Whitty

Only one from 2007 that would be a no doubt-about-it top album of the decade would be Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem.

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; A Ghost Is Born

Spoon - Gimme Fiction (but pretty much everything really...)

TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

The Shins - Oh, Inverted World

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Pig Lib

Super Furry Animals - Phantom Power; Mwng

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Gorillaz - Demon Days

Built to Spill - You In Reverse

The Gourds - Cow, Fish, Fowl or Pig

The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema

The Black Keys - Rubber Factory

This album is music filtered through the intellect. IMHO the soul got left in the filter. And so even though I like the style of music they play and even admire the technical ability, it's not something I feel inclined to listen to again.

I haven't heard it in those terms, but I agree with the assessment.

They sound like pretentious rich kids playing at West African music, not actually playing it, if that makes any sense. Not at all impressed or engaged by what they're doing.

You forgot Lucinda Williams.

I shan't claim this list as comprehensive, but I shall claim it is subject to my own tastes. There's a good reason Lucinda Williams didn't make my list- I haven't heard it. Same with Magnolia Electric Co. (do they put out an album every 10 weeks or something?)

Dr. Dog - We All Belong

Classical music has the Three B's of Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms. Philly's Dr. Dog don't go that far back for their retro sound, but a more recent trio of B's undoubtedly influences We All Belong: Beatles, Beach Boys, and The Band. There's a psyhedelic buzz grinning over much of the disc's tracks, and paired with the vintage recording style I'm reminded a bit of Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle, production-wise. It's a homey, inviting sound. Toby Leaman's round-toned bass demands attention. His linear melodic accents evoke McCartney and the funky, root-on-the-one bounce is all Danko. Piano is a common bond on We All Belong, with major to parallel minor chord changes and clear rhythmic accents again summoning those analog tape ghosts of the late 60's/early 70's. Scott McMicken's vocals are readily recognizable, with the soul and rasp to pull off these kinds of songs without sounding like a pale imitation of the classic rock canon. The harmonies accompanying him help tracks like the gorgeous "Keep a Friend" shine sweetly through complex Brian Wilson-inspired song structures. "Retro" and "stale" aren't synonymous. Dr. Dog strike it big on this highly likable effort that captures the freewheeling spirit of Abbey Road's second side.

M.I.A. - Kala

Listen to that beat in "Bird Flu". Listen to it, for God's sake! Hip-hop is assumed to be the music of the streets, the genre that most directly transmits the oft-confrontational experience of ordinary life amongst overflowing humanity. India's got overflowing humanity to say the least, and it doesn't sound like it gets any more oriented to mutually shared experience than it does in this instance, with a chorus of drummers and chants whipping up a riot of rhythm every bit as potent as the song's title malady. There was an exotic sexiness to Arular, but on her sophomore album M.I.A. trades sly come-ons for brazen challenges. "How many no money boys are crazy / How many boyz are raw? / How many no money boyz are rowdy / How many start a war?" she stabs between the confident bass drops in "Boyz". "People judge me so hard / 'cause I don't floss my titty set / I was born out of dirt like I'm porn in a skirt / I was a little girl who made good with all that I blurt" from "20 Dollar" clearly takes digs at the sentiment that female artists in the hip-hop world should look good first and work on the rhymes later. "Paper Planes" is more than defiant- it's dangerous. Samples of The Clash, gunshots, and cash registers compound the menace promised by the memorable chorus. This is music of the streets alright, but more like the streets seen in films like City of God and Blood Diamond. No gimmicks here, says M.I.A., just listen and deal with the juxtaposed reality of the lives of most of the world's billions set against the thoroughly modern sounds challenging her more well-off intended audiences.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - The Good, The Bad & The Queen

It ain't easy being bleak. But Damon Albarn is up to the task of trying with his latest crackshot band. A declining England, and a declining West in general populate the themes here- war, dread-inducing nights, political impotence, soul-smothering industrial landscapes, ravens flying across moons, that sort of thing. Paul Simonon steals the show musically with his trademark dubby bass swaying and thudding prominently through the dark proceedings. Simon Tong and Tony Allen are a bit subdued in comparison. This is an album that practically begs for a follow-up. Hopefully, camraderie is allowed to nurture and fluorish during another gathering of these formidable talents somewhere in the near future. Danger Mouse certainly has a hand in the spooky moodiness, too- the synths and keys on "Herculean" and "Bunting Song" recall Animals-era Pink Floyd (as does the cover art for that matter). Albarn's formula is still thriving as he conducts his orchestra through forays into hip-hop, reggae, British rock, and gloomy New Wave- crisply produced the whole way through. Feeling down hasn't had grooves this that felt this good in quite some time.

