9 posts tagged “radiohead”

Okely dokely, time for the all important 'best albums of 2007' list. As per last year, this'll cover the albums that did things to me during 2007, not just albums that were released in 2007. I'll also post my favourite track from each to share the goodness.

Poptones	1. Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box These top few albums have all been listened to excessively, and it's hard to put one above the other, but for taking me to new places, the top spot has to go to PiL. I was obsessed with remaining outside my comfort zone while I let this one wash over and through me. I've yet to find anyone who will listen to it with me though... Read my original post
Those Thieving Birds (Part 1) / Strange Behaviour _ Those Thieving Birds (Part 2)	2. Silverchair - Young Modern So extremely impressed with this album at first, I even credited the 'Chair with heralding a new artistic movement (see my outrageous claims at the link below). This album was such a bold and cutting-edge artistic statement from a band that sell millions of albums and have their songs heavily featured on commercial radio. The thing is, the songs from Young Modern were still featured on commercial radio whilst being artistic masterpieces at the same time. That's no small feat and will be difficult to repeat. Read my original post
15 Step	3. Radiohead - In Rainbows So consistently amazing, and so challenging at the same time, will they ever disappoint? Last.fm tells me I've listened to tracks off 'In Rainbows' more than any other album, and even though I've only been scrobbling since June, I'm guessing it would still stand for the whole of 2007. And fuck, the discbox is really nice... PS, I tried about 8 times to upload any track off this album and get the artwork to appear, but no luck.  Vox has fully shat me trying to upload all these tracks, I tried 2-3 times for at least 4 of these files :-|
We Are Nowhere And It's Now	4. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning Obsessed, impressed and thoroughly absorbed with both 'I'm Wide Awake...' and 'Cassadaga', I overplayed both of them to the point that I didn't want to listen to either of them for months. I've put them back on a few times in the last couple of weeks, and though all that initial buzz is gone, I really love them again. Probably my lyrical highlight of 2007 with amazing lines like "If you swear that there's no truth and who cares / why do you say it like you're right?" and the gorgeous "You were born inside a raindrop / I watched you falling to your death". Read my original post
Holidays In The Sun	5. Sex pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks I surprised myself with how much I've embraced this album. I always assumed it would be shit for the sake of being shit, musically inept and just arrogant and annoying. The songs are really deserving of all the praise they're given, it turns out, quite apart from all the attention they got for their attitude and bass player. Thanks to Lester Bangs for changing my mind.
War Weary World	6. The Call - The Walls Came Down Never heard of 'em before a guy at work put me onto them. I thought I might be politely listening to and returning his CD, but it turned into a new favourite. And helped me conquer my fear of 80s music at the same time. Mainly, though, I'm just a sucker for those political question-the-establishment type lyrics. Read my original post
Chocolates and Cigarettes	7. Angus & Julia Stone - Chocolates & Cigarettes So serene, so laid back and paints such amazing mental pictures, this one has kinda crept along and remained a constant favourite for far longer than I thought it would. Sparse to the point of being desolate, mellow to the point of being boring but instead becoming just the opposite (huh?), this EP (and all their other stuff) really speaks to me. My wife digs it too, so it's kinda our thing.
Australian Gigolo	8. The Fauves - Nervous Flashlights Hard to pick which album gets the gong, because this obsession was about all their albums being listened to on shuffle for months. They are so clever, so insightful, so funny, so lazy and so Australian. Who else could write a song called 'Australian Gigolo' with lines like "The Joy of Sex is a valuable text / hey baby baby put that down I don't want you to know what's coming next." I just love Andy Cox's brain, but could never get all sycophantic and tell him, because as he sings on this album, "When you see me on the street / you know I am not approachable / if I'm someone you'd like to meet / I don't want to talk to you ... / I am not approachable / you know I think I'm better than you" Read my original post and listen to the other tracks I've uploaded
The Warning	9. NIN - Year Zero Impressed with the cool political concept behind the album from reading reviews and interviews, I took it upon myself to get into the album. Never a fan of the industrial sound before, it took a bit of doing, but now I'm into a bunch of their albums and their (his) stuff is right up my alley. I hear they're gonna make a movie out of this album, kinda like 'The Wall'. I have a feeng it will be a masterpiece. Read my original post
Heaven And Hell	10. Black Sabbath - Heaven & Hell I'd never given the Dio years the time of day before because I'm such a massive fan of the Ozzy stuff that I thought it was near blasphemous. All the hype around the 'Heaven & Hell' reunion (aka a Dio-fronted Black Sabbath unable to use that name thanks to Sharon Osbourne) made me want to give it a go though. What I found were a bunch of albums that stood on their own and could wear the Sabbath moniker with pride, especially their first one that gave them their new officially sanctioned band name, 'Heaven & Hell'.
Fourth Floor	11. The Waifs - Up All Night My obsession with the Waifs was actually spawned from an mp3eme this year. I was struggling for a song that had great harmonica playing in it, remembered one of the couple of Waifs songs that I knew and loved, and then subsequently went mental over their 'Up All Night' album. Their new one, 'Sun, Dirt, Water', was released this year, and it's fantastic too. Read my original post
Starry Picking Night 2 comments	12. Clare Bowditch - What Was Left I was completely taken by the beauty of this album back at the start of the year, with songs that take you through a range of emotions, and leave you affected in some way after it's all over, sometimes feeling a bit uneasy or slightly down. It's good to get an emotional response to music, it's what it's all about. Read my original post
Split Needles	13. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away This album was one of the first that I loved in 2007, and was the subject of one of my earliest posts. It's become my favourite Shins album, and it also posesses some of the best cover art of the year. A real progression for them and challenging/rewarding for the listener too. Read my original post
You Were But A Ghost In My Arms	14. Agalloch - The Mantle A friend who still keeps a finger on my waning \metal/ pulse recommended this album to me because he thought I'd dig the atmospheric, epic nature of the songs. I've fully embraced it, and love to put it on and get taken away to another world, a world painted by changing guitar melodies and tempos and great use of the Zeppelin patented 'light and shade'.

