Domenic Maltempi: A few ‘top’ album choices for 2007
I knew back on small animal appreciation day (July 23,) that 2007 would be one of those musical years where a certain insolubility would careen a batch of bands away from sinking in the wrong pits of ephemera. We would celebrate them in PSF and think about Dick Clark looking at us from his secret houses as we kissed our midnight loved ones or promised oneself to flee them. For pits of dumb-ass access click-search past cooch-lick banners– have tongued our music far too raw from overcooked. Damn minor-hit cycle scrapes its heels invisible blue, pervades all! Pits yes, we were all not directly digging them for songs we might have loved but only unbuttoned our best shirts, for songs we didn’t get to despise as much as we might have. Artists would make albums that would overcome those ever quickening erosive agents of our enduring interest and planted imperceptibly throughout all of it and all of us. We’re all late for everything waiting for something to synch to something else.
(Top 7 in no particular order)
Deerhunter: Cryptograms
Debut Kranky and killer record. Seriously beautiful songs harnessing motionless ambient dogs, mushing on gelid foot over blue sponge-rock spangles…
Colleen: Les Ondes Silencieuses
Thank you for the way your exits balm. No samples here, Spare pieces wheel one wing and half high around in a sky that god wanted back in it’s lungs after thinking about it. This whole album I s sheathed with impenetrability and sweet solicitude, but sounds vulnerable or brittle to the knave.
LCD Sound System: Sound of Silver
It is the sound of silver and the coffee isn’t even bitter! Excellent coming together of incredibly fun vocals, effortlessly awesome delivery through the cartoon needles of carefully whipped up hooks and blocks of warm-warm-hot-cool lathering repetition strokes.
Pharaoh Overlord: Live in Suomi Finland
Recorded back in dirty old 06, this is more than a live album. It has a pleasing continuity, fur-steel lined thickness sticks close to legs of fuzzy-hard rock dope gulped reverse-histrionics that you will want to suckle like the new creature you become.
Lewis & Clarke: Blasts Of Holy Birth
Pop-folk porch bliss, with flying porch included. Verdant gems wander somewhat mysteriously, vested in dronish plucking somnolence. A lot of live tracking doses the listener into a light thrall.
Wooden Shjips:
Primordial rhythmic ooze gets you stuck in fine splintered shape. I love albums that provide for a place to get stuck in, not lost. Szlip in-out vocals that answer with delayed churlishness… gales of organ, Faustian guitar eddies and bare bone bass lines that rope along.
The Cherry Blossoms:
When a band can have this much fun on an album, almost totally eschewing any strictures, it’s triply amazing that one can get so addled by its totality again and again. Reminds me of making concept albums on taped over Madonna cassettes with my favorite cousins in different countries!