From its’ first moment of impact, the clash of decades duking it out with the confines of Neimo’s latest EP is obvious. With pulsating synths, dance floor drum beats, flashy guitar showmanship, and Bruno Joe Dallersandro’s rebel rousing vocals all exploding at once, the band coat an affinity for early 00’s nitty, gritty guitar rock with a sleek 80’s/90’s disco glam not entirely surprising to hear from four fashionable Frenchmen.

For those interested in a quiet kind of New Years Eve, consider the stay at home entertainment Radiohead will be providing over at Dead Air Space. Seems the band are giving the world another one of its’ fabulous webcasts. From Thom…

So you didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas this year. That sweater from your aunt? Those sheets from your sister? Not the most exciting gifts of all time. No problem though. Might we suggest treating yourself with an exclusive single from your favorite pals, Jack and Meg?

Back in November I read an article in the Village Voice about a band I had never heard of. I was intrigued by the word used to describe their sound: asoulgazing. It essentially means a mix of soul music, shoegaze and indie rock with hip-hop style looping and drum programming. We’ve all had that moment when you’re immediately, irrationally sold on a product before seeing it or hearing it. This became my moment, but of course I had to check out some songs to make sure that my preconceptions were true.

Without revealing too much, emo darlings Death Cab For Cutie want the world to know they have a new album on the way in May of ’08. The announcement of the follow-up to their ’05 outing, Plans, comes via a vague teaser of the band in the studio on their official website.

We know you’ve been waiting weeks on this, our ticking time bomb of a list, slowly counting down only the very best albums of the year. It’s been a rewarding kind of review …a chance to actually take a moment away from always thinking about what comes next, to focus on everything 2007 had to offer. We hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed making it. And now, “Boom!”…2007’s crowning achievement.

Twenty-four down. One to go. We’ve spent the last few weeks unveiling what we believe are the very best albums ’07 had to offer. Tomorrow we’ll reveal the crowning achievement of the year that was. And while we’re utterly dieing to tell you what it is, let us first recap our month long count down in one, aggregated collection…

If the music of twenty three year old Nancy Elizabeth whips up ice-cold images of isolation in wide open, wind swept terrain, it is certainly for good reason. The Lancashire-born singer captured her ambitious take on folk music’s age-old traditions while surrounded by a sea of countryside. Recorded in both a remote 17th Century white stone cottage in Wales and a village hall outside Manchester, it’s just the kind of intimate setting one would expect to stumble upon a band of clandestine musicians working away on dulcimer, glockenspiel, guitar, harp, mandolin and a variety of other instruments that read like another language all together (bouzouki, khim, etc). The result is Elizabeth’s debut long player, Battle and Victory (The Leaf Label); a unique batch of mystic song fare that calls to mind the very best aspects of Nina Nastasia, Joanna Newsome, and Vashti Bunyon. KEEP READING – David Pitz

It has been several years since Jeff Tweedy set out to seek a little assistance in dealing with his addiction to pain killers. And while this should be dead and buried, Wilco unearthed the story again this year, if only for the fact that Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch) is the first album since Tweedy decided to take control of his life.

Playing the role of shocker in our count down to the best album of 2007, Yeasayer’s All Hour Cymbals (We Are Free) is clearly the biggest surprise of the year …a stop you in your tracks kind of debut that draws appropriate comparisons to Jim Morrison, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, and Radiohead.

Just when we were all caught up in actually singing her praises, Amy Winehouse makes the news again…this time for allegedly getting herself arrested for “perverting the course of justice” in the case against hubby Blake Fielder-Civil.

Critiquing Radiohead’s In Rainbows solely by what lies within those late night files zapped to your desktop back in October is no easy endeavor. Not only that, but such a review would really only reveal half the reasons why the world got all hopped up on the Rainbow kool aid in the first place.

Prepackaged with the pressurized punch of following up a universal classic, Arcade Fire fought off the inevitable sophomore slump by conceiving a striking album of immaculate epics that, while emotionally dampened, call upon a grander, less charming, muse.

A maverick musician skillfully forging his way through musical terrain most wouldn’t dare navigate, The Dirty Projectors's David Longstreth plays a bit of a schizophrenic bandit on his band’s latest release.

