For my final “Friday Top Ten” of the year, I always like to write about the news music that has found its way into my possession over the course of the previous 365 days. In 2005, I think I devoted a paragraph to each of my favorite 25 records. Last year, I wrote three-word reviews for my favorite 50 records. This year, I’m upping the stakes, with one all-encapsulating sentence for the best 100 new records. Strap your safety belts on, because this is going to be a very, very long music-related entry.
The Top 100 Albums Of 2007
100. The Oh Sees – Sucks Blood – John Dwyer’s (Pink & Brown, The Coachwhips) shift from unpolished garage noise to fuzzy drone folk is a complete psychedelic success.
99. Scout Niblett – This Fool Can Die Now – With help from Will Oldham, Emma “Scout” Niblett crafts a fine set of dark, passionate tunes that have undoubtedly drawn comparisons to Cat Power. [Listen to “Comfort You”]
98. Tomutonttu – Tomutonttu – Side project of Kemialliset Ystävät member Jan Anderzen is a minimalist’s dream, all fractured keyboards and abstract electronic squaller.
97. Uton – Alitaja Ylimina – A long ambient trip through swirling winds and dark shadows, great for falling asleep to after a handful of sleeping pills.
96. PJ Harvey – White Chalk – A plaintive, piano-and-acoustic heavy record that has burrowed its way into my heart while also making me yearn for the old days. [Listen to “To Talk To You”]
95. Hella – There’s No 666 In Outer Space – With the addition of a talented singer, Hella has become a math-prog behemoth capable of making you feel retarded or making you feel smart enough to contemplate the meaning of your existence. That doesn’t make any sense at all, but Spencer and Zach are extremely talented, and that’s pretty much the best reason to listen to Hella. [Listen to “The Things That People Do When They Think No One’s Looking”]
94. Ville Moskiitto – Retkikertomuksia – Experimental violin music from a Finnish folk guitarist is like being lost in a deep cavern with no light to guide you to safety.
93. Big Business – Here Come The Waterworks – Great deadpan lyrics and huge, heavy metallic-rock bombast is sure to get you in the mood to throw your body around carelessly disregarding your own safety. PS – The bassist/vocalist’s old band Karp are one of my favorites. You’d be wise to find copies of their self-titled album and the next one, Suplex.
92. Soft Circle – Full Bloom – Tribal drums, kling-klangs and knob twirling from Black Dice’s drummer and some artist guy perfect for easing you into your high.
91. Melt Banana – Bambi’s Dilemma – Even the most melodic album this band has ever recorded is more spastic than any number of noise-rock releases.
90. RV Paintings – Trinity Rivers – Shimmering abstract weirdness, like wine glasses and loops and harnessed fog.
89. Boris/Merzbow – Walrus/Groon – Side A is a cover of “I Am The Walrus,” but given a insane, sonically wild treatment, and Side B is a completely mind-blowing, all-VU’s-in-the-red heavy dirge.
88. Acid Mother’s Temple – Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under The Stars – We all know about this band of crazy Japanese hippies, but the song “Pussy Head Man From Outer Space” alone is worth hours of giggles.
87. Dead C – Future Artists – Mystifying rock music that is noisy as fuck without going over the edge into masturbatory pulsating electronic weirdness.
86. Matt Shoemaker – Spots In The Sun – Beautiful psychedelic soundscapes that offer to transport you to the most remote and desolate places on earth.
85. Weedeater – God Luck And Good Speed – Fuzz, fuzz, fuzz, pounding drums and helpless vocal screeches from one of the planet’s finest stoner rock bands. [Listen to “For Evan’s Sake”]
84. Fear Falls Burning – The Rainbow Mirrors A Burning Heart – Two tracks of slowly decaying guitar amplifications that sound like a wall crumbling under its own weight.
83. Trans Am – Sex Change – It’s not The Red Line, but this album of futuristic electronic Kraut homages is the best Trans Am have sounded in quite some time.
82. Ektroverde – Ukkossalama – This could easily be considered total jam-band hippie shit, but I like to call it experimental improv from Finland, with heavy jazz, Kraut and funk influences.
81. Larsen – Musm II – Avant-garde improvisations that gather a variety of styles and meld them with the generally drone-infused sound Larsen normally emit.
