12.12.2007 | 6:45 am

By the time you read this, I’ll be a college graduate


Plastics, amirite

If four years and three months of higher education have taught me anything, it’s that the following albums are really bad and I hope people don’t actually listen to them IRL.

Battles – Mirrored
Deerhunter – Crytograms
The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
LOLCD Soundsystem – Sound of New Order
M.I.A. – Kala
Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings (Not really bad: Spider-Man 3)

2007 worries me, dudes. I will happily debate all of you in the comments and defend my love of all things singer-songwriter-y and acoustic guitar-laden. In the meantime, here’s a song we should all agree on:

The Main Drag – “A Jagged Gorgeous Winter”: mp3

Also, everybody likes the new Burial album, right? Alright.

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More posts about: 2007

  • Greg Katz

    if those albums all have something in common, it’s that their creators are trying to work beyond the constraints and paradigms of whitebread indie rock. while it’s probably a rare listener who likes them all, i find the fact that you deplore all of them a little disturbing.

  • Carman

    LCD Soundsystem doesn’t sound anything like New Order.

  • Reed

    i think greg katz is confusing working “beyond the constraints and paradigms of whitebread indie rock” with sucking

    with the exception of lcd soundsystem, though, which was alright

  • Carman

    I think reed is confusing Dave’s taste in “whitebread indie rock” as something legitimately worth defending.

  • Dave Rawkblog

    What they have in common is they all were showered in critical acclaim and they are all horrendous. LCD’s okay, though.

    You don’t think Dan Deacon is whitebread eccentric indie-pop and Deerhunter is whitebreak shoegaze/noise? It’s not like indie rock (as opposed to indie folk or indie pop) is even my whitebread genre of choice, Greg.

  • Anonymous

    In your e-spat with Hogan, didn’t you say you like part of the Deerhunter record and thought it deserved a 6+ rating, just not the huge amount of praise?

  • Dave Rawkblog

    A 6.7, apparently, but in my house anything under a 7 gets deleted real quick

  • alfred

    ugh

  • lonelyspacepanda

    I really enjoy the M.I.A and Field albums, but I think it’s all about setting and mood when playing those. Even established classics like Loveless can only be enjoyed at a certain volume (loud) in a certain setting (outside at night). I do find metacritic’s top listed albums of 2007 shocking. If I were going back in years to check out what I’d missed, I would skip 2007 altogether based on that. I think music is becoming a lot like movies, where the top rated albums (85-100) are ones that most people/critics will “like” but few will “love”. While the 69-85 rating, will be the albums that people love and hate–keyword “love”.

    Anyway, I think even Deerhunter and Dan Deacon have some worth once you get into them.

  • lism.

    Dude, I’d put Radiohead on that list as well and I know you wouldn’t. Same sort of idea. Still bores the pants off me. I can never be sure how much of the critical adulation is “across the pond” syndrome though: witness the number of US-based music blogs who write about the Kooks with a straight face.

    But yeah, totes looking forward to your list. Singer-songwriters all the way. Easy Tiger might even get a Top Ten mention on mine, I think you were right on that one…

  • Anonymous

    Hello? battle is bad?

    what is wrong with people. It’s a master piece. Think of it like TVoR except twice as fast.

    I want recount.

    squashed

  • Adam

    Dear Dave,

    I like all of the albums you listed. I even love some of them. I’ve said why countless times, so I won’t bore you with the same-old, same-old. But I would like to say that without exception, the albums you listed are not for everyone.

    Battles is too prog, Deerhunter is to cryptic, The Field is too repetitive, LCD is too much of a knock-off, M.I.A. can’t rap, and Dan Deacon is just plain obnoxious. Right?

    Personally, Battles makes me headbang; Deerhunter sounds great while I’m reading textbooks; I find the Field incredibly relaxing; LCD makes me think of summer while walking to class in four inches of snow-mush; M.I.A. makes me roll my windows down in an attempt to let everyone know I’m listening to cooler shit than they are; and Dan Deacon makes my feet move like few albums this year.

    In the end, the connections I made to each of the albums on your “shit list” are more important to me than what’s good and what’s bad. And you’ll of course condone that. But I wish you’d stop replacing the fact that these albums might not have struck YOU the way they did others with the opinion that they “suck”.

