Best Of 2007: Overlooked Records
Tuesday December 18, 2007 @ 03:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Welcome to the first part of ChartAttack's year-end coverage, our annual Overlooked Records column, where we take a look at some of the albums we didn't have time to review this year.

ChartAttack's year-end wrap continues later this week with a look back at some of the best photos of the year and our Top 15 Albums Of 2007, which you can read on Friday. Next week we're off, but we'll be back in 2008.

THE BLACK LIPS Good Bad Not Evil (Vice/Warner)
After breaking through earlier in the year with a hear-it-to-believe-it live collection of previously recorded songs, The Black Lips proved they could turn the studio trick with Good Bad Not Evil. The Lips' cleanest recording to date is still full of the same filthy rock that barely-but-thankfully made it through on their first two records. Probably the dirtiest-looking band on Earth's music is like the soundtrack to hell, if hell was an endless desert with speakers attached to every cactus. Elements of surf rock grace the sharp edges of barn-burners "O Katrina!" and "Cold Hands," while "Navajo" might be the greatest song ever written about native Americans. And how many other bands would clinically break down the question, "How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Has Died?" What makes the Lips most compelling, though, is that they sing every note like it's the last. Noah Love

THE CAVE SINGERS Invitation Songs (Matador/Beggars)
How you feel about The Cave Singers depends entirely on what you think of lead singer Pete Quirk's peculiar drawl. It's shrill, tense and doesn't have a great deal of range, but it's also so distinctive that it lifts these folk oddities above so many also-rans. It helps that guitarist Derek Fudesco (Murder City Devils, Pretty Girls Make Graves) has the experience to know what drama is and provides plenty of it in the instrumentation. "New Monuments" has all the chill of a Clinic song, while album opener "Seeds Of The Night" builds, as most of the songs do, on a simple guitar line into a choral singalong. Colin Stewart's production gives Invitation Songs the '70s atmosphere it so desperately wants/needs, making this a neat little folk rock gem. Noah Love

JARVIS COCKER Jarvis (World's Fair)
Leave it to Jarvis Cocker to move to Paris and not only escape the trappings of the city’s romanticism, but somehow grow even more sardonically bitter. The former Pulp frontman’s solo debut drips with his acerbic wit as he addresses the disillusionment in human existence. He implores girls to find someone who appreciates them in his trademark disaffected deadpan on “Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time.” The more palpable vitriol surfaces in the stripped-down, punk guitar-infused “Fat Children,” where Cocker blithely intones “Fat children took my life” over and over again. It’s all part of a brilliant and masterfully paced record of Cocker’s wry lyricism and assured pop compositions. According to Cocker, the world is fucked, so why not be happy? It seems the bookish man from Sheffield has finally done it — without all the E’s and Whizz, to boot. Matt Littlefair

DAN DEACON Spiderman Of The Rings (Carpark)
I never considered Woody Woodpecker’s laugh haunting until I heard what Baltimore-based electro whiz Dan Deacon did to it. On appropriately titled album opener “Woody Woodpecker,” swirling loops of the iconic bird’s signature laugh ferment into a hellish hallucination, with a rhythm that’s oddly soothing. The fact that Deacon’s breakthough opens with the demented bird laugh is illustrative of his charm. He has a great time messing with you, while still eliciting an uncontrollable urge to tap your feet along to his robotic drum tracks and ever-changing compositions. A strafing beat, ambient noise and synth crescendos rise and fall like some dizzying drive through the hills of Montana in hyperspeed on album centrepiece “Wham City.” It leaves any misgivings about Deacon’s talents wallowing in the dust. It’s impossible to understate Deacon’s ability. He deftly combines elements from seemingly disparate musical aesthetics and resolutely spins them into his own creation. Matt Littlefair

DEERHOOF Friend Opportunity (Kill Rock Stars)
There's an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa's rival builds a diorama depicting "The Tell-Tale Heart." It's exacting in both scale and detail and puts Lisa's effort to shame. Deerhoof is that other kid. Building on the success of 2005's The Runners Four, the San Francisco noise-rock trio have crafted another record that'll leave your lower mandible dragging along the linoleum in awe. Satomi Matsuzaki's hyper-girlish delivery borders on cartoonish camp, rendering lyrics nearly incomprehensible, save for random snippets that are bafflingly esoteric. But that just amps the texture quotient of Friend Opportunity. For this band, lyrics are just a melodic punctuation for their brilliant, time signature-shifting compositions. Case in point: the series of gently picked trills on "The Galaxist." That's where you'll find the band at their best, circling amidst unpredictable guitar phrasing and rampaging drums. Unlike Lisa Simpson, there's no need to feel embittered. You can just sit back and admire Deerhoof's creativity. Matt Littlefair

