Top 9 Albums of 2007
9. Streetlight Manifesto, Somewhere in the Between
8. Okkervil River, The Stage Names
7. M.I.A., Kala
6. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
5. Battles, Mirrored
4. The White Stripes, Icky Thump
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
2. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
1. The National, Boxer

9. Streetlight Manifesto, Somewhere in the Between
The fact that this album was completely ignored in the music press, mainstream or otherwise is proof that the vendetta against ska is completely wrongheaded and stupid. As far as supposedly ska records go, this has a lot more than the typical downstrokes and dumb lyrics. The first song, “We Will Fall Together” is marked with nimble instrumentation, especially from the bass, massive horn lines, and an almost metallic crescendo. This is not ska for dummies. Streetlight makes what could be most closely recognized as neo-classical ska, marked by surprisingly complex lyrics and virtuosic performances, especially on the horns.
The second song, “Down Down Down to Mephisto’s Café,” an indictment of organized religion is even more successful. The beginning is subtle, simply strummed guitar and quiet vocals. Then the horn line comes in. A better horn line does not exist in third wave ska, if you can even call it that. The lyrics too, are clever and well put together, not overly obvious. There’s some ambiguity to them, but not so much that nothing they say can be taken seriously. The chorus, in addition, is infectious, catchy, and great. There are plenty more good songs on this album as well, from the bordering on hardcore “Watch it Crash,” the Eastern-European influenced “Would You Be Impressed,” the anatomy of a man on the run displayed in “One Foot on the Gas, One Foot in the Grave.”
The title track is another infectious, upbeat one, very shout-able, with gang vocals and a luminous horn line. A life-affirming message too is present, but not a overly sentimental, schmaltzy one. The horn line is the sweetest part of the song, and the group’s lyricist, Tomas Kalnoky, is smart to not try and compete with that. It’s followed with “Forty Days,” the weakest track on the album, mostly due to a completely unnecessary and poorly executed guitar solo at the end. They should leave the solos to the horn plays. “Blonde Lead the Blind,” aside from having an absurdly joyful, powerful horn line, has more clever lyrics, but really, Streetlight could be stripped down to their four horn players and probably be almost as fun to listen to.
“Receiving End of it All,” the second to last track, is absolutely monolithic, incredibly intense, and easily the best on the album. “What a Wicked Gang Are We,” the last song, is one of the less unremarkable they’ve produced, until the very end, where the what could easily be the most impressive trombone solo ever played absolutely eviscerates anyone listening. Just because the music press refuses to acknowledge ska doesn’t mean anyone else should, and this album is a perfect reason why.


8. Okkervil River, The Stage Names
This is an outstanding album, but I already wrote a pretty in depth review about it, so if you want to know anything about it, read that.


7. M.I.A., Kala
Easily one of the strangest albums released this year, M.I.A.’s Kala is a blending of influences from every corner of the globe. Due to this breadth of influences, it’s difficult to tell exactly what genre Kala falls into. Maya Arulpragasam, also known as M.I.A., is Sri Lankan via England, so that could give some hints, but not a whole lot. The opening track, “Bamboo Banga” is a fairly straightforward dance-club track. “Bird Flu” is next, rattling, brash, and evocative of African and Caribbean music. It’s another track that could do well in many settings, but definitely lends itself to a party sort of mood. “Bird Flu” is followed by “Boyz,” a track based around a soca rhythm, but builds so many samples up that it sounds absolutely tremendous and swaggering.
Then, just to keep us guessing, M.I.A. gives us a straightforward cover of a Bollywood song, “Jimmy,” then a meditation on the nature of hip-hop in “Hussel.” “Mango Pickle Down River” comes next, a track based around Australian music and featuring several Australian children dropping verses. That said though, I’m going to skip ahead to the real mindblower of the album, the Clash-sampling “Paper Planes.” Jesus Christ this song is good. Ostensibly a caricature of the drug-dealer persona of so many rappers, it’s straight-up incredible, one of the best tracks to get released this year. The success of M.I.A. is part of a couple of interesting trends. The first of these is an ever increasing focus on bringing in influences from all around the world. This is becoming thankfully more and more prevalent, and leading to some fascinating music.
The second trend, less specific to M.I.A. is the immense success the indie dance scene had in 2007. From this album to LCD Soundsystem’s masterpiece to Daft Punk’s hugely acclaimed Live 2007 to Justice’s insanely catchy Cross to any of a dozen other highly excellent releases. This year saw something of a renaissance in a genre that can very easily be boring and repetitive.


6. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
They made one of the most heavily acclaimed records of 2004, and they came back with an album that, if it couldn’t quite match the mercurial heights of Funeral, it certainly did nothing to take away from the band’s legacy. Funeral was acclaimed for the immense peaks it hit in many songs, but, often, the compositions suffered as a result of trying to hit these euphoric highs, sometimes eschewing logic in the interest of putting into place a good crescendo. The compositions alone on Neon Bible hint at a mounting maturity. Where Funeral was concerned with creating a sense of hope out of the darkest places in life, is considerably darker, less concerned with being in any way uplifting. The passion remains in the music, but where there previously was romanticism, bitterness is now the main order of business.
The album is bleak from the first offering, “Black Mirror,” but also as huge as it needs to be. Equally tremendous is the second song, “Keep the Car Running,” sounding much like a more baroque version of the E Street Band. The lyrics are somewhat lacking in subtlety, fairly standard complaints about the touring life, but the music itself keeps the song from descending into clichéd territory. The relentlessly downbeat march of a title track comes next, and, to be completely honest, it feels a bit tacked on, as though the band felt they needed to pad the song count a bit.
Still, with a song like “Intervention” following it, one can’t complain. “Intervention” does the most to set the tone for an album. It’s huge and orchestral, dwarfing every song around it, set into action by a grandiose church organ. Religion, war, politics, they’re all tackled at some point within, and it’s probably the closest Neon Bible comes to Funeral, although where a song on Funeral would hit a massive crescendo, “Intervention,” despite the steady building within, comes to an abrupt stop. It’s majestic, solemn, and simply giant.
Following “Intervention,” “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations” can’t quite compete. Not that it’s a bad song, it simply takes a long time to really get going, not gaining the momentum it so desperately needs until more than halfway through. “Ocean of Noise” gets it right though, just as dark and majestic as the title suggests. The next three songs, “Well and the Lighthouse,” “Antichrist Television Blues,” and “Windowsill” all occur in similar territory to “Keep the Car Running,” like orchestral versions of the E Street Band. The album then closes with the absolutely dire sounding “My Body Is a Cage.” While there were better albums released this year, none had quite the same singular vision as The Arcade Fire.


5. Battles, Mirrored
I’m not sure if this is part of the aforementioned boom in indie dance music. It certainly has some of the elements, in super funky melodies and incredibly tight percussion, but to call it dance music just doesn’t seem right. Maybe it’s math rock. Or post rock. Or…something, I don’t really know. The vocals are guttural, processed to hell. There are electronics everywhere, sometimes in very strange, unnatural feeling places. Talking about individual tracks seems almost like a waste of time, since Mirrored, as with many great albums, seems to flow perfectly from track to track. It’s noisy and messy, but also somehow tight, focused, and very intricate. I don’t get how this happens, but it did here, and I’m not going to argue with a result like that.
The individual musicians, for what it’s worth, are all stellar. John Stainier, on the drums, is certainly the most notable. This is for two reasons. First, every single track is driven by drums more than anything else. Secondly, these drums are played with such style, such…I don’t want to say finesse, as a lot of the drum parts on mirrored are anything but subtle, but no other words seem to fit right. The guitar and bass and electronics are angular and weird, funky and robotic and strangely catchy. This is what the best album of 2020 is supposed to sound like, Battles is just giving us a little preview.


4. The White Stripes, Icky Thump
My theory is that The White Stripes work at about half the speed of Led Zeppelin, but have a very similar pattern of output. By this logic, their self-titled debut was about the equivalent of the first side of Zeppelin I, all nasty but very blues based, simple hard rock. De Stijl, then, was the second side of the first Zep album, a bit more eclectic, some acoustic stuff, but still very much a straightforward piece of blues-rock. White Blood Cells was very much akin to the first half of Zeppelin II, some monstrous rockers (“I Think I Smell A Rat” compared to “Whole Lotta Love”) with occasional respite. Then The White Stripes released Elephant, which, much like the second side of Zeppelin II, was still mostly heavy blues-rock, but still each band’s most eclectic offering up to that point.
However, the Stripes seemed to have bucked the trend, at least a little bit, with the release of Get Behind Me Satan, dealing with their iteration of Led Zeppelin III in one fell swoop. Both albums were far more eclectic than their predecessors, more based around acoustic and unusual instruments, more folk-y. But I think they’re back in their old patterns with Icky Thump. Much like the first half of IV, it’s packed with super loud, raucous, loud songs. There’s even one heavy on the mandolin to stand in for “Battle of Evermore.” I formulated this hypothesis for a lot of reasons. Partly because Jack White obviously worships Zeppelin, and that becomes blatantly obvious in his band’s sound. He sounds like Robert Plant and plays a lot like Jimmy Page, if Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had grown up in Detroit and done a lot of speed. Plus, Meg White plays drums a lot like John Bonham would play if resurrected as a zombie, and is similar in shyness to John Paul Jones.
What does this really have to do with the record? Not a whole lot, to be honest, I just wanted to put that theory out there. The only detail you really get about Icky Thump out of that is that it can only accurately be described as really, really rockin’. And, well, it certainly is. The title track is weird and sinister (kind of “Black Dog”-esque, actually), “You Don’t Know What Love Is, You Just Do As You’re Told” is the best straight-up rock song released this year. “Conquest” is a strange, kitschy piece of speed-Mariachi-metal, kind of like if The Stooges had met up with Jimmy Page in Tijuana. It doesn’t have all the variety and eclecticism of the last album. What it does have is thirteen ridiculously awesome rock songs. The White Stripes long graduated the garage rock trend, and this album sees them incorporating the best parts of their work from that era into their current identity.


