Top 10 albums of 2007

What do you mean this is late?

1 The National – Boxer
My sister casually said have you heard anything by The National, they're pretty good. At the time I was between chemotherapy cycles and, to be honest, didn't really pay much attention. But I did borrow four albums from her and they lay neglected in a corner of my iPod for a month or so. Finally one afternoon in hospital, idly flicking through artists, bored with all the music I knew, I happened upon this album. It didn't take too long for me to be completely hooked. First thoughts were of the Tindersticks and Stuart Staples in particular (or Vic Reeves' pub singer according to pootly1), but without the melancholy or heavy-hearted weariness. The music is dark and brooding, late night and smoky at times, but never portentous or forced. The drumming is amazing and the other instruments sparkle and spar over the top, surging from sparse and spare arrangements to dense walls of rhythm.

2 Burial – Untrue
The sound of walking for hours alone through London after the tubes have stopped running, all the night buses have fallen off the edge of the world and you don't quite know where you are going.

3 Sigur Rós – Hvarf / Heim
Five (sort-of) new songs and five live recordings from 2006. Sounded like a clearing-out-the-cupboards type of project – not enough ideas for a new album – but in fact it is pretty good. Not exactly Agaetis byrjun, but certainly no Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do either. I think it also figures pretty high on the list because of the wonderful DVD that came out around the same time.

4 Lucinda Williams – West
That voice. Until 2007 I don't recall hearing anything by Lucinda Williams. I had read reviews which sounded interesting, but was always put off by the stigma of buying something from the country and western section. Anyway in March I noticed that iTunes had Car Wheels on a Gravel Road for $10 and given the relatively anonymous nature of the transaction I was unable to find a good reason not to buy it. Straight away is was hooked. In classic country and western style this, her latest, album is all about pain – the death of her mother and a lost love – but the songwriting and music is so far removed from my understanding of country and western as to make the genre irrelevant.

5 Art of Fighting – Runaways
At times last year I found this almost too sad to listen to. While it is undeniably downbeat and even pessimistic in places it also often soars to the heavens, the lows somehow emphasising and accentuating the joyous.

6 Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Seems a long time ago now, but I played this endlessly when it came out. I like it even more than Funeral and that was a stunning album. Lots of reviewers mentioned Springsteen's influence, but I can't see it myself. Not that this would necessarily be a bad thing as I have always (well since 1985 anyway) been a huge Bruce fan. (Although 2007s Magic was a disappointment to me, sounding like a very workmanlike copy of a real Bruce Album. Even the song titles sound like cliché Bruce – Gypsy Biker, I'll Work for your Love, Devil's Arcade ...) The music is dark, apocalyptic and frankly pretty scary if your listening on headphones. Also great played gut-kickingly loud in a darkened room.

7 Malcolm Middleton – A Brighter Beat
I feel happy that Scotland has its own parliament now and look forward to them honouring Mr Middleton with the freedom of the country or some other suitable recognition for services rendered. Aptly named, this a more consistent and coherent set of songs than Into the Woods, but for me it doesn't have anything quite as sublime as Choir and Loneliness Shines. If you haven't heard the former please drop everything and go find a copy right now. This sounds churlish, and when you've got songs like Fight Like the Night, A Brighter Beat and Stay Close Sit Tight it probably is. (Oh, and full credit for releasing a song called We're all Going to Die as your attempt at a Christmas number 1.)

8 Idlewild – Start a New World
Nothing earth-shattering – Roddy Woomble's lyrics can still veer perilously close to pretentious bed-sit poetry, the music is a little more polished than their best work, but it's still great. Soaring choruses, crunching, spiky guitar riffs and even a little bit of trumpet. Listen to Make Another World, Once in Your Life or Finished it Remains and tell me that this isn't a great rock band.

9 Manic Street Preachers – Send Away the Tigers
I guess that this is the album that I hoped the Manics would make after Gold Against the Soul. It is direct, nothing superfluous, heart-on-sleeve, righteous-anger rock music and sounds like they are finally having fun as a band again. Your Love Alone is Not Enough is just magnificent and I find it hard to believe that anyone could be unmoved when the Nina Persson and the strings take off together around 1.10 into the song.

10 Gersey – No Satellites
Mining a similar vein to Interpol, but somehow when I went to buy Our Love to Admire I ended up with this instead. And undoubtably it was the right choice. While it doesn't have the range or passion of some of their early music it is (along with Idlewild and the Manics) another fantastic set of rock songs.

