The Day There Was No News

The Day There Was No News
Originally uploaded by Pixelsurgeon

by Pixelsurgeon

Procrastination Patrol: Lykke Li

So I've moved into a new apartment for a few months. It's nice, having the space entirely for myself, and being back online 24/7. Though I'm meant to finish a project I'm working on, being online means I'm quite often watching Youtube.
This week, I've been watching Lykke Li's video for her sneaky pop hit (in Sweden at least), Little Bit. Sound-wise, Li splits the difference between Robyn's detached euro-pop (now with added Snoop Dogg!) with the eerie spareness of the Knife's faux-marimba ballads (like Marble House). This mp3 is recommended for fans of Cassie's robotic slinkfests as well as Björk's more Homogenic compositions.

40 best songs of 2007

Ok, so this is like, so last year, but I did promise. These were my 40 favorite songs of 2007, soundtracking lots of packing and unpacking, runs through New York, Holland and Berlin, and my every home-cooked meal. No. 1 should come as no surprise.


(image stolen from the almighty popjustice.com)

1. Umbrella (Rihanna cover) / Scott Simons (myspace)
A bare ICU beat backs the glitch and piano reconstruction of this gothy megahit. Of all the covers of this omnipresent track, this is the saddest version, even milking the 'Ella ella, ey ey' section for rainy day pathos.

2. D.A.N.C.E / Justice (video)
Daft Punk meets the Jackson 5, the t-shirt-tastic video was every fashionista hipster's wet dream.

3. 1234 (Van She Technologic Remix) / Feist (original video/fanmade remix vid)
Counting has never been this fun. Though Leslie's original is pretty awesome, this Australian remix strips much of the slightly too Adult Contemporary production and adds some scuzzy speakerbusting beats.

4. Books From Boxes / Maxïmo Park (video)
Honest to goodness straightforward New Wave rock, imagine me helplessly tapping the Footloose intro while doing my dishes.

5. Here (In Your Arms) / Hellogoodbye (video)
Awesome Cher-stealing shoestore rock that sounds like the trashiest Eurodisco.

6. Overpowered / Roisin Murphy (video)
Our generation's Donna Summer brings the higher consciousness. Also, how many disco tracks use the term 'cognitive state' and make it sound sexy?

7. Falling Slowly / Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (video)
That song from the 'Once' soundtrack.

8. Valley Morning / Loudon Wainwright III (live video)
This gorgeously laidback tune from the 'Knocked Up' soundtrack shows where Rufus got his sense of melody. It depicts any morning in LA, touching on immigration policy and the Schwarzenegger.

9. John Brown / Papercuts (myspace)
Like Ennio Morricone produced Americana, the mid-song change of rhythm is where Sergio Leone would have the tantalizing avenging begin.

10. Plus Ones / Okkervil River (acoustic video)
From a rich album inexplicably left off my best-of list, this song is the smartest, referencing numerical hits from among others Nena, R.E.M., Lionel Richie, Paul Simon, The Zombies, and ? and the Mysterians, all the while making a subtle point about a relationship's ending. Okkervil River's 'Like a Rolling Stone.'

11. Knife (Girl Talk Remix) / Grizzly Bear (video)
Last year's best track remixed by this year's best DJ.

12. I Still Remember (SebastiAn Remix) / Bloc Party (download via zshare)
This huge Ed Banger remix builds a potent lovesong from pieces of the weakest and whiniest single from the entirely too earnest (but still charming) second Bloc Party album.

13. Bleeding Love / Leona Lewis (video)
Last year's X-Factor winner rightly spent months atop the UK charts with this majestic and gory extended metaphor: "My heart's crippled from the vein that I keep on closing/ You cut me open and I keep bleeding love."

14. signatune edit v2 (more kick thomas bangalter remix) / DJ Mehdi (video)
Daft Punk's Bangalter pulls out all his tricks to extend the 1-minute original to 6-and-a-half of ecstatic dancefloor bliss.