3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Hey, it’s another throwback. Albeit one that I’m going to do everything I can to avoid typing the title of again. I just can’t stand when my word processor starts yelling at me, and it’s not happy about this one. Spoon’s 2007 album is one of many excellent examples of how good it can be when awkward white guys decide to play black music. This isn’t when swaggering white guys (like, say, Led Zeppelin, or The White Stripes) play black music. When the nervous, awkward white guys do it, it often comes off a little nervous (The Talking Heads around Remain In Light, for example). But, in this case at least, it’s fucking good.
They sound like The Beatles might have if, instead of breaking up, they’d gone down to Detroit (funny how things keep coming back to there) and absorbed both the proto-punk of the MC5 and The Stooges and soul coming out of Motown and then decided to forget all that psychedelic bullshit. Spoon’s songs are super-tight, no frills compositions, each one built with exactly as much material as it needs and nothing more. Heavy bass, loud drums, and guitar that serves more as a rhythm instrument than anything else. The lyrics are of the type that sound good, and definitely mean something, but don’t make themselves immediately obvious. “Don’t Make Me A Target,” the leadoff song, is a standout, as brash as Spoon ever gets, even if they stumble a bit on the second song, “The Ghost of You Lingers,” a tune based entirely on a repeated piano chord (not a bad thing, as you’ll see on the number two pick) and vocals. It’s not a bad song, but one that takes some getting used to.
The Motown influences start to show themselves on “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” which sounds like a less sloppy version of the MC5 trying to play “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You).” There are horns deep in the mix, a tambourine, echoed vocals. It’s probably the most representative track for the whole album. The only other tune that challenges “Cherry Bomb’s” representative status is “The Underdog,” a definite contender for single of the year. Acoustic guitar, bass, spare drums (including timpani), plenty of tambourine and maracas and a luminous horn line. It represents an almost exact synthesis of the sounds of Otis Redding, Paul Simon, and maybe The Violent Femmes. Super-catchy, highly unusual, constantly building, and highly excellent.
There’s razors edge, rude-boy rock and roll throughout the album, especially on the three songs between “Cherry Bomb” and “The Underdog.” These three start out restrained, with “Don’t You Evah,” get a bit nastier, a little more dangerous on the intentionally misspelled, postmodern “Heard It Through the Grapevine” “Rhthm and Soul,” and explode into all-out knife fight on “Eddie’s Ragga.” “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case” follows “The Underdog.” This song’s pretty obviously about cocaine. And not even very subtle about. Not only are the lyrics about cocaine, but, confronted with an instrumental version of the song and asked what it’s about, I think a decent majority would respond “cocaine.”
The song about coke is, naturally, followed by one called “Finer Feelings.” This one’s a bit funky and a bit uptight. It follows the one about cocaine pretty well, and could even be about the aftermath of a coke binge. The last song, “Black Like Me,” is probably the most overtly soul-styled. It’s also quite unsettling. There’s a very Stax-Volt style electric piano, and the song builds, much like a song out of that legendary studio, but, where most of those would hit some redemption, this one just ends. There’s something incredibly dire about it. That’s Spoon’s spin on the soul ballad, and it ends the album on a perfect, albeit odd note.


2. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
It opens with a groove. “Get Innocuous,” the first track on James Murphy’s (a.k.a. LCD Soundsystem) is exactly the type of music fans of the self-titled debut album dug. The lyrics are mostly unimportant, and kind of goofy, the rule for pretty much every song on that album, but the sound, man, the sound. It’s perfect dance music, thumping bass and drums and lots and lots and lots of samples built up upon themselves to make an utterly dance-able track, especially with those weird Benedictine monk vocals. “Time To Get Away,” the second track, is much in these same lines. It’s tongue in cheek break-up song with absolutely indomitable bass, a locked in groove designed to get a place dancing, and fast. Seriously, one can’t help but dance to this thing, no matter the situation. It’s almost a problem, really, because, seeing as that wouldn’t be acceptable in public, it requires of those listening outside the safety of their homes or clubs a large measure of restraint.
“North American Scum” is third, another very tongue in cheek track, but there’s an odd honesty about it. Still, you pay little attention to any social commentary Murphy might have in mind and focus on that delicious groove he’s got going. But then “Someone Great” comes on, and, while you can still absolutely dance to it, that’s not the primary focus anymore. There’s a poignancy that Murphy hasn’t really touched on before. The subject is loss, although in what sense is unclear. It could be about a breakup or it could be about someone’s death. Judging by the one serious aspect throughout all of Murphy’s work, a fear of growing old, my guess is the latter, but really, the specifics don’t matter. In “Someone Great,” there are two songs, one great to dance to, one sad and poignant.
Almost as poignant as the next song, and the best single of 2007, “All My Friends.” Remember how I said songs based on a repetitive piano rhythm can be great? Yeah, this is why. There’s a very simple piano part that repeats, ad infinitum, throughout the song. While “Someone Great” could tangentially be about aging, “All My Friends” very explicitly is about the process of getting old. As the song goes on, more instruments are piled on top of the piano part, although it never gets any less insistent. Who knew James Murphy was such a good songwriter. “All My Friends” describes in concise, poetic, beautiful terms the phenomenon of aging, growing away from friends, searching for relevance. It’s cathartic, sad, and incredibly powerful.
The more serious-minded songs continue on with “Us V. Them,” about the social consequences of living the life without regrets discussed in “All My Friends.” But no one could keep up that much emotional intensity for that long, so we get another couple dance songs. First, there’s the joke-y, disco punk of “Watch the Tapes.” Definitely the least interesting track on the album. Not bad, by any means, but not particularly remarkable either. However, after that, there’s the title track, which happens to be the best straight dance song on the album. Even this one’s a little bit about aging, considering the only lyrics are “Sound of silver talk to me, makes you want to feel like a teenager, until you remember the feelings of, a real live emotional teenager, then you think again.” It’s initially just odd declaration and a thick bass-line. But, as with most of the songs, it builds. But the amount of things going on near the end of this one is just staggering. There’s more bass, kalimba, keyboard blips, drums, marimba, a choir, something like a Martian, symphonic version of every James Brown song ever.
It ends with one of Murphy’s favorite pastimes, lampooning hipsters. That was the focus of pretty much all of his first album, so only one song here shows a certain increased restraint. That song is “New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down.” See, Murphy is the consummate hipster himself, so there’s plenty of self-parody here.


1. The National, Boxer
A couple years ago, back when the grossly overrated Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were just getting big, they went on a tour opening for The National. Seeing as they were the indie buzz band of the day, a lot of people showed up for the opener, then left before The National started. A lot of critics were absolutely disgusted at this, saying everyone was missing out on the better band. I was skeptical, as I found it hard to believe any group supported by CHYSY could actually be any good. Then I heard “Fake Empire.”
It’s the first track on “Boxer,” and the first single. Starting out with a beautiful piano part, lit from within by Matt Berninger’s rich baritone singing about spiking lemonade. It’s the sound of a lonely summer night. Then the drums come in, and the song becomes something else entirely. The drums in The National’s music are shockingly good, and crucial to the bands sound. The song build and builds, though the lyrics are spare, into a sublime string crescendo. The critics, apparently, were right. There’s another great song about aging, this one called “Mistaken For Strangers,” a bit more upbeat tempo-wise than “Fake Empire,” but where “Fake Empire” is mysterious and romantic, “Mistaken For Strangers” is utterly dejected. The rock songs on Boxer are the ones that jump out at you, tracks like “Strangers” and the one proceeding it, “Brainy.” However, none of them ever grow too outwardly intense, preferring to confine their power inward, avoiding overly dramatic gestures.
“Squalor Victoria” is the most stereotypically rock and roll song on the album, even through the pounding drum intro is accompanied by a string section. “Victoria” is like a toned-down version of the masterpiece that closed their 2005 work, Alligator. However, good as many of these rockers may be, it’s in the slower songs that the heart of The National is revealed, dark, mysterious, even baroque. “Slow Show” is all galloping drums and doomed romanticism, a key element of every National song. The coda of “and though I dreamed about you, for twenty-nine years before I ever saw you” could, in less skilled hands come off as mushy, stupid, too over-the-top feels completely honest, capable of piercing through even the thickest cynicism.
The lyrics of these songs are never too specific, yet one never finds themselves wondering what they mean. The meanings are all there, they reveal themselves to you in due time. Until that time, it’s all you can do but appreciate the beautiful images and music. “Start A War” embodies this perfectly, a slow song, begun with a pretty classical guitar part and flowing into the chorus of “Walk away now, and you’re going to start a war.” Even though the lyrics around it don’t necessarily make a whole lot of literal sense, you understand exactly what Matt Berninger is talking about.
From beginning to end, Boxer is absolutely complete, always slightly brooding and darkly romantic and filled with mystery. No one’s made music exactly like this before. Sure, you can hear Joy Division in their sound, and Tom Waits, and Leonard Cohen (Berninger is a lot like a version of Leonard Cohen who can actually sing) and some alt-country, but not in any great measure. None of those artists, brilliant though they may be, have never written a song that sounds anything like the achingly beautiful closer, “Gospel,” the very sound of a rainy morning just before the sun rises, and the perfect way to end the album

