Let's start talking Best Album of 2007.

[Murmuring Beast 0]

Isn't "All My Friends" that Franz Ferdinand song? I strongly dislike that song and hope it is not featured on their next album.

Even if this is a joke, I'm simply not going to take anything you say seriously from now on.

 

Do you wear a monocle?

[The Flamboyance 0]

Someone Great is an incredible song.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

Czech, which is better: "Someone Great" or "All My Friends."

I loved "All My Friends," because of that cool Neu! feel (I heard some Heroes in there too), and the lyric "we'll set the controls for the heart of the sun, one of the ways we show our age" is great and it made me smile. Not to say "Someone Great" was bad by any means. Close call, but I liked "All My Friends" more.

 

Isn't "All My Friends" that Franz Ferdinand song? I strongly dislike that song and hope it is not featured on their next album.

Even if this is a joke, I'm simply not going to take anything you say seriously from now on.

This exchange was funny.

[Mik 0]

Since no one else is going to tell you, CMM: it's a Franz cover of LCD. I prefer the original.

 

And I'm gonna say All My Friends > Someone Great too.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

If 'All My Friends' doesn't come to be the defining song of the 2000s, or at least be up there, that will be a disappointment.

[Hank Kingsley 0]

Electric Six's newest, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master, and Ryan Adams' Easy Tiger. Sorry, you guys.

 

 

 

Also:

aforementioned Wilco and LCD.

Coconut Records' Nighttiming

 

[Garth 0]

Of the albums I've heard from this year:

 

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Art Brut - It's A Bit Complicated

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

 

[Smartly Pretty 0]

10 days from now I'll probably be really excited and tell everyone Tullycraft's "Every Scene Needs a Center" deserves to be up there.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Half-way through my first listen and I'm just about ready to give the title to Widow City. I love The Fiery Furnaces.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

It was okay, but Bitter Tea is probably my favorite overall, because it captures the whole bouncing-off-the-walls ADD aesthetic without being so sprawling that you can't make it regular listening. It was my big autumn jam of 2006.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

I guess no one heard the new Spoon or no one liked it? I thought it was pretty good. Blind Cave Salamander (thanks Czech) was also quite good. Those are the only two that come to mind so far. I have to check out that LCD Soundsystem.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

I almost want to say Blind Cave Salamander made a better Radiohead album than Radiohead did. I can imagine Thom's vocals fitting in there quite well on a few of those. "Time Piece" most of all, probably.

[Mik 0]

I can't get in to Spoon at all. Some of the songs are good but some of them make me groan. ME. Imagine the necessary cheese.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

How do we feel about In Our Bedroom After the War? I love the first six tracks, then I get kind of twee'd out till the penultimate track. First track is a great overture, which I always love. The second reminds me of You Forgot It In People, and the third track has a great postmillennial U2 outstreched-arms feel like "Beautiful Day" and "City of Blinding Lights." The happiness in the closer is probably hysterically overwrought, but Canadians have really demonstrated a penchant for making larger-than-life indie rock work ("It's All Gonna Break," "In the Back Seat," and those are just fellow closers) and this is no exception. Probably not the best of 2007, but it's up there for me. Maybe other people liked it even more than I did.

 

EDIT: Corrected because I had both Stars albums in my Winamp and I wrote the wrong one. duh.

[Lord of The Curry 0]

Do you mean In Our Bedroom After the War? Set Yourself On Fire was their last album. I personally haven't heard much of it (In Our Bedroom) because despite being in the downtown Toronto area some of the record stores around here only order 5-10 copies of the album and it's constantly sold out.

 

Add Beirut's The Flying Club Cup to the list. The duet with Owen Pallet and Pallet himself doing the strings for the whole album really step it up.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks for catching that. I probably wouldn't have caught it otherwise.

 

The Flying Club Cup is very good so far, but (I think I already said this) I'll need to revisit it when I'm not quite so overexposed to the dulcet tones of Mr. Owen Pallett. Musically, it's pretty fascinating, though.

 

I listened to Challengers by the New Pornographers last night. It was fun to listen to, but the New Pornographers don't really capture me, or leave any lasting impression after it's over. They just are what they are, I guess. I felt the same way about Twin Cinema, more or less. Maybe Fountains of Wayne already holds the real estate in my musical heart for this sort of music. Maybe I'm approaching a Canadian indie critical mass. Maybe I'm just an idiot. I don't know. Were I working on a 10-point scale, I'd give it a 6.5, but I'm not trying to introduce objectivity into this exercise and reduce music to mere numerical values. I just say everything was pretty good, basically.

