Album of the Decade....

More at spectrumculture.com

Andrew Bird

The Mysterious Production of Eggs

[Righteous Babe; 2005]

Nearly five years after its release, Andrew Bird's The Mysterious Production of Eggs remains one of the few albums from this decade that sounds unlike anything that came before it. Three years in the making, the record marked a dramatic stylistic shift for its creator; instead of repeating or even refining the mostly pastoral sounds of Weather Systems, Bird instead created a sprawling album of layered instrumentation, evocative arrangements and expert lyricism. Addressing predominantly dark subject matter with a mixture of sympathy, defiance and dry humor, the record managed to sound both timeless and timely, a quality that has only increased in subsequent years.

Though Bird's vocals still draw mostly inaccurate comparisons to everyone from Paul Simon to Thom Yorke and Jeff Buckley, Eggs' instrumental foundation is still difficult to categorize. Restrained songs like "Sovay," "MX Missiles" and "Masterfade" are defined by images of mortality and childhood memories as they bend and sway against Bird's careful arrangements, while the blasts of instrumentation that begin and end the morbidly humorous "Fake Palindromes" are largely unlike anything Bird had recorded up to that point. Violin, glockenspiel, guitar and other instruments are applied throughout, yet the album never sounds overly manufactured; even Bird's frequent whistling never feels self-conscious.

Eggs forgoes linear narratives in favor of striking images and clever wordplay. Though it's a bit dicey to call the album prophetic, its relevance to this decade is immediately recognizable: greedy bastards cash in at others' expense, soldiers march off to war, the economy and its financial institutions crumble. Yet even if the world Bird depicts throughout Eggs is markedly bleak, most of its fatalism is tempered with optimism or, at least, benign acceptance. In this way, the apocalypse of "Tables and Chairs" is greeted not with despair but instead with a celebration, complete with dancing bears, a band, Adderall and, of course, snacks, while "Opposite Day" envisions a new social order where society's grunts take charge and the powers-that-be find themselves incarcerated or in hell.

Andrew Bird released a string of outstanding albums this decade - the idyllic Weather Systems, the expansive Armchair Apocrypha and this year's solid Noble Beast - and while each effort demonstrated a different side of Bird's musical vision, none of these records matched The Mysterious Production of Eggs in both depth and ambition. A nuanced album whose charismatic lyrical vagaries and instrumental flourishes never deteriorate into excess or pretentiousness, it stands as one of this decade's most singular, focused and inscrutable releases. - Eric Dennis

Andrew Bird - Effigy

Go to spectrumculture.com for the full list of our choices for this year's best songs.


Built around layers of looped violins eventually fading into an acoustic guitar and one of Andrew Bird's most striking violin instrumentals, "Effigy" is a song of loneliness and isolation. Whatever the song's specifics exactly are - ostensibly it's about a lone drinker at a bar who's short on companionship but long on existential laments, but with Bird, how the hell can anyone be sure? - it is simply one of this year's most powerful and relevant songs.

On paper the song's lyrics are dark enough, but its understated instrumentation and Bird's vocal delivery make the character's situation seem that much more tragic. A few key lyrics add to the track's poignancy; specifically, Bird's reference to "fake conversations on a nonexistent telephone," suggests that communication and social interaction are not among the man's strong suits. Perhaps as bleak a song as Bird has recorded, it offers little sense of resolution or hope. Time isn't on anyone's side and there's nothing romantic about a solitary life for a "man who's lost his way/ Slips away." It's not the first time Bird has written about such things, but the song is among his most direct and moving. "Effigy"'s arrangements, lyrics and vocals fit together perfectly, resulting in one of this year's most touching songs.

Bowerbirds: Upper Air

everyone go to spectrumculture.com. do it every day. like eating an apple.


A listener could be forgiven for finding Bowerbirds' debut album Hymns for a Dark Horse just a bit too preachy and pedantic. Its heavy doses of environmental motifs and occasional sloganeering frequently detracted from the songs' subtle and lush arrangements. Sure we've all done our part to fuck up Mother Earth - Funkadelic already told us that - but the album's steady stream of National Geographic imagery was at times too obvious and humorless for its own good. Despite the band's best intentions, too often the album played like an insipid lecture about nature's startling beauty and its razor-thin fragility. And please remember to recycle.