An early little parcel here, this courtesy of those pioneering Welshmen in Super Furry Animals. In this little nugget, a beaming little lad has himself a very merry Christmas...Except, it looks like the kind of holiday hullabaloo being had in this video for “The Gift That Keeps On Giving” comes at the expense of all the other good little boys and girls.

With a dark and dingy dredge of bottom dwelling bass, brash one and two stomps on the kick and snare, and the ever reckless ramblings of Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince, The Kills introduce the first taste of their upcoming album, Midnight Boom (Domino), with this stylish video that bundles cool studded tension and angst ridden art all in one glorious work of site and sound.

No MTV censors downing the dials here. No Letterman techs cutting the wires either. Nope. Just M.I.A’s “Paper Planes”…the way the Sri Lankan spitter originally intended for you to hear it.

There was plenty for print this past year concerning the exploits of Britain’s most beloved booze hound, Amy Winehouse…the least of which actually had anything to do with the time-worn blend of soul, jazz, and the blues that made her relevant in the first place.

Given the boundless amounts of anticipation that seem to precede any follow-up to artistic brilliance, many an artist often fall victim to the not so necessary need to reinvent the art that makes them who they are. Thankfully, when it came time to recording The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar), Okkervil River chose to continue refining the elegant roots they have slowly sunk into bedrock over the last six years…a good move considering most fans probably only stumbled upon Will Sheff’s potent poetry shortly after the release of their ’05 break through, Black Sheep Boy.

Photo by Maureen Pitz
Banging the can for musical adventures of a more archaic nature, this performance from Baltimore’s Yeasayer is one of the more unique shows you’ll find in our ever growing catalogue. With centerpieces like “Wait for the Summer” and “2080” plump full of a variety of ancient treasures and trinkets – percussive mantras, ritualistic chanting, and enraptured hand clapping/ foot stomping – Yeasayer spin the globe more than a few times throughout the course of this performance, excavating diverse musical relics and ricocheting rhythms from a variety of cultural/historical backgrounds.

Whenever the music of Elliott Smith finds its’ way to me, I’ll admit it can be hard not to feel a bit overwhelmed. Elliott’s compassionate composite of chords and voice provided one of the first places I can remember finding beauty, doubt, fear, hope, love, power, and sadness all intersecting at once. It was powerfully emotional…the perfect soundtrack to the range of thoughts and feelings life inevitably throws at most young people.

Few bands work as well within relatively simple, sonic confines as Spoon. Compiling a conspicuous catalogue that rarely leans hard on window dressing, the Texas Tunesmen have always known what works. Drums, bass, guitar, and keys: these would be the basic building blocks if pop music had a periodic table of the elements. So when trumpets, saxophone, cello, a plethora of percussive extras, flamenco guitar, a Japanese koto, chamberlain, and bits of studio chatter pop in and out of their sixth studio try, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge), it might seem appropriate to suspect the band may have over did it a bit.

On Menomena’s third album, the Portland trio proves a band need not trend in the same directions as many of their experimental contemporaries to hone in on personal success. Sure, much of Friend or Foe (Barsak) is the result of a progressive home grown computer program dubbed Dealer. But it is the album’s nod to traditional melody and composition…the kind that could send the heart into an astonishing kind of emotional flutter at any moment…that won us over this year.

Dead before the ship ever sank? Hardly boys…After fifteen years together, Modest Mouse are still running their sails up the mast year after year. And while they have certainly charted a course away from the broad, wind swept jams and gnarly Indie crunchers of their youth, the band’s hot and heavy segue into a more commercial sound has certainly been a compelling (not to mention highly successful) twist in the history of one of the most beloved bands of the last decade and a half.

While recent whispers down the lane concerning Beach House’s sophomore album suggest that the Baltimore duo have made a turn for new sounding territory, the first glimmer of Devotion (Car Park)…a track called “Gila”…suggests that, for now, the song remains the same.

When Iron and Wine’s first album in three years landed at Baeble HQ last August, we were all a little taken aback. The stay at home folkie we had all come to adore on The Creek Drank the Cradle and Our Endless Numbered Days was gone. In its’ place was a globe trotting man, eager to dig his heals into a variety of genres.

When pop artists go political, it is often a thorny needle they are left to thread their way through. If the song is packed too loosely, the underlying message can be lost to the mass consumption of a radio hit. On the other hand, if the artist works in less subtle ways, they are often chastised for being too whiney, too uninformed, and, as of late, even too trendy.

