Best of 2009

For fun, and for explanatory exhaustion, I’m keeping my blurbs to four words apiece:

1. Wye Oak, The Knot. Brave hurricane of feeling.
2. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca. Decade’s boldest indie vision.
3. Fool’s Gold. Hot, culturally malleable Afroism.
4. Bat for Lashes, Two Suns. Arty eye, amorous heart.
5. Amadou et Mariam, Welcome to Mali. Cosmopolitan Bamako blues, smiling.
6. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest. Harmony dreams, almost vertigo.
7. Micachu and the Shapes, Jewellery. Re-sculpted rubbish. Rauschenberg? Punk.
8. Jason Lytle, Yours Truly, the Commuter. Outsider’s diary, finally outside.
9. The Almighty Defenders. Delicious degeneracy. (Sorry, Sam!)
10. Antony and the Johnsons, The Crying Light. Pastoralism eulogized pastorally, eerliy.

Also recommended:

Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
Cryptacize, Mythomania
Cymbals Eat Guitars, Why There Are Mountains
Dinosaur Jr., Farm
Florence and the Machine, Lungs
Girls, Album
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Pheonix
Regina Spektor, Far
The Very Best, Warm Heart of Africa
Vivian Girls, Everything Goes Wrong
M. Ward, Hold Time
Wilco, Wilco (The Album)

Worst album of 2009 (tie):

Ray Davies, The Kinks Choral Collection
Decemberists, The Hazards of Love

Decade postmortem: 2007 and 2008

Having gone through a decade of old top 10s, I’ve been thinking about the two contrary motives involved in putting these things together. On one hand, the lists express personal tastes, more emotional than analytical. And since they are usually cranked out on deadline at the end of the year, they can be inexact, first-draft statements reflecting a moment in time; it’s like a postmortem temperature taken while the body is still warm. This gut-level impulse tends to favor more unpredictable, less popular picks: fanboy plugs, showoff-y picks, oppositional stances.

On the other hand, you’re making broad statements about the state of music, and there have to be real criteria for that judgment. Less impressively, critics want to look smart to other critics, and that means balancing a certain number of obscurities with a certain number of choices in common, which function as trade credentials. This is the more calculating approach, and it’s the mindset of collective editorial lists at magazines and websites. With the imprimatur of a publication, personal feelings are minimized (as is the blame for erroneous or lame picks), and these lists end up being more official and predictable, in line with the consensus; in fact, they establish consensus.

Neither approach is right or wrong; they work together. But looking back years later it’s hard to hold on to those random, contrarian choices, since the vibe you felt making them in the first place has probably faded, and the weeding process of history has rearranged the field. For example, from our point of view 10 years later, Kid A towers over the releases of 2000, but at the time it was somewhat more controversial: Pitchfork put it at No. 1 that year, but it was only No. 5 in Rolling Stone, behind Eminem, U2, D’Angelo, even Madonna’s Music.

What this means for me is that as I’ve revised my lists they have probably become more “correct” but also less interesting: fewer surprises, fewer argument-starters, less defiant advocacy. One of my favorites for 2008, for instance, was the Jonas Brothers, which caught me some shit. (Hi, Jake.) I can’t say now whether I was right or wrong about it because I haven’t listened in a year; that fact alone, however, is reason to edit that album out, since it can’t have been so great if after 12 months I don’t care.

But it’s also one of those self-correcting, conformist moments, an opportunity to replace an honest but risky lark with something safer, more familiar, “stronger.” At the same time, you’ve got to hold on to your individuality and avoid succumbing to the groupthink that can make so many of these lists tediously identical at the time they’re drawn up but then uselessly out of fashion once X number of years pass and nobody cares anymore about Northern State or Arrested Development. That, and the fact that you need to listen to lots and lots and lots of music, is why it’s hard to do this.