 

Here, I'll fix that. Guns Babes Lemonade by Muscles. Hahaha, the hell is this thing?

[Mik 0]

I like the new Beirut. It's very pleasant to listen to.

 

As for both In Our Bedroom After the War and Challengers... I was underwhelmed by both. Challengers has grown on me a lot but I haven't gone back to the Stars album because I remember being really disappointed. I think I need to listen to it again, though, because it's gotten a lot of praise.

[The Man in Blak 0]

So I updated my list with the new Radiohead album and the Of Montreal release too, the latter of which I completely shrugged away and forgot about.

 

And I've said it elsewhere, but the Blind Cave Salamander self-titled is all right, but some of the electronic touches make the songs too busy at times, too unnatural. I like post-rock and everything, but this one's more competent than it is memorable.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

I thought it was pretty memorable. "Ljubljana" has a cool drum machine line, and "Time Piece" is just great. Maybe I just spent more time with it than you did. Not that that makes me superior to you! I'm just sayin' it grew on me.

[The Man in Blak 0]

Eh, I've given it a couple of playthroughs and nothing's really hooking me, outside of ""Ljubljana" and maybe "Katydid". There's a lot of Godspeed! in there. Of course, different strokes, etc.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

Did Czechers originally not like Bitter Tea? I remember someone from this board taking it to task somewhat. I haven't heard it yet.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

No, I was a fan from day one. Rehearsing My Choir was the one I didn't like. Nobody does. I mean, it's fun to hear them name streets and be like "hey! my dad's office was on 22nd Street!" and "hey! I, too, know that channel 44 aired religious programming and other dopey UHF shit before they switched to Telemundo!", but the melange of prepared piano, goofy squeerpy synths, and an old Greek lady just doesn't work for me. Too many ideas for one album, which is usually the FFs' modus operandi, I know, but it just ended up being a failed experiment in this case. I see what they were trying to do, but the execution is just awful.

 

Bitter Tea is great, though. It's just a more accessible, bite-sized Blueberry Boat. Speaking of, does anybody ever get the Frosted Mini-Wheats that aren't bite-sized? The ones we all get are the bite-sized ones, and they come in the orange box, but there are full-sized Frosted Mini-Wheats that are like twice as long and come in a red box. I think we bought them once (because my dad is a notoriously fast grocery shopper and just grabs things that vaguely resemble the items written on the list) and I just ended up breaking them in half.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Rehearsing My Choir was the one I didn't like. Nobody does.

 

I do. Once you get used to Grandma Furnace's voice it's really pretty good. "Slavin' Away" is one of their very best songs.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

Man, the more I listen to Obligatory Villagers, the more I love it. There's just not enough, that's the problem, even if the nature of her music makes it feel longer than the actual running time. It's practically an EP, and I hate EPs. With her first two albums being as long as they were, she couldn't have come up with another ten minutes of this good stuff? "Testify" might be her best song to date. I have to love anything that jumps between police chase, cabaret, rap, and production number within a minute and a half. I don't even care what the lyrics are about anymore. It's just so fun to listen to. There's a tap-dancing break!

[Steviekick 0]

Electric Six's newest, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master, and Ryan Adams' Easy Tiger. Sorry, you guys.

 

I can second that. I liked the previews they posted on Myspace. Overall, I really haven't been to overly impressed with any 2007 releases.

[Lord of The Curry 0]

I'm too lazy to check the rest of the thread but has The Besnard Lakes' "Are The Dark Horse" been mentioned? If not, it deserves one.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I mentioned it in another thread, but yeah, it's really, really good.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

The new Black Dice album (Load Blown) is pretty great if you're into that sort of thing. I don't think I'd call it album of the year or anything since I doubt it's going to have any sort of lasting impact, but it's an enjoyable listen nonetheless.

[snuffbox 0]

The new Mac Lethal comes pretty close to passing Ali's 'Truth' for my number two spot. It might by the end of the year, after further listens.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Oh, also

 

but I'm also naively holding out hope that Jay-Z will somehow manage to defy expectations and release something worth a shit).

I like "Blue Magic" so far, but the whole "I saw this movie and wanted to make a rap album" thing is kind of weird. Fingers crossed.

 

If all the recently leaked material is any indication then this is actually going to be really good. Like Reasonable Doubt/Blueprint-level good. I'm excited.