Post-Rockist Picks of 2007: Day 2 (Lists from Bryan and Scotter)

BRYAN’S ALBUMS OF 2007 (Bryan writes for the Post-Rockist courtesy of Better Chatter).

10. Liars –Liars (buy)

Sailing To Byzantium
Liars have a big bag of tricks. They follow their heavy krautrock opus with an album containing some actual radio-friendly songs. “Houseclouds” sounds like a long lost Beck tune, “Sailing To Byzantium” eerily sounds like Radiohead, and “Freak Out” is pure snarling Stooges. There’s still a heaping spoonful of their classic murk, but Liars is as varied an album as I’ve heard all year while being raw, upbeat, and straightforward. It’s fun listening to a band known for experimentation prove they can play by the rules. I consider this their Loaded.

9. The Twilight Sad –Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters (buy)

That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy
As you can tell from the band name and album title, this Scottish quartet is a little bummed out. That doesn’t mean their music isn’t pretty. Layered My Bloody Valentine-inspired guitars and vivid lyrics make Fourteen Autumns‘ angst touching rather than whiney. Lead singer James Graham occasionally screams lines with an accent so thick and charming it’s tough not to feel for him. In a year full of great danceable albums, it was refreshing to hear The Twilight Sad’s big rock sound and tormented lyrics.

8. Jens Lekman –Night Falls Over Kortedala (buy)

The Opposite of Hallelujah
I feel like such a putz for getting into Jens so late, but I’m glad I finally did. All the comparisons to The Magnetic Fields and Jonathan Richman had me curious yet suspicious, but Night Falls presented me an artist who clearly had his own voice (and what a voice at that). At first listen, the sweeping strings and playful woodwinds might seem a bit schmaltzy, but he delivers each word with such sincerity I’m forced to believe this is how Jens truly feels. His lyrics paint such interesting metaphors and touching scenes that it makes me want to pour a glass of wine, get sentimental, and dig into his entire back catalog.

7. Arcade Fire –Neon Bible (buy)

(AntiChrist Television Blues)
Following up Funeral was no enviable task, but these Montrealians(?) gave it their all. There’s a sense of foreboding from the start as Win Butler sings of bombs and nightmares after a wave of thunder washes in. The album is packed with stories of fear, loss, and a grim future. “Intervention” is easily the best anti-Iraq War song I’ve heard and serves as the ultimate hipster protest anthem. Despite all the darkness, it’s far from depressing. It’s a call to action for anyone frustrated with our current political climate, economic climate, or climate climate. “My Body Is A Cage” closes the album not with fear, but with hope, as Butler pleads, “Set my spirit free.” (Must Listen –”Intervention”)

6. Justice – †(buy)

Phantom
Throw this album on and you will D.A.N.C.E. for the next 48 minutes, not including the residual dancing that will follow. Their electro is so intricately crafted and instantly catchy, it’s going to be a daunting task for them to follow this up with something better. Some people claim they’ve lifted too much from Daft Punk, but Justice infuse harder house edges, some Motown sing-alongs, and considerably less cheesiness than their French idols. I’ve regretted every moment since I failed to score tickets to see them in concert. Not because I won’t have another opportunity, but because I desperately need to dance their music out of my head and onto the floor.

5. Animal Collective –Strawberry Jam (buy)

For Reverend Green
As a lover of AC, I can’t get enough of their fusion of tribal rhythms, innocent/creepy lyrics, and Brian Wilson-inspired melodies. Strawberry Jam is their most (relatively) accessible album to date. The tunes are more focused and simple, straying from their previous norm of using over 100 tracks per song. They’ve sacrificed sprawling tracks for uniform bounciness throughout. I’ve found it nearly impossible not to jump around like a twelve-year-old while listening to songs like “Peacebone” or “Winter Wonder Land.”

