2007 Retrospectrometer
by Marc Hirsh

This year turned out to be a singers’ year, and anyone who knows me knows what that means: let’s talk about girls. In fact, by October or November, it became so clear and obvious a problem that I started to think that I was going to fail in my duties for the very first outlet that’s actually offered to pay me for this information, so I started actively looking for more albums by men that were strong enough to hold up to the ones by women. But I never found them, despite the pressure (from nobody in particular) that I felt to maybe see if I could kind of halfway cram a few specific albums in there. I mean, just because Bruce Springsteen’s Magic is his best album of the ’00s doesn’t mean that I listen to it very often.

But the problem was more widespread than that. When cataloguing the year’s music, I found that there were more than a few singles that had as much, if not more, impact on me than full albums. So this year, I’m breaking with tradition and forcing songs and albums to mix in defiant rebellion against the natural order of things. Think of it as a Real World Top Ten, except with an even dozen and maybe not so much ripping off Griel Marcus. Also know that, with one or two exceptions, the widows and orphans come from fine albums that I would not hesitate to recommend but that, for one reason or another, I can’t in good conscience include on this list. Which leads me to my top musical whatzit of the year…

1) Amy Winehouse, “Rehab.” My sister asked me earlier this year why Amy Winehouse was allowed to be a complete and total mess while Britney Spears got nothing but scrutiny for the same. My answer was simple: because Winehouse owns her trainwreckery. And while Winehouse’s story slid further and further towards the “sad” side of the scale as the year unfolded, it’s the self-awareness all over Back To Black that both protects her from the worst scrutiny and will, should Winehouse actually drag it outside of the confines of the album, pull her out of the spiral. And it was all there in “Rehab,” right from the start: in the honking saxophones, crisply popping drums and that wrenching, damaged voice, all of which underline a lyric that captures the singer adamantly and dismissively refusing an intervention. For about two weeks, this song was the single greatest thing that existed anywhere in the universe. Now, of course, I know that there are other things that beat it. But I’m honestly not sure I could name any of them off the top of my head.

2) Eleni Mandell, “Moonglow, Lamp Low.” A genuinely, magnificently soothing song, with Mandell singing in a low murmur as the song gets pulled over you like a warm blanket. But really, it earns its spot by virtue of a scant two lines, which in their evocation of the day’s end constitute my favorite imagery of the year and well beyond: “The sky says goodbye with the wink of an eye/A bright blue yawning to the west.” Those last seven words are nothing less than sheer perfection.

3)  The Pipettes, We Are The Pipettes (Cherrytree/Interscope). My first words upon leaving Great Scott after the conclusion of November’s Pipettes show were “I need to see that again right now.” Which was no surprise, really, considering that from the moment I put We Are The Pipettes into the CD changer and pressed “play,” it took all of about four minutes (during which time I’d been bombarded with the global alert of the title track and gotten as far as the first chorus of “Pull Shapes”) before I was practically in tears. If British lasses with a certain attitude had a bang-up year, then the Pipettes clawed their way to the head of the pack by virtue of multiplying the formula by three. (In a marvelously crass example of blatant image-consciousness, erstwhile blonde Gwenno had been transformed into a redhead by the time of the Great Scott show, all the better to stand out from her compatriots without duplication.) I can think of no rock ‘n’ roll pseudonym at the moment that’s more joyful than “RiotBecki,” and the trio of frontwomen (and their sharp, oft-overlooked four-man band) extend that giddiness across the album. “Because It’s Not Love (But It’s Still A Feeling)” captures the subject and feel of every girl-group song ever, but with 40 years of wisdom standing unavoidably front and center. Despite being one of the most blithely mean seduction songs ever written, “Sex” is hilarious whether the singer is fully aware of her unsubtle paramour’s intentions (he tries to refocus her attention by saying that she talks so much that “my ears are getting sore”) or whether she is in fact breathtakingly naïve. The former seems more likely, considering the way they turn it around on the fella in the very next song, telling him “Leave me alone, you’re just a one-night stand.” Ebullient, confident and gloriously catchy.

4) Brandi Carlile, “The Story.” The Story, the album, is the sound of an artist who hasn’t quite peaked, though she’s clearly on her way. “The Story,” the song, is what it’s going to sound like when it happens.

5) Nicole Atkins, Neptune City (Red Ink/Columbia). Historical proximity makes comparisons between Nicole Atkins and Brandi Carlile inevitable, as both share a rich, open-throated vocal style, but Atkins’s range and timbre are lower and darker, like some magic blend of Stevie Nicks and Cass Elliott. Neptune City opener “Maybe Tonight” is fired through with the sense that something is about to happen, and then, wonder of wonders, something actually happens, which only comes as a surprise because so many others fail to keep similar promises. The thrill of anticipation that marks her songs is a sympathetic match for the orchestrated guitar pop with perfect depth of field that Atkins uses to deliver it. When she sings “I don’t care where you’re going/You’re taking me with you” in the bridge of “Cool Enough,” the strings swell and the bottom drops out even as her tone never wavers and she keeps her eyes dead on the person she’s addressing. And when she kicks it up a notch in the poppier “Love Surreal,” she successfully weds the exuberance of the dancefloor with the emotional heft she’s spent half the album meticulously establishing. Atkins’s only false step is in burying the title track midway through; the self-described “cemetery song for summer” is as strong a farewell as an album could want.