Back to this, with part 3.

11. Okkervil River
I guess liking this band would make me kind of a hipster-type (although I assume you kind of guessed that about me already. Maybe it was offset by all the ska), but fuck, I don't even care. As a lot of critics have already made abundantly clear, 2005's Black Sheep Boy was a masterpiece level achievement, a semi-cohesive concept album bolstered by what were very possibly the best lyrics of the last couple years and instrumentation that sounded something like a more inventive Wilco covering Neutral Milk Hotel. This all was carried even further by Will Sheff's voice, which could sound even a bit grating, but any of that was made up for by the tremendous sincerity apparent in it. "For Real" was a frightening, claustrophobic, depressing look into the slightly deranged mind of the titular character, and "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" contained a peak worthy of Springsteen. Their 2007 album The Stage Names is almost as impressive an effort, with the second great indie rock song about he death of John Berryman, as well as a bunch of other sincere, sometimes depressing, almost always hopeful neo-folk tunes.

12. Old 97's
This is one of two bands (the other being the Drive By Truckers) that typified all that was dirty and right about the alt-country scene. Always a bit more romantic in their depravity than The Truckers, a little more refined. This is likely because their frontman, Rhett Miller, is one of the few musicians that fits the term "ladykiller." Don't assume that the two bands are all that similar, really. They both have lots of songs about drinking and one night stands, about lonely travel and lonelier love, but The Old 97's care much less about the mythology behind the music they make, focusing instead on the more immediate implications. Their earliest incarnation was in a more cow-punk style sound, but as they progressed, they grew closer to being a somewhat more straightforward country-rock band, although the punk element never truly left the music. Capable of putting on some of the most wild, whiskey-fueled rave-ups in music today, they can also exhibit a softer side, writing some of the better ballads that make their way around these days. Plus, as most of these bands do, they put on an explosive live show.

13. The Avett Brothers
Well, I figure I already put one punk-influenced Americana act up here, I might as well go with another. The Avett Brothers are, as the name implies, a pair of brothers who play guitar and banjo, backed up by a third member on bass. They don't really effectively occupy any single musical idiom. Too fast, loud, and aggressive to really be bluegrass, too acoustic and traditionally-influenced to be punk, plus they have a dozen or so more unusual musical tendencies. In this case though, it all comes together to make for a band heavy on good lyrics, great ballads, and plenty of howled punkgrass joints. Plus, they recorded a song called "Pretty Girl From Chile" that goes from pretty standardd Avett's punkgrass to a very Spanish/South American influenced segments, all coming to an end with crashing Crazy Horse-esque guitar squalls. If that doesn't set a band apart from most others, I don't know what does.

40 Best American Bands, Part Two

6. Tom Waits
The man released a three-disc b-sides and rarities collection, and it managed to be one of the best albums of 2006. Not only that, another such collection of equal magnitude seems like it would be totally appropriate. Few performers are as chameleonic as Tom Waits, and none who are are as consistently good. He went from piano-balladeer to a marimba-happy Kurt Weill on acid to a purveyor hyper-eclectic pseudo industrial, and hasn't remained entrenched in any of those identities (or any of a good dozen more) for more than a few fleeting songs. He's naturally had some missteps, but that's par for the course for anyone as prolific and longlasting as him. Anyone who can write a song like "Downtown Train" that remains enjoyable even after hearing Rod Stewart butcher the living hell out of it belongs on this list.

