When I chose my favorite albums of 2006 last December, I feigned anger. I joked that the year had given me nothing good except the 10 albums listed on the remainder of the page. It's funny, but I only seemed happy about those 10. As it turned out, 2007 was a lot more challenging. If I'm upset about anything - and I'm really not - it's that I only get this many slots to highlight my favorite music. How limiting.
This year, a bit to my surprise, my tastes skewed strongly toward the world of indie rock at the expense of more mainstream music. It was nothing personal. But I think it does really demonstrate how diverse the term, once limited to being punk's scruffier, sloppier little brother, has become. To even be able to jump from Panda Bear to Caribou to Battles says a lot. And hey, Radiohead's back.
With that, I'd like to thank everyone who didn't make it onto this page - Okkervil River, Beirut, The Clientele, Pharaohe Monche, Menomena, Spoon, New Young Pony Club, Black Milk, The Twilight Sad, The Field, Liars, St. Vincent and all the others - but still made this year worth listening to.
- Billy Kalb, Diversions Editor
10) Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
I kept reading that 2007 was supposed to be the year that local golden boy Andrew Bird ceased to be a hometown secret. That sounded pretty good to me, seeing as how he got heckled while opening for jam-band-lite Guster at Loyola a couple years ago (heathens, all of you!). But when I got to see Bird play in Minneapolis' First Avenue club this past August, I reconsidered, relishing the chance to hear the man in such a small space. It was a live experience well suited to the music of Armchair Apocrypha, the always-excellent singer/songwriter/violinist/whistler's seventh and probably best full-length yet. Like everything Bird does, it's not particularly fancy; there aren't any hot dance beats and none of the songs were destined to be the big single of 2007. To call the album's sturdy straightforwardness a fault, however, would be like rejecting a glass of fine wine for not being served in a punch bowl with a paper parasol - albums this comfortably well-crafted (and intimately secret) are all too rare as it is.
