Post-Rockist Picks of 2007: Day 3 (Lists from Amy and E.Kula)

2007: Return to Indie Rock Mountain: The Mix CD by Amy

Wracked, anguished and awestruck after my typically tumultuous freshman year of college, and blessed with my very first CD burner (built into my computer!!), I made a mix CD that I thought would express to my friends what a very special, significant and emotionally trying time I’d had over those eight months. As a mix CD it was problematic: strictly chronological (in September I saw Dar Williams; in November I went home for Thanksgiving and saw 8 Mile in theatres, hence the Eminem track in between Lila Downs and fucking Dispatch), too many songs by the same artist (like Modest Mouse, which I had just discovered) and my taste in music was, at the time, terrible (hence, once again, Eminem. And Dispatch).

But the first semester of my sophomore year was even MORE full of chaos and drama as I learned that everything I had thought about the world and my life during my freshman year of college was all wrong (and that my taste in music was, in fact, terrible). It was so full of chaos and drama, in fact, that I had to create a commemorative mix CD at the end of the first semester. It became a great tradition, a rite of passage into breaks and summers, a way to close things up, a reflective album to listen to in the car on my way home.

Several important things happened to me this year. I quit one job and started another far more wonderful job. I moved out of one apartment and into another. I broke up with an Edan-worshipping, beat-making boyfriend and started dating a 12-string-strumming, Phil-Collins-poster-posting kind of guy. In my writing I started using adjectives made out of several mish-mashed words. In literature I believe these syntactical tics are called kennings, and I hope they go away soon.

But most relevant to you, dear reader: despite my questionable ability to pay my monthly subscription fee, I joined eMusic! And for the first time in a long time, I found myself at least marginally hip to what the kids are calling “music” these days. And I like it! I also had an iPod for a while, but it was an old iPod that I bought from a friend and it was fully dysfunctional within two months.

So for the first time since college, I made a mix CD, even though I normally think “here are the tracks on my latest mix CD” articles are kind of tiresome, and even though, because of my excursions in the slick world of new music, it kind of reads like an top indie singles list, and even though, strictly speaking, not all of these tracks were released in 2007. No matter! They have a place here! And here they are! Totally unedited and authentic!

1. “Party on 4th Street” – Black Nasty
from Funky, Funky Detroit. 2004. (buy)
This is from a compilation of rare Detroit funk and soul, released to give credit to Detroit’s sometimes-overlooked-in-favor-of-Motown Northern Soul scene. I spent some time getting cozy with record diggers and dancing at Milwaukee’s legendary Get Down, a monthly spin of unreleased and hard-to-find old soul jams. This was a funky, sweaty, dance party kind of year. And I really did go to some parties on Fourth Street this year. Well –at least a basketball game. Down on Fourth Street.

2. “Mysterious Object” – Hulot
from The World, 2007.
This is my ex-boyfriend and even though he still makes me mad, he spent a good six months of the year working on this debut album and I will not be able to think of 2007 without thinking of his very good music and the incredible shows he threw in attics, basements and barrooms.

3. “Swim Team” – Baby Teeth
from The Simp, 2007. (buy)
Andrew wrote eloquently and accurately about Baby Teeth’s remarkable sophomore album, and there is little I have to say to elaborate, besides to note that Baby Teeth was one of three bands that I didn’t get sick of listening to this year, and that their show in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day just might have been the best show I went to all year. If I were making a “top this and that” list, this release would easily make top five.
(Track not available)

4. “I Feel It All” – Feist
from The Reminder. 2007. (buy)
This hit single is mix-CD ready; in fact, I was introduced to it on a mix CD that someone sent me from the West Coast. Feist’s last album was solid, but she really shines here. She makes you wonder how she found out so much about your life–in a way that makes you almost hate her. Except that you love her.

