Top 10 Albums of 2007

In many ways, 2007 was a positively magical year for music fans. From the shock wave of press that accompanied the pay what you will release of our pick from number one album of the year to the reunion of one of rock’s most iconic bands (that would be Led Zeppelin), there was much to draw one’s attention to.

Our music writers’ individual lists (which you can read on the Burnside Writers Collective blog) are a great encapsulation of just how much there was out there to listen to. Although a number of albums popped up on list after list, there were so many differences amongst all the lists to make my job of compiling a top 10 from it a daunting task.

Yet, what I was left with was a wonderful reminder of how lucky we are to be music fans these days. There are millions of albums, billions of songs, and hundreds upon hundreds of megabytes at our disposal, only a few clicks away. If there were more hours to spend in a day, our lists might look even more fractured and harder to meld together.

It gives me great hope, as well, that our top 10 list of 2008 will be even farther from the norm than this one turned out to be. I don’t decry our writers for their picks, but it is filled with records that are showing up on lists all over the blogosphere and in print publications galore. Next year, I would like to see this list bring it music from the farther reaches of the planet with many more genres represented. Maybe that’s asking too much, but I can’t help but think that our writers, and other writers worldwide, will open themselves up to sounds that are unfamiliar, that can make them uncomfortable, and might change the way they think about music in general.

Without further ado, I give you our list of the best albums of 2007 as chosen by the music writers of Burnside Writers Collective:

1. Radiohead - In Rainbows

It would be impossible to separate the significance of the music making up In Rainbows and the circumstances in which it was brought into our headphones and our lives. Even folks who had only a small interest in Radiohead knew something about this band giving - yes giving - their music away to the masses. After the mediocre and convoluted Hail to the Thief, fans were hungry for something smooth, slightly sinister, kind of catchy, intricate and memorable. And Radiohead beautifully delivered. The greatness of this album is not its singular completeness or any thematic significance, but more through the brilliance contained in each track. Most notable being the almost-jazzy coolness of “Reckoner,” and the whimsical beauty of “Nude”—which is easily one of the greatest song that Radiohead ever recorded and ever will. October 10th, 2007 marked the release of another incredible album by the best band in the world, as well as a red-letter day in the eventual death of Major Label Music.

— Michael Dallas Miller

2. Feist - The Reminder

The Reminder reminds me of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour: an incredibly collection of fantastic songs (with only a couple of duds) that never quite clicks as an album. That’s its only flaw…Leslie Feist came up with something too good. I’ve always seen great albums as brick walls…the bricks held together by mortar. With “I Feel It All”, “1235”, “Past in Present”, “My Moon My Man”, “The Park”, and “Brandy Alexander” (which somehow lifts a melodic line from the Disney animation, Pocahontas), The Reminder is almost all bricks.

— Jordan Green

3. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

It started with some ads and a toll-free number. Akin to 2 a.m. infomercials made by televangelists and cult leaders, the haunting ads for Neon Bible were full of lofty promises. The campaign created a frenzy among fans. Even before the album’s release, the Burnside boards were full of debate after Ryan Smith’s preview . Would Arcade Fire make good on their promises? Sure enough, Neon Bible is furiously beautiful. It grows and arcs, like tumultuous ocean waves in a storm. Heavy notes crash into each other, and lyrics are delivered like a mysterious message in a bottle. Neon Bible is a concept album in every sense of the word. Touring churches, Arcade Fire sang lyrics that criticized mass-media religion, and yet left room for conversation about God.

— Stephanie Nikolopolous

4. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Over the course of their 10+ year career, Spoon has been slowly and methodically stripping back their sound, keeping the bare minimum of instruments and individual parts, but eschewing anything that smacks of pretension. Horn sections aside, their latest album is their finest and most threadbare effort to date. And, like the perfectionist songwriters they are, not a note or a sound is wasted on these songs, making even the odd samples and bits of studio dialogue that creep into a few tracks sound positively essential.

