – At My Age (Proper)
You’ve got to admire any elder statesman of rock who gives his album such a throwaway ironic title – it’s surely asking for a critical lambasting. But 2007 had brought with it so many great records contesting the lamentable belief that music has to be the sole preserve of the young. Lowe brings gentle humour and hard-won wisdom to this concise but insightful collection. It’s marginally slighter than its more soulful predecessor (‘The Convincer’), but still highly enjoyable in its warm, relaxed and debonair demeanour.
91. Paris Motel – In The Salpetriere (Loose)
Amy May’s revolving cast of chamber pop explorers are one of Britain’s most charming bands – from their tradition of Valentine’s Day gigs to the compelling narratives of their fairytale songs. ‘In The Salpetriere’ was long-awaited, but more than delivered on their initial promise, veering away slightly from tweeness in favour of something more ambitious and encouraging. Amy’s understated vocals are a particular source of joy throughout.
90. Richard Thompson – Sweet Warrior (Proper)
I’ve been meaning to unpick the back catalogue of Richard Thompson for some time, only really being familiar with those classic Fairport Convention albums to which he made such powerful contributions. Having still failed to achieve this ambition, ‘Sweet Warrior’ seemed as good a place to start as any. It’s a driving, cleanly produced record with a righteous energy that belies its writer’s increasing years. His voice seems to have suffered little or no degradation, and his powerful combination of folk melodic inflection with the spirit of rock and roll is undiminished.
89. Lucinda Williams – West (Lost Highway)
Opinions on ‘West’ depended on whether one preferred the raucous, rocking Lucinda or her more vulnerable, reflective side. I felt that with ‘West’, she wisely concentrated on the latter, in the process crafting a distinctly melancholy and haunting album tinged with a very real sense of loss. She didn’t neglect that surly sultriness completely though – and the best moments of ‘West’ were as thrillingly alive as anything else she has produced in her still developing career. If it’s good enough for Elvis Costello, it’s good enough for me.
88. Kenny Werner – Lawn Chair Society (Blue Note)
Known as something of an acoustic traditionalist, Werner set out to prove such assumptions entirely wrong with this first foray into electronics. It’s not such an about-turn as to constitute an embracing of dance music techniques though – the rhythms are very much the dexterous and adventurous variety unique to contemporary jazz, even when it veers into more straightforwardly funky territory. It is a more ‘produced’ work though, with the studio playing a considerably greater role. It’s also playful and zesty too.
87. Led Bib – Sizewell Tea (Babel)
Led Bib’s signature sound, based as it is on the gimmicky dissonance between their sparring saxophonists, is only likely to carry them a limited distance. For what is only their second album though, ‘Sizewell Tea’ is certainly both confident and confrontational, and it chimes conveniently with the DIY punk-inspired ethos at the heart of the new London indie-jazz crossover. There’s more free-spirited blasting here than on recent material from Acoustic Ladyland though – and it’s certainly no pop record. Instead, its relentless assault is somewhat fearsome and foreboding.
86. The National – Boxer (Beggars Banquet)
Morose, misanthropic and stark, but still developing their more melodic preoccupations, ‘Boxer’ downplayed the group’s aggressive dimensions in favour of some dour, gin-soaked barroom music. If this is balladry, it’s balladry of a particularly torrid kind, and The National have captured a peculiar brand of darkness all of their own. ‘Boxer’ is their most sophisticated and memorable album to date.
85. Manu Katche – Playground (ECM)
The reflective and calm nature of Katche’s compositions make his parallel career as a rock drummer for hire appear somewhat incongruous. Yet, after the beautiful ‘Neighbourhood’ and now this equally beguiling album, there’s little doubt that his own musical voice is deeply personal and highly sophisticated. He’s a player with little or no ego too. In fact, he subsumes himself so completely within the collective on this that he’s often the least prominent figure in his own group. Instead, he complements the talents of his finely tuned ensemble with subtle and redoubtable good taste.
84. Iain Ballamy – Anorak – More Jazz (Basho)
Ballamy, a former member of Bill Bruford’s Earthworks with Django Bates, is a rather undervalued British jazz talent. He returns to his jazz roots here after a number of years experimenting with common ground across genres, and the playing is scintillating. His frequent staccato passages in solos are striking, but he also has a tremendously lyrical sound when necessary. He shares a somewhat satirical bent with former playing partner Bates (just listen to his reworking of ‘My Way’, about as unsentimental a reading as could be imagined). He also gives his band plenty of space to make gestures of their own, and drummer Martin France is on bristling, prickly form.
