We now take a break from our regularly scheduled Queer leftie cultural critique for that most contrived, flawed and invariably maddening of "music journalism" traditions -- the year-end "best of" list.
What follows are my "top 11" albums of 2007 (I couldn't settle on 10), in order from "worst" (#11) to best (#1). A few introductory notes on my biases: I prefer female vocalists -- the more eccentric, the better. I like music that is complex, riveting and emotionally and intellectually challenging. In most cases, I prefer to call attention to the neglected and underappreciated. Thus, you won't see Feist's
The Reminder, Tegan & Sara's
The Con, or Amy Winehouse's
Back to Black, although I actually enjoyed all three albums quite a bit.
The rankings become increasingly arbitrary below my top 2. This list is not meant to be taken
too seriously. The music, however, should be taken as seriously as possible.
Thus, without further ado-
#11: "The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn" - CocoRosie
Bianca and Sierra Casady create warped, circuitous music that, upon first description, might sound like indie-hipster affectation, like weirdness for weirdness's sake. As in -- "Oh my God, I found this great band that uses children's toys as instruments and recorded their entire first album while sitting in a bathtub in Paris." And indeed, CocoRosie's detractors claim that those of us who call ourselves fans couldn't possibly enjoy the music and that we must be posers, only pretending to like what we hear for the sake of coolness. If CocoRosie's recordings were any less captivating, I might agree. Fortunately, the music is hypnotic, as frightening as it is lulling. Their eccentricity is organic, not forced. On The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, the sisters employ more structured melodies than in the past. The result is refreshingly tuneful without sacrificing any of the band's trademark strangeness.
favorite tracks: "Rainbowarriors," "Japan," "Animals."
#10: "The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard" - Rickie Lee Jones
In 2003, Rickie Lee Jones (who is in my pantheon of most-worshiped artists) released the meticulous and deliberate The Evening of my Best Day, one of the strongest albums of her career and one of my favorite albums of the decade thus far. If The Evening of my Best Day presented RLJ at her most artful and crafted, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is its converse -- a raw, rugged and often improvisational rock record. Sermon emerged from RLJ's collaboration with writer Lee Cantelon, who invited RLJ to read on a recording of his work The Words, a collection of Jesus Christ's experiences and teaching reconceptualized for contemporary readers. RLJ found herself unable to read Cantelon's words without setting them to music, and began improvising melodies live in the studio. Sermon's earliest songs came out of these sessions. As a result, the album has a unique immediacy, emotional candor and spiritual resonance. Its religious philosophy prioritizes the experiences, doubts and questions of everyday folk, and may be best represented by a lyric from the song Where I Like it Best:
"How do you pray in a world like this/You know, I see the people on TV/And they close their eyes and they bow their heads/And they say "Let us pray"/And it feels so cold and meaningless."
and later:
I tell you what/You gotta take it back from them/Because the prayers belong to you/All you gotta do is say hey hey/I'm down here too, I'm down here too/I'm down here too."
...a humanist gospel both powerful and haunting.
favorite tracks: "It Hurts," "Where I Like it Best," "7th Day."
#9: "The World has Made me the Man of my Dreams" - Meshell Ndegeocello
Meshell Ndegeocello has long been my favorite "neo-soul" artist, a contrived critical term that her complex and politicized fusion of funk, soul, rock, jazz, etc. predates by at least half a decade. The World has Made me the Man of my Dreams is her most involving release since 2002's Cookie: the Anthropological Mixtape, finally integrating her recent jazz experimentations and collaborations with her more established artistic voice. Funk, soul, jazz, psychedelia, afrobeat, sensuality and politics are all present and accounted for. The world (slash Meshell & co.) has made me the Meshell Ndegeocello record of my dreams.
favorite tracks: "The Sloganeer: Paradise," "Elliptical," "Shirk," "Article 3."
#8: "White Chalk" - PJ Harvey
This is one of the only albums on my list to receive widespread (and deserved) critical attention. Thankfully, most of those reviews do justice to the album's intensity. You'll see the word "haunting" popping up quite frequently, and for good reason. With all of the talk about PJ Harvey's status as an iconic alt-rocker and songwriter, I've always been surprised by how rarely people seem to talk about the raw power of her vocals. That seems to be changing with this release. Polly Jean has immense artistic integrity, pushing herself into new and likely uncomfortable terrain with her first set of piano-based material. Although these songs are down-tempo, they should not be mistaken for "mellow" or "soothing." They are as challenging and confrontational as anything else she's ever recorded.
favorite tracks: "Grow Grow Grow," "When Under Ether," "The Mountain."