❧

That’s theory. Now for practice. Here’s my original list for 2007 (and original blurbs):

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Battles, Mirrored
5. Feist, The Reminder
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. M.I.A., Kala
8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
9. Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows

Scorecard: Pretty right-on, I think. Dirty Projectors blew my mind in 2007, and I still like them now. Plant/Krauss is magnificent, and Spoon added another reason for being the best band of the decade. I’m moving Feist and M.I.A. up, bumping Battles down, and replacing Avril with Deerhoof, who deserve more credit than they’ve been getting at decade’s end. Otherwise not many changes. (Nos. 11 through 20 would include Black Lips, Yeasayer, Linda Thompson, Kanye, the Frames, Miranda Lambert and Nick Lowe. And Avril.)

Kind Reader, I present my revised list for 2007:

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Feist, The Reminder
5. M.I.A., Kala
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. Battles, Mirrored
8. Radiohead, In Rainbows
9. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
10. Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity

❧

2008 is a little trickier for me. My original list (and blurbs):

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
4. Metallica, Death Magnetic
5. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
6. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Black Kids, Partie Traumatic
9. Jonas Brothers, A Little Bit Longer
10. Beach House, Devotion

Looking at this, Randy Newman now feels more like an 8 or a 9 than a 6, and Black Kids and the JoBros belong in the mid-teens. But what to replace them with? The records that didn’t make my original cut were:

• Al Green, who made a gorgeous, vibrant record with ?uestlove. Cut because Newman was more topical and exploratory, and I didn’t want two fogies.
  
• Jamey Johnson. Omitted as a reaction against critical groupthink, and because I’m just not a country guy. But it’s undeniable that this is a very strong record.
• Coldplay. Good, but it’s Coldplay.
• She & Him. Nice, but at the time it didn’t seem terribly significant. Still doesn’t, although it’s just as sweet.
• Lykke Li. Sort of the year’s Bjork/Feist/Regina/Fiona/Emiliana quirky-girl entry. Which “shouldn’t matter shouldn’t matter,” as Gwen would say. But it does matter because her album is not half as clever as anything by Bjork or Feist or Regina or Fiona or Emiliana.
  
• Nick Cave. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is great, but ... I dunno.
• Joe Jackson. Rain is as good as anything he did 25 or 30 years ago, but you’ve got the fogy problem again. What’s 2008 about it? Why could it not have been made in 1983 or 1992 or 2005?
• Magnetic Fields, Distortion. Another consensus choice, and despite a couple of fantaaaastic songs (“Drive On, Driver,” “California Girls”), it felt like a trifle.

Three more you see on every other list from 2008 are Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, Fleet Foxes’ debut, and Tha Carter III. I still snooze thinking of Fleet Foxes, and don’t feel fully qualified to judge Lil Wayne. But Kanye’s Auto-Tune essay on isolation and misery was visionary; shoulda been in my list to begin with. He and Jamey Johnson make the cut.

So, 2008 revised:

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Metallica, Death Magnetic
4. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
5. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
6. Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
9. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
10. Beach House, Devotion

❧

And that’s our show, folks! My 2009 list will be posted soon. Make that eventually. Well, pretty soon. Happy New Year!

Dirty Orchjectors, and Chuck Biscuits update

Dirty Projectors has become the umpteenth touted, smart, beloved, but not huge-selling alt band to do the indie-orchestral thing, playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Feb. 27.

It was probably inevitable. They follow Death Cab for Cutie, M83, Grizzly Bear, the Decemberists, Belle & Sebasitan, Air and Bright Eyes, all at the L.A. Phil; Joanna Newsom and, again, Grizzly Bear, both with the Brooklyn Phil; and Ben Folds with the Boston Pops. UPDATE: Even as I typed, Grizzly Bear was doing yet another orchestral gig, in London.

I didn’t expect when I got up this morning that I would be giving thanks to Henry Rollins. But thanks, Henry, for never singing “T.V. Party” with the Boston Phil at Tanglewood.

In other sorta Rollins-related news, it appears all but certain that Chuck Biscuits is alive and that his death was a hoax. Read more about it, if you’re not already too disgusted and offended by the whole thing.