80. Sandoz Lab Technicians – The Western Lands – Way, way, way out-there New Zealand experimental band that barely sounds like music, but also really, really fucking cool.
79. Topias Tiheasalo – Eyes Of A Dead Lamb – This kid from Finland has pretty much reinvented what an acoustic guitar can sound like, producing some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard in ages.
78. Ben Reynolds – Music Is The Music Language – Oceanic electronic glitches that elicit feelings of floating alone on a raft without a care in the world.
77. Plants – Photosynthesis – Psychedelic folk from Portland that combines ambient drones with twangy mountain music to form a ceaseless rolling fog of backwoods weirdness. [Listen to “Seedling”]
76. Eric Cordier – Breizhiselad – Eyes closed, hands clutching headphones, sitting at the center of the earth listening to the sounds of shifting plates and surface reverberations overhead, as created by a French sound artist.
75. Sunburned Circle – The Blaze Game – Put Sunburned Hand Of The Man and Circle in the same studio, and you get an absolutely crazed collaboration rich in hypnotic goodness.
74. White Rainbow – Prism Of The Eternal Now – Adam Forkner of Yume Bitsu has continued the tradition of increasingly vibrant recordings with his latest full length as White Rainbow. [Listen to “Mystic Prism”]
73. P.G. Six – Slightly Sorry – Its contents are more mainstream and poppy sounding than I’m used to, but it’s still the same old P.G. underneath. [Listen to “The End Of Winter”]
72. Qui – Love’s Miracle – Heavy, unusual, trippy and indescribable. David Yow actually sings a few lines. It’s worth a listen. [Listen to “Willie The Pimp”]
71. Call Me Lightning – Soft Skeletons – I have a very large soft spot for this band, and even though it seems like everyone I know despises them, I will continue to enjoy their spastic post-punk gems.
70. Throbbing Gristle – Part Two The Endless Not – This band scares me, and I think they know it, and it feeds their creativity, and they just keep scaring me more and more.
69. Mammatus – The Coast Explodes – An epic heavy-rock album that will brutalize your ears and mesmerize your mind, especially if you’ve smoked a little (or a lot of) pot before listening. [Listen to “Pierce The Darkness”]
68. Jean-Francois Laporte – Soundmatters – Total sonic construction and deconstruction, including a field recording of winter winds in Montreal during a blackout…yeah, this is my idea of fun.
67. Electrelane – No Shouts, No Calls – All girl fun-Kraut band has really hit their stride, great tunes and fine melodies aplenty!
66. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – The Garden Of Forking Paths – So many sounds, so many perfect moments, so many aural mysteries, so wonderfully pleasant, it would probably make William Basinski blush.
65. GHQ – Crystal Healing – This record always scared me because the cover looked like a dude spreading open a vagina on his forehead, but once I got passed my own insecurities I found that I realized that I could fall in love with the record cover as well as the slanted doom folk it contained inside.
64. Growing – Vision Swim – Greatly processed guitars amplified loud enough to rattle walls that will continue forever, or until someone pulls the plugs from the countless effects pedals these fellows always have spread out in front of them.
63. Jackie-O Motherfucker – America Mystica – Four tracks of live performances from one of the highest bands I’ve ever encountered.
62. Burning Star Core – Operator Dead… Post Abandoned – A disgustingly intense, distorted noise masterpiece that sprawls across the space between your ears and warms you like a nice dose of electroshock therapy.
61. Electric Wizard – Witchcult Today – Heavy, heavy stoner rock from the masters of the genre, so take some bong hits and settle in for a crushing ride.
60. Space Machine – 2 – Knob-twiddling electronic music that makes me close my eyes and imagine I’m on an important space walk somewhere in the middle of the galaxy.
59. Battles – Mirrored – A joyous, furious romp through math and prog rock territories that makes me wish Lynx were still putting out albums. [Listen to “Race In”]
58. Air Conditioning – Dead Rails – A band from Allentown on Load Records that makes me wish I was still living back east and could see these fuckers on a regular basis, this album will fry your brain.
57. White Hills + White Pee – Wish You Weren’t Here – One long collaborative track between the modern kings of Brooklyn space rock and a freakishly good experimental group from San Francisco that will make you feel really, really high.
