#10 Loney, Dear – Loney, Noir

Hailing from the same Scandinavian stomping grounds as Jens Lekman, it seems there wasn’t enough room on hardly anyone’s ‘07 favorites lists for more than one tender-hearted Swede, with Night Falls Over Kortedala nabbing top accolades while the modest Loney, Dear wilted into blog oblivion. Actually, the only other person I know who dared to mention Loney, Noir was Rachel Briggs, art director at American Songwriter magazine, whom I must salute for her fine taste. What’s more surprising is that it seems no one even took notice of the bushy-tailed blaze of infatuating sunshine that is “I Am John,” which I consider to be the best song of the year in a year of some truly great contenders. Off to a brisk start with Emil Svanängen’s falsetto whine, accentuated with a crisp, finger-swept acoustic guitar before being lifted by Malin Ståhlberg’s feminine back-up and drumbrush swipes, the song only builds off its punchy beginning with lyrics that work their way into every corner – often carrying over from bar to bar as if struggling to keep up – and pushes far beyond its dainty exterior into an ever-escalating, clamorous finish of pinched vocals revolving around one another, until, finally, just fading into silence as if nothing ever happened. Perhaps that’s why Loney, Noir’s gentle hooks, soft synths and placid passion – if I was forced to pick, other highlights worth looking into are “Hard Days 1,2,3,4″ and “Carrying A Stone,” but two in a string of worthy titles – failed to catch the attention of critics who sort through hundreds of free promo CDs a year: Loney, Dear is just too sweet for rock ‘n’ roll, and all the better for it.

#11 Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Burdened with the nigh-impossible task of following up one of the decade’s hands-down best albums back in ‘04 with Funeral, Montreal’s Arcade Fire were facing a welcome, but tough, crowd when they announced the release of their sophomore effort Neon Bible early last year. Without the usual cushion most bands have of lesser-known underachievements to precede their great works – for example, it’s an easy guess Black Reble Motorcycle Club’s Baby 81 wasn’t going to be another Howl, if you’d just look at their first two biker-rock records – Arcade Fire had no context for their work besides an overshadowed EP. Old news by now, Neon Bible was hardly the dreaded flop it might have been and only encouraged the band’s surrounding myth as the “saviors of rock.” But you know me, I’m hard to win over, and while I couldn’t help but be lured by the anxious rise and fall of opener “Black Mirror,” monophonic jangle of “Keep The Car Running” and last-gasp rebuke of “Intervention,” I couldn’t help but feel the lack. Far from the mournful ballads of Funeral that acted as a circle-of-friends catharsis – shortly before entering the studio, the band suffered three family deaths back-to-back – Neon Bible was noticebly … angry. Sharing a title with the John Kennedy Tool (of Confederacy of Dunces fame) novel of the same name – though the band claims it as pure coincidence, uh huh, sure – Arcade Fire seemed to be playing into a well-rehearsed cliché of the whole denounce-the-dictator album – Ted Leo’s Shake The Sheets, Neil Young’s Living With War, Green Day’s American Idiot (though I’ve never heard it, and glad for it) – that had been freely circulating for two presidential terms now. That aside, though, frontman Win Butler’s vocals seemed to take on a melodramatic tone (I still cringe at the opening moments of “My Body Is A Cage”) that hadn’t been there before, a peculiar shift from the choir calls on Funeral that seemed to merge with the ebb and flow of the music so seamlessly. As I let my expectations fall away, though, and let Neon Bible stand on its own merit, Butler’s haunted angst on “(Antichrist Television Blues)” followed by his heart-rending resignation on “Windowsill” when he declares bluntly, “I don’t want to live in America no more,” floored me with each listen. Far from the cheap sandbagging of Green Day or another sappy call for peace from U2, Arcade Fire tapped into a shared vein of looming fear that dominates American sentiment, brought on by misuse of power by way of imperialistic Christian dogma. It’s only a matter of time before WWIII hits our shores and the possibility of a future administration waging a holy war on our own soil seems more likely than ever; it’s not that it absolutely will happen, but the threat is enough to lock your windows, let your patriotism wane and run like hell.

