2007 Top 10 Lists (staff): Christina & Lindsey

Christina Rentz (Publicity)


1. Spoon @ Roseland Ballroom – October 20, 2007: 3200 fist-pumpers, a Merge shout out, a Destroyer cover (!!!), and the euphoria that comes with seeing a fantastic band at the top of their game!
2. The National – The Boxer: Took me awhile, but now I’m obsessed!
3. Oakley Hall @ Antone’s – March 2007: The first time I saw Oakley Hall, I thought how great they would sound in a real old time “music hall.” Boy, was I right!
4. Peter, Bjorn & John @ The Blender after-party SXSW: Free Sparks and crazed front row dancing at 3am to the catchiest songs I have heard this year.
5. Shout Out Louds “after-party” in the Cat’s Cradle parking lot October 2007: Shots out of cowbells, Swedish caviar in a tube, and sing-a-longs with The Rosebuds to strange Swedish televangelists.
6. The Ladybug Transistor, The Lucksmith’s & Still Flyin’ @ Duke Coffeehouse – October 2007: Made me wish I did more drugs! Also, too uncool to be at what turned into a very crazy party!
7. Arcade Fire & Spoon on SNL!
8. M.I.A. – Paper Planes: Will always make me think of my best friend’s bachelorette party. Cruising through the Tennessee Mountains in an SUV imitating the gunshot noises in the chorus with our mouths.
9. M. Ward w/ Norah Jones @ War Memorial Auditorium – April 2007: Watching Matt Ward woo more than a thousand Norah Jones fans, and then spending an hour and a half wondering if Norah and I could really share clothes (I totally think we could!)
10. Onion AV Club & Idolator: my internet soulmates.


Lindsey Kronmiller (radio/video/online promotions)

Top 10 non-Merge albums of '07 (1 - 10):

The National - Boxer
Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
Menomena - Friend and Foe
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls
Akron/Family - Love Is Simple
The Sea & Cake - Everybody
Bishop Allen - The Broken String
VARIOUS/SOUL JAZZ - Brazil 70 : After Tropicalia - New Directions In
Brazilian Music In the 1970's


Top 10 (including Merge albums)

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
The National - Boxer
Caribou - Andorra
Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
The Clientele - God Save The Clientele
The Broken West - I Can't Go On, I'll Go On
Menomena - Friend and Foe
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls

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2007 Top 10 Lists (staff): WIlson Fuller

Wilson Fuller (mailorder/digital assets manager)


The Ladybug Transistor/Lucksmiths/Still Flyin'- LIVE @ Duke Coffeehouse (10/1/07)
Au Revoir Simone
BMFD
Bowerbirds
Feist
The National
New Magnetic Wonder
Panda Bear
SLGTM
Springsteen
St. Vincent

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2007 Top 10 Lists (staff): Charlotte Walton

Charlotte Walton (Chief Financial Officer)


1 Richard Hawley - Lady's Bridge
2 Club 8 - The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Dreaming
3 Iron and Wine - Shepherd's Dog
4 Bishop Allen - The Broken String
5 Great Lake Swimmers - Ongiara
6 Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
7 Little Name - How To Live and Swim
8 Loney, Dear - Loney, Noir
9 The Clientele - God Save The Clientele
10 Elliott Smith - New Moon

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2007 Top 10 Lists (staff): Jack Ball

Jack Ball (Production Manager/Soccer Hooligan)

My top 10 music (I do have a top 10 of best soccer games of the year, but that might bore everyone.):

1. Clutch - From Beale Street To Oblivion
2. Bad Brains - Build a Nation
3. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Palomar - All Things, Forests
5. Superchunk - Misfits and Mistakes
6. Darkest Hour - Deliver Us
7. Avril Lavigne - Best Damn Thing
8. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
9. Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
10. MIA - Kala

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2007 Top 10 Lists (staff): Mac McCaughan

Mac McCaughan (Merge co-owner/Portastatic/Superchunk)


Been fretting over Top 10s of late...a lot of great stuff came out this year and I don't think I can get it down to 10! And as usual I'm including no Merge releases, which I naturally listened to more than anything else...so without too much analyzing, these kept making their way back into the player over and over this year:

Dirty Projectors - Rise Above
Feist - The Reminder
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
New Pornographers - Challengers
Bill Callahan - Woke On a Whaleheart
Shins - Wincing the Night Away
The National - Boxer
Bruce Springsteen - Magic
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
Okkervil River - The Stage Names

and all tied for #11...:
Tracey Thorn - Out of the Woods
Bishop Allen - The Broken String
Caetano Veloso - Ce
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Kevin Drew - Spirit If...
Robert Plant / Allison Krauss - Raising Sand
Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War
Loney Dear - Loney Noir
Majik Markers - Boss
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

