2007 Mixtape
Part of the reason I haven’t been writing lately is because I’ve been prepping for an epic 2008 year-in-review kinda post, sorting through the roughly 300 albums I’ve nicked this year and making top album and song lists, among other things.
But before 2008, there was 2007: a year full of great releases. So I thought I’d wander through the dense forest of my iTunes and pick out my favorite songs–not from this year, but from the last one, in order to see what’s held up and what’s faded by the wayside.
The result is a 32 song trip down memory lane. Some of these tracks I’ve talked about before in the Mixtaper column or in other posts, but some, I hope will be a bit fresh. Because of the rather large number, I’ll strive for brevity in my comments on each. Ready? Okay then.
1. American Hearts by A.A. Bondy, from American Hearts
There’s something achingly gorgeous in this relatively simple folk track. Listen to his voice break ever so slightly when he sings the “don’t tread on me” lyric in the chorus. It gives me chills.
2. Coffee by Aesop Rock (ft John Darnielle), from None Shall Pass
The concluding track (excluding the hidden song) on an amazing and intelligent album features two of the best lyricists working today combining their powers. After Aes’s frenetic rapping, John’s ending verse sounds like an old soul sample recovered from a dirty basement. Plus, there’s the zombies.
3. Fiery Crash by Andrew Bird, from Armchair Apocrypha
This track goes down smooth, driven by a pulsing beat and lilting melody. Even as it starts to build up as it moves along, it retains a very relaxed, urbane charm that characterizes Mr. Bird’s best work.
4. Keep the Car Running by Arcade Fire, from Neon Bible
One of the lighter tracks from Canada’s most melodramatic indie rock orchestra. This song rockets along over light, lush backing track as Win Butler shout-sings with his usual emotive intensity. The result is teeming with life, organic and refreshing.
5. The Ballad of Love and Hate by The Avett Brothers, from Emotionalism
Easily the strongest track from the alt-country band, a spare and haunting effort anchored by its strong and emotionally loaded lyric. The beautiful melody, sung with just the right restraint, coupled with the spareness of the arrangement makes the words that much more effective.
6. Wild Mountain Nation by Blitzen Trapper, from Wild Mountain Nation
This song is basically southern rock on acid. It’s got a stomping beat, twanging slide guitar and an appropriately dirty lead guitar, but the whole things sounds messy and fractured in a spectacular and interesting way. I dare you not to tap your foot to this.
7. Flume by Bon Iver, from For Emma, Forever Ago
The album as a whole is characterized by a haunting, wintry feel, and this song captures the best of that atmosphere. The moody acoustic strumming is buried under droning sounds and layered falsetto vocals that give the song a ghostly presence. I can’t find it, but if you can track down his 9/8/08 performance of this song on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, it blew me away.
8. On the Bubble by The Broken West, from I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On
This song practically slaps you in the face with its bright indie-poppiness, right out of the gate. That towering, sugar-sweet riff is only the tip of the iceberg–the handclap beat and bounding guitars support an eager vocal, harmonized in just the right places. It’s like sunshine condensed into two minutes and 40 seconds.
9. Pale Horse by Canon Blue, from Colonies
The song opens with moody backwards riff that’s soon augmented by a hypnotic guitar, etherial piano chording and eventually an electro-backbeat, which kicks up just as the vocal launches into a reverb-soaked chorus. This is music for traveling on trains or walking around in winter–it’s open and chilly, but also inviting.
10. Melody Day by Caribou, from Andorra
There’s something retro about this song, like it’s been brought here from 1967 via time warp, but it’s been dressed in modern clothes. There’s a bedroom-electronic flavour layered under the psychedelic melody, twittering flutes, understated guitar and crashing cymbals. The result is something that’s both alien and familiar in a really peculiar and cool way.
11. Serpentine by Chris Bathgate, from A Cork Tale Wake
The richness of the voice, coupled with the singsong melody is what strikes me the most here. The song appears simple at first listen, but reveals a subtle complexity on each repeat–cellos intone under the gentle piano, just as a violin (or viola maybe) soars above it; it’s easy to not even notice the drums as they come in; the build is really beautifully executed.
