The Sad Bear

December 23, 2007

Unworthy Albums

An album came out this year, "Some Loud Thunder." Sound unfamiliar? That's because it was the new release by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and for some reason, nobody listened to it, my friends and myself included. We enjoyed their self-titled debut, but this year, we just didn't get around to the new release.

So come December, my Top 10 List would be, in short, an incomplete sham.

But professional critics get bins of music and still manage to enshrine mediocrity. Largheartedboy has the comprehensive list of this year's lists (which at least reveals the parity of listing). The listener-generated NPR Top 10 is here (and it's got a tinge of indie!).

Note to varying degrees of praise, the presence of the following albums, annotated here with my opinion:

+ Modest Mouse, "We Were Dead..." (pale)
+ Radiohead, "In Rainbows" (drowsy)
+ The White Stripes, "Icky Thump" (confusing, tasteless; icky)
+ Beirut, "Flying Club Cup" (stompless)
+ Of Montreal, "Hissing Fauna..." (self-parody; fallen)
+ Wilco, "Sky Blue Sky" (underachieving)

In a year of unworthy releases, even efforts from Jens Lekman, Andrew Bird, and Deerhoof produced "not their best album, but it's still pretty good," to quote Beta Band. Spoon too, but that's not an insult.

Perhaps Feist made progress, but she really should consider wielding her guitar in a video instead of dancing in that awkward and honest way of hers.

Labels: criticism, Feist, indie, largeheartedboy, music, NPR, Top 10

by Tony Gonzalez at 2:42 PM |