Music

CDs we missed

 A rundown of notable 2007 releases that passed us by the first time around

[Indie Rock]

Handsome Furs

Plague Park

*** 1/2

Sunset Rubdown

Random Spirit Lover

****

Wolf Parade didn’t release an album in 2007, but it turned out to be a banner year for fans of the Montreal outfit anyway, thanks to the release of side-project full-lengths from both principal songwriters

.

First, Dan Boeckner debuted Handsome Furs on May’s Plague Park, accessible, winsome and lyric-forward in the tradition of “Same Ghost Every Night” and “This Heart’s on Fire” off Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary (highlights include the electro-rootsy “Sing! Captain” and the fittingly spartan “The Radio’s Hot Sun”).

Then, in October, Spencer Krug one-upped his bandmate with the third album from Sunset Rubdown, Random Spirit Lover, a dizzying—and initially, rather tough to penetrate—labyrinth of ambitious musical brainstorms, cresting with the back-half duo of “The Taming of the Hands That Came Back to Life” and “Setting vs. Rising.”

Listen to both discs to marvel over the lone Wolves’ fundamental differences, or simply to intensify your fervor for 2008’s scheduled joint effort.

– Spencer Patterson

[Posthumous]

Elliott Smith

New Moon

*** 1/2

Elliott Smith tunes don’t inspire impromptu group sing-alongs. But they do provide the kind of emotional connection that, at times, may be the only tether available. The late singer-songwriter’s hushed vocals and minimal acoustic strumming offer solace during the grayest Decembers, the worst heartaches and the most crushing depressions. They connect millions, most often when no one else is physically present.

Twenty-one of these 24 tracks from his self-titled sophomore effort and Either/Or period are unreleased, and all stand up remarkably well. The collection wouldn’t exist if Smith still did, yet it’s best to brace for such extra-sobering moments as the “But, oh man/What a plan, suicide” couplet of “Georgia, Georgia.”

– Julie Seabaugh

[Country]

Elizabeth Cook

Balls

*** 1/2

Country singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook defiantly puts down pop on “Times are Tough in Rock N’ Roll,” complete with banjo, fiddle and even Jew’s harp. But elsewhere on her third album, she writes catchy songs that could easily permeate a less rigidly defined country mainstream, keeping away from bombast while engaging in sly down-home wordplay. “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman” is like a Shania Twain song with a little more humility, and all the arena-rock production stripped away. Cook throws some optimism in, as well, declaring “I’m not a has-been/I’m still a gonna-be” on the bluegrassy “Gonna Be.” There’s no reason she can’t be right.

–Josh Bell

[Industrial]

Savage Republic

1938

**** 1/2

Los Angeles art-punk and industrial legends Savage Republic haven’t been up to much since their 1989 break-up. Besides having their music featured in The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, the band remained oddly silent, and their huge catalog went out of print. Nearly 20 years after the split, the group’s new and unique droney deathrock-meets-the-Middle-East album 1938 may be the finest and most exotic thing to come out of LA’s once-great goth scene in years. A must-have for fans of dark and avant-garde music.

– Aaron Thompson

[Indie Pop]

Saturday Looks Good to Me

Fill Up the Room

*** 1/2

Saturday Looks Good to Me ringleader Fred Thomas creates indie rock in a world where indie rock never happened. His band/collective’s previous rousing and outstanding albums (especially All Your Summer Songs and Every Night) were like Phil Spector on a limited budget: shimmery melodies, messy arrangements, pure pop fun. Fill Up the Room sounds a little more mellow, but the infectious hooks are still there, especially on “(Even If You Die on the) Ocean” and “Hands in the Snow.” The latter track opens with a melody a bit like The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” before Betty Marie-Thomas’ vocals take us somewhere a whole lot darker but no less satisfying.

