Favourite Music Of 2007: Sounds Of Silver

This second selection contains a predictable mix of newer names, long-term favourites, minor-league obscurities (no shame in that) and mainstream chart-toppers. They’ve engaged my interest for longer than the average four weeks or so that would have qualified them for “bronze” status, though they’re not necessarily the ones I’ve been raving about to friends.
Various / Xiu Xiu – Remixed & Covered

As the title suggests, this double album contains a mixture of cover versions and remixes. The covers are mostly of Xiu Xiu songs by other bands, but it also includes also an(other) excellent version of the Joy Division / New Order classic Ceremony by Xiu Xiu themselves, which manages to out-frenzy their previous attempt on 2002′s Chapel Of The Chimes.
If this album had been created in Europe, it would probably be crammed with loads of dodgy Italian and Belgian Goth bands, none of whom you’d have heard of before. However, Xiu Xiu’s friends and partners – like the band to which they’re paying homage – are mostly American, so we get treated to some genuine delights from the likes of Gold Chains and Parts & Labor.
Aa (BIG A little a) – Gaame

Aa live just down the road from Parts & Labor in Brooklyn. Both share a love of the ferociously percussive, but Aa’s sound is infinitely more sinuous and primal. Sometimes Gaame sounds more like a field recording of the rites of a Melanesian cargo cult than the output of a technologically aware group based within the pulsating environs of New York City.
It’s hard to pick a favourite track from this album, but the whirling, unfocused, euphoric Good Ship is playing as I type and seems to sum up its appeal as well as any other description. Utterly trend-free, Aa’s music appears to exist in a vacuum and makes me nostalgic for the unbridled experimentation of The Pop Group, Virgin Prunes and Test Department.
LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver

I enjoyed the first LCD album (in reality, more of a singles collection) for a while, but I wasn’t expecting to like this one so much. However, James Murphy has turned down the irony to produce reflective, soul-baring moments like Someone Great in the context of an album of classy, motorik funk that fuses Krautrock with Chic and makes it sound completely natural.
A pulsating mirrorball in a plastik, Neu York rollerblade disco, All My Friends seemed like it was going to be my song of the year at one point. While that prediction might have been a little premature, it’s certainly in my Top 5. It was the soundtrack of the Spring, as the light started to return and flower buds sped ruthlessly towards the surface of the earth.
The Aliens – Astronomy For Dogs

This is a pure, Hammond-fuelled, psychedelic rush that ambushed my affections by stealth over a period of several weeks. It was one of those albums that just got bigger and bigger the more I listened. Oddly, it contains so many ingredients that I’d dismiss on their own (e.g. the squiddly, 70s prog synths of Robot Man), yet which cumulatively create something magnificent.
It’s as if The Aliens’ forerunners The Beta Band had embraced conventional song structures and discovered the “4-D” button on the mixing desk. If you’ve ever liked anything by The Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Byrds or The Beatles at their wildest, check this out. Rox is the standout track for me, effortlessly blending 60s trippiness with vintage Happy Mondays euphoria.
Kate Nash – Made Of Bricks

Kate Nash arrived almost fully formed as Lily Allen Mk II in the public consciousness, which initially put me off. Critics have questioned her stage school background, implying that she’s somehow not a “real” musician. In other quarters, a whispering campaign has suggested that there’s not actually a great deal to her lyrics. I have to disagree with both charges.
While the album is a little over-long (a few songs are entirely dispensable) and some of the melodies could have done with a touch more polish, in general it strikes me as a work of touching honesty. Foundations and Mouthwash are sublime off-kilter pop moments and songs like Birds, Merry Happy and (particularly) Nicest Thing demonstrate an assured confidence.
HTRK – Nostalgia

CLANGGGG… CRUNCHHH… STRRRKKK… I didn’t think they made ‘em like this any more. Maybe they don’t. Maybe all that Australians-in-Berlin stuff is just a front and HTRK is some kind of future projection from 1982, a timewarp prank by Lydia Lunch and Die Haut, giggling uncontrollably into their absinthes, kohl running down their faces in the shadow of the wall.
I’m not sure what would please me most – that possibility, or the rather more substantial fact that HTRK exists here and now, creating this beautiful, malevolent, chainmail-on-velvet music. Agonised and ecstatic, much of Nostalgia reminds me of a time when I could get lost inside songs by Cindytalk or The Birthday Party for days. Slow, seductive, sweet sedition.
Susan Matthews – Hope-Bound

I stumbled across Susan Matthews on MySpace in early 2006, but took a year or so to get round to contacting her and buying her CDs. I’ve slowly been getting to grips with them throughout the course of 2007, though with every listen I realise that I’ve barely scratched the surface of these fractured, mesmerising, enigmatic and fascinating pieces of music.
Comparable to – and, to a certain extent, influenced by – my personal holy trinity of left-field music (Virgin Prunes, Cindytalk, Coil), her 2007 release Hope-Bound is one of the most sophisticated expositions of her compelling musical world-view to date. I have yet to hear her subsequent album The Silent Architect, a treat that lies in store for early 2008.
Holy Fuck – LP

This was unexpected: a chance recommendation from a friend, which exploded into my life without warning or precedent. This astonishing album seems to bring together every single instrumental strand from my music collection over the past twenty years: Dif Juz, 808 State, Sabres Of Paradise, Add N To X, Thievery Corporation… you name it, it’s in there.
Then, of course, there’s the audacity of the name, the splendour of their live show (believe me, anything that gets me dancing these days is truly exceptional) and the generally good-humoured vibe of purpose, enthusiasm and adventure that surrounds them. You have to love a band that can call its album’s bonus track Bone Us. I hope to see them again in 2008.
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – Thou Shalt Always Kill

Pure joy. This sounds like a novelty record on your first listen, but closer attention is repaid with a coherent and intelligent rapid-fire commentary on the trivialities and essentials of modern society. Scroobius Pip sounds superficially like a rapper, but has more of a slam poetry background, which I suspect explains the articulacy and deftness of his wit.
Ably supported by Le Sac’s loping, fidgety musical background, Pip’s immaculately timed delivery warns in pseudo-religious terms against doubting the infallible (aka Stephen Fry), judging by appearances, idolising the unworthy and surrendering to the idiocies of sound-bite culture. The moral of the tale? “Thou shalt think for yourselves.” Amen to that.
PJ Harvey – White Chalk

I was impressed with The Peej’s first couple of albums, but the more she moved towards Cave-like dead-girls-in-ditches territory, the less interested I became. The news that she was releasing a stripped back, piano-driven album sung in her “church voice” therefore piqued my curiosity. It didn’t disappoint when I finally got to hear it – indeed, quite the opposite.
White Chalk is a more substantial offering than its flaky name, spectral whisperings and fragmented murmurs might suggest. Nor is it quite as sombre and muted as you might have believed on hearing the taster single When Under Ether (check out the howling-at-the-moon mid-section of opener The Devil, for example). Never have bones rotted so beautifully.
So, plenty of good stuff there, with few reservations expressed on my part. Some of these releases have now probably run their course as far as my interest is concerned, but several (I’m thinking especially of Xiu Xiu, Aa, LCD Soundsystem, Susan Matthews, Holy Fuck and PJ Harvey) have plenty of mileage left in them yet. And then there are my “gold” choices…
Favourite Music Of 2007: Bronze | Silver | Gold