15. Paper Planes / M.I.A. (video)
Most infectious and politically incorrect chorus of the year. "All I wanna do is *gunshot* *gunshot* *gunshot* *gunshot*, *reload*, and take your money."

16. Ludlow Street / Suzanne Vega (live video from amsterdam)
This sad elegy to the streets of the Lower East Side is just one highlight of la Vega's lovely album.

17. Ray of Zdarlight (Digitalism vs. Wham!) / The Avalanches (mp3 from pitchfork)
A forgotten George Michael hit resurrected as robotic French disco by Australian mashup masters. Soulwax' version crosses it with Tears of Fears' 'Shout!'

18. Beautiful Life / Gui Boratto (sweetest video)
A gorgeous techno ballad, like a high-speed trainride through a waking dream.

19. Goodbye (Tahiti 80 remix) / The Postmarks (video for original track, remix is here)
Stereolab meets The Cardigans, chilled vocals, a big chorus.

20. To Build A Home feat. Patrick Watson / The Cinematic Orchestra (video)
The Canadian Polaris Prize-winner brought the ordinarily quite funky Cinematic Orchestra their most likely track to ever soundtrack a tragic season finale of Brothers & Sisters (Ed. Youtube says "featured on ABC's Grey's Anatomy"), wait for the stunning, but helpless orchestration in the final minute.

21. Losin' U / Amerie ft. Willy Denzey (youtube radio)
The most underrated American R'n'B pop-diva shines among this addictive blend of French hiphop, Arabian pop, and crunky synths.

22. Girls And Boys In Love (David E Sugar's Shameless Mix) / The Rumble Strips (original's video/remix mp3 here)
Humongous and helplessly joyous piano and 8-bit remix of these Austin rockers by British bleepster. Also check the Strips' remix of Amy Winehouse's 'Back To Black'.

23. I Miss You Someone / Cloetta Paris (mp3 @ myspace)
Icy, icy Scandinavian minimalist pop anthem, also check her breathy cover of 'St. Elmo's Fire.'

24. Future Pt. 1 / Voxtrot (daytrotter link)
More perfect pop from Austin, though the album did not deliver the easy pop-thrills of their singles, this track showed they could still be the new R.E.M.

25. Out of Control (Song 4 Mutya) / Groove Armada feat. Mutya Buena (video)
Wonderfully self-referential eighties-style pop-song featuring the deliciously mean ex-Sugababe Buena.

26. Anti-Anti (Treasure Fingers Remix) / Snowden (original's video/remix @ hype machine)
No idea, but everytime this popped up on shuffle, I thought, "What was this again? This is awesome and vocoderlicious!"

27. Si tu disais (Françoiz Breut cover) / Benjamin Biolay (original live video/cover @ hype machine)
Comme Beirut en francais. Ces violins, delicieux!

28. The Whole World And You / Tally Hall (live video plus sir mix-a-lot cover)
This simple and circusy serenade is the shortest track here, and by all counts the sweetest: "No one's better than you."

29. Gettin' Enough? / Lil' Chris (video)
More British pop from the ultra-minor leagues, peewee, in fact. Like Green Day and Kim Wilde's illicit ADD lovechild.

30. Bathroom Gurgle / Late of the Pier (video)
Scuzzy rock that sounds like a glam-rock demo, wonderfully pissed off and dancy.

31. About You Now / Sugababes (video)
Major-League British pop from the oddly consistent and always up-to-the-minute-sounding Sugababes. What Kelly Clarkson could conquer the world with.

32. Sweaty Wet/Dirty Damp / Gameboy/Gamegirl (suitably dirty live video)
Australian dirty dirty laptop-hop, file under 'songs that go boom'.

33. Young Folks (beyond the wizard's sleeve re-animation) / Peter Bjorn & John (original video/remix @ hype machine)
Justly inescapable whistleblowers pop.

