GOD & A BOTTLE

…kinda. i was asked to assemble a 2007 mixtape for Idolator’s year-end poll. instead of compiling my favorite songs of the year, i used it as an excuse to craft a soundtrack for an imaginary rob schneider movie. you can read the results here. The setup, to get you started, is after the jump.

Read more »

Well, clearly I didn’t do such a good job keeping that promise.

Read more »

one of my resolutions for the new year was to update this site more regularly. I will, of course, completely welch on this resolution come March, but let’s try to keep the illusion going while we can.

Read more »

1. M.I.A., Kala
The most thrilling musical moment in 2007 comes fifty-six seconds into “Paper Planes,” at the precise moment when Maya Arulpragasam, with a barrage of gunshots, transforms Wreckx-N-Effect’s ode to the rump into an anarchist’s cheat sheet. If the second record from M.I.A. teaches us anything, it’s that life is short and getting shorter, the casualty of a culture accelerating so quickly we’ll all be atomized by this time next year. So, then, let’s not mince words: Kala is a masterpiece, an astonishing work of vision and idea whose scale and ambition only looms larger with every half-assed platter released in its wake. No other pop record released this year was so relentlessly forward-thinking, so consumed with consumption and so able to wring the maximum impact out of musical juxtaposition. Kala is the perfect reflection of the way culture happened in 2007, with Banghra and Baghdad and Biggie Smalls all ramming up against each other over and over, a few hyperactive particles in the steadily swelling data-smog. On the Internet, these formerly far-flung universes are separated by a single click — why should pop records be any different? But for all its global acumen, never descends to the realm of polemic. M.I.A. remains – firmly, proudly – a documentarian, making more of her points with her choice of sample than with her turn of phrase. Kala is a collage made from scraps of the daily papers, each of them a different typeset in a different language, all of them reporting the same bad news.
M.I.A., “World Town”
M.I.A., “The Turn”
M.I.A., “Paper Planes”

4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
No one wants to age in New York City; the constant ache of places to go and things to do never subsides, it just gets more pulsing and pronounced. And so here now for all the old fools who refuse to cave to biology and physics is the perfect soundtrack, cobbled together from pieces of 20 year-old records (Bowie, New Order and Can, among others, make cameos), shot through with wiseass humor and driven by a stubborn refusal to act your age. “All My Friends” is the album’s ethos, and the secret mantra of everyone in the 30+ age bracket: “You spent the first five years trying to get with the plan/ and the next five years trying to be with your friends again.” Sound of Silver is the soundtrack for both sides of that equation.
LCD Soundsystem, “North American Scum”
LCD Soundsystem, “New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down”

3. Miranda Lambert, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Miranda Lambert opens her second record with a shotgun on her lap, ready to take the head clean off her lousy, abusive, ex-con husband. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is all sinning and grinning from there, Lambert looking for liquor in a dry town and gleefully inverting the Stones’ “Under My Thumb” to suit her own wicked purposes. Neither a snoozed-out alt-country oat-fest nor a slippery, silvery Shaniascraper, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend instead nimbly walks the middle-ground; it’s a crackling record, the work of an unsinkable spirit whose just now figuring out how far ahead in the game she is.
Miranda Lambert, “Guilty in Here”
Miranda Lambert, “Desperation”

2. The National, Boxer
The National have, knowingly or otherwise, been writing the story of my life for the last seven years ago. We’ve been keeping pace like two runners, hitting the same marks at the same time, nodding back and forth at each other from across the track. When someone asks me what kind of year I had in 2007, I’m just going to hand them Boxer. Like the LCD, it’s a record about realizing you’re getting too old to stumble around drunkenly in the “silvery silvery Citibank lights,” but it’s also a record about accepting that, about finding consolation and companionship, about finally figuring out how to grow old gracefully. Matt Berninger is one of the best lyricists working, and his ability to express an emotion without saying it outright is startling (and doesn’t get recognized enough). Boxer was the soundtrack to my dumb, exhausting, depressing, exhilarating 2007, a record that seemed to understand me a little more every time I listened to it (though I could have used the line “make up something to believe in your heart of hearts/ so you have something to wear on your sleeve of sleeves” about 15 years ago). In my review of this record for eMusic I called it “a tiny, subtle diamond in a field of ten-foot neon exclamation points”; if I could write that sentence again, I might add a clause emphasizing the staggering amount that diamond is worth.
The National, “Fake Empire”
The National, “Apartment Story”

