2007 has been a great year for music. There have been albums which have pleased us, thrilled us, delighted us and taken us aback. So many albums worthy of consideration, it was difficult to decide which ones would have to be left out. However, after much deliberation, discussion and hair pulling, we finally decided on a top 10 for 2007 which we all agreed with. This, ladies and gentlemen, is The Guest Room’s 10 best albums of 2007.
10. Radiohead – In Rainbows
How to describe In Rainbows? There are many adjectives that fit the bill – haunting, otherworldly, paranoid and unsettling, to name but a few. However, at its core, this album is quite simply beautiful. In truth, it does not quite match up to the (admittedly outrageously high) standards set by some of the previous releases from Thom and the boys. However, let us not forget that these are the peaks hit by albums that are widely considered to be some of the greatest of all time. It would be churlish to allow the fact that this album fails reach to quite the same heights to obstruct the listening experience, particularly given that there’s been enough of that already, what with the media furore surrounding the controversial new method of release.
But yes, the album. Well, as has already been stated, it is a beautiful collection of songs. Witness ‘Faust Arp’, with sidling strings accompanying Yorke’s delicate, swooning vocals. Yet In Rainbows is also an unashamedly paranoid and claustrophobic piece of music. ‘Bodysnatchers’ features a rumbling bassline underpinning a gently droning rhythm, with Thom warbling out his lines amidst ethereal sound effects, all fading into a skuzzy, grizzly guitar outro. The skipping, off-kilter drumbeat of ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’, accompanied by echoing multi-tracked vocals proves to be a decidedly unnerving listening experience, whilst spacey, string laden epic ‘House Of Cards’ proves that the band are still more than capable of broadening their sonic horizons when they put their minds to it.
Unfortunately the album is let down in places by what feels like half formed arrangements or half-finished songs, a problem that seems to occur more frequently on Part 2. As a result, In Rainbows does fail to reach the giddy heights of years gone by. In spite of this, it is by no means an album to be disregarded or avoided. In a year where far too many bands were willing to sit within their safety zone in order to sell well, this is a forceful reminder that here are a band who are not only willing but also able to expand the boundaries, in terms of both the industry and the music itself. As sonically experimental as ever, as it stands this is an excellent album with a classic buried somewhere just out of sight.
09. Blonde Redhead – 23
Truth be told, this was voted in by 2 members of staff who have yet to submit the review. Slack, i know :-p Nevertheless, its been voted as our 9th best album of the year and as soon as we have something more to tell you about this, we will. Calm down, its on its way.
08. Epic45 – May Your Heart Be The Map
Epic45 – AKA Ben Holton and Rob Glover – are a unique band. Its hard to know where to place them. Indie? Electronic? Ambient? Experimental? All of those apply in part and yet it really doesn’t do them justice. Whatever it is, it works. A few years ago they released Against The Pull Of Autumn, an album that was quite simply astonishing, magnificent and bewitching, capturing the very essence of autumn and a work which will go down as amongst the finest of the decade. This year’s May Your Heart Be The Map was long awaited and doesn’t disappoint. Listening to this LP you are instantly transported to your childhood – or at least the childhood you wish you’d had. Much like Russel Crowe in Gladiator – except younger, less prone to killing people and without the facefuzz – you find yourself walking through fields and forests, the sun high above you, a slight breeze lazily pushing a few cotton white clouds across the sky. So vivid is the imagery evoked by the music that in a less enlightened (but possibly more pleasant) age, one might suspect witchcraft, so enchanting is this record.
May Your Heart Be The Map hits the spot; both as a music lover and as a shameless nostalgic, this record will warm your soul.
07. Grinderman – Grinderman
Essentially a streamlined Bad Seeds, Grinderman sounded exactly like what they were. Gone were the grandiose and darkly poetic songs of the Bad Seeds, gone was the twisted gentleness you come to expect from Nick Cave in recent years. For these songs, Cave wrote using guitars, rather than the piano which is his primary instrument. This resulted in a rawer, more primal sound.
Lyrically, of course, this is still very much the Nick Cave we know and love. Dark, twisted and laced with a sense of humour which brings to mind the the evil genius in Hollywood films. In fact, that is not a bad comparison to draw, because everyone always loves the well spoken, witty villain in films, even if the rest of the film is complete and utter klaxons. So it is with Grinderman – there may be bands there or thereabouts, trying to do something that’s vaguely connected, but Grinderman is just so much better than all of them that you might as well ignore them.
