Summer Blockbuster Edition! (pt 2)

WE'RE BACK!  I'm sure you've all already seen the first installment of our chronicle of summer music releases.  If not, scroll down.  If yes, here is part two!

Less Than Jake - GNV FLA

After courting the mainstream over the past few studio releases, and catching considerable criticism for it, Less Than Jake's eight studio album comes full circle--not only musically, getting back to the irresistibly catchy horns that first broke them onto the ska-punk scene, but also lyrically, with an eloquent tribute to the unabbreviated album title and college town that so firmly holds the band's roots, Gainesville, Florida.

GNV FLA is without a doubt a trip through reminiscence  for members of Less Than Jake.  The only complaint one could have is that there is no subtlety whatsoever.  Tracks one and two, titled respectively: "The City of Gainesville" and "The State of Florida" are just an example.  The tracks act as one, setting up the theme and if nothing else, the mindset needed to fully appreciate the rest of the album.  The tracks start off with the slow bounce of ska-tar and horns and the sweet, sweet vocals of Roger, effectively a prologue to the story being told.  After track two, it becomes (at least musically) very traditional as per Less Than Jake.  It's no Pezcore, but it's certainly Borders & Boundaries-esque.  

The last thing I want to point out, particularly to Less Than Jake who felt a bit let down by their previous album In With The Out Crowd, GNV FLA  is significantly less....'pristine' than IWTOC was, making for a more raw, more traditional ska-punk listening experience.  Sounds like they either fired the sound guy from album priori, or just whipped him into shape, because the newest effort is not wrapped in that fresh plastic sheen that leaves much to be desired.

GNV FLA is nothing short of an amazing Less Than Jake record.  Back-to-roots musicality and lyricism cause deep satisfaction, despite some nay-sayers and their claims of bluntness.

8.0/10

 Girl Talk - Feed The Animals

What is there to say about mash-up mix-master Girl Talk?  Formerly a Biomedical Engineering student, sample-based DJ Gregg Gillis released his fourth full length album, demonstrating yet another exercise in 'spot the sample'.  Or as Uncrate put it, "Feed The Animals is like a musical scavenger hunt, mashing Faith No More with Busta Rhymes..."

There's really not much to analyze about an album like this.  Although none of the actual music is original, the sample mashups are masterfully executed, and it's so fuckin' catchy it's almost hard not to dance to it!  If I would've know that they teach you that kind of stuff in Biomed Engineering school, perhaps I would be studying something completely different...

7.5/10

Spiritualized - Songs in A&E

I'll be honest right off the bat.  I'm a newcomer to the Spiritualized-style minimalist orchestral rock.  You want more honesty?  Okay fine.  It's good.  It's really fucking good.  It reminds me of a combination of old Wilco and new Wilco.  Almost as if Jeff Tweedy wanted to make the music he's making now, but didn't have access to all of the cool artists and tools he works with.  

The song is broken up into sections by wistful instrumental interludes labelled "Harmony" 1-6.  They provide a superb tie between the songs on the album.  The record takes a while to get off the ground (probably purposefully), with tracks like "Sweet Talk" almost stereotypical in folk-rock and "Death Take Your Fiddle" dragging its toes on the ground almost the whole way through.  But by the time "Soul on Fire" (my personal favorite) comes tweeting through your speakers, Spiritualized has hit full swing, executing not-so-minimal minimalist rock at its very, very finest.  As the "Harmony" tracks occur more frequently toward the end, the record comes to a close with a very lofty, sentimental feel.  Like ending a long night on psychedelics listening to post-rock as it starts to get light outside.  Fittingly, the album ends on a track called "Goodnight Goodnight" featuring the lyrics "Goodnight, goodnight, you're coming down...".

Like I said, I'm new to Spiritualized and they're astoundingly beautiful execution of this style of music, but it's so good......and I will most certainly seek out more.

8.5/10

Summer Blockbuster Edition! (pt 1)

Seriously, holy fucking fuck. After far far far too long with no access to music, I am returned from the ashes as a phoenix triumphant. That is, I got a new iPod.

As the summer is passing us by with so many excellent/important releases unreviewed, we're going to try and remedy some of that right now. I've got the first three of many albums to come below.



Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends

After 2005's X&Y, I grew somewhat disenchanted with Coldplay. Their first two albums were undeniably strong (if perhaps a little too U2 influenced), but their third fell flat, in part due to overproduction, but mostly because they simply weren't writing engaging songs. A step towards mediocrity.

Put simply, I underestimated them.

Viva la Vida is a masterwork, showing the band stretching beyond themselves to new (and exciting) territory. No longer content to be the dreamy-eyed boy with the falsetto, Chris Martin turns over a new leaf on this album, putting out lyrics that point to social ills (he told Rolling Stone in an interview that the lines in "Violet Hill" about "a carnival of idiots on show" and "the fox became God" are references to Fox News) and loneliness leading to sexual indiscretion (the show-stopping "Yes). Throughout the album, Martin struggles with the thought of death and ghosts, from "Cemeteries of London" ("Where the witches are and they say/There are ghost towns in the ocean") through to the last song "Death and All His Friends," where he states he doesn't want to follow Death and affirms that "We lie awake and we dream of making our escape."

All this would be meaningless without the rest of the band, of course, and indeed, the music on this album is as soaring and free as Martin's words (due in no small part to the skilled production of Brian Eno). Take the instrumental opening, "Life in Technicolor". A slow building melody that crescendos into a perfect opening track, telling you exactly what to expect. Or standout track "Violet Hill," which begins with background noise and piano, only to explode into (gasp!!) distorted guitars, swirling and storming behind Martin.

This album establishes that Coldplay is able to expand beyond the syrupy lyrics and bland soundscapes, and that they're fucking good at it.

8.0/10



The Offspring - Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace

When The Offspring's eighth studio album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, roared onto my speakers with "Half-Truism," I immediately caught myself thinking "Wow, this song sounds like it belongs on Smash." Two songs later, in "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" I noted an uncanny similarity between the vocal melody and that of a Panic at the Disco track ("Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off"). That dichotomy perfectly demonstrates what the album is about: sometimes it's loud, fast, and balls out punk (rock), sometimes it's polished and shiny pop (rock), and the good news is that The Offspring are masters of both.

Actually, the best news is that the band has decided to shy away from the hokier songs of their more recent releases, like "Hit That," "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)," "Spare Me the Details," and "Original Prankster." Indeed, the closest they come to kitsch is "Stuff Is Messed Up," the standard lament over the current state of affairs featuring a "We Didn't Start the Fire"-esque rattling off of Dexter Holland's woes of the moment (Including, but not limited to: "Therapy, I won't tell/Rehab and LOL/Worldwide calamity/TV Reality/Euthanize, supersize/Death squads and boob jobs/VIP infamy/Gratify instantly"), or perhaps the reggae reminiscent guitar and beat of "Let's Hear It For Rock Bottom".

Really most of the album is old hat to anyone who's listened to The Offspring, the best moments are the songs where they branch out from their tried-and-true formula. Songs like "Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?" and "Fix You" are surprisingly tender. I would go so far as to say that the former is among their greatest songs, a deeply touching story about childhood abuse or rape, Holland eventually pleading "Don't waste your whole life trying/to get back what was taken away."

The best thing I can say about this album is that it is unmistakably, inimitably, thoroughly The Offspring. If they manage to remain this relevant and engaging, then the next eight albums will be equally as good.

7.0/10



Weezer - Weezer

Oh, Rivers Cuomo. What happened to you?

Weezer's new album, their third self-titled album, starts off with "Troublemaker" a gritty, Pinkerton-era piece of grunge-pop that catches the attention easily enough, but by halfway through you realize seems awfully familiar. Then... then comes "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)," a song so unabashedly terrible, I have to wonder why their producer didn't walk up to the band and hit Rivers Cuomo on the nose with a newspaper. It's an interesting idea, the song switches through ten different genres throughout, centering on one lyrical theme, but it's so poorly executed that it's nigh-unlistenable.