Promising collaborations: David Byrne and Dirty Projectors

Wow. I’m thrilled to hear the results of a session with two really great Davids: Byrne and Longstreth.

Byrne, in a post on his blog a couple of days ago (which reached me via Stereogum), discusses recording this past Sunday and Monday with Dirty Projectors for the upcoming “Red Hot and Indie” compilation, which is being produced by members of the National and will also feature Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Feist, Sharon Jones and the Decemberists.

After giving a weird but pretty apt description of Dirty Projectors (“Their music has familiar elements, yet often sounds like pop music by someone who has read about the form, but never heard it, and then handed the essential building blocks to make some songs”), Byrne reveals a scenario that has probably been the subject of quite a few musical wet dreams over the last 30 years:

As a starting point for the second song, I sent Dave some lyrics I had written in maybe ’75 or ’76 ... These lyrics were unlike any I knew at the time, and made some of those [Talking Heads] tunes so peculiar. These songs didn’t lack emotion, but filtered it through an extremely constricting linguistic bottleneck, making the tension more pronounced, though never explicit. That sounds pretentious — and maybe it is — but looking back I can now see how truly odd those lyrics were. And I realize I don’t, and probably can’t, write like that anymore. Given the Projectors’ output however, these lyrics seemed like something they might “get.”

More amazing, Byrne seems to apologize for being the straight man here:

I still feel that I may have straightened out these DP tunes just a tiny bit, although perhaps it’s not an entirely bad thing: I sense that my participation reveals that there is a lot of method into what — at least for some — appears to be the total madness of the DP’s tunes.

Neat video series: Black Cab Sessions

The gimmick: Indie rockers do acoustic one-takes in the back seat of a moving London cab; the front-seat camera catches random glimpses of the city. Some of the participants: Spoon, Okkervil River, the Kooks, Cold War Kids, Elvis Perkins. Good performances and surprisingly natural, interesting films.

Somewhat similar to the more fancy-schmancy “Concerts à l’Emporter” at La Blogotheque. (The Dirty Projectors episode last summer is a highlight. They do their version of Black Flag’s “Police Story” — “This fucking city is run by pigs/They take the rights away from all the kids” — in Washington Square Park, inches away from cops on patrol.)

2007: The year in live music

In 2007 I saw 135 shows, not counting theater, TV tapings and some other nonmusical events. Here’s the list, with faves in bold itals. The hands-down winner is the Boredoms’ epochal “77BOADRUM” on 7/7. Runner-up: Dirty Projectors on 12/4. Worst is probably Mos Def on 1/17.