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

You'd better bring the goods if you're going to give an album a title like that. Not an issue. Spoon has been America's most reliable rock band of the 00's. All the elements that have bonded to create this consistency are on display in the opening track "Don't Make Me a Target"- ominous riffing, a room-filling kick drum beat, and the whiskey-warm voice of Britt Daniels. The soul keeps you coming back. Tastes and trends have veered toward arty, affected, vulnerable sounding male vocals recently, but Daniels' rasp (with potent falsetto punctuations) is steeped in in the confidence of Motown and 80's underground rock. Motown's great singers knew they had chops while the Reagan-era rockers like Paul Westerberg and Black Francis belted defiantly, even if their natural talents weren't exactly making anyone forget about Marvin Gaye. Britt balances both influences and contributes easy-sounding vocal melodies over his keen-witted, uncluttered lyrics. Ga x5 goes down like a top-shelf cocktail and struts over to the dance floor with tunes like "Eddie's Ragga" and "Don't You Evah" inevitably inspiring head-bobs and toe taps.

Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation

One of my favorite new discoveries of 2007 is this beguiling outfit from Oregon. Who don't they sound like is the appropriate question if you're trying to describe them to someone unfamiliar with their sound. The Grateful Dead, Sonic Youth, Royal Trux, Golden Smog, The Minus 5, Pavement, Elephant 6 pop-psychedelia... plenty of retro, much like fellow '07 standouts Dr. Dog. It's hard not to smile when you hear music this loose, completely free of expectations, and immersed in the DIY ethos. "Futures & Folly" snakes through a whole garden of Beatles-esque chord changes with guitars and synthesizer merrily making the rounds like late 60's Dead. One track later "Miss Spiritual Tramp" channels Pavement channeling The Fall (and even name drops the rather unpleasant Colombian necktie! Look it up if you don't know.) with glorious guitar noise and sneering don't-give-a-fuck vocals leading the way. Bless the freewheeling weirdos who march to their own drumbeat, yet still remain grounded amongst a host of outstanding influences.

Radiohead - In Rainbows

So they're the biggest band on the planet now. Spend a decade putting out Kid A, a willfully anti-rock experimental disc, follow it up with the morose Amnesiac and the bleak bloops and clicks of Hail to the Thief and that's how you achieve that sort of acclaim I suppose. Radiohead sets its own trends, and the ballyhooed independent release of In Rainbows was a fresh approach that largley lived up to the hype thanks to the band's revisiting of their rock influences after a decade of digital avant-garde. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" and "Bodysnatchers" finds Phil Selway out of hiding and letting his drums muscle through some inspired rock band dynamism. Not that Radiohead has forgotten how to be creepy- "All I Need" conjures the same sense of lumbering dread as "Climbing Up The Walls" from OK Computer. "House of Cards" finds Thom Yorke conveying some very un-Yorke sentiments about wanting to be a lover and not a friend. Dare we say that Radiohead sounds like it had fun on a lot of these tracks? They may be the altar at which millions worship, but these Oxford rock gods aren't bound by any stifling dogma here. In Rainbows is Radiohead's most thoroughly rocking and enjoyable album since OK Computer, serving as a fine bookend to the ten years between the albums that marked the band's ascendancy to the apex of the music world.

