Forthwith: A List of 20 Good albums from the Year of Our Lord 2007

All year, I kept thinking this was a bad year for music, especially considering the good albums that came out last year. Then I sat down and listed all the albums I liked from this year, and came up with a pretty damn good body of work from this year.

So, here it is: blurbs to come.

1. The National - Boxer
"Stay out, super late, with our diamond slippers on." Half the time these guys seem like indie's answer to Leonard Cohen -- rambling slowcore degenerates who sometimes break through their own nonsense with a blast brilliance. And then I shut my logical brain off and start to get a feel for the overall theme of the album. To these ears it is a treatise on the relative mundanity of life in your thirties. Especially if you spent your twenties trying to everything possible to avoid all the trappings of success and responsibility. It's more, to borrow another cliche' world weary -- this band hits you in right in the center of the "I used to be fun, now I'm boring and married and drink micro brews and pine for things in the Crate & Barrel catalogue" part of your brain.
Fake Empire and Apartment Story really evoke those feelings for me. It's rare when you find a song or a sound that really captures th ewhat and the why of your life at the time, but this is one of those albums for one of those times.
It makes me feel like I am on sedatives/painkillers, but in a good way.

2. Deadstring Brothers - Silver Mountain
3. Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
4. Tim Armstrong - A Poet's Life
5. Babyshambles - Shotter's Nation
6. Ike Reilly - We Belong to the Staggering Evening
7. Broken West - I Can't Go On/I'll Go On
8. Dax Riggs - We Sing of Only Blood or Love
9. Spoon - GA GA GA GA GA
10. I'm Not There - OST
11. John Doe - A Year in the Wilderness
12. Jason Isbell - Sirens of the Ditch
13. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
14. Bettye LaVette - The Scene of the Crime
15. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
16. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
17. Nicole Atkins - Neptune City
18. Dwight Yoakam - Dwight Sings Buck
19. Kanye West - Stronger
20. Jay - Z - American Gangster