06. Maps – We Can Create
Where to start with this album? Well, of all the albums nominated, it should have been this that emerged victorious in the Mercury Music Prize. The winning album was, of course Myths Of The Near Future by Klaxons and there are a few similarities – as well as key differences – between the two. The key similarity is that both breathed new life into by-gone genres (Rave for Klaxons, Shoegaze (sort of) for Maps) and moved the genre forward. The one key difference is that Maps weren’t shit.
In fact, We Can Create is a stunning album. It calls to mind the early work of Sonic Boom post Spacemen 3, particularly the first 2 Spectrum albums – psychedelic, electronic and experimental, yet underneath it all, a collection of some damn good pop songs. We Can Create is ethereal and dreamlike without ever losing the listener. A highly rewarding listen and the best debut album you’ll have heard this year.
05. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
You have to feel a bit sorry for Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. Because as things are now, they really can’t win. Given the position they currently occupy in the hearts of music listeners everywhere (having pulled off the elusive magic trick that’s been the downfall of so many bands of breaking into the mainstream without alienating the older fans and the underground ‘indie’ scene) there’s only one way they can logically go, and that’s down. But then again, the same thing was said after the phenomenal success of their debut album Funeral, an LP which took the music world by veritable storm. Two years on, and they manage to repeat the trick with album #02, Neon Bible.
The album itself has been criticised in many quarters for being too overblown, too full of it’s own sense of importance and grandeur. A fair criticism, in fact. A prime example would be ‘Intervention’, a song that hurtles along amidst a huge organ melody, whilst Butler cracks out gems such as “Working for the church whilst your family dies” and “Hear the soldier groan and go at it alone”. You can almost the self satisfaction seeping out the pores. But then the question comes, what does it all matter? Who cares if it’s big and overblown and full of itself? Because it sounds FANTASTIC. Who cares if Butler’s lyrics seem patronising beyond the limits of decency? His voice more than compensates, intoning each word as though his life depends on it. Elsewhere, no such problems arise. The title track is positively gentle; – totally relaxed and calm. Again Butler’s vocals are superb, perfectly complimented by the steady, plodding drums and the angelic backing vocals. ‘Keep The Car Running’ is bounding acoustic pop that demonstrates how a vocal melody can truly make a song. However, the album’s masterpiece is ‘No Cars Go’, a re-recording of a track from one of their earlier EPs, with a full string arrangement. Butler and Chassagne’s voices compliment each other perfectly on this song. ‘No Cars Go’ simultaneously delicate and sweeping, both touching and anthemic. It is a love song of truly epic proportions. It represents possibly the high point in the band’s career so far.
Whilst Neon Bible does have several shortcomings (such as the criminal under-use of Régine Chassagne’s vocal talents) these are largely minor issues, and are easily forgotten when listening. The music itself is utterly absorbing – it is on a grander scale, it is more epic than almost anything
else that has been attempted in 2007. And whilst the lack of any major
developments in the sound does raise some questions over the band’s
future, it is easier and perhaps better to simply ignore these, and appreciate the album for what it is. Namely, one of the best pieces of music released this year – stunning.
04. Marsen Jules – Golden
Martin Juhls is one of music’s best kept secrets. He consistently makes beautiful albums, using the art of sampling to create soundscapes of wonderful emotional and atmosphere. Under his krill.minima guise his Nautica album came along just too late to seriously challenge for a place on this list, beautiful though it is. As Marsen Jules he has graced us with his best creation since his marvellous debut Herbstlaub. 7 tracks long, each heading in a different direction after building upon a neo-classical core. Acoustic guitars, electronic pulses, filtering, buffering, the adding of orchestral over and undertones, a hell of a lot of things which I will never understand and an incredible talent for making music that is unashamedly beautiful and emotional. Golden is ambient electronica at its best; delicate, intimate, sublime and it both washes over you and tugs at your very heartstrings.
