What I listened to in 2007: Notes

11Feb08

[Note:  My favorite album of 2007, Wussy’s Left For Dead, is reviewed at Wussy's Left For Dead] 
Arcade Fire and Bruce Springsteen
David makes an interesting and not uncompelling argument in an essay on this blog (Bruce Springsteen’s Neon Bible) that Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, which I like well-enough, and my number 2 record of the year, Bruce Springsteen’s [...]

Filed under: Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, Bruce Springsteen, Five Star Songs, M.I.A., Year-End Wrap-Up, Youssou N'Dour   |  1 Comment

Shuffle: Just Like Old Times (*****)

11Feb08

The greatest singer songwriters know how to twist a cliché inside out until it turns up a totally new thought, and the best recording right now are Todd Snider and Amy Rigby.  I mean, who really needs a 2006 song called “Just Like Old Times”? 
Well, here are the old times:  pool shark runs into [...]

Filed under: Five Star Songs, Shuffle, Todd Snider   |  2 Comments

Shuffle: Moog Island (*****)

11Feb08

Morcheeba is the classic case of a band without credibility.  If trip hop was your scene, they were sellout popsters driven to make money selling records to noncultists; if you had no interest in trip hop, there was nothing in particular about Morcheeba that would change your mind – they didn’t have the hooks or [...]

Filed under: Five Star Songs, Morcheeba, Shuffle   |  1 Comment

Five Star Songs

11Feb08

Shameless listmaker that I am, I have a list of 315 five-star songs.  Naturally, this is something I couldn’t have had before the iPod, which provides both the means for reviewing songs for such a list, and the database for recording the rating.  I don’t swear, as I write this, that there aren’t 10 songs [...]

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