Tracks from my favourite albums of the year, not in order of preference. Click here for the 2007 chart Podcast, and all the previous ones. This is what’s in it;

Apples in Stereo - Skyway Black Francis - You can’t break a heart and have it Polyphonic Spree - Running away The Aliens - Only Waiting LCD Soundsystem - Us v Them Spoon - Don’t make me a target The Crimea - Light brigade The Shins - Australia Jason Falkner - Contact Manic Street Preachers - Rendition Polytechnic - Cold-hearted business The Rakes - Little superstitions Serj Tankian - Lie lie lie fortune drive - Vimto vignette Switches - Drama queen Future of the Left - Small bones small bodies Maximo Park - Our velocity Hot Hot Heat - So so cold Arcade Fire - No cars go Voxtrot - Blood red blood

They’re not in order of preference, and they’re not necessarily my favourite tracks from the albums. I’d already put some of my favourites on previous Podcasts, so I chose some different ones. However, I love every track in this podcast, and enthusiastically recommend each album from which they were harvested.

You can download the file directly by clicking here, but I’d still rather you subscribed through iTunes, or whatever.

Anyway, stop faffing. Here’s my album chart of 2007. Podcast to follow shortly.
The top 25;

1 Voxtrot - Voxtrot	Simply wonderful. At first, Voxtrot struck me as a bunch of fairly dull indie weaklings. It seems that most people still agree with that initial appraisal, but I don’t. Many reviews have said that the album didn’t live up to the promise of their earlier EPs, but I prefer to think they’ve gone in a slightly different direction. Given the added resources (in terms of time, money and an experienced producer) the album contains more layers than the EPs. Some of the songs are packed with strings, woodwind and layers of guitars, giving the music the kind of gravitas that the lyrics often demand. In other places, they strip it back, and leave Ramesh Srivastava’s fragile vocal stranded, drawing attention to the words and the melody. It’s a beautifully crafted album, with a number of immensely powerful songs, which reward repeated listens. There’s something quite charming about an album whose climactic finale revolves around the line, “I’m just trying to do my best; I’m not afraid of life, I’m afraid of death.” It’s an admirable motto for life, I think. You may prefer to think that it’s nonsense or trite, but I’d have to disagree. It very nearly sends shivers down my spine.
2 Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder	3 Polyphonic Spree - The Fragile Army
4 Polytechnic - Down til dawn	5 Fortune Drive - A modern question
6 Shins, The - Wincing the night away	7 LCD Soundsystem - Sound of silver
8 Rakes, The - Ten new messages	9 Manic Street Preachers - Send away the tigers
10 Aliens - Astronomy for dogs	11 Switches - Heart tuned to D.E.A.D.
12 Serj Tankian - Elect the dead	13 Hot Hot Heat - Happiness Ltd.
14 Jason Falkner - I’m OK…you’re OK	15 Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
16 Arcade Fire - Neon bible	17 Black Francis - Bluefinger
18 Future of the Left - Curses	19 Crimea, The - Secrets of the witching hour
20 Maximo Park - Our earthly pleasures	21 Biffy Clyro - Puzzle
22 Electrelane - No shouts, no calls	23 Of Montreal - Hissing fauna, are you the destroyer?
24 Bloc Party - A weekend in the city	25 Wildhearts, The - The Wildhearts

Here are the rest;

Easy for children,
Impossible for grown man,
Curse my adult brain.

Anyway, I was walking back from the pub on Friday night, and noticed the 2nd or 3rd For Sale sign along a local street. I’d noticed the others, but not interrupted my stride as I mentally banked them for later consideration. But this one made me instantly stop walking and let out an involuntary noise from my mouth. Look;

It’s half a house. Someone knocked down a gate and replaced it with a scale model of a house. I know the photo was taken in the daytime, but this is because I felt the need to verify my memory the next morning. Obviously, despite its handy proximity to my own house, I didn’t really consider it as a rental opportunity, but I was sufficiently curious to look the price up on the web. It may only be 50% of a proper house, but they’re asking £340,000 for it. I suppose that’s the punchline.

Second piece of photo “fun” is below. If you’re having people round to watch the sport on telly, and their side is getting soundly beaten, why not project the half-time score onto the house next-door? To not do so is a missed gloating opportunity.

Shortly after getting home from the disturbing experience of the Bristol leg of NME’s New Rave tour, I wrote the following in an email to some people. I reproduce it here, as I don’t think I’ve completely carried the anger over into today. I’ve toned it down a little, in the cold light of day, but want to represent how I felt last night;

I’ve just spent a number of hours in a big room - a room that seemed to be turned on its side, as it was much higher than it was long - knocking glowsticks and whistles out of the mouths of water-drinking Jocastas and Henrys. I know this isn’t the first cultural phenomenon to have come round twice during my life, but it’s got to be one of the most annoying. If I go to a proper gig i.e. one that is for music fans, rather than retarded children, and someone blows a referee’s whistle within leaping distance of my head, I will immediately disable them, hollow out their heads, free their eyes from the sockets and blow into their nose until they make a loud “pheep”ing noise.

CSS were quite good, I expect, but I couldn’t really see them, and I couldn’t hear much after the 2 Unlimited sample, because the sound disappeared up into the uselessly high ceiling, and its remnants were strangled by the braying children and their whistles.

There were empty glowstick packets in the men’s bogs. IT’S JUST WRONG.

If I try to consider it rationally, I suppose I don’t object to New Rave in principle. I object to these bands (Sunshine Underground, CSS and Klaxons) being termed “New Rave”, when they bear no relation to Old Rave. But, if kids want to do something that they’ll be embarrassed about in 6 months’ time, then let them show up at clubs with glowsticks, whistles and white gloves. But these bands…you’d at least expect a tenuous connection to Rave buried somewhere in their music, but it’s pretty difficult to find. Three bands showed up to this gig, and all of them were largely guitar-orientated indie bands, with a disco attitude to the open hi-hat. Franz Ferdinand have already revived that sound, and I doubt they get pelted with glowsticks whenever they take to the stage.

What’s most annoying about it, is that this risks turning gigