Top 25 of 2007: 5-1

5) Beirut – The Flying Cub Cup

Sorry I’m just a sucker for this type of music, I admit it. I don’t think about any of the gimmicky pitfalls of music like this, and I don’t care that Zach Condon is only twenty-one—this album is brilliant, especially when you take it together with the Lon Gisland EP released earlier this year.

This album reminds me that blank spaces used to exist on the map. It reminds me of a time when the unknown actually existed.
Illogical, rambling emotional impacts aside, this album marks an incredible progression for this band. Musically the song are much more distinguishable, and to emphasize this fact Condon seems to have intentionally utilized a single lyrical theme.

It’s the most listened to album on my ipod.

Favorite Track: The Penalty

4) The National – The Boxer

Climbed higher on my list with each listen. Their sound must originate from some smoky, basement bar in the middle of country where smoking inside is still legal. Matt Beringer’s voice is unshakable, the apocalypse could be raining down around him and I don’t his cadence would change.

Also since Sufjan didn’t release an album this year this is the closest I could get—he plays piano on the outstanding ‘Ada.’

Favorite Track: Slow, Slow

3) Sunset Rubdown – Random Spirit Lover

This isn’t so much an album as an opera. These aren’t songs but movements weaving a modern mythology of characters epically struggling against tenuous everyday existence and the underage temptations of vodka.

Spencer Krug’s arrangements, like Mozart (there I said it), are frustratingly complex yet simple. Krug’s frail voice makes everything sound dramatic, his guitar lines blend together like a string section.

I hope he continues to be as prolific as he has been past couple years. He’s the best composer working these days. There I said that too.

Favorite Track: The Courtesan Has Sung

2) Radiohead – In Rainbows

Dear Radiohead,

I’m sure you thought you would be first, and by all rights you should be. Without you this list wouldn’t exist. You’re the reason I love music.

You’ve definitely tested my faith over the years. Yes, eventually, all the albums were enjoyable but nothing approached the complete immersion, the complete escape I achieved with The Bends or OK Computer.

I kept waiting for an album I didn’t have to wrap my mind around, an album I liked immediately and could play for others and they would like it immediately instead of just asking me to play ‘Creep.’

As I waited, my music tastes matured and expanded thanks to the training you had given me. I had patience for music, I let it grow and build and glow in my ears. Months passed when I didn’t listen to a single one of your songs.

Then, when I wasn’t even paying attention, when I wasn’t obsessively guessing what new songs would make the album cut, you released this. After the misleading intro of ’15 Steps’ you launch into a simply blissful album. One after another the wonderful, accessible but complex, rolled across my ears—it was the album I had been waiting for, everything I had wanted.

So why aren’t you number one? I’m not sure, there are all these conflicting feelings, I’m so confused. After finally getting all that I wanted I’m not experiencing the complete endorphin rush of fulfillment I had expected.

I’ve decided we need to see other people, so I’ve put you at two. I hope we can we still be friends.

Best,

Austin

1) Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Truthfully I’ve always listened to Spoon out of a sense of obligation. The same sense that makes you buy the Economist when you really want the Maxim with Buffy on the cover. I’ve always appreciated Daniel’s perfection of song craft, and the band’s virtuous use of negative, silent space within their songs, but the seemed songs too obviously crafted, too deliberate.

But then came this album.

It’s hard to write about. It’s flashes of independent brilliance delicately strung together. It is perfectly etched but strikes imperfect emotional chords. I don’t know how they wrote ‘Finer Feelings’ or where the bass line in ‘Don’t you Evah’ comes from or how they devised the handclaps on ‘Underdog.’ I’ve listened to it repeatedly.

It never gets old. Never ceases to amaze.

Favorite Track: Finer Feelings