7. Prince
Why? 'Cause he's fucking Prince, that's why.

8.Drive-By Truckers
These guys went from being one of the better, rougher, drunker bands of the early nineties alt-country to now maintaining a status as one of the better, rougher, drunker rock and roll bands of the 2000's. They serve as, well, replacements for The Replacements, except a bit more southern, although just as fucked up. The group just went on an all-acoustic tour after the departure of the talented songwriter Jason Isbell. There's been some outcry now that the band's most widely exalted songwriter has gone, but now the weight of all the songwriting falls back on the shoulders of original members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. This does not bother me one bit. Cooley is one of the best straight rock and roll songwriters in the game, and Hood's no slouch himself. Isbell's contributions to is first album with the group, Decoration Day were decent, but far overshadowed by Cooley, brilliant on The Dirty South, where he contributed three of the band's best songs to date, and entirely overproduced and ill-fitting on their most recent A Blessing and A Curse. Hopefully their next album sees a return to their dark renderings of southern gothic songwriting while retaining some of the hard-rockin kick of Blessing.

9. The National
I'm predicting right now that this band will become pretty huge in certain circles by the time they release their next album. Their last two have been spellbinding, particularly 2007's Boxer, and their sound is not unlike that of Leonard Cohen, if Leonard Cohen could sing. There are hints of country, piano balladry, and late night rock and roll. Theirs is a morose blend, but with a certain touch of suicidal romanticism that leaves even the most hardened cynics at least a bit affected. Their obtuse lyrics results in them sometimes coming off as a bit pretentious, and it's not helped by the fact that it takes a few listens for their songs to truly make sense and become as effective as they need to be, but trust me when I say that The National are the real deal.

10. Wu-Tang Clan
I was tempted to put a Prince-esque entry here, but I figure one cop-out, true as it may be, was the maximum allowable per segment of this list. So I'll explain, at least a little bit. Wu-Tang revolutionized New York hip-hop, taking the lyrical advances of such master MC's as Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, and KRS-One, and spiking them with kung-fu movie aggression and the initially minimalist, vicious production of RZA. But it's more than just the full group releases that make them great. The amount of solo work that falls under the Wu-Tang banner is staggering, especially when they're blessed with having such a strong MC as Ghostface Killah making his bid for lyrical supremacy, creating not one but two very strong releases in a single year. The rest of the group are powerful in their own right, and the general public will see how they've coped with the loss of founding member ODB on the upcoming 8 Diagrams. Until then, they remain an almost untouchable self-contained hip-hop empire.

40 Best American Bands, Part One

This post is the first of what will hopefully be a series of posts detailing artists that, in my humble opinion, constitute the forty best bands in America. This list is inspired by similar ones on The Aquarium Drunkard and Information Leafblower blogs, so, without further ado, here goes.

Okay, that was kind of a lie. One last thing. This is in no particular order.

1. Wilco
There's not really any way to deny this band's rightful presence on the list, so I'm just going to put them right out there. Why are they on the list? Well, you know...they're Wilco. They've got a frontman who is probably the best songwriter since Bob Dylan, and deserves a place in the upper echelons of the craft. Plus, they manage to integrate alt-country with an obsession with experimentation, an obsession that has brought a couple of brilliant avant-garde musicians, drummer Glenn Kotche and guitarist Nils Lofgren. It's a damn good combination, that's paid off in some spectacular music.

2. Big D and Kid's Table
Bet y'all motherfuckers didn't see that one coming. Yeah, that's right, I'm putting a latecomer third wave ska band on the list. Why? Because they're good enough. The last two albums produced by the group, Strictly Rude and How It Goes have been knockouts, monumental efforts bolstered by one of modern ska's strongest horn sections and Dave McWane's lust-for-life songwriting. Strictly Rude was the more polished of the two, and demonstrated a refined approach to the slightly more traditional ska aspects of the band's sound, from the rave-up of "Noise Complaint" to the sunny, bouncy "Shining On" to the trad-ska examination of a bad-idea relationship of "The One," all capped off by a long dub excursion in "She Knows Her Way." How It Goes was a more disjointed effort, an everything and the kitchen sink style flawed ska opus. There are plenty of missteps, but for every one of those, there's a tremendous success, in everything from the supercharged anthem of bitterness of "New Nail Bed" to a paean to living the good life in "If We Want To." They've even got an ode to ultimate frisbee ("175") and horn-driven reggae instrumental (the title track). Big D's been evolving at a constant rate, and their next album, especially if it's the oft-discussed but heretofore unrealized Strictly Dub, could bring the ska world to its knees. Not bad for a crew of drunken, hedonistic Boston miscreants.

