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One local effort stood out when TimeOut reviewers contemplated the 30 best albums of 2007
KEY POINTS:
1 THE PHOENIX FOUNDATION
Happy Ending
(Flying Nun)
Us reviewer types have been bangin' on about this Wellington mob for a couple of years now and here we go again ... except Happy Ending is really the album that proves that the Phoenix Foundation are as good as we thought they were.
Actually on this, they're better. It makes the band's much-admired previous albums sound like dry runs by comparison. For on Happy Ending there's something magical in how the dozen seemingly disparate tracks and its multiple songwriters and voices become its own artpop wonderland.
It's exuberant, dramatic, melodically wondrous, and lyrically variously hilarious, wistful and bewildered.
It swerves gently from kooky guitar sing-alongs to languid psychedelia, it pauses for effect on elegant sad-eyed piano ballads and cinematic synthesizer swirls, it locks itself in its bedroom for a sulk but then it's skipping happily around the backyard just as the sun comes out. Sometimes that's all in the course of one track. And that's just the first hundred times we've heard it _ it's an album that never stops revealing a little more detail or depth on each play. Which is why it's our soundtrack to 2007 _ just like their earlier work became the score to Eagle vs Shark _ and one we'll turn to for years to come. (RB)
2 RADIOHEAD
In Rainbows
(Download)
It might have been the year's most radical release _ as a pay-what-you like download _ but In Rainbows was the most satisfying album by the Brit art-rock masters in a decade. After the scattershot experimentalism of its predecessors, here Thom Yorke and co's songs breathed deep through an album which had its fair share of anguish powered by feverish rhythms and guitar fireworks, but gripped just as much when things went soul-shaped and strangely sexy. (RB)
3 ARCTIC MONKEYS
Favourite Worst Nightmare
(EMI)
No mucking around for the Sheffield four who stormed their way through 2006 on the back of their breakthrough debut. This album easily matched that first one for wiry funky punk fire and whether he was delivering lines of scathing wit or regretful homesickness, frontman Alex Turner further stated his case as the lyricist of his Brit-rock generation.
4 ROBERT PLANT/ALISON KRAUSS
Raising Sand
(Universal)
The unlikely pairing of Led Zeppelin howler Plant and, bluegrass queen Krauss was a match made in Americana heaven with the pair's intertwined voices delivering graceful revivals of songs largely dredged from a swamp of prehistoric rock'n'roll, R&B and country. You can understand why even a Led Zeppelin reunion tour might have to to wait because of Plant's commitments to this. (RB)
5 KINGS OF LEON
Because of the Times
(Sony/BMG)
The third album by the US southern clan often mentioned in the same breath as the Strokes proved not only their commercial breakthrough _ enough to headline Vector Arena in the New Year after being mid-bill at the 2007 Big Day Out _ but their musical great leap foward. Their sound might have got far more expansive but the Kings' brand of weirdness remained while their choruses howled even louder over the engine roar of all those those cars which kept driving through their songs. (RB)
6 BURIAL
Untrue
(Samurai/Hyperdub)
On his second album the anonymous south London dubstep maestro created a menacing atmosphere with bleak, static soundscapes, temperamental beats, and rupturing bass frequencies, yet it was remarkable how soulful and moving it was. This guy, whoever he is, is the musical equivalent of guerilla-style London artist Banksy _ a bloody genius. (SK)
7 JOE HENRY
Civilians
(Anti-/Shock)
Long pegged as an alt-country troubadour, Henry's terrific tenth album also did jazzy, bluesy and neatly antique things in its big elegant spaces as his wry lyrics _ delivered in a voice which can sound like Dave Dobbyn's American cousin _ eloquently swung between the personal and political. (RB)