12. Saint John by Cold War Kids, from Robbers & Cowards
If one could distill badass into a song, it might sound like this. A jailhouse murder ballad driven by a wicked bass and thundering drums, over which comes a snarling vocal, clearly from the wrong side of the tracks. By the time the honky tonk piano sweeps in, it’s become almost a gospel song in a perverse but awesome way.
13. Going Nowhere by Elliott Smith, from New Moon
Technically this song is at least 10 years old, but it saw its first official release last year and stands as one of the strongest tracks from the articulate, dark world of Elliott’s music. His raw vocal whispers its way through a melancholy melody and over his beautiful guitar, as though he were in the room playing for you, maybe after some drunken party, while your friends are passed out around on the floor.
14. My Moon My Man by Feist, from The Reminder
This was a tough call–the innocent sweetness of “One, Two, Three, Four” or the femme fatale stomp of this track? And it is a stomp; the song is rhythm driven but covered in velvet, especially Leslie’s vocal, wandering through the arrangement like a silk ribbon. It’s dangerous and kinda sexy.
15. Song Among the Pine by Gravenhurst, from The Western Lands
Something about this track has the air of some ancient, pagan hymn. Nick Talbot creates, out of guitar, voice and gentle hums and drones, a snow-covered forest on a crisp sunny day, where mystical things lurk just on the periphery. It’s positively haunting.
16. Your Rocky Spine by Great Lake Swimmers, from Ongiara
Although the album isn’t as strong as their prior two, this banjo-driven love song is one of the band’s better songs. Tony Dekker’s voice is ridiculously beautiful, as usual, and the melody and lyrics embrace you as the song moves forward along its open path with a certain moody sweetness.
17. Small Talk by Immaculate Machine, from Fables
Indie pop, yes, but with a tense flavour to it, created by a tight melody and the interplay between lead violins and guitars over an unrelenting bass. The lyrics reflect this tension, talking of secrets worming their way into a conversation that suddenly turns heavy.
18. Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car by Iron & Wine, from The Shepherd’s Dog
The thing about Sam Beam is that he progresses with each release, becoming slowly more complex and adventurous, while retaining the intimate southern charm that made him famous in the first place. This album, like its opening track, features more playful touches–piano runs, gentle beats, distorted sounds–while still sounding like some old uncle telling you a story at a family reunion picnic. The lightness does the music good, it doesn’t get mired in melodrama, although the lyrics retain an emotive character.
19. Teardrop by Jose Gonzalez, from In Our Nature
As with his cover of The Knife’s “Heartbeats,” Mr. Gonzalez manages to strip this Massive Attack song down to its naked spine, retaining the character of the original while also making it very much his own. The song itself lends itself perfectly to his quiet, echo-laden world–its powerful yet still spare.
20. Pink Light by Laura Veirs, from Saltbreakers
There’s something about that guitar riff that’s just irresistible and something literate and intelligent in the singer/songwriter/occasional Decemberist’s voice. Like a lot of the tracks on this list, this one seems to come from its own kind of mythical world where sails are tattered and winter wracks the bones of memory, all under ringing chimes and over skittering beats.
21. Hatchet by Low, from Drums & Guns
“Groovy” is not a word I would usually use to describe the slowcore Minnesotans of Low, but this track definitely qualifies as that. With their usual awesome male/female harmonies, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker intone a wry lyric over a groovy beat and skeletal guitar riff, making this short song one of the most interesting in their catalogue.
22. 99% of Us is Failure by Matthew Good, from Hospital Music
When an album has a name like that, you’ve got to know you’re in for something like this, but this song is still a sucker-punch to the gut. There are a lot of songs about watching a loved one die, but the devil is in the details here; Good’s voice is expressive without being over the top, the lyrics are smart enough to have some pathos and the melody doesn’t hurt the picture, soaring over the ’90s alt-rock callback instrumentation.
