Top 25 of 2007: 10-6

10) The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

My list this year seems to be littered (delicately sprinkled?) with largely wordless, instrumental music. Perhaps it’s a sign that I will soon start listening to instrumental smooth jazz covers of 1990s top 40s? I just threw up in my mouth.

I listened to this album on the 5 a.m. train from Providence to Boston with my head pressed sleepily against the windowpane watching the snow spit in the blue winter dawn. The album’s title seemed possible.

Favorite Track: The Silent

9) The Dirty Projectors – Rise Above

I didn’t know what to make of this album at first. After a couple listens I decided it wasn’t a grower, either you liked it or you didn’t and I was definitely in the latter group—I couldn’t get past his voice.

And then, and don’t ask what possessed me to listen to it again, it was beautiful. It’s something, maybe the mixed vocals, the instrumental moments of chaos, something about the album’s ode to Black Flag, something…who knows?

Please just listen to it several times.

Favorite Track: Rise Above

8) Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger

Delicately understated and sincere. Gone is the self-indulgent Adams who thought everything he quickly shitted belonged on tape.

I can’t put a finger on the prevailing “theme” of this album—it’s not like “Heartbreaker” where everything’s about loss, or “Love is Hell” which deals with angst—but I think that adds to the attraction. The emotions range over top a landscape of just good, good music

It does almost act like a greatest hits album.

Favorite Track: Two

7) Sondre Lerche – Phantom Punch

Sondre Lerche’s testicles finally dropped. Don’t worry he still has that beautiful, seducing tenor, but he finally dropped his old, too-sweet-sounding-for-more-than-a-song-at-a-time music in favor of scissor-kicking-maybe-I-could-kick-you-ass-if-really-really-really-angry music—the results are astounding.

I’ve not found this album on any of the top album lists I’ve read but I don’t care. Throughout the turmoil that has been my top ten this album has been the one constant. I just keep listening to it.

Favorite Track: The Tape

6) Burial – Untrue

I work at a school and love getting to work early and staying a little late, after almost everyone else has gone home. There’s something about an empty space that was once bustling with people. All those bodies leave shadow imprints, all those voice drop whispers in the corners. It’s a tingling in the back of your neck, being alone without being lonely.

Somehow Burial captured this feeling and put it on tape. I don’t know what “dub-stepping” means, it appears to have a strict definition that I can’t understand. I don’t understand the music itself, really, I just feel affected by it.

Favorite Track: Archangel