Few artists hone in on quite as may unusual proclivities as Andrew Bird. From the moment the lights went down on my first show of ‘07, the guitarist/violinist/whistling virtuoso had me completely cornered with his unusual bits of oddball idiosyncrasies.

That The Mumlers borrow their name from an enterprising 19th century photographer (that being William H. Mumler) who fetched top dollar for the frozen images of the dearly departed he claimed haunted the frames of his compositions may seem like just another inconsequential historical reference for a band seeking an interesting talking point. But listening to the Bay Area ensemble’s debut album does feel a bit like ghost hunting in a place you’d least expect to drum up long forgotten spirits. KEEP READING - David Pitz

Another surprise on our countdown…this by a group of Danish musicians we had never even heard of until just a few weeks ago. But in such a short time, Efterklang managed to capture our imagination with an album of contemporary chamber folk that did more than trace over the lines paved by Sufjan Stevens.

The lore of Atlanta’s Black Lips is not for everyone. No, this rowdy bunch of gutter punks fly their ferocious flag for too much drunken depravity, too much overall unwholesomeness, and far too many exchanges of precious bodily fluids (blood, urin, vomit, and god know what else) to ever get a solid salute from the major masses.

Gun slinging impresarios of the American progressive sect, The Mars Volta have announced plans for an 11 date tour to precede the release of their highly anticipated fourth album, The Bedlam in Goliath.

With Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop), James Mercer’s vessel for holding grand, yet often poetically vague, topical ideas received a brand new production standard…one gleamed over in the kind of studio finesse that take their impeccable slices of indie pop to loftier territory.

The clicking heels of indie rock’s primitive parade have been striding by for a number of years now. Releases, both current and of the not so recent variety, by artists like Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart, Coco Rosie, Grizzly Bear, and Joanna Newsom all bang the can for musical adventures of a more archaic nature, and upon first, second, and third listens to Yeasayer’s excellent new disc, All Hour Cymbals (We Are Free), it would seem fitting to slide the Brooklyn band into this slowly bloating sect of the indie elite. KEEP READING - David Pitz

Psssst…we got some really trashy news from the ever twirling rumor mill for you this morning. Some Real Emotional Trash, if you will. Slated for a March 4th release on Matador, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks are preparing to dump their first release with Sleater Kinney’s Janet Weiss behind the kit on us, and frankly, we couldn’t be more excited to get knee deep in it.

Land Ho! Vampire Weekend has found their way off the boat and on to glorious Southern Californian shores...and for good reason.

While the frenzied focus on Jeff Tweedy should have shifted away from his rehab stint many moons ago, there can be no denying the fact that the man dons a super sense of vitality these days. Wilco’s fall tour hardly wrapped up too long ago, and Tweedy himself has spent the better part of the last few weeks lending his time and talent to charity events for the likes of Second City, The Old Town School Folk Music, and Barack Obama. Now it seems the entire band is set to bundle all this benevolence for their fans on the East Coast and across parts of the South.

If Ryan Adams spent ’06 attempting to distract the bitter demons that have plagued parts of his life with a purge of albums (Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, 29), 07’s Easy Tiger (Lost Highway) marked a careful acceptance that sometimes temptation, loneliness, and heartache are bound to lie in wait somewhere on the horizon.

Grab your books ladies and gents. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs…whatever really. Hell, you may even want to bust out that box in your parent’s basement full of all your college learnings. You may need them in order to figure out just what the heck Dan Bejar is singing about come March 18th.

Another day, another factory freak-out...This time from everyone’s favorite weirdo (we use the term lovingly) Björk. Teaming up with long time favorite French director Michel Gondry, the ice queen plays industrial puppet master in her new video, coloring her pocket army with Volta’s spastic battle cry, “Declare Independence”.

While modern dance music has, historically, offered very little to those down with songwriting, assimilation with more organic structure and instrumentation over recent years has helped ebb the flow of repetitive, melodramatic, mediocrity on the dance floor. With artists such as Beta Band, Books, Hot Chip, and Tunng championing many a converts, its safe to call whichever scene acts like these are clumped into undoubtedly healthy.