#7: "Saltbreakers" - Laura Veirs
For relatively simple music, Laura Veirs albums are shockingly revelatory. Veirs is a rare guitar-based singer-songwriter whose palette is expansive rather than insular. Her lyrics are literate and her melodies infectious and sturdy. On Saltbreakers, the production details and band arrangements are thrilling, augmenting and exposing new characteristics of the songs rather than flattening or oversaturating them in canned junk. It's all about the subtle details: the piano on Don't Lose Yourself, the backing chorus on To the Country, the entrance of the delicate electric guitar partway through Cast a Hook. I also dig the album's thematic resonance, with most of the songs employing ocean-oriented metaphors and romantically invoking Veirs's Pacific Northwest locale. I compulsively spun this one for a good month or so.
favorite tracks: "Ocean Night Song, " "Don't Lose Yourself," "Cast a Hook," "Black Butterfly."
#6: "Find Me" - Happy Rhodes
Find Me is Happy Rhodes's first release since 1998. As an active member of an at-times rabid Happy Rhodes-oriented fan community (see "Ectophile's Guide to Good Music" in right-hand navigation), I had mild concerns that this recording would not meet expectations, and that I'd be forced to exclude it from this list and suffer the wrath of my fellow fans. Thankfully, Happy recorded one of my favorite albums of her career, a more song-oriented effort than her sometimes atmosphere-heavy back catalog. (Please, please, please purchase this record from CDBaby and help support the career of this criminally under-appreciated artist). The review I wrote when this album first became available remains apt:
With a perfectionism and eye for production detail to rival her musical influence Kate Bush, Happy Rhodes has always released records packed with transcendent, multilayered soundscapes. Yet Find Me may be her most fully-realized production. Whereas Happy's past records have at times had an even, almost metronomic quality that some have called "druidic," the songs on Find Me have heightened shape, contour and drama. The most memorable, like the searing title track, move from quiet beauty into explosive climaxes. When she called this her "rock album" at a recent performance, the audience tittered. But if by calling it "rock," Happy means to reference the album's high-octane, walloping emotional arc, she may not be far off the mark.
favorite tracks: "Find Me," "She Won't Go," "Here and Hereafter," "Can't Let Go."
#5: "The Bird and the Bee" - The Bird and the Bee
The Bird and the Bee is one of those female-male collaborations that results in musical alchemy. Inara George is a singer-songwriter and guitarist, Greg Kurstin a producer and keyboardist. The band's detractors (thankfully, a minority) hurl half-baked politics involving words like "yuppie" and "Starbucks" to dismiss this gorgeous music. They're full of crap. Although Inara and Greg have a lovely, loungey vibe that serves as pleasant mood music, their complex melodies -- evocative of 60's pop, jazz and tropicalia combined in an electro blender and hurtled forward into an uber-hip future -- refuse to be reduced to the category of "background music." As in the complicated pop songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, The Bird and the Bee's breeziness masks wrenching heartache and turmoil. And like Dionne Warwick singing those Bacharach-David tunes, Inara George makes a cakewalk out of shit that's really fucking difficult to sing on pitch (believe me, I've tried). I also recently had the pleasure of taking in Inara and Greg's endearing live show -- looking forward to more from these two.
favorite tracks: "Fucking Boyfriend," "I'm a Broken Heart," "My Fair Lady."
#4: "Obligatory Villagers" - Nellie McKay
I don't tend to put much stock in cockamamie rock critic theories of lineage and succession. But I have concocted one theory that I enjoy, which situates Nellie McKay alongside Joanna Newsom and Regina Spektor as one third of the new triumverate of 1st-class female eccentrics -- the Bjork, Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco of the 21st century, if you will. When McKay first came onto the scene with 2002's delightful Get Away from Me, I found myself questioning whether, going forward, she would be able to transcend the timeliness of ironic humor for something more timeless. Over time, the sheer breadth of her musical imagination has put my fears regarding her subject matter to rest. Nellie is too gifted to disappear. Her cracked cabaret compositions have always called for a more organic and immediate setting than the programmed arrangements of her past recordings have been able to provide. Obligatory Villagers is her first album with a live band, for whom Nellie composed all of the orchestrations. As a result, it's also her most fully-formed, sounding more than ever like madcap postmodern feminist musical theater -- for instance, the second track, Oversure, opens sounding exactly like a Broadway overture before evolving into a spirited song-and-dance routine (one imagines) paying homage to a female vampire from an obscure B-movie. Nellie McKay has always been one of the most distinctive contemporary artists. Here, she's finally in full command of her powers.
favorite tracks: "Oversure, "Gin Rummy," "Galleon," "Testify."