Upper Air marks a subtle step forward for the band. While Bowerbirds again incorporate heartstring-grabbing melodies, the album branches out to encompass themes that were only hinted at throughout Dark Horse. The blend of folk and Americana first explored on that debut effort is further refined here, with Upper Air sounding a bit less lo-fi and more polished than its predecessor. Several songs begin with a simple acoustic guitar before other instruments are gently added; the guitar strum of opener "House of Diamonds" is eventually supported by understated keyboards and strings, while hushed piano lines are used to great effect on "Northern Lights." The instrumentation is interwoven wonderfully throughout, with Beth Tacular's accordion propelling "Teeth" and "Beneath Your Tree" along, at least as much as an accordion can propel anything. Phil Moore's vocals are similarly evocative; frequently reminiscent of Andrew Bird, he sings unobtrusively and gives the instrumentation room to breathe and sometimes wander. Moore's vocal takes here should eliminate any further comparisons to folkie weirdo Devendra Banhart; Moore's vocals are far more direct and contain none of Banhart's eccentricities or pretentions, and the album is better for it.

While the band hasn't entirely abandoned the lyrical obsessions of Dark Horse - the song titles and album artwork alone dispel any such thoughts - Upper Air comes across as more introspective and less tree-huggingly maudlin, with a focus on life's little dramas, disappointments and joys. A few songs could even be interpreted as unabashed love songs to an actual person and not a tree, rainbow or mountain stream. "Northern Lights" and "Ghost Life" are romantic without being dainty, a precarious balancing act the band successfully walks for most of the album. Though the album's tone is usually one of hope and contentment - "Chimes" is perhaps the best example - hints of mental distress surfaces in several songs, whether it's the "mind...wound so tightly" of "Bright Future" or Moore's assertion that "my conscience is an avalanche" in "Crooked Lust." The album likewise closes on a somber note, with the dirge-like "This Day" sounding both foreboding and funereal, a far cry from the measured optimism of most of the album's other songs.

Part of Bowerbirds' charm on Upper Air is that the band recalls various artists without sounding derivative, whether it's the Calexico-flavored opening to "Beneath Your Tree" or the vocal harmonies in "Bright Future," which wouldn't sound out of place on a Midlake or, if you're really, really desperate, CSNY album. The frequent comparisons to groups like Lavender Diamond and Vetiver are decent starting points, though Upper Air's songs are closer to the Americana of Iron and Wine or The Handsome Family, mostly minus that group's morbid sense of humor. Though it's tempting to view the songs on Upper Air as little more than odes to nature or as a continuation of Dark Horse, such an approach sells the album a little short. With crafted and textured arrangements that never sound tedious or over-produced, Upper Air finds the band moving beyond Dark Horse's confines in favor of something that is both musically and lyrically more complex and consistent.

Concert Review: Andrew Bird/Heartless Bastards

The Pageant, St. Louis, MO, 03/15/09

go to spectrumculture.com


It was an interesting study in musical contrasts at the Pageant Sunday night. Opening act Heartless Bastards specializes in something that can best be described as a thrillingly bastardized form of garage blues-rock. The band's music doesn't so much nudge listeners awake as grab them by the throats and thump them upside their heads. No points for subtlety here; lead vocalist Erika Wennerstrom substitutes soaring emotion and a booming voice in place of pitch-perfect delivery. The band's latest album The Mountain had all these qualities in spades, and showed some advances as the band occasionally opted for some folksiness with banjos and fiddles. All those seemingly endless comparisons to fellow Ohioans The Black Keys aside, Heartless Bastards is a damn good band in their own right, though Wennerstrom is the band's only constant member.

Headliner Andrew Bird's approach is markedly different. While his live show tends to be more free-form and unhinged than his albums, with an urgency to the songs that is largely absent from their studio counterparts, releases like The Mysterious Production of Eggs and Noble Beast are lyrically dense and musically layered, straddling that fine line between lyrical ambiguity and inaccessibility. His songs reveal themselves gradually over time; if Heartless Bastards' style is to jar listeners to attention via Wennerstrom's vocals and the band's onslaught, Bird often relies on understated melodies, loops, and all that damn whistling to make his point. Regarding what that point is - who the hell knows, with Bird himself admitting that he's not even sure what the songs mean.