    In fact, objectively speaking, strip away the aforementioned connections and every album you listed is remarkably impressive. Greg said it’s because they’re working beyond the constraints of indie-rock. And yeah, that’s pretty much it. With the exception of SoS, the albums you mentioned required fantastic imaginations and relentless talent to create. Unlike some of the year’s most disappointing releases, namely from everyone’s old favorite Wilco, they each required a wonderful sense of where music is going and where it’s not. Credit is at least due for that.

    - adam

  • J.P.

    Thank you for being one of the few music critics who will openly admit to disliking that godawful MIA album. Add it all up: Those horrible kids guest rapping on Mango Pickle Down River; the horrible, pure Velveeta experience that Timbaland brought to his guest spot; plus the horrible turn by the totally mediocre Afrikan Boy, and you’ve got a pretty poor hit-to-miss ratio right off the bat. Toss in Bamboo Banga, which never really pays off after a promising build-up, and your left with several glorious singles. But several glorious singles do not a great album make. Audacious in scope? Yes. Worthy of all the hype sent its way? No. Fucking. Way.

  • Adam

    j.p. – good post, except none of those reasons are why Dave doesn’t like Kala. He thinks the problem is M.I.A., not her accompaniment.

    oh, and IMO, “Bamboo Banga” is one of the best tracks of the year.

  • Dave Rawkblog

    Adam – yes, you nailed why I don’t like these albums, except in the case of M.I.A. – not only is she a tremendously annoying MC/vocalist, but the beats on the last record slay this one. To me, it’s clearly an inferior album. What track on this album comes close to “Galang?” Certainly not “Paper Planes,” a song I still can’t tell if it’s supposed to be ironic or not.

    This post is honestly partially in jest, as I wanted to piss some people off and get you guys to start talking – I don’t think any of these albums are HORRIBLE in the way, say, a Nickelback album is, and liking these albums doesn’t mean anybody has bad taste or whatever. But BECAUSE these albums are a little off the beaten, indie-rock path, I can’t help but feel like they’re making token appearances on lists – M.I.A. has gotten on everybody’s top 10 lists regardless of whether that list is like Field/LCD/Battles or Springsteen/Iron & Wine/National and in context it makes no sense a lot of the time. Where are the other beat-oriented releases on the Paste list? She gets a lot of undeserved attention based on her context/extra-musical factors.

    As far as Deerhunter goes, I still think that album fails to fulfill its potential – the ideas are there, but the songwriting and some of the experimentation needs to catch up with them. I think if the song structures were less drone-y and repetitive and had more real climaxes, the album would be vastly improved. And the “experimental” aspects could be a lot more raw and noisy tonally. LCD bugs me not because he rips people off but because he can’t seem to decide if he wants to make people dance or rock out and so too many of the songs are these weird hybrids that sacrifice the best aspects of both genres. Also dude is getting good reviews in large part because he writes admittedly great lyrics about being an aging hipster which is why a lot of people are giving him a free pass.

    I do really love a lot of this year’s weirder albums – Animal Collective, Burial, Boris, all of which will be on next week’s lists – so I’m not just championing white dudes/acoustic guitars here.

  • Dave Rawkblog

    For instance, they’re totally different genres and everything but the Burial album does everything the Field album doesn’t: it uses samples in daring, creative ways (as opposed to sounding like Fennesz house remixes) that are constantly moving and evolving along with the non-repetitive beat. You can’t stop paying attention for even one second or you’ll miss something, which is obviously something you can do for vast stretches of the Field.

  • Adam

    ” but the beats on the last record slay this one. To me, it’s clearly an inferior album. What track on this album comes close to “Galang?”"

    well yeah.

    and your observation about Kala’s spot on year end lists is excellent–it is ironic and stupid. the only explanation i can give is that she’s clearly more universal than the competition.

    and yeah, that Burial album is fantastic. far superior to the Field, IMO.

    but man, if you can’t have fun listening to Spiderman of the Rings, I feel bad for you. one of the most unabashedly joyful records of the year.

  • RUDEMAN

    Paper Planes is THE JAM

    why doesnt anyone realize that half of Kala (paper planes, bamboo banga, xr2 etc) is TIGHT and the other half BLOWS

    it’s 1:50am here

    BROS I MISS YOU

  • Anonymous

    kala’s on this list? aw, dave, you’re no fun.

    - Lillian