This album marks the first time since the first self-titled that other members of the band have contributed to the songwriting process, making this Weezer as something different than "The Rivers Cuomo Band," but none of it is to any worthwhile effect. Brian Bell's contribution, "Thought I Knew," sounds like a Fastball B-side (Hah! Fastball. What a bizarre reference.), while drummer Patrick Wilson's track, "Automatic" tries so hard to be poignant and just ends up falling flat.

It's not all bad news. Barn-burner "Everybody Get Dangerous" has a chorus so raucous, you'll want to start kicking over chairs and burning shit to the ground and features Cuomo's rambling lyrical style ("When I was younger/I used to go and tip cows for fun, yeah/Actually I didn't do that/'Cause I didn't want the cow to be sad"). And the ballad "Heart Songs" is a beautiful tribute to the songs that Cuomo grew up with.

In the end, it's not that it's a bad album. It's just that I've come to expect better of Weezer.

5.5/10

Not Dead Yet

Hello Everyone

I realize that we haven't been posting anything in a while, and for that I'd like to apologize.  But hey, can you blame us?  We're poor college students.  InDet's computer has been out of commission for like.....months.  But good news is he just got his iPod working the other day, and since summer is here, I have some more freetime as well.  We will be putting up reviews left and right here soon, just wait it out.

Ben Gibbard: Pessimist

This review has been moved. Find it here: http://indie-rock-music.suite101.com/article.cfm/album_review_narrow_stairs

Dear Ms. Carey: You Are Not A Scientist.

In response to a question concerning the title of Mariah Carey's new album, E=MC², Ms. Carey, genius that she is, responded with the following gem:

"It's, like, 'emancipation equal mariah carey times two.'"

The utter stupidity of this comment left me unable to breathe. Apparently being a pop superstar requires that you have an IQ no higher than your age.

Not going undergound

Animal Collective - Water Curses

2007 was a good year for Animal Collective. It saw the release of Strawberry Jam, arguably their most mature LP in their nine-year history. They toured the US and Europe approximately 14 times. They made their television debut debut on Conan O’Brien. They even got to experience the first snow in Tucson in a decade. But for all of the leaps forward the band made, they were largely overshadowed by the individual achievements of co-founding member Panda Bear (Noah Lennox). He did, after all, release Person Pitch, the best Brian Wilson album since Pet Sounds. Yup, some people rather enjoyed that one. He even emerged for the first time as a songwriting force in the band, contributing three of Strawberry Jam’s nine songs. 2007 was indeed the Year of the Panda.

Which makes it all the more puzzling (or perhaps revealing) that Panda Bear is almost nowhere to be seen on Water Curses. Rather, the four song EP (recorded during the same sessions in Tucson that yielded Strawberry Jam) serves almost as a solo outing for frontman Avey Tare (Dave Portner). Although it is admittedly difficult to connect the Collective’s sounds to individual members, there are no live drums, no additional vocalists, and sparse instrumentation throughout. In general, these songs consist of little more than Avey’s guitar or piano backed with various electronic bleeps and glitches. The result is a collection that sounds like a more refined, streamlined version of their previous album. Take the track “Street Flash,” for example. The song, a fan favorite since it was first live nearly three years ago, is driven only by Avey’s melancholy, heavily delayed guitar and a controlled chaos of electronic bleeps and glitches in lieu of a proper percussion track. Diehards may notice that the screams permeating the background first appeared in live versions of Panda’s “Bro’s,” but otherwise, this song (and the ones that follow) are strictly the Avey Tare show. That background noise, by the way, is a recurring theme here – Animal Collective has mastered the art of layering a symphony of noise without ever detracting from the big idea.

The title track is the only song here that sounds like the work of a full band – incidentally, it’s also perhaps the most immediate, danceable song the band has ever recorded. In truth, with its bubbly synth line and steel drums, it sounds downright out of place standing next to three more somber, introspective tunes. This discrepancy is the only thing that prevents Water Curses from sounding like a collection of cast-offs and leftovers. Instead, it serves as a natural bridge documentation the Collective’s transformation from the noisy SJ era to their current incarnation as a more minimal electronic outfit. In that context, they may not win any new fans with this outing, but it will no doubt be a pleasant surprise for those thought that 2008 would be a letdown from the band.

8.2/10

You might lose teeth...

Protest the Hero - Fortress

Jesus fucking Christ.