Though the main similarities these two artists have in common are mostly limited to their record label - they're both currently part of the Fat Possum stable - the pairing made for a pretty solid, if disparate, few hours of music. Heartless Bastards took the stage at 8 pm sharp - it's a work night, folks - to polite but somewhat subdued applause from the capacity crowd. The band's plan of attack was direct and loud, with the Pageant's notoriously spotty sound quality (think of a thumping bass heard from the comfort of a toilet bowl) thankfully absent. With a heavy dose of songs from the new album, Heartless Bastards played tight and polished - perhaps a little too polished - with Wennerstrom pausing only briefly between songs to switch guitars or introduce the next number. The band nicely translated their love of volume to this live setting, with "Blue Day" grooving like a dusty blues track from a bygone era and "Sway" taking on murky, sinister undertones. Most songs were stretched out with lengthy instrumental jams that showed the band's garage rock roots, even if they've moved far beyond the claustrophobic quarters of the tiny Duck Room, where they played on their last stop in St. Louis. "The Mountain" benefited from a similar thrashing, with Wennerstrom's vocals complementing the band's racket and sounding like a cross between Lucinda Williams and Jim James (that's a compliment). An acoustic take of "So Quiet" offered a brief respite from the band's general clamor, before their set concluded with the ubiquitous big finish - dueling guitars full of fury and fire, manic drumming, and distorted faces of anguish from the band members. For the most part the usually chatty St. Louis crowd - nothing says sophistication like talking through an entire fucking concert, especially in the grips of a recession - was attentive, with the usual background hum of conversations little more than a hushed din.

If the band could be faulted for anything, it's that they were at times too precise and too exact to make any real connection with the audience. Part of this disconnect can be attributed to the Pageant's complete lack of aesthetics or atmosphere; despite being a mid-sized club, with its gigantic advertisers for the venue's corporate sponsors and non-existent décor, it's almost as cold and impersonal as any massive arena. Still, despite some dedicated head banging from a few of the pit's more manic members and St. Louis icon Beatle Bob shadowboxing with an invisible adversary, it was hard not to feel that the band's sound would be better suited to a sweaty, dingy, seedy basement concert room instead. While not revelatory, the band's set was strong and able to hold the attention of those ADD-addled concertgoers. Wennerstrom's voice in particular is an instrument in itself, brash without being bombastic and soulful without being overwrought.

After a relatively brief pause while the stage was stripped of all things Heartless Bastard, the pit warriors jockeyed for prime real estate (elbows up!), and one concertgoer regaled me with a story about how the often-truculent Jerry Lee Lewis several years ago called his friend "the spit in my mouth" before the verbal abuse really started, Andrew Bird opened the show solo, armed only with a violin, guitar, xylophone, and tons of loops. An opening instrumental that segued into "The Water Jet Cilice" - with the musician continuing his odd tradition of taking off his shoes - set the template for much of what followed, with Bird building the songs piece by piece by looping his instruments and alternating between violin and guitar. Backing band Martin Dosh, Mike Lewis and Jeremy Ylvisaker then joined for the main set, with songs like "Masterswarm," "Natural Disaster," "Effigy, "and "Souverian" performed more drawn out and atmospheric than they are on Noble Beast. Those who have seen Bird perform before are well aware of how he reworks his songs' textures and especially their vocal arrangements; it's this type of unique phrasing and near-improvisation that makes Bird such an engaging performer. Other songs were far less restrained, with a jagged version of "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left" accompanied by intense stage lights that made more than a few people - you guessed it - snap their heads to the left. "Fake Palindromes" was similarly twitchy and aggressive, a fitting closer to the main set before a too-short two-song encore.

While on paper Bird's songs lean toward the oblique, the distance that threatens to separate the performer from the audience is bridged by Bird's stage presence; it's simply too hard to look away. Part of Bird's sway over an audience stems from how these songs are literally built block by block on stage, along with a reserved and self-deprecating stage demeanor. His mannerisms are crafted without seeming overly choreographed or theatrical. Certainly part of this is the combined novelty of all those loops and all that whistling, but Bird often deviates from a song's structure, suggesting that his albums are merely blueprints that are more fully fleshed out in performance.

