The Top Fifty Favorite Songs Of 2007 - Pt.5

V.
We have arrived. I present, my Top Ten Favorite Songs of 2007. This year's list is dedicated to Sharon and Spencer. I love you both. Thanks for reading.

10. “I Should’ve Been After You” by Rooney
C’mon! There is nothing wrong with aping ELO, 70’s prog rock, The Beach Boys, late-90s-indie-pop, and T.Rex all in one fucking-mega-addictive-power-pop tune. The song opens with a sickly guitar riff that gives way to glam-stomp big drums and twinkling prog-synth licks for fifteen seconds then everything drops out to Robert Carmine launching into a clearly-enunciated melody that is so like “Questions” by Papas Fritas that it's nearly robbery. That's ok, Rooney stays on this kick for the verse and then the big-fat-gigantic-super-duper hook comes in and the chorus grabs yer lazy ass. Breakdown #2 is at the two-minute mark and it's pure Beatles-slash-Beach-Boys. Breakdown #3 is thirty seconds later and it's the bridge and it's gorgeous ELO - big guitar riffs and those pulsating drums and intrcate synths! The calvacade of vocoder-processed vocals may be aped, but it's put to incredible use. Breakdown #4 is a return as the last minute of the song circles back to the Fritas-verse piano-drive-indie-pop-stomp into that hook and its coda coda coda. These separate movements may drip with the derivative, but the execution is so perfect that it’s captivating and exhilarating.

09. “Rolling With The Punches” by Gallows
Gallows are completely unstoppable; they play every note with extreme prejudice, vocalist Fran Carter delivers every shredded vocal with total conviction. "Rolling" wastes no time by launching right into this tale of accountability and anti-hero revolt. The delivery of the hook, both vocally and musically, sounds like a beaten body falling to the cold pavement. When Carter trades call-and-response-barbs with guitarists Laurent Barnard and Steph Carter, it’s exhilarating. The thing that differentiates this track from the others on Orchestra of Wolves (and the punk-hardcore milieu) are the melodic breakdowns ---> part atmospheric post-grunge noodling part-Murder City Devils Animal Rock exhaustion - this adds a complexity to the post-punk-post-hardcore template. The song ends at the diametric polar opposite of the raucous start – Carter’s vocals are processed and nearly a Bowie-esque moan, he intones, “I am a hypocrite/I am the concrete around our feet/And even when I push us in/I'll find a way to drag us out again”. It’s such a curious way to end a track that pummels so hard – curious is good here.

08. “To Fix The Gash In Your Head” by A Place To Bury Strangers
The drum machine pulsates and shimmers in distortion, the guitar is complete overdrive, and lead singer/guitarist, Oliver Ackermann delivers the catchiest melody in his teeny oeuvre. The song obtains the integration of melody and sonics like TJAMC at their best, but adds a furrowed brow and stabs of sheered metallic violence. I’m not quite sure about these words – the musings of a serial killer doctor? Well, it probably isn’t that simple, but nor does it matter. Ackermann creates a chaotic track and uses a guitar pedal called Total Sonic Annihilation ... and that is this song.

07. “Biscuit Chinois” by Jacquemort
A quick drum roll, ding of a bell and super-bass synth riff open this song, three minutes of playfully intense dynamics and melody; part crazy-there’s-no-fucking-way and part rich-classic-pop. This is one of those songs that move. After each pass on the hook, the instruments drop out and the song goes somewhere totally different – a quirky synth jam emerges, a tense/angular guitar solo grabs the limelight, a jangle guitar passage pops up, etc. – only to return to that glorious hook where Thomas Augustin’s (also plays keys for the killer Malajube) voice is slightly raw. His vocals can hush down on a dime, and soar ala Thom Yorke, Murray Lightburn, or Jeff Buckley. It should be noted that the persistent bass line(s) in conjunction with the bass drum anchor the song through all the changes. There is this hint of the reckless, as the execution seemingly teeters, near shambles, the melody and changes maintain, and that makes for greatness.

06. “Depth Charge Ethel” by Grinderman
They told me that Nick Cave was going to embrace his beginnings – that is, the music that informed his seminal band, The Birthday Party – I have no confirmation for this but this means garage-y sixties/bluesy seventies proto-punk. The full-length is a bit much, but this slab of punk … in June of this year, “Ethel” was in my Heavy Rotation – I called it fuzzy; filthy; and funny. One thing I didn’t convey is that it’s unkindly addictive and subversively hooky. The killer dose of thunder is primal energy. The single achievement is in the furious flourish of fuzzed guitar and pounding rhythms that propel the Cave’s disgusting (in a good way!) vocals through this freakin’ crazy dumb tale of sin. Holy shit. Yeah, that really says it all.

05. “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse” by Of Montreal
The song begins with ominous noise and a fifties-stylized-horror keyboard riff as Kevin Barnes sings, “I’m in a crisis, I need help from a mood shift, shift back to good again, c’mon mood shift, shift back to good again, c’mon be a friend” and in comes the song as a burst of indie pop glee club innocence. But we know from the lyrics that it's anything but innocent. It’s disarming, lacks common sense, and triumphant. The song is classic Of Montreal, quirky arrangement, whacked changes, and all sorts of weirdness.

04. “7 Stars” by The Apples In Stereo
This song is absolute pop perfection – something that is not foreign to head Apple Robert Schneider (see previous gems like “Tidal Wave”, “Shine A Light”, “Go”, “The Rainbow”, on-and-on). The production is shimmering, complimentary to the straightforward arrangement and allowing the song itself to shine as bright as the melody. There are flourishes of fuzzed out guitars, slinky minimalist leads, assorted percussive elements, synth whirrs and whizzes, etc. etc. The vocals are laid down in pure perfection – just a hint of straining that has always made his voice so charming. Schneider is always willing to steal cool tricks from his heroes – in this case, the hero is ELO vocoder vocals (check the little transition of “going backwards now”). The chorus soars to outer space, spinning around and around in weightless abandon. Further, it captures what made the Apples so compelling in the mid-80s, the seamless blending of simple indie pop with guitar rock power – the chorus begs for air guitar antics, which is so awesome.

03. “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” by Spoon
“Cherry Bomb” is bloody infectious tense-pop in the vein of the great early 80s Elvis Costello jams. The hook is crafted so so utterly precise, it’s sung with a sly smile-slash-grin. The guitar, drums, and bass launch the gorgeous licks all over the place. The Spoon sound is all about pulsating rhythm, it permeates Britt Daniels' songwriting, that makes the Motown style a perfect fit. I’m not one who gets real into production values and studio chicanery, but the things Daniels (and his collaborators) does on this song are so clever/unique/unexpected that they actually enhance the song – it’s like that extra layer that differentiates from the, well, 46 other great songs of this year and hundreds, thousands of songs over the years. This tune is in tremendous company.

02. “Our Velocity” by Maximo Park
Maximo Park came out of nowhere in 2005 to soar to the number six position on my Top 50 Records list (uh, that year … hrmm) with A Certain Trigger, so obviously I approached this lil’ single with much anticipation. I had to turn on the deep-down-power of internal restraint to put expectations into perspective, otherwise the mind would be clouded. Yes, it’s as hot as anything from the debut. Sure, there is something grown-up, pseudo-deeper, reeking of nostalgia, syrupy fresh about the music and the songcraft. But there is something so freaking addictive about the song. One day I actually rocked this track eleven times in a row. Some of you discerning music listeners may be wont to call it the proverbial musical equivalent of an ice cream cone or dilly bar, I won’t go down that road. I do know that I love how that robo-synth line gets completely overtaken by massive overdriven overdistorted overkilled guitar work. And all those lines about being "sensitive". And the bridge is pretty fresh, no it’s a bridge that I dream of weekly. Yep.

01. “North American Scum” by LCD Soundsystem
The track opens with the electro hum of vintage synth-something-or-other and James Murphy immediately flaunts his Mark E. Smith jones in a way that is undeniable mimicry, but with sincere reverence. It’s that gentle coo of MES coaxing the song to the lay-it-out-suckas verse of tight-ass snares, shh-shh hi-hat, sinewy minimalist guitar lines, and slow-brew bass lines (real and/or/none-of-the-above). The cry of “NORTH AMERICA” is a wild-eyed mantra to embrace stupidity, absurdity, and ironic-modernity in a world that turns a hostile (and in many cases a hateful) eye to the major nation on the said continent. When the band sends up the Cry, the chorus launches to a crazy cacophony propelled by a funky-slap-bass line, buzzing vintage keys, and (of course) Murphy’s ragged falsetto vocals. Murphy and his band execute the changes perfectly, they allow the tension to build and release into sheer joy (when poop-faced anger is expected).

Anyone who has been paying attention to the band would exactly positively expect this kind of track – music geek inside jokes (“when our young kids get to read it in your magazines/ we don't have those” and “and for those of you who still think we're from England ... we're not, no.”), the MES angle, the irony, the amalgamation of sub-genres – and they are correct. And god fucking knows how many times I have tore a band a new asshole for this exact crime. “North American Scum” is too addictive, too well-crafted, too dominating with that ludicrous hook and stunning performance to get all uptight. It demands attention, grabs your hips and shakes your leg and your head snaps, engages your sense-of-humor, never drifts, and it moves moves moves. Let me be clearer: isolate the track, destroy the expectations, and get yer polite-[post]-punk on. ** natch **

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