Menomena - Friend And Foe

There's only room for one Flaming Lips in the world, but Menomena brings a great deal of that band's delightful subversion of the rock idiom into play on Friend and Foe. The booming Steven Drozd-style beats set up the proceedings, with frequent minor interval piano exclamations and droning bass rumbles reminiscent of TV on the Radio tying the sound together. "Boyscout'n" and "The Pelican" are experimental rock at its finest- they tweak the ear and latch into the brain with a sort of sweet recklessness. The whistled melody set over top of the insistent marching rhythm from "Boyscout'n" is one of the most hypnotic pieces of music from 2007. This is music to tickle those synapses. It's playful, weird, brimming in confidence and ideas, and boldly proclaiming that Menomena is a band to watch for years to come.

Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond

Now this was an unexpected treat. I'd believe you if you told me J Mascis and Co. recorded this in 1987 only to lose the masters and rediscover them in some dusty closet twenty years later. Not to say that Dinosaur Jr. is re-hashing old glories or anything like that. It's just that their three-piece let's-rock-first-and-ask-questions-later sound is so timeless and simple. J Mascis's fretboard still sparks with spontaneity as he weaves searing lines that avoid the lick-based predictability that infects so many virtuoso talents. "Almost Ready" opens up Beyond and it's immediately apparent that these types of sounds remain fresh even if the band was doing this sort of thing when Mr. T was an A-list celebrity. "Pick Me Up" is likely the guitar solo of the year, ending with a blitz that defiantly reminds us that 80's revivalism isn't all skinny ties, horrific drum tone, and eyeliner-caked synth players.

Whitty's Album of the Year:

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

It's all "electronic" music anymore isn't it? While ostensibly making albums, I've spent enough time with my face bathed in computer screen light futzing with digital reverb, and hearing mouse clicks as often as snare hits for the edges to soften between technology and the supposed organic sanctity of the creative process. Is Sound of Silver the most heartfelt electronic music ever, or maybe the future direction of rock? Does it matter? The future is plopped out here in front of us in digital form, and has been for years. Enough pontificating on the larger implications, because the immediate truth is that LCD Soundsystem is rocking like hell here in 2007.

The influences are readily apparent. Talking Heads circa 1980 as they seamlessly blended primal, visceral soundscapes from both West Africa and New York's arty underground dance-rock scene. David Bowie tweaking knobs in Berlin with Brian Eno. Pavement's charmingly loose slacker-rock in-jokes. When the influences are this damn good, it's hard to care too much if "Us v Them" and "Crosseyed & Painless" could at times be mistaken for long lost twins.

"Depth" isn't the first descriptor leaping to mind when considering most lyrics of dance-oriented music, but Sound of Silver finds James Murphy flexing his wry poet's hand with sharp lines like "I did it once and my parents got pretty upset / freaked out in North America / but then I said the more I do it the better it gets", "New York, you're safer and you're wasting my time / Our records all show you were filthy but fine", & "You're talking 45 turns just as fast as you can / yeah, I know it gets tired, but it's better when we pretend. / It comes apart, the way it does in bad films. / Except in parts, when the moral kicks in." Mix in piles of singalong hooks like "Cloud, block out the sun" from "Us v Them" and the titular chants of both "North American Scum" and "Time to Get Away" and we have an ideal balance of anthem-ready, just plain sexy fun and a level of depth that demands multiple listens.

The bass and drums pulse with the warmth of live instrumentation. Murphy's vocals break out of the genre's expectations with giddy, impassioned quirk and verve. It's an album for the party. It's an album for the comedown. It's electronica grown up, reflective, and humanized.

Some short takes:

Gogol Bordello - Super Taranta: The album's a little long, but there's little else that sounds like this motley Pogues-like gypsy outfit helmed by the freewheeling Eugene Hutz and his thick Ukrainian accent delivering my favorite couplet of the year: "Have you ever been to American wedding? / Where's the vodka, where is marinated herring?"

Oh No - Dr. No's Oxperiment: Beats and grooves aplenty, culled and re-mixed from popular music of the Mediterranean. It's cumin-scented trip-hop. The disc flies by in short bursts of exotic statements like a whirlwind travelogue for the milk-crate-full-of-records demographic.