Of course some tightasses will mention that the show wasn't flawless; "Lull" had two false starts as Bird and Dosh couldn't get their loops to mesh, "Why?" took a while to get grounded and "Anonanimal" was a sludge of noise, but those are minor quibbles. And likely there are some fans clamoring for those pastoral days of 2003 when Bird played solo to a couple dozen people in the Duck Room and their primary reference point was that one of Bird's songs was actually a Galway Kinnell poem. As both a musician and performer Andrew Bird has far outgrown those boundaries. There are few musicians who have Bird's ability for lyrical and instrumental arrangements, and even fewer who can seamlessly reconstruct them in a live setting.

Various Artists - Dark Was the Night

Go to spectrumculture.com

Compilation charity albums are frequently a mixed bag of odds and ends, with a couple gems sprinkled in among the more lackluster musical curiosity pieces. Although the noble intentions of these albums are commendable, the actual finished product is frequently underwhelming. Something along the lines of the supremely disappointing Vic Chesnutt tribute too often seems to be the norm. Released when there was actually some buzz about Chesnutt breaking into the mainstream, artists like R.E.M. and Sparklehorse offered revelatory interpretations of Chesnutt tunes alongside turgid reworks from the likes of lightweights like Live, Garbage, and, ugh, Hootie and the Blowfish.

Produced by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National and benefiting the AIDS awareness organization Red Hot, Dark Was the Night fortunately contains none of these drawbacks. Simply put, it just might be the best compilation released this decade: ecstatic press materials and Uncut previews comparing it to the seminal No Alternative aren't as outlandish or excessive as they appear at first blush. Though the enduring mystique of No Alternative has perhaps caused some of its flaws to be overlooked - along with quality tracks by Nirvana, Pavement, Sonic Youth and Uncle Tupelo among others, it also included duds from Goo Goo Dolls, Matthew Sweet and Buffalo Tom- Dark Was the Night might be destined for a similar canonization. It boasts a stellar cast of indie artists, including Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, Cat Power and Kevin Drew, as well as a few old-timers like Yo La Tengo, David Byrne and Stuart Murdoch.

Although only the most devoted - and perhaps uncritical - music fans will like all the songs included here, the two discs offer a solid cross section of indie music's often divergent trends and styles. Though the album covers such a broad spectrum, the sequencing works; rarely does the album sound like a disjointed collection of singles you'll never hear on mainstream radio. Of the more frenetic tracks included, opener "Knotty Pine" by Dirty Projectors and David Byrne, "Lenin" by Arcade Fire and "You Are the Blood" by Sufjan Stevens are the most memorable, with Stevens transforming the Castanets original into a 10 minute mass of distortion and fuzz that's a radical departure from his more straightforward and melodic "States" albums. Yet the most affecting songs are those rooted in an acoustic sensibility. Grizzly Bear's simple "Deep Blue Sea," Iron and Wine's "Stolen Houses (Die)" and final track "Love vs. Porn" by Kevin Drew are among the starkest songs included, featuring little more than hushed guitars and creaky vocals. Conor Oberst's song of sordid hookups and morning after regrets "Lua" carries a similar tone and is sung as a duet with Gillian Welch, whose addition offsets Oberst's tendency to periodically wallow in self pity. "El Caporal" from My Morning Jacket is built around a catchy melody and horns, while The National's dryly humorous "So Far Around the Bend" is bouncy and also prominently features violins.

A number of cover songs are also included and mostly remain faithful to the original versions. The Books and Jose Gonzalez offer a strong interpretation of Nick Drake's "Cello Song," Dave Sitek of TV On the Radio transforms the Troggs' "With a Girl Like You" into an unholy union of shoegaze and drone and Kronos Quartet provides an instrumental version of the Blind Willie Johnson song that gives this compilation its name. Perhaps the standout cover is Antony and Bryce Dessner's take on the obscure Bob Dylan song "I Was Young When I Left Home." Foregoing the radical and bombastic approach that has been the ruin of countless Dylan covers, Antony's vocals are similar in style to Dylan's, and Dessner's guitar arrangement also remains faithful to the original. Dylan's bleak song resonates because of its simplicity; both Antony and Dessner seem to recognize this and avoid bludgeoning the song with extraneous clutter.

Dark Was the Night isn't perfect - with over 30 songs, how could it be? - but it does offer a remarkable snapshot of today's indie music scene and its various styles. Though notables such as Okkervil River and Animal Collective are absent, it's hard to squabble with the overall results. For those unfamiliar with modern indie music, it's a good starting point. And for those psychotically dedicated indie musos among us, it's an essential purchase.

Andrew Bird: Noble Beast

go visit spectrumculture.com


Though none of Andrew Bird's previous releases can be characterized as straightforward, Noble Beast is probably his most challenging and least immediately accessible record to date. Previous efforts like Weather Systems and The Mysterious Production of Eggs usually offered guideposts that suggested where the songs were heading; even though these songs weren't redundant, they were usually rooted in a common musical sensibility that allowed the listener to keep his bearings as he navigated the vagaries of Bird's bizarre and often darkly humorous musical world. Yet Noble Beast is a whole other, um, beast. If previous release Armchair Apocrypha occasionally found both Bird becoming more impressionistic and non-linear, Noble Beast pushes that approach considerably. Upon initial listens it sounds like the equivalent of being lost in the woods while being pursued by a whistling, ill-rhyming violin player prone to fits of lyrical abstraction.

The album walks a fine line between obliqueness and willful obtuseness. Certainly some of its songs never quite catch fire even after repeated airings, suggesting that a certain amount of self-editing on Bird's part might have improved the album. At a shade under 55 minutes, it's one of Bird's longest, and occasionally seems even longer. Mimicking the approach taken on his previous albums, a few short instrumentals are included; though these are all nice enough and remind the listener of Bird's well-documented musical training, at most they offer a brief respite from the album's more difficult moments. "Tenuousness" relies on Bird's tendency towards wordplay and rhyming to a fault and is too clever for its own good. Though Bird bristles at such comparisons, the vocals and instrumentals on "Not a Robot, But a Ghost" are overly reminiscent of Thom Yorke and Radiohead, though in Bird's case this probably more attributed to the quirks in his vocal delivery than any type of intentional homage to the band.

Noble Beast's charms unfold slowly, given time to settle in the listener's ears. While the album does require a certain degree of patience from the listener, a number of its songs are as inventive as anything Bird has recorded. Eventually the songs sound far less random and scattershot that they initially appear, with Bird's patented approach of violin, guitar, loops, and whistling - a helluva lot of whistling - utilized to good effect. Opening track "Oh No" begins with a violin melody that is soon accompanied by piano and a good bout of whistling, "Fitz and the Dizzyspells" is as up-tempo and danceable a song as it gets (for Suzuki-trained violinists at least), the near-epic "Nomenclature" features some of Bird's most urgent and soaring vocals, and the gorgeous arrangement of "Souverian" is built around a jaunty piano and vocal take that wouldn't sound out of place on Bird's previous albums. Other songs like "Effigy" are more subdued and almost acoustic; perhaps Noble Beast's most striking moment, it includes a pseudo-flamenco guitar melody and an old-timey violin arrangement that nicely augments Bird's sardonic and deadpan vocals.

Bird's lyrics are more cryptic than on his previous efforts, with specific evocative phrases suggesting various images and meanings. Only a fool would claim to fully understand the songs' themes or intentions; Tom Waits' well-worn concert joke that the only things adults talk about are food, sickness and death is somewhat applicable here. Bird's usual obsessions - flightless animals, personal reckonings, apocalypse, childhood memories, mortality, myths, superstitions, history's long-gone empires - are again present, often accompanied by rhyme schemes that are either brilliant or overly academic, depending on your point of view. Yet in many ways this lyrical ambiguity fits the songs well and gives them added depth. Though it's not the masterpiece Andrew Bird has hinted at since Weather Systems, there's a gradually unfolding mystery and beauty to Noble Beast.

