Album: Wild Mountain Nation
Label: Lidkercow Ltd
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/b/blitzentrapper-wildmountainnation.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-06-12
UK Release Date: Unavailable
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List number: 50
Blitzen Trapper had a hell of a year in 2007. It started off simply enough for the Portland sextet as they quietly put the finishing touches on their third self-released full-length, and backed it up with the usual heavy touring. However, despite its humble entrance, Wild Mountain Nation exploded once it got through the door, a veritable Trojan horse of throwback Steve Miller, angular post-rock riffage, backwoods country contemplative Americana, and humble electric folk ramshackle. The major indie media bathed the album in praise for months, eventually leading to a contract with the highly influential and legendary Sub Pop. By its nature, the album is an inspiration to every DIY band out there, struggling to do what they love for a living without selling out that dream. Blitzen Trapper made it on their own terms, and mark my words, they’re going to keep making it. Filmore Escalito Holmes
MP3: Wild Mountain Nation
Blitzen Trapper – Wild Mountain Nation
Album: Send Away the Tigers
Label: Red Int
Label: Red Ink
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/m/manicstreetpreachers-sendawaythetigers.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-07-24
UK Release Date: 2007-05-07
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List number: 49
With Send Away the Tigers, rockin’ Welsh trio Manic Street Preachers regain the power and majesty of their ’90s glory days. Throughout the record, lyrics of political and romantic hopelessness are buoyed by soaring, melodic anthems. Singer and bassist James Dean Bradfield has a huge and irrepressible voice, while guitarist and principal songwriter Nicky Wire is a self-proclaimed nihilist. What should be an odd couple is actually a heavenly matching of complementary powers. On Send Away the Tigers, the Manics have rediscovered just how well their talents can work together, creating their best album of the 2000s. Michael Keefe
Manic Street Preachers – Autumnsong
Album: Souvenirs D’Un Autre Monde
Label: Profound Lore
Contributors: Neige
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/s/souvenirs_dun_autre_monde.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-08-14
UK Release Date: 2007-08-06
N/A release date: 2007-06-08
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List number: 48
Expectations were high among underground metal scenesters when word came out that French black metal one-man band Alcest had completed its debut full-length, but nothing could prepare them for the dazzling beauty that would burst forth upon first spin. Traces of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Neige’s black metal style linger, from the tremolo picking to the somewhat high-end mix. Although he claims to have never heard shoegaze before, this album explodes with roaring guitars and soaring melodies that bear an uncanny similarity to My Bloody Valentine and Ride. Unlike peers Wolves in the Throne Room, Agalloch, and even “metalgaze” greats Jesu, the arrangements on Souvenirs are more pastoral and sun-drenched. Neige’s lyrics, sung entirely in French, are shamelessly romantic, as tracks like “Printemps Emeraude” and “Ciel Errant”, which muse about trees and clouds for crying out loud, and they pack an emotional wallop that few underground scenesters would dare attempt. Adrien Begrand
Album: White Chalk
Label: Island
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/h/harveypj-whitechalk.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-10-02
UK Release Date: 2007-09-24
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List number: 47
With another instinctive, artistically-challenging record, pioneer Polly Harvey is adept at capturing the voices of women on the verge of nervous breakdowns: the frail Victorian ladies-in-waiting, ghostly brides, the forsaken and the abused, and a caché of other feminine archetypes of days long past get the full treatment on her gorgeous, mournful White Chalk. Haunting and elegant, written mainly for the piano, the record is a delicate oddity on first listen, but soon reveals a sinister supernatural ribbon that chills to the bone. The urgency and bruised intimacy of Harvey’s emotional vocal odyssey provides a rare glimpse into the soul of a true poet, while her hymn-like compositions, at once incredibly complex and fragile, are expertly recorded by producer Flood. While this transformation into a repressed, frightened spinster may not have been what fans expected from the chic rock goddess, it is a stunning immersion into character. Her bravery on this record will have you partying like its 1899. Matt Mazur
PJ Harvey – White Chalk
Album: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Label: Epic
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/m/modestmouse-weweredeadbeforetheshipevensank.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-03-20
UK Release Date: 2007-04-02
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List number: 46
Modest Mouse’s first post-“Float On” LP begins with what sounds like a midget jumping on a bed while playing an accordion, before erupting into a Gotterdammerung of serpentine guitar leads and lisping/ bellowing vocals. Less idiosyncratic than their earlier work, this is instead Isaac Brock’s version of a pop/rock album. The result is the band’s catchiest music yet, full of uptempo ditties like “Dashboard”, “Fire It Up”, and “We’ve Got Everything” that are still ten miles (or should I say leagues?) left of the mainstream. The rhythm guitar jangles of ex-Smith Johnny Marr and the guest backgrounds of James Mercer provide pastoral respite on the gently mournful “Missed the Boat” while “Spitting Venom” lives up to its title, an eight-minute showstopper of angular melody and frightening guitar. Powerful and confident, to hear this album is to hear one of America’s best bands at the height of their powers. Robert Short
Modest Mouse – We’ve Got Everything
Album: Wincing the Night Away
Label: Sub Pop
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/s/shinsthe-wincingthenightaway.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-01-23
UK Release Date: 2007-01-29
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List number: 45