The Sea and Cake - Everybody: An album that's like a breezy summer night drive. It's suave and swings with the band's jazzy post-rock stylings while Sam Prekop's breathy voice hovers like wispy clouds in front of a full moon.

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin: They continue to stake out their easily-recognizable style by blending harmony-rich song structures with bursts of Built to Spill and Neil Young guitar/drums stomp filling out the minimal arrangements. It's a warm, earthy sound- the musical equivalent of campfire smell.

Gruff Rhys - Candylion: Wales's foremost rock frontman gives us a sugary dose of psychedelic indie-pop with this solo outing. The title track is as much sunny fun as any song this year while the incantatory "Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru" gets bonus points for being both phenomenally catchy and totally incomprehensible.

Initial Disappointment That I Like More Now, But Not Quite As Much As These Other Albums: Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

"Where's the Rock?" Award: The New Pornographers - Challengers

Too Slow Overall For My Taste, But I Really Like "Fake Empire": The National - Boxer

I'd Like You More if You Were Hyped Less (And Also If Your Verse Melodies Weren't So Interchangeable And Your Choruses So Overwrought): The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

If you simply re-install your wipers on the interior of the windshield, you can prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

Sharp-sounding song construction you have there. Definitely some influence from yer countryman Mr. Costello seeping into the precisely enunciated chord movement. It also has some of the Pacific Northwest indie-pop sound (maybe the Atlantic Northwest inspires similar sounds!). I'd describe it as "brisk-pop"- very snappy!

Good luck!

Where to start with The Grateful Dead? At the very end...with their merciful demise.

Trenchant!

If you have an oven-safe frying pan or cast-iron skillet, a super easy dish that's good this time of year:

You'll need two bone-in chicken breasts or pork chops (don't have to be bone-in, but the results will be better), about half of a medium onion, two carrots, and a potato.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Chop the carrot, potato, and onion into rough chunks (about 1") and set aside.

Liberally season your chicken/pork all over with salt (kosher would be best), pepper (fresh ground would be best), and whatever herbs you care for: rosemary, sage, thyme, savory, and parsley are all good choices.

Heat some oil in your skillet over medium high until oil just starts to put off wisps of smoke.

Add the chicken/pork. Let one side brown for 5-6 minutes. Flip, and brown the other side. Remove the meat and let drain on some paper towels.

Add the chopped veggies to the skillet and some extra oil if needed. Season 'em liberally with salt, pepper, and herbs. Brown, stirring every few minutes for about 8 minutes total.

Add the meat back to the skillet.

Place your skillet into the oven for about 25 minutes. Check it after 15 minutes to give the veggies a stir and flip the meat.

Make sure the meat is done if you're unsure (a bit of rosy pink color close to the bones won't hurt a thing).

Serve that junk. Warm bread and wine recommended.

Make sexy time.

Laura Flores - Turnover (employment)

 

1) Passover Seder

2) Stray Cats

3) Dan Patrick (politics)

4) Miss Navajo

5) Silversword alliance

6) Deck the Halls

7) 221B Baker Street

8) David Lafata

9) Horace Bury

10) Hamilton Avalanche

11) Alpheus Felch

12) Sayyad Zabiuddin

 

Known to the music industry primarily for her grammy winning single, "El Alma No Tiene Color" (The Soul Has No Color), Mexican indie rocker Laura Flores dishes out a vicious cornucopia of hot tamales on her third release, Turnover (employment). Beginning with Passover Seder, in which she savages the U.S. government for not recognizing Jewish holidays, Flores, who is Catholic, runs through styles as diverse as her multicolored waist-length hair. Rather than the expected tribute to rockabilly legend Stray Cats, the second track features a heartbreaking coda of actual feral cats growling in hunger while drums pound out an ominous salsa beat.

 

Dan Patrick (politics) is a parodic "tribute" to the Texas senator whose political causes include a boycott of Bill Maher's television show Politically Incorrect. Flores is equally dismissive of beauty pageants in Miss Navajo and of dubious sexual practices in her modern retelling of the legendary Alpheus Felch. But it is on the cover songs that she is at her most vituperative. Deck the Halls is a blast of south of the border punk, transforming the insipid Christmas standard into a Latino version that sounds like a Mexican waitress channelling Johnny Rotten, while 221B Baker Street subverts the Gerry Rafferty classic by keeping the tune note-perfect while reversing the lyrics, e.g., "Dead in your head but light on your feet ...."