Music Review: Charlie Louvin - Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs

Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs is the second release in 2008 from the grizzled music veteran. Earlier this year Louvin got godly on Steps to Heaven, a strong collection of gospel songs that also included a sometimes-overzealous set of background singers. Showing a definite Christian religious conviction without being heavy-handed or dogmatic, it focused heavily on mortality, albeit with an uplifting underlying theme of the afterlife. Louvin’s latest album veers dramatically in the opposite direction; Sings Murder is far more morbid, bleak, violent, and darkly humorous than Steps to Heaven. Mixing a number of traditional folkie/bluegrass songs (some of which previously appeared on the excellent People Take Warning! box set) with other old-timey tunes that nevertheless still sound relevant today, the album also serves as a nice reminder of just how fascinating, bizarre, and strangely beautiful these aging ballads are. It also recalls Louvin’s earliest work; 1956’s ironically-titled Tragic Songs of Life dealt heavily in equally dark topics.
The album’s production serves Louvin’s ragged voice very well; under the guidance of producer Mark Nevers, the songs are warm and balanced. Each instrument is given enough space, the album never sounds cluttered or over saturated, and Louvin’s voice is just right in the mix. The record blends musical elements that play to Louvin’s strengths, whether it’s the upbeat country roll of “Darling Corey,” (which also features Andrew Bird on fiddle), the rustic spiritual arrangement of “Wreck On the Highway,” the subdued guitar work on “Dark as a Dungeon, or the steel guitars that dot most of the songs.
The album includes several ballads that are standards of American music. “Wreck of the Old 97” and “Dark as a Dungeon” are probably the two songs that listeners who aren’t hardcore music history wackos will even recognize, probably because those songs have been performed by other artists. Louvin’s take on the venerable train tragedy song is far more restrained than Johnny Cash’s speed-fuelled live versions, though Louvin’s performance here similarly relies on a rhythm and instrumental approach that is highly evocative of a train. Louvin approaches Merle Travis’ “Dungeon” with a vocal weariness that brings out the song’s gloom and doom far better than the shrill versions Joan Baez has subjected our ears to over the years.
Other songs show that Louvin remains a skilled interpreter of American ballads. The traditional “The Little Grave in Georgia” is the album’s most moving and emotional song, with a remarkably depressing violin and guitar melody underpinning the woeful tale about dead Mary and her grave “all covered in ivy.” It also features Louvin’s most assured and confident singing.
Sings Murder also serves as a nice primer on the images, metaphors, and plainly strange motifs that define the American songbook. In these songs people die of broken hearts and it’s entirely believable; the tragic couple of “Katy Dear” are forbidden to marry by their parents, so of course they do the most logical thing and kill themselves (hell if I know why they don’t just defy their parents and get hitched anyway). A father can coldly turn his back on his daughter and her newborn child, only to become overcome with grief and sorrow when she (big surprise) freezes to death outside his doorstep (“Mary of the Wild Moor”). And in these songs fatal highway wrecks come with “whiskey and blood all together mixed with the glass,” great ships sink, trains crash, village bells toll in mourning, a brother is killed in a freak hunting accident, the cotton crop goes to shit, and the hair of the dead underage beautiful girl is always dark and curly. Sings Murder isn’t for everyone; it won’t light up the charts and its best songs won’t be used in a promo for CSI Miami. But for music fans interested in the bizarre and beautiful nature of traditional songs, this is a welcome and worthwhile album.

An Indie Music Junkie's Year-End Best Of List

What would December be without crass commercialism, rampant orgy-like spending, and random year-end lists?

It Was the Best of Concerts, It Was the Worst of Concerts

Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan, October 22, 2007 - In October the two music icons appeared at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis. Costello, armed with an array of guitars, delivered a memorable solo performance full of the spite, anger, humor, and occasional tenderness that mark his best songs. There was crowd participation, furious guitar playing, and a perfect “The Scarlet Tide” to close the set. Then Dylan ambled out, played a couple songs on guitar, and retreated behind his keyboard for a set that sounded like the end days. The mix was horrible, and Dylan could barely wheeze three words at a time as he growled his way through the murk.


Reunion Album That Reconfirmed It All

Beyond - Dinosaur Jr. - Sure, J Mascis looks like the guy you always see in Best Buy monopolizing Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock while children wait impatiently for their crack at it, but Beyond was a tremendous reunion album. With its mix of guitar squall and buried melodies, it stands right alongside You’re Living All Over Me as a classic Dinosaur Jr. album.



Reunion Album That Ruined It All

The Weirdness - The Stooges - Forget that “Lust for Life” is now the theme song for a cruise ship commercial (with the lines about liquor and drugs carefully removed). This underwhelming album by the Stooges killed whatever mystique they had left. Even Steve Albini as “recorder” couldn’t save it.



