Favorite Tracks of 2007, Part 5

10. "Is There a Ghost" by Band of Horses

It is a haunted, insomniac, exhausted world. We are isolated and alone. Or are we? What can bring light, peace, and rest to this ghostly vision? Really freakin' loud rawk guitars.

9. "Earth Intruders" by Bjork

A preview of what music will sound like in 2017. Rhythmic, percussive, yes, but also post-human and utterly alien. Bjork still thinks she can organize freedom, but what that freedom will look like is no longer anything our dead 20th century liberal souls would recognize. More like necessary voodoo.

8. "My Moon My Man" by Feist

While "1 2 3 4" played to all our worst desires for bright colors, Sesame Street cheerfulness, teenage wishy washy wish fulfillment, bad dancing, etc. etc., "My Moon My Man" found Feist playing the sexy, seductive jet-setter. Take it slow, take it easy on me, she sings in invitation. The music slinks, and the last sounds you hear are high-heeled steps racing away to her next rendezvous.

7. "Atlas" by Battles

Now we're talking. This song and those crazy vocals still freak me out. The brilliant Battles play a frenetic but disciplined brand of dance/post-rock that puts the listener square in the middle of an amazing sonic landscape/onslaught. You don't listen to the music so much as experience it in three dimensional space.

6. "D.A.N.C.E." by Justice

2007 was the year that white indie-rockers were called out for not listening to enough black music. So leave it to the French to deliver the best beats, and rehabilitate an affection for Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5. Like Daft Punk before them, Justice are more than happy to celebrate a cool, European brand of worldly eclecticism and, as every P.Y.T. knows, this is what music was supposed to sound like when we imagined the carefree oughts.

5. "Silver Lining" by Rilo Kiley

What a terrible album. What a fantastic song. On this one track, Jenny Lewis and the band out-do all of the recent Dusty Springfield imitators with this gorgeous and expert performance. Like all great country songs, the lyric spins cliche into something familiar, heartbreaking, and in the end hopeful. That grass-hoppery guitar line gives one the sense that the singer is both nervous and excited to be moving on.

4. "Going to a Town" by Rufus Wainwright

The piano and vocal put me in mind of the melancholy of old jazz torch songs like Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life." There is a sadness here that seems like the culmination of years and years of frustration and disappointment. When he says he's tired of America it's not glib. It's not something said easily or to shock. It is painful and honest. Perhaps it was his Judy Garland performances that allowed Rufus to take these essential ingredients of tragedy, solipsism and camp, and transform them into full-throated social and political protest.

3. "The Good, the Bad and the Queen" by The Good, the Bad, and the Queen

Damon Albarn's latest side-project is where the two strands of Brit-pop Englishness (Blur) and hip-hop and world beat (Gorillaz) come together to interrogate and exhaust their possibilities. On the one hand musical exploration and the ability to embrace the world as an artist is a net good. On the other, war, racism, illiberalism are bad. What overshadows our every effort is the Queen: empire, colonialism, patriotism, chauvanism, whiteness. Listen as Albarn's music hall piano and bouncy delivery give way to a punk's notion of a what a middle eastern dervish sounds like. And listen again as it all collapses and with it the possibility of a shared universal language based on song.

2. "Bamboo Banga" by M.I.A.

M.I.A. resists and rejects the notion that the west can reach out and embrace the world, shaping African and Asian beats into its own myopic vision of pop music. On Kala, it's Indian music that's the assumed cultural inheritance, and The Pixies, The Clash, and (perhaps) Duran Duran become the weird, exotic flourishes. On "Bamboo Banga," M.I.A. works with Switch to create a driving, forceful beat full of boasts, warnings, and announcements, and reclaims a little bit of R&B history along the way. If she's knocking on the doors of your Hummer: the future does not belong to you.

1. "Fake Empire" by The National

The song is oddly American in its nakedness and deep baritoned vocal. The loveliness of the images are straight out of a holiday beer commercial. Good times, good friends, a little something in our lemonade. But as the piano carries forward the implicit message is that we are privileged, complacent, lazy, comfortable. That's where we find ourselves at the end of 2007. Half awake in an empire that has burnt itself out; that never was a real empire anyway. In confessing it, the National remind us that we can't miss what we never had. We can't regret losing what we never aspired to in the first place.

Favorite Tracks of 2007, Part 4

20. "Icky Thump" by The White Stripes

All stomp and bombast. A one man ode to dinosaur rock. Jack White is a purposeless energy going nowhere for no reason. What makes him rock? Angst? Rebellion? I have no idea, and neither does he.

19. "You Know I'm No Good" by Amy Winehouse

When this track debuted I thought Amy Winehouse was a cool for cool's sake, double-oh seven, groove-happy ironist. So, I was wrong. The song is a heartfelt ode to the trashy, the dirty, and the carpet burned. Documentary, then.