34. The Magic Position / Patrick Wolf (video)
Life-affirming and rainbow-colored chamber-pop.

35. Beggin' (pilooski edit) / Frankie Valli (video)
Pilooski's re-edit brought out the urgency in Valli's boppy lament.

36. Untrust Us (Demo) / Crystal Castles (youtube radio)
In which princess Zelda disappears into a hyper secret secret level, with Wario watching through a one-way mirror, hypnotized.

37. So Electric / Lifelike (youtube radio)
Time-stopping stadium-sized house music.

38. The Boys (Calvin Harris cover) / Dragonette (original's video/fanmade vid for cover)
The awesome Dragonettes outfreak Harris' silly "The Girls" through more tht just gender-reversal.

39. Never Hear Surf Music Again / Free Blood (mp3 @ hype machine)
A poppier !!!, a wonderful new chorus each of its six minutes.

40. The Good Soldier / Nine Inch Nails (youtube radio)
Reznor brings the sexy back.

Kandors by Mike Kelley

There are many different Supermen. Over the years this fictional superhero has developed and grown, but also fled into alternate universes to start again, each writer and illustrator building on past continuity and deviating from it just enough to keep fans guessing and the story alive. In his new show at the Jablonka Galerie in Berlin, Mike Kelley (1954) returns to his themes of personal memory and popular culture, this time exploring them through the myth of Superman’s lost city of Kandor. [...]
The whole set-up at the Jablonka Galerie suggests a complex expansion of a two-dimensional comic strip concept into three dimensions. The bottled sculptures are situated among futuristic home-design elements – space dividers, consoles, counters - that seem out of context, too spare. This counterintuitive homeliness is accentuated by the occasional ‘anachronistic’ prop – a woven basket, a discarded yellow shirt, or a kitschy porcelain bouquet. Anachronisms like this only add to the tension between the frozen state of the still, bottled Kandors and their sped-up projection counterparts, suggesting a distortion of the fabric of time, as if Superman just stepped out and the planet has forgotten which way to turn.
By titling the show 'Kandors,' Kelley acknowledges the multiple nature of Superman’s cultural heritage, by extension challenging the notion of an objective representation of the past and portraying our (pop-) cultural memory as shifting and amorphous, multi-interpretable. Seen in this light, Kandors is a successful play on the flexibility of this kind of cultural knowledge and its inherent lack of objective truths, as well as a powerful meditation on the impossibility of reliving the past.
Read the rest of my review at Whitehot Magazine.

The Swept Aways sing a sad sad Xmas

Though most would paint christmas in tones of green and red, Low and Elvis know its most common shade is blue. A maudlin wall of cheer, the Swedish wistful way with a hook and a giant Spectorian chorus. Like Wham's Last Christmas before them, The Swept Aways choose a melancholy approach to the merry season. With its sad tale of "eggnog on your collar", these wonderful Swedes sing about a "cry cry christmas, christmas means goodbye" (mp3).

My Favorite Films of 2007

The next part in my 'best of 2007' cycle is my list of best cinema experiences. Twelve films that I thought were awesome and would heartily recommend for Christmas netflix- or multiplexing. What did I miss here? What did you guys love?


1. Zodiac
My most visceral cinematic experience this year took place in that awful theatre in Chelsea, not the one next to the legendary hotel, the one just off to the west on a deserted stretch of 23rd street. I was quite literally on the edge of my seat the entire film. Not frightened of the film's serial killer, or even David Fincher's trademark deep scares, but because of the completely believable obsession that slowly absorbs Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey's characters as they become involved in the hunt for the Zodiac killer. Because we know the killer was never actually caught, the narrative tension builds around what might have been, every near-miss or close call especially poignant in the face of the unresolved ending. All in all this is a surprisingly subtle and psychological work, one that beautifully depicts the era and the excruciating clumsiness of pre-CSI policing.