03. The Shins – Wincing The Night Away
2007 has been an interesting year for music, to say the least. Yet it has been lacking in one or two key areas. Most notably, there have been remarkably few albums worth mentioning that one could describe as ‘bright’, or ‘cheerful’. This has, perhaps, worked in The Shins’ favour, as it has ensured that their latest release, Wincing The Night Away, has stood head and shoulders above the competition this year. The most endearing features here are the album’s depth, and therefore its longevity. On a first visit it would be easy to dismiss this album merely as jangly pop music: good for a few hit singles or as the backing track to a garden party, but nothing really spectacular. However, repeated listens prove that there is more to this album than there may initially appear.
The pivotal track here is Turn On Me (pivotal only because it would be unfair to label any track as ‘best’ on an album so packed with fantastic songs). This song encapsulates many of Wincing The Night Away’s key traits. Heralded by an achingly pretty, wonderfully simple riff, the song is carried along upon a tide of bouncing, punchy drums and dreamlike harmonies. James Mercer’s lyrics are at once absurd and incredibly funny – this contrast is at its starkest here, where the wryly witty: “You can fake it for a while, bite your tongue and smile, like every mother does an ugly child” gives way to the oddly poetic: “But the stars are leaking out like spittle from a cloud, amassed resentment counting ounce and pound”.
Other stand-out tracks include the sublime Australia – a song so laden in symphonies and harmonies as to appear almost silly on the first listen, in spite of a dangerously infectious melody. Once again, however, repeat listens reveal hidden depths, arriving here in the shape of the startlingly dark lyrics apparently concerning the loss of youth and freedom (“You’ll be damned to pining through the windowpanes, you know you’d trade your life for any ordinary Joe’s, so do it now or grow old, your nightmares only need a year or two to unfold”). First single Phantom Limb features a sugar sweet vocal melody, combined with lyrics that can only be described as strange (“They are the fabled lambs of Sunday ham, the EHS norm”).
Following the huge critical success of Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow, The Shins had a very difficult act to follow with Wincing The Night Away. It is a huge testament to James Mercer’s abilities as a songwriter that they manage to pull it off so spectacularly, without sounding in the least bit stale or monotonous. The lyrics and music of this album combine to form a sonic experience somewhat akin to “Mervyn Peake for the ears” – stranger than fiction, larger than life, full of shadows and echoes, never anything less than brilliant. Put some time into Wincing The Night Away. It will be so worth it.
02. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Baby 81
BRMC announced themselves in 2001 in the midst of what the NME at the time called (bless them) the New Rock Revolution, a genre supposedly being led by The Strokes. Indeed, The Strokes were a great figurehead for the NRR, young, stylish, eyecatching and – at that point at any rate – some bloody good songs. Is This It was stylish, it was fun and it was simple. BRMC’s eponymous debut was complex, very rarely fun and not even the local goths would say that they have evr been anything other than completely unstylish. It did, however, have depth, it had feeling, you got the sense thathere was a band making some bloody great music and that they had a lot more where that came from. And so, whilst each subsequent release from Julian and co. was met with great fanfare and even greater disappointment, BRMC have made albums which may not have reached the hights of their debut, but showed that they had enoguh in the tank to not only match it, but surpass it.
Baby 81 is the sound of this promise being fulfilled. It would be easy – and true – to say that it takes all the good points from their previous 3 efforts and leaves anything that’s not up to scratch by the wayside. It has the straightforward rock of Take Them On, On Your Own, the upgraded songwriting from Howl and combines them under the umbrella of dark atmospherics from their debut. This is the sound of a band getting everything just right. It should be difficult to pick a standout track on this album; Berlin, Took Out A Loan, Weapon Of Choice, Lein On Your Dreams, need Some Air, all brilliant songs, each one raising the quality of the album. But all of them are surpassed by American X, an epic number, 9 minutes and 11 seconds long (9:11. coincidence?) that is dark, claustrophobic and utterly enticing. Like all great songs of length, it doesn’t seem that long at all and once its done it leaves you thinking “Wow, what the hell was that?”
Baby 81 is the best thing that BRMC have ever done. Maybe, in time, they’ll surpass even this. But if not, what a fabulous album to have as the best in your back catalogue.
01. The National – Boxer
Boxer is, by unanimous decision, our number 1 album of the year. It is the best record released in the last 12 months and it is so by quite some distance. An even bigger feat, is that it is the best record The National have produced. Those that have heard their previous effort, Alligator, will know just how big an achievement this is.
