The 40 Best Albums of 2007
40 - 31
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30 - 21
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20 - 11
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10 - 2
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NUMBER 1 |
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Kevin Barnes combines joy and misery into such pleasing confusion that it's hard to know whether he's going to shake his ass or collapse in a heap after each song. The bristling, buzzy "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse," blends new-wave bounce with lyrics detailing his battle with depression -- he begs his mind not to fail him by serenading it with chipper chirps and hip- swiveling slink. Psychological complexity and libertine flamboyance rarely complement each other so well in the either-or world of pop music. J.M.
Favourite Worst Nightmare
Proof that youth is not, in fact, always wasted on the young: Arctic Monkeys' fantastically agitated sophomore album ups the velocity, craftsmanship, and fuck-it-all Britishness of their acclaimed debut. Frontman Alex Turner, still within spitting distance of his teens, wrangles caustic barbs from both his guitar and his lyrics, the two coming together particularly well on "Brianstorm" and "Fluorescent Adolescent" (the latter rhymes "fishnets" and "nightdress" with sneering glee). Snot-nosed punk -- and we mean that as the highest compliment. J.M.
The Reminder
The cool older sister in the sprawling Toronto indie-rock family, Leslie Feist beat a path out of the underground in 2007, selling hundreds of thousands of copies of her third solo album to folks whose idea of a broken social scene is a bar without bottle service. But this was far beyond music to brunch by -- The Reminder boasts more than its share of arty eccentricities, such as the field-recording rustle in "The Water" or the now-omnipresent Broadway-chorus vocals in "1234." Slyly subversive, challenging even as it soothes. M.W.
Boxer
Matt Berninger is blessed with the type of beaten-down baritone that can't help but evoke melancholy -- when he sings the line "Half-awake in a fake empire," you're inclined to believe him. But this Brooklyn-based quintet's gift lies in their ability to maximize the drama inside that space, transforming songs about staying indoors ("Apartment Story") into darkly romantic epics as sonically soaring as their lyrics are agoraphobic. The margin between shout-from-the-rooftops hope and head-on-the-bar despair is a narrow one in the National's purview, but, hey -- in ours, too. S.K.
Alright, Still…
In a pop world filled with airbrushed, pitch-corrected fembots, Lily Allen comes across like a flesh-and-blood human -- one who drinks too much, dates dopey dudes, and overshares on MySpace about her personal life. Her debut album of reggae-dusted, rap-influenced sing-alongs feels like a weekend romp through London with a mouthy young chavette as your guide. Though the melodies are breezy and her voice a cool, limpid tool, the songs are full of acidic opinions about cheating boyfriends ("Smile"), crappy shags ("Not Big"), and cocaine-hoovering frenemies ("Friend of Mine"). Shit talk rarely sounds so sweet. M.E.
†
This Parisian duo emerged as the brightest lights in the Euro nü-rave scene that's also been dubbed blog-house, an apt name because the duo's bowel-loosening riffs are gargantuan enough to sound cool on even the crappiest computer speakers. Like mentors Daft Punk, Justice create populist dance music -- their Sabbath-meets-Nile Rodgers tunes are jacques-your-body jams for indie kids. With references drawn from '70s hesher rock -- quasi-Christian iconography, stomp-box bass lines, crunchy prog-synth riffs -- Justice made electronic music filthy, funky, and fun again. M.E.
Magic
Despite its vintage tunes and acoustic arrangements, Springsteen's 2006 album with the Seeger Sessions ensemble, We Shall Overcome, rocked plenty hard. So the beauty of Magic isn't that the Boss is back to his arena-rousing ways; it's that for the first time since the mid-'80s, he's made a record that can't be reduced to a slogan or a concept. Filled with optimism and dread, cynicism and sincerity, ballads and anthems, Magic sounds like life lived on the ground. M.W.
The Black and White Album
Having spent the better part of a decade exploring and exploding the possibilities of no-frills garage rock, Howlin' Pelle Almqvist and his dapper Swedes are now, gleefully and mischievously, all about the frills. Much has been made of the two Motown-meets-Motörhead tracks produced by Pharrell Williams, but no matter how many bells, whistles, or kitchen sinks are thrown into the mix of overdriven Nuggets riffs and shout-along choruses -- "Try It Again" epitomizes this recipe at its best -- the Hives still sound like the Hives. And like no one else. S.K.
Planet Earth
Eschewing the it's-all-about-the-art platitudes that bog down so many of his fellow prestige acts, Prince announced his return to immediately pleasurable songwriting on Planet Earth's buzzing lead single: "I love you, baby / Just not like I love my guitar." From the jangle pop of "The One U Wanna C" to a clutch of slow jams, the whole album bursts with a directness Prince hasn't shown in years -- which doesn't mean there aren't loads of idiosyncratic details. In "Mr. Goodnight," his idea of foreplay is watching Chocolat on the big screen. M.W.
DA DROUGHT 3
Even the worst Jay-Z songs have one lyric that makes you wonder, "How does he do it?" On Da Drought 3 (the best of one trillion comps Weezy put out this year), that's virtually every rhyme. He gets high, eats Gummi Bears, free-associates hustler fantasies and sports metaphors. And when he interrupts a lament about dying in the streets to interject, "When I was five, my favorite movie was the Gremlins / Ain't got shit to do with this, but I thought I should mention," the only appropriate response is stunned amazement. K.A.
40 - 31
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30 - 21
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20 - 11
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10 - 2
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NUMBER 1 |