1/10: Love Arcade @ Bowery Ballroom
1/10: Cold War Kids @ Pianos
1/17: Mos Def’s Big Band (Lincoln Center American Songbook) @ Allen Room
1/24: Camera Obscura, Essex Green @ Warsaw
2/2: Devendra Banhart, Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver, Adem, CocoRose, Cibelle (David Byrne Perspectives: “Welcome to Dreamland”) @ Carnegie Hall
2/3: Estrella Morente (World Music Institute Flamenco Festival) @ Town Hall
2/4: Haale, Alarm Will Sound, Camille (David Byrne Perspectives: “One Note”) @ Zankel Hall
2/7: Libby Johnson @ Rockwood Music Hall
2/7: Essie Jain, Mike Wexler @ Tonic
2/8: Calexico (Lincoln Center American Songbook) @ Allen Room
2/16: Arcade Fire @ Judson Memorial Church
2/17: Gang Gang Dance @ Studio B
3/19: Chris Daughtry @ Irving Plaza
3/24: Lightning Bolt, Barr, Marnie Stern @ 3rd Ward
3/30: “Festival of India: Colors of Rajasthan,” Gulabi Sapera and Party (World Music Institute) @ Symphony Space
3/30: Toumani Diabaté’s Symmetric Orchestra @ Zankel Hall
3/30: Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (ReTros) @ Luna Lounge
3/31: LCD Soundsystem, planningtorock @ Bowery Ballroom
4/4: Alfred Brendel (Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart) @ Carnegie Hall
4/5: Land of Talk, Mahogany @ Mercury Lounge
4/9: Iggy and the Stooges, Sistas in the Pit @ United Palace Theater
4/10: Klaxons, Bonde do Rôle @ Bowery Ballroom
4/11: Lily Allen, the Bird and the Bee @ Irving Plaza
4/13: The Locust, Daughters, Cattle Decapitation @ Rebel
4/13: Roky Erickson and the Explosives @ Southpaw
4/14: Jandek (w/ Tim Foljahn & Pete Nolan) @ Abrons Arts Center @ Henry Street Settlement
4/14: Cloud Cult, Young Galaxy @ Mercury Lounge
4/30: Lou Reed, Okkervil River @ Highline Ballroom
5/4: Northern State, Boyskout @ Galapagos
5/5: Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio (screening/concert, Tribeca Film Festival) @ Pace University
5/9: Arcade Fire, The National (High Line Festival) @ Radio City Music Hall
5/16: Spanish Harlem Orchestra @ SOB’s
5/17: Ken Nordine (High Line Festival) @ Kitchen
5/19: Ricky Gervais (High Line Festival) @ Theater at Madison Square Garden
5/22: Vinicio Capossela @ Joe’s Pub
5/22: Bebel Gilberto @ Gramercy
5/27: Brand New @ Bowery Ballroom
6/1: Animal Collective, Danielson @ South Street Seaport
6/9: Bee Thousand 33⅓ “microshow” w/ Marc Woodworth (Todd P.) @ Don Pedro’s
6/14: Welcome, Georgie James @ Mercury Lounge
6/14: Jealous Girlfriends, Woggles @ Pianos
6/17: The Whitest Kids U’ Know @ Pianos
6/19: Erik Friedlander @ Marquee
6/19: White Stripes, Citizens Band @ Irving Plaza
6/21: Richard Thompson, Ollabelle @ Celebrate Brooklyn
6/24: Superchunk, Oakley Hall @ McCarren Pool
6/24: Arms and Legs @ Cake Shop
7/7: Boredoms “77BOADRUM” @ Brooklyn Bridge Park
7/11: Deerhunter, Ex Models @ Bowery Ballroom
7/12: The World Without Magic, Ford & Fitzroy @ Pianos
7/13: Menomena, Beat the Devil @ South Street Seaport
7/13: Jealous Girlfriends, Dappled Cities @ Mercury Lounge
7/17: Os Mutantes (Lincoln Center Festival) @ Rose Theater
7/17: Slint @ Webster Hall
7/20: Nick Lowe @ Housing Works Café
7/21: Siren Music Festival: M.I.A. etc. @ Coney Island
7/21: Gogol Bordello @ Irving Plaza
7/25: M.I.A. @ Studio B
7/26: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings @ Castle Clinton
7/27: Melvins @ Troubadour, LA
7/28: Rentals @ Spaceland, LA
8/12: Ted Leo, Thermals @ McCarren Pool
8/21: José González @ Spiegeltent