This album kicks you in the face with steel toes from the first track, "Blood Meat", and doesn't let you up for air until the "Goddess" has been "Gagged".

For no other reason than to write this review, I had to get my hands on a copy of Protest's debut album from 2005, Kezia.  I had to hear the roots from which this technical finesse had sprung forth.

Where Kezia seemed like an effort to construct an identity for Protest the Hero, Fortress holds the band much more comfortably within their post-hardcore punk/metal chains.  While the fact that every song on this album is pounding and in your face is a cool aesthetic, it could wear you out from time to time.  Protest only gives you about 45 seconds of breathing time halfway through the album.  

"Palms Read" ends with a chanting anthem ("raise your glass...") that fuzzes away into nothing, before abruptly kicking your ass with one of the most showy displays of technical guitar I have seen in quite some time.  Drop a pompous "circus riff" in there for good measure, and you're launched right into "Limb from Limb", my personal favorite from the album.  "Limb from Limb" employs a Castlevania-esque 8-bit guitar riff section that make me want to loop it forever.

Overall, Protest the Hero has come a long way from it's already dynamite debut album Kezia.  Assuming that they give me enough time to nurse my Fortress-induced wounds, I sincerely look forward to whatever Protest the Hero can craft next.

8.0/10

Drink up, gentlemen!

**Before getting into this album, allow me to apologize for the hiatus. Things have been hectic, but we plan on getting back on track here in the next few weeks with all of the latest albums. To help us, we've recruited a new writer. ALRIGHT. Now that that stuff is over with, let's move on to an album that (unfortunately) has already been out for quite sometime.**

Flogging Molly - Float

Flogging Molly's third full length album is darker than a lot of albums I've heard in the past few years, and certainly the darkest of Molly's collection.

The Molly's have always been a Irish-folk "drinking makes everything better" type band. But the mood on Swagger and Drunken Lullaby's invoked a feeling of lightheartedness when it came to drinking. Drinking made everything more fun. On Float, things are a bit different. Even the album cover carries a gloomy connotation. More of the songs on the album are in a minor key and the lyrical content matches. Perhaps the slowest, saddest orchestration on the record is the title track:

Drank away the rest of the day

Wonder what my liver'd say,

Drink, It's all you can

Blackened days with their bigger gales

Blow in your parlor to discuss the day

Listen, it's all you can

Ah but don't, no, don't sink the boat

That you built, you built to keep afloat

Ah no don't, no don't sink the boat

That you built...

Sick and tired of what to say

No one listens anyway,

Sing, that's all you can

Rambling years of lousy luck

You miss the smell of burnin' turf,

Dream, it's all you can

...and so on. It's only an excerpt, but you get the idea. Although a solid majority of the songs parallel this drunken, bleak pessimism (or perhaps grim realisim), there are upbeat songs interspersed that are reminiscent of the Flogging Molly we all know and love. This album exhibits the most musical growth that the Molly's have shown since their debut record Swagger. It's probably safe to say that come St. Paddy's day when I get together with friends to drink Harp's, smoke cigars, and listen to Molly, the mood will be grim in the event that we choose this album.

That being said, I'm glad Flogging Molly has put out a great new record, and with this degree of maturation, I'm curious to see where they could go next.

7.5/10

She fell in love with a [coked out] drummer...

So I'm sure InDet will be posting his own thoughts about this, but I figured I'd say a few words anyway. Last night we drove to Columbus to see Vampire Weekend at the Wexner Center.

First things first, it was an absolutely awesome show. The Wexner Center is a full sized theater, but the show was a Black Box show, where they curtain off the stage and build a small riser on one end of the stage while the audience packs on to the rest of it. It dramatically decreases the performance space and creates a really intimate atmosphere, which I think was perfect for a band like this. I'd say there was probably about 200 people there at most.

The opening band was...well...fronted by a guy who was 100% nuts. I don't really have anything else to say about them. After intermission, Vampire Weekend came out, and they looked exactly like you'd expect an indie rock band from New York to look. They sang, they danced, it was rad. One thing that stuck out, though, was the drummer. He had to have been on something, because aside from being insanely awesome at his instrument, he just looked out of it during downtimes.