Other noteworthy obsessions to round out the top 25:

15. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - BRMC
16. I Heart Hiroshima - Tuff Teef (Read my original post)
17. Liam Finn - I'll Be Lightning (Read my original post)
18. Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
19. Ramones - Rocket To Russia
20. The Cult - Electric (Read my original post)
21. Richie & The Creeps (Read my original post)
22. Kings Of Leon - Because The Times (Read my original post)
23. Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Blank Generation
24. Sarah Blasko - What the Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have (Read my original post)
25. Beasts Of Bourbon - Little Animals

Check this shit out.  Radiohead hold the top 10 positions this week on last.fm for the most played tracks overall.  There are 10 tracks on 'In Rainbows' and every one of them is in the top 10!  But not only that, they're almost in the same order as they are on the album!  Far freakin' out, this has to be pretty rare.  Shows you what having no single does I guess, makes people get the whole thing and listen to the whole thing.  Oh, and it's amazing, so that helps.

Check it out yourself (if you click this link this week).

Radiohead still doing things to me -- that 'In Rainbows' just gets better every time.  'Bodysnatchers' is possibly the best song in the world, and 'Videotape' is haunting me at nights.  I've had all their other albums/EPs on shuffle rotation this week too, so they'll be there next week for sure.

Also got a little sidetracked on a Megadeth/Metallica thang this week -- it's been a while between drinks.  Megadeth's 'Holy Wars...The Punishment Due' from 'Rust In Peace' is truly a masterpiece and never fails to blow my mind after all these years.  That main riff is so fast that it is possible that it wasn't played by human hands at all.  Other factors are at play here.  It's below, please do yourself a favour and hit that play button.  Ahhh, Dave Mustaine, how I wish I didn't know that you were a born-again christian -- really undercuts the whole 'metal' thing you've got going on.  Kinda like knowing that Alice Cooper is a right-wing Bush supporter -- I haven't been able to listen to him in the same way since.

And John Lydon, you are amazing. You may well be a snotty nosed prick, but you are a freakin' genius.