5. “The Rooster” – Big Boi
from Speakerboxx, 2003.
It’s amazing how classic this double album is already –it’s only been a few years. I revisited Outkast this year after falling in love with them all over again late in 2006. For a solid month in late winter, not a day went by that I did not wake up to Outkast.
(Track not available)

6. “Back Up Train” – Al Green
Back Up Train, 1967. (buy)
This was a break-up song. I will not lie. It made me cry the first time I heard it, so of course I wanted to listen to it all the time when I was sad and wanted to cry during the break-up.

7. “Heretics” – Andrew Bird
from Armchair Apocrypha, 2007. (buy)
I have never not loved Andrew Bird with my whole music-loving heart. Andrew Bird’s music evokes all of the different kinds of love I have for all of the different kinds of music there are in the world. A bold statement, maybe, but no one has stirred my heart the way Andrew Bird has over the years. In some ways I’ve been ready for him to disappoint me, but this hushed, sleepy album, hushed and sleepy though it was, did not disappoint in the least. Au contraire! It amazed!

8. “Now This is Love” – The Trusty Knife. Not yet released! (myspace)
It was that Candlier’s show I went to in June that really changed everything for me over the summer, and it was my good friends in the Candliers that introduced me to this truly fabulous Milwaukee band. I think they’re kind of destined for fame, love and diamonds.

9. “Lover” - Devendra Banhart
from Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, 2007. (buy)
Every time I think I don’t like Devendra Banhart that much –too weird, too warbly –he charms me.

10. “For Once in My Life” – Stevie Wonder
from For Once in My Life. 1967. (buy)
I listened to this song ALL THE TIME when I found out about my new job in July. I think it’s one of the most joyful songs ever recorded.

11. “Don’t Make Me a Target” – Spoon
from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, 2007. (buy)
When this album came out I kept hearing these singles all around town and thinking, “What is this band? Is this awesome? Do I love this song?” And the answer was: yes it is, yes I do, and it’s Spoon. All of the cool kids have loved Spoon forever, and like all of the not-as-cool kids, I never bothered to care much about them before this album came out.
(Track not available)

12. “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” – Of Montreal
from Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? 2007.(buy)
I gave this album so many chances and never warmed to it. Then Andrew said, “Hey, do you think that one Of Montreal song on that new album I think is so incredible is about their show at Beloit?” We listened to it for a while, considered it, decided it had to be. Girls kissing girls? A swing by a church? (Further fact checking on Andrew’s part proved us wrong). I had to stay up late that night to work on a story for the magazine and listened to the album over and over and over again. In the morning I was a convert to the fashionable idea that this band and this new album were both monumental. I saw them in concert and was moved and flushed and excitable for days. Then I regretted not seeing them in Beloit a number of years ago when they played in the basement of our campus bar where there were likely a number of girls kissing girls and DJs playing dead jams. It took me months to shake my obsession with Of Montreal and get back to the other good stuff going on in the world.
(Track not available)

13. “Plus Ones” – Okkervil River
from The Stage Names, 2007. (buy)
I came upon a great deal of free tickets in the fall and saw a lot of bands that should’ve been good but weren’t (I have to say, I have no interest in giving The National a good, considered, intelligent listen having seen them in concert not once but twice now and having found them eye-stabbingly boring on both occasions). Okkervil River was a nice surprise. I heard a lot of this sort of angry, highly referenced little band in college, but they have become much better, and this album shows them at their very best: poppy, smart, smug sometimes, wrought other times, on the whole not unlike a margarita –salty on the outside, sweet at the heart, but astringent.

14. “The Orchids” – Califone.
from Roots and Crowns, 2006. (buy)
I told you in 2006 that this album was great even before I listened to it. Well, I listened to it this year. And I was right.

15. “Shirin” – Jens Lekman
from Night Falls Over Kortedala, 2007. (buy)
The first time I heard this song, I was driving back to work after a business errand, and it was raining, and I saw a young father holding his son’s hand and crossing the street in a very bad part of town, and this song was on the radio and I cried and cried. I got back to the office and my boss said, “Are you on your period?” And then our designer said, “Ewww, TMI!” Thanks, guys, for ruining everything that is beautiful.

