2nd Annual Album of the Year Thread

Cafe Society
1

Going through my records I see I started a thread with the same premise last year, so what the hell. Here’s a thread to pimp your Album of the Year. Here are my votes:

The Fratellis - Costello Music. Flathead was a justifiable hit, but I can’t get over just how solid this album is. In a world with quick hits, commercials and starbucks taking on music distribution roles, it is surprising to see an album this good from top to bottom.

Eastern Conference Champions - Ameritown. The Radiohead comparisons are unavoidable and deserved, but this is still a great album, and “Hollywood…” might very well be my favorite song of the year.

Bishop Allen - The Broken String. One of my favorite new bands, these guys are amazingly consistent - they almost never write a bad song. The highlight of this album is a song called “Rain.”

Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam. I find earlier efforts from this band a little too out there, but so far this album is the most interesting album I have heard in recent years.

Upset of the year: Modest Mouse released an album that DIDN’T make my top list. This band has been so consistantly amazing, they amaze me now when they don’t amaze me…

2

Coheed and Cambria - No World for Tomorrow. It’s sort of “Forward to the Past” in that it is a combination of mature prog-rock with some frail emo-singing of their Second stage Turbine Blade. It’s not produced hard-hitting enough for the subject matter, unlike In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3, but you can still sense the power and urgency through the singing alone. And the wrap-up section of the story is possibly the best I have ever seen in a long-form linear art form, novels and symphonies included, in the last song “On the Brink,” which contains the best Floydian guitar this side of Comfortably Numb.

Anberlin - Cities. I’m sort of conflicted about my like for the band, because they seem to be record executive’s wet dream in that they represent a mash-up of all the pop-punk cliches of the past 10 years. But they do it better than most of the examplars of the other styles, for instance the medium-speed piano of Something Corporate. And Godspeed certainly is the rockingest pop-punk song of the past 5 year, which is saying a lot, even though my previous conflict is in evidence even in this song because they have exactly two “Oi! Oi!” moments in the song in which to pump ones fist exactly as if some record producer said “I think it needs to be 10% more Oi!”
But what I learned most from Cities, as if I didn’t learn it already from A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out by Panic!, is that as long as your emo-singing is good enough I will like your music, because even in the parts where Anberlin fails to deliver keepin-it-real-wise, or less often, content-wise, they make up for by their delivery.

3

And I guess I will include an upset as well, although it and Traffic and Weather by Fountains of Wayne are the only other 2007 albums I bought this year: Heresy and the Hotel Choir by Maritime. While it certainly has a couple good songs, and the rest is listenable as background music, I was expecting more of their extremely-hooky album We, the Vehicles, instead of what it is, which is a disappointingly only slightly-more-hooky version of their mediocre Glass Floor, and to make it worse there was a bunch of senseless feedback, which in places is, I’d have to admit, better than the slightly twee Glass Floor offerings.

The worst thing about this album is I bought it in order to know the songs for their concert this Wednesday, and they will no doubt be playing mostly those songs rather than the ones from We the Vehicles. I am debating mouthing the words to Dan and Davey’s previous sound-alike work (and one of the top 5 songs ever created) “Best Looking Boys” when they play “Be Unhappy” and see if they mess up or notice I am singing another song (it’s in a SMALL club!), but I don’t want to punish them for singing one of the only good songs from that album (not to mention the dickishness even if I only mouth the words.)

4

Bran Van 3000-* Rose* This album wasn’t worth their long exile/hiatus, but it’s still really good.

Annie Lennox -Songs of Mass Destruction She’s still got it.

Imani Coppola-The Black and White Album This is the album that’s engrained and entwined with Summer 2007 with me. Especially the track “Keys 2 Your Ass”.

Josh Rouse-Country Mouse, City House This man can do no wrong.

Tim Minchin- So RockOK, I think this is technically 2006, but I didn’t discover it til '07 as it’s not readily available in the states. Hillarious and talented.

5

[QUOTE=Ludovic]
…
The worst thing about this album is I bought it in order to know the songs for their concert this Wednesday, and they will no doubt be playing mostly those songs rather than the ones from We the Vehicles. I am debating mouthing the words to Dan and Davey’s previous sound-alike work (and one of the top 5 songs ever created) “Best Looking Boys” when they play “Be Unhappy” and see if they mess up or notice I am singing another song (it’s in a SMALL club!), but I don’t want to punish them for singing one of the only good songs from that album (not to mention the dickishness even if I only mouth the words.)
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that would be considered by many to be a colossal dick move. Just as say, going to a Make Believe show and screaming about kitty cats. They share tempo and general strong structure, but “Best Looking Boys” has an interesting bassline, nice instrumental breaks, more dramatic vocals, none of that annoying ska upstroke nonsense, and backing vocals, compared to that strange choirboy thing in “Be Unhappy.”