Top Artists this Week (see more)

4 Nov 2007 – 11 Nov 2007

–	1		Radiohead	35
	2		Megadeth	29
7	3		Public Image Ltd.	28
	4		Metallica	27
3	5		Angus & Julia Stone	19
14	6		Black Rebel Motorcycle Club	17
5	7		You Am I	16
	7		Heaven & Hell	16
6	7		I Heart Hiroshima	16
6	10		Sex Pistols	14

Been a few moons since I last put my weekly Last.fm stuff up, but I think I'd like to look back at it one day to know what I was listening to at a certain time, so for no one's benefit but my own, I present last week's listening habits.

'In Rainbows' is doing things to me.  It took some listening to get into all the songs, and to start to differentiate some of the mellower ones, but man, it's good.  I paid $90+ for my copy of it, but that's because I pre-ordered the 'discbox' version which is apparently coming in December.  It has an extra disc on top of what you can download, so that should be fantastic.

Magically, bizarrely, my wife and I suddenly got into Missy Higgins' new album.  Every time we put it on before, we found ourselves saying "stop boring us Missy" and skipping tracks.  But suddenly the first single, 'Steer', sounds like her best song ever, when before it sounded like a pale imitation of 'Scar'.  Funny how these things can just click one day.

I'm really taken with the Sex Pistols and PiL, too.  PiL is a tough nut to crack, but so worthwhile.  Unlike anything I've heard before, so strange, great dub basslines, weird lyrics, no real choruses.  But completely engaging.  I keep wanting to put it back on, even before I knew if I was really enjoying it.  Thanks to Lester Bangs for the tip.

Top Artists this Week (see more)

28 Oct 2007 – 4 Nov 2007

1	1		Radiohead	105
19	2		Angus & Julia Stone	64
	3		Missy Higgins	40
7	4		Sex Pistols	31
	5		Martha Wainwright	26
	6		Silverchair	22
	7		The Shins	21
6	7		Black Sabbath	21
5	9		The Clash	19
7	10		Public Image Ltd.	18

Audio: Show us five CDs or albums that changed your life. 
Submitted by redhotmomma.

'Slippery When Wet' started it all for me - it opened my eyes to music.  I came from a family that never listened to music, and this blew me away.  It started an obsession with Bon Jovi that lasted years. I remember thinking "how could anyone not love this?".  The answer became clear in time, but not for a while...

'The Real Thing' allowed me to get the hell out of that cock rockin' phase that Bon Jovi began for me.  It was the first 'weird' album I loved.  Another contender here was Alice In Chains 'Dirt', which I potentially loved even more.  But this one started it.

Before 'Remasters', I never liked 'old music'.  I was too into slick over-produced sounds, and hated the rough sounds of 70s production.  This all changed thanks to Led Zeppelin, and began an obsession that ended up overtaking my desire to find new music.  I only searched for old music for a long time.

'Kid A' allowed me to get into styles of music that weren't rock.  I guess it began with 'OK Computer', but that was still a rock album really.  This one wasn't, and I loved it's weirdness, its soundscapes and especially its artwork.

Believe it or not, I never ever liked any music with a female vocalist.  At all.  I'm serious.  And I can't believe it.  However, 'She Will Have Her Way' changed all that and has spawned obsessions with Martha Wainwright, Clare Bowditch and Sarah Blasko among others.

Liking electronic music is still a bit of a novelty for me. You have to keep in mind that I was exclusively a metalhead/hard rocker from age 12. I didn't distinguish between evil dance/techno music and any other use of electronic instrumentation or sounds.

I can actually thank one of my favourite metal bands, Paradise Lost, for starting to change my attitude. They got ever so slightly electronic on 1997s 'One Second', and then followed it up with the very electronic 'Host' in 1999. Most of their fans turned away, but I somehow embraced it.

I then remember hearing The Fauves' 'Celebrate The Failure' on the radio in 2000 (I can picture exactly where I was in the car when I heard it) and being pretty sure I liked it, fake drum beats and all (much to my surprise). I guess the big riff helped though...