– Andy Wang

[Singer-Songwriter]

Jesca Hoop

Kismet

*** 1/2

Los Angeles songbird Jesca Hoop was raised in an über-Mormon household, lived in a van for a while in her 20s and eventually became a nanny for Tom Waits, who helped the right people hear her demos. But this pedigree would be moot if Hoop didn’t have inventive songs to back it up, and her lovely debut, Kismet, possesses them in spades. Recalling the quirk-pop of Poe, Suzanne Vega’s earnest folk and Regina Spektor’s trilling confessions, the album bewitches with sepia-toned harmonies, lush acoustic guitar and Hoop’s expressive alto. Best is the piano-and-string-cushioned torch song “Love and Love Again,” and the otherworldly gypsy-folk gem “Seed of Wonder.” File under Sunday morning chill-out.

– Annie Zaleski

[Hip-Hop]

Freeway

Free at Last

****

Freeway was touted as rap’s next big thing with the release of his 2003 debut, Philadelphia Freeway. Almost five years later, Freeway’s buzz has cooled considerably, but that doesn’t stop Free at Last from being one of the year’s strongest hip-hop albums. The rapper’s gruff delivery never relents, but he can ride the softer, pop-oriented beats, like “When They Remember,” just as easily as he can the harder, grittier ones, like “It’s Over.” Everyone from Scarface to 50 Cent shows up as a guest star, and Freeway shines when he showcases his softer side on songs like “Take It to the Top.”

–Ben Westhoff

[Indie Rock]

Johnathan Rice

Further North

****

Indie kids, don’t hate Johnathan Rice because he’s Jenny Lewis’ boy-toy. Hate him because he shares a bed with the darling Rilo Kiley lead singer and because he’s not just a pretty face. Rice, a 24-year-old singer-songwriter who grew up in Glasgow and Washington, D.C., saw his star rise in 2007 with the release of his second album, Further North, a collection of jangling guitars and spooky stories, road songs that echo The Byrds, the Pixies and a touch of Fleetwood Mac’s jaded SoCal worldview. A couple more albums like this and maybe Lewis will be known as Johnathan Rice’s girlfriend.

– Patrick Donnelly

[Experimental]

That 1 Guy

The Moon is Disgusting

****

If Nick Cave romanced Judy Jetson and she birthed their love child at Home Depot, the baby might grow up to be That 1 Guy. His savant-garde tunes artfully burp out of a 7-foot “Magic Pipe” (tubular plumbing, taut bass string, a mosaic of switches and other electronic nonsense), while his earnest wailing about produce and astronomy only adds to the alien joy. This zouk-inspired sophomore CD pulses more thickly and confidently than his debut Songs in the Key of Beotch without losing any of the nonchalant innovation. Welcome to the device-full musical movement.

– Kristyn Pomranz

[R&B]

Amerie

Because I Love It

****

“Sometimes you gotta work hard for it,” Amerie declares on “Gotta Work,” and this seems to be the guiding principal of Because I Love It. All across this album (which, inexplicably, has yet to be released stateside) the R&B songstress works tirelessly to get her music across, but rather than flattening you (as mere “effort” so often does), the results are exhilarating. Amerie’s emphasis on big, whomping, sucker-punch beats is so undeniable that it’s easy to overlook how deft some of the tunes themselves are. “Crush” and “Crazy Wonderful” are melodic highlights and may well become the pop smashes they are destined to become, though it’d help if a U.S. label would release the damn thing already.

–Scott Woods

[Heavy]

Serj Tankian

Elect the Dead

*** 1/2

I’m probably the wrong guy to stump for this disc, not having heard much more System of a Down than what leaked out of my kid’s room before he moved on to post-industrial Finnish death metal or whatever. But this bowled me over. Is it possible to get the first single, “Empty Walls,” out of your brain? No it is not. It sets the tone for rest of the CD: Tankian’s intense, operatic howl sailing over heavy, tempo-shifting guitar drone, garlanded with plenty of eclectic touches (check the vocals on “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”). If sometimes his well-known political sentiments seem taken from a junior-high notebook (“we don’t need your hypocrisy”? Really?), the lyrics, mostly, and the music, almost always, seem unusually alert—at least compared to Finnish death metal.

– Scott Dickensheets

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