Best Artist to Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial

It was an interesting year for Band of Horses. After a spat with fans in San Diego over videotaping of the band’s July 6 performance, the Sub Poppers took some heat for licensing songs to Wal-Mart for use in an online campaign. In recent weeks, the band’s song “Funeral” has been in heavy rotation for a Ford television commercial, marking the strangest use of a song for commercial purposes since Volkswagen used Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” in 2000.



Best Artist to Not Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial

That Tom Waits is a bad mofo. In January, Waits won a decision against Adam Opel AG, an offshoot of General Motors, for using a Waits soundalike to sell cars…in Scandinavia. It was the second time in less than two years that Waits won such a lawsuit. Rumors that BMW wants to use Waits’ “Misery is the River of the World” for their 2008 marketing campaign are not yet confirmed.



Favorite Concert

When The National played the Duck Room in St. Louis on June 11, Boxer was freshly released and beginning to garner plaudits that ranged from reserved praise to over-the-top awe. What could have been a sparsely attended show was instead a packed house with an eager, energetic crowd. Relying on the new material but also playing songs from Alligator and Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, the band delivered an intense, cathartic performance, surpassing the increasing hype. Now, if someone has a recording of it, I’m not hard to reach.



Reissues Are More Than Just Cash Grabs

Bronze – Calenture, The Triffids - The underappreciated 1980s Australian band finally got their due with a nice reissue of their 1987 album Calenture, the follow up to the essential Born Sandy Devotional. The original album, demos, and outtakes were spread out over two discs, plus the album’s packaging was snazzy and liner notes were actually informative.

Silver – Stand in the Fire, Warren Zevon - Long out of print on disc, Warren Zevon’s Stand in the Fire received the digital treatment this year. A recording of a wild, frenzied 1981 performance, the album showed Zevon at his manic best. Four cuts excluded from the original album were included to top it off. Play it loud.

Gold – Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth’s much-worshiped Daydream Nation was given a fat dose of bonus tracks this year. The original album is, of course, great, but the real treat here was the second disc, which was jammed full of Sonic Youth goodness, including a live version of each album track, as well as covers of songs by The Beatles, Neil Young, and Captain Beefheart. A nice essay and cool period photos made this reissue an essential purchase.



You Fool, Reissues Just Rob You of Money

Pointless reissues or compilations were certainly not in short supply in 2007. While many major labels could be taken to task for uninspired reissues/compilations, Columbia’s bland, boring, and utterly useless Dylan release represented everything wrong with such releases. With zero unreleased recordings (unless you paid on iTunes), this abomination rehashed most of the same damn songs as Dylan’s many other compilations. With an artist whose vault must be packed with unreleased goodies, lazy stuff like this shouldn’t even exist.



Favorite Albums

Bronze – Neon Bible, Arcade Fire - Even if many music fans and critics blew their loads over 2004’s Funeral, the Arcade Fire’s self-produced sophomore album gave everyone a chance to get fired up again. Even though the images of apocalypse and bombs could grow a little heavy-handed at times, Win Butler’s voice, ranging from howls to everything in between, and the band’s damn loud playing made this album more than just another rant about the sorry state of our world.

Silver – Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird - With the guitar pushed to the forefront, Armchair Apocrypha marked a stylistic shift for Andrew Bird. The songs were highly textured and far more layered than his previous albums; violin loops, drums, whistling, guitars and glockenspiels were thrown together to create a symphonic sound that amazingly didn’t result in garbled mush. The songs could sometimes be decidedly heavy; absurd superstitions, old age, the futility of war and the fall of empires, childhood confusion, and a general helplessness against a vast, impersonal world all unfolded in Bird’s lyrics. There aren’t many albums that sound like this one, and that’s a good thing.

Gold – Boxer, The National - Never has an album whose characters suffer under a veil of fuck-it-all resignation sounded so good. The songs on Boxer invoked themes of broken relationships, people aging quickly beyond their years, and passing, superficial comforts like drugs and booze; even the implied threats of “Start a War” sounded powerless and empty. Evocative lyrics, Matt Berninger’s weary baritone, and the band’s sometimes minimalist, sometimes layered instrumentation combined beautifully to create one of the best albums of the decade.