3. The Hold Steady
These guys keep Big D from being named the best party band in the country (it's a damn close race). I'm not going to discuss The Hold Steady at length, because I did that plenty in my last post. All I'm going to say is that they're a bunch of funny lookin' dudes making the music they want to make and enjoying the hell out of it, and that's a beautiful thing. Long live The Hold Steady.

4. The Flaming Lips
So their last album wasn't the greatest thing ever. It was far from the worst, and even probably ranked among the top fifty of the year. The Lips set a standard for themselves with Yoshimi and The Soft Bulletin that they weren't quite able to live up to. However, the band takes their songs to an entirely different place live, and their live show is what got them a place on this list. They throw down on a level rarely touched. Wayne Coyne just gets it, it being that innumerable number of things that define a great rock band. It is not just getting what goes into making a live show something incredible, something life-changing, something downright religious. No, Wayne Coyne certainly gets that, but, from everything he says, he seems to get what life should be about, in the most ideal of worlds. He's ddevoted himself to making some beauty in a world that, not to play into every cliche ever written, is too often filled with ugliness. Going to see The Flaming Lips is escaping from that ugliness for a couple of hours, embracing life and everything in it. He might not be the best singer, but hey, the message is more important than the voice.

5. Clutch
Clutch are the only real funk-metal band that has ever existed. Yes, I know what you're thinking, but, hate to tell you, you're wrong. Well, okay, there's maybe one exception, but that's 1970's Funkadelic. Red Hot Chili Peppers have never been funk metal. They've been funk, and, very occasionally, they've been metal, but never the two at once. Primus has never been funk metal. I guess maybe Faith No More has been, but they've been pretty much every genre andd every combination thereof for a brief period. But Clutch beats them all. Even on their most crushingly heavy songs, there's a palpable groove, a bit of bounce, a bit of snap. Plus, how many metal bands can write concept albums around the concept of embracing pacifism and sound totally fucking badass while doing it. I couldn't see any other band pulling it off with as much success as Clutch on the monumental Blast Tyrant. Not only that, they manage to pull off southern metal quite well, especially on their last three LP's, and especially on "Cypress Grove," a demented, heavy, twangy tale of murderous gangs of backwoods women. Not many bands can straight up rock as hard as Clutch. Millions of gearheards can't be wrong.

That concludes part one. The rest of the list will be forthcoming.

Boys and Girls In America

As much as people may bemoan the loss of creative integrity in music these days, we live in privileged times. Rarely before now has there been an era where so many brilliant arists roamed the country. It's a lofty group really, with members like Wilco, Sufjan Stevens, Ryan Adams, My Morning Jacket, Okkervil River, TV On the Radio, Ghostface Killah, The Decemberists, Cat Power, The National, and dozens more. But the band among these that seems most destined for transcendence, for a legacy, aside from maybe Wilco, is The Hold Steady. They're only three albums old, but each album has further defined their sound, and each one is better than the last, that last album being the astonishingly brilliant Boys and Girls in America. It's been reviewed numerous times, and, while this one is a tad late, it's far from extraneous. Not enough can be said about how perfect this album is.

Album Review: Boys and Girls in America

The Hold Steady have done it. They've written the perfect rock and roll album. They flirte with perfection on their last two, the very bar-rockin' Almost Killed Me and the dense, conceptual work Separation Sunday. While each of these albums is a work in their own right, they can't compete with Boys and Girls in America. Taking it's name from a passage in On the Road, the album is a meditation on youth, drugs, music, and inspiration. While Boys and Girls may not contain The Hold Steady's single best moment (that honor goes to "Killer Parties," from Almost Killed Me), it holds great moments, and a lot of them.

The album opens with "Stuck Between Stations," which contains the eponymous Kerouac quotation and tells the story of Minneapolis poet John Berryman's suicide. The song is at once bombastic and lonely, hyper-literate and visceral. It strikes to the very core, perfectly simulates the feeling of walking alone through a big city, drunk and ragged. Lead singer Craig Finn's wordplay is nothing short of phenomenal, and his voice fits exactly with the loud, just straight up rockin' music behind it. Upon first hearing this song, one worries that they placed their best track too early in the album.

WRONG, motherfucker! It's followed with what could well be the greatest pop-rock song of this decade, "Chips Ahoy," the story of a prescient girl who uses her gift to win at the track. It's catchy as all hell, and almost too perfect to be put into words. Every little touch in this song is just plain right, from the organ fills to the "woah-oh-oh's" behind the telling chorus of "How am I supposed to know if you're high if you won't let me touch you." This song is a microcosm of everything The Hold Steady aspires to be, examining love, drugs, and sounding beautiful and knowing all at once.