 

The disc ends with the chilling Sayyad Zabiuddin, the name of a suspect in the July 2006 Mumbai train bombings. His name was also given as Zabiuddin Ansari by a different source, but here Flores just calls him "that asshole."

Adenostoma fasciculatum - Syndicalist Party

1. The Royal Family (novel)

2. Radical 30

3. Florida gubernatorial election, 1986

4. Darabani

5. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

6. 810s BC

7. Antidiotico

8. Bundesstra

dude, downloaded a few Darkside tunes. sounds great. the piano is awesome, is it a keyboard? doesn't sound like it. also, the sound is really warm. also, y'all really got the floyd feeling. it's like More era Floyd playing Darkside tunes. good stuff.

craig

Thanks for the compliments! We get a lot of early-Floyd comparisons, and I'm always flattered by them.

Our keyboard player is using a Kurzweil SP-88 for piano as well and a Nord Electro 2 for most of the electric piano and organ sounds. He borrowed my microKorg synth for the synth parts on "Any Colour You Like" and "Brain Damage".

You're right Crow- I get to conveniently dodge a lot of presumptions that accompanied the music during its initial life. DSOTM is six years older than me and punk just a couple of years older. I'm in a generation that finds nothing terribly odd or contradictory about listening to "Pretty Vacant" right after "Comfortably Numb".

Pink Floyd certainly isn't "underground" by any means, but among those of us who were impressionable teens during the Nineties, a lot of great music from the 70's became sort of a club, and admission was gained after adequate consumption of albums likeDSOTM, Houses of the Holy, and Ziggy Stardust. To this day, those albums don't sound dated to my ears. Sure, I may not rush to crank up the volume when "Over the Hills and Far Away" comes on the radio for the umpteen-tillionth time, but I can recognize that this is music that is still a standard in many ways for those of us that still believe in the power of the rock album format.

I see the return of singles as an emerging trend, and I wonder if there will be rock albums released in the next decade that will resonate with the same kind of power for future generations the way DSOTM still remains a cultural touchstone for current twenty and thirty-somethings.

It's "try to" not "try and". "You'll try to get back to me", for instance.

Already saw two of my perennial favorites mentioned: Valentime's Day and "for all intensive purposes".

I work for an engineering department, and always crack up inside when I hear rip-rap (the large stone used to stabilize ditches and drainage intakes/outfalls) referred to as "riff-raff".

"It's a major award!!"

Thanks mountain bed for the kind words. Writing and music are two of my greatest passions, and when they happen to intersect, I'm a happy boy.

Floyd rocks harder at slower tempos than any other band I've ever heard. It was humbling to tap into that power for an evening. I don't have a good copy of our version of "Echoes"- it's been a few years since we've done it, but I'll let you know if we break it out again.

Okay, this is sort of a plug, but it's really more than that. Over the past few months, I've learned Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in preparation for a gig that took place last Friday. It was a type of challenge I've never before undertaken, and I don't imagine I'll ever find a finer rock album to learn in its entirety.

You can now download that DSOTM set and four original songs at my band's official site. I'd love to hear what you think.

Below are some thoughts and reflections on this album that is truly ingrained in my musical personality.

I think like most of us music fans who get into Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon was the album that wormed its way most deeply into my consciousness, a subtle kind of infiltration that manifested itself prominently during my late teenage years. It's an album with a tremendous kind of seductive power and those heady years between 16-19 seems to be the age when almost everyone identifies strongly with the sentiments DSOTM covers: alienation, mental anguish, and the thoroughly unfair cold human facts of time, money, and conflict. It's an album you "outgrow"- that's at least the common perception among a lot of other music fans. At the very least, it's an album that is absorbed during so many hazy evenings in a dorm room or parents' basement that it becomes unnecessary to keep listening to it a decade or more after first hearing it. Those notes are in your DNA.

