The eMusic Dozen: Best Albums of 2007: 10 - 1

10 The best of the post-millennial spate of '80s alt-rock reunions -- Mission of Burma, the Pixies and now Dinosaur Jr. -- all hail from Massachusetts. Those bands succeeded not because of geography but because they embody one of rock's eternal verities: chemistry. When a particular group of musicians makes an incredible sound that no other combination of people can quite duplicate, that's a great band. And it's why, 19 years after their last album together, Lou Barlow, J Mascis and Murph not only sound just like Dinosaur Jr, they sound great. What's surprising is the energy that courses through this record like intravenous java, powering addictive songs liberally slathered with the velvety huzz that only extreme amplification can provide. Like the best Dinosaur music, Beyond celebrates the link between self-doubt and self-indulgence, and in so doing, alchemizes angst into joy. -- Michael Azerrad

9 Say "punk" in 2007 and you're more likely to imagine the Warped Tour and X-treme Sports than hopping in a ratty Econoline van to play beer-soaked gigs in po-dunk towns. Luckily, some Los Angelinos converting an old grocery store into an all-ages venue remember punk's heady rush and sought to rekindle that holy fire. No Age, a two-man band of Dean Spunt and Randy Randall spearheaded such a re-appraisal of LA's punk scene, backing it up with Weirdo Rippers, a collection of singles that captures their live energy while also showing the band's debt to "noise" -- be it Black Dice, Ramones, My Bloody Valentine, or Pavement's earliest singles (who cut their pop with plenty of crackle). What elevated No Age this year were the catchy tunes beneath all that fuzz and distortion, which are so raw, physical, and jubilant that they plunk you back in your first mosh pit. -- Andy Beta

8 If the 12-year gap between Thurston Moore's first solo album and this new one suggests a life of fruitful harmony aboard the Sonic Youth mothership, then so too does the aural weft of Trees Outside the Academy. It's surely testimony to Moore's relaxed sense of his artistic self that he should have elected to make what is primarily an album of acoustic ballads, albeit serrated just under the surface by his trademark gonzoid dissonance. And what beautiful songs these are, none more so than "Honest James," where Charalambides' Christina Carter duets with the author on a supplicatory lament to love and loss, with Moore's lyrics pitched at a level of emotional candour from which his work with Sonic Youth has generally shied. -- Keith Cameron

7 Manu Chao has been a remarkable musical miniaturist and cut-up fiend since his days in the group Mano Negra. As his own cover co-designer, Chao blends African, Spanish and Caribbean colors and imagery into a distinctly individual style that always hints at more than it reveals. La Radiolina recycles some half-dozen previously-used Chao arrangements throughout its sixteen tracks and four "bonus" cuts. Yet the short lengths, along with nearly nonexistent between-track pauses, lend the album a compelling organic unity. "Rainin in Paradize" ("In Fallujah, too much calamity/ This world go crazy, it's no fatality") shares the same nervous police sirens, anxious rising guitar lines and urgent beats with both "El Hoyo" and "Panik Panik." Chao has no patience for post-release remixes; La Radiolina creates its own schizophrenic afterproduct. -- Richard Gehr

6 Part of the allure of dubstep, the sound that Burial -- an anonymous London musician -- helped establish, is that it's so sparse and elemental that it eludes description almost by design. Untrue benefits from the conspicuous presence of vocals. Where voices served as atmospheric agents on the debut, here they drive tracks into the space of certifiable songs. "Archangel" announces the change at the start, with a mercury-mouthed male diva singing about "kissing you" and "holding you" in desperate, unsettling tones. A similar strategy plays out in "Near Dark," in which the vocal sentiment in the refrain "I can't take my eyes off you" applies just as much to ears. Even when the voices fade and drift like mist in the background, there are moods to be gleaned from the beats -- the ticks and trips that toggle like drum 'n' bass risen from the grave as something irretrievably decayed but also irresistibly angelic. -- Andy Battaglia

5 A tiny, subtle diamond in a field of ten-foot neon exclamation points, Boxer, the stately, flawless fifth record from the Brooklyn group the National, draws strength from the power of suggestion. "Let's not try to figure out everything at once," Matt Berninger sings softly in the glowing opener "Fake Empire," and that line could be a statement of theme: On Boxer, the epiphanies take their time. Sound arrives not in distinct notes but reverberations: guitars echo, organs pool, bass hums and buzzes. The jittery, insistent "Mistaken for Strangers" builds to a groan instead of a shriek and "Guest Room," which is as close as Boxer ever comes to an anthem, blots its big finish with inky smudges of bass and rolling clouds of feedback. It's a record full of down-payment dreamers who are learning to be satisfied with everything they haven't got. They're beaten but grinning -- half awake in fake empires, but waiting around to see the sun. -- J. Edward Keyes

4 To call Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga one of the year's two or three best rock albums is to overstate how much it sounds like a rock album. There's no mistaking its imperturbable swagger and seething refrains for anything else -- Spoon still knows how to write a song that could fit into each of rock's past five decades without tipping toward any one in particular. But even songs on Ga Ga that traffic in guitars don't sound like they were written with guitars in mind. What sticks most on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is the grain and range of Daniel's voice, which must have been miked a dozen different ways to capture his timbral moods in tracks as disparate as "Don't You Evah" and "The Underdog." Nothing Daniel does has ever sounded labored, but Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga finds him and his band with a newly refined balance between craft and restraint. -- Andy Battaglia

3 Less than two minutes into "Intervention," Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler crumples under the line "every spark of friendship and love will die without a home." By this time, soldiers and church and crying have already been covered. This is the Arcade Fire: fifty ticker-tape parades and six screens playing Miracle On 34th Street. Neon Bible has the same Bowie anthems and New Order stride as its predecessor, but the brisk hope has turned stone dead. At album's end you realize that "My Body Is a Cage," a swollen, blankly hopeless slave dirge, is the centerpiece. And even though "The Well and the Lighthouse" apes Springsteen's heroism, the lyrics are about dying, splashing around in the dark: "If you leave them, ships are gonna wreck." The Arcade Fire, who once sounded like a guiding force or a way out, are now as trapped and lost as any other mook in this frigid downer of a world. -- Mike Powell

2 Tinariwen has made a fabulously skewed blues album that restores a winning exoticism to that oft-heard genre. The return of near-mythic founding member Mohamed Ag Itlale after six years in the desert (and you can take that quite literally) proves memorable, his improvised poetry on "Ahimana" intoxicating even if, like me, you don't understand a word of his native tongue. Gritty and wholly involving, the album is a delicious tangle of snaking Malian guitars, Mobius strip-like rhythms, fat bass, clanking percussion and call-and-response chanting. Word is that the final mix of the album had to be submitted for the approval of the Tuareg tribal elders, and that band percussionist Said Ag Ayad ferried it to them by camel. Now, how cool is that? -- Barney Hoskyns

1 Person Pitch may not sound like a singles album, but that's exactly what it is. Culled from 12-inches and compilation appearances, the songs on the album don't reflect the product of an intense period of recording; instead, the album is a general expression of what Noah Lennox has been up to in the years since his second album, 2004's Young Prayer (i.e., getting married, having a child, moving to Portugal). The undisputed highlight is the twelve-minute "Bros," which sounds built expressly for Julee Cruise, until Lennox rubs his eyes and the song goes widescreen. Judging by these results, we could stand to hear Lennox happy more often. -- Todd Burns