2007 Album reactions

I do not own any of these albums. I've only given them a few sample listens. I own very few albums right now because of this.

Ratings:
* worthless, incompetent (0.0-2.5)
** disposable (3.0-4.5)
*** tolerable (5.0-6.0)
**** good (6.5-7.0)
***** excellent (7.5-10.0)

Air - Pocket Symphony **
Moon Safari and Talkie Walkie were post-Eno bites of 60s Eurokitsch ignorant bliss, soundtracks for a space station retro lounge in Second Life. While Pocket Symphony retains their tired pads, cycling arpeggios, and breathy/spacy soundscapes, it takes a darker tone, drawing perhaps from Neil Young, not Burt Bacharach.

Do Make Say Think - You, You're A History In Rust **
Do Make Say Think are the Jade Warrior of today; weak and pointless prog-rock for the generation that calls it post-rock. These flaccid Godspeed You Black Emperor clones write easy-listening furniture music masquerading as brainy suites, and their new release is no step forward.

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver **
LCD Soundsystem was a party mix, 45:33 was a workout mix, and Sound of Silver is a mix for sitting alone in your room... wishing you were listening to the album's eclectic influences instead of their watered-down, soulless bastard child.

Low - Drums and Guns **
Low finally abandoned their austere slowcore on The Great Destroyer, and here they inch their way even further into a muscle-pop of whispers. Low have never shown much talent, but in earlier albums they at least achieved a meandering fog of wonder.

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away **
I suspect fawning critics will make the argument that The Shins are progressing their sound on this record, but such a tiny evolution barely registers on my scale. It's just another template pop album.

Amon Tobin - Foley Room ****
The undisputed jungle king returns, this time abandoning his vinyl sources for found sounds. Foley Room finds a unique balance between the compositional creativity of his early work and sound design that is usually the specialty of noise and ambient artists.

!!! - Myth Takes ***
The additional styles present in Myth Takes assures !!!'s spot in the dance/funk/punk vanguard, but in another way the album represents a step backward to exhausted routines, most noticeable on "Heart of Hearts", "Sweet Life", and "Infinifold."

Eluvium - Copia **
Eluvium's pop ambient is - like that of Max Richter - lovely but no match for Christian Fennesz.

Idlewild - Make Another World **
Idlewild's pop-hardcore becomes more repulsive with each release.

The Noisettes - What's the Time Mr. Wolf? **
The Noisettes' debut, high energy rock in the vein of The White Stripes and The Vines, will probably be very popular.

Panther - Secret Lawns *
Charlie Salas-Humara's debut abounds with experimental R&B ideas, but the execution is amateur.

Rafter - Music for Total Chickens *
A demo mixtape of experimental pop. In the age of digital distribution, artists release anything.

Small Leaks Sink Ships - Until the World is Happy; Wake Up You Sleepyhead Sun *
To misquote one misreview: "If Minus The Bear and The Mars Volta had a deranged lovechild with fetal alcohol syndrome, it could quite possibly be called Small Leaks Sink Ships."

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? **
Another album of pointless pop pretending to be sophisticated glitch-prog.

Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City **
I never understood the hype around their debut, a party-pop British new wave revival farce, and A Weekend in the City is certainly no improvement.

Rickie Lee Jones - The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard **
Another set of basic ballads. Each of these focus on one of Jesus' teachings. Golly it's exhausting to listen to all this bad new music.

The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible ***
Neon Bible is not as intelligent, inventive, ambitious, or emotional as their debut, but it's still a small step up from most pop music getting headlines these days.

Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha **
It's another collection of elegant ditties, adding a few new styles added to Bird's repetoire but lacking poignancy and profundity.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch **
I'll try not to mention Pet Sounds... damn it.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder ***
Some decent songs littered with jangling studio effects.

The Besnard Lakes - Are the Dark Horse *
For a good laugh, listen to this pathetic album while reading the Pitchfork review.

Rhys Chatham - A Crimson Grail ***
For 400 electric guitars. Next, I suppose Branca will write something for 100 electric guitars. Despite its bootleg sound quality, the recording is thankfully beautiful and un-guitarlike. A super-epic, droning My Bloody Valentine, I suppose.