And an honourable mention for The Twilight Sad's Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters.

Bill Henson

I am sadly disappointed Mr Rudd. I had thought that you were a thoughtful and intelligent man who could think and write about subtle and complex issues, such as the role of faith in politics. However, your ill-informed and hysterical comments about the NSW police raid on the Bill Henson exhibition last week sound more like the knee-jerk rantings of shock-jocks and tabloid journalists. I had hoped for better from you.

Perhaps something more like the letter penned by your guests from last month's 2020 summit. Thank you Alison Croggon and all the other signatories for providing some welcome context and sanity into the debate.

It is my opinion that none of Bill Henson's photos could be construed as pornographic and worth remembering that all his models (and their parents) have given their full consent to the taking of the pictures and their display in exhibitions.

However, I am biased. I think that Bill Henson is a great artist and someone that Australia should support and treasure, not vilify and misrepresent. And in fact, the mainstream media's coverage and response is far more likely to have had a damaging impact on those involved than anything that happened in Bill's studio.

'Difficult' third album

Sean O'Hagan in The Observer on My Bloody Valentine's imminent return to the stage (and a lot of other great stuff). I can't imagine there will be a gig I would rather go to this year than seeing MBV at the Glasgow Barrowlands. Not so sure about the festival appearances, but if they did make it to one in the Southern hemisphere I am sure I would be near the front of the queue.

A friend once asked me to list 10 albums that everyone should listen to. Top of the list was Loveless and at the time I said that it sounded unlike anything that I had ever heard or ever expected to hear again. So far that's true.

However, Kevin Shields is quoted in the article saying 'we are 100 per cent going to make another My Bloody Valentine record, unless we die or something'. I can't wait. Well I can. I've already waited seventeen years, so I suppose another one or two won't make much difference.

Giro d'Italia

First grand tour of the year kicked off in Palermo yesterday, so it must be time for some semi-informed guesses about the top three in Milan on June 1.

I don't think di Luca is going to manage to defend his title and I don't think that Contador will be up to the challenge. Although with the lack of Tour invite still fresh in their minds Astana will be pushing hard. I do think that Levi Leiphemer could be a surprise contender, but the mountains are probably just too tough for him and so it will fall to Andreas Klöden to put their case for le Tour to reconsider.

The mountains should favour Gilberto Simoni, but I don't feel that he has the legs to truly compete over three weeks anymore. So, anyway enough of who won't win it, here are my tips –

Maglia Rosa
1 Franco Pellizotti
2 David Zabriskie
3 Mauricio Soler
With Vladimir Karpets and Andreas Klöden just behind.

Maglia Verde
Maricio Soler

Maglia Ciclamino
Given that Mark Cavendish and Robbie McEwen are unlikely to get to Milan, I think I'll go for Robert Förster in the sprinter's jersey.

Book covers (or how not to sell me a book)

Compare the two covers for Graham Robb's recent book The Discovery of France –



Hardcover above, paperback below.

The hardback made me think of merchant bankers who have just bought a farmhouse in Provence, who need a weighty historical coffee-table title to casually place in the lounge of their latest addition to the real estate portfolio. The paperback looks like it is designed to appeal to the same people who like jokey travel literature of the type invented by Bill Bryson, but more recently exemplified by authors like Pete McCarthy and Tim Moore.

Surprisingly, I don't fall into either of those categories. But having read a bit more about Graham's book (and watching him talk and read from it at Guardian Books) it sounds great. His discussion on the ebb and flow of the influence of Paris on the rest of the country and the process by which regional influences have reasserted themselves on the national psyche, sounds particularly interesting.

Also he mentions the Landes de Gasciogne shepherds (one can be seen on the cover of the paperback, bottom left) who, in my opinion, have always been unfairly neglected in English-language histories and studies of France. Because of the marshy shrublands where they grazed their sheep they used stilts to keep track of their flocks and watch out for strays. They also had an ingenious third-leg which allowed them to rest without having to remove their stilts – as shown by Claude Viseux's statue on the outskirts of Mont de Marsan.


I remember a particularly surreal French Orienteering Championships where, if I recall correctly, the prizes were presented by shepherds on stilts ...

Excited?

Quite a lot actually. Thanks for asking ...

The wrong man

I have been trying to work out what is wrong about Gordon Brown for a while. In theory he should have been the perfect antidote to the Blair premiership, but something has gone devastatingly wrong with his ascension to the Prime Minister's job.

k-punk clarifies it all for me.

"Tell us about your mother, Gordon" ...