56. Shannon Wright – Let In The Light – A mostly contemplative effort from one of my favorite female songwriters that also shows some flashes of vitriolic, menacing brilliance.
55. Oxbow – The Narcotic Story – Every time Oxbow puts out a new record I feel like it has to be ranked on my Year-End list or else Eugene will hunt me down and pummel me into the ground, but this year they happened to release perhaps their best record yet, so I can safely add it to my list without worrying about Eugene’s wrath. [Listen to “The Geometry Of Business”]
54. Do Make Say Think – You, You’re A History In Rust – This album really did nothing for me until I saw them live, and then I started listening to it more frequently, and realized it continues the band’s tradition of recording great, great music.
53. Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat – An Interlude To The Outermost – Yes, I only got this record because of the artist name, but I was also pleasantly surprised by the music, which sounds like a less harsh, more acceptable version of whatever that Bright Eyes goon is trying to do with his life.
52. William Fowler Collins – Western Violence & Brief Sensuality – Unbelievably stunning experimental guitar album that captures everything I love about the state of New Mexico, including my hatred of The Shins! Well, I don’t know that Collins hates The Shins, but I like to pretend that he does…
51. Axolotl – Memory Theater – Yeah, it’s a collection of out-of-print material, but I hadn’t heard any of it before (free-noise sound sculptures) so I’m including it on this list of “new music.”
50. Grinderman – Grinderman – “No Pussy Blues” is easily one of the best songs of 2007, and the rest of the album is just as good…which makes ranking this the fiftieth best album of the year somehow retarded. [Listen to “No Pussy Blues”]
49. Ghost – In Stormy Nights – Yesterday at work I put on a Ghost record and warned my boss that he was going to hate it, and to my surprise he told me that he didn’t hate it — you won’t either, because everyone (whether they know it or not) has a soft spot for Japanese acid-folk.
48. William Basinski – El Camino Real – One track of utterly haunted beautiful sounds that I wish would never end.
47.Vibracathedral Orchestra – Wisdom Thunderbolt – Fun, spaced-out rock music with inventive percussion and jarring, raga-like guitars. [Listen to “Wisdom Thunderbolt”]
46. Machinefabriek – Weeler – It’s hard to choose a favorite from this prolific soundmaker, but Weeler is the one I listened to most according to my LAST.FM profile, so that’s the one I’m including on this list.
45. The Austerity Program – Black Madonna – Massive swath of rock with a drum machine. After a year of awesome Harvey Milk re-issues, hearing The Austerity Program was like a breath of fresh air from a genre that has stayed fairly consistent for a while.
44. OM – Pilgrimage – Mightily loud, ungodly and hypnotic, this is the epitome of “heavy.” I really need to see this band in a live setting, and soon! [Listen to “Pilgrimage”]
43. Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood – Preying In Circles – Australian free-folk group puts together an album of unclassifiable sounds that could be described as “not music,” but something about it is eerily fascinating.
42. Zodiacs – Gone – There isn’t enough LSD in the world to replicate the greatness of this recording. It fits in perfectly between any number of fuzzy Japanese rock bands and 70s space rock bands.
41. Reigns – Styne Vallis – The band whose last record We Lowered A Microphone Into The Ground was intended to replicate exactly that have now recorded an album whose concept is the exploration of a lost village located somewhere in the kingdom of England. [Listen to “Volcanoes Of Taiwan”]
40. Marissa Nadler – Songs III: Bird On The Water – I saw her live a few years ago and hated her because she marched off stage after declaring the sound at the venue sucked, but I really enjoy this record, including the Leonard Cohen cover, which I would ordinarily declare to be sacrilegious. [Listen to “Thinking Of You”]
39. Wolves In The Throne Room – Two Hunters – Well, would you look at that, a black metal record made my best albums of the year list! Congratulations, Wolves In The Throne Room, you’ve won me over!
38.
37. Baja – Maps/Systemalheur – With a penchant for genre-melding that parallels Gastr Del Sol, this album pleased me to no end. I’ve heard the new one (slated for an early ’08 release) and it’s even better.
36. Suishou No Fune – Writhing Underground Flowers – This little Japanese duo almost deafened me when I saw them a few months ago, but their new album will happily introduce you to the modern Japanese psychedelic movement.