8 M.I.A.
Kala
(Inertia/The Label)
The Tamil Tiger's daughter struck again with an album that, on paper at least, made for an unlikely party soundtrack. Recorded in India, Trinidad, Australia, Jamaica, Japan and America, and incorporating such odd flavours as zooming motorbikes, tinny disco beats and cutting political rap, M.I.A took her eclectic, one-woman freak show to the next level. (RBy)
9BEIRUT
The Flying Club Cup
(4AD)
This unusual French-inspired folk album by 21-year-old New Mexico musician Zach Condon may sound melancholy at first but it was a celebration. The lad plays a mean cornet and his vintage voice has a richness of someone three times his age. Songs like the sweet sing-a-long of A Sunday Smile, the romantic Cliquot, and the predominance of brass and accordian gave the album an old world charm and you felt like you were down at the village hall decorating it for a party. A celebration indeed. Beirut plays Womad in Taranaki during March. (SK)
10 ROBYN
Robyn
(Universal)
She's the pixie-like Swede who disappeared after two hits in the 90s, only to return as this year's coolest pop star. With a voice like Janet Jackson high on Neneh Cherry, lyrics as sharp as her haircut and beats more garish than the Scandinavian sun, she single-handedly made it okay to like dance-pop again.
11 TINARIWEN
Aman Iman
(Filter)
The sound of sub-Saharan blues is dense, driving, intense and poetic, and on this album is also shot through with mercurial guitar, mesmerisingly repetitive rhythms, and impassioned singing. The bridge between ancient Mali and blues clubs in Chicago. This rocks the Casbah.
12 WILCO
Sky Blue Sky
(Nonesuch)
After the claustrophobia and sonic edginess of its predecessors, this was the American alt-country stalwarts seemingly gentlest album in an age but Jeff Tweedy's songs and the musical gearshifts his band applied to them made this mellow gold.
13 DAVID KILGOUR
The Far Now
(Arch Hill)
The sixth solo effort from the guitar and vocie of the Clean was an acoustic-powered psychedelic pop wonder, which found him sounding the least like the guy from the Clean that he has for some time - and the better for it.
14 BATTLES
Mirrored
(Border)
When Alvin and the Chipminks are thrown into a blender with Kraftwerk, Sun Ra, and a hardcore band with the world's meanest drummer, you get Battles. Yes, Mirrored was nuts, bonkers and all about fun. How they made it work, who knows? But take up the challenge to find out. Someone had better lock these four New Yorkers up, preferably in a glass cage. One of, if not the most unique records of the year.
15 LIAM FINN
I'll Be Lightning
(Liberation)
Finn jnr's debut solo album was a thoughtful, assured and original collection of songs. He played all the instruments, layered them until the walls bent and recorded it using analogue. A richly textured testament to a true talent.
16 MARK RONSON
Version
(Sony/BMG)
The studio boffin turns his hand to tracks by Britney Spears, Coldplay, the Kaiser Chiefs and more, with the help of Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse and friends. They make for tracks big on the brass, bass and percussion of 70s funk, big on irony and even bigger on personality. To call it a covers album would be an injustice. (RBy)
17 SOULSAVERS
It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land
(V2/Shock)
With treated piano, shivering lap steel guitar and washes of Eno-like ambient sounds propping up the broody music, this album is soaked in religion, redemption, Christian imagery and dark melancholy. With guest vocalist Mark Lanegan's solemn baritone everywhere (and Will Oldham on one track), Soulsavers have created an album that is atmospheric and soulfully moody, reaching from gospel affirmation to pessimistic blues. (GR)
18 THE CHECKS
Hunting Whales
(Sony/BMG)
Time-warped North Shore teens on their London OE deliver retro Mod-era 60s R&B stompers with guitar solos straight out of the paleozoic era while fronted by a truly enigmatic raw-throated garbler. Gee, what's not to like? (RB)
19 LOW
Drums and Guns
(Sub Pop/Rhythmethod)
It was the most low-key anti-war album you're ever likely to hear. And beneath the sparse, minimal music of the Minnesota trio, lead by husband and wife Mormon couple Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, lay a bloody yet beautiful portrayal of these violent times. There was no grandstanding here just pure musical honesty from the chilling wail of Sandinista, to the shrill sonics and wonky organ of Breaker, to the questioning of God on Murderer. They play the Kings Arms on January 9. (SK)
