Best music of 2007

There's a copy of The Tech's certified choices for the best albums of 2007 online here. It was published a week or so ago, and I'm pretty pleased with it; I think it's actually better than last year. It's a mash-up of choices both Sarah and I made, but since she is editor, her deck of choices was shuffled significantly higher than mine. I don't really have a problem with Radiohead being on the list, but I don't think it should be #1 just because... well, I don't want to pick on Sarah publicly. The only other gripe is that I don't know what the hell White Rabbits is all about. Overall, it is a good list though, and I hope we make a lot of readers feel out of the loop and stupider than us.

I had been under the impression that we were also going to write about the best songs of 2007, and I was out of contact with Sarah for a while frantically typing those up whilst traveling by train between Worcester and Boston. I was just about finished when she told me that songs weren't going to be factored into the article. Phooey. Actually, it was a blessing because I didn't like how they were turning out anyways, but there are some parts that I wrote that I really liked. It's just that overall, I had a bad feeling about it. So my work doesn't go to waste, I'll show what I had written (in rough draft form):

LCD Soundsystem – “Someone Great”
When your whole world goes wrong, why won’t everyone else’s? “The coffee isn’t even bitter” the morning after a break-up for LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, and he's "stunned it's not raining." How stupid is it that we anthropomorphize nature to the extent that we expect it to acknowledge our lives, our grief with omens and signs? I guess it's something we depend on so we can convince our egos that we're each the center of our own universe. Coming to understand that can hurt, but that's not what "Someone Great" is really there to tell you. Mostly, it embodies that devastating feeling that comes when you become acutely aware of how much you leaned on someone or something right after it's pulled out from underneath you. The song hits with the weight of a plunging anchor with downcast keyboards sounding irretrievably sunken. This is, almost paradoxically, a dance track, a quality that is somehow critical to it being the knockout track of the year. It must have to do with the ironic parallel between dancing and mourning. You're living solely in the present for both, but in the latter scenario, it's because you dare not look ahead. As Murphy clings to emotional stability he weakly assures himself, "we're safe for the moment."

Bloc Party – “I Still Remember”
Though their second album, A Weekend in the City, struggled to stay consistent, it reached the same heights as their debut through standout tracks such as “I Still Remember.” The song is cut from the same mold as “So Here We Are,” an earlier Bloc Party favorite with a guitar line that glistens like the reflections off a chandelier. Where “So Here We Are” is placid, however, “I Still Remember” is exuberant with the lightness of being in love, and true to the band’s form, it might have the most memorable guitar hook of the year. If I had my way, you’d see this song in the next Rock Band download package, but there’s the issue of sexual ambiguity in the singer’s object of affection (“We left our trousers by the canal…I kept your tie”). Does anyone feel like belting out a gay love story? Rock ‘n roll!

Animal Collective – “For Reverend Green” & “Winter Wonderland”
Animal Collective’s latest album Strawberry Jam plays like a best hits collection, by which I mean something both bad and good. On one hand, the album is sequenced so that the tracks all feel like a bunch of competing egos trying to mingle. On the other hand, those same tracks are amazing to experience one at a time. The best of these, “For Reverend Green” and “Winter Wonderland,” could not be further apart in mood and aesthetic. The former is harsh and humid like the churning engine room of a ship with Avey Tare’s vocals sailing high over Deakon’s friction-charged guitar scrapings. The latter is as breezy and blissful as a sled ride down a hill with a percussion section that sounds like it was played on icicles in a snowy cavern. On multiple fronts, Animal Collective continues to push the frontiers of what is considered great rock and make it sound easy.

Radiohead – “All I Need”
The most dangerous thing Radiohead could’ve done to my fanhood was mess this one up, because “All I Need” was the best song on In Rainbows before it was even recorded. The band debuted it during their American tour of 2006, and even the low-quality YouTube footage was mesmerizing. Phil Selway’s drums were towering and cavernous, and Thom Yorke’s voice was at its most subordinate: “I am a moth who just wants to share your light/ I am an insect trying to get out of the night.” The drums are scaled way down on the album version, but the soul of the song, Colin Greenwood’s mournful bass-line, remains intact. Yorke’s wails over a discordant piano outro, “It’s all right/ It’s all wrong,” driving home the turmoil that comes from being defeated by one’s own pure devotion.

Of Montreal – “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse”
How married are you to the notion of controlling your own destiny? Your answer may be subject to change when every choice ahead of you is certain to bring nothing but suffering. A possible solution: chemicals! Unfortunately, Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal found his drugs as harsh a mistress as the wife from whom he separated, but by convincing his chemicals not to ”strangle [his] pen,” he was able to spin out this wild, electro-pop gem. Barnes initially tries to will his psyche back together by crying, “C’mon, mood, shift/ shift back to good again” as loud, humming keyboards warble like a car trying to start. From there on, however, “Heimdalsgate” becomes joyful and almost outrageous, but with his begging that the current high won’t ever end, Barnes understands that eventually he has to fall apart all over again.

The National – “Mistaken For Strangers”
Matt Berninger, in his distinctive baritone, sings of the minor tragedy of being “mistaken for strangers by your own friends” after you suit up and fall into the office drone routine, but his voice seethes with bitterness as if it’s those friends who should feel guilty. A hollow, ascending guitar line brings steady tension to the verses until the full band releases it in a pounding chorus that damns you for your “uninnocent elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.” Being corrupted and forsaken in the most “unmagnificent” way possible never felt this viciously gratifying.