#3: "American Doll Posse" - Tori Amos
This is Tori Amos's most ambitious record in years -- a glam rock spectacle that eschews the confessional for the performative. As the critic at Pop Matters described, Tori becomes the ultimate drag queen version of herself. After spending most of the decade shelving her characteristic draaaammmmmaaaaa so as not to upset her young daughter, Tori finally decided the daughter was old enough to deal and promptly opened up a fresh can of bad-ass. Such bad-ass would be worthless were it not creatively inspired. Luckily, American Doll Posse is vital in both its vision and execution. Although most have praised the album's ambition, it has been criticized on two fronts. First, some suggest that at 23 songs and nearly 80 minutes, Posse is too long. But unlike 2005's The Beekeeper, no obvious contenders emerge for chopping; few can agree on what to discard. Additionally, the length makes sense in context, as the album is an exploration of multiple constructions of femininity, performed by five different "women" understood to be different aspects of Tori's personality. This high-concept conceit is the album's other most criticized feature, but only because it is frequently misinterpreted. The five women are not intended to be fully-formed, three-dimensional "characters" with distinct musical voices. Rather, they are "dolls" -- deliberately one-dimensional feminine archetypes. The women are costumes we wear to perform particular identities; what emerges is a kind of experiential social commentary on marketing, artifice and the fractured "self" in contemporary patriarchy. The meta-narrative explores Tori's own construction as the "authentic," confessional female singer-songwriter, an appellation that can become as constrictive, reductive or artificial as any other.
favorite tracks: "Teenage Hustling," "Digital Ghost," "You Can Bring Your Dog," "Body & Soul," "Code Red," "Dark Side of the Sun."
#2: "Marry Me" - St. Vincent
Like My Brightest Diamond, Bat for Lashes or Feist (well perhaps slightly less like Feist, since Feist is actually Leslie Feist's last name... but I digress), St. Vincent is one of those "bands" that rests primarily on the shoulders of a single, multi-talented female singer-songwriter with rotating guests. In addition to writing powerful and unconventional tunes, St. Vincent's Annie Clark (a multi-instrumentalist like her friend Suf) honed her craft as a guitarist for The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens. I put great deliberation into choosing my number one record of the year, and if the award had been given on the basis of sheer freshness and thrill factor (I ultimately prioritized composition and album craft), it would've gone to Annie. The opening track, Now Now, is a strong representation of what lies within, musically speaking, deftly combining such seemingly disparate elements as buoyant, rhythmic electronics, children's chorus-provided backing vocals, agile acoustic guitar fingerpicking, disarming dissonance and formless electric guitar feedback. A series of similarly oddball masterpieces follows before the album wisely closes with a set of more mellow and conventional jazz-folk songs. My only (and relatively minor) complaint is that the closing track doesn't build into a climax to match the album's majestic opening. ...And if you're interested in hearing more about Annie's excellent lyrics (I tend to neglect the words these days), Slant Magazine has a great year-end review.
favorite tracks: "Now Now," "Your Lips are Red," "Apocalypse Song."
#1: "The Summer Storm Journals" - Noe Venable
The greatest album of the year does not appear on any year-end lists. The greatest album of the year does not appear on any year-end lists because this world in which we live is a low-down, damaged place. Into that damage, Noe Venable brings redemption through art. In Prayer for Beauty, the lyrics of which might legitimately be considered the Noe Venable manifesto, Noe sings, "say a prayer for beauty/they keep coming to take her apart/so many ways I've tried to say it/ oh my life oh my gods oh my heart."
Noe is an artist who values beauty. Not superficial, hollow beauty, but a bottomless beauty with the power to rearrange the world. The Summer Storm Journals is the first album that Noe has produced and arranged herself, and her intentionality shows in every carefully-crafted note. Noe is currently working to integrate "intellect, spirit and art," and this transformative process permeates her work. Rachel Salomon's breathtakingly intricate cover art is an ideal representation of the complex music that lies within. The Summer Storm Journals is an album of many layers, layers to be savored, then peeled away to expose other, equally profound experiences. Consider the marimba and arpeggiated (?I think?) piano runs on Army of Nows. Or the piano's evocative chord progression on Flower in Time, accompanied by strings, reminiscent of Laura Nyro's Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp. If anyone tries to tell you this album is "precious," they might actually be telling the truth. This album is indeed precious -- precious and indispensable. ...Like Happy Rhodes, Noe will directly benefit from your purchase of this record, directly from her website if possible.
favorite tracks: "Prayer for Beauty," "Swim with Me," "Flower in Time," "Army of Nows."
2007 was a fantastic year for music. Ultimately, the only valid reason for writing a year-end "best of" list is to call attention to records one feels deserve to be heard. On that note, I hope you'll consider my recommendations. Each one is a powerful work of art in its own rite.