#12 The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse: Best Debut Album of the Year

Though not Montreal husband-and-wife duo The Besnard Lakes’ official debut record, having produced a limited print (a meager 1,000 copies), self-released album back in ‘03 called Volume 1, their semi-self-titled follow-up The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is their first effort on the ever-trustworthy Jagjaguwar label, which circulated their expansive chamber rock on a mass scale. Boasting my favorite opening seconds from all of ‘07 with “Disaster,” Jace Lasek’s crisply tender coo carries the opening notes of a classical guitar before slowly introducing a lingering violin, then building to a dramatic crescendo that will become the trademark for every one of the seven gorgeous symphonies to come. Shrugged off as self-indulgent and languid, Johnny-come-lately shoegaze by some, Dark Horse is very much reminiscent of Jónsi Birgisson’s entrancing falsetto, but ingrained with meticulous form – the couple were able to make extended visits to Breakglass Studio where Lasek has been a sought-after producer for Canadian acts like Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown – that shifts from fragile vocal harmonies and concert hall arrangements to gravelly guitar tones and chugging drums that take their time to achieve Dark Horse’s lofty mood, yes, but which can hardly be labeled as listless. The album’s finest track, “Devastation,” serves as its centerpiece that comes the closest to the choir-like hymns of oft-compared, wrongly matched counterparts Arcade Fire, but evokes more the space-rock anthems of labelmates Black Mountain, but without their vintage leanings and wry humor – for sure, the Besnard Lakes are a strictly serious affair. Just listen to the crunchy strings vibrato of follow-up “Because Tonight” that extends to slightly more than seven minutes, or the Animal Rights-esque guitar solos on the equally long “And You Lied To Me.” That’s not to say Dark Horse doesn’t search for its lighter moments with the buoyant bass line that introduces “Ride The Rails” and fluttering rhythm guitar throughout “On Bedford and Grand” or drum cadence on closer “Cedric’s War” that both strike Beach Boys parallels – especially the jovial half-chuckle that echoes off the walls in between verses in the song’s first half. Whatever musical intimations you might read into this album, though, The Besnard Lakes are more than just throwback laundry; stamping music this resonant is just asking to miss out on something.

#13 Menomena – Friend and Foe

Unlike so many prog-rock, avant garde bullshitters on the fringes of the indie scene tinkering with drones, ambience and found sound after hearing their first Aphex Twin record, Portland, Oreg., trio Menomena is one of the few bands I know able to trot without pretention into “experimental” territory and emerge deserving to have the quotes erased off the word. Attempting more than just a backdoor strategy to their music, Menomena perform an all-out deconstruction of their third LP Friend and Foe, examine its splayed remains and reassemble it all to staggering effect. Opener “Muscle ‘n Flow” interweaves rotating drumfire, and “The Pelican” makes use of blank space between pointed guitar thrashes, but nowhere is this method more apparent than on third track “Wet & Rusty,” which alternates between episodic piano interludes, halted acoustic strums, leftfield back-up vocals and sporadic bell chimes that somehow make perfect sense in the song’s context. Though when Friend’s tone suddenly takes a mid-album turn for the dramatic with “My My” – away from the faint playfulness that seeped through the cracks of the previous tracks – it somehow feels like a natural extension, a latent ingredient that merely decided to make a late surface, but which informs the remainder of the album by way of the increasingly earnest lyrics on “Evil Bee” (Oh, to be wanted, to be useful/Oh, to be a machine), spectral vocal harmony on “Ghostship,” and eerie piano medley of closer “West.” Finally, Friend takes its last breath with a semi-hopeful hidden track that wavers between a Zen garden pluck and end credits to a well-scored Zelda game, just before concluding with an abrupt, forbidding thrust of grey noise. Menomena may have torn to shreds some of their best and most refined rock songs for Friend and Foe, but they marshall them back together with finesse into something that equals more than the sum of its parts.

