Favorite 2007 Releases

Favorite Releases In 2007

I probably bought about 20 or so CD’s this year. Not a lot by any means compared to previous years. A lot of the music I listened to in 2007 was from discs received in music magazines Paste, Uncut, and Mojo, which is a great way to hear a lot of new music and often old music you might have missed or forgotten about. The whole concept of “Backtracking” (discovering a band you had heard about for years but never really listened to) fascinates me. In addition, I spent a lot of time listening to legally available live shows by such bands as Phish, Phil Lesh & Friends, the Grateful Dead, Moe, Wilco, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, The Dave Matthews Band, etc….all grabbed from Etree or the DMB and Ryan Adams archive torrent sites. The wealth of live material made available by bands for free (or a small stipend) continues to grow and I see this as something that is never bad.

In any event, out of the approximately 20 or so CD’s purchased this year that are not magazine compilations or live shows, the following seven are those that made me stand up and pay attention to, and reaffirmed my long standing belief that you can never have enough good music to listen to, if you just listen carefully. As usual, there is always too much music and not enough time to listen to it all.

Note: These are not in any particular order.

Wilco – Sky Blue Sky – Lovely tunes, upbeat, great guitar work by Nels Cline. Tweedy’s songwriting is excellent, the band is stable and very talented, and if you don’t like Impossible Germany there is something wrong with you. We saw them in 2007 on the tour to support the release and it was clearly one of the best rock shows I have ever been to. Hard to believe this is only their sixth studio release. There is a lot of warmth to this music and Tweedy’s songwriting that has not been seen before. They are heading in an exciting direction

Springsteen – Magic – Back with the ESB after a two album absence. Shows more punch than The Rising and anything else he has done for a long time. Very much a true rock and roll record that in concert allows the band to shine. The lyrics are tricky and need to be paid attention to because they tell a complex story, mixing love with anti-war sentiments and how it feels to be a 50 something rock and roller with a family. The songs are tough and focused and while he often strays to do things outside of the ESB, he seems to always come back with a vengeance like this.

Rilo Kiley – Under The Backlight – Fleetwood Mac’ish? Nah, yeah, sometimes. With Jenny Lewis leading the way the sound is radio friendly (not that any listens to it anymore) and the tunes memorable from the onset. My first exposure to the band was from the previous release, More Adventurous, which is a bit mellower and more melodic, so my first listens to Under The Backlight were positive but I felt that they had taken a different turn. However, after repeated playing UTB has enough hook and panache to keep me coming back for more.

Amy Winehouse – Back To Black – While ignoring her personal transgressions in 2007 is hard, it is easier when you just listen to this release. When I bought this my dad was ill in the hospital in NYC and I was driving in every other day to visit with him, always during the evening rush when I had time on my hands to really listen to music. Note to others….if you are going to get stuck in traffic on the Helix leading to the Lincoln Tunnel for 45-60 minutes, make sure you have some good music with you. Winehouse made those rides bearable. I hope this amazing talent does not pull a Brittany train wreck and fall off the tracks. Oh, and listen to those horns!!! Motown should be proud.

Bright Eyes – Cassadaga – Have liked Conor Oberst’s music from the beginning but always felt his previous releases were a little choppy and unfocused. They had memorable moments, but nothing to hold things together. Listen to this release. Listen to these songs about love and alienation. Listen to Make A Plan To Love Me, and then listen to the whole release again from start to finish. There is space here, space to listen, space to give the music a chance to find itself and for the audience to feel like Oberst and the band are right in the living room with them. This is an artist on the verge of a breakthrough, and this should be exciting to watch.

Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger – For me, not in the same vein as Cold Roses, this is nevertheless a strong release. A little bit more laid back, it sounds like this should have been his release after Heartbreaker. There is a lot more to come from Ryan, and while he does in concert often piss a lot of people off, at least he is now clean and ready to roll.

Erin Mckeown – Grand - Yeah, released in 2003 but I just heard her this year and found this release……not sure how. However, if you listen to Cinematic (sample it on Amazon!!!) and are not instantly hooked there is something wrong with you. A little bit of indie-pop, some swing, some folk, all the way to trip-hop. There are 14 songs on this CD and only one is more than about 3 minutes in length. And, the more you listen, the more it will grow on you and you will want to hear more. The first time I heard one of her songs I thought it was Dido singing. Mckeown is better than Dido in that her songs have more breadth, more fascinating lyrics, and a bit more pop mentality.


Honorable mention goes to:

The Sandinista Project – Yeah, my stepbrother Jimmy Guterman put this together, so I have some bias here. And yeah, just like the original release there is a lot of ‘what were they thinking’, but on a whole this is an ambitious piece of work not only by The Clash but by all of the artists that agreed to take part in this undertaking. One of the things I found interesting about this is that some of the songs I considered throwaways on the original actually shine here. Kudos to Jimmy for putting it together. For more info go to: http://sandinista.guterman.com/

Son Volt – The Search – A really, really like this band. For some reason or another I just keep forgetting about them. Perhaps it was because the first time I heard them was on Trace, which did not grab me right away, or perhaps it never has. Others have told me to get Okemah And The Melody Of Riot, which I WILL have to do someday. I need to spend some time with this music, to see if I can get it on my radar screen a little bit more.


And finally, I still need to get:

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
K.T. Tunstall - "Drastic Fantastic"
And new releases by Levon Helm, Page & Krause, Neil Young’s Massey Hall release, Josh Ritter, Keane, and a host of others that I have heard on those magazine compilations I need to find out more info on.

And lastly, these are artists that had a bit of an impact in 2007 that I just don’t get, even though I have tried, really tried:

The National (and LCD Soundsystem and The Bravery)
M.I.A
The Hold Steady
Lucinda Williams