My Ten Favorite Releases Of 2007 Thus Far

Ah, 2007, a year that will surely be cherished for its artful musical releases. This year has already blown 2006 away as far as release quality goes. I've decided to share my five FAVORITE releases of 2007 so far in list form. Each of the entries on this list includes concise reasoning for why I love it so much. Be warned, there are leaked albums included on this list, but please do not report me to the RIAA. Those dudes could mess up my life forever!

5. Ted Leo - Living With the Living
Ted Leo is one of the most honest rock and roll artists in the industry today. He is true to himself and true to his fans. I find inspiration in nearly every line Leo sings because of the truth transparently visible behind each of them. Living with the Living is not the best album Mr. Leo has ever made, that distinction undoubtedly must be attributed to his rollicking and criminally underrated debut The Tyranny of Distance, but this one is a close second. Ted and the boys retread their familiar song styles ("Sons of Cain", "Army Bound", "Colleen") for much of the first third of the album, but as the disc progresses things get more and more interesting. "A Bottle of Buckie" emotes the same kind of sweet nostalgia as fan favorite "Timorous Me" but does it with a lovelier melody. "The Unwanted Things" is a dubbed-out lament for the world, groovy and smooth for the ears, but more importantly unlike anything this band has ever recorded. "La Costa Brava" is equally uncharted territory for the band and a true winner. "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb" has the kind of angry energy we haven't heard Ted spout since "Ballad of the Sin Eater". "Annunciation Day/Born on Christmas Day" reminds me of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" era U2 (that's a great thing!). "C.I.A.", my favorite track on the album, is a perfect ending tune complete with the catchiest refrain written this year. Ted is still pissed about a lot of things and he's great at channeling his negative energy into brilliant song-cycles.

4. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
The evolution that Wilco have displayed as a collective on each release since Being There is nearly immeasurable in its immensity. While Summerteeth was the cohesive realization of the earnest and creative Americana that Being There hinted at, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot shattered any previous notion of what an alt-country --and more specifically a Wilco album-- could be with its genius atmospherics and its more haunting portrait of America. A Ghost is Born found Wilco exploring new guitar centered territory without losing much of the excitement of their previous efforts. Sky Blue Sky finds guitar hero Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone pushing the band even further forward. This album is all over the place. The songs are more dynamic than ever, moving through traditional country into perfectly executed jazz into driving rock tunes. Jeff Tweedy is on as usual, reminding us again that he truly has become a voice for this generation. It's better than A Ghost is Born and only slightly less impressive than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the latter of which can probably never be matched anyway.

3. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
Andrew Bird is one of the most unique characters in modern indie rock. His skill level as a violinist is remarkable and he translates that skill into magnificent arrangements in his studio work. Armchair Apocrypha is something of a culmination for Bird. While his previous albums were solid and featured at least a handful of truly great tracks, Armchair Apocrypha is start-to-finish an incredibly engaging album. Every song is brilliant as all pistons are finally afire during every minute of his album. Bird presents the listener with easily the catchiest songs he's ever written ("Heretics" and "Imitosis" come immediately to mind) and also some of the most haunting ("Spare-Ohs" is terrifying and probably the best thing Mr. has yet written and the fact that it's followed up with the subtle ending track "Yawny at the Apocalypse" intensifies the drama tenfold). Every second of this album is unpredictable as it veers off course almost constantly. Bird's improvement as a lyricist is perhaps the most striking quality of this album; his lyrics paint vivid pictures of this dark world we reside in. Sometimes he delves forth with the persona of an innocent child like Jeff Mangum once did; at times he assumes a wry cynicism that the aforementioned Jeff Tweedy might appreciate. I once read a quote that said "Bird could do for independent American music what Tarantino did for American cinema". If The Mysterious Production of Eggs was Bird's Reservoir Dogs then Armchair Apocrypha is his Pulp Fiction.

2. Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
In late summer of 2003 a family band (three brothers + one cousin) from Tennessee who had spent their entire childhoods traveling and spreading the good word of the Lord with their preacher father/uncle released their debut album on RCA records. That album was called Youth and Young Manhood and despite the fact it had the worst album name in recent memory the disc was pretty solid. The band hit it huge overseas and experienced mild success in the U.S. thanks to their unique sound which was something along the lines of the Strokes by way of the South if they had a better drummer and a singer that sounds like a mix between a dying mountain lion, Bob Dylan, and screeching brakes on a rainy day. The album was about two parts straight forward garage rock and one part Southern fried rock n roll that'd make the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd pretty proud. Their follow up album found the band not only coming up with an even more atrocious title (Aha Shake Heartbreak) but writing one of the coolest rock and roll records of not only 2005, but of the entire decade. The entire thing clocks in at about a half hour and never relents once it starts throbbing with the screaming guitars, jumpin' bass, thunderous drumming, and Caleb Followill's yelp of "Slow night so long, she's frenching out the flavor, she's 17 but I done went and plumb forgot it!" in "Slow Night So Long" all the way to Followill's moan of "tippin' beers it's cold as jail and the motherfuckers gonna go to hell..." in final track "Rememo". The one flaw of Aha Shake, besides its dumb title, was the juvenile lyricism coming from Caleb. Otherwise the Followill kids delivered one of the truly kick ass rock and roll records of my lifetime. I'll never forget the first time I heard the youthful idealism of "The Bucket" and its anthemic line "always remember the pact that we made: too young to die but old isn't great!"