Then of course Radiohead took me the rest of the way.  It wasn't immediate though, because I didn't get 'Kid A' at first - it took a couple of years until I really loved it. 'Amnesiac', the 'Kid A' companion album, is now my favourite Radiohead album, and Radiohead themselves may just be my favourite band.

I've certainly still never embraced electonica whole heartedly though. My subsequent encounters have been sporadic. There was The Dissociatives collaboration between Daniel Johns and Paul Mac which was the perfect album for me at the time. And there was Jethro Tull's early 80s electronic experimentation with albums like 'Under Wraps' and Ian Anderson's solo 'Walk Into Light'. More recently I've thoroughly appreciated Nine Inch Nails' amazing sounds.

I've now found another electronic artist that I love - Gotye (pronounced 'gore-tee-yeah' according to the website, but that pronunciation only works with an Aussie/British accent, so I guess 'gaugh-tee-yeah' if you're American/Canadian). I first saw the excellent film clip for 'Hearts A Mess' a few months ago, and it all had such a Dissociatives feel that I had to get the album. I've been playing it constantly for weeks now.

There's something that speaks to me about the electronic music artist carefully creating a masterpiece from scratch, layer upon layer of sound in the computer. The creative possibilities seem endless, with conventional instruments and any other sound under the sun at their disposal.  I think if I were a musician I'd be like Trent Reznor.

This post was originally to be about just Gotye, but you got my life story instead. But you also get more music. Here's a sonic walk through my electronic music-listening career. Pretty limited, but plenty more than my experience between the ages of 12-20, ie not nothing.

I'll also throw in the 'Hearts A Mess' filmclip because it's so cool.

Post an acoustic song from your personal library

This is my first go at this mp3eme group thing, and I'm quite excited about this week's theme because I've always loved acoustic stuff.  In particular, I've always loved seeking out acoustic versions of non-acoustic songs.  I think you can't get any more honest than a stripped-down acoustic version of a song - it really highlights the songwriting and vocals and feels like they're playing in the room with you.

I don't know if it's kosher to do more than one, but I think I'll end up posting a few acoustic versions of songs over the week because I have so many cool ones. Here's the first - a haunting, beautiful, intense version of Creep by Radiohead.  It's off the My Iron Lung EP from 1994.

OK. The third and final installment. I'll keep it to 12 albums, one for every month.

9. Bob Geldof - Sex, Age & Death
Becoming more politically aware over the past few years has of course made me aware of Bob Geldofs work in the 'corridors of power' to persuade governments to adopt measures to make poverty history. But apart from the Boomtown Rats 'I Don't Like Mondays' and his 'Great Song Of Indifference' I didn't know any of his music. I thought he'd probably have a lot of good things to say.

This album was released after all the shit went down with Michael Hutchence dying, who was of course married to his ex-wife Paula Yates. Then Paula topped herself and all the kids from both relationships came to live with him.

That's a lot of shit to deal with so understandably the album doesn't get globally political - its just dealing with personal demons really. But he gets the message across with the same vehemence and intensity as he does with his political lobbying.

The $6,000,000 Loser probably best describes his state of mind:

take my head and fuck with it
Put it back again
We got the technology
to put it back again
The six million dollar loser
Rides again

He gets out and out nasty about what I can only assume is Paula Yates on 'One for Me' (you don't even need to get your clothes off anymore / you 're a bit too old for that stuff anyway) and 'Inside Your Head' (Does it always have to turn to shit / what the fuck's going on inside your head).

But he seems to find solace in the arms of faceless 'Pale White Girls' (limbs that are trembling for something to hold) and with another casual relationship (in '10:15') who 'kindly said she didnt mind' when he cried.

'Pale White Girls' is musically the best song, being a near perfect execution of atmosphere to match the lyrical content, melody, song structure that carefully builds to the chorus, understated vocals, and instrumentation. It really is breathtaking.

Geldof experiments musically with some electronic sounds, bass driven / percussive tracks, horns, and of course a nice mix of rock and acoustic songs. A definite grower too - I wasn't a big fan after my first listen but clearly I've gotten a fair bit out of it with repeated listens...