35. Earth – Hibernaculum – A revisitation of several older tunes that sound like Ennio Morricone got ahold of a Sunn Model-T and decided to blow back all our skirts. [Listen to “Miami Morning Coming Down”]
34. Angels Of Light – We Are Him – I don’t know why Michael Gira has to be so depressing all the time, but I will gladly follow him anywhere and buy any of his recordings.
33. Nadja – Radiance of Shadows / Touched / Thaumogenesis – It’s too hard to pick one, so I’ll choose all three. Nadja make crushing, painkiller-slow metal that will either make you smile for the duration or make you want to claw your eyes out…I guess it depends on how black and slow you like your music.
32. Lichens – Omns – Who would have thought one of the dudes from 90 Day Men would turn around and start a project so sparse and delicate? It’s basically one note going on forever.
31. Skaters – Dispersed Royal Ornaments – Another prolific project, the Skaters create murky effects-heavy noise with strangely effected vocal injections, I saw one of the guys’ side projects a few months ago and it was definitely a sight to behold.
30. Sunburned Hand Of The Man – Fire Escape – An album that combines the best parts of Sunburned… with Four Tet, they recorded a bunch of their drugged out basement jams, and Four Tet turned it into something really dense and pretty.
29. Circle – Katapult – Another grossly prolific band who had several releases this year, Circle are the Finnish band that so deeply loved Krautrock and experimental music that they combined both together to create something wholly unique and lovely.
28. Boris With Michio Kurihara – Rainbow – With the addition of Ghost’s guitarist, Boris are transformed from heavy gods to blissfully sweet rock band.
27. Part Chimp – Cup – Evan-Rock has never sounded this loud and in-your-face, with great melodies and killer guitar sounds. [Listen to “Bring Back The Sound”]
26. Kamialliset Ystävät – Untitled – The name means “Chemical Friends” in Finnish, and the wonderfully cracked music will keep you nicely toasted as you enjoy whatever chemicals you so desire.
25. Morkobot – MoStRo – Heavy drugged-out Italians create sounds that make you want to travel the spaceways with a head full of stars.
24. James Blackshaw – The Cloud of Unknowing – My favorite release yet by this master of acoustic guitar, with deftly plucked melodies rich in tone juxtaposed to an omnipresent swelling drone.
23. The Makes Nice – Candy Wrapper And Twelve Other Songs – One of the dudes from Weakling (an infamous US black metal band) has another band, and they write the most awesome sunshine-y California pop/rock music you’ve heard in decades. [Listen to “Candy Wrapper”]
22. Hotel Alexis – Goliath, I’m On Your Side – So perfect, this album of reverberated sad songs with soulful vocals and gentle percussion, it is almost always in my iTunes queue when I am drifting off to sleep.
21. Jasper TX – In A Cool Monsoon – The latest album from the artist who ranked #5 on last year’s list of best albums. The same description still applies: “Evocative ambient dreamscapes.”
20. Zelienople – His/Hers – Experimental band from Chicago named for a tiny town in Pennsylvania (I have a friend who lives there!) release another stark, mournful album that sounds like a funeral in an echo chamber. [Listen to “Family Beast”]
19. Rhys Chatham – A Crimson Grail – 400 guitars, need I say more?
18. Grails – Burning Off Impurities – Combining post-rock with drones with weird gypsy melodies, Grails have recorded their finest slab of psychedelic instrumental music to date.
17. Stars Of The Lid – And Their Refinement of The Decline – One of my favorite bands has reached a new height, with guitar drones buried way, way down below layers of strings, horns, and even a children’s choir. I love this album so much. [Listen to “The Evil That Never Arrived”]
16. Amber Asylum – Still Point – Not sure if this is considered chamber rock, classical, post-rock or experimental, it is a chilling album that will definitely depress you, especially if you like being depressed by tear-inducing sad music.
15. Expo 70 – Animism – Melding krauty space rock tendencies with glacial doom drones to create a heavy sonic trip that is perfect for comedowns and zoning out at the park on a sunny afternoon.
14. Shellac – Excellent Italian Greyhound – Deconstructive rock music with a sense of humor, a welcome break from all the mournful and masturbatory “high-brow” albums that made this list. [Listen to “Steady As She Goes”]
13. Earthless – Rhythms From Cosmic Sky – They love Hawkwind and High Rise, they might play louder than any band I’ve ever seen, they record endless songs that are so rich and heavy you wish they would never end. They are Earthless and they rock so, so hard.
12. Jesu – Conqueror – Yeah, it gets a little boring towards the end, but I listened to this album perhaps more than any other this year, and that means the quality of the music is very high…It’s like My Bloody Valentine’s metal record!
11. RACCOO-OO-OON – Behold Secret Kingdom – Another one of the loudest bands I’ve seen this year, they play a style of noise rock that really is far from what most noise rock bands create, with remarkably brilliant rhythms and relentless skronky noises. Imagine someone put Brainbombs and Can in a blender. [Listen to “Black Branches”]
10. Islaja – Ulual Yyy – An Unspeakably lush recording where the listener is transported to a place between a deep, wintry sleep and an herb-induced blissfully blurry state.
09. Starving Weirdos – Shrine Of The Post-Hypnotic – Crackling and buzzing and feeding back and building upon layer after layer of sound, equal parts back-porch folk and abysmal industrious hell. [Listen to “Crewell”]
08. Grouper – Cover The Windows And Walls – “Dense bleary eyed fields of druggy reverb, thick swirls of blurred vocals, smeared into indistinct melodies, all abstract and shimmery, soft focus and billowy, the musical version of those soft fuzzy grey clouds that fill the sky at twilight.”
07. The Conformists – Three-Hundred – The fact that this record was recorded live in the studio still amazes me, because each song so constantly shifts and changes, I imagine it takes absolute mastery over one’s instrument (or years and years of practice with the same people) to stop and shift gears on a dime like The Conformists do. This is a truly remarkable album worthy of a much longer review. [Listen to “Are These Flowers?”]
06. Antibalas – Security – Pure Afro-beat, up-tempo, funky, with a killer horn section and stunning rhythms. Also, it never hurts to have John McEntire enlisted as recording engineer.
05. The Angelic Process – Weighing Souls With Sand – The heaviest album of the year, totally overblown and distorted, with a beautiful voice in the distance, floating beneath the muck and mire, guiding us through the songs and cluing us into he actual melodies that are barely audible below the fuzz and decay. [Listen to “Million Year Summer”]
04. Titan – A Raining Sun Of Light & Love For You & You & You – Melding space-rock with the cooler, psychedelic elements of prog-rock. At times they sounded like Harmonia, or Cluster. Heavy and huge, with incredible guitar work. Watching Titan is like surviving a deadly storm. It’s a brutal cacophony. Drums roll without relent, keyboard spiraling with guitar and bass like a tornado, picking up intensity, slowing down to a blissful state of relaxation, backbuilding, and finally relaunching into the cosmos. [Listen to “Track 4”]
03. La Otracina – Tonal Ellipse Of The One – La Otracina intend to envelop the listener in massive swaths of sound…Free, loose space-rock complete with dive-bombing synthesizer tone bends and monumental feedback swells. The musicians are masters of restraint, and for the sundry noises which make up these tracks, it never sounds like overkill…A nod to all things free; totally blissed-out, bending and weaving, dynamic celestial jamming.
02. The Narrows – Benjamin – The best aspects of Codeine, June of 44, Slint, and Unwound combined. I’m not kidding. It’s skull-crushing, painkiller-slow rock music, raw and unaffected. Dynamic volume shifts, hopeless lyrical content, and glacially-slow rhythms. “Last of the Norsemen” could be the finest slowcore tune recorded since Bedhead disbanded, and the gut-wrenching “Over and Out” has the same effect on me as Slint’s “Good Morning Captain.” Yeah, this album really is that good. [Listen to “Over And Out”]
01.White Hills – Glitter Glamour Atrocity / Heads On Fire – Either of these two albums could have been my favorite of the year, but the fact that they were both released within 365 of each other astounds me. They are the most tremendous space rock band currently active, with a Stooges-like rhythm section and jaw-dropping, off-the-wall acid drenched guitar solos. Their guitarist/vocalist Dave is by far the best guitarist I’ve encountered in a long time. His technical expertise and knowledge of the psychedelic rock canon all but guarantees White Hills will continue to release album after album of inspired rock music. [Listen to “Eternity” and “Spirit Of Exile”]