Then 2007 rolled around it was time for album number 3. But something happened between Aha Shake and Because of the Times, the superb third album from The Kings of Leon. Actually, I'm pretty sure that two things happened and here they are: 1) The Followill kids grew the fuck up and it shows. 2) The Followill kids, especially guitarist Matt Followill, started doing drugs. There can be no other explanation for the sound of this unbelievable album. Where the first two discs were fun rock and roll albums to serve as the soundtrack for party-filled summertime Because of the Times is a goddamn masterpiece. The atmosphere that has invaded the band's sound immediately brings to mind our old pals Wilco and the eeriness that certain parts of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot evoke. The musicianship has improved about a hundredfold on this album. Songs are fleshed out; long gone are the sudden song endings that sort of plagued the first two albums. Caleb Followill is no longer singing about bangin' underage girls and getting too drunk to get a boner. Instead he's crafting really interesting stories with believable characters. It's as if he looked at the ideas he had when writing lyrics for the first two albums and decided to revisit them but actually do it with some tact and articulation this time around. Take the first song on the album for a great example: "Knocked Up". The song clocks in at over seven minutes long making it easily the longest song in the band's roster. The first line of the song and of the entire album is "I don't care what nobody says, she's gonna have my baby". Rather than boast about knockin' up some chick like he may have on Aha Shake Caleb instead creates a persona who quite honestly wants to start a family even if all of the odds are against him. From there on the album only gets better. First single "On Call", catchy as hell "Ragoo", and especially "Fans" shows off a band who are much more meticulous and in control of their talent. "Fans" is another fine example of how Caleb has grown as a lyricist as he muses about being a superstar front man in England but not in his home country, "cause England's Queen makes you love the tales I breathe. You know the rainy days they ain't so bad when you're the King." A lot of KOL fans will probably complain that this album is over-produced. The only reason this album could sound over-produced is because of the minimalist production on the band's two previous efforts. To me, this is the best rock and roll album of 2007 so far.

1. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
It really truly makes me laugh when people still refuse to acknowledge hip-hop as a legitimate genre of artistic music. As long as I've listened to music I've welcomed hip-hop artists just as readily as I've welcomed Springsteen or Radiohead into my own collection of favorite artists. I am still blown away when people will say something to the effect of "rap sucks it's not even real music." I'd love to hear someone actually be able to back that statement up for once. True, I didn't really have a hip-hop album in my life that moved me the same way a lot of rock and roll did until about 2003 when I first heard El-P's Fantastic Damage. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before in my entire life. Here was this dude slingin' bombastically industrial and infinitely layered production with some of the most intelligent and complex rhymes I had ever heard in my entire life. I read this this blog article earlier this year that listed El as the greatest white rapper of all time and I think I agree with that whole-heartedly. There were parts of Fantastic Damage that just blew my mind. Don't worry, I've listened to legit MCs my entire life. Chuck D was one of the first MCs that ever stole my heart away with his rhymes and I still think he's one of the best to ever a rock a mic. But there was something about what El-P was saying that just hit me harder and the way the beats were dynamic, building to a climax at which point he'd spit the most insane shit I'd ever heard. It's the end of "Deep Space 9MM" when he likens himself to a caveman, "I watch your spirit box with the blinking lights and think /Are those little people trapped in that box?" and then thanks God "for the drugs and the drums". It's "Truancy" when the beat changes up and he eventually tells us "this is for the kids worrying about the apocalypse: do something, prepare yourself and stop talkin' shit!". I could go on forever about how incredible that album is, but it's a bit besides the point. The point is, more so than any Shins, Modest Mouse, or even Arcade Fire rock n roll album, El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead is the most complex, haunting, and artistically accomplished disc of 2007 so far.

El-P has certainly got the right company for this album to be truly epic, just look at the guestlist: The Mars Volta, Cat Power AKA Chan Marshal, Slug, Murs, Trent Reznor, Matt Sweeney (Zwan, Guided by Voices), Camu Tao, Daryl Palumbo (GlassJaw, Head Automatica), Cage, Aesop Rock, Hangar 18, and James McNew (Yo La Tengo). But don't be mistaken, no guest can outshine El-P on this album. His production is unbelievable and beyond anything I can describe adequately with my vocabulary. It is however: mind-blowing, sometimes dream-like, oftentimes nightmare-like, unlike anything you will ever hear, and relentless in its assault on your eardrums and brain. The album opens with a quote from David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, "Do you think that if you were falling in space that you would slow down after a while or go faster and faster?" The quote is appropriate for two reasons: 1) You do start falling the second you press play on this album and do you indeed fall faster and faster as it progresses. 2) El-P is very much the David Lynch of hip-hop in his ability to transport you to a dream-like state, stay a step ahead of everyone else in the art form, and fuck with your mind until it hurts to even try to analyze what is going on. I'm sure this album is too dense for many people. Take Pitchforkmedia for example. Just a few months ago Pitchfork handed a 9.1 to the mindless and disgustingly overrated Hall Hath No Fury by the Clipse, an album which had boring, predictable production and some of the most worthless Coke rhymes ever busted on record. Then they had the nerve to stick I'll Sleep When You're Dead with an 8.0, an admirable score by P-Fork's standards but so incorrect. This album is a 10.0, but apparently much too intelligent and layered for the indie rock's staff. The sad part is so much of the U.S. will agree, unable to see the true brilliance behind this disc. It's a wonderful kaleidoscope of nightmares, Orwellian drama, science fiction, painful emotion, and phat beatz that won't soon leave my mind.