The Lowest Of The High-Profile: Some Albums That Got Lost

2007 seemed like it was a pretty big year for records, and a lot of records that in other years probably would have emerged with a much higher profile got left by the wayside. Even records that did wind up being remembered come late December - and here I'm looking right at you, Dirty Projectors - felt like nobody had actually really listened to them. These are albums that deserved a lot more listening and talking than they wound up getting.

Wax Mannequin - Orchard & Ire
It's not really correct to say that Wax Mannequin (really named Chris Adeney, but don't tell him that) is under the radar; instead, he seems to live in a place where radar doesn't even operate. 2003's The Price was an absolute masterwork of punchy rock hooks speckled with jazz, electronica and moments of delicate bliss. Orchard & Ire, half of which had previously appeared in a rougher form on 2006's Orchard EP, doesn't top The Price, but not much can. Instead, Wax's new record strives to match the balance of fist-pumping rock'n'roll and tender, subtle balladry that made The Price so great, and it largely acheives this.

Orchard & Ire has a nearly cinematic pace to it, and that helps. The triple-gut-punch of the first three songs ("Animals Jump," "Robots, Master And Lady" and "Price Paid") nearly match the same sequence on the previous album, going so far as to reference the mythology of that record. "You And All Your Friends" does the same, visiting the medical motif on The Price once more over a martial 6/8 beat. Nearly-Celtic "Everything Proper" fits neatly between the quiet, folksy "Animals Come Home" and the low-key atmospherics of "Almost Everyone," then let loose as Wax goes for broke over the last three tracks. It's a journey that careens between Bruckheimer explosions and Kubrick slow-burn, and in the end it's a thoroughly rewarding one.

Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
Phantom Punch was released really early in the year with relatively little fanfare - in fact, it's safe to say that it was likely overshadowed by Lerche's soundtrack for Steve Carrell's Dan In Real Life. It's a shame, really. One track of deceptive jazz-pop starts Lerche off in a familiar frame of mind for folks who caught his last record with the Faces Down Quartet (and the aforementioned soundtrack), but when "The Tape" kicks in with a bruised guitar barking in the right channel's distance, the record title rings true.

Lerche suddenly emerges as the sort of suave rock'n'roll frontman whose attitude belies the energy churning beneath the music's surface; while the pop sensibilities of Two Way Monologue and the jazzy phrasing and rhythm of Duper Sessions remain intact, there is a new vitality to his work. "The Tape," "Face The Blood" and the title track are startlingly close in both style and quality to early Elvis Costello, while "John, Let Me Go" and "Say It All" are distinct strummed pop songs that hearken back to Faces Down and Two-Way Monologue, touched up with the flames that singe the edges of the whole album. Finally, there is the long and surprising shoegaze drone of "Happy Birthday Girl," an eight-minute build to a stunning and dissonant climax. It's another in the long line of surprises that Lerche builds up over this album, and hopefully an indication that he's nowhere near the last trick up his Scandanavian sleeve.

Softlightes - Say No To Being Cool, Say Yes To Being Happy
I don't know as much about Softlightes as I do most of these other bands. From what I understand, the core members were in another band that titled their final song or record "Become The Softlightes." Either way, it was a good move on their part. Say No To Being Cool, Say Yes To Being Happy is possibly the most straightforward record on this list. If you are into cute, upbeat pop music that has had computers cheekily applied to it in various ways, this record delivers. The reason I'm including it here as opposed to a lot of other records that could have occupied the same spot is that it just delivers really Goddamn well.

Lead and possibly only single "Heart Made Of Sound," besides having a music video bordering on precious, marries a twinkly and jangly piano-and-guitar melody to buoyant, harmonized vocals and communal shouts of "Hey!" Vocoder appears in "The Robots In My Room Were Playing Arena Rock," the title of which is accurate enough to the extent that robots, bigger drums and electric guitar were involved, but I'm going to assume that like me you were sold by the first two words in this sentence and the rest are simply a bonus. A few songs touch on the dreamy work of Ivy and Tahiti 80 in as compelling a way as the songs which are uniquely and fantastically Softlightes. The only real umbrage to be taken with this record is that it would have been even better if it had ended at the reprise of "Heart Made Of Sound," but instead it carries on for an additional two tracks, both of which are lamentably titled ("If The World Had Cookies" and "Black Skinheads In White Pants," which is at least fittingly nerve-rattling). Thankfully, that's more of an issue of sequencing than it is quality.

Joel Plaskett Emergency - Ashtray Rock
Pitchfork is equally loved and reviled in the music hobbyist community that has developed on the Internet in this decade, and both sides have legit reasons for their stances. The big issue is that often the publication manages to do something right and something wrong in the same breath. Case in point: in announcing who won this year's Polaris Prize, their headline was "Polaris Prize Goes to Arcad-- WTF? Patrick Watson?!" They then acted all surprised that Patrick Watson was the panel's choice for best Canadian record of the year, like Pfork had their finger on the pulse of Canadian music.

Yeah, well, where were you on this one, motherfuckers?

