Top 50 Albums of 2007

10. Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam

You can call Animal Collective experimental. You can even call them weird. But one thing you can never call them is boring. With their latest, Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective refuse to settle into a set sound and emerge with their most pop-friendly effort yet. From the galloping energy of “Peacebone” to the just plain stunning “Winter Wonder Land,” every listen yields a new discovery as you delve further into the band’s own discovery. Along with the additional releases of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch and Avey Tare’s Pullhair Rubeye, there seems to be no end of Animal Collective’s varied and exciting creativity. – Jackie Im

9. Battles – Mirrored

Tyondai Braxton screws with his vocal pitch to make it sound like a chipmunk’s. John Stanier performs with his hi-hat positioned a few feet above him, absurdly towering over his trap set for no other reason than that it looks pretty funny. This is not the work of your typical humorless prog/math/post-rock band, my friend, this is what happens when four extremely talented musical whiz kids get into the sugar before plugging in. Mirrored is by no means a goof, but over the course of its eleven tracks, there remain numerous moments during which grinning, if not occasionally laughing out loud, is mandatory. There’s the T. Rex robot factory “Atlas,” the helium funk jam “Leyendecker,” and the combination of “Tij” and “Bad Trails” sound as if they were intentionally composed for video games, and old school ones at that. The talent on hand in this string tapping whirlwind is serious business; these guys are just more interested in having fun than sounding scholarly. – Jeff Terich

8. M.I.A. – Kala

M.I.A. is outspoken, ambitious, confident, and she makes music that defies all limits. She refuses to play second fiddle to male collaborators such as Diplo and Timbaland. She makes any political statement that she damn well pleases, and she does so creatively and unabashedly. She dances like a 9-year-old who just discovered her sense of rhythm. She storms festival stages wearing gold pants and peacock bras and scales the metal scaffolding. And she does all this with absolutely no hesitation or apology while making music that thrills and bursts and bends any previously held notion of what her albums should or should not sound like. Her role as a non-white female musician in a genre of music that is vastly male-dominated contains a high level of responsibility, one that M.I.A. takes very seriously. Kala is intelligent, fearless, socially-conscious, and nothing short of ground-breaking, and as she shouts, “I put people on the map that never seen a map,” she is fully aware of the impact that her music makes and continues to stride forward proudly and with no trace of apprehension. Thank you, Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, for the indescribably amazing Kala and for being such an incredible inspiration to everybody and anybody. – Anna Gazdowicz

7. Panda Bear – Person Pitch

There was a period of about 3 months in the spring, during which I couldn’t shut up about Panda Bear’s Person Pitch. My friends were forced to tolerate my rampant fanboyism, and my girlfriend likely started to tune it out. As a matter of full disclosure, I’ll admit that this sort of thing happens to me all the time, but with Panda Bear, it was different, primarily because the music itself is so different. Person Pitch has an unnamable quality about it, a certain je ne sais quoi that struck a chord, not just in this awestruck reviewer, but in many other souls longing for an album of pure and gorgeous melodies. It’s not so much rock, or pop even, and don’t you dare call it freak folk. Person Pitch is something different entirely, a simple, yet deep expression of joy and humanity. I’ve tried so hard to find the right words to describe it, but the truth is that each listen leaves me speechless. – Jeff Terich

6. The National – Boxer

In just about everything ever written or spoken about The National’s fourth album Boxer, it has been referred to as a `grower.’ Typically that translates into `unimpressive at first,’ but in this case, it’s quite the contrary. Its delicate graces and simmering intensity rise to the surface immediately, revealing a beautiful, baroque set of songs. In time, it’s the details that come into focus—the gentle weeping of strings, the strikingly pronounced hammering of piano keys, Matt Berninger’s evocative lyrics, and most of all, Bryan Devendorf’s drums. This album is more about drums than most albums released in the past decade, their presence solid and stoic, yet still providing a heart to each elegant melody. With each listen, that heartbeat gets louder and louder, like Poe with a greater sense of magnanimity. So, as it turns out, Boxer truly is a grower; with each listen, it just becomes more and more immense. – Jeff Terich

5. Feist – The Reminder

Despite the fact that Feist is gaining acclaim from her latest album The Reminder being played continuously at corporate coffee shops, and is being featured on another corporation’s MP3 player commercial, there’s no denying that this bird from Canada writes beautifully blissful and melancholy songs, and she is truly something to hear. No frills, no novelties, no gimmicks, Feist is the real deal in a valley of girlish ballads and formulaic pop songs. Some songs have a strong danceability factor to them, and others have a warm low end that propels the album even further into the depths of Feist. So what if your co-workers and soccer mom neighbors now know about Feist. This is a winner of an album. – Ayn Averett

4. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver

LCD Soundsystem’s self-titled debut is about as good as debuts get, rocking in all the right places, grooving pretty much everywhere else, and packed full of frontman James Murphy’s keen wit. They got everything right the first time, which seems all the more amazing that Sound of Silver actually outshines its predecessor. It’s a bigger album. It’s a prettier album. It’s a heavier album. And it’s one that actually tugs at the heartstrings while it smacks at that cowbell. Treble favorites and silver (hey!) and bronze ‘song of the year’ earners “All My Friends” and “Someone Great” are the best songs in the band’s career, touching upon aging and loss, respectively, each set against hypnotic and sublime melodies. For LCD, dance music isn’t just a distraction, it’s a reminder of how good it feels to be alive, of how much joy and sorrow can come from a 4/4 beat and how much fun it can be to jump around and shout “North! America!” Maybe in Berlin, they’ll go another night, but we’re the only ones who can claim LCD Soundsystem. – Jeff Terich

3. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

When Spoon titled a song on their 2005 album Gimme Fiction “Merchants of Soul,” they handily gave critics like myself a three-word phrase that best describes the Austin band’s modus operandi. On a nearly unheard-of streak of recording and releasing five classic albums beginning with 1998’s A Series of Sneaks, Spoon reaches an amazing new plateau with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, their subtle grooves and dynamite hooks refined to perfection and more soulful than ever. The production on Ga is rich and fluid, making tracks like “Finer Feelings” and “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb” pop and flow, sounding at once vintage and timeless. With more than a dozen years behind them, however, the band not only reveals themselves as flawless tunesmiths, but unafraid to screw with the formula as well. Snippets of found sound and radio broadcasts have seeped into their arrangements, and “The Ghost of You Lingers” is just plain bizarre, a drum-less piano pounder floating in its own nebulous pop music galaxy. That’s also the track that lends the album its name (hint: listen to the way the piano is played). Even when the horns, koto, ambient effects and Spanish guitar come in, there’s no question—this is classic Spoon. – Jeff Terich

2. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Win Butler and company have seemingly done what almost no other bands have done before. They’ve appealed to the masses without losing their core indie fan base. Usually, when a band goes from a word of mouth debut release to touring the world with U2, the backlash is felt like a whipcrack across the backsides of those rabid fanatics who revel in their favorite band’s anonymity. Not so with the Arcade Fire, as Neon Bible merely cemented those early opinions while gathering more acolytes to join the obsession. There seems to be somewhat of a formula with the Arcade Fire, having to do with a balance of hypnotic and mesmerizing dirges and uptempo Springsteenian bacchanalia. In many ways, Neon Bible is like Funeral, part deux. Hell, even their stage shows, despite a change in set dressing, almost never change. You could probably play a video of Regine’s dancing to “Haiti” from a month earlier behind her same performance that night with nary a difference, but that doesn’t matter a bit. What the Arcade Fire provide their fans, more than a vibrant stage performance, is a feeling of hope for anthemic rock, which most people probably saw as dead. The nearly symphonic presence of the blend of their instruments give them that touch of otherworldliness, the kind that makes Canada seem much farther away than it really is. When you see them live, that’s the impression you get, that Win and Régine are visiting aliens, giving us doses of the idiocy of politics and religion through their bizarre and infectious entertainment. How else explain the overwhelming sensation of weightlessness when hearing the revamped version of “No Cars Go?” – Terrance Terich

1. Radiohead – In Rainbows

The most Romantic Album of the Year award belongs to none other to my favorite band Radiohead. Wait, how did this happen? From the opening notes we all can feel the sparks that sent shivers down our eagerly-awaiting spines—pure unadulterated brilliance to my ears. I love Colin’s sultry bassline on “Nude.” This must have been what Thom was talking about when he said Radiohead wanted to make music to have sex to. Yes, “Nude” is quite beautiful and sexy, especially Jonny’s equally seductive guitar riffs that even Al Green and Marvin Gaye would love to sing over. And let’s not forget Phil’s tender touches on the drums. The kind of gentle beats that would make Massive Attack want to sample on their next album. The lushly arranged “All I Need” is a perfect lyrical equivalent to the sound of “Nude.” Thom has never written about love and intimacy as he does In Rainbows. Like a Romeo in black jeans, Yorke sings for all of us the romantics singing about the infinite complexities of relationships coming to life as Radiohead brings “All I Need” to its exciting climax. You can feel the emotions coming loud and clearer than ever before especially in songs like “House of Cards,” as Yorke sings, “I just wanna be your lover/ No matter how it ends/ No matter how it starts.“

In Rainbows is also the first Radiohead album in ages where we can actually hear the soulful vocals of Thom Yorke throughout. Who would have thought after releasing the electronics heavy solo album The Eraser, Thom would release his most heartfelt sounding songs in quite some time. It’s the little things on In Rainbows that stand out to me, like the way that Thom enunciates every syllable in songs like “15 Step,” such as the way that he says “etcetera.” Another fun fact: the beats on “Videotape” mirror the sped up ones in the opening track “15 Step?” If you put the album on repeat it runs like a full-circle dream, which you can relive again, like watching your favorite film go on and on forever. Could this be the reason why the album begins with the lyrics, “How come I end up where I started?” Think about it and play it on a loop and see if you hear what I hear.

So when did Radiohead become such lyrical and rhythmic romantics? Hard to say, but for a band that’s been called “cold” and “indulgent,” they sound more human than ever, connecting with the love and adoration that we all want to feel. – Adrian Cepeda