February 14, 2008
The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2007 Edition.
So yes, this list is awfully late. And it's rather odd, because the two bands I probably listened to most this year -- mostly because I did a massive, expensive-at-import-prices excavation of their discographies -- don't show up on this list. They happen to be two wonderful Japanese bands, Spangle call Lilli line (here's their profile on keikaku.net) and chatmonchy. I suspect this is because both may be best appreciated in terms of some amazing singles, some of which have been featured on this blog before). (Come to think of it, my favorite album of the year is also of Japanese provenance.)
And at the end of this year -- especially since I was so busy in December and January -- I found myself in the depressing position of being part of a weary chorus, led by Pitchfork and the late lamented Stylus and the Village Voice and every other music blogger out there, all trumpeting the praises of the same albums repeatedly and all swooning over "All My Friends". So did I.
Nonetheless, I'm a little reluctant to add to the verbiage, so I broke from tradition and did the next best lazy-ass thing. For a few obvious choices, I just took reviews from the usual places (actually, just the first page of reviews on Google or Metacritic), pasted the text into online software, and generated a word-frequency count. (This exercise would have been a little more productive if I had added more reviews, but again: too lazy.) The results are below, excepting articles and words like "drums" or "guitar", or song titles. And hey, it seems to work.
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And now, the best music I heard all year, in alphabetical order:
1. Battles, Mirrored (2007)
6 METAL, 5 JAZZ, 5 WORK, 5 PLAY, 5 SICK, 4 TECHNOLOGY, 4 DANCE, 4 MEN, 3 MATH, 3 ASTOUNDING, 3 AVANT, 3 ELECTRONICS, 3 TOGETHER, 2 HAMMERS, 2 ECSTATIC, 2 FUCK, 2 BOOM, 2 BIG, 2 JUMBLE, 2 VIRTUOSITY, 2 TECHNICAL, 2 PROFICIENCY, 2 LOOPS, 2 THRILLING, 2 BRILLIANT, 2 MACHINE, 2 ROBOT, 2 SKILLS, 2 SYMPHONIC, 2 PROG, 2 PROCESSED, 2 COLLECTIVE, 2 GLORIOUS
Amazon link.
Video for "Atlas" on YouTube.
Official website.
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2. Chillitees, Extra Rice (2006)
I don't think I'm the right audience for this album, which seems crafted as background music for making out at 2:30 in the morning with some hottie in your apartment after the bars have closed and the prospect of a snack at Goodah! isn't as appealing, as of course it shouldn't be, as a possible roll in the hay. But that's what Extra Rice sounds like: a polished slice of Pinoy after-club chill, with keyboards that wouldn't be out of place on an early-70s CTI album, and lyrics just lovingly drenched with post-coital afterglow. "Ikaw ang paglunas sa aking pangungulila," Uela Basco sings the morning after to a lover in bed who's not entirely hers to keep, if you know what I mean. Either way, it's consummately performed and produced, and, particularly for the Philippines, just sounds deliciously illicit.
Amazon link.
Video for "Sama Na" on YouTube.
Official website.
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3. Anna Järvinen, Jag fick feeling (2007)
It's not easy to write about song-based pop albums when one has no notion of what the lyrics are about. In this case, I'd like to think it's about love. Anna Järvinen used to be one of the lead singers for the band Granada -- pretty music, certainly, but nothing compared to the pristine beauty of her debut album, Jag fick feeling.
But I'll tell you about the songs anyway. It's hard to pick a favorite, and why: there's the torch balladry of "Nedgångslåten", complete with a forlorn whistled riff; the unpredictable flowing verse structure of "Götgatan"; the unashamed "la la la" ending of "PS, Tjörn", lighter than air; a flute intro to the lovely "Svensktalande bättre folk", which feels like a Roger Nichols - Paul Williams track cut for A&M (and I mean that with very high praise).
It's not easy to place a finger on the musical antecedents of this strummed folk-pop -- that's Dungen as her backing band, by the way -- though the inevitable comparisons are to Nina Persson back in the pre-Life days, though not as twee. (If I had to pick a reference point on the vocal-creaminess spectrum: Harriet Wheeler? Bic Runga? Though stylistically they're not even the same.)
Whatever it all means, it's one of my favorite albums of the year. Listening to it the first time, I was looking out my window at the orange leaves falling to the ground and it felt like a lonely love letter from Sweden had just arrived in the mail.
Amazon link.
Video for "Götgatan" on YouTube.
