Spin Gives In To Against Me!'s New Wave
This is a tough one to love. And a sort of tough one to hate. At the very least, Spin's list of Top 40 albums of 2007 earns points for giving a nod to Panda Bear's Person Pitch which, aside from a Top 10 finish in the Gummys, has been unjustly left off a lot of year-end roundups so far. But, then they forgot Animal Collective. Bonde Do Role clocking in at #36 is probably more a show of nostalgia and sympathy for recent events than a critical assessment of the album's decent merits, but okay. (If not, Spin you're welcome to use that as an excuse when you explain yourself to Dirty Projectors, Jens Lekman, Andrew Bird, and Battles fans.) The Top 10 at least hits upon the usual (and deserving) suspects. Except for Winehouse. But get back on the see-saw: Rilo Kiley doesn't belong on any of these lists (not even the Gummys, silly kids). And our WTF captured in one word: Prince.
40 Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight
39 Turbonegro - Retox
38 Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English
37 Ted Leo & The Pharmicists - Living With The Living
36 Bonde Do Role - With Lasers
35 Say Anything - In Defense Of The Genre
34 Bat For Lashes - Fur And Gold
33 The Wildhearts - The Wildhearts
32 Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81
31 Handsome Furs - Plague Park
30 Brother Ali - Undisputed Truth
29 Panda Bear - Person Pitch
28 Iron And Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
27 Band Of Horses - Cease To Begin
26 Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
25 Queens Of The Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
24 The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
23 Peter Bjorn & John - Writer's Block
22 Elliott Smith - New Moon
21 Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
20 of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?Don't agree with that #1? Not this guy. Full list here.
19 Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
18 Feist - The Reminder
17 The National - Boxer
16 Lily Allen - Alright, Still...
15 Justice - †
14 BruceSpringsteen - Magic
13 The Hives - The Black And White Album
12 Prince - Planet Earth
11 Lil Wayne - Da Drought 3
10 The White Stripes - Icky Thump
09 Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
08 Jay-Z - American Gangster
07 Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
06 Radiohead - In Rainbows
05 M.I.A. - Kala
04 Kanye West - Graduation
03 LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
02 Arcade Fire Neon Bible
01 Against Me! - New Wave
Posted at 5:34 PM in Year-End List
Tags: Against Me!
I never thought I'd see the day that my selected number 1 album of the year would fall in line with a magazine that puts Fallout Boy or My Chemical Romance on their cover.
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What's fun, after so many lists, is to imagine the blurbs that will go with each entry. The sameyness of these lists is making me numb.
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against me sold out
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What's up Handsome Furs! Finally getting the recognition they deserve!
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Getch'ur Spin list with blurbs here:
http://www.spin.com/features/magazine/best_of_2007/albums/
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Spin sold out. Against Me are absolute dogshit.
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I'm so tired right now. Can I borrow some 2008?
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Yes Handsome Furs. Dan Boeckner is radzilla.
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no, spin didn't sell out, that shit was still sitting on the shelf at borders today.
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Not the best Against Me! album. But they can kick your favorite indie band's ass. They can also grow more facial hair.
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FINALLY! It's about time someone recognizes The Hives.
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I like it.
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ya know, i think this is the first list i've seen with PB&J...i guess i was kinda expecting them to fare better on these lists.
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And Against Me! for that matter.
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The Wildhearts get some respect!
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Was it a slow year for Rock 'n Roll? Or did everyone just get soft?
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Hate Spin but at least someone recognized Era Vulgaris, most underrated album of the year
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*rock album...there's one for ya zach
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Doug, I think PB&J have been absent because I think "Writer's Block" was released last year....
Nice to see Handsome Furs though.
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Gainesville represent
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A lot of the ubiquitous bands on these lists made decent records but they previously made better ones. Arcade Fire, Ted Leo, the National, Band of Horses, the Shins--none of them made their best album so far. It's like celebrating familiarity: "we dig this band and they made an album, let's include it." I know these lists are irrelevant, but it'd be nice to see bands recognized for actually progressing and getting better.
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"In a perfect world, New Wave would have been greeted with the adulation and success the similarly agitpop American Idiot received."
*sigh*
If only.
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You liked Alligator better than Boxer, Mike?
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Little bit o' sweetness, lotta bit o' icky blahness.
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Didn't that Lily Allen record come out last year?
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Brother Ali! Holla!
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Another yay for Handsome Furs. Also, after listening to Alligator v. Boxer for the past couple of months, I still like Alligator better...and I don't get the excitement over Spoon, which is good-not great, or Band of Horses, which is so boring.
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Spin's 1996 list (#1 Beck; #2 Fugees; #3 Pulp!) and 1997 list (#1 Cornershop; #2 Radiohead...#12 Pavement) are classics of alt rock journalism.
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spin's been slacking a bit.
http://paidandpopular.blogspot.com
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Quickly browsing through the Top 10 blurbs, I noticed two incorrect album covers (Jay-Z and Kanye). I don't understand how that is possible for a music mag's end-of-year list...
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"Rilo Kiley doesn't belong on any of these lists (not even the Gummys, silly kids)."
YES.
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against me!? if it was their As the eternal cowboy record i would have agreed. but their latest record just doesn't cut it compared to their previous records. if it was actually a different band who released the record, i might have been impressed but knowing against me!'s back catalog, i know they can do much better. the newest record biggest weakness is that it is too over-produced. against me!'s part of appeal was that their music never seem too over-produced, it felt raw. butch vig has a habit of ruining good bands...
besides all the above said, the record does have a duet with tegan quin from tegan and sara which is definitely worth a listen.
http://www.killabot.wordpress.com
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I've never actually heard an Against Me song until a few moment ago.