Bishop Allen would probably break the top 50, but Charm School was a lot better. In many cases, I liked the EP versions of the songs found on Broken String way more satisfying. Live, though, they were amazing. That fucker duck walked!

I’m still compelling my list, but my contenders are:

Panda Bear, Good Life, Taken by Trees, Jens Lekman, Deadly Syndromes, Okkervil River, Menomena, Vampire Weekend (well, EP? I don’t know), Arboretum, Arcade Fire, Benjy Ferree, Bat for Lashes… whatever, doesn’t matter, I know a whole lot of modern bands.

I’ll through Panda Bear - Person Pitch in the mix for being so different than what is out there.

6

Three words:

Sky Blue Sky

Now, I loved Wilco’s A Ghost is Born and so I had absurdly high expectations for Sky Blue Sky. Perhaps even “impossible to meet” expectations. But that album met each and every one, and then some. It is brilliant and gorgeous.

7

This thread gives me a little bit of faith in people’s musical tastes.
I just about gave up on humanity after watching the completely dreadful AMAs last night.
They’d have you think that the only people who released albums this past year were Carrie Underpants and Justin Timberlake and that Beyonce is somehow now an American legend. (insert puking emoticon here)

8

[QUOTE=Hampshire]
This thread gives me a little bit of faith in people’s musical tastes.
I just about gave up on humanity after watching the completely dreadful AMAs last night.
They’d have you think that the only people who released albums this past year were Carrie Underpants and Justin Timberlake and that Beyonce is somehow now an American legend. (insert puking emoticon here)
[/QUOTE]

Plug Awards

(Oh, yea. It isn’t perfect, it is more of the popstars of the indie world. That’s to be expected.)

9

I’m certainly not qualified to name an ‘Album of the Year,’ (especially as I haven’t had a lot of petty cash this year to buy a lot of the music that I’m interested in) but the album I have enjoyed most is Random Spirit Lover by Sunset Rubdown.

However, I haven’t heard all of Aesop Rock’s newest album…

10

I’ll offer Steve Earle’s Washington Square Serenade. Damn but I can’t get that thing out of my CD player.

11

I second The Fratelli’s Costello Music. Most solid album I’ve heard in a while; not a song on it that I’d skip.

12

[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl]
Three words:

Sky Blue Sky

Now, I loved Wilco’s A Ghost is Born and so I had absurdly high expectations for Sky Blue Sky. Perhaps even “impossible to meet” expectations. But that album met each and every one, and then some. It is brilliant and gorgeous.
[/QUOTE]

Seconded.

I came here to add this album to the list. It’s truly great.

13

Gotta put in a good word for Nick Lowe’s “At My Age”.

14

First of all, no one should be allowed to come up with a Best of the Year list until January 15th at the earliest. There is still plenty of music to be released and listened to in 2007.

However, my best of the year SO FAR includes Band of Horses, The New Pornographers, Dizzee Rascal, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, and the National. I’m also really digging the new Octopus Project album, but I’ve only listened all the way through once so far.

15

I don’t buy CDs like I used to, but some of the new albums I’ve enjoyed this year are:

Bitter:Sweet - The Mating Game (super-sexy, loungey trip-hop is back, and I love it!)
Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight (not their best, but still a solid effort, and they were awesome live, touring in support of it.)
New Pornographers - Challengers

Were Amy Winehouse’s *Back To Black * and Lily Allen’s *Alright, Still * this year, or last? Because I am still enjoying the hell out of both of those.

16

[QUOTE=HowieReynolds]
First of all, no one should be allowed to come up with a Best of the Year list until January 15th at the earliest. There is still plenty of music to be released and listened to in 2007.
[/QUOTE]
A fair point, which caused my favorite album of 2006 to go unmentioned so I’ll add it here:

Califone - Roots & Crowns. An amazingly textured, beautiful album that is consistantly interesting and maybe my favorite album of the last 5 years. I just picked up tickets to see them open for Iron & Wine at the Paramount in Oakland, I couldn’t be more excited!

17

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Tegan and Sara - The Con
Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs

18

Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala
The National, Boxer
Lily Allen, Alright, Still (came out in the US this year, anyway)
Peter Bjorn and John, Writer’s Block (ditto)
Okkervil River, The Stage Names
Iron and Wine, The Shepherd’s Dog
Radiohead, In Rainbows

This year has had a lot of great songs on OK albums. These are the ones I can think of that are really solid throughout.

19

Richard Leo Johnson & Gregg Bendian: Who Knew Charlie Shoe?

Possibly even better sequel to Johnson’s fantastic The Legend of Vernon McAlister. Mesmerizing, low-key blend of bluegrass, psychedelia, prog-rock, free jazz, and backwoods weirdness.