16. “Streets of Fire” – The New Pornographers
Twin Cinema, 2005. (buy)
On the drive from Minneapolis back home to Milwaukee, I heard “Letter From An Occupant” and was reminded that few other songs have meant so much to me in my life. And then I realized I’d never heard Mass Romantic all the way through. So I listened to it, and then revisted Electric Version, and then Twin Cinema, which I had never fussed with, and then I started listening to Destroyer, and I fell into a rabbit-hole and life was nothing but the smart, sexy, obtuse New Pornographers, and that was a good time for me. I saw them live with the full line-up: Neko Case was there, and Dan Bejar, who wandered on and off stage with a preoccupied look on his face and a precarious glass of red wine. Of course.

17. “Heart it Races” – Architecture in Helsinki
from Places Like This, 2007. (buy)
Catchiest song of the year, maybe even in an annoying way that I will regret several years from now when I listen to this mix CD again. But how can you resist those steel drums? Or the many memories this song carries of standing around with a bunch of friends, maybe doing something dumb like eating tortilla chips or playing Bite The Bag, and looking at each other and saying, “Damn! This song is CATCHY!’

18. “Gone” - Kanye West
from Late Registration, 2005. (buy)
Oh, Kanye. You are the Louis XIV of popular music except that no one wants to overthrow your aristocracy yet. Your Highness, we so enjoyed Graduation, and would have selected one of the many fineries from that fine, fine release, were it not for the fact that somehow we were introduced to this little gem from your previous album and its biting and grandiose dreams carried yours truly through many trying and often beautiful and very funny and so sad weeks this year.

BONUS TRACK: “Heather via J.C” – Baby Teeth.
from For the Heathers (EP), 2006. (buy)
How this song is genuinely edifying and revitalizing I will never know. It is derivative, it is silly, it is totally ridiculous and pure genius and I danced alone to this song about a booze-reeking stalker and his roller derby love in many an unguarded moment in 2007. This gives you a good sense of the Baby Teeth that once was –a Baby Teeth that is not gone, only incorporated into a body that is much more real and much easier to take seriously and not so embarrassing to say that you love so much.

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E. KULA’s TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2007

10. Opsvik and Jennings – Commuter Anthems (Rune Grammofon) (myspace)
9. Band of Horses – Cease to Begin (Sub Pop) (myspace)
8. Panda Bear – Person Pitch (Paw Tracks) (myspace)
7. King Khan and the Shrines – What Is?! (Hazlewood) (myspace)

6. Blonde Redhead – 23 (4AD) (myspace)
5. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl) (myspace)
4. Julianna Barwick – Sanguine (self-released) (Florid Recordings) (myspace)
3. Nina Nastasia and Jim White – You Follow Me (Fat Cat) (myspace)
2. Miracle Fortress – Five Roses (Secret City) (myspace)
1. Pop Levi – The Return to Form Black Magick Party (Counter) (myspace)

HONORABLE MENTION (in no particular order)

Besnard Lakes- “The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse” (Jagjaguwar) (myspace)
Busdriver- “RoadKillOvercoat” (Epitaph) (myspace)
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings- “100 Days, 100 Nights” (Daptone) (myspace)
Flash Hawk Parlor Ensemble- “Plastic Bag in a Tree” (Hush) (myspace)
Phosphorescent- “Pride” (Dead Oceans) (myspace)
Georgie James- “Places” (Saddle Creek) (myspace)

Best Compilation and/or Soundtrack

“Labrador 100, A Complete History of Popular Music” (Labrador) (buy)

Best EP of 2007

“People” by Animal Collective (Fat Cat) (buy) (myspace)

E. KULA’S FAVORITE SONG OF 2007

“Need Your Needs” by Georgie James (myspace)

Other Songs I enjoyed

“People” by Animal Collective (myspace)
“Comfy in Nautica” by Panda Bear (myspace)
“Where in the World are you Now” by Great Lakes Swimmers (myspace)
“Dear Employee” by Papercuts (myspace)
“Pick-Me-Up Uppercut” by Pop Levi (myspace)
“A Beautiful War” by Robert Wyatt (myspace)
“Night” by Bill Callahan (myspace)