Man o' man like I said too much great stuff to narrow it down! And surpsingly "indie" when I look at it now -- a great year for indie rock whatever that means, and i think you do. People complained about the Feist Apple ad -- they watch too much TV, and 1234 wasn't nearly the best song on there. Panda Bear took me by surprise as I've never been absorbed into the Animal Collective's clutches really. Tracey Thorn's record is so good and without deserved fanfare. I'm still not sure if I'm spelling Loney Dear correctly.

Not mentioned here were some amazing reissues as well: Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall, Young Marble Giants Colossal Youth, and the Betty Davis reissues come to mind. Sonic Youth reissued Daydream Nation live on stage.

Records I couldn't catch up with long enough to get to know but that I probably will love soon include the Fiery Furnaces - Widow City, Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger, Battles, and maybe even that Radiohead record...it's on my computer somewhere....

Here's hoping 2008 is as plentiful.

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Ross Flournoy

Ross Flournoy from The Broken West shares his favorite releases of 2007 ("in no particular order"):

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
Broken Social Scene presents Kevin Drew - Spirit If...
Okkervil River - The Stage Names
Oakley Hall - I'll Follow You
Iron & Wine - The Shepard's Dog
Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall
The National - Boxer
Trans Am - Sex Change

The Broken West plan to head into the studio early in 2008 and hope to have a new album ready by the fall. Stay tuned for more details.

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Ivan Howard

Ivan Howard of The Rosebuds chimes in with his personal Top 10 List Of Musical Events of 2007:


Here is my Top 10 List Of Musical Events for me in 2007. It is impossible for me to pick a "top 10 albums" list since I have not heard a lot of new records this year, and every time I try make a top 10 list I always forget something either way!

10.) Selling out the Bowery Ballroom in NYC on our US Tour in May. You have to understand that our first ever show as The Rosebuds in NY was at a place called the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A, that held about 15 people all of whom were friends of the band we were playing with. Well, I should not say it was a real show because it really was an "Open Mic" night where everyone in the audience got in for free. The only catch was they had a two drink minimum!

9.) Watching the Red Sox clinch the division title from the center-field bleacher seats at Fenway park, with 9 of my best friends and watching the whole crowd sing the "ba ba bas" during Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline."

8.) The Quincy Jones Autobiography. Probably the best biography I have read. You can't imagine the things that he has actually done, and the bluntness with which he tells his life story. He spares no one including himself.

7.) I had a random email from a band out in the San Francisco bay area called the Morning Benders one morning asking if they could send me the new e.p. that they just finished (called "Boarded Doors"). I told them I would love to hear it and when it arrived at our house, I put it on in the kitchen when I was doing the dishes and was blown away. We asked them to open up our show at the Great American Music hall in SF a few months later.

6.) Kelly went up to NYC this summer to check out a few standup comedy shows and saw Micheal Showalter's comedy CD taping show at Union Hall (which we love by the way) and told me about a sketch he did about a poem he wrote in his high school literary journal. Well I finally heard that story on the CD and it is hilarious! Up there with "the Gorch" from Jon Wurster. What does it have to do with music you ask? Not really sure, but it isn't bothering me either way.

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5.) I recently had reconstructive ACL surgery, and while I was laying around the house for a couple of weeks Kelly and I watched the Bourne Identity Triology on DVD. Man, I might trade a few songs to be able to speak 80 languages and fight like Jason Bourne. I guess I can already drive like he does though. Did you see Kelly and I
test drive that Volvo on the Rosebuds Blog?

4.) The first 3 hours of the new Tom Petty documentary Running Down a Dream. Full Moon Fever was the first cassette tape I ever bought.

3.) After we played the Parish in Austin, TX on our last US tour, we met up with Jim Eno from Spoon and he showed Kelly, Matt, Giorgio and I his new Public Hi-Fi Recording Studio. It's a palace. He put me in the captain's chair of the control room, and played two of my favorite songs in the world back to back and I almost died from how good they sounded over those speakers there... and the fact that I did not even suggest what songs to play, they were already cued up. "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Ain't Know Sunshine When She's Gone."