Boxer is a record which has all the traits which make The National The National. Yet at the same time it is a world away from what they have given us before. Boxer is a much more subdued record. With the exception of first single Mistaken For Strangers there is nothing here which comes close to being a straightforward ‘rock’ song. Driven throughout by Bryan Devendorf’s fantastic drumming (surely second only to BSP’s Woody amongst modern drummers) it is calmer, more introspective, darker and more powerful and it is hauntingly beautiful.
It isn’t an immediate thrill. You can’t expect to just throw it on in the background whilst you’re deciding which t-shirt to wear. Boxer is a rare thing – a record which demands your full attention, demands that you listen to it.
Fake Empire, which opens the album, could very easily define what the entire album is about. It starts of slow, reeling you in, and it build and builds until its magnificence hits you right between the eyes, like a diamond bullet, leaving you stunned and in awe. Give yourself an hour or two alone with Boxer, with no distractions and you’ll find that The National haven’t just made the album of 2007 – they’ve made a masterpiece which will stand the test of time.
Laura Marling’s debut is a startling, if not spectacular, record. She has drawn comparisons with Joni Mitchell and listening to it you also, almost inevitable, you can also hear a similiarity to Beth Orton and – especially on The Captain and the Hourglass – Neko Case, although it is unfair to her to simply compare her to other artists in the same stereotypical demographic. She combines beatiful melodies with lyrics which are worldweary and cynical beyond her years (which is, mainly, what startles). people might complain that New Romantic is not included in the track listing. However, whilst it is the song that first bought her to many people’s attention (mine included), it wouldn’t have fitted in with the style and the flow of the album. This is a very good debut and from here she can launch a wonderful career. 7
I’m not sure really what to say about this record. The man is Nick Cave. The Band are The Bad Seeds. The album is Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!. It is very good. Just what you’d expect, really. In fact, its hard to think of anything this band have done that isn’t good. This latest offering – the first since 2004′s marvellous double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus – sounds more like Bad Seeds side-project Grinderman than classic Bad Seeds, but that is no criticism, just another step in the inevitable evolution of a band. The title sharing lead single is a contemporary take on the story of Lazarus (if you don’t know who he is, shame on you) and really is a great example of the sort of unique song writing which makes Nick Cave so special. It may not be the best thing the Bad Seeds have ever done, but its still streets ahead almost everything else you could care to mention this year. 8
The Weather Clock is the third album proper from Antony Harding, better known to you and I as July Skies. Previous effort The English Cold was a record set in the second world war, and The Weather Clock follows on from that by focusing on life in a post-war Britain. The usual shimmering, etherial, almost dreamy July Skies sound is here and it really does draw you in. Its a record to which you need to set aside time to listen to; so many records you can simply stick on and listen to whilst you are doing thing. With The Weather Clock you need to shut yourself away from the world (prefferably in a room with a pleasant view) press play, lay down on the bed and then just take it all in. 7
The best bit of news this year has just hit the news desks; Spiritualized have announced that their new album will be called Songs in A&E and will be released on the 19th of May in the UK and in Europe, with an American date yet to be confirmed. the track listing is as follows;
Well, here we are, 31 days into 2008 and we have been hit with all of 1 album worth writing about. In fact, not even that many albums not worth writing about. All in all, bar Do You Like Rock Music? theres been less activity on the music scene than in a nun’s drawers. Still, theres some nuggets of news which we can mull over for the meanwhile.
Those of you who have spent any time talking with me about music will know two things about me. Firstly, that I believe Connor McNicholas to be nothing short of the devil incarnate, a man who in an earlier, more enlightened time, would have been hounded down by a mob of peasants carrying pitchforks and setting fire to things along the way. Secondly, you will also know that I love British Sea Power in the same way that Jeremy Clarkson likes saying “Powwweeerrrrr” whilst oversteering round a sharp corner or David Attenborough loves to make nature documentaries. Knowing this, you would understandably believe that maybe, in reviewing the 3rd album from messrs Yan, Hamilton, Wood and Noble, I might be a little bit biased. And, in all honesty, i probably am. But, had this album dissapointed, been of a standard less than i had come to expect, then no-one would have been more dismayed than I.