7. Wu-Tang Clan, 8 Diagrams
Proof positive that Ghostface and Raekwon shouldn’t be music critics: 8 Diagrams is a dark, dazzling masterpiece, a record that requires you to push against it before it starts giving up any of its secrets. The Wu-Tang clan preside over a grimy, crumbling Gotham, a place with long shadows in its alleys and murder in its bars. The record is relentlessly subdued: most songs have just traces of sound, depending on the 8 surviving Wu members to provide drive and animus. Raekwon was looking for a ‘punch you in the face record,’ but that would be missing the point. The new Wu realizes that the true way to get the upper hand is to sneak up from behind. That’s what 8 Diagrams does, over and over again.
Wu-Tang Clan, “Gun Will Go”

6. Jay-Z, American Gangster
The way forward is backward: after a non-starter grownup record that found Jay’s rhymes limp and his spirit weak Hova returns to the streets, re-telling the story of youth with purpose and conviction. It’s the kind of record that should only exist on vinyl, a long-form masterpiece full of hazy ’70s soul and astonishing lyric construction. Jay’s told the same stories hundreds of times, but here he’s haunted by conscience; the moment near the album’s end when it all falls apart is his masterstroke: “Now you’re tumbling, it’s humbling/ you’re falling, you’re mumbling/ under your breath, like you knew this day was coming/ …come January it gets cold/ when the letters start to slow/ and your commissary’s low/ and your lawyer’s screaming ‘appeal’/ only thinking about the bill/ and your chances are nil/ damn, gravity’s ill.”
Jay-Z, “American Dreamin’”

5. My Teenage Stride, Ears Like Golden Bats
So New York’s best & brightest have their eyes set on Dunedin: this year’s happiest surprise channels straight-up Flying Nun jangle-pop and turns it inside out, using it to soundtrack songs about sad sacks stuck in turnaround with bum luck and now way out. This one is all hooks and oblique lyrics, with the best rewrite of “Pink Frost” thrown in for good measure. You can spend days trying to uncork what it is Jed Smith is driving at, or you can board the Black Diamond Express and ride it to the end of the line with him. I heartily endorse the latter option.
My Teenage Stride, “To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge”

10. The Good, the Bad & the Queen, The Good, the Bad & the Queen
Damon Albarn’s ode to a crumbling London had resonance far beyond his homeland: his portrait of citizens cynical from too many bills, too many bombs and too little hope cast long shadows across 2007, seeming just as sadly relevant at the year’s end as it was when it was released at its beginning. Everything that initially seemed wrong with this record — the lack of percussion, the somber mood, the weary singing — were eventually what made it perfect. GBQ’s cityscape is full of burned-out lights and broken windows, crumbling storefronts, running rivers of garbage and the insistent squeaking of rats. It’s a world so sucked up in destruction its citizens don’t realize their making casualties of themselves. Sound like any place you know?
The Good, the Bad & the Queen, “History Song”

9. Gallows, Orchestra of Wolves
There is nowhere to catch your breath on Orchestra of Wolves. British punk band Gallows just keeps racing around in circles, vocalist Frank Carter gobbing out lyrics clumps at a time. Everything on here sounds like a race to the grave: the way the riffs run up and then collapse, the way the drums twitch and hammer, the way Carter’s voice splinters into fragments by the time each song ends. Wolves‘ chief asset is its ability to maintain this manic pace for its duration, each song searing like a branding iron on wet flesh. But look closer and marvel at the architecture: each song is assembled from distinct movements, each gust in the maelstrom perfectly, deliberately placed. Gallows is the sound of order under chaos, the confluence of maddening gusts that miraculously produces the perfect storm
Gallows, “Come Friendly Bombs”