18. "What's a Girl To Do?" by Bats for Lashes

It's been a while since we've had a good talk-singy song, and well, the other-worldy chorus takes it to a whole 'nother level. Which is just my way of saying I have no idea what this song's about, but I like it. Rabbits on bicycles everywhere clap along.

17. "I Always Say Yes" by Glass Candy

Breathless 70s era disco meets Giallo-style creepiness. This is where we hurt.

16. "The Ride" by Joan as Police Woman

A lovely, affecting performance by Joan Wasser, who having performed with Rufus Wainwright, Antony and the Johnsons, Sparklehorse and others, deserves to be recognized in her own right.

15. "Nag Nag Nag Nag" by Art Brut

Eddie Argos is so good that you forget that you're listening to a song. He's the music fan's music fan. Morrissey meets John Cusack in High Fidelity. Just read this:

I used to have a bedroom to hide in,
but now I’m outside deciding.
Older but wiser,
this song’s the decider.
Is it the sound of a man wrestling with emotion,
or the sound of him losing
and causing commotion?
I’m nothing to my peers,
but envy and hatred.
How many girls have they seen naked?

And that's just the bridge!

14. "The Underdog" by Spoon

Strums and horns and a vaguely familiar melody. Britt Daniel and the band blast through this number before it really has a chance to register. It's that sense of urgency and expert delivery that keeps the song tugging at you long after the final fade.

13. "Now, Now" by St. Vincent

The song builds gracefully, at once feminine and ethereal. Then it taunts you with it's childlike "you don't mean that say you're sorry." By the time the guitar kicks in to blast you out of the room, it's too late to admit that Annie Clark's got chops. You've been played.

12. "Heatherwood" by Deerhunter

Everything Deerhunter did this year was cool, but this was the song I kept coming back to. This is shoe-gazer music that does not collapse or deflate. It expands, it embraces, as it sucks you in. Yet the lyrical mystery remains. What "was not seen again"?

11. "Once Upon A Time" by Air

The sound of Air sounding like Air. Piano runs and breathy vocals with all of the Air touches and flourishes. The song itself plays as though it's meant to be heard as you transition from one thing to another. At the airport. On the subway. It's one last chance to catch your breath before hurtling on to the next thing.

NEXT: The Best of the Rest and the Rest of the Best.

PLUS: 2007, what did it all mean anyway? A unified theory.

30 Best Blogs (Not this one, obviously)

More fun with lists, only this time it's blogs. I only recognized 3 of the 30 so I have some reading to do.

Favorite Tracks of 2007, Part 3

The middling middle:

30. "Dashboard" by Modest Mouse
29. "Rotten Hell" by Menomena
28. "The Crystal Cat" by Dan Deacon
27. "Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse" by of Montreal
26. "Fucked Up Kid" by Kevin Drew
25. "Apreludes (in C sharp major)" by Stars of the Lid
24. "Konichiwa Bitches" by Robyn
23. "What Light" by Wilco
22. "Elephant Gun" by Beirut
21. "They're Leaving Me Behind" by Nick Drake

Up Next: Icky Good Girl Say Ride Nag Underdog Now, Heather Time

Favorite Tracks of 2007, Part 2

More list-making. We complete that bottom 40% of the list that no-one pays attention to anyway.

Please note: the rankings of these songs are for entertainment purposes only and do not actually reflect the relative quality between the tracks themselves. Make a mix-tape and see for yourself.

40. "Melody Day" by Caribou
39. "Again & Again" by The Bird and the Bee
38. "Thinking of You" by Norah Jones
37. "Sleeping Giant" by Mastodon
36. "Black Mirror" by The Arcade Fire
35. "Four Winds" by Bright Eyes
34. "Bookshop Casanova" by The Clientele
33. "Flathead" by The Fratellis
32. "LDN" by Lily Allen
31. "Ave Cruz" by CeU

Back tomorrow with more indie-rock die-hards, a former Scandinavian pop princess, a few weirdos, some ambient, and a dead guy.

Favorite Tracks of 2007, Part 1

It's list-making season, everywhere you look. So I thought I'd get my 2 cents in before 2008 is upon us.

Favorite Tracks 50-41

50. "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem
49. "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" by Radiohead
48. "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe" by Okkervil River
47. "Yadnus" by !!!
46. "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" by Jarvis Cocker
45. "Tonight I Have to Leave It" by the Shout Out Louds
44. "The Perfect Me" by Deerhoof
43. "Spaceman In Your Garden" by Prinzhorn Dance School
42. "Heretics" by Andrew Bird
41. "Phantom Limb" by The Shins