2.) Watching Bon Iver's" first show ever at our Rosebuds' show at the House of Rock in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We drove all night from Chicago to get to the afternoon show on time, and Justin (aka Bon Iver) who was our guitarist on tour kept telling us about how awesome his hometown was and about this place called The Joynt down from the venue where his parents met. Well what was awesome was the Bon Iver set. That was the first time any of us ever saw Justin play those songs. When he played "For Emma, For Ever Ago" and dedicated it to Kelly and me, it was all I could do to even watch the song it was so good. If I would have been more of a man I would have just balled my eyes out like I wanted to right there in front of everyone. But I kept it together that time.

1.) Eating breakfast with Ian Brown from The Stone Roses in Moscow, Russia. He is Kelly's "Elvis." It would actually be tied with hearing the bass line to "I Want to be Adored" with 3000 screaming Russians come over the PA speakers of the club we were playing together. I never thought that would be a possibility, but you never know what a random email could bring about.


(photo courtesy of Stranded In Stereo)

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Daniel Bejar

Dan Bejar has a new Destroyer album on the way in 2008 - Trouble In Dreams will be released on March 18th - but here a a few of his favorite things from 2007:


Frog Eyes - Tears Of The Valedictorian
Cass McCombs - Dropping The Writ
Bill Callahan - Woke On A Waleheart
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
Robert Pollard - Coast to Coast Carpet of Love
The Clientele - God Save The Clientele
Babyshambles - Shotter's Nation
Plush - Take A Chance (video); I Sing Silence (rough mix)
Devon Williams - A Truce/Elevator (7")
Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Adam Olenius

Adam Olenius from Shout Out Louds shares his Top 10 of 2007.


Music on tape:

1. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
2. LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
3. Studio - Yearbook 1
4. The National - Boxer
5. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
6. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
7. Anna Järvinen - Jag fick en feeling
8. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer
9. Brazil 70 - After Tropicalia
10. Laakso - Mother I Am Good Looking?

Other great things from 2007:

Bonanza Coffee Heroes in Berlin
Music Hall Of Williamsburg
Caetano Veloso
Closer by Anton Corbijn
GPS
Spider and James from The Pogues


Stay tuned for new Shout Out Louds' North American tour dates to be announced in early 2008.


(photo courtesy of Chromewaves/Frack Yang)

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Gary, Steve and Jeffrey from Big Dipper!

We'll be releasing a 3-disc Big Dipper retrospective in March and the band will be re-forming for some shows in April! Check out an mp3 of She's Fetching!

Gary Waleik's Top 10(s):

Top Ten LP's I've rediscovered now that I've reconnected my turntable:

1) Here Come the Warm Jets - Brian Eno
2) A Different Kind of Tension - Buzzcocks
3) Ringo - Ringo Starr
4) Volume, Contrast, Brilliance - The Monochrome Set
5) Aphrodesia - Jackie Gleason
6) Chairs Missing - Wire
7) June 1, 1974 - Kevin Ayers
8) A Nice Pair - Pink Floyd
9) Lolita Nation - Game Theory
10) You Broke My Heart in Seventeen Places - Tracy Ullman


Top Ten Wax Cylinders I've Rediscovered Now That I've Repaired
the Victrola:

1) Man Will Never Walk on the Moon - Grumpy Gus and His Nattering
Naysayers
2) Prohibition is Next to Godliness - The Idle Rich Christian
Women's Abstinence League Choir
3) The Depression is Good for People Like You and Me - Bootstrap
Bob and the Blue Collar Self-Haters
4) I Foresee a Time Fifty Years Hence When a Band Called Guided
By Voices Emerges from Dayton, Ohio - Honolulu Slim
5) Lye Soap Blues - The Yonkers Boys Choir
6) Gee, Ain't Mississippi Swell? - The Hudson Bay Chorus
7) Young, Loud and Snotty - Dead Boys
8) A Tribute to Lightnin' Hopkins - Lawrence Welk and His
Orchestra
9) The Hanukkah Variations - Richard Wagner
10) You're A Grand Old Flag - Theodore Roosevelt and the Fifty
Ninth United States Congress Glee Club

Steve Michener's Top 10 Music Business deaths in 2007:

