On first-half trends:
I don’t believe in trends, actually, certainly not at the rate that they’re generated by journalistic discourse. Am I gonna tell you that I think gypsy music is happening? No. I am gonna tell you that two of the best records of the year are by gypsy-rock bands and that there’s a great gypsy-horn band record out—Balkan Beat Box, Gogol Bordello and Fanfare Ciocarlia—and that I’ll find more before the year is over since I did last year. But I would be very hesitant to call that a trend.
What I can say is that, so far, there’s been remarkably few substantial hip-hop albums in my opinion, although that tends to be an end-of-the-year thing. A remarkable percentage of the really good hip-hop records come out in the last two months of the year. They Christmas-market like nobody else in the history of pop music except for Christmas-music people.
On the chart success of “indie” acts:
Now it’s as likely to be an Arcade Fire record or a Shins record that shows up at the top of Soundscan as a hip-hop record or a Taylor Hicks. My guess is that this has as much to do with the economics of the record business as it does with anything else. That is to say, in raw numbers, you need many fewer sales to top Soundscan than you did two or three years ago, and that means that all of a sudden, this relatively modest, but passionate, committed and affluent audience really packs clout in terms of the way the business is now operating. [Also,] I don’t have any doubt that over the last three years, for a lot of different reasons—not all having to do with the fact that nobody’s buying records anymore—the core audiences of bands like the Arcade Fire and The Shins, in particular, have mushroomed.
On his favorite albums of 2007:
Balkan Beat Box and Gogol Bordello. This year I think Balkan Beat Box made the better record of the two, but they’re both fabulous bands. Gogol Bordello is, for me, the most exciting American rock band. They’re visionaries. They have a mission in a way that The Shins do not [chuckles]. Arcade Fire have a bit of a mission, too—that’s one reason I like them. Insofar as the Miranda Lambert album is still ghetto-ized as country, it’s the best album to come out of that ghetto in a hell of a long time. But beyond that ... I could name a few African records, but it hasn’t been a fabulous year.
On the best show he’s seen in 2007:
Bjork, in Washington Heights at this new venue owned by the Reverend Ike—the United Palace Theatre. I saw Laurie Anderson doing a lot of new material at a place called the Highline Ballroom over in Chelsea. And Apples in Stereo were real good in Central Park. They’re a much better live band than I would have figured.
On the albums of 1967, many of which he recently reviewed for Rolling Stone’s Summer of Love issue:
I think there are actually more good records put out in 1997 than there were in 1967. I did 20 of those [1967 reviews] and of the 20 that [David] Fricke did I think at least five of them are really crap records. One reason there are more good records made in 1997 than 1967 is that there are more records made, by a factor of about 10. I also think that the ’70s were definitely a better time for records than the ’60s, without any question. I don’t believe that the late ’60s were the greatest time for rock music. Far from it.
..................................................
Christgau is a contribusting editor for Rolling Stone and a contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. His Consumer Guide appears monthly on MSN Music.