4. Of Montreal –Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (buy)

Gronlandic Edit
Once upon a time, men like David Bowie and Marc Bolan pranced around looking like women and posturing with excessive machismo. Of course their music had heart, truth, and wit as well. You can now lump Kevin Barnes into that mix. Of Montreal dole out sugar-coated synth while Barnes confidently sings about being unconfident. Hissing Fauna is a breakup album full of anxiety, but it doesn’t revel in sadness despite Barnes baring his soul about relying on antidepressants, unabashed anger towards his ex, and the inability to flee his frustrations. The melodies are so bouncy and catchy, it almost makes getting your heart broken sound fun. Almost. (Must Listen –”The Past Is A Grotesque Animal”)

3. Radiohead –In Rainbows (buy)

Reckoner
I’ve always been a sucker for all things hauntingly beautiful, so obviously I’m a big Radiohead fan. Four years after their last album, they gave the world just over a week to guess what they’re next move was. More isolated? More ominous? More electronic? Radiohead’s answer to all of these was a resounding NO. It’s there most melodic album since OK Computer and their most personal since The Bends. I can’t help but get goose bumps when Jonny Greenwood’s guitar takes center stage 40 seconds into “15 Step.” Everything I love about Radiohead (Thom’s moody lyrics and vocals, Phil’s creative percussion, Jonny’s delicate guitar, Ed’s angelic backing vocals, Colin’s efficient bass, and just the right amount of piano and strings) is summed up in the five-minute “Reckoner.”

2. M.I.A. –Kala (buy)

Paper Planes
When I was younger I couldn’t stand samples, but I grew to realize the resulting songs could live separately without detracting from the originals. What’s wrong with using a great riff to create an entirely different piece of art? Here, M.I.A. samples beats from New Order to cash registers while spitting lyrics from The Modern Lovers to Bollywood disco hits. All of it blends into vibrant scenes of a hungry and dangerous third-world setting where gunshots provide the rhythm. For me it doesn’t make a bit of difference whether M.I.A. is truly being political or just cultivating an image. With lyrics this creative and beats this good, she could sing about gum drops and puppy dogs and still make it interesting.

1. LCD Soundsystem –Sound of Silver (buy)

All My Friends
With so many anticipated albums coming out this year, I was probably most nervous about Sound of Silver. I played James Murphy’s first album repeatedly for about a month after I bought it, but with the dance-rock revolution seemingly in comfortable territory, I didn’t quite know where he could go from there. Who knew all it took was making the music a little more personal. The snark is still there in “North American Scum” and “Get Innocuous,” but my favorite one-two punch of the year comes in “Someone Great” and “All My Friends.” These songs perfectly capture the struggles of young adulthood: maturely coping with loss, discovering your priorities, and becoming someone you might not want to be. Listening to “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” while riding the subway home from my temp job gave me a feeling Murphy’s experienced some of the same lows I have. He makes fusing catchy dance beats with truthful, unpretentious lyrics seam effortless.

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SCOTTER’S ALBUMS OF 2007

10. PJ Harvey – White Chalk (buy)

Grow, Grow, Grow
I’ve never really been a huge P.J. Harvey fan, which is probably why I liked this album so much while many of her most avid fans disliked it. Much ado has been made about the fact that Harvey chose the piano as the primary instrument for the album, an instrument she is not as adept at playing as the guitar. But really, with songs this intense and brooding, what more is needed than an incessant pounding of chords and subtle percussion creaking and cracking like the floorboards of a musty old Victorian mansion? Harvey’s voice is angelic, although you’re not sure which angel is showing up each track, the angel of hope or the angel of death. In a year when several well-known artists deviated from their established sound to try something new (and I’m thinking of Wilco and Radiohead, in particular), White Chalk was for me a far more unified and interesting affair than the others.

Favorite lyric: “Oh God, how I miss you” from “The Piano”

9. Devendra Banhart – Smokey Rolls Down the Thunder Canyon (buy)

Lover
In Ray Davies’ “unauthorized autobiography,” X-Ray, the character Julie opines, “Have you ever thought about what it would be like to write without fear?” I’m taking the quote out of context, but I’ve always wondered what that would be like. Well, I won’t say that Devendra Banhart acheives this feat completely–we all have our doubts and doubters looking over our shoulders, making us a little less fearless in our creativity than we would like. But “without fear” is the best way to describe Banhart’s songs and songwriting. Most of the songs are guileless and fun without feeling the need to apologize for being so, and the ballads are all very heartfelt and honest. Musically, Banhart and his band run the gamut, from classic rock guitar thumpings beneath sitar-like frills (”Tonada Yanomaninista”), mambo and samba stylings in the various Portuguese-sung tracks, to Noel Coward-esque ditties like “So Long, Old Bean” and Dave Brubek borrowings on “Little Sea Horse.” When I close my eyes while listening to “Lover” I can almost see Devendra fronting the Jackson Five.

Favorite lyric: “You want to know: Who wrote the Book of Job? And you want to know: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? Well, I did. I did.” from “Shabop Shalom”

8. Jens Lekman –Night Falls Over Kortedala (buy)

The Opposite of Hallelujah

If not for the first two songs, “And I Remember Every Kiss” and “Sipping On The Sweet Nectar,” this album very well may have been my Number 1 of the year. I was extremely excited about this album–I had listened to Oh You’re So Silent Jens approximately 1,032 times–but after listening to the first two tracks, I completely lost interest in Kortedala. It wasn’t until I saw a solo performance of “The Opposite of Hallelujah” on the old YouTube that I returned to the third track, which is probably my favorite song of the year. The remainder of the album is nearly as good–excellent pop with enough musical invention to keep the album interesting throughout, along with the gooeyist, loveliest sentiments for the lover and dreamer in us all. Once you fall completely in love with the album, you’ll be able to overlook the flaws, which is kind of how long-lasting relationships work anyway.

Favorite lyric: “Your father’s mailing me all the time. He says he just wants to say hi. I send him out-of-office autoreplies.” from “A Postcard To Nina”

7. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular (buy)

Pieces of What

I first listened to Oracular Spectacular just a few weeks ago–just in time to make my Top Ten. I can’t really say that MGMT sounds like one artist or another since they’ve so thoroughly synthesized their influences and since nearly every song is different in style and tenor. But I’ll try. The recipe consists of a cup of Marc Bolan. A half teaspoon of Air. A pinch of New Radicals. A few dabs of Flaming Lips and Muse, with David Bowie sprinkled in. Mix in falsetto harmonies, youthful optimism, and a heartbeat rhythm for dancing, and you have my Number 7 album of the year. They tour often and all over and have a very tight sound. A signatory of Columbia, it will be interesting to see what they can make of themselves in 2008.

Favorite lyric: “And in a couple of years, tides have turned to boos and cheers” from “The Youth”

6. Bishop Allen – The Broken String (buy)

Rain

Bishop Allen’s The Broken String played far too often as background music for my daily tasks only because it’s so damn catchy. But upon my very first listen, I knew something very interesting was going on with this album. The first song, “The Monitor,” takes as its apparent subject the Union Civil War Ironside that battled the Confederate Merrimack. The song compares this 150-year old naval battle to the everyday struggles of being in a band in the 21st century, in the way that you might try to make yourself feel better about your crummy problems by thinking about how tough it must have been during World War II. The song is a brilliant work of anachrony, moving us through time from the battle to the band (perhaps engaged in a battle of the bands) and back.

Self-conscious and imaginative, quite hum-able and dancey, The Broken String is palpably pleasant to listen to, but close listenings reveal an unexpectedly mysterious album. The great variation of sounds and styles prevent it from getting old and will keep Bishop Allen cued on your iPod or choice mp3 player for months.

Favorite lyric: “I tell the taxi driver “to the park or [?]” and his gloves are pristine white, just like the girls I used to know would wear to dance their first cotillion, every single one of them named Jennifer.” from “The Chinatown Bus” (NOTE: If anyone can tell me what Justin Rice sings at the [?] above, please write to scotter@post-rockist.com ASAP. I’ve spent a lot time trying to figure out what he sings there and I’m sure all of the crappy lyrics sites out there are dead wrong.)

5. The Tragically Hip – World Container (buy)

Last Night I Dreamed You Loved Me

“The Lonely End of the Rink” sets a lovers’ quarrel at a hockey rink and is one of the worst ideas The Tragically Hip have ever had. But this album is still my Number Five for the year. After 24 years as a band, The Hip continue to be one of the most overlooked and underrated bands by the American music establishment.