2. Lust, Caution
A friend once told me that truly great (and, I imagine, truly awful) films can be understood in any language as they are primarily told by the images and the expressions of the actors. I saw Ang Lee's latest seething masterpiece in a sold-out alfresco screening in Venice on the night it won the Golden Lion there. The complex tale of espionage and sabotage came across flawlessly, even though its sprawling Chinese dialogue was only subtitled in Italian. A second viewing, here in Berlin, only brought further layers of lyrical complexity. As in "Brokeback", much of the love story is unspoken, told through the faces of Tony Leung's harsh collaborator and Tang Wei's instinctive spy. Again, the sex scenes are unflinching and violent, though much more graphic, and the ending is heartbreaking, another lover left alone in the other lover's empty bedroom.


3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Though Johnny Depp was long attached to play the lead in this true story of imagination's triumph over nigh complete paralysis. "Kings and Queen"'s Matthieu Amalric's performance however transcends any the always slightly campy Depp could have pulled off. Director Julian Schnabel avoids much inevitable sentimentality (or the slightly academic tone of the similar "The Sea Inside") through Amalric's dry inner monologues and truly inspired visualizations, shot from the paralyzed man's severely impaired and immobile point of view. The one detractor, if it can be called that, from this intimate tale is the endless stream of gorgeously French women that fawn over the protagonist, but hey, can we really complain about that?


4. Atonement
My love for this film is all the stronger for my low expectations, after all Keira Knightley in another period drama? Joe Wright's "Pride and Prejudice" was fresh, certainly, but it in no way predicted the sheer cinematic daring this film brings to the film. Some scenes are positively operatic in their staging, a feeling heightened by the sumptuous soundtrack, which is enriched with the clacking rhythm of a typewriter. The editing too is wonderful and entirely untypical of the typical period drama, ranging from quick flashbacks and forwards, to one hallucinatory long take on a battle-strewn beach. McAvoy and Knightley are great (as are Vanessa Redgrave and Romolai Garai), but Saoirse Ronan, the prescient star of Peter Jackson's forthcoming "Lovely Bones", steals the film.


5. Knocked Up/Superbad
As any fan of his TV-show "Freaks and Geeks" will attest, Judd Apatow can do no wrong when producing films about awkward and ill-advised fumblings of any kind.


6. Grindhouse
As someone who grew up with Tarantino and Rodriguez films instead of the exploitation films they so shamelessly pay tribute to in this superfun and dirty double bill, how could I not enjoy this? Fergie's empty skull is exposed! Quentin's penis actually falls off! Uma Thurman's "Kill Bill" stand-in is a kiwi! and she kicks motherf$%$ing Kurt Russell's ass!


7. Michael Clayton
What could have been a simple legal thriller is enhanced by Tom Wilkinson's lucid ramblings, George Clooney's ineffable charm, and Tilda Swinton's slightly nervous portrayal of a woman in over her head. Just watching her dressing, folding her clothes, and washing her armpits, clearly shows Swinton's acting can make any project eclipse its genre.


8. Death at a Funeral
Another entirely unexpected pleasure - I mean Frank Oz also directed the painfully unfunny "The Stepford Wives" and "In & Out" - this small British ensemble comedy mines the fertile ground of the graveyard for a truly hilarious tale of blackmail and mourning. I was really howling with laughter, especially at the inimitable (and naked) Alan Tudyk, who you'll remember as the timid pilot of the "Firefly" or the demented pirate in "Dodgeball".


9. Hot Fuzz
A glorious parody of American buddy movies, its sheer Britishness causing much of the viewing pleasure (although seeing a vicious old lady being kicked in the face is a perverted joy all in itself). The second viewing is even better, like Hotter Fuzz.


10. Once
This bittersweet work of musical verité is surely destined to become some generation's "Before Sunrise."


11. The Year of the Dog
Mike White directs Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, and Peter Sarsgaard in this wonderfully acted, painful tragicomedy of one woman and her love for dogs.