It is well known by now in the music world that The Shins are good at crafting intricate and unforgettable songs, damn good. Bright melodies burst without limit from the brains of indie’s most well-known band. Wincing the Night Away was a smashing commercial success by any standard — it reached #2 on the US Billboard chart — and was the first Sub Pop album ever to reach the Top 20, a testament to the group’s ability to bring indie to the masses. But despite popularity and critical acclaim, the album retains the musical integrity of the Portland group’s previous two LP’s. Nearly every Shins song ever recorded would work perfectly in a soundtrack or on a mix CD, but Wincing the Night Away, as the group’s third consistently creative album, solidifies the fact that their music, although accessible, exceeds the music of their mainstream peers in every way: lyrically, rhythmically, melodically, and harmonically. The Shins are able to take simple structures like arpeggios and standard rock progressions and transform them into something that transcends modern pop, balancing catchy accessibility with genuine musical craftsmanship. This combination of simplicity and innovation is why, as Natalie Portman so eloquently put it, The Shins will change your life. Elizabeth Newton
The Shins – Australia
Album: Challengers
Label: Matador
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/n/new-pornographers-challengers.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-08-21
UK Release Date: 2007-08-20
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List number: 44
More cinematic than Twin Cinema, and more cohesive than any other record released this year, the New Pornographers’ Challengers was so very good it compelled you to think in clichées. Underneath its underlying tones and dizzy melodies, next to its intelligent guitars, you’d find frailty, beauty, sex as art, and, quite probably, something or other about dolphins. A perfect uber-pop experience, Challengers, saw Carl Newman and his multi-tasking cohorts tweak the nose of expectation and laugh in the face of jaded pop cynicism. Toning their sci-fi joy-ride down just a notch or maybe three, they were able to create time and space for pure pop seduction as a result. “All the Old Showstoppers” nicely showed off the collective’s apparently endless ability to build organic pop architecture with layer upon layer of wit, invention, hook and harmony. The title track, sung by Neko Case, beguiled and stunned. Dan Bejar’s eccentric “Myriad Harbour” enchanted. “Failsafe” wrapped Kathryn Calder’s vocals around a resonant tremolo guitar to quite beautiful effect. And the almost mournful “Go Places” saw The Flame-Haired Chanteuse deliver yet another irresistible performance. Repeatedly recalling the grandiose pop conceits of Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne, and George Martin, Challengers marked a deliberate and significant advance on its predecessors while remaining firmly connected to very best of the band’s past. Listen carefully and you can hear elements of “From Blown Speakers”, “Ballad of a Comeback Kid”, and “The Body Says No” lurking within this exceptional record. “Mutiny, I Promise You”, for example, is essentially a distillation of everything that was good about Electric Version. Less insistently percussive and relentlessly dramatic than its sources, it’s a majestic and heroic pop song of the very highest quality. And entirely typical of Challengers. Roger Holland
The New Pornographers – Challengers
Album: American Gangster
Label: Roc-A-Fella
Contributors: the hitmen, the neptunes, bigg d, nas, bilal, beanie sigel, just blaze, dj toomp, jermaine dupri, no i.d., lil’ wayne
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/j/jayzamericangangster.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-11-06
UK Release Date: 2007-11-05
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List number: 43
Over the course of Jay-Z’s tribute-to-the-movie that is American Gangster, H-to-the-Izzo leaves no doubt as to who he believes is the king of the hip-hop hill. The thing is, the way he tells it leads us to believe he’s the king, as well. The self-aggrandizement, while still quite obviously present throughout the album, is tempered via struggles with morality, faith, and self-doubt. Somehow, the presence of these struggles makes Jay-Z even more magnetic than he usually is. Subject matter aside, Jay’s flow is solid, and the production from Diddy’s Hitmen is actually perfect for the cinematic feel that he was so obviously going for (though Bigg D’s inspired take on Beastie Boys’ “Hello Brooklyn” steals Diddy’s thunder for one track). And for once, Jay-Z has put together an album whose purpose isn’t so much to blow you away, but to seep into you, bit by bit. He succeeded, and as such, his legend continues to grow. Mike Schiller
Jay-Z – Fallin’
Album: Armchair Apocrypha
Label: Fat Possum
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/a/armchair-apocrypha.jpg
US Release Date: 2007-03-20
UK Release Date: Available as import
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List number: 42
From the opening post-millennial airport dread of “Fiery Crash” to the Eastern squeal of “Yawny at the Apocalypse”, Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha is no less passionate and moving for being a paragon of elegance and intellectualism. Originally conceived to be less wordy and more spacious than 2005’s Mysterious Production of Eggs, the album finds Bird still reveling in dense wordplay and sound. Collaborator Martin Dosh’s “Simple X” boasts a syrupy melody bolstered by clattering percussion and Bird’s ubiquitous whistle; “Plasticities” slow-burns its way to being one of the songwriter’s most indelible and meticulous constructions. “I think life is too long / To be a whale in a cubicle” he offers, in a way encapsulating the album’s entire m.o.: to escape from the drudgery and deadening routines of life, an effort mirrored by Bird’s own growth as a songwriter, carving out an increasingly idiosyncratic yet pleasing path through the brush and briars of contemporary song. Michael Metivier
MP3: Heretics
Andrew Bird – Imitosis
Album: The Great Unwanted
Label: Ruffa Lane
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/l/luckysoul-thegreatunwanted.jpg
US Release Date: Available as import
UK Release Date: 2007-04-09
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List number: 41
It isn’t rare these days for a group to take its cues from ’50s and ’60s vocal pop: Motown, the ‘girl groups’ and Northern Soul. But it is rare that the songs are well-written enough that it doesn’t seem like a costume or gimmick. The Greenwich, UK band Lucky Soul’s debut album has razzle-dazzle in spades, but its impact lingers long after that daze-inducing first kiss, on the strength of its songs. They take their cues from the greats of the past — including also indie-pop of more recent decades — but that’s only the start. The band’s founder Andrew Laidlaw, is a songwriter with an innate grasp on melody, words and how they work together for listeners. And underneath the romantic glow and bittersweet tone of his summery pop songs lies an independent, nonconformist streak, befitting of the most headstrong punk rocker. Dave Heaton
Lucky Soul – Add Your Light to Mine, Baby