Shining - Grindstone ***
King Crimson-based progressive metal after Ozric Tentacles and Dream Theater, though not a grand departure from In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster.

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity **
Deerhoof's pop-indie prog is a fun diversion, but in the end, contributes nothing to the grand story of music. Fun is exactly its goal, which is why you may enjoy it but I will not rate it highly here. I'm looking for the next Royal Trux or Vampire Rodents.

Deerhunter - Cryptograms **
Wears off quickly.

Soft Circle - Full Bloom ***
Somehow manages to create a kind of psychedelic new-age soundscape pop.

Dalek - Abandoned Language ***
Much as before, Dalek's latest lays raps over imitations of Faust, Nurse With Wound, Cabaret Voltaire, and a dozen other avant-noise-rock groups. A step forward, but not by much.

Ghost - In Stormy Nights **
Only "Hemicyclic Anthelion" (28 minutes) is as ambitious as Hypnotic Underworld (but not as successful, anyway), and the rest is disposable.

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank **
Jolly good fun, but also the least ambitious Modest Mouse album yet.

Great Lake Swimmers - Ongiara **
Decent songs in the vein of Sufjan Stevens.

Times New Roman - Present the Paisley Reich **
Cacophony rock at home in 1983. A bit out of touch in 2007.

Charlemagne Palestine - A Sweet Quasimodo Between Black Vampire Butterflies *
Yet more of his "strumming music."

Sapat - Mortise and Tenon **
Each track belongs on a different album.

Richard Youngs & Tirath Singh Nirmala - Richard Youngs & Tirath Singh Nirmala ***
Droning, swirling, avant-folk noise with a surprising continuity and effective emotional arch.

Grinderman - Grinderman ***
Nick Cave's Grinderman is infinitely better at going raw and relentless than Metallica's St. Anger. Besides Foley Room, I've not enjoyed any other 2007 album this much, so far.

Benni Hemm Hemm - Kajak *
Like a half-assed Belle & Sebastian.

Charalambides - Strangle the Wretched Heavens **
Exactly what one would expect as the belated leftovers of one of the better bands of the 90s.

Shannon Wright - Let in the Light **
Perhaps her simplest and most derivative work, Wright is still a gifted songwriter.

The American Dollar - The Technicolour Sleep *
Pleasant and totally vacuous.

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky **
Worst Wilco album ever. They could've written and recorded the whole thing in one week.

Der Tpk - Harmful Emotions *
Panzer Corps on Siltbreeze sound like gritty 80s artpunk but have nothing to say.

Pelican - City of Echoes **
Once disciples of Earth, Pelican now sound like Karma to Burn with a heavier, darker Karma to Burn.

Neal Morse - Sola Scriptura **
Contemporary Christian Neo-Prog from the frontman of Spock's Beard. More musically competant than 99% of CCM but, like all CCM, still nothing but a derivative imitation of music that was interesting only a decade earlier.

Blonde Redhead - 23 **
Like Misery is a Butterfly, 23 is a softly gorgeous but unnecessary Goldfrapp imitation.

Tin Hat - The Sad Machinery of Spring ***
Today's Penguin Café Orchestra delivers another set of style-shifting, mostly accessible, chamber/folk/jazz experiments.

Menomena - Friend and Foe **
It's all starting to sound the same...

Maximo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures *
Excruciating.

Trans Am - Sex Change *
My God. Even more excruciating.

4hero - Play with the Changes *
I seriously didn't plan it this way, but this album is yet more excruciating.

The Horrors - The Strange House **
Exactly what you would expect from an indie-rock band named The Horrors. Sounds like a Frankensteinish take on "Rock Lobster."

The Chromatics - Shining Violence *
Retro cheese-pop.

Studio - Yearbook 1 **
Trancebeat soft new-wave indie pop.

radicalfashion - Odori **
Tumbling, tinkling minimalism from Japanese pianist Hiohito Ihara. Not very cohesive.

Adult. - Why Bother? *
Why bother, indeed. A godawful racket of pointless synth-punk.

Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline ***
Essentially, a revisitation of The Tired Sounds Of, which ain't all bad.

Death Unit - Infinite Death **
The noise supergroup puts out another disc of explosive racket. Extreme, sure, but nothing to really propel the genre forward like, say, Intelligent Shanghai Mono University.

Raccoo-oo-oon - Behold Secret Kingdom ***
A grimy racket of krautrock, acid rock, noise, and Dead C.

Pain of Salvation - Scarsick **
Pain of Salvation desperately scratch for relevance by adding... nu metal rapping! Ugh.

Moonsorrow - Viides Luku - Hävitetty **
Among the best epic Viking metal albums ever made. In other words, pretty bad.

Jesu - Conquerer **
Bland heavy metal shoegazing.

Crippled Black Phoenix - A Love Of Shared Disasters ***
The debut from Crippled Black Phoenix - recorded with members of Electric Wizard, Mogwai, Panthiest, and Portishead - is split between Yo La Tengo-esque indie rock songs and Mogwai soundscapes. Not quite new musical territory. The ambient laments of tracks 1 and 10 were most interesting to me.

Ola Podrida - Ola Podrida **
Really pretty songs.

Type O Negative - Dead Again **
The same old thing from Type O Negative.

Voxtrot - Voxtrot **
No. It's not even mixed right for pop/rock. Who mastered the vocals?

Feist - The Reminder **
Leslie's most varied and best-produced album yet.

Hella - There's No 666 In Outer Space **
The Nintendo soundtrack-influenced math-rock steers toward Mars Volta territory.

Rubik - Bad Conscience Patrol **
Finnish indie-pop with a hard edge.

Dntel - Dumb Luck **
A consummately produced and guest-heavy album of pretty glitch-pop. Possibly the best of this style.

Titan - Pilzmarmelade **
A 40-minute jam of stoner psych-space rock in the vein of Acid Mothers Temple. The second half is boring.

Glenn Jones - Against Which The Sea Continually Beats **
Cul De Sac's guitarist again imitates John Fahey.

Blood of the Black Owl - Blood of the Black Owl *
A worthless set of black metal dirges.

Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position **
Patrick Wolf's frolicking, playful new pop album is unabashedly silly.

The Book of Knots - Traineater ***
Multi-instrumentalists Joel Hamilton, Tony Maimone, Matthias Bossi, and Carla Kihlstedt deliver another concept album of a hopeless world, this time with Carla Bozulich, David Thomas, Tom Waits, and other guests. A solid follow-up to their debut, Traineater is orchestral indie rock from musicians raised on The Swans and Pere Ubu rather than Belle & Sebastian.

Thief - Sunchild **
Lush, mellow neo-folk.

The Bird & the Bee - The Bird & the Bee **
I swear I've heard this album 30 times before over the past 15 years. Oh, it's just so ironic to write a floaty dream-pop song called "Fucking Boyfriend." So fucking ironic, girls.

Wold - Screech Owl *
Noise and nothing new.

Hot Gossip - Angles **
Zzzzzzzzzzzz...

Grails - Burning Off Impurities **
Bland eastern-sounding post-rock.

Amiina - Kurr **
Sigur Ros collaborators Amiina's debut is a gentle and breezy tinkle of dream-pop made from unusual instruments. Apparently this is what passes for an "interesting" record these days.

Hauschka - Room To Expand ***
Volker Bertelmann's album of instrumental pop via prepared piano and vanguard tonality. Dances the same genre lines as Max Richter. Or, consider it instrumental glitch-pop performed acoustically. Or, compare it to Drukqs.

Teenager Bad Girl - Cocette *
O God no.

Alex Delivery - Star Destroyer ***
A dead-on impression of Faust for the new millenium, with Win Butler-esque vocals. Unique, but the tracks are not of the highest quality. Ideas still abound, but where have all the great composers gone?

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero **
So it's clear that Reznor will not return to the height of The Downward Spiral. Another innovator has been left behind by the music he created.

65daysofstatic - The Destruction Of Small Ideals **
More boring industrial-sounding math rock.

The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters *
Yawn.

The Field - From Here We Go Sublime **
Pretty good for minimal techno, I guess.