All in all, awesome fucking show. My only gripe is the fact that they don't tour with any sort of strings player, which I think makes each song lack just a little something from the album that gives the songs a certain kind of character, or catchiness. (Also, no harpsichord on M79. Sad.)

Sounds of the Studio

Hot Chip - Made in the Dark

Immediately following the spoken advice helpfully given midway through the second song on Hot Chip's third studio album, "Shake a Fist", to get out and crank up your headphones, Hot Chip delivers one of the more engrossing synth breakdowns in recent memory. Bouncing and stumbling through a glitch-filled beat, it helps to showcase the top notch musicality of these five Brits (as well as their superb ear for production). The opening vocal repetition of the next track demonstrate that they know how to have fun, and the perky beat testifies to that. Elsewhere, the almost stream of consciousness ramblings of "Hold On" ("I'm only going to Heaven/If it tastes like caramel") and references to Willie Nelson and WWE in the same song ("Wrestlers") show their tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.

Really, the strongest and weakest moments on the album come from the ballads. The standout title track strips away the effects in favor of soul-influenced guitar lines while Alexis Taylor sings gently about broken love. On the other hand, the final two tracks bring the tempo down, but fail to pay off in any significant way. These aren't bad songs, but on this record they seem almost irrelevant, a way to lull you to sleep so you won't notice the music is ending. Still, these are minor quibbles, and for the most part, the album shines with an infectious groove, a beat you can dance to, and lyrics that carry a both a sense of humor and an emotional weight worth paying attention to. Crank up your headphones.

7.5/10

"This Is Based On A True Story..."

Super Furry Animals - Hey Venus!

The Super Furry Animals' eighth album is perhaps a small step away from the spacey psychedelia that the Welsh quintet is best known for. Described by lead singer Gruff Rhys as "a 'speaker blowing' LP", there are very few moments on this album that aren't bursting with pure psych-pop goodness. Indeed, from the Phil Spectoresque "Run-Away" to the mellow soul of "Let the Wolves Howl At the Moon", there's harly a moment to catch your breath as the Animals take every good idea pop music has had in the last fifty years (these guys pulled out their old Beatles and Beach Boys vinyls) and turns into a sound that is invariably and unquestionably unique. Hey Venus! isn't the strongest album the Super Furry Animals have released, but it is one of their most immidiately engaging, and a good album to point to for anyone trying to discover what SFA is all about.

7.0/10

No Stake Required

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"I was a sailor first..."

Ringo Starr - Liverpool 8

Liverpool 8 is Ringo Starr's fourteenth studio album. It's been two years since his previous effort, but those two years seemed to loosen Starr's grip on the Beatle inside him. All 13 of Ringo's previous studio albums exhibited some sort of Beatle's-esque influence, but Liverpool 8 is somewhat of a new beginning.

Kicking off this album is the title track, which has the feel of a song you'd expect to hear at the end of an album. "Liverpool 8" is a goodbye song, reminiscent of days spent rocking "with George and Paul/and my friend John" as well as a reference to Rory Storm (lead vocalist in one of Ringo's pre-Beatles bands, Raving Texans), and is decorated with endearing thoughts of his hometown that clearly influenced a reluctance to leave ("Destiny was calling/I just couldn't stick around/Liverpool I left you/but I never let you down"). I take this as an almost journal-like personal work of Ringo's; you would need to read a biography in order to fully understand every reference in this track.

From there, Starr seems to experiment with several different styles of musicality, my only complaint being that it sounds so intentional. For instance: "Think About You" and "For Love" are pretty solid blues/rock tracks, "Gone Are The Days" is heavily influenced by Indian music, making it sound like a track from Ian Brown's Solarized, "Harry's Song" sounding like a cross between a southern honky-tonk worthy piece crossed with a march-like variety show entry (that is not as bad as it sounds), "Pasadobles" being strongly influenced by Spanish music, so on and so forth.

The concept is good, as it exemplifies Ringo's long-overdue break from the Beatles motif. However, the layout could do for a bit more subtlety. Track after track makes jumps between styling: "If It's Love That You Want"'s Duran Duran-esque 80's rock/southern fusion setup to the low-fi, indie-rock love song sound of "Love is", to the record-closer "R U Ready?" which sounds like a bluegrass band accompanying a group of working slaves singing a spiritual.