With Cease to Begin (Sub Pop), Band of Horses, the band that gave album reviewers the chance to name-check The Shins and The Flaming Lips even more than usual, has released an album that replaces the echo-drenched indie rock of their first ... with more echo-drenched indie rock. KEEP READING - Claire Orpeza

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MP3: Band of Horses:: “Is There a Ghost” – from Cease to Begin
Band of Horses on MySpace

With Made in the Dark steaming towards a February 5th release, the cool and cocky cadets of Hot Chip have begun to unroll all the necessary bits and pieces to assure the album is met with a substantial amount of buzz. First up, the band has let the leash off of Made in the Dark’s first single, “Ready for the Floor”, over at their space. Now, wasting no time at all, they have moved right along by clowning around in this rather bizarre video treatment for the track. We’ll skip the explanation, and head straight for the goods.

Don’t count the fact that this one didn’t grab our immediate attention as a knock against it. Some albums work in more mysterious ways. In the case of The National’s Boxer (Beggars Banquet), no album surprised us as much in the end.

There can be any number of ways a band might arrive at the front door of a newly finished studio album. Bishop Allen found their way by writing/recording some 58 songs (The band released an EP a month for all of ’06), whittling them down to a handful, and packaging them as the sophomore follow-up to Charm School. In the process, The Broken String (Dead Oceans) became one of our favorites this past year. From our review…

It may not have been planned. It may have only been undertaken with hibernation in mind. But Justin Vernon’s retreat to untold solitude in Wisconsin’s North Woods produced the material for one of the New Year’s most celebrious of releases. An absolute stunner of an album, Jagjaguwar will be releasing Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago on February 18th, 2008. If for any reason you may have lost a little faith in dime a dozen songwriters, this trek through folk ambience will have you coming back to the genre. - David Pitz

Though the past might be ripe with black and white, newsreel sentimentality and quasi romantic images of the last honest fight, more recent accounts of World War II tell a different tale…one painted in the graphic full-color, hell on scorched earth, strokes it really was. To this, add the penned perspective of Paul Arbogast.

Stowing his Balkan blues for Gulag Orkestar’s follow-up, Zach Condon packed Beirut’s sophomore effort, The Flying Club Cup (Ba Da Bing), with enough of a Parisian punch to prove at twenty one, he’s got this whole indie exotica thing down pat. He also managed to snag a spot within our top 25. From our review of The Flying Club Cup…

It took a place I always misunderstood to convince me that Phosphorscent’s Pride (Dead Oceans) was one of the very best records of the year. Not only that, but the realization only hit me a week ago during a 14 hour trip from one familiar city to another. Somewhere in the middle of one particular stretch of farmland …a place, mind you, that always caused me to ask, “why live here?”, it happened. With snow beating down on the windshield, and lonely, ice dusted cornfields speeding by my window, Pride spread its mighty wings and demanded my attention.

Kicking off this year’s list, we’ve tapped Joe Henry’s Civilians (Anti) to fill in the #25 slot of our countdown. An album of enormous beauty, Civilians caught Baeble contributor Claire Orpeza a bit off guard the moment she received it. From her review…

With the calendar threatening to turn, and a noticeable decline in albums slipping through our mail slot, it is certainly looking to be that time of the year where new content takes a welcome back seat to a celebration of the year that was. It is list season…that exceptional time of the year when it seems almost every publication rummages through the contents of the past 12 months to stack the very best they had to offer up on a critical totem poll. Several well known publications have already released theirs…towering tallies of record upon record. Many more will do the same over the next few weeks. Here at Baeble, we have dwindled our picks down to a mere twenty-five albums. Twenty five albums that stopped us in our tracks…twenty five records that demanded we take the time to perk our ears. Of these, many were albums we knew would find their way into the list, even before we ever pressed play for the first time. But for the most part, most of the releases that made our list hid stunning surprises between their reels…inspiring debuts from artists we had never heard of before, and bands/musicians we never would have guessed had such wonderful works of art up their sleeve. It was a good year for music. What more is there to say?

Over the next month or so we will slowly unroll our scroll, revealing what we believe were the very best albums of ’07. We know you may disagree with some of our choices. We respect that. Music, after all, is a very personal choice, and by god, is no one wrong! So be sure to tell us what some of your favorites were this year. We can’t wait to hear from you. - David Pitz