It had been quite some time since I, at the advanced age of 28, had given DSOTM a proper front-to-back listen. Cory offhandedly tossed out the idea at a rehearsal early this fall- "why don't we cover Dark Side?" We chuckled at first, but then instinctively noodling around realized that we knew the chords to "Breathe". I knew the main riff to "Money", a line that I think every bassist picks up within a few weeks of buying a bass. Jereme knew those haunting opening chords to "The Great Gig In the Sky". Hmmmmmm. We've covered plenty of Pink Floyd in the past: "Fearless", "Astronomy Domine", even the leviathan that is "Echoes". Maybe we

All I wanna hear about is how well you did, how nervous you were, what story you told about yourself, and how disturbing Trebek is.

Didn't see this the first time 'round...

Already mentioned my winnings and story... I honestly wasn't that nervous at all. I'm used to being on stage, and I didn't have any more anxiety than I would for a gig, which isn't a whole lot. More anticipation (as opposed to out-and-out nervousness) beforehand than anything else. I was glad that my first game was also the first of the five to be taped that day. Waiting around in the green room for a few hours probably wouldn't have helped very much. The crowd at the taping was only a few hundred, and they're seated off to the side out of view, so you don't really think about them. Once the game started, it was all business. It moves too fast for you to stop and think about all the money at stake and all the people who will be watching.

Trebek isn't disturbing at all. Shorter (as all TV people inevitably are) than you might expect- probably about five-eightish. He's very tan. And he really is a sharp guy from what I could tell during our brief post-show chat. I get the feeling that he really does know a lot of those answers.

Wow, the intro is even written in Moon-man language!

Very cool link- I was getting pretty tired of standard-def moon.

I would be happy to take Nick Markakis off your hands.

He should be one of the few untouchables. He'll be a .310-25-110 guy for years to come, not to mention that he can steal bases and has a friggin' Howitzer for an arm.

Did you act like Sean Connery?

The temptation was resisted.

what question about your life did alex ask you?

First day was chatting about how I'd like to have Alex's job (two day workweeks for only about half of the year I believe) and how I envied him being animated into a Simpsons episode. Second day we BS'ed about my job at the time as a surveyor.

I was a one-day champion. Very poetic. 28 grand was my take, though I actually scored more and lost a close match on day two (would've had about 58 grand if I pulled it out). I would give Ken Jennings a tough match on a good day. He was so damn quick on that buzzer though, not to mention he really could pull some of those obscure 2,000 dollar clues, too.

I'm losing sleep wondering if my O's can afford to extend Paul Bako!

Please, please- no more second-tier free agents. Trade Tejada. Trade Mora. Trade Hernandez. Just release Gibbons. For God's sake, do a better job to attract Dominican and Japanese prospects. Extend Bedard, and if nothing comes of it- see what we could get in return. It pains me to write that, because I love watching the man pitch.

I expect to finish last next year, but if we must suck, let us be young while basking in suckitude.

Ummm... let's see. How about Q & A time? Makes it a little easier with the way message board discourse works... Ask away and I'll answer away...

cryptique- It took me about three months before they called me.

Have you addressed this in detail here before?

I have not. It's kind of pompous IMO to just come right out and start blabbing about how you were on Jeopardy!. Some of my friends half-jokingly say I should mention it every time I meet someone new, but I'm really not that kind of personality. I won't deny that it was a very cool experience, however.

I'll gladly share my experience if anyone's really interested.

I was actually on Jeopardy!, and I insist on spelling it correctly with the exclamation point.

I'm also meticulous about italicizing titles in my posts.

I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy at least six times.

I can throw a mean spiral, though. It all balances out.

Listening to your stuff up at MySpace and I am loving it.

I think that your issue re: reviews is the fact that you don't have a label pushing for you.

It 'tis. Preparing to make a push to some labels when our DVD is complete. We do have some contacts through our connection with Pavement/Silver Jews that might help us out, but it's a tough road to gain traction.

Music is a war of attrition. Stick around long enough and people have to start paying attention. It's the Guided by Voices career plan.