#14 Frog Eyes – Tears of the Valedictorian

Without a doubt the wildest record of the year, British Columbian quartet Frog Eyes’ fifth LP Tears of the Valedictorian is a bombastic, blusteringly pompus effort, every corner of which is crammed with Carey Mercer’s vocal acrobatics, interloping drums, stray guitar bits and unaware piano interludes. On the brink of overwhelming every track into an indecipherable mess, the song’s structures are so precisely mapped out and its members so adept with their ill-conceived approach to the material that it’s a wonder this album works at all, much less congeals into the certifiable opus it is. Spanning only nine tracks, some of which accomplish monumental stature in but a two- or three-minute stretch (” … Eagle Energy,” “Idle Song”), and others like “Caravan Breakers” that somehow reach beyond epic by fusing every would-be mistake and unwaveringly irregular stratum of the song’s endless layers into a messy whole. Among those, “Bushels” stands out as one of the year’s untold jewels that’s so utterly vulnerable, with Mercer whooping heedlessly (and even haphazardly off-key at times) around grandstanding piano bangs and unrestrained percussive assaults. At other times, Mercer sings nearly accapella on “The Policy Merchant, The Silver Bay” from which the album gleans its title, accompanied by scant guitar picks and swipes across the strings. However you choose to look at it, Valedictorian throws you completely unexpected turns, even up to the album’s finale that sounds like a muffled track played backwards to, despite its oddity, surprisingly soothing effect. Even those familiar with Mercer’s crude arrangements, and sometimes bandmate Spencer Krug’s dense accompaniment, seemed to have been turned off by this rough-hewn album; if given its space, though, Frog Eyes are able to craft unbelievably sophisticated music that can result in a huge breath of fresh air for those who can hold their ear’s initial gag reflex.

#15 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! – Some Loud Thunder

At times, I’m harangued for making use of online file-sharing, of how mine and others’ lack of concern for the artist’s integrity as a viable commercial product is the cause for supposedly plummeting CD sales, thus shoving the broom handle into the bike spokes of the blessed music biz, and, ultimately, stripping the artist of his ability to share his heart to the masses. I can’t say that illegal downloading isn’t an ever-so-convenient fast track to, essentially, theft, but further supporting that point by saying that it’s a larcenous pollution of the music industry’s purity is ludicrous. That’s bullshit; fuck the industry. Maybe this sounds too close for comfort to John Doe’s philosophy in Seven – it’s ok to brutally murder disease-spreading whores, lying lawyers and pederasts, ’cause we’d all secretly thank the one who had the gall to actually do it – but I think that’s a misnomer. In the same way you can support the troops without supporting the war (except Ann Coulter), you can show your love for the artist’s work without falling prey to the (oh no!) Machine. Unlike millions of Radiohead fans who downloaded In Rainbows for free a few months ago – and still quite a few who went peer-to-peer out of habit, I guess – I paid for my copy. It was only ₤1 (about $3.00), but hey, if I were Trent Reznor, I might pay $5,000 bucks too; besides, Amy bought me a hard copy for my birthday, ’cause she’s awesome.

My point of all this is, the only concrete negative result I’ve seen from file-sharing is when I downloaded Some Loud Thunder by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! Not only did I seem to love this sophmore effort more than anyone else, but I thought the first title track was a captivating opener when every review I read trashed it as piss-poor production intended solely to ward off the throngs of indie darlings who declared their ‘05 debut as the advent of a revolutionary self-release market. Without my knowing it, though, CYHSY! had purposefully leaked a less-fuzzy version of the title track after the fact to, I guess, make up for the loss. Of course, I happened upon that version and have been listening to it for months as the on-the-shelves definitive version. The fact is, the first rendering is awful and completely off-putting to no apparent purpose, and is the only reason this album is not a bit higher on my list. After all, I’m a purist in that sense and base my criticism solely on what the CD gives me: I want my guarantee on the box. Paradoxically, it’s the purist in me that cringes at the coming-of-digital-age ideas of there no longer being a standard album cut, but rather free-floating mixes and remixes where the user now creates his/her own playlist to jumble willy-nilly. As much as I love the guy, Beck’s a pretentious arse for thinking he can “reinvent” the album. To the point, though, CYHSY! made their start by thriving on bootleg culture, promoting their own work sans label at the mercy of devoted NPR listeners and sycophantic critics. Once they signed to U.K. label Wichita for Thunder to boost their marketablity – or keep from being charged for the ice under the bleachers at Chicago Stadium – did they no longer fit the trend, which, in my opinion, cost them in the polls. In Matrix-speak, they are the anomaly that disproves the norm, or to sound more literate and borrow from Derrida, the deconstruction always already present within the work.

