starting with the obvious
to kick off my favourite albums of 2007 list here are two albums which were rather obvious choices having appeared on many people’s end of the year lists, the rest of my selections are a bit more obscure.
iron & wine the shepherd’s dog
while i’ve always thought iron & wine had an interesting style on their previous releases, and sam beam is certainly a songwriter of some weight, they never grabbed me completely until this one. each album previous to this had a few songs that i really liked, but as a whole they kinda dragged on. they continue with the more elaborate production found on woman king going even further this time and exploring different musical styles but plenty has been written about all that. his lyrics are as dense as ever i wish i could figure out what the hell the songs were about, though they are enjoyable even if i have no idea what he’s singing about. i would love to know, for example, what the hell the song “white tooth man” is about, i haven’t really analyzed the lyrics but every time i hear him sing about “the plain clothes cop” my ears perk up with questions. other stand out tracks for me were “resurrection fern” and “flightless bird, american mouth” (included on my end of the year mix) both of them are gorgeous tracks. here’s another good one for you to check out:
iron and wine – boy with a coin.mp3
andrew bird armchair apocrypha
i don’t know what it is about andrew bird but he fails to impress me as much as i think he should. i think a lot of it has to do with his songwriting which to me has always seemed a little weak, his music could also stand to be a little more exciting. i did see him live early last year and some of that excitement was added seeing him build up each song by looping the various instruments that he plays although that suffered as well from my high expectations. that being said i listened to armchair apocrypha recently after sorta forgetting about it for awhile and i enjoyed it quite thoroughly even if it didn’t blow me away. i’ve never thought that this album reached the highs achieved on his previous album, the mysterious production of eggs, with songs like “fake palindromes” but this was a more consistent release which doesn’t taper off like i felt the last one did. the better tracks from this album include “heretics” “plasticities” “scythian empire” and my favourite song from the album “simple x” which is actually a song of martin dosh’s (his drummer) which andrew bird wrote lyrics to, here is a video of them playing it live:
~ by mwn on January 18, 2008.
Posted in music
Tags: andrew bird, download, iron & wine, lists, video
Andrew Bird is certainly better live. For some reason it took me a long time to get into this album too. I don’t think the songs are nearly as catchy as his last album, but they’re growing on me, especially after seeing him play them live.
Honestly, I really don’t like the new Iron and Wine. Like everyone else I was blown away by their last album, but this one is not doing it for me. I think the songwriting and overall production is weak.
i think you need to give the iron & wine a few more listens, i think it’s quite impressive how they were able to step up the arrangements so much and still have it sound like an iron & wine release plus the album has really good pacing. as for the songwriting as stated i can’t figure it out what the hell the songs mean but it hints at being quite deep. try reading the lyrics.