While World Container is not dominated by a thematic glue, the songs carry subtle connections that make them gel together nicely. One of my favorite moves is the use of the same great line (which, as you can see, is my favorite lyric on the album) as the first lyric to two vastly different songs, “The Kids Don’t Get It” and “Pretend,” forming a narrative connection between the two. Singer and lyricist Gordon Downie has always been one of my favorites and his delivery and lyrical dramatics are as good as it gets for me, with the possibly exception of Dan Bejar.

Favorite lyric: “‘If I ask you a question are you gonna lie to me?’ ‘Is that your question? Cuz that one is easy!’” from “The Kids Don’t Get It” and “Pretend.”

buy)

Brother in Conflict

This Austin, Texas fivesome has been earning some hype with two EPs released in 2006 and finally released a long-awaited full length this year that should be on several Top 10, 15, 20, 25 lists, but isn’t. I’m really baffled by this. Perhaps it’s because the album contains melodies that are a bit too catchy (you know how critics can disdain bands who aren’t too difficult). But the album can challenge you without having to poke you in the rib with a large stick. Its intensity is not always of the fist-pumping kind, although you will find yourself pumping your fist to such introspective lyrics as “I got to lose my idols to find my voice,” which is kind of weird as far as fist pumping goes.

Lead singer/songwriter Ramesh Srivastava’s lyrics often read like a journal, detailing broken relationships, lover’s quarrels, family problems, and the need to break out of one’s old skin to realize a fuller potential. This may seem a bit adolescent, but it’s a really really good journal, written with great feeling, perception, and with the assistance of a dog-eared dictionary with a well-worn binding. “Ghost” sounds like the best song that Keane never wrote and never will. “Stephen” will become your favorite song to sing to your friend named Stephen.

A final reason why I like Voxtrot so much: When I saw them live, their bassist Jason Chronis gave me a warm, fuzzy Paul McCartney feeling on stage that just made my night.

Favorite Lyric: Every single word of “Stephen.”

3. Bowerbirds – Hymns to a Dark Horse (buy)

In Our Talons

“Back to when I was born on a full moon. I nearly split my momma in two” begins Bowerbirds’ Hymns For A Dark Horse. This opening is unnerving, no matter how mellifluously sung. What follows is a collection of songs that attempts to get to the bottom of something that is as mysterious as it is essential. Birds and insects, wood and leaf, starry skies and ominously cloudy nights, desperate humans and ghosts often make up the characters of this sublime album (and I use “sublime” in the Burkean sense of something both awe-inspiring and terrifying). Phil Moore’s vocals are sweet, but staid; he sings like one inspired by his muse to sing of a great foreign place, but with the sedate composure of a prophet. His nylon-stringed guitar is never picked with flair, but with a quiet, tribal intensity.

Beth Tacular, the accordionist and backup vocalist, nearly breaks down the delicate balance between Moore’s singing and his strumming. Her backup vocals are just a bit out of tune–they don’t add harmony as much as subtle dissonance, like a bird cawing ominously in the distance. Her contributions on the accordion are equally troubling. Her notes cut into the soundscape as much as they contribute to it, leaving that unnerving balance even more unnerving.

There’s something profoundly Biblical about Bowerbirds’ music. I think the biggest mistake someone can make is thinking that they are Walden-toting hippies. This is the darkest album I’ve heard this year, and the most moving, because they capture something mysterious about the human spirit and reveal it to us in a dark wood amidst all of the dangerous forces that civilization thought it could bury in cement and steel.

Favorite Lyrics: “The room calls to me, says we’re all strung out” from “Bur Oak.”