9/10: Dina Dean @ Rockwood Music Hall
9/10: Live Rock ’n’ Roll Karaoke @ Arlene Grocery
9/13: Ollabelle Taj Mahal people @ Banjo Jim’s
9/19: Nick Lowe, Holmes Brothers @ 7 World Trade Center
10/3: Modern Sky Festival day 2 (New Pants, Supermarket, Peng Tan, others) @ Haidian Park, Beijing
10/3: Joyside, Queen Sea Big Shark, Banana Monkey @ D-22, Beijing
10/4: Modern Sky Festival day 3 (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Carsick Cars, Arms and Legs, ReTros, S.A.W., 641, Submarine, The Young Kids, Tibet, Dead J, others) @ Haidian Park, Beijing
10/4: Notch festival (Kira Kira, Johann Johannsson) @ Yugongyishan, Beijing
10/5: ReTros, Birthday Boyz @ 2Kolegas, Beijing
10/6: Lonely China Day @ 2Kolegas, Beijing
10/7: Lie Tie Qiao (sax/drum improv) @ D-22, Beijing
10/9: Improv night (Yan Jun, etc.) @ 2Kolegas, Beijing
10/11: Birthday Boyz, Last Choice @ 4698, Changsha, China
10/12: Birthday Boyz @ Vox Bar, Wuhan, China
10/17: TK Webb and the Visions, Douglas Armour (CMJ) @ Glasslands Gallery
10/17: Fool’s Gold showcase w/ Cool Kids, Kid Sister, Nick Catchdubs (CMJ) @ Hiro Ballroom
10/18: We Are Wolves (CMJ) @ Fader CMJ space
10/18: Yo Majesty, Elk City (CMJ) @ Pianos
10/19: Yeasayer, Black Kids (CMJ) @ R Bar
10/19: Essie Jain, Leah Siegel (CMJ) @ Living Room
10/19: Sons and Daughters, Maccabees (CMJ) @ Bowery Ballroom
10/20: O’Death, Old Time Relijun (CMJ) @ The Yard, Brooklyn
10/20: White Willams (CMJ) @ Fader CMJ space
10/20: Justice (CMJ) @ Terminal 5
10/26: Brunettes, Wows @ Union Hall
10/27: Gamelan Cudamani @ Skirball Center @NYU
10/27: Bill Charlap Trio (Kenny Washington, Peter Washington) @ Village Vanguard
11/3: The Exit @ BAM (“BAM Takeover”)
11/4: Band of Horses, the Drones, Tyler Ramsey @ Terminal 5
11/12: Pipettes, Nicole Atkins @ Gramercy
11/16: Berlin Philharmonic (Kurtag, Mahler) @ Carnegie Hall
11/23: Black Dice, Sightings, Awesome Color @ Highline Ballroom
11/26: Julie Hardy @ 55 Bar
11/26: John Wolfington and friends: Tim Foljahn, Alexa Wilding @ Living Room (upstairs)
11/26: Antihoot: David L.K. Murphy, etc. @ Sidewalk Café
11/26: Jim Boggia, Jim Campilongo Electric Trio @ Living Room
11/26: Live Rock ’n’ Roll Karaoke @ Arlene Grocery
11/27: Cross Pollination #169: Bess Rogers, That Fleeting World @ Pianos
11/27: Michael Daves @ Rockwood Music Hall
11/28: Joel Frahm Trio (w/ John Ellis not Frahm) @ “The Salon at Arthur’s IP” (a.k.a. Arthur’s Invitations and Prints)
11/28: Tinariwen @ Other Music (in-store)
11/28: Defibulators @ Rodeo Bar
11/29: Dog Day @ Sound Fix Lounge
11/29: Howard Fishman @ Pete’s Candy Store
11/29: Anistar @ Zebulon
12/1: The Clean, Times New Viking, the Mad Scene @ Cake Shop
12/4: Ansel Matthews @ Zinc Bar
12/4: Terry Waldo @ Banjo Jim’s
12/4: Eli Degibri Trio @ Louis 649
12/4: Dirty Projectors, White Williams @ Bowery Ballroom
12/6: Taylor Mali, David L.K. Murphy @ Bowery Poetry Club
12/6: Old Time Jam with Zot’s Dream @ Freddy’s Back Room
12/6: Rachelle Garniez @ Barbès
12/6: Flying Lotus (not seen: El-P) @ Studio B
12/7: Harry Partch’s “Delusion of the Fury” @ Japan Society
12/8: Doc Marshalls @ Hill Country
12/11: Yo La Tengo @ Maxwell’s
12/12: Neil Young @ United Palace Theater
12/19: Trefoil @ St. Bartholomew
12/20: Harlem Blues and Jazz Band @ Trinity Church
12/20: Boys of St. Thomas Choir @ St. Thomas Church
12/21: Ethel etc. @ World Financial Center Winter Garden
12/27: “Roméo et Juliette” @ Metropolitan Opera
12/30: Chuck Berry @ B.B. King’s