Portishead

So the answer to my rhetorical question from February 10 was Portishead. Based on the two songs from their mySpace page and the advance single Machine Gun, my excitement levels for Third are pretty high.

(Billy Bragg will always have a special place in my heart for Spy vs. Spy, Brewing up, Talking with the Taxman, the politics, his live shows and the endless argument I had with and ex-girlfriend about the lyrics of Great Leap Forwards. I still think his lyrics are great, but the middle-of-the road, pub rock which seems to be their standard accompaniment these days really bores my tits off.

I still consider R.E.M. to be one of the greatest bands ever and the Green World Tour concert at Glasgow Barrowlands is probably the best gig I have ever been to. And Accelerate is supposed to be a return to the glory days of Green and Document. But much as I desperately want it to be as good as either of those albums (or even half as good...) I somehow know that Stipe, Buck and Berry just don't really have it in them anymore.

And finally the smokescreen. I like the Breeders a lot, but come on, not that much.)

Light in the West from February 17's Observer Music Magazine also helped to fuel the anticipation. Fascinating on the history of the band, the dynamics of the personalities and also the construction processes the music goes through. I can't find a date for the Australian release, but most of the signs point to late April. I hope so ...

JG Ballard

I have always loved JG Ballard's books for the sheer brilliance of his ideas and how much he says about society using his fiction. And for this I have always considered him to be one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century. However, for some reason, I was never convinced of his greatness as a writer.

But not now.

Miracles of Life is undoubtably one of the best autobiographies I have ever read.



Modest and sparing, I found this telling of his remarkable life even more powerful and moving than his fictionalised accounts – Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women. A great deal of the material is already familiar from those novels, but one of the fascinating aspects of this book is his willingness to discuss his inspiration and techniques for writing.

His training as a doctor at Cambridge (where he was fascinated by dissection), his early working life selling encyclopedias, training in the RAF and as deputy editor at Chemistry & Industry along with his interest in psychoanalysis all led him to create a unique genre of writing in which the characters 'inner-spaces' are the focus instead of science fiction's usual preoccupations at that time.

I loved his delightful inversion of Cyril Connolly's quote – "my greatest ally was the pram in the hall" – and his belief in the importance of providing a happy and stable childhood for his family after his wife died suddenly in 1964. It is quite a leap of imagination to go from writing books like The Atrocity Exhibition during the day to picking the kids up from school, watching Blue Peter and preparing dinner. As he admits himself 'my children brought me up, perhaps as an incidental activity to rearing themselves', but also rightly points out he was incredibly lucky to be able to observe the process of his children growing from infancy into fully formed human beings so closely and how often fathers miss out on this. His joy in being a parent, the time spent as the sole parent of young children and the 'miracles of life' that he observed all added much to my understanding of him and his books.

It saddened me greatly to learn in the final chapter that he is suffering from advanced prostate cancer and that this may be the last thing he writes. It would be sad if this is the case, but when you look at the life he has led and the work he will leave behind I can't help but feeling that there isn't really any need to say anything else.

Grykes and clints

Moving from truly remote and relatively untouched corners of Scotland to the Burren in Ireland and on to the English countryside, Robert Macfarlane discovers and describes wild places in all their many manifestations –

Certainly, these islands possessed wild places on massive scales ... but my original idea that a wild place had to be somehow outside history, which had failed to fit the complicated pasts of the Scottish and Irish landscapes, seemed even more improper in an English context. English wildness existed in the main as Nash's 'unseen landscapes': it was there, if carefully looked for, in the bend of a stream valley, in the undercut of a riverbank, in copses and peat hags, hedgerows and quicksand pools. And it was there in the margins, interzones, and rough cusps of the country: quarry rim, derelict factory, and motorway verge.

The writing is poetic, lyrical, erudite and often all of these in a paragraph or less. The extract below, explaining how physics and climatic conditions combine to make the air in certain locations particularly clear, is a wonderful example:

On the north-western coasts of Britain and Ireland, the air has a remarkable transparency, for it is almost free of particulate matter. Little loose dust rises from the wet land, and the winds blow prevailingly off the sea. Through such air, photons can proceed without obstacle. The light moves, unscattered, and falls upon the forms and objects of those regions with candour.

Other passages that particularly touched me were his description of squirrels creating their own electric blankets using phone lines near his friend Roger Deakin's home (page 215); the explanation of how human eyes work at night (page 200) and his descriptions of sleeping outside in various locations. The latter bringing back memories of a soft, warm August night spent sleeping on a bed of heather in the middle of the Cairngorms and a snug but damp snow cave near the summit of Ben Lawers.