23. Fake Empire by The National, from Boxer
There’s a grace to this song. Part of it comes from Matt Berninger’s low voice singing the almost detached melody. Part of it is the unobtrusive beat, driving under the pianos that grow stronger as the song builds. By the time the horn sounds come in, the track has become something else completely–a slice of smooth, modern pop/rock.
24. Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe by Okkervil River, from The Stage Names
This was a tough one–five of the nine songs on the album were under consideration for this list, but in the end, I had to pick this. The metaphor-dripping lyrics, the hurling vocal of Will Sheff, the anthemic nature of the instruments that support him–it’s all there. There’s a reason Okkervil River are one of my favorite bands and this is a great example of it.
25. Overture by Patrick Wolf, from The Magic Position
Now THAT is a violin riff. There’s something suitably epic about this affair; Mr. Wolf’s voice is laden with bravado, the beat pulses and thunders, the strings sweep in grand movements, etc. The contrast of electronic and acoustic instruments creates a cool effect also. Like Sam Beam, Patrick gets better with each successive release, and if this is this good, his next album better be damn well amazing.
26. Romantic Type by Pigeon Detectives, from Wait for Me
There is something appealing about straight-ahead, no frills rock ‘n’ roll and this song delivers on that front. It sounds in kind with the whole Franz Ferdinand-ish, “let’s draw from the late ’70s” thing, chugging forward there 2.5 minutes of crunchy guitars and a frenetic rhythm section, complete with the slowdown on the post-chorus. But it does it all really well, and that’s the key here.
27. House of Cards by Radiohead, from In Rainbows
Amidst all the tales of isolation, geopolitical statements and dystopian ruminations, Radiohead rarely get to write a straight love song, but here they’ve done it. Sort of–there is a certain doom-laden mood here, but it wouldn’t be Radiohead if there wasn’t. Everybody on the planet gushes about Radiohead, so I don’t have to explain why this song is awesome, really.
28. Rehab by Rihanna, from Good Girl Gone Bad
Say what you will, this chick can sing. Although not quite as cool as “Disturbia” (which is ineligible as it came out on the 2008 special edition of the album), there is something really appealing about this. Her voice isn’t being showy here, even though she’s capable of it, and the backing track feature a sweet, whirling piano. Proof that there is hope in the mainstream pop/R&B arena.
29. Overpowered by Roisin Murphy, from Overpowered
Formerly half of the dance pop band Moloko, Ms. Murphy creates the sound of robot sex on this track. It’s danceable, driven by a skittering low pad and plucking stabs over the top of a cybernetic vocal. Yet when she launches into the chorus, it’s with a “come hither” intonation that’s made more startling by the style of the verses. Great stuff.
30. Your Last Chariot by Scout Niblett, from This Fool Can Die Now
One of the shorter songs on Ms. Niblett’s best album since her 2001 debut, its a great showcase for her wailing vocal (see also: “Peoria Lunchbox Blues” by Songs:Ohia). The guitar, like the rest of the song around it, has a dirty, rural feel to it, not unlike ’90s Cat Power (an overused but apt comparison). There’s something dangerous about the affair as she repeats “comin’ to get ya…”
31. Sometimes by Siobhan Donaghy, from Ghosts
A standout track on one of the best pop albums of this century, the former Sugababe flexes her creative muscles, moving down a track that marries her teenybopper roots with Kate Bush-ish eccentricity. Listen to that high, spiraling vocal or the weird noises that dance in and out of the mix. The effect is to turn a simple bubblegum track into something weirdly spectacular.
32. Bouncing Off Clouds by Tori Amos, from American Doll Posse
Proving herself still vital, nearly 20 years after her first album and through a career marked by indulgent quirkiness, Tori put out one of the catchiest songs I can think of in this one. The melody is strong, the backing track isn’t showy but frames the vocal wonderfully, the lyrics… well, they’re Tori, but they’re not over the top. This manages to be both adult contemporary and appealing/interesting, a combination not easily achieved.
So that’s that list. 2007 was definitely a good year. I’m now off, ready to dive back into this year’s offerings–an even more diverse and intriguing set.