12. Fido
A fifties-set zombie film for satirical kids, enough said.

Four honorables must be mentioned here, all almost worthy were it not for very minor issues of story or Richard Gere. "Tekkon Kinkreet" is the prettiest film I saw all year, a gorgeous animated film that looks different than anything familiar from Miyazaki or Pixar. Sarah Polley's "Away From Her" is a heartrending tale of sacrifice and marriage, carried by the luminous Julie Christie. "The Hoax" is much more fun than its poster suggests, like "The Aviator" crossed with "Catch Me If You Can" minus the Leo, and "I'm Not There", apart from the aforementioned Gere, is actually a rewarding Dylanography, if you can tear your eyes away from another of Cate Blanchett's transformative biographical performances.

There are still at least three notable absences here, movies that I've enjoyed immensely when I read them, in screenplay or graphic novel form, but have not had a chance to see (damn you German distributors and Chinese internet pirates!). "Juno" is a very smart comedy about teen pregnancy starring the amazing Ellen Page and Superbad's Michael Cera (as well as his "Arrested Development" dad, Jason Bateman). Ryan Gosling stars in the sweet "Lars and the Real Girl", a most unlikely lovestory between a town and one man's Real Doll (tm). Lastly, "Persepolis", the stark and surprising tale of a young girl's coming of age in the axis of evil, and her subsequent adventures in Vienna and Switzerland.

best album of 2007: the arcade fire

1. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
One solid characteristic of your favorite album of the year is that you can’t really listen to it anymore; you’ve completely played it out. Still, I cannot underestimate the marvel it has brought me over the course of 2007: from it’s slowly leaked first tracks in January, the stunning Blogotheque vidcast, and the gorgeous Norah Jones and Calexico covers of smoldering stand-out track “Ocean of Noise”. Though, as the David Byrne said, in his best-of-2007 list, the lyrics are ‘all wrong,’ the first listen to “My Body is a Cage” was the most singularly visceral rock experience I’ve had all year (here’s the fan-video that the Boss himself dug).

If the Fire’s great first album, “Funeral,” was a celebration of life in the face of death, this Springsteentastic album – unafraid of grand gestures, doomy chants, and church organs – is a wild elegy for life in the face of the rapture. Mercifully, its apocalyptic atmosphere is lifted by just enough wisps of hope and an overall feeling of strength in numbers, a warm collectivity we also find at my #2.

best albums of 2007: 2. beirut

2. Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
To really understand my love for this band is to go back in time, to their second or third ever show, a shambolic performance at the Knitting Factory in which ukuleles broke and singer Zach Condon was still quite stagestruck. Over the past two years though, he’s assembled a band that rivals the Fire’s in joyous rock communion, and expanded his dynamic range from Balkanic singalongs to French chansons. The gorgeous and complete set of videos shot by La Blogotheque for the album’s release take the songs to the streets – and ice cream truck garages – of Brooklyn, and show that the Beirut live experience is uniquely intimate (here’s a one such live version of “The Penalty”). With songs that evoke tundra yurts and urban cabarets, Beirut displays an urbane melancholy that we also find in the Swedish lamentations of my #3.

best albums of 2007: 3. loney, dear

3. Loney, Dear - Loney, Noir
What sets this band apart from #1 and 2 above is its bare, blatant sense of hope. Perhaps because of this, it was the only concert to make me cry this year. With their slightly precious vocals and hyper-melodic songs, loving this band is almost too easy, too sweet on the ears, but their tendency towards communalist din at least prevents it from being too saccharine. The opening number, “Sinister in the State of Hope”, is evidence of Loney’s great sence of pace and orchestration, creating an solemn paean to elusive hope. Beautifully and subtly laced with buzzy or hissy electronics, Loney, Dear’s best songs waltz up to a frantic, even squeaky climax that, through sheer joy and faith in change, reached into my heart this year and rewired it in the best of ways.