Constantly thought-provoking, near the end he touches upon the wild places which have been reclaimed by nature from man's clutches and presciently notes that:

Abandoned places such as these provide us not only with images of the past but also with visions of the future. As the climate warms, and as human populations begin to fall, increasing numbers of settlements will be abandoned. Inland drought and rising sea-levels on the coasts will force exoduses. And wildness will return to these forsaken places.

I always find it comforting to think that the Earth will easily outlast humanity and at some point in the future all traces of mankind will cease to exist. This remarkable diagram shows how long this process would actually take if all mankind disappeared tomorrow –

Apologies for the quality, but the original article [Times online] no longer has the diagram.

And, just in case you were wondering, a gryke is a vertical fissure in limestone pavement which has been worn out by water erosion and a clint is a glacially polished horizontal surface of limestone pavement.

Although, this pretty good too...

Is it just me?

Or does James Dean Bradfield look like Ken Stott these days?

Anyway, it is still probably my favourite song from 2007...

Favourite mooks of 2007

More lists... According to iTunes my favourite songs from 2007 were:

1 Rescue – Lucinda Williams (West)
2 I'm Taking the Train Home – The Twilight Sad (Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters)
3 Ocean of Noise – The Arcade Fire (Neon Bible)
4 Your Love Alone is Not Enough – Manic Street Preachers (Send Away the Tigers)
5 Heart it Races (As Played By Soft Tigers) – Architecture In Helsinki (Heart It Races – Single)
6 Fight Like the Night – Malcolm Middleton (A Brighter Beat)
7 Brainy – The National (Boxer)
8 Visitor – Nina Kinert (Let There Be Love)
9 Johnny and Mary – Placebo (Covers)
10 Hljómalind – Sigur Rós (Hljomalind – EP)
11 The Rebel on His Own Tonight – Malcolm Middleton and Alan Bissett (Ballads of the Book)
12 Parisian Skies – Maxïmo Park (Our Earthly Pleasures)
13 Lost Watch (Iceland Version) – Seabear (Music for Hairy Scary Monsters)
14 In McDonalds – Burial (Untrue)
15 Teenage Kicks – Seabear (Teenage Kicks / Piano Hands – Single)
16 Wrecking Ball – Interpol (Our Love to Admire)
17 A Brighter Beat – Malcolm Middleton (A Brighter Beat)
18 Mysteries – Art of Fighting (Runaways)
19 Make Another World – Idlewild (Make a New World)
20 What If – Lucinda Williams (West)
21 Down On the Ground – British Sea Power (Krankenhaus? – EP)
22 It's Not Over Yet – Klaxons (Myths of the Near Future)
23 Stay Close Sit Tight – Malcolm Middleton (A Brighter Beat)
24 That Summer At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy – The Twilight Sad (That Summer At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy – Single)
25 Raver – Burial (Untrue)

Which looks about right when you see the track listing for my best of 2007 CD:

Eating Seaweed (Best of 2007)
Your Love Alone is Not Enough – Manic Street Preachers
Johnny and Mary – Placebo
The Rebel on His Own Tonight – Malcolm Middleton and Alan Bissett
Make Another World – Idlewild
Parisian Skies – Maxïmo Park
Heart it Races (As Played By Soft Tigers) – Architecture In Helsinki
Fight Like the Night – Malcolm Middleton
Trains to Brazil – Guillemots
Wrecking Ball – Interpol
Still a Long Way To Go – James Dean Bradfield
Rescue – Lucinda Williams
Mysteries – Art of Fighting
Lost Watch (Iceland Version) – Seabear
Hljómalind – Sigur Rós
Brainy – The National
Ocean of Noise – The Arcade Fire
I'm Taking the Train Home – The Twilight Sad
In McDonalds – Burial

Trains to Brazil and Still a Long Way To Go don't figure on the iTunes list because they were acquired before January 1, 2007 but too late to make the cut for the Best of 2006 CD.

Good to see Malkie getting four entries in the top 25, pretty impressive even if you count the duet(?) with Alan Bissett (author of the awesome boyracers).

Lucinda Williams and The Twilight Sad were runners-up with two songs each. More on my favourite albums of 2007 soon...

Four to look forward to...

Billy Bragg - Mr Love and Justice
Breeders - Mountain Battles
Portishead - Third
REM - Accelerate

But which one am I most excited about?