The influence the Beatles had on virtually all music post-1963 was seismic, but it's refreshing to see Ringo Starr break free of that stranglehold, despite the fact that his fourteen album solo career falls low on the radar for a member of such a monolithic band.

The vocals are clean. The musicality is clean. It's a solid record. A lack of cohesiveness keeps it from being a great album, but it's certainly a very good collection of songs.

6.5 out of 10

Fuzzy!

This review has been moved. You can read it here: http://indiepoprockmusic.suite101.com/article.cfm/album_review_distortion

The Top Ten (pt 2)

This is it, ladies and jellyspoons. The moment you've all been waiting for.



5. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

Contributed by The Audiophile

Anyone who has seen the documentary film "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" understands the turmoils that Jeff Tweedy, as well as all of Wilco, underwent during the creation of 2001's groundbreaking record Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The turmoils reflected in the musicality of that record are but a mere remnant on Wilco's newest effort, Sky Blue Sky. Littered with the familiarity of phrases that reference love lost, love found, so on and so forth ("on and on and on/we'll be together, yeah"), Sky Blue Sky is a step back to pre-Ghost is Born Wilco. As opposed to the inverse formula for GiB and YHF, Sky Blue Sky is only one part experiment to three parts rock, including smooth, yet often drastic, transitions from song to song as well as from verse to chorus (see: "Shake it Off"). Not to mention the guitar solo in "Impossible Germany", which equates to nothing short of pure aural sex (pun 100% intended).





4. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer

Whoa. Apparently, after releasing The Sunlandic Twins, frontman Kevin Barnes went batshit crazy. Not that that's a bad thing, as Hissing Fauna, one of Of Montreal's finest records to date, is utterly stellar. Ostensibly about Barnes' breakup with his wife and subsequent transformation from himself into his glam-rock alter-ego, Georgie Fruit (The change occurs during the epic 12 minute "The Past is a Grotesque Animal"), Barnes uses every trick, instrument, lyrical turn, and electronic tweak he can muster to chronicle his decent into depression, search for meaning, and transformation. With lyrics that no one else could come up with, let alone pull off ("Somehow you've red-rovered/The gestapo circling my heart"), and styles that haven't seen the light of day in some time (see the disco-funk-new wave-pop-rock "Gronlandic Edit", or the pure groove-funk of "Labrinthian Pomp"), Of Montreal has created a layered masterpiece that not only deserves but demands repeat listening.



3. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

The Field's debut album turned a lot of heads this year, and with good reason. After almost five and a half minutes of grooving along to the slowly building thump and the gradually expanding sonic textures of "A Paw in My Face," Axel Willner (aka The Field) releases his hold on the track, only to (staggeringly) reveal Lionel Ritchie's "Hello". Willner uses minimalism to explore and expand on every musical concept he advances, stretching it to the point where you might think "Hey, this is a little repetetive," and the moment you think that, BAM!, something changes. A modulation, the addition of another rhythm, or perhaps a one note sample of a woman's voice, looped and repeated, creating depth, and, to a point, melody. This is an astounding album, and "sublime" is definitely the word for it.



2. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

James Murphy just seems to be getting better with age. LCD Soundsystem's first album namechecked every important band of the last thirty years that you've never heard of ("Losing My Edge"), and took stylistic cues from most of the ones you have ("Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up," "Tribulations"). On this album, he ups the ante by adding more rock instrumentation (not that this is a rock album) and indeed, sounds like he's taking things a little more seriously (for a guy who used to make up the lyrics in the studio, this is kind of a big deal). From the pride he takes in being "North American Scum" to cherishing his friends ("All My Friends"), Murphy has produced one of the finest dance-rock albums to ever grace the scene.