1)Lee Hazlewood....What can you say? He discovered
Duane Eddy and gave Nancy Sinatra a career. One of the
greats.
2)Luciano Pavarotti....Quick, name the other two
tenors!
3)Porter Waggoner....Leaving this world with a
satisfied mind.
4)Denny Doherty....Mamas and Papas singer AND Canadian
citizen. We all should accomplish so much in one
lifetime.
5)Max Roach....one of the greatest drummers of all
time.
6)Boots Randolph.....Composed and played 'Yakety Sax',
the theme song to Benny Hill. If there were a god it
would have been Benny who got the brain hemmorrhage.
7)Robert Goulet....I'll give him a pass on his lame
music career since he was Wheezy the penguin in Toy
Story 2.
8)Bobby 'Boris' Pickett....Born in Somerville,MA, he
wrote 'Monster Mash' in 30 minutes and spent the rest
of his life cashing BMI checks.
9)Don Ho....Brought Hawaiian music to the mainstream
with nary a slack key guitar in sight. Not one of the
greats.
10)Hilly Kristal....Owner of CBGBs where I spent some
of the best nights of my musical life.

Jeffrey Oliphant's Top 10 Fun Things from 2007:

1) ELO - Time
2) Fountains Of Wayne - Utopia Parkway
3) Brian Adams - Greatest Hits
4) Smart Money.com
5) Nikki Sixx- Heroin Diaries
6) The Future For Investors - Jeremy J Siegel
7) Yahoo Fantasy Sports
8) Michael Savage Radio Show
9) Moon Bats
10) Connells - Ring

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Jeremy Gara

Jeremy Gara from Arcade Fire chimes in with his Top 10 of 2007:

1. Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger
2. Susanna Wallumrod – Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos
2. Blonde Redhead – 23
2. Radiohead – In Rainbows
2. Supersilent – 8
2. Colleen – Les Ondes Silencieuses
2. The Luyas – Faker Death
2. Nels Cline Singers – Draw Breath
2. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
2. Sunn 0))) – Oracle
3. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Ire Works (I haven’t bought this yet, but I know it’ll hit the top ten when I do…)
3. Jay Reatard – Blood Visions (last year, but I was late finding it.)

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Caribou

Caribou (aka Dan Snaith) made his Merge debut in 2007 with his stunning new album Andorra, which means he gets his first shot at a Merge Year End Top 10 list. Here's Dan's rookie card...


1. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
2. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
3. Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid - Tongues
4. Battles - Mirrored
5. Ariel Pink - Scared Famous
6. No Age - Weirdo Rippers
7. Fridge – The Sun
8. Junior Boys – Dead Horse EP
9. Koushik – Out My Window (not yet released but much enjoyed)
10. Born Ruffians – Red, Yellow and Blue (not yet released but much enjoyed)


Look for Caribou to be back in North America for another round of tour dates in early 2008.

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Britt Daniel

Britt Daniel of Spoon shares his 10 favorite albums of 2007:

Handsome Furs - Plague Park
Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
Feist - The Reminder
John Vanderslice - Emerald City
LCD SoundSystem - Sound of Silver
The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Low - Drums and Guns
Interpol - Our Love To Admire

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2007 Top 10 Lists: Tracyanne & Carey of Camera Obscura

We kick off our 2007 Year-end lists with Tracyanne Campbell and Carey Lander of Camera Obscura!

****
Tracyanne's Top 10:

As usual the majority of the music I've bought hasn't been contemporary.
Here's a list of the best
of contemporary I have managed to buy and enjoy in no particular order:

1.John Rauhouse - Steal Guitar Heart Attack
My boyfriend got me into this. The sound of his guitar makes me melt. John's
guitar that is...
2.Taken By Trees - Open Field
Simply beautiful and fragile. A fantastic debut.
3. Jens Lekman - Night Falls over Kortedala
The ingredients he uses to season his songs are a wonderful mystery to me.
This album makes me greedily want more and more and more from Jens Lekman.
4.The Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
What can I say? A Good old fashioned rock band with great tunes.
My highlight is 'Fans'.
5.Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight
I love the 80's vibe. It's very good to dance to which is important.
6.Feist - Reminder
I recently saw her perform in Glasgow and it was the most enjoyable show
I've been to in years. She makes me want to go home and practice playing guitar.
7.The Clientele - God Save the Clientele
'The Queen of Seville' makes tears pop out of me every time.
8.Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars
Genius!
9.Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
This was released in the UK in 2006 but I had to put it in. I'll never tire
of 'Rehab'.
10. Richard Hawley - Lady's Bridge
Hopelessly devoted...


Carey's Top 10:

1. Richard Hawley - Lady's Bridge
2. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
3. Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars.
4. Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
5. Loney Dear - Loney Dear, Loney Noir
6. Taken By Trees - Open Field
7. The Clientele - God Save The Clientele
8. Innocence Mission - We walked in Song
9. Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight
10. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

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