Best albums of 2007

21. Spy Machine 16, How Things Come Apart

About half of the songs on How Things Come Apart were originally on Spy Machine 16's debut EP, The Soap From This Soapbox Makes My Dirty Feet Slide, so anyone hoping for a wealth of new material on the band's first full-length may have been disappointed. Otherwise, there wasn't much to complain about, as SM16 successfully translated all the energy and excitement of their live show to disc -- no easy feat, when you consider that one-quarter of the band's line-up is comprised of dancers. As a bonus, the lyrics weren't just politically aware, they were also literate (two adjectives that rarely go together in pop music).

Download "On Struggles For Change And Hope"


20. Torngat, You Could Be

As I said a few months ago, this is post-rock even someone like me can enjoy. Rather than showing off their virtuosity via random time signature shifts, Torngat made an instrumental album that could be described with words like "playful", "whimsical" and "fun".

Download "You Could Be"


19. Abdominal, Escape From The Pigeon Hole

There aren't many rappers who could get a city's mayor to contribute to an album that also features the most explicit sex song imaginable, but Abdominal does it on Escape From The Pigeon Hole (on "T.Ode", featuring Toronto mayor David Miller, and "Sex With Girls", respectively). That he's able to do so and make it sound like the most natural thing in the world speaks volumes about his talent. Plus, who can resist a song like "Pedal Pusher", where the wheels being bragged about are on his bike?

Download "Pedal Pusher"


18. Maybe Smith, Animals & Architects

Colin Skrapek is just one man, but in his head he contains multitudes of insanely catchy pop songs (as is displayed repeatedly on Animals & Architects).

Download "Hearts Like Bears"


17. Justice, Cross

An office is probably the last place in which Justice meant for Cross to be listened to, but I can't count the number of days where I sat at my desk, slipped in some earbuds, and chair-danced to this album. The grinding basslines are big enough to swallow anyone whole, and they helped make Cross one of the most fun albums of 2007.

Download "Let There Be Light"


16. The Weakerthans, Reunion Tour

Reunion Tour may not live up to the standards of The Weakerthans' previous albums, but then again, few could. This is a solid album from a band a decade into their career, who know exactly how they want to sound and how to go about achieving it. It may not win them tonnes of new fans, but it's certainly enough to satisfy anyone who loved the band already.

Download "Civil Twilight"


15. Sunparlour Players, Hymns For The Happy

Sunparlour Players live sound like a cross between Sufjan-esque orchestral pop and some deranged Appalachian mountain man, with a bit of Arcade Fire thrown in for good measure (this last part is according to my girlfriend; I can't hear it). They may not quite capture this mix in all its intensity on Hymns For The Happy, but they're
not far off from it, either.

Download "If The Creeks Don't Rise"


14. Stars, Do You Trust Your Friends?

The bad news for Stars in 2007 was that their proper new album, In Our Bedroom After The War wasn't very good, apart from a few flashes here and there of brilliance. On the upside, however, Do You Trust Your Friends? showed that 2004's Set Yourself On Fire holds up stronger than ever, even when its songs are being picked apart and put back together by some of the best artists in Canada. Final Fantasy, Young Galaxy, Kevin Drew and The Dears were among the musicians who made appearances, and without fail everyone involved left a positive impression. Not huge impressions, mind you, but enough they they were able to leave their marks and still have the strengths of the originals come shining through.

Download "Celebration Guns (Camouflage Nights with Kevin Drew Mix"


13. Mother Mother, Touch Up

I may have been just a tad hyperbolic when I said that Touch Up was the best album of the year way back in March. What I wasn't wrong about, though, is how well Mother Mother throw together everything you could imagine and still come out sounding great. Rap, rock, country, bluegrass, punk -- the band is willing to experiment with everything they can think of, and more often than not their experiments are successful.

Download "Dirty Town"


12. The New Pornographers, Challengers

Whereas a lot of people saw their love of The New Pornographers take a hit with Challengers, for me it was the first time I've ever found myself really enjoying the band. The album may not have quite the immediate impact of any of its predecessors, but that just meant that the hooks in songs like "Myriad Harbour" and "All The Old Showstoppers" were hidden a little more deeply. Listen enough times, and you'll hear them and -- eventually -- grow to love them.

Download "All The Old Showstoppers"


11. Celebration, The Modern Tribe

Of all the things to happen in music this year, the fact that The Modern Tribe was was generally ignored has to rank up there as one of the biggest surprises. I would've been willing to bet any amount of money that Celebration had all the ingredients in place for guaranteed success, considering they released on album of accessible art-rock on 4AD that was produced by a member of TV On The Radio. On top of that, the band is fronted by a fairly attractive woman, so you'd think that alone would've been ensured at least a bit of notice. Unfortunately, nearly everyone in the world seems to have slept on the album, which is a huge shame, because it's probably the best thing to come out of America this year.

Download "Hands Off My Gold"


10. Jenn Grant, Orchestra For The Moon

I said it back in June, and I'll say it again now: the only difference between Jenn Grant and Leslie Feist is the amount of money behind Feist's promotion. In fact, after listening (or not listening, as the case may be) to the albums for six months, I'd take it a step further, to say that Orchestra For The Moon shows Grant to be superior to Feist in the one area where it really matters. Hopefully the American release of Orchestra... will help everyone else see this, because it really is a lovely album.