---

The year in records.

Best of 2007

ALBUMS

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above. Much has been said about the concept. And it’s brilliant. But what got me was how Dave Longstreth advanced the emerging indie-boys-discovering-Afropop minigenre. He rips up highlife and uses just what he wants — the sunny, melodic dance lines, the manic guitar counterpoint — which is exactly what he does with/to Black Flag and those Stockhausen-esque alien harmonies. Oh, and it kicks ass, too. (Example; Black Flag’s original.)

2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand. This seemed a potential trainwreck when I first learned of it, but it turned out to be a glorious surprise. Luxuriant and masterly, it’s the O Brother, Where Art Thou? of blues, country and rockabilly, with a center of gravity in the 1950s instead of the ’20s.

3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. I gave it a mixed review when it came out because the looser, jammier approach of latter-day Spoon seemed less compelling than the structure-mad minimalism of the Kill the Moonlight era. But I was wrong. This is Britt Daniel in magnificent command of sound and vision, and though it’s less compositionally compressed than before, not a single sound is wasted.

4. Battles, Mirrored. The nuttiest, tightest and most surprisingly danceable math(ish)-rock album of the year.

5. Feist, The Reminder. First impression: Sounds like Feist. Six months later: Pretty much a perfect archetype of what soft-rock can be in the ’00s, tasteful and grown-up but squarely in the indie idiom, not folk. That means its interests extend beyond the acoustic guitar, and the central emotional tone is mature vulnerability, not earnestness.

6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black. It was clear long before her Lohanization that Amy is a star. Back to Black is a broadly conceptualized, flawlessly executed vision of neo-soul, with big, hip-hop-y beats that could be samples were Amy and Mark Ronson — who deserves his share of credit — not in love with real, live sound. But listen again to the suicide note that is “Rehab”: she was fucked up way pre-Perez Hilton.

7. M.I.A., Kala. Actually my biggest disappointment. Ms. Arulpragasam made a very, very good album instead of another freakin’ unbelievable one. Her agitprop also threatens to get boring eventually. But I had the pleasure of interviewing her, and found her very willing to be challenged and debated on politics. A simple egotist/ideologue wouldn’t be.

8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible. Second-biggest letdown, because three years ago they made a supreme statement of optimism and joy at a time when the ruling dogs were the Strokes, Modest Mouse, etc. Neon Bible is their apocalypse album, and it’s excellent. But it feels like 47 minutes in purgatory, which by definition isn’t exactly satisfying.

9. Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing. It’s the best pop record I heard this year. So fuck you.

10. Radiohead, In Rainbows. It’s a bad year when your top 10 includes three disappointments. This is a gorgeous, classic Radiohead album — how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! — but it doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about the band.

THE NEXT 13

The National, Boxer
Black Lips, Good Bad Not Evil
Linda Thompson, Versatile Heart
Beirut, The Flying Club Cup
Ryan Adams, Easy Tiger
Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam
St. Vincent, Marry Me
Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals
Kanye West, Graduation
Neil Young, Chrome Dreams II
White Stripes, Icky Thump
Essie Jain, We Made This Ourselves
Tegan & Sara, The Con