8. Paramore, Riot!
Back in my day, we bought our Christian rock from rickety old bookstores, searching for Mike Knott amidst racks of Dobson propaganda and Thief in the Night videotapes. Now America’s young believers get to hear their heroes on the honest-to-God radio and even watch them on MTV. Any why not? Paramore’s Riot! was a straight shot of giddy power punk, unabashedly spit-shined and more-than-ready for prime time. Hayley Williams is Joan Jett as played by Pippi Longstocking, a dizzying spitfire with a 40-watt voice and enough charisma to inspire 950,000 teenage girls to follow her example. Riot! is a searing reminder of the manifold pleasures of pop music done right. Why should the devil have all the good music, indeed.
Paramore, “Born for This”

what does it mean that it took me so long to compile my list? That there was nothing that tripped the switches for me? That I felt over- and underwhelmed at once? That I just have trouble making decisions? Maybe come combination of all of these. In any case, I put off doing this forever, so let’s do it all in one terrific rush. Here comes 15 - 11 (because my company holiday party is tomorrow night, and I can guarantee I won’t be posting a goddamned thing after that), with the rest to follow over the next few days.

15. Prodigy, Return of the Mac
So here’s what it took to get a decent Mobb Deep album: call it a mixtape. One half of one of NYC’s greatest unleashes a surprisingly fiery and unapologetically old-school hip-hop record full of grainy soul samples and gritty, violent rhymes. “Mac 10 Handle” is its thumping heart of darkness, a harrowing descent into madness and paranoia, a long night drive down a dark neighborhood, gun in hand, eyes peeled.
Prodigy, “Stuck on You”

14. Burial, Untrue
Here’s nighttime in 2007, dank and dark and threatening, full of weird shadows and odd shapes. Burial may end up being this year’s Roni Size, but Untrue at least ensures them a full 10 months of timeliness. Released in the year’s final weeks, the record is a great, gurgling enigma, layers of misty synths and disembodied vocals, not so much a pop album as a paranormal experience.
Burial, “Archangel”

13. Against Me! New Wave
Go figure that it took a one-time anarchist folk band to write the best Hold Steady song of 2007. Buoyed by the power of “Thrash Unreal,” A song I listened to more than any other in this weird, mixed-up year, Against Me!s major-label (read: sellout) debut took on ugly Americanism, lazy songwriting and left-wing futility in one angry, splintering clusterbomb. “White People for Peace” was its secret weapon, a two-fisted anti-war anthem that took on fuckwit Republicans and the fuckwit Democrats who use toothless means to stop them. “Protest songs! In response to military aggression!” howled Tom Gabel over and over and over. It wasn’t too tough to hear the disgust seeping through.
Against Me! “Thrash Unreal”

12. Saigon, Return of tha Yardfather
December ‘06, but who’s counting? Labels bitch about how they can’t seem to find an artist who appeals to the kids and the conscience, and then push off Saigon’s debut again and again and again. Yardfather was a testament to both his manifold strengths as a lyricist and his ability to spit morally-conflicted rhymes with genuine conviction. Backpack rap falls flat because it doesn’t feel real, radiating the same air of phony contentment as traveling salesman and born again christians. Saigon’s rhymes about making the right decision strike home because Saigon always sounds like he’s a hairsbreadth from making the wrong one.
Saigon, “Desperado”

11. Chris Letcher, Frieze
An out-of-nowhere masterpiece about isolation and disintegration, Chris Letcher’s Frieze is the Arcade Fire in lowercase, a small, quivering record that springs to life at unexpected intervals. Letcher’s voice is the anchor, a weird, strangled weapon able to convey desperation and determination within the same syllable. Songs go from broken to triumphant in minutes, small movements in this grand, shadowy masterpiece.
Chris Letcher, “Milk”

so, yeah, it’s been awhile.

it’s been a busy, crazy month, and i’ve been blogging a lot at eMusic’s 17 Dots blog, which kind of eliminated my need to blog here. i’m going to change that in the 08, tho — in fact, i’ve made a number of ridiculous resolutions for next year that will undoubtedly fall apart. blogging here at least twice a week is one of them.

to answer the question i’m getting most: my top 15 of 07 will start rolling out here tomorrow (monday) night. promise.

in the meantime, i have written a few columns. you can read them. they are on:

Britney Spears, Blackout
Jay-Z, American Gangster
Daughtry live (with surprisingly few pissed-off comments).

top 15 starting this week, and twice a week in 08, even if i have nothing to say. promise.