Songs 2007

Here are some songs released in 2007 that I played to death.

Spring and Summer By Fall - Blonde Redhead. I couldn't have been happier that Blonde Redhead hired Alan Moulder to produce their new record 23. As a producer Moulder, more than any band, soundtracked the '90s for me with his work with groups like My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver. With Moulder's help Blonde Redhead's unholy transmogrification into a one-band shoegaze revival is now complete and I think it's the best work they've ever done.

Why Should I Be Sad - Britney Spears. More Prince than Prince. With Pharell Williams behind the curtain.

Indoor Swimming At The Space Station - Eluvium. 10 minutes of piano, synth and seagulls stirred up into an ambient build without resolution. Completely gorgeous.

Irene - Caribou. Starts out as Sesame Street slow jam, but reveals a sublime pop tune buried under all the '70s PBS warble. Like Boards of Canada producing the Beach Boys.

The Ghost of You Lingers - Spoon. In all the best Spoon tracks, the band arrangements are kept to their most spare, so that when a disembodied effect like a crackle or a shower of reverb gusts by for a few bars, it actually means something. "The Ghost of You Lingers" leaves the band out entirely and makes its point with just a piano, SFX and Brit Daniels' cocky croon.

On Large Amusements - Zoos of Berlin. The EP that this showed up on was a long time coming. (Zoos of Berlin played their first show in 2005, if that gives you any idea of the depths of their perfectionism.) And yet... the EP almost justifies the wait, it's that marvelous. And even more incredible, a really well-realized demo version of this beautiful song has been floating around for over a year, long enough for me to build a severe attachment to it. For the official version, they gutted the thing and changed it all around. It's a much different animal and if you loved the demo like me, odds were against loving the changes. And yet... [insert Italian expression of enthuisasm here]!

My Swag - T.I. "Swag" is short for "swagger" here, but who needs two syllables when one will do? Not T.I. "This is impeccable pimping."

Scream - Timbaland (featuring Keri Hilson). I spent a lot of wasted energy trying to convince friends that some of the tracks on Timbaland's new album Shock Value were the next level. It seemed all the songs I was hot for were the ones written and including guest vocals by Keri Hilson. But my friends couldn't look past the record's atrocities. And there is much to hate on Shock Value, most of which has to do with the really inane lyrics and pseudo-thuggery. Still, Timbaland managed to cram a lot of goodness in between the pandering reaches for crossover success while adding a layer of epic to his already classic sound. He's left Pharell and his protoge, Danja, the post-apocalyptic, empty crunch if his previous productions and moved on to a kind of Phil Spector-goes-third-world smear. I feel that.

Through My Sails - Soulsavers. This track consists of Mark Lanegan (he of indescribable voice) and Will Oldham duetting on a cover of a classic Neil Young tune. I will stop writing now.

Reckoner - Radiohead. Radiohead finally made a song in the shape of my skin. Or at least it feels that way, that's how much I identify with this track. I devoted a rambling blog to it and how much it reminded me of Talk Talk's "New Grass."

Into the Hollow - Queens of the Stone Age. QOTSA are the perpetual heavy. They make a mean brand of metrosexual metal. But walking the metrosexual tightrope is to hover between douchebaggery and emasculation. And, like the over-groomed asshole with too much product in his hair, their records have in the past tended to sound a little too sculpted. Era Vulgaris fixed all that. It sounds pummeled rather than mixed, with all the shades smearing into the color of death by sexy.

Stronger - Kanye West. He didn't sample Daft Punk as much as he appropriated their track, making it seem almost obsolete in the process, like the original had been pre-production for Kanye all along. The balls! Then he made a ridiculous-good video for the thing that was an homage to Akira, the post-nuclear Japanese manga masterpiece and '80s milestone, with Kanye as the psycho-kinetic title character. Clearly, the world is Kanye's for the taking. I'm glad to see him get away from that '70s retro soul sprinkle, even if it means coming to the electro revival a few years late. Dig the way he stutters the chorus lyric: "Nah-nah that-that which don't kill me, can only make me stronger." It's totally next-level in a really effortless and natural way.

I Am Always Waiting - Mobius Band. When I drooled over this song in a blog, I wrote, "Emotionally, it's breakup-song big, the kind of cut you want to listen to when your life feels like plates of massive, tectonic shift. But even in breakups, the tearing is sometimes balanced with adrenaline, and "I Am Always Waiting" strikes that kind of balance."

Pioneer To The Falls - Interpol. I'm not going to lie, I've lost the love for this band. Maybe it was never true love in the first place, only a lusty haze of nostalgia and well-appropriated new wave goth influences. But I swear, if they made more tracks like this, where Ennio Morricone is conjured rather than Joy Division, I could love them for reals. And the bridge is just a goddamn amazing wonder of structural engineering.

Work It Out - RJD2. This is how the learning process went for me: "Hey, that video is pretty cool, the way that guy's making a new dance form using crutches and skater moves... hey, I like that song, too. Is that a Beatles cover? Say what? That's RJD2? But I thought he produced destroyed-sounding hip hop. Where'd he learn to write like that, and who's the guest vocalist then? Say double what?? RJD2 himself?! Man, where was I when this record dropped. For shame. Ima have to check this out.... let's see here.... MOTHERFUCKERS! What is all this tepid internet buzz. Haters! Oh, well, maybe the rest of it doesn't live up to the single.... oh, shit, but oh, how it does. Oh, shit, this record is totally soothing my summer soul." Then I tried to do something about it.


Nature Springs - The Good, The Bad and The Queen. Few songs on this uneven record managed to live up the promise of the band's premise: namebrand britpop frontman (Damon Alburn) turned creator of things next-level (side project Gorillaz's Demon Days is probably producer Danger Mouse's finest hour) hires bass player (Paul Simonon) from The Clash (one of only two white bands to ever play reggae rhythms and still keep their self respect) to anchor the jerky drum brilliance of afrobeat revolutionary (Tony Allen). But "Nature Springs" was actually better than even the idea of all that. It's its own genre; a wistful disembodied sound that reminds you how seasons always seem to be changing in the right direction. When Simonon drops in with his sub rumble, he makes you think the word "bass" was created by smashing "bad" and "ass" together. And Allen? ALLEN! I once lost a whole weekend trying to put his seasick sound into words.