MySpace page.
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4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver (2007)
8 DANCE, 8 PUNK, 7 EMOTIONAL, 4 ELECTRO, 4 DISCO, 4 ACID, 4 SONGWRITING, 4 TEENAGER, 3 RHYTHM, 3 OBSESSIVE, 3 DEPTH, 3 FUNK, 3 MELODIC, 3 TECHNO, 3 GROOVE, 2 CLUB, 2 FUNKY, 2 INFECTIOUS, 2 DETROIT, 2 KRAUTROCK, 2 HIPSTER, 2 EPIPHANIES, 2 LOSS, 2 REMINISCENCE, 2 REGRET
Amazon link.
Video for "All My Friends" on YouTube.
Official website.
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5. Midlake, The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)
7 TIME, 7 TEXAS, 6 YOUNG, 6 ART, 4 LOVE, 3 OLD, 3 CONCEPT, 3 LIFE, 3 HARMONIES, 3 MAC, 3 SEVENTIES, 3 EARLY, 3 STORY, 2 FOREST, 2 ACOUSTIC, 2 MEANINGFUL, 2 CLEAR, 2 PASTORAL, 2 FM, 2 VILLAGE, 2 FLEETWOOD, 2 RETROSPECT, 2 MOODY
Amazon link.
Video for "Roscoe" on YouTube.
Official website.
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6. MONO & World's End Girlfriend, Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain (2006)
(Reposted from an earlier entry over a year ago, in January.)
A five-part chamber music suite for string quartet and post-rock band. A collaboration between Japanese composer Katsuhiko Maeda and the thunderous Tokyo quartet that is MONO, the album is surely going to be one of my favorites of the year (and it's only January!).
Doubtless a lot of music fans more knowledgeable than I would point to music from a different tradition -- say, Shostakovich, Pärt, or Gorecki -- as more complex, more profoundly moving. But the difference is that MONO rocks: the moment in "Part Three" when MONO's Mogwai-influenced wall of guitar comes crashing down on the orchestra is a cathartic sonic event, only made more poignant by the calm resignation of the finale.
It's hard to describe the widescreen sorrow at the core of this music. It's something as mundane as the inherent loneliness of automobiles stranded on the freeway at sunset. But the ineffable grandeur it evokes is not just exit music for a film, it's Exit Music for real: ruined cities, a threnody for the broken earth, the dying sun's last defiant flare before the beginning of a cold, dead universe. Or as C.K. Williams puts it in his poem "Light," "…everything ends, / world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away / like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain."
Amazon link.
Official MONO website.
MySpace page for World's End Girlfriend.
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7. The National, Boxer (2007)
5 BARITONE, 5 SUBTLE, 4 GROWER, 4 BRILLIANT, 3 SPACE, 3 IMAGERY, 3 MOOD, 3 POWERFUL, 2 PRETTY, 2 AMERICAN, 2 DRAMATIC, 2 METAPHOR, 2 BEAUTIFUL, 2 DENSE, 2 RESTRAINT, 2 NIGHT, 2 PERSONAL, 2 JOURNEY, 2 DIFFICULT, 2 ACCLAIM, 2 MASTERPIECE, 2 MODERN, 2 BED, 2 PUNCH, 2 MELANCHOLY, 2 LEONARD, 2 COHEN
Amazon link.
Video for "Mistaken for Strangers" on Youtube.
Official website.
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8. Kanye West, Graduation (2007)
9 HIMSELF, 8 LIFE, 7 GREAT, 5 HOT, 5 SOUL, 4 ELECTRONIC, 3 HOOKS, 3 CHICKS, 3 CELEB, 3 CONSISTENT, 3 SUMMER, 3 PRIDE, 2 ELECTRO, 2 TIGHT, 2 COOL, 2 PLEASURE, 2 CELEBRATORY, 2 PERSONAL, 2 SUBSTANTIAL, 2 FAMILIAR, 2 CARTOON, 2 LEGEND, 2 DAMN, 2 STATUS, 2 LOVE, 2 PUBLIC, 2 EGO, 2 ROCKING, 2 BOASTS, 2 JEWELRY, 2 VUITTON
Amazon link.
Video for "The Good Life" on YouTube.
Official website.
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The 2006 list, plus the runners-up.
The 2005 list, plus the runners-up.
The 2004 list.
The 2003 list.
The 2002 list.
The 2001 list.
Posted by the wily filipino at February 14, 2008 12:16 AM