Don’t get me wrong, if their music had sucked, I wouldn’t have even cared to have it on my radar. Not only is Some Loud Thunder a commercial contradiction wrapped in a conundrum, but it’s a self-assured, sheerly brilliant piece cleverly disguised as a reckless rock record. Though a top-ten candidate of mine for quite a while before learning about my aforementioned goof, tracks like “Satan Said Dance” (my #14 song of the year), the euphoric bassline that drives closer “Five Easy Pieces,” and the rattled blues of “Arm and Hammer” perk my ears up every time. So whether or not I ever buy a jewel-case-and-insert copy of Thunder or keep it as the befuddled tracklist I fell in love with, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! shielded some unfair wrath (though not Brad Pitt’s) this year that, by some slim chance, this review might help unravel.

Sorry this rant was so long, but it needed to be said. “All this talking …”

#16 Devendra Banhart – Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

Back in ‘05 when the staff at Magnet Magazine didn’t have stilted taste – now fawning over every other Robert Pollard release, counting Trail of Dead’s last mistep as calculated brilliance, and debasing themselves with Hold Steady at number one – their end-of-year recommendations opened up my musical palate to some of the best music I hadn’t heard yet. It was at a time when I was still hoarding burns from friends and, as of yet, had no grasp on the whole underground culture enough to discern my own taste. Of those Magnet endorsements – a slew of greats like The National, Black Mountain, Constantines, Black Rebel Motorcylce Club, M. Ward, Sleater-Kinney – the single most eye-opening and lasting musican they introduced me to was Devendra Banhart. After gorging myself on Banhart’s opus Cripple Crow that affirmed an exponential growth on his part from four-track bedroom auteur to eclectic gypsy-folk shaman, I was determined to try and weasel my way into an interview with this guy if I could for his latest magnum Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Sadly, that never came to pass, and amidst a circle of frowns from critics who basically circumvented Smokey as “too long” and divergent in its genre-hopping, I was prepared to accept that Banhart had, perhaps, tumbled a ways down his mountain of distinction. Honestly, who could follow up a feat like Cripple that I can’t help but feel may be one of the great records of the decade? After inching my way, one careful listen after another, through its myriad motifs and homage varietals, snaking between cabana chanteys, soul-sister revivals and Jewish doo-wop love tunes with ease, all brought into unison with Banhart’s poly-flex throat calls and soft-spoken meditations, Smokey is as forward-looking an album as possible. One glaring defect that I haven’t been able to place, though, is the low-toned production by otherwise reliable compatriot Noah Georgeson that muddles Banhart’s wildhorse whims. Whereas ’04’s twin albums Rejoicing In The Hands/Niño Rojo reveled in its splintered acoustics and vacant haunts – even Georgeson’s precise elocution of Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender was flawless – this album does feel a little … smokey. Regrettably, that palor never seems to lift and reduces to near soft rock what should be a visceral clamor. That doesn’t impugn obvious stand-outs like “Seahorse” from easily being one of Banhart’s better songs, or “Tonada Yanomaninista” from breaking form with a tousled rock-out, or, actually, any of its 16 tracks spanning nearly an hour’s worth of material from losing their unorthodox piquancy. During Banhart’s Nashville show at City Hall in October, I have to say I felt these same reservations as I stood alone in a crowd of wish-they’d-been-there Deadheads, Latina samba couples and pubescent press with cameras. The air felt oddly dry. But as Banhart suddenly loosed himself on stage, belting out with a third-world spirtual relish, “I’m scared of ever being born again/ If it’s in this form again,” an expectant shiver coursed down my neck. When looking back, that may have been the most awe-struck I’ve been at a show, affirming my belief in Devendra Banhart as one of this generation’s best songwriters and that Smokey, for all its flaws, is a cherished shrine of his, perpetually decorated with as much care as any of his deserving children.