"Chips Ahoy" is followed by "Hot Soft Light," a song about, as Craig Finn has put it, getting busted. Tad Kublers muscular guitar riff propels the song as Craig Finn's protestations grow more desperate and indignant, while keyboardist Franz Nicolay (who, coincidentally, may be the coolest person ever) pounds away.

Up next is one of the albums two missteps, "Same Kooks." To put it bluntly, I don't like this song much. It seems to take the "Hot Soft Light" formula and attempts to speed it up by about three times. It would be a decent song for most other bands, but on an album this great, it stands out as being exceptionally weak.

However, any doubt cast on the album by "Same Kooks" is immediately dispelled by the next song, "First Night." Fuckin' A, they knocked this one out of the park. For one, it's placement is pretty much perfect. After four solid rock songs, a ballad seems right at home. But this is no simple ballad. This piano driven work revisits Holly, Charlemagne, and Gideon, characters from the previous album, Separation Sunday. It's a beautiful song, rivaling even "Thunder Road" as a rock ballad. The climax takes it far and away from all other songs in its vein. The electric guitar coming in, the violin, the piano, Craig Finn's voice...it's beyond words.

"Party Pit" is up next, and, well, it's not as good as the track preceding it. However, I'm not sure any song on this album could measure up. There's less to say about "Party Pit" than a lot of the other songs on the album. It's the kind of song The Hold Steady excell at, and perfected on Separation Sunday, a hooky rock song with a great chorus about living in Minneapolis. It's solid, and fun to listen to, but not transcendent.

The next song, "You Can Make Him Like You" follows in the same vein, although te subject seems slightly more intriguing, about girls who define their very existences by their boyfriends. It's yet another strong song, hyper-catchy and suited to being played as loud as the speakers'll go.

"Massive Nights" is next, and could almost function as a sequel to "Chips Ahoy," with it's awesome chorus and the "woah-oh-oh" chanting behind it. It's The Hold Steady's prom song, the type that would be in a high-school movie. Too bad no high-school movie is good or self-aware enough to have this song. Someday, hopefully. Hell, a whole movie could be based around the prospect of having The Hold Steady provide the soundtrack. "Massive Nights" is perhaps their quintessential summer song, suited perfectly for slightly drunk, slightly stoned, and exceedingly happy.

The album takes a considerably more sober turn with Citrus, a song based almost entirely on the acoustic guitar and accordion. It's an ode to alcohol and awkward young love viewed through jaded eyes. It's poignant, sad, insightful, a tiny bit dark, and mostly hopeful. It's not about the destructive power of drink. Quite the opposite in fact. It expounds the power of booze to bring people together in a sad, harsh world.

However, the album does have one more misstep in it, the second to last song, "Chillout Tent." It's a narrative about a boy and a girl meeting after ODing at a music festival, hooking up, and never seeing again. Sounds kind of promising, but it comes off as banal and uninteresting, damaged further by the guest vocalists. The Hold Steady doesn't work without Craig Finn's rough voice in front of it. There are some good lines to be found, lines like "They started kissing when the nurses took off their IV's, it was kinda sexy, but it was kinda creepy," but, of course, these redeeming lines are all spoken by Finn. It's not quite a throwaway, but it lacks the spark that runs through the album.

Everything comes to a close with "Southtown Girls," an paean to settling for less. It begins with the whole band singing the chorus a capella, followed, after a pregnant pause, by an organ-kissed blast of electric guitar, closed with a Springsteen-esque harmonica solo from Nicolay. It's exactly the song needed to close the album. The Hold Steady specializes in excellent closers, with "Killer Parties" on Almost Killed Me, and "How a Resurrection Really Feels" on Separation Sunday. "Southtown Girls" continues the pattern in grand, tired, cathartic closing tracks, and finishes the album in grand fashion.

The Hold Steady are what rock and roll is supposed to be about, five guys who look like high-school teachers having what is very obviously the time of their life doing this. There's no pretension in their music, no backstories to be aware of. It's music for everyone, from nineteen year old hipsters to dockworkers. The Hold Steady understands that music is supposed to be something fun, and that's a fucking beautiful thing.

First Post

I'm Ben, and what you're reading is my blog, Messiah Ward. The intention of said blog's creation is so I can have a place to post my opinions about music and culture in general, but could rapidly devolve into senseless ramblings. We'll see, I guess.