Download "Dreamer"


9. Kyrie Kristmanson, The Kyrie K Groove

While I was definitely pleased to see that Kyrie Kristmanson won at the Canadian Folk Music Awards (for Young Performer of the Year), I can't help but think that the award will hinder her career a little. After all, if The Kyrie K Groove shows anything, it's that Kristmanson doesn't fit into any neat little boxes, even one as amorphous as "folk". The best description I've ever read of her music invoked both Björk and jazz, and that comes much closer to capturing the essence of what she's doing here. She has a dazzling voice and the musical chops to match, and I suspect that by this time next year, her name will be very well known.

Download "Eruption"


8. Two Hours Traffic, Little Jabs

The downside to releasing an album of upbeat summer anthems: the fact that once the weather turns cold, you're really not in the mood for them anymore. As such, I haven't listened to Little Jabs much since the thermometer took a nosedive sometime around the beginning of October. Still, for a few months over the summer, there wasn't anything I wanted to listen to more. Two Hours Traffic crammed the album full of songs tailor-made for driving around in beautiful weather on days that never end, and the world is a better, happier place because of it.

Download "Backseat Sweetheart"


7. Candie Payne, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More

If you're North American, there are only two ways to get I Wish I Could Have Loved You More: illegally or as very expensive import. I know that most people will go with the former option, but Candie Payne's debut is amazing enough that it may just be worth that $40 price tag. Her music is about as sexy and sultry as it gets, and the album is simply stunning. Hopefully she'll make the trip across the Atlantic, because this is an album worth owning.

Download "All I Need To Hear"


6. Jim Bryson, Where The Bungalows Roam

I had pretty high expectations going into Where The Bungalows Roam. I used to work with Jon Bartlett, the man who runs Kelp Records (Jim Bryson's label home), and for months he was raving about the album, saying it was one of the best things he'd ever heard.

When I finally got a copy, I was happy to hear the hype was entirely deserved. Where The Bungalows Roam is a lowkey folk masterpiece, alternately world-weary and hopeful, and held together by Bryson and his marvellously expressive voice. He may now be known across Canada as the guy The Weakerthans brought on tour this past fall to play guitar, but hopefully all the people who went out to the shows will actually check him out, because this album should make him a star.

Download "The Wishes Pile Up"


5. Basia Bulat, Oh My Darling

Oh My Darling is simply gorgeous. Basia Bulat has an excellent voice, and she uses it to full effect here. It may have taken forever for the album to finally get released in Canada (and Americans are still waiting), but there's not a track here that wasn't worth the wait.

Download "In The Night"


4. Miracle Fortress, Five Roses

Even now, several months after it came out, it still boggles my mind that Graham Van Pelt had an album like Five Roses in him. I mean, I liked Think About Life, but nothing on that band's self-titled debut suggested GVP was the second coming of Brian Wilson. As Miracle Fortress, however, he showed that he's more than capable of crafting a whole album's worth of lush guitars and dreamlike vocals. It was totally unexpected, but wholly welcome.

Download "Have You Seen In Your Dreams?"


3. Handsome Furs, Plague Park

As was the case with favourite EPs of the year, the difference between the top three albums on this list is negligible. Ultimately, it all came down to what I listened to most, and of the three Plague Park finished third. This has nothing to do with quality, though -- it's just that it's a really intense album, and it's difficult to listen to intense music for any extended periods of time. Lyrically, Dan Boeckner has long been defined by his dislike of modern society and technology, and here, with only his then-fiancée/now-wife Alexei Perry to accompany him, he's allowed to expand on those ideas over the course of a whole album. It's pretty bleak in virtually every respect (particularly on "Sing! Captain", when he howls "If there's a God / He's a little God...And He hates His babies most of all"), but it also shows that, contrary to popular opinion, Boeckner deserves at least as much credit as Spencer Krug for the awesomeness that is Wolf Parade. Here's hoping the space between Handsome Furs albums isn't as large as the time between Wolf Parade albums, because Boeckner and Perry make some beautiful, if bleak, music together.

Download "Sing! Captain"


2. Young Galaxy, Young Galaxy

Like a lot of people, when I first heard Young Galaxy, I assumed they would fit neatly into the Stars/Broken Social Scene sound that had come to define Arts & Crafts. After seeing them live several times over the course of 2007 and listening to their self-titled debut obsessively, however, I can proudly state that I was mistaken. These guys may start in that general area of spacey art-rock, but they add levels of aggressiveness to their music that aren't present with those other bands. They make epic-sounding music, but not in a classic rock kind of way: rather, they make music that's big and expansive, like their name suggests, that always sounds like its about to get bigger and more dynamic. I can't wait to see where they go next.

Download "The Alchemy Between Us"


1. Amos The Transparent, Everything I've Forgotten To Forget

As I may have said once or twice, I loved Everything I've Forgotten To Forget. I've listened to it obsessively from the moment Jonathan Chandler sent me a copy back in June, asking if I'd be interested in hearing what he and his band had created in the studio. There were days when I woke up with songs from the album in my head, already playing, as if my brain had some internal CD-playing alarm clock. In fact, if you want to nitpick, I should probably rewrite what I said about Stars a few paragraphs up -- the best thing that band was associated with all year was this album, since Evan Cranley and Amy Millan both make cameos.

The amazing thing is, as good as those cameos are, neither one eclipses what Chandler and his rotating cast of bandmates accomplish here. Regardless of who accompanied him on any given song, Chandler had a very clear idea of the kind of sound he wanted Amos The Transparent to sound like, and he achieved that sound time after time. Every single song here is unforgettably catchy, and if you want to hear the sound of someone absolutely nailing it thirteen times in a row, then you need to hear this album -- Everything I've Forgotten To Forget is unquestionably the best album of 2007.

Download "After All That, It's Come To This"