1. Radiohead - In Rainbows

Radiohead is number one? How cliché , how tedious, I hear you cry. Well, fuck you. There were a lot of superb albums this year, but none of them can hold a candle to In Rainbows, the best album Radiohead has released since, well, the last one. The stutter-step beat of "15 Step", joined by Yorke's always entrancing warble as he queries "How come I end up where I started?/How come I end up where I went wrong?" grabs a hold of the listener and pulls them in. The very next track, "Bodysnatchers", has Yorke wailing about paranoia over some of the most straightforward rock Radiohead has produced in some time, carrying you into the beauty of the ballad "Nude". The gentle beat behind Yorke and the guitar effects gives the impression of vulnerability, and as the instruments gradually come in, Yorke's pained croon only becomes more desperate.

Like any great album, In Rainbows stretches the genre. There is no other band that does the things that Radiohead does. This album is an almost seamless amalgamation of everything that Radiohead has done before, from the minimalist sampling and instrumentation of "Nude" to the shades of "Karma Police" heard in the album closer "Videotape", to the screeching thump of "Bodysnatchers". And like every Radiohead album since The Bends, it does not disappoint.

The Top Ten (pt 1)

Drink every time you see the word "pop".



10. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

The shimmering indie-pop sound that James Mercer has worked so hard to create comes to full fruition on Wincing the Night Away, an album that is by turns about relationships, drugs, and Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch. Mercer's lyrics are almost constantly murky, but the music that accompanies it is full of shimmering guitars and drum machines, making it impossible to really care how bizarre the words are, because the music is just so damn upbeat. This is, by far, The Shins most cohesive album to date, and I look forward to seeing how they develop with subsequent releases.



9. Get Set Go - Selling Out & Going Home

What Mike TV lacks in subtlety (there's a track on this album titled "Fuck You (I Want To)"), he more than makes up for in pure songwriting finesse. And while his subject matter is rarely deeper than drugs, sex, death, or music, he's never at a loss for words to describe those things. Get Set Go excel at making pop music, the kind that you'll be humming along to no matter how obscene ("Come on fuckers/Everyone get movin'!", TV chants at one point), the kind that makes you wonder why it makes you feel so happy, even when the songs are meditations on being someone's heroin (in all the worst ways) and or venting off a bad relationship ("Get What's Coming to You"). Infectious pop music, impeccably created and produced.



8. Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

Contributed by The Audiophile

Explosions in the Sky resurfaced this past year with their first full blown effort since 2004's soundtrack for Friday Night Lights. Unlike a solid majority of the albums mentioned in this list, the word 'pop' (you don't have to drink for this one...) would be an inappropriate way to describe any musical aspect of this record. As quite possibly the most emotional musical work I have ever laid ears upon, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone steps up the groups maturity, taking the quiet-loud-quiet format and making the quiets more detailed and calculated, while making the louds more intense and overwhelming. Every atmospheric utterance of the ambient instrumentals weaves a tale in a way that words never could: drawing you in with nuanced intricacy before shattering your perception through sonic explosion (see band name). The record reaches is apex during the 13-minute epic "It's Natural To Be Afraid" which contains a charged guitar duet over top a soul-crushing piano ostinato.

Now that we're through all that, this would be a good time to mention that this album is best taken with a full-screen Magnetosphere iTunes visualizer. Do it.

7. The White Stripes - Icky Thump

I've gotta be honest: I really don't care for The White Stripes. I mean, okay, White Blood Cells and Elephant were both pretty good albums, but not until Get Behind Me Satan did I really care what Jack and Meg White did. Icky Thump is a step back to the blues-heavy rock that made them famous, but with the inclusion of the styles on GBMS, the Stripes have created an unbelievably solid rock record. "Conquest," with its' Spanish influences sounds like a bullfight, the music pounding away as White sings of sexual conquest turned on its' head, and "Rag an Bone" is a hilarious ode to trash gypsies (as my mother calls them). With heavy 70s rock influences and a record collection that has a lot of Rolling Stones, The White Stripes created the rock record of 2007.



6. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Panda Bear, of Animal Collective, released his debut solo album this year to pretty much universal praise. There's not a lot that I can say that hasn't been said elsewhere: it's an unspeakably pretty album, it features a lot of Brian Wilson as a major influence, and it's a damn fine album, damn fine. If gorgeous, eloquent, happy pop music doesn't interest you... see a doctor. You might be clinically dead.