— Bob Ham

5. Menomena - Friend and Foe

My pick for best album of the year harnesses Menomena’s motif impeccably, transitioning in all the right places. The album begins frenzied and fresh, summiting with the anthemic “Rotten Hell” before floating down on the b-side. Some of the songs best moments are late, like on “Evil Bee” with the line “Oh to be a machine/Oh to be wanted/To be useful”, which seamlessly transitions into the Danny Seim’s strangely wonderful vocals on “Ghost Ship”, where Menomena slow down and showcase their innate sense of sound. Balanced with a tremendous opening half, Friend and Foe is everything I look for in an album. I actually got the album for Christmas in 2006. Two listens in, I couldn’t see how any album this year could beat it. As December 31st nears, I feel the same way.

— Jordan Green

6. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

7. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha

Before Armchair Apocrypha, I had not paid much attention to Mr. Andrew Bird. However, the moment I heard “Imitosis,” the second track on Armchair, I fell instantly heartstruck. A beautiful, intelligent look at the nexus between biology and psychology, the song dips and swirls with near pop-perfection. Other notable songs include “Dark Matter”—which begins with an impressive bit of whistling, mentions the much-coveted game Operation, and contains a question that has been an universal befuddlement since the infancy of Man (“Do you wonder where the self resides/Is it in your head or between your sides?/And who will be the one who will decide/Its true location?”), and “Scythian Empire,” a smart song that deftly juxtaposes images of a forgotten empire with the “Halliburton attache cases” and “Scotch-Guard Macintoshes” of today’s political climate. Brilliant.

— Ariele Gentiles

8. Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls

Somehow it seemed fitting that after the release of this album, Electrelane announced an “indefinite hiatus.” Their career seemed to be building to this point, to this brilliant album, as more tunes started to filter through their glorious drones, and the time spent on the road and in the studio started to pay off with tighter and more defined instrumentation. No Shouts is a glorious explosion of rollicking piano lines, Verity Susman’s arch vocals, and the scratchy guitar work of Mia Clarke. Admire them for the fact that they went out on top and keep admiring them as this record finds its way back to your CD player for years to come.

— Bob Ham

9. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

When I originally penned my review of this album for BWC, I showered it with praise, specifically its innate, over-the-top ability to propel even the most dance-phobic, rhythm-deprived amongst us onto the dance floor. And while it remains true that this album is packed with rhythms that avoid the clichés of most dance tracks, what sets Sound of Silver apart are the mature topics discussed throughout. Whether it’s the self-aware immaturity of “North American Scum” (“New York’s the greatest if you get someone to pay the rent - wa hooo! North America!”), the languid jabs of “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” (“New York, you’re perfect, oh please don’t change a thing/your mild billionaire mayor’s now convinced he’s a king.”), or the sublime introspection of “All My Friends” (“And with the face like a dad and laughable stand/you can sleep on the plane or review what you said.”), Sound of Silver is more than dance music for hipsters and intellectual elites; these songs strike to the heart what it means to grow up and even grow old.

— Adam P. Newton

10. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

Wilco’s sixth studio album is not the band’s greatest. That designation will likely always be reserved for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the monumental 2002 record that defied genres and changed rules. But if Yankee Hotel will always be the greatest, Sky Blue Sky” may be the best. This is a generous and expansive record, evoking road trips and middle America, reminiscent of Neil Young and The Band. The lyrics are deeply personal, drawing from Jeff Tweedy’s public struggles with panic attacks, depression, and migraines, and his addiction to painkillers, which led him to rehab in 2004. The lyrics are also hopeful, and many seem to be addressed directly to Tweedy’s wife, whom he credits with saving his life. Wilco may or may not return to the experimentation that left us all so breathless at the beginning of the decade. But Sky Blue Sky represents a new level of maturity for the band. With Tweedy, who turned 40 in 2007, at the helm, and with several brilliant new additions (most notably rock god Nels Cline) Wilco is poised to make great rock albums for years to come.

— John Pattison