I only checked them out because of this article.
I'm regretting that decision now. It's another 30 seconds I'll never get back...
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I thought that Bat for Lashes came out last year.
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I used to look forward to Spin's year-end albums list like nothing else when I was a teenager. That was back when, as owen pointed out above, the mag still heralded great music. I knew Spin lost it the year they crowned a System of a Down album best of the year. That's not even music.
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dear people writing year-end best-of lists:
please stop putting in rainbows in the top 20.
thank you.
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dear vinnie
please realize you are a fool.
thank you.
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Sorry dudes, but that Rilo Kiley album was like candy. Stereogum, don't waste your extremely rare intra-indie rock putdowns on something that fun, not with all that self-important reverb-heavy BS waiting for its pretension to get stomped on.
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I'm totally lost on why every list seems to forget or ignore Andrew Bird and Beirut.
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I'm totally lost on why every list seems to forget or ignore Andrew Bird and Beirut.
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damn again, no NIN...against me but no Trent?!? odd. ahh, like i give a shit haha, its just boring conversation starting shit n e way...and the hives supposedly made a good album?!! hmm...well its possible haha.
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yeah fuck spin. they puts in against me!'s dogshit at number one ahead of arcade fire, lcd soundsystem, in rainbows, white stripes, and spoon's ga x5. also they forgets the amazing new backstreet boys record which beats the shit out of that dogshit new against me!. fuck you spin.
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against me didn't sell out they bought in.
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Why did Say Anything make this list? They made possibly the most mediocre record of the year. The best thing that album had for it was the title, which I promptly stole and used on my final paper.
it also just occured to me: where's the love for the new Saul Williams? Or do magazines have issues with the term Niggy Tardust?
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rilo kiley's new album was like candy all right. yup, just like candy corn.
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Best list yet. Radiohead isn't too high, Handsome Furs beat Sunset Rubdown, overblogged indie sensations The National and Animal Collective were kept at bay, and the wonderful year for hip-hop (Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne) is given its due.
Why can't the Gummys be this good?
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don't understand what people see in new against me! at all. yeah i'm a huge fan of the old stuff, but that doesn't render me incapable of seeing that new wave is generic pop bullshit and tom gabel just sounds constipated trying to sing like he always has over shit like that.
searching for a former clarity had songs as poppy as the ones on new wave, but those were actually good. of course, the fact that not every song sounded exactly the same helped.
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screw all of you guys that say against me! sold out. so what if they want to experiment with a new sound. true fans of the band would say thats great, im happy for them and still like them for them. true fans will be fans of whatever music they put out. true, you may like other material better than others. the only thing against me! has sold out is many concerts. i became a fan of them a little before they put out new wave. my now ex girlfriend bought it for me. i listened to it and i admit it wasnt what i expected but i still love it and love the band. keep it up guys. cheers, jesse
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uhhhh true fans of Against Me! have been known to say:
"you made an entire fucking documentary about how you were against the major label system and thought it was crazy how much you were being offered to sign. and before that you wrote a shitload of songs about being true to yourself and playing music as a creative venture rather than a way to sell a bunch of tickets and tshirts and albums of ten midtempo yawn-worthy songs."
the new Against Me! record was weak and super disappointing, even when not compared to their old records and 7"s, or what they used to say. it's just a boring album.
also, Tom Gabel said this in an interview with SPIN:
"SPIN: Is it weird that the punk purists are getting this riled up over the so-called authenticity of an album that features a song about how silly that very notion is?
Gabel: 'Up the Cuts' is trying to say that the argument the punk scene is making about mainstream culture is totally irrelevant now -- technology is changing everything, and they're still talking about $5 shows and seven-inch records. What I'd love is for those people to come with us."
...what?
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It's really hard to take any 2007 list that doesn't include Silverchair's "Young Modern" seriously. If you are unaware of what these guys have done since 1997 and didn't really like what it was they were doing then with the whole teenage clone of Nirvana/Pearl Jam "Frogstomp" era you might be pleasantly surprised with their last 3 releases. Very rare to see a band change this dramatically in 10 years time by changing their sound from something that was commercially successful to letting their sound evolve over the years to what the band is today. Most bands that change as much as Silverchair has usually go in a direction of what is successful at the time...Silverchair did pratically the opposite. They went from commercial rock radio kids emulating(they named their band in reference to Nirvana and a song "Berlin Chair" by a popular Aussie band You Am I) to a band that could collaborate with symphony orchestras to churn out emotionally brilliant songs like "Emotion Sickness" and "Across The Night" to name a couple.
Disagree with me if you want to, it's really not gonna change my opinion on my favorite band of all time. But don't for a second try to debate the fact that Daniel Johns and company are not just a band, they are talented and accomplished "Artists".
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That's always cute when some ignorant jackass makes a "sold out" comment about Against Me. God forbid a great band gets recognized for their hard work and dedication. Let's see.... they only toured around for 8 years playing every "hole in the wall" venue that would have them, building a following that most major label bands could only dream of...show after show, night after night, each show as passion filled as the next. Not because they were getting paid, but because they love it. Sellout? Really? You are the one reading a CORPORATE MUSIC MAGAZINE, dumbass.
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