Ranked: 13 Top Albums Of 2007
(as listened to and voted upon by me):
13. Apples In Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder
12. PJ Harvey - White Chalk
11. Casey Neill - Brooklyn Bridge
10. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
09. Laura Veirs - Saltbreakers
08. Radiohead - In Rainbows
07. Rob Crow - Living Well
06. The New Pornographers - Challengers
05. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog
04. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
03. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
02. Feist - The Reminder
01. The National - Boxer
Just some notes here:
I used iTunes’ & Netflix’s star-rating system to rank these albums. After all, an album is only as good as its songs. However, I did add some points to albums that I felt were greater than the sum of their parts. These extra-credit points favored The National and Iron & Wine the most.
The surprises for me were a) how well Feist rated overall, b) how Laura Veirs ended up on here at all (I originally didn’t care for the album, but kept coming back to individual songs enough times to realize that this album deserved a serious second look) and c) some of the dark horse favorites from first-half of the year (Casey Neill and Rob Crow) made it through to finish at the top. Way to go, Rob - not even the Pinback album could take your place!
And here would be a good place to share with you an mp3 from a fave local Portland album you may not have heard this year. When I first heard an early version of Casey Neill’s “Brooklyn Bridge” album back in 2003, it was full of folk ballads. The finished product (released this year on Portland’s In Music We Trust label) is much more rockin’, and features some wonderful additions such as “The Holy Land”. In a recent No Depression article, Casey mentioned Martin Scorsese’s movie “Gangsters Of New York” in conjunction with the song and I have to admit that while I had never thought of that connection before, I certainly will from now on.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 4:59 pm and is filed under album, album rankings, indie rock, the national, top albums of 2007, year-end lists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