DEERHUNTER Cryptograms (Kranky)
If Atlanta (also home to The Black Lips) is the new Texas (the new U.S. home of indie rock), then Deerhunter are its At The Drive-in. It just feels like something this good can't possibly last. Given that guitarist Colin Mee quit and then rejoined the band in the fall, it probably won't. The quintet had two significant releases in 2007 — this and the Flourescent Grey EP, the songs of which somehow managed to outdistance those on the brilliant Cryptograms. The full-length combines subtle ambience with pop that explodes from your speakers. The title track begins with frontman Bradford Cox's startling, pedal-drenched vocals and then drifts into one of the best guitar assaults of the year. The record kicks into high gear in the second half with the one-two punch of "Spring Hall Convert" and "Strange Lights," which resonate so powerfully it's hard to believe they're positioned right beside each other. Deerhunter might not have been the year's most popular indie rock act, but they were its best. Noah Love

DIZZEE RASCAL Maths + English (XL/Beggars)
Dizzee Rascal's Maths + English, as its title suggests, is a record of basics, but executed by somebody in the advanced class. It's also the London-based MC's most accessible effort for North American audiences. Dizzee's East London inflection still indelibly stamps every syllable, but he's inched further away from his Grime-star roots in favour of a more dancefloor-friendly, dare I say it, Americanized sound. He's more frequently brilliant than not. His spiteful derision of wannabe gangsters on "Where's Da G's" is hard evidence of that. When Dizzee snarls, "Love to sit and listen/But we know that you don't walk the walk," the disdain boils over the snapshot bass line. His syntactic venom isn't always so incisive, like on the boorish and regrettably infantile "Suck My Dick." But cut for cut, the good far outweighs the lame posturing on yet another exercise in expectation-defiance. Matt Littlefair

THE FIELD From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)
From Here We Go Sublime is a tangible execution of the principle of "Occam's Razor" — the simplest answer is usually the right one. Swedish electronica producer Axel Willner (the one-man auteur behind The Field) layers tried and true modulated samples and synth notes on run-of-the-mill drum loops to create soundscapes that are arresting in both simplicity and depth. The broad, gauzy My Bloody Valentine-esque samples on "Sun On Ice" prove to be the apex of the record as they wash over a barely restrained beat that eerily mimics the listener's own slightly elevated heart-rate. What propels Willner above the plethora of assholes with laptops is his avoidance of cliche — a considerable feat given his source material. From Here We Go Sublime isn't the record you put on to pass time on your daily commute. You put it on once you've gotten home and want to forget about everything else that's happened that day. Matt Littlefair

PARTS & LABOR Mapmaker (Jagjaguwar)
Having never raced along the Bonneville Salt Flats in a rocket car, I can only speculate as to what it feels like to be hurtling across a horizonless landscape at supersonic speeds whilst seated atop thousands of pounds of jet fuel. Nevertheless, I'm confident that Brooklyn-based trio Parts & Labor are the aural equivalent. Mapmaker represents a marked but assured progression from last year's sharp-edged Stay Afraid. Most notably, the band include a galloping horn section on the excellent "Fractured Skies" without losing any of the sonic oomph they deliver like a melodic jackhammer. (Now-former) drummer Chris Weingarten's hyperactive snare assails with the focus of an ADHD kid juiced up on a handful of Ritalin and lays the framework for the scratchy guitars and harrowing vocals. Strap yourself in and enjoy the feeling of the wind turning your face into silly putty. Matt Littlefair

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS S/T (Killer Pimp)
One gets the feeling My Bloody Valentine decided to reunite because of bands like A Place To Bury Strangers. There are no shortage of groups emulating Loveless's classic template and MBV must have figured, "If all these bands can profit off of this, why not us?" If Autolux took on MBV's more lush tendencies and Serena Maneesh handled the ambient side, then Brooklyn's A Place To Bury Strangers are all about the noise. You can practically hear your eardrums shattering at a show when you spin the group's self-titled debut. It's soaked in Joy Division dread and early Nine Inch Nails effects for good measure. They're obviously not the first to mine this territory, though they might be the most exciting. That three people could produce a sound this big is astonishing. That they could be good enough to render obsolete the entire MBV comeback is even more of an accomplishment. Noah Love

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