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2007 - year of the clusterfuck
THE TEN BEST ALBUMS OF 2007

It’s been a fairly average year for music. The biggest news has been the slew of reunions, with acts as diverse as the Verve, the Police, Led Zeppelin, Rage against the Machine and the Smashing Pumpkins getting together to earn a few dollars and, if we’re (un)lucky, record a new album. Musical innovation has been mostly limited to marketing, with Radiohead’s decision to release their new album for free causing waves and fattening wallets around the world. There haven’t been many new bands on the scene either, with most of the albums to make my list being second or third efforts from bands that appeared on the scene two to five years ago. But when the year was good, it was very good. Here are the ten most good (or ‘goodest’, to satisfy you grammar Nazis) occasions.

#10. Yours Truly Angry Mob – Kaiser Chiefs.

The Kaiser Chiefs may be in danger of becoming a British Hooty and the Blowfish, but they deserve credit for making their pub rock interesting and punkish in a way that songs about getting fish and chips and going to football games shouldn’t be. This mob doesn’t really seem that angry at all.

#9. Icky Thump – White Stripes.

At first this album was a pretty major disappointment for me, with nothing to match the ‘grab-you-by-the-throat’ appeal of previous Stripes works like ‘Seven Nation Army’. But on repeated listenings it reveals it’s not only equal, but actually superior to Get Behind Me Satan, just as irreverent and significantly more musically together.

#8. Grinderman – Grinderman.

Nick Cave is famous for reshuffling his band like a pack of cards, but this time more than just the names of the backing musicians have changed. The band itself has been renamed, and it’s largely abandoned bombastic piano-based doom rock in favour of scratchy guitar-based garage rock. One finds oneself wondering if one is being subject to a rather elaborate joke, but regardless, when it works, it transcends the novelty value, and when it rocks, it rocks fairly hard.

#7. Carnavas – Silversun Pickups.

Similar to Death Cab for Cutie but not nearly as over-hyped, Silversun Pickups are a fairly obscure Indie rock group from California who frequently flirt with emo without quite getting there, but don’t let their not being a thousand miles from My Chemical Romance prevent them from coming up with some extremely charming and occasionally poignant sixties-influenced guitar music.

#6. What’s The Time, Mr Wolf? – The Noisettes.

Another overlooked band, but British, not American, the Noisettes feature a soul-influenced lead singer flanked by a pair of shaggy-haired indie rock guys. Drawing equally from the Supremes and My Bloody Valentine, their first album combines a cheery upbeat vocal style with skidding guitar drones and grim lyrical matter in a manner that’s both thought provoking and toe tapping.

#5. A Weekend in the City – Bloc Party.

Another Anglo-African group, Bloc Party owe more to Joy Division than Diana Ross. Weekend is their second album and is rather less murky than its predecessor, with sharper guitars and drums, and even injections of electronica. The album is something of a ‘state of the nation’ work that addresses the chaos of modern British life, dwelling on immigration, terrorism and corruption in a way that’s relevant far outside the UK.

#4. An End Has A Start – Editors.

A journalist once said to me, rule number one is never say anything bad about editors. But even without this sage advice, I wouldn’t have much bad to say about this album. It’s not as good as their debut album, which flattened all around it like some post-punk nuclear bomb, but it’s telling that Editors in a lull are better than many other bands on an upswing. It’s a bit more political, a bit more piano-y, a bit less Joy Division-y and a bit more Muse-y. These guys are going places fast and their third album might yet give them the accolades they deserve. Now if only they would get with the times and call themselves ‘The Editors’

#3. In Rainbows – Radiohead.

Amidst all the flak concerning this album’s label-less, money-free method of release, discussion of its musical virtues has been pretty muted. Now it can’t be denied marketing is as much a part of the game as composition but nor can it be denied that this is, when the dust has settled, a good album. It owes a heavy debt to Can and DJ Shadow, but the basic formula might well be to make an electronic album that sounds like it was recorded on some godforsaken Yorkshire at the middle of the night in winter – even when the guitars and synths are swarming all over the place, the prevailing sound can only be described as ‘bleak’. Perhaps it has something to do with Thom Yorke’s strained falsetto vocals, which are dominating the songs more than they have ever done. It’s quite astounding that a band originally written off as a one hit wonder are still innovating fifteen years after their debut.

#2. Zeitgeist – Smashing Pumpkins.

It sounds like a formula for disaster. A band that was clearly out of artistic energy reforms seven years later with only two of its original members. Surely such an album is destined to suck in a legendarily bad way. Many critics fell for this compelling narrative but they can’t have listened to this album, because it cooks like a handful of bullets on a Mongolian hot plate. One can only conclude from the evidence that Billy Corgan was right all along – he really was the sole artistic force behind the Pumpkins (which fails to explain why his solo album blew so hard). But whatever its genesis, Zeitgeist is as undeniably good as a hundred dollar bill coated in chocolate. It’s energetic, intelligent and listenable – even danceable – in a way that the Pumpkins never consistently managed.

#1. Neon Bible – Arcade Fire.

Arcade Fire marked themselves as something special from the moment I first heard ‘Haiti’ in a record store in early 2005. Their first album was excellent, their second album is even better. The band have, it seems, gone beyond the fairly personal meditations of Funeral, their debut, taken a look at the world, basically hated what they saw, and composed an album that lays that out. The perspective switches from the personal to the global and back again, but the mood is one of despair, disillusionment and mourning for an innocence they never knew they had until it was lost. The only downside is that, with music this heartfelt and negative, the odds for a third album are not good, simply because they’ll probably have all topped themselves at this rate.

So, there it is. Do you agree? Disagree? Any conspicuous ommissions or foolish inclusions on my part? Let's get some kind of discussion going here, my bad pennies.