6) Lily Allen, Alright, Still (EMI). Sure, she’s a brat, but at least she’s got a point of view. And that point of view is: enfant terrible. Which is really just fancy talk for “brat.” But sometimes fancy talk is enough.

7) Eisley, Combinations (Reprise). The first time I listened to this sophomore album by a band that I love, as some might well imagine, beyond all reason, I was intrigued by the shift from the dreaminess of Room Noises to something darker but otherwise keenly disappointed. By the fifth time, I was wowed. The fact that I even bothered sticking with it through those tricky middle three is testament to how powerful their pull can be. Combinations is, among other things, a declaration of independence: from the push and pull of find-us-a-hit-stat label demands, from the restrictive expectations of fans and detractors alike, very possibly from the family-band lifestyle that they’ve called their own for almost a decade. But their epic sweep remains, as do the curlicue voices of Sherri and Stacy DuPree, with guitarist and sister Chauntelle finally speaking up for the first time in the flatly gorgeous “I Could Be There For You” and making it count. As the album unfolds gradually on repeated listens, it reveals a touch that’s alternately lighter (on “Ten Cent Blues” and “If You’re Wondering”) and heavier (on “Many Funerals” and “A Sight To Behold”) than Eisley’s previous work while sounding more organic than ever. After a lifetime of sharing a roof and years of sharing a tour van, Eisley are apparently just now settling in.

8) Rihanna, “Umbrella.” A tremendous pop song, and I’m not even talking about its mega-ubiqui-smashitude. No other song in recent memory, and certainly none with any degree of mass popularity, has sounded so convincingly like a full-fledged classic so immediately. At its core, it offers nothing more (or less) than shelter from the storm – a theme of rather long standing in the pop arena – but even as Rihanna sings “You can stand under my umbrella,” the chords take an uneasy turn, not exactly sure of where to go or how they can make it there. Her promise of comfort takes on added significance precisely because clouds are coming. And they look bad.

9) The White Stripes, Icky Thump (Third Man/Warner Bros.). Two years after the strained and self-consciously arty Get Behind Me Satan, Jack White seems to have remembered that his ongoing experiment of dressing up theory in primitivism’s clothing in order to drag it into the mainstream doesn’t work if nobody actually bothers to listen. Strange as it is to believe, the screaming-matador stomp “Conquest” might just encapsulate the appeal of Icky Thump: it may be silly (to the point that Jack’s vocal gets so lost in the second bridge that he comes back into the song in a totally different key from where he came from or where he’s going), but it’s got fire underneath it. Elsewhere, “Rag And Bone” splits the difference between hobo and boho, gives Meg the best vocal Jack’s ever allowed her (despite the fact that she doesn’t sing a note) and boogies like mad, while the insistent “I’m A Martyr For My Love For You” is moody without Jack undercutting the tension because he doesn’t trust it. And so it goes, as the White Stripes reestablish their rock bona fides, hone their pop chops and dig so deeply into the folk tradition that they end up on the Scottish border. Forget Radiohead; this might be the most avant-garde band with mass appeal.

10) Markéta Irglová, “If You Want Me.” The most remarkable thing about Once to me was the fact that no other movie that I can think of so perfectly captured the act of the creation of music (though Hustle And Flow came close). “Falling Slowly” is certain to be the song that gets the Oscar buzz, if anything makes the cut. But it was this scene that embodied why any of this was important to the characters, as well as to anyone who’s ever made (or listened to) music. Having been given an instrumental track by the guy with whom she struck up a friendship after watching him busk on the streets of Dublin, the girl writes lyrics and heads to the convenience store to buy batteries for her CD player. She can’t wait, so she throws them in as soon as she pays for them, puts on her headphones and walks down the street, singing along with music that only she can hear.

11) Avril Lavigne, “Girlfriend.” Sure, it’s almost overwhelmingly stupid. And sure, when she sang it on Saturday Night Live, she was dramatically, hilariously upstaged by her backing vocalists (on loan from Butch Walker) every time they appeared in the same shot. But it’s the best cheerleader song since Toni Basil’s “Mickey,” and if it were by Damone (and the parts where she’s not trying to rip of M.I.A. sound very much like it could be), it would be praised to the hills as an unpolished display of the heedless rush of youth. And would never, ever have been a hit.

12) Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand (Rounder). Combining the talents of the onetime golden god of heavy metal and the queen of neo-bluegrass was one of those ideas that seems so misguided that it’s almost no surprise that the results are brilliant. The two come to the project as equals: Plant only gets a writing credit on one song and Krauss only gets to fiddle on two. All that leaves them with is their voices, which nestle snugly in and around one another in a moody collection of covers that’s sad, serene and occasionally raucous. In one three-song stretch, they go from Sam Phillips’s cabaret exotica “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” to Gene Clark’s achingly slow “Polly Come Home” to the deconstructed rockabilly of the Everly Brothers’ “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On),” and it’s gorgeous enough to forgive the inevitable Ozzy Osborne/Reba McEntire collaboration that somebody, somewhere is probably already trying to make happen.

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