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Arctic Monkeys, Favourite Worst Nightmare
Nicole Atkins, Neptune City
Meg Baird, Dear Companion
Big A Little a, gAame
The Bird and the Bee, s/t
Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
Bonde do Rôle, With Lasers
Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity
Deerhunter, Cryptograms
Dinosaur Jr., Beyond
Julie Doiron, Woke Myself Up
Dolorean, You Can’t Win
Justine Electra, Soft Rock
Tim Fite, Over the Counter Culture
Frames, The Cost
Fratellis, Costello Music
Erik Friedlander, Block Ice & Propane
José González, In Our Nature
Jesca Hoop, Kismet
Jennifer Gentle, The Midnight Room
Jesu, Conqueror
Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future
Lavender Diamond, Imagine Our Love
Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime
LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
Nick Lowe, At My Age
Nellie McKay, Obligatory Villagers
Nina Nastasia & Jim White, You Follow Me
No Age, Weirdo Rippers
Okkervil River, The Strange Names
Josh Ritter, The Historical Conquests Of
Shins, Wincing the Night Away
Elliott Smith, New Moon
Spanish Harlem Orchestra, United We Swing
Mavis Staples, We’ll Never Turn Back
Marnie Stern, In Advance of the Broken Arm
Richard Thompson, Sweet Warrior
Teddy Thompson, Up Front & Low Down
Ween, La Cucaracha
Tinariwen, Aman Iman
KT Tunstall, Drastic Fantastic
David Vandervelde, The Moonstation House Band
Voxtrot, s/t
Rufus Wainwright, Release the Stars
White Williams, Smoke
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

REISSUES

Young Marble Giants, Colossal Youth
Betty Davis, Betty Davis/They Say I’m Different
Pylon, Gyrate

SINGLES

1. Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”
2. Rihanna feat. Jay-Z, “Umbrella”
3. Avril Lavigne, “Girlfriend”
4. Bonde do Rôle, “Gasolina”
5. Lil Mama, “Lip Gloss”
6. Robin Thicke, “Lost Without U”
7. M.I.A., “Boyz”
8. Fratellis, “Chelsea Dagger”
9. Spoon, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”
10. Grinderman, “No Pussy Blues”

HONORARY MENTIONS

Radiohead, “House of Cards”
Kanye West feat. Mos Def, ““Drunk and Hot Girls”
Bruce Springsteen, “Livin’ in the Future” (time travel theory here)

NOPE

Fall Out Boy
Architecture in Helsinki
I’m From Barcelona
Mos Def
Polyphonic Spree
Dean & Britta
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Sage Francis
Dntel

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Keyshia Cole
Rilo Kiley
Bjork

BLANK STARE

Levon Helm (he’s great and everything, but album is terrible, and gushy reviews are inexplicable)

REALLY, REALLY BUMMED OUT THAT I MISSED LIVE

Daft Punk

REALLY, REALLY GLAD I SAW LIVE

Dirty Projectors

TRULY IS THAT GOOD

Feist

SPECIAL CITATION FOR OPENING A PORTAL TO THE BORE-UNIVERSE FOR 77+ MINUTES

Boredoms, 77BOADRUM, Brooklyn, 7/7/07 (I was behind this guy, at position #69)

POOR THING

50 Cent

COOLEST TITLE

Tom Zé, Danç-Êh-Sá

DUMBEST TITLE

Radiohead, In Rainbows

BEST NEW BLOG BAND

Vampire Weekend

MOST OVERRATED NEW BLOG BAND

Black Kids

BEST USE OF ‘WOLF’ BY A CANADIAN INDIE BAND ...

AIDS Wolf

... AND WORST

Sea Wolf (because they’re from L.A.)

MOST PATHETIC KERFUFFLE

Fallout from Sasha Frere-Jones’s misguided essay on the whiteness of indie-rock. David Brooks should never write about music, with the possible exception of political allegories drawn from Marx Brothers musical numbers. As has been noted, Carl Wilson performed an excellent tear-down of Frere-Jones’s piece.

BIGGEST LIE

Live Earth. It had nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with Al Gore’s ego. Ever wonder why the musicians most outspoken about environmental issues — Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Radiohead, U2, even emissions-credit-buying Coldplay — were not involved?

WORST ALBUM OF 2007 (tie)

Prince, Planet Earth. Come on people, it sucks. And let’s all just admit it: he hasn’t done anything worthy since Diamonds and Pearls (’91) and nothing truly great since Lovesexy (’88). He’s awesome in concert and looks good and all, but please.

Jesse Malin, Glitter in the Gutter. Bruce, say it ain’t so.

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The year in live music.