20 RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Release the Stars
(Universal)
Ever-flamboyant singer-songwriter Wainwright's fifth album actually toned down the extravagances of its predecessors for this accessible collection on which the strangely lovely bittersweet songs stood out in front of the lavish arrangements. (RB)
21 ARCADE FIRE
Neon Bible
(EMI)
The Montreal septet and much anticipated Big Day Out act's second album lacked the dynamism of 2005 breakthrough debut Funeral, but it still delivered a compelling grand melodramatic sweep with frontman Win Butler sounding increasingly like a Bruce Springsteen from another planet. (RB)
22 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Magic
(Columbia)
Talking of whom ... Springsteen's most plainly enjoyable album of what's been a busy chapter in his career was big on just about everything _ exultant tunes, grand arrangements, smalltown details, high-revving guitars _ while still finding time to play the blue-collar romantic and ask a pointed question: "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" (RB)
23 THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE QUEEN
The Good, the Bad, and the Queen
(EMI)
Blur's Damon Albarn got another supergroup together _ this time with real people like Paul Simonon from the Clash, DJ Dangermouse, and Afro-beat extraordinaire Tony Allen, rather than cartoon creations Gorillaz _ and came up with a whimsical and dreamy musical journey about life in London. Songs like Kingdom of Doom and Herculean show why Albarn is one of the inspired musical brains of modern music. (SK)
24 SJD
Songs From A Dictaphone
(Round Trip Mars)
Studio'n'song-boffin SJD's _ Sean James Donnelly _ fourth album not only provided two local advertising campaigns with groovy jingles with the album's stand-out track Beautiful Haze and I Wrote This Song, it delivered more of his trademark pop cleverness complete with excursions into electro-gospel. (RB)
25 FEIST
The Reminder
(Polydor)
Canadian Leslie Feist has a voice that's good'n'ghostly, hushed in the ballads, powerful in the pop songs. She backed it up on a solo release with songs that leapt across the spectrum yet never felt disjointed. (RBy)
26 RYAN ADAMS
Easy Tiger
(Lost Highway/ Universal)
For the colourful and prolific country rock star, Easy Tiger was the album he needed to make about now: something to stick all that notoriety to and one which reminds how good he is as a writer and a singer, and how affecting his songs can be. (RB)
27 LCD SOUNDSYSTEM
Sound of Silver
(DFA)
You gotta love music that makes you feel like the coolest person on the planet and that's what the songs of LCD Soundsystem leader James Murphy do to you. There was the high-balling jaunt of Time To Get Away, the infectious cow bell anthem Us v Them, and North American Scum, with its obnoxious fist-raising chant, will be riotous when they play it in the Big Day Out's Boiler Room in January. Hate to use the word, but LCD are just so bloody funk-ay. (SK)
28 GRAND PRIX
Terraplane Twilight
(Arch Hill)
Wellington may be wet and hilly but this album from the city's most ardent race-car enthusiasts sounds inspired by dry desert plains. Throw in a "recorder of death", religious chanting and the retro country groove GP do so well and it makes for the moodiest local album of the year. (RBy)
29 EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY
All of A Sudden I Miss Everyone
(EMI)
This US band's instrumental, mostly guitar-based, music has sonic breadth and a widescreen quality, but has simple melodic detail. It can be intense but it will pull right back to unexpected intimacy. The six pieces on their fourth album, move seamlessly into each other so the album has symphonic reach and intensity. Exceptional. (GR)
30 JESU
CONQUEROR
(Hydra Head)
Metal album of the year. Bold call because Conqueror's slow, bludgeoning beauty doesn't fit the traditional metal mould but the man behind Jesu, extreme music pioneer and former Godflesh member, Justin Broadrick, took inspiration from bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride and made heavy music beautiful. (SK)
