My Listening Year: Best Discoveries of 2007 (Blind Spot Edition)

2007 was a great year for new releases, but even better for all the blind spots I filled in. I unintentionally had a very 70s year—seventeen out of my twenty-eight blind spot purchases were released in that decade. That's a good thing. Talk about blind spots: as a whole, I think the 70s were one of the least represented decades in my collection until this year.

Elvis Costello, Imperial Bedroom [mp3: "Human Hands"]
Hands down the biggest surprise of the year for me. I'd already made my mind up about Costello—I like him, but I don't like him like him. So when I picked up Imperial Bedroom and This Year's Model, it was really a matter of "eh, why not?" I was so ambivalent about it that I didn't even listen to Imperial Bedroom right away. Good thing I finally did, as the album turned out to be among my most-listened-to albums of the year. Like I said about Armchair Apocrypha last week, this is one of those wonderful albums where every song, at one point or another, is your favorite song. For the first time I consider myself a fan of Costello's, and will likely pick up more of his albums in the near future (starting with those from the same era as Bedroom.)

Big Star, #1 Record [mp3: "The India Song"]
As with Costello, I had no real expectations for Big Star, and picked up #1 Record/Radio City on a lark. Based on Third/Sister Lover, I thought I'd already made up my mind. I'm so thankful I gave these guys another chance! I've been listening to #1 Record pretty obsessively since getting it a couple months ago. My sense is that this might be the only Alex Chilton album I really need, however. The other Big Star albums, to my ears, descend in quality (Radio City is pretty good, not great, and Third/Sister Lover is unfocused). Somebody help me out—does his solo material change tack?

The Byrds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers [mp3: "Wasn't Born to Follow"]
Going into 2007, I knew it was going to be a year for the Byrds.  And it was: I picked up three Byrds albums total, in addition to the three I already owned. They were all great, each in their own way, but The Notorious Byrd Brothers sets itself apart in my eyes. For all the accolades Sweetheart of the Rodeo gets, Notorious is a far more interesting fusion of country and rock because it is more subtle. Gram Parsons's contributions to Sweetheart are fine, but they're also totally transparent, in that they simply are country and bluegrass, sharing album space with McGuinn's folk-rock tunes. Notorious is, from beginning to end, a Byrds album which has integrated the lapsteel and largely set the twelve-string acoustic aside. Crosby's excellent harmonies are still there, and neither Parsons nor Dylan's fingerprints are anywhere to be seen. It's not the perfect Byrds album (in fact, I don't think there is one), but it's the most interesting. It's still the Byrds, but you can hear, quite obviously, that the band was growing artistically. Sadly, it was the swan song for the original lineup, so there's no telling where the group would have gone if they'd stuck it out.

Joni Mitchell, Court & Spark [mp3: "Free Man in Paris"] and Blue [mp3:  "Carey"]
If anything, my Byrds fascination has grown to a near untenable obsession with their entire scene. in addition to steadily tracking down all of their albums, I've begun delving into the Laurel Canyon scene of the 60s and 70s. That's brought me to Buffalo Springfield and Joni Mitchell so far, with a long list of others I want to pick up. Mitchell in particular has turned out to be a terrific discovery for me (actually it was my brilliant wife who picked up Court & Spark).  I didn't fall immediately in love with this album, or with Mitchell in general. The first half was immediately engaging, but it sort of fell off after the midway point. Mitchell, left by herself, has some tics that were/are repellant to me, particulalry on first listen. Mostly it's the way her voice jumps into the upper register almost at random, or the way she seems to squeeze as many syllables into her lyrics as she damn well pleases, meter be damned. It's offputting. Nevertheless I liked enough of Court & Spark to give another album a chance. So I bought Blue. On first listens I was disappointed to find that this was a sparser album, none of the full-band treatment as on "Help Me" or "Free Man in Paris." But as time goes by I'm finding Blue to be the stronger album, and I'm coming around on all of Mitchell's quirks. There's still something kind of antagonistic in my listening relationship with Mitchell, but that's precisely what keeps me coming back to her.

Comments

[Paul]

Just stumbled onto your site. You might like my blog. In the last month I featured The India Song, California (from Blue), and Almost Blue (from Imperial Bedroom). Pretty random? Anyway, I'm also a Byrds fan (especially Sweetheart).

Warning: I also like country. Anyway, looks like there's some overlap.

URL = http://www.settingthewoodsonfire.com/

[scott pgwp]

Hey Paul - thanks for commenting; your blog looks great, glad to know about you!

[Paul]

Thanks! I've got a link up to PGWP. I'm looking forward to reading...

[Berrett Rice]

Love your blog! I was excited to see that you are discovering Costello, one of my personal favorite artists. Thought I'd comment that he hardly wrote a bad note between This Year's Model and King of America. I would particularly recommend Trust, King of America, and This Year's Model (which you already have) as his triumvirate of brilliance. He has other great stuff later in his career, but his initial offerings are by far the best.

I really like your writing - I'll be reading from here on out. Thanks.

[scott pgwp]

Hey Berrett - thanks for the compliment. I so happened to check your blog today too; I see we're both reading jeremy's blog. Hope you get your def leppard poster.

[Steve Peters]

Steve Roden sent me here. For Costello, I love Armed Forces. For Joni Mitchell, try Hejira. It's got the band thing, but totally different. She's over being a pop star, and not trying so hard to prove she can do jazz. Great songs with interesting arrangements, and she sings mostly in her lower range the whole time.

[scott pgwp]

Hey Steve - I was pawing over Armed Forces just the other day. And I think Scraps (another commenter here) recommended Hejira (among others) last time I posted about Micthell...

Thanks for posting - hope you find other things of interest around these parts.

[Mike]

If you dig Big Star, check out Chris Bell's "I Am The Cosmos" release. Proves that Bell deserved as much (more?) praise than Chilton in the Big Star days.

[satisfied75]

Ditto what mike said, check out I Am The Cosmos if yer digging on Bigstar.

I also didnt pick up on Notorious Byrd Brothers until a few of years ago. Great stuff.