Surveillance

And at number 2 was Jonathan Raban's Surveillance. I resisted reading it until March (after buying it for myself as an early Christmas present) and could tell from the first page that it was going to be a real treat.

Like in his travel writing, Raban manages to say a lot about contemporary society, the little details of fact and place are always perfectly observed, reflecting back to the reader our current preoccupations and concerns.

The story concerns a journalist, reclusive writer, gay actor/activist, the journalist's 11-year-old daughter and whether the writer's bestselling war-time memoir is real or not. The story races along and is always fascinating. The ending, however, leaves everything unresolved, not reaching any conclusions about what has gone before. I can't decide if he is trying to make a larger point about the world and mankind's place in it or if he just felt that was how the story should end.

Maybe I need to read it again and see if I can work it out...

What was Lost

So, Catherine O'Flynn's What was Lost was my favourite book of last year. I first read about it on the redoubtable Crockatt and Powell's blog (why did they wait for me to move from Battersea to Melbourne before opening up shop?) and managed to get a copy brought out from the UK.

For me it is just about perfect - moving, funny (hilariously so in places), mysterious and wonderfully well written. I am not going to say any more because basically everyone should read it and I don't want to give anything away.

The Readings' catalogue this month had a special feature (i.e. short interview) with Catherine and Scribe are publishing it in Australia, so well done to them and whoever was smart enough to invite Catherine to the Perth Festival...

(Scribe also published the excellent Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy and the very enjoyable Border Street by Susanne Leal, both of which I read last year and would recommend.)

Books of 2007

Listed in the order they were read. 2007 was actually a pretty good year in terms of quantity (mostly due to spending the best part of two and a half months in hospital) and I expect 2008 will mark a return to levels more like 2006's twenty-eight.

1 Kate Atkinson – Case Histories
2 Nicholas Shakespeare – In Tasmania
3 Cormac McCarthy – The Road
4 William Boyd – Restless
5 Markus Zusak – The Messenger
6 Matt Rendell – The Death of Marco Pantani
7 William McIlvanney – Laidlaw
8 Rory Stewart – The Places In Between
9 Paul Auster – In the Country of Last Things
10 Anne Fadiman – Ex Libris
11 Jonathan Raban – Surveillance
12 Laura Hird – Hope and other Urban Tales
13 Richard Gwynn – The Colour of a Dog Running Away
14 Catherine O’Flynn – What Was Lost
15 Orhan Pamuk – The New Life
16 William Boyd – Fascination
17 Cormac McCarthy – No Country for Old Men
18 Roberto Bolano – The Savage Detectives*
19 Colin Thubron – In Siberia
20 Mark Taplin – Open Lands
21 Cate Kennedy – Dark Roots
22 David Vise – The Google Story
23 Martin Cruz Smith – Wolves Eat Dogs
24 Sara Wheeler – Travels in Thin Country
25 Richard Moore – In Search of Robert Millar
26 Ian Rankin – The Naming of the Dead
27 Kenneth Deffeyes – Beyond Oil
28 Graeme Fife – Inside the Peleton
29 Jonathan Coe – The Rain Before it Falls
30 Michael McGirr – Things you get for free
31 John O’Farrell – Things can only get better
32 Paul Auster – Oracle Night
33 William Gibson – Spook Country
34 Ian Rankin – Exit Music
35 Simon Winchester – The Map that Changed the World
36 Susanna Leal – Border Street
37 Andrew Greig – Kingdoms of Experience
38 Graham Swift – Tomorrow
39 Alexander McCall Smith – 44 Scotland Street
40 Orhan Pamuk – Istanbul
*Mostly read in 2007, but I ended up putting it aside about two-thirds of the way through and only finished it off recently.

Statistics
Fiction: 24 titles
Non-fiction: 16 titles
Number of authors: 34
Male authors: 27
Female authors: 7
Books published in 2007: 7
Books published in 2006: 10
Books published in 2005: 7
Books published 2000-04: 8
Books published 1990-99: 5
Books published 1980-89: 2
Books published before 1980: 1

Top 10
1 Catherine O’Flynn – What Was Lost
2 Jonathan Raban – Surveillance
3 Orhan Pamuk – Istanbul
4 Cormac McCarthy – The Road
5 William Boyd – Restless
6 Colin Thubron – In Siberia
7 Ian Rankin – Exit Music
8 William Gibson – Spook Country
9 Paul Auster – In the Country of Last Things
10 Nicholas Shakespeare – In Tasmania
Notes on the top 10 to follow...