best albums of 2007: 4. the national

4. The National - Boxer
Less concerned with hope and more with the passions is this incredibly solid album by Brooklyn’s The National. More controlled and measured than any of the outburst-prone bands above, this band, and especially their incredible drummer, delivers a grounded, driving and not just sexy, but actually sex-y set of songs that are as stadium-ready as those of the Fire’s. As with the Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan, the steady, low voice of their lead-singer works its mojo best on Boxer’s slower tracks, like “Slow Show” and “Start A War” (also check out their Daytrotter session, it includes a cover of the Psychedelic Furs’ “Pretty in Pink”).

best albums of 2007: 5. rufus wainwright

5. Rufus Wainwright - Release The Stars
Though this album is often dramatically overproduced and weighed by down by unnecessary flute solos, any true Rufus lover would tell you that there is no such thing as a dramatically overproduced flute solo when Wainwright’s grand emotions are at stake. As the album’s completely unhinged, operatic opener, “Do I Disappoint You?” (ha!), rhetorically asks: “Why does it always have to be chaos?” Well, dear reader, it has to be chaos to allow for contrasting songs as elegant and refined as “Nobody’s off the hook” and “Going to a Town” (a gorgeous Goodbye-New York-Hello-Berlin track, the lame video for which is here), as it also has to be chaotic to make authoritative astronomical commands like in the jubilant album closer “Release the Stars”, the song that launched a million trillion slowly sparkling disco balls.
(Ed. Note: Also, it has to be said that a choreographed dance in Garland-drag to Judy’s “Get Happy” (Youtube helps) might get you more devotion from this writer than is officially allowable by the rock journalist union.)

best albums of 2007: 6. radiohead

6. Radiohead - In Rainbows
A scaled-back, more personal set of ten tracks by what is arguably my generation’s favorite band ever. It was actually a very strong year for my high school musical crushes, with great albums by PJ Harvey, Björk, and Air all making appearances in my top 20. This might be because I’m getting very close to thirty and becoming more reluctant to embrace new sounds, but I really hope it’s because these artists are coming into their own now, making work that has no benchmarks but their own. With the syrupy-sexy (as far as echoey floaty Thom Yorke songs can really be called sticky) “House of Cards”, Radiohead at least broke new ground in lyrical content, “I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover,” is positively Prince.

best albums of 2007: 7. grizzly bear

7. Grizzly Bear - Friend
Shamefully left of my best-of-2006 list with their superlative “Yellow House” album, the Grizzlies unyielding “Knife” finally slashed its way to the heart of my iTunes this year. This EP shows the strides the Brooklyn band has made musically since their bearded, fragile campfire days when I first saw them, opening for Sufjan Stevens at a Katrina benefit. Now sonically at cruising altitude, the songs reinvented here, or covered, as in the case of Phil Spector’s horrific girl-group ballad “He Hit Me (But It Felt Like a Kiss),” masterfully change gears emotionally and musically. The band’s tonal range is especially strong in the vocal harmonies that make Grizzly Bear the tightest band in the country. Though it’s only represented on this collection by three covers, “Knife” with its “Stand By Me” backing, sinister lyrics and soaring vocals (here in an even boppier live version from February 2007) is unquestionably the best song of 2006 (damn!).

best albums of 2007: 8. vampire weekend

8. Vampire Weekend - Blue CD-R
Proof of the slow dissolution of the record industry, and the power of blog-hype, is the presence of this sort-of unreleased debut EP by these local Paul Simon-fans. Stylish and over-educated, they take Simon’s (and David Byrne’s) African rhythmic influence to create happy (a deeply uncool concept in indie-rock), punky two-minute-pop songs that still can’t help but make me walk with a smile in my step (try and stay stoic during “Cape Cod Kwassa”. They also rhyme ‘Louis Vuitton’ with ‘Reggeaton’: skills!).