The cover art is great too because its' about as subtle as the lyrics and pretty clearly shows someone getting fucked.

dark days they come without sayin' anything

10. Thom Yorke - The Eraser

I do this weird little thing where I have a 'favorite band ever' (probably Led Zeppelin) and a favourite band still around today, which would probably be Radiohead. So I didn't really doubt that this would be amazing.

I think of this album as bleak beauty - its kinda like bare icy trees on a cold grey winters day. There's beauty in that but its not as in-your-face as nature on a summer's day.

The songs here are largely electronic, often with a driving bassline holding things together. They're a series of bleeps and bips with typical gentle soaring Yoke vocals. It's really quite amazing that he can turn what in effect are avant-garde soundscapes into beautiful engaging and often catchy songs.

Harrowdown Hill has been my favourite track from the get-go. Its got a great trebly baseline travelling throughout and a chorus that stays in my head for days. Lyrically its about a British weapons inspector that spoke out about the bogus wmd intelligence and got mysteriously disposed of:

Don't walk the plank like I did
You will be dispensed with
When you've become inconvenient

The question is asked 'did I fall or was I pushed' but it's a rhetorical question. There is a bleak comment on the current power balance in the world:

We think the same things
At the same time
We just can't do anything about it

But some hope too:

We think the same things
At the same time
There are too many of us
That you can't count

Cover art 10/10. What can I say - Stanley Donwood does it yet again. Fittingly, he's probably my favourite artist around today.

11. The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
The Raconteurs are a side project for Jack White from The White Stripes, two guys from The Greenhornes and Brendan Benson, solo artist and part time producer for The Greenhornes. They got together at Benson's place with the idea of doing something, wrote the amazing 'Steady As She Goes' and I guess figured they had something pretty special.

The band was actually called The Saboteurs here in Australia because there was already a band here called The Raconteurs. The Aussie band was offered some money to change it, but asked for more 'just to see what would happen'. Well, what happened was they got sweet FA and The Raconteurs went with something else.

Whatever you call them, they shouldn't really be called a side project because this is good. This is the equal of their amazing regular bands, dare I say it, better. By their powers combined they have a sound unlike any other. Songs like the title track, 'Intimate Secretary' and 'Store Bought Bones' sound almost other worldly - not because they're trippy or spacey but because they take the rock song sound somewhere new.

Vocally is where this album really grabs me. White and Benson harmonise and double/triple-track their vocals all over the place. But again, not in a conventional way, but rather, in keeping with this crazy sound I'm talking about. 'Broken Boy Soldiers' finds White singing like a man possessed.

I love The White Stripes and I love The Greenhornes (their 2005 EP 'East Grand Blues' almost made this list) but if they never recorded another note in favour of keeping this little nugget going I'd be a happy man.

12. Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam
There seem to be two schools of Pearl Jam fans - those who love Ten and Vs but were put off by the different sound and direction of Vitalogy or No Code, and those who still love everything they release. I fall firmly in the latter group, and can't really understand the former, except to say they really haven't heard some of the best rock albums of our time.

I think this one could possibly have brought some of the unbelievers back into the fold though. It's a bit of a rockin return to the Vs sound with songs every bit as good. It's a riff rock onslaught - we're 6 tracks in before we get a mellow song. Where as on the 'Riot Act' album there was a definite standout in the riff rock department (Save You), on this one there are about 5 contenders.

Of course, its not all about that, and we get some gorgeous moments too with the quiet 'Parachutes', the building intensity of 'Gone' and the lazy groove of 'Army Reserve'. A real highlight is the bluesy 'Come Back' which reminds me of Led Zep's 'Tea For One' in a way. And in the tradition of closing the album on an epic quieter note ('Release', 'Indifference', 'I'm Open'), 'Inside Job' doesn't disappoint.

It you used to love Pearl Jam then get this album. If you still love Pearl Jam then you've got this. Well done.

Alrighty, that's 2006 done. I can move on..