2. buy)

Maybe You’re Coming Down With It

I’m pretty sure mine will be one of the only lists this year that includes The High Strung’s Get the Guests. I don’t think a lot of critics have even given the album a listen, but I can’t blame them too much because I certainly wouldn’t have bought this album had I not moved to Detroit this year and determined to discover as many great Michigan bands as possible. Like my favorite Detroit bands, The High Strung doesn’t sound like everyone’s misconception of how Detroit sounds (ie, Garage Rock). Musically, The High Strung cover several modes of pop writing: hyperactive rock anthems (”He’s Got No Soul,” “Rimbaud/Rambo”), driving pop fanfares (”What A Meddler!”), funky romps (”Maybe You’re Coming Down With It,” “Missed Easily”), heartbreaking acoustic ballads (”Arrow,” “Childhood”). But what is most striking to me about the album–what makes it my Number Two album of the year–is the fact that every song is full musically but incomplete lyrically. Don’t get me wrong, these lyrics are polished. But there’s something about Josh Malerman’s narratives that require the listener to connect his or her own dots. Sung in his high-timbred voice, Malerman’s words leave me itchy to figure out what’s really going on. He’s not giving us all of the facts. He’s leaving something out of the stories. He’s not tying up loose ends. He’s leaving that work for us.

What is the relationship between the opening track, “What a Meddler!”, and the closing track, “The Meddler?” What is the “it” in “Maybe You’re Coming Down With It?” What is “this thing” in “He’s Got No Soul?” What is the meaning of the singer’s defiance in “Watch Me Sustain the Early Days” (one of my favorites on the album)? The album’s liner notes contain a nota bene warning that “Names, characters, places, and incidents [on the album] are products of the author’s imagination.” If so, Malerman is an omniscient narrator who’s leaving out details that keep his characters from becoming stable in our minds’ eyes, but the result (I believe) is that the characters become easier to inhabit, because the listener is forced to fit inside the shell of their characteristics and peculiar situations. Like Bishop Allen’s The Broken String, Get the Guests delivers both as an occasion for reflection and an occasion for rocking.

Favorite lyrics: “The wheel of fortune came to a stop. Looks like we lost” from “The Meddler,” “It’s built to make you believe the house came with no key.” from “Maybe You’re Coming Down With It,” and “I’ve been no good so good; it’s hard to describe” from “The Baddest Ship.”

1. Of Montreal –Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?/Icons, Abstract Thee (buy) (buy)

Gronlandic Edit
Thanks to Detroit music blogger Jasper who gave me the notion that Hissing Fauna and the EP Icons, Abstract Thee really make a cohesive whole and, consequently, the best album of the year. I don’t like Hissing Icons (as I’ll call the two discs from now on) as much as some of their other work, in particular, Adhils Arboretum and Satanic Panic in the Attic. But it is a work of great imaginative and musical art, more so than any previous Of Montreal album. Perhaps it’s because I was a doubting philosophy major and can find solace in so danceable an existentialist manifesto. Perhaps it’s because I can be glad I’m not in the state of mind that Kevin Barnes must have been in to write songs of such isolation, desperation, yearning, and frenetic confusion. The album is a cry for help that is self-help; sado-masochism for the sake of survival. There are so many ideas, both lyrical and musical, within the compass of Barnes’ powers that they could barely fit within the scope of these songs, but somehow he makes them all fit without overdoing it, filling the songs with as much as they can take but not more, unlike earlier albums like Coquelicot where his musical cup runneth way the hell over. And on tracks as diverse as “Gronlandic Edit,” “Suffer for Fashion,” “She’s a Rejector,” and “Miss Blonde Your Papa is Failing,” Barnes shows that he’s the most talented and versatile vocalist in music. His voice is so dulcet in “Miss Blonde Your Papa is Failing” that it makes me shudder.

As far as I’m concerned, Hissing Icons is the closest any Elephant 6 band has come to In An Aeroplane Over the Sea, which is the best possible compliment I can give to any album or band.

Favorite lyrics: “I guess it would be nice to give my heart to a god, but which one? Which one do I cho-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-se?” from “Gronlandic Edit” and “Eva, I’m sorry, but you will never have me. To me you’re just some faggy girl, and I need a lover with soul power. And you ain’t got no soul power.”

CODA:

After a 2007 of listening to several 2006 releases I did not get to last year, I can confidently say that if I had the chance to revise my picks from last year, there would be a three-way tie for first between Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, Joanna Newsom’s Ys, and Destroyer’s Rubies.