83. Dinosaur Jr. – Beyond (Pias)
The reformed Dinosaur Jr. sounded, well, exactly the same as they had in 1987. It was as if nothing had changed in the American alternative musical landscape in the intervening twenty years. Yet, as a result, there was something thrilling about hearing the chemistry between J Mascis and Lou Barlow not just restored but enhanced, Barlow being afforded greater respect on this occasion. Mascis’ cracked vocals and primal guitar squall can sound thrilling in any context though, and he blessed ‘Beyond’ with a very strong batch of songs. ‘Beyond’ succeeded chiefly through delivering a made to measure fit for everyone’s expectations.
82. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch)
Wilco’s ‘Sky Blue Sky’ received something of a critical pasting for the wrong reasons. Dismissed as a conservative retreat, it’s actually an impressive restating of the group’s core values. At its best, it merges excellent craftsmanship with assured individual musical contributions (particularly from fiery avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone). As a result, this is the most exciting and dynamic Wilco line-up so far, with Jeff Tweedy’s voice also becoming a more confident and manipulative instrument in such solid company. Where the record could be criticised is in the dropping off of quality in its second half – it’s let down slightly by some under-par songwriting rather than any inherent weaknesses in the overall approach and sound. The positives still greatly outweigh the negatives though.
81. The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat)
With an intensity reminiscent of long-forgotten Irish rockers Whipping Boy, The Twilight Sad conjured a dour but ultimately inspiring world of teenage isolation for their debut album. With an atmosphere charged with disaffection and distaste, the music itself nevertheless had a powerful sense of purpose, and the results constituted a stark recasting of rock dynamics.
80. Bill Callahan – Woke On A Whaleheart (Drag City/Domino)
Well at least he got rid of those obfuscating parentheses, but why the loss of the Smog moniker altogether? It left fans and critics alike pondering whether ‘Woke On A Whaleheart’ might finally be presenting us with the real Bill Callahan (whatever that might be). Well, it might be warmer in places, but it’s certainly not a complete abandoning of his misanthropic musings. The influence of Leonard Cohen is still very evident, and his singing is remains distinctively mordant. There’s a greater attention being paid to detail though – and ‘Woke On A Whaleheart’ is, as a result, closer to the more accessible and tender highlights of the Smog catalogue (‘Supper’, ‘Knock Knock’) than the elusive frustrations of ‘Rain On Lens’.
79. Low – Drums and Guns (Rough Trade)
It’s entirely conceivable that every attempt Low make at reinventing their own wheel will be classed as a step in some radical and alienating new direction. Actually, this album may well be more in keeping with the grand tradition of Low than ‘The Great Destroyer’. Nevertheles, simply giving less prominence to guitars and more to classic analogue synths and keyboards works wonders for them. This is still a melancholy and haunting affair, but the occasional bursts into what might even be bright pop (‘Hatchet’) suggest there is new territory for this most dogged of bands to map out.
78. Abram Wilson – Ride! Ferris Wheel To The Modern Day Delta (Dune)
It didn’t accrue quite as much attention as label mate Soweto Kinch’s fusion of hip hop and jazz, but Abram Wilson’s dedicated, genuine tribute to the American jazz tradition and, especially, to New Orleans had a living resonance all of its own. Wilson cuts an intensely serious figure on stage, but there’s wit and heart in this narrative project as well as drama, and the excellent big band performances invoke a range of contrasting emotions. Most of all, it’s simply a driving, toe-tapping celebration of great music.
77. Kevin Ayers – The Unfairground (Lo-Max)
Unexpectedly emerging from his retirement pad in France, Kevin Ayers returned with a sweet and deceptively simply album contrasting neatly with the more obvious experimentalism of his former colleague Robert Wyatt’s ‘Comicopera’. Accepting that it had more modest ambitions, ‘The Unfairground’ was something of a melodic triumph though, and a powerful reminder of the qualities of Ayers’ songwriting. If a little less quirky than his early solo works, ‘The Unfairground’ was both whimsical and charming.
76. Phronesis – Organic Warfare (Loop)
It’s such a good time for the piano trio at the moment that it’s worth taking stock and paying attention to one of the lesser known acts in London. Although part of the Loop Collective, Phronesis have not been afforded the same press attention as their co-conspirators Outhouse or Gemini. Led by the exuberant and expressive bassist Jasper Hoiby, this album was recorded with Swedish musicians (although the band now incorporates other London-based players). It’s a distinctive, muscular work owing a little to the power-trio approach of groups such as The Bad Plus. It’s not averse to lyricism either though, and the complete whole is extremely promising, should anyone else notice.
To be continued....