What better way to finish the year than with a variety of violent, bloody, minifig deaths? Answer me that.
Dunechaser from The Brothers Brick has shown a beautifully gory and death-ridden scene from Beowulf by Micah Berger today. The overall scene is above, but you can see some of the more imaginative deaths in the Brickshelf gallery here.
I did actually review this wonderful album quite a while back in an extraordinarily short lived album review section. It’s just as good now as it was when I loved it then.
Hypnotic, beautiful, intriguing and stark, this is an album wonderfully suited to the now wintry landscape, so if you didn’t listen to me and buy it then, do so now.
Stand Out Tracks: A Paw In My Face, Silent
A little late for Christmas, I know, but I did like this. (via Bits and Pieces)
This was the album I was probably looking forward to the most in 2007 (mainly because I didn’t really expect Radiohead to get around to releasing anything). 2004’s Funeral is one of my favourite albums of recent times - a real grower that becomes a veritable firecracker over time.
A lot of reviews felt the need to point out that Neon Bible isn’t as good. It’s not, but this isn’t important since it shows that Arcade Fire are more than capable of repeating the genius from that album and stretching it out in new and exciting directions.
Also, despite Neon Bible not quite fitting together as the wonderful whole that Funeral manages, Neon Bible probably trumps its predecessor in terms of stand-out tracks. Keep The Car Running, Intervention, Antichrist Television Blues*, No Cars Go and My Body Is A Cage are wonderful songs on a great album that desperately deserves many a listen.
*Many people have pointed out that this track sounds like it could be a Bruce Springsteen song, like that’s supposed to be a bad thing. Weird. For me it’s the best track on the album.
Stand out tracks: Keep The Car Running, Intervention, Antichrist Television Blues
Another cracking piece of work from Count Blockula. Note especially the drawers, cologne bottle, and great use of tile pieces for the jumper / shirt collection. This is what I imagine my boss’s wardrobe to be like.
Any song that rhymes ‘Collagen’ with ‘apologin’ has got to be pretty good, but made all the better by the redneck setting in this video. This made me laugh out loud a number of times.
James Murphy is quite a man. I wasn’t a huge fan of LCD’s first album, and so I missed this when it was first released. Then I heard All My Friends and Someone Great, and I fell in love.
All My Friends is an amazing extravaganza of a song. It’s not afraid to take an age to get going and it only bothers with one chord for the whole journey. Starting and finishing the first verse with the line “That’s how it starts” is a stroke of genius in a song that rarely strays far from the home of genius. I could go on all day, but skip to the end of the track when I am, inevitably, bouncing around the room like a loon shouting “If I could see all my friends tonight” and you may begin to see why I love it so much. And John Cale did a cracking cover on the single too.
All My Friends is, certainly, the best moment of Sound of Silver, but every track on the album would be one of the best, if not the best song on pretty much any other album this year. If this is what we can come to expect of LCD Soundsystem over the next few albums, then I wonder whether there will be any great need for any other bands at all.
Stand out tracks: All My Friends, Someone Great
Before 2007, I hadn’t heard of The National at all. By the end of it, I realise they’ve produced two of my favourite albums ever, and also been the best gig I’ve been to all year.
Boxer, on first listen, can seem a little depressing. The slightly drawling baritone voice of Matt Berninger can sound rather morose at first, and the well, second, third and fourth listen. But gradually, the uplifting, beautiful nature of the music begins to come through.
The National sport one of the best drummers around at the moment, in my opinion, and the guitar and bass parts are pretty well off the norm a lot of the time. Boxer is a splendid album, and whenever I hear the lines from Slow Show,
You know I dreamed about you for twenty-nine years before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I missed you for twenty-nine years
I stop and listen again.
Stand out tracks: Brainy, Slow Show
No surprises (ba-dum) that this album is one of my favourites. There’s not a lot that Radiohead have taken part in that I haven’t loved and told people about for far longer than they’ve remained interested.
Even for Radiohead though, In Rainbows is one special album. In a way, it returns to the immediacy of the lyrics and tunes found on The Bends and Pablo Honey, but at the same time the forays Radiohead have made into the experimental through Kid A, Amnesiac, and to a lesser extent, Hail To The Thief, can be heard here as well.
The release of this album coincided with a very unhappy break-up for me and it felt remarkably like this album had been written just for my benefit (”you reel me out and then you cut the string”, “you are all I need”, “has the light gone out for you? Because the light’s gone out for me” etc), as all the best albums should. This album also played through my recovery and return to happiness, and it fitted perfectly for that too.
Don’t let their popularity fool you, Radiohead are a blistering, groundbreaking band, and they’ll be the band you’ll be telling your grandchildren about. Don’t be an idiot.
Stand out tracks: Bodysnatchers, Videotape
Here starts an almost certainly incomplete, and in-no-particular-order list of albums I have enjoyed greatly in 2007, as the year winds its windy way to the end of the windy road.
Person Pitch, I have decided, is the album that would be made if Sigur Ros and The Beach Boys got together and decided to make a prog rock album. Except it’s good. Extraordinary, in fact.
The result is a hypnotic, dazing experience of loops and riffs, noises and claps, which manages to sound vaguely apocalyptic and generally mind-blowing.
Panda Bear is probably better known as a member of the wonderful Animal Collective, but in my opinion this album blows all of theirs out of the water and then some. It’s an amazing piece of work, and well worth anyone’s HMV vouchers. Buy, buy, buy!
Stand out tracks: Bros, Take Pills.
It’s nearly Christmas, and so it’s time to look back over the hysteria of the Evening Standard’s year with the wonderful compilation put together on Linkmachinego. Take a deep breath, and off you go. link.
Another film that I’m really looking forward to in 2008 is Where The Wild Things Are. The visuals are looking pretty damn good, and Spike Jonze is one of the very few people I’d trust such an amazing book to. Let’s hope I’m not disappointed. link (via ffffound)
Other than the fact he’s from Lazio, I know nothing about the guy. But he’s one talented guy. link