Best EP of the Year: Black Kids – Wizard of Ahhhs

For the most part, I don’t spend much time with EPs, those dainty pockets of songs either not good enough to place on a band’s full-length, or chock full of label-mate remixes not really appropriate for a proper release. But when one as amazing as Black Kids Wizard of Ahhhs, a toe-test available for free download on their MySpace site (sadly, this is no longer available) that piqued enormous interest from indie labels and bloggers with too much time on their hands … well, this is one of those rare incidents when the EP is the perfect fit and anything but a judgment call on its contents. A playful blend of Reggie Youngblood’s lackadaisical coos, pinned between the Cure’s Robert Smith and New Order-inflected synth-dance and wobbly basslines, Wizard captures a solidarity not often found in bands as young as this, much less with so little time on the road to whet such a distinct sound. No doubt there’s plenty of push from whatever label finally nabs them (and themselves, I’m sure) to pull together their proper debut, and perhaps even make a buck off it this time. But here’s hoping they’ll take their time to coax into creation a follow-up worthy of Wizard’s youthful flair, and take a cue from Sea Wolf’s too-hasty blunder this year. It could mean the difference between being one of the best albums of the year (if not in ‘08, then whenever they’re able) and a lamentable let-down.

#17 Liars – Liars

When first introduced to art-rock trio Liars on Pitchfork’s best of ‘06 for Drum’s Not Dead, I immediately had an unfair bias (as I am sometimes wont to do) against them for merely being lumped in the top ten alongside Scott Walker’s The Drift – maybe the least accessible album I’ve ever heard – and the ridiculous position of The Knife’s Silent Shout at number one. After warming up to staple prog acts like CAN and Slint, though, I began to understand the gravity of Drum’s unnerving tribal beats, banshee yells and degenerated drones, but not before their self-titled fourth LP won me over for entirely different reasons. Still weighted with Angus Andrew’s sickly moans and bleary industrial seethings that make up the band’s unhinged pathos, Liars, while hardly as disparate an effort as its been made out to be, is noticeably more relaxed and untethered by the weighty concepts of Drum’s or sophmore album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. Maybe relaxed is too loose a term, though, since opener “Plaster Casts of Everything” is the most savagely aggressive song I heard in ‘07, and certainly the best video of the year, falling somewhere between the lewd brilliance of David Lynch and fascinating projectile retch of a film school student’s senior thesis. Pond hopping from the lascivious “Leather Prowler” to the murky beauty of “Sailing To Byzantium,” to the straight-up, dogged rock anthems of “Cycle Time” and “Freak Out,” Liars is referentially literate in its influences without feeling at all stenciled from kraut, post-punk or experimental dance predecessors. Likely to be the single best effort from one of the New York underground’s most singular bands, this album continually catches me off guard and just gets better with each listen.

#18 Caribou – Andorra

After Dan Snaith’s solo engine Manitoba went defunct in ‘04, due to legal conflicts with some ’70s scissor-kick wash-up of the same name, though only a cosmetic change to the Canadian’s bedroom synth-rock, his start under the new moniker almost seemed to stunt his progress judging by the 2005 lackluster debut The Milk of Human Kindness. Whatever that album lacked, though, Caribou’s latest installment Andorra more than makes up for. Kicking off with one of the year’s best songs, “Melody Day” perfectly sums up the album’s smitten aura, intense percussive breaks, exultant high bell tones and chill harp swipes. A blend of ’60s throwbacks and careful tape-splice production, Snaith’s light-footed vocals and well-chosen instrumentation let his songs breathe, swelling from the minimal Casio scales that introduce “Irene” to the flower child vibe of “Eli” and expansive terrain of “After Hours.” With more than a few of them given feminine titles, such as the breezy “Sandy” and closer “Niobe,” Andorra feels much like a cluster of once-love songs that transcended the romantic spring from which they originated, drifting toward a higher plane of immensely moving arrangements endowed with a flawlessly gorgeous palate of sounds. Where they once fostered the seeds of but a song’s idea, these past loves have now become the muses for a personal opus of Snaith’s own inspired rapture.