best albums of 2007: 9. spoon

9. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Though I haughtily dismissed this album after a careless first listen, I was scared into giving this record another chance after last year’s Grizzly debacle (see #7 above). Listening to somehow bare songs like “Black Like Me” or “The Ghost of You Lingers”, I found Spoon’s strutty rocksongs to have choruses after all, and not just that, but their addictive tracks possess musical structures that are all the more rewarding for leaving little gaps of silence, of aural space. This might make it seem as if Ga x 5 is a difficult album, but mariachi-fun tracks like “The Underdog” (the cute one-take video is here) or “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb” should easily blow this notion away with their mighty, funky horn sections.

best albums of 2007: 10. doveman

10. Doveman - With My Left Hand I Raise the Dead
A very different approach to the idea of musical deconstruction, of the sound of silence, can be found in this challenging album by these jazzy (?) self-confessed lampshade rockers. By challenging I mainly mean ‘hard to listen to on shuffle’; of the 16 slow and stately tracks here, just over half is an actual song, the other seven take up almost as much time, connecting the songs not through interludes, but through almost improvisational textures, bits of melody dis- and re-appearing and sometimes alternating with hiss and muttering (if you can spare 11.5 minutes, listen to “track 9” and “Castles” in order, and swoon). These nameless tracks function as out- and intro, leading in and out of song, perfectly mirroring the intimate Doveman live experience (check out another lovely Blogotheque video), in which Thomas Bartlett’s frail voice and piano subtly contrast with bits and pieces of mandolin and trumpet, like “Chet Baker Sings” Radiohead, broken and lovely.

best albums of 2007: 11. lcd soundsystem

11. LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
The closest thing 2007 had to New Order (the title track in particular), that other band that so effortlessly crossed soul-stirring new wave rock with pounding pounding disco music.

best albums of 2007: 12. pj harvey

12. PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Her best work since “Is This Desire?”, Chalk is mostly piano-based, Polly Jean’s vocals much more ethereal than on her previous, growling “Uh Huh Her” album. This strummed live version of Chalk standout “Grow Grow Grow” reflects the isolation and introspection of these heartbreakingly poised 30 minutes of fine-tuned grief and surrender.

best albums of 2007: 13. blonde redhead

13. Blonde Redhead - 23
I only fell in love with these moody, shoegazy tracks after Mike Mills’ Miranda July-starring video, entirely composed of one-second shots. The rest of the album sustains this delicate mood of velvety discomfort, “The Dress” with its “I love you less, now that I know you” refrain is exemplary of 23’s dirgy pop.

best albums of 2007: 14. new young pony club

14. New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
An angular and hella funky new-wave pop album that completely delivered on “Ice Cream”’s promise of dispassionate vocals and even cooler asymmetric hairstyles (check that video on Youtubez). Reminscent of early Madonna and Duran Duran, try the sub-zero dance-pop of “Tight Fit”.

best albums of 2007: 15. jens lekman

15. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
With its ironic juxtaposition of maudlin (and often witty) lyrics, “If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This),” and sunny, almost Motown or Love Boat theme-sampling instrumentation, Lekman has created sardonic, yet heartfelt songs that can warn the coldest Swedish winter. The tragic tale of guacamole gone wrong, like, emergency room wrong, “Your Arms Around Me”, is undoubtedly the sweetest, saddest love song of the year.

best albums of 2007: 16. miracle fortress

16. Miracle Fortress - Five Roses
Montreal’s best kept secret, a warm and poppy bath of sound that releases its rich and rosy fragrance only after a few sleepy listens. I heard the quietly ebullient “Little Trees” first, and suggest you do too, if only to be surreptitiously transported to a sleepy, romantic Quebecois street corner where the smell of fresh bagels is gently wafting your way from the 24-hour bakery further on up the street.

best albums of 2007: 17. the go find

17. The Go Find - Stars on the wall
What adorably Belgian postmen would sound like if they were raised on the Postal Service album and the Sofia Coppola soundtracks (see my old post here).

best albums of 2007: 18. band of horses

18. Band of Horses - Cease To Begin
Unabashedly grand in the ‘storming the gates of heaven’ way – listen to “Is there a Ghost?” to hear the ethereal extent of Band’s north-western rock aspirations – this sophomore album is actually as good as everybody said last year’s My Morning Jacket was.

best albums of 2007: 19. !!!

19. !!! - Myth Takes
The triple exclamation marks definitively heart your dancing shoes (“Yadnus” was a live favorite of mine), but please do wear sturdy ones, because this cocky deconstruction-disco-rock will disco you until the disco deconstructs itself into a steaming pile of cowbell.

best albums of 2007: 20. rosie thomas

20. Rosie Thomas - These Friends of Mine
My only concession to my Sufjanmania – though he also plays piano on #4 – this short set of slightly too cute Brooklyn coffeeshop ballads (it comes with a Fleetwood Mac cover! And it’s “Songbird”!) still boasts more than just a few Suf-appearances (on a straight cover of R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” for ef’s sake, see what I mean by cute?), Thomas’ originals, like “All the Way to New York City” and “Say Hello,” manage to earnestly portray bittersweet regret.

best albums of 2007: 21. sexton blake

21. Sexton Blake - Plays The Hits
Covering, among others, Elton John, Kim Carnes, Milli Vanilli, Rod Stewart, Erasure, as well as fucking Paula Abdul (remember the Keanu-goes-Jimmy-Dean video for “Rush Rush”? Yeah, me too) and LL Cool J, while still preserving one’s dignity, and not only that, but actually extracting emotional truths from singles flogged to death on AM radio, earns Blake not just cool-kudos, but major karaoke karma points.

best albums of 2007: 22. air

22. Air - Pocket Symphony
A bit boring, yes. Repetitive, also, Elevator music, definitively. But this French band never aspired to change the face of rock, just to create imaginary, futuristic soundtracks to imaginary, futuristic French films in which everybody is somehow both smoking and radiant. This sounds like a sequel to last year’s equally sonically rich Charlotte Gainsbourg album (then #18), but mostly without Jarvis Cocker’s redeemingly sharp lyrics (“The Duelist”, a Jarvis and Charlotte duet was a bonus track).

best albums of 2007: 23. chromeo

23. Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
Elevating retro to the next level, this catchy album of metallic vocoder-enhanced lost New Edition hits (like titular single “Fancy Footwork” (check their vid on Youtube) or 80s-flashback “Opening Up”) is like a new soundtrack to a funny “House Party” starring Morris Day and Prince as Kid ‘N Play (or Hall & Oates), respectively.

best albums of 2007: 24. over the rhine

24. Over The Rhine - The Trumpet Child
Like #20, this is sometimes frightfully MOR, Adult Contemporary, or even – the horror! – Starbucksy. Still, if merely being jazzy – yes, Jazzy-jazzy –, having a really good female singer, and being accomplished musically would prevent me from embracing luscious and hip-wiggling tracks like “Trouble” or glowing almost-hymns like the album’s classy title track, then I’ll gladly embrace the Michael Bublés of this world and buy another latte.

best albums of 2007: 25. björk

25. Bjork - Volta
Though the Icelandic siren is as always musically inventive and delivers beautiful “Hyperballad” song-songs like the oceanic (and slightly Homogenic) “Wanderlust” or the mysterious Antony duet “Dull Flame of Desire”, Volta is especially notable for Björk’s most strident (and f*&%king loudest) song yet, “Declare Independence”, the great Spike Jonze video for which cannot even come close to the sheer life-force and M.I.A.-besting political energy that bursts forth from its speaker-wrecking pagan bassline. Raise your flag, bitches.