Frankly, I was absolutely stunned when speculation over Polaris' contenders hardly strayed to this record. It's a stunning, semi-autobiographical concept album about love for one woman tearing bandmates apart. They go so far as playing a song from Plaskett's old band, Thrush Hermit, members of which will apparently recognize elements of themselves in the album's narrative. It doesn't entirely need it; after all, it's tough to argue with the strut of "Drunk Teenagers," the goofball synth and enormous power chords of "Fashionable People," the palpable regret and bitterness driving "Nothin' More To Say." There is a moment, however, when mouths tend to drop when listening to this record, and it's a simple seven-note motif that slackens the jaws. It's woven in finely but it merely serves to signify many strands running throughout. The album holds together well with just the clever pop and rock-worship that makes up most of Plaskett's discography, but is even stronger with the level of self-reference contained within and the singluar vision that drives Ashtray Rock to a point of remarkable cohesion.

Future Of The Left - Curses
Confession: I use iTunes. Heathen in such an age of vinyl to suggest that I so much as look at .mp3's, I know, and even worse to use a player that so strongly represents poseurism, but it's easy enough for me to use and it has a dandy little search function up in the top corner. That's how I listen to tunes when I'm using the computer, for the most part, and I'm definitely writing this lengthy screed on the computer right now. By accident, I had caps lock on when searching for this record, meaning that by the time I realized it I had looked up the record CURSES.

How fitting. CURSES. CURSES. CURSES! It's such a pummelling monolith of a record. To suggest that it rises from the ashes of Mclusky is to suggest that the two members of Mclusky present in this band had to at one point stop being on fire, and though their final record as that other band implied otherwise this was clearly not the case. Here they are, scorching and raging and blistering and tearing down everything in their path. Curses is glorious in its capacity for violence, shredding traditional guitar sounds on "Plague Of Onces" and somehow making a Roland keyboard visceral on "Manchasm" and "Team:Seed." Yes, you've probably noticed, Andy Falkous' knack for a title remains intact with songs like "Fuck The Countryside Alliance" and "Real Men Hunt In Packs," and his utterly bizarre imagery comes part and parcel with that. It would be nothing, though, without the remarkable talent of Jack Egglestone and Kelson Mathias coalescing in an absolutely ferocious rhtyhm section. Yet hooks, riffs and singalongs all appear here in full force, and the songwriting reaches its apex on the strikingly subtle ballad that closes out the record, "The Contrarian."

Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls
Members of a great band come together to make the definitive record of their career and then break up. Story of our collective life, friends. So many excellent bands enter our lives this way. I guess if it's any consolation, that record for Electrelane was No Shouts, No Calls.

If you get past the 2:36 moment on this record, where Verity Susman's voice cracks while proclaiming with increasing urgency that, with you, she'll tear down "the walls, the walls, the walls, the walls, the walls, the walls" and your heart doesn't jump instantly into your throat to try and call something back to her, you're probably not going to be following this record. Ditto for the bittersweet harmonies that pop in mere moments later, or any of the motorik-meets-girl-group first half of this record. Perhaps you'll be sold by the second half, where folk swoons and faints from the dry heat of electric guitar jams. Here's hoping so, because once you've soaked the whole thing in this record captures the joy and terror of love and frames it perfectly within pop. That romantic strain running throughout the album seems set firmly before the fall of the Iron Curtain, using the methodology of East-West diplomacy in that time period as a deeper examination of relations of the heart. Dark nights, dark secrets and a light of hope that pierces it all. Electrelane were a smart band, and with any luck No Shouts, No Calls will endure as a reminder of that.

Coconut Records - Nighttiming
Hey, remember Phantom Planet? Yeah, those guys. Sang "California" which became the theme song for The O.C.? Little dude by the name of Jason Schwartzman did drums for them for a while, including that song about the Sunshine State. He left to focus on his acting career during the recording of their most recent album in 2004, but it didn't really go anywhere. So here he is with Nighttiming, an album that sometimes feels like it can't decide what to be but in the end just comes together as an excellent collection of twelve songs. That's not a bad thing to aspire to be.

Schwartzman starts off the record with "This Old Machine," a gorgeous lullaby duet with, of all people, Kirsten Dunst, who turns in a nice delicate whisper that suits the song perfectly. Cue the melancholy piano and strings of "West Coast," a song that slowly unravels into pomp and bombast on par with any of the more transcendent moments of Funeral. To tell the truth, the differences between the songs and the way they're sequenced are reminiscent of the A side and B side of an old single, and that's about par for the course for the rest of the album. Schwartzman covers a lot of ground with that format, though - the country sway of "Slowly" that sounds like Mike Nesmith's idiosyncratic solo work, the cutesy sixties pop swoon of "Easy Girl," the Weezerisms of "Back To You." And of course, that title track starts with a deceptively cocky strut but turns out surprisingly moody.

The thing about a record as diverse as this is that it can signify either artists losing track of where they're headed or artists doing things simply because they like doing them, and Coconut Records clearly falls under the latter category. It's nice to hear an album of well-done pop by someone who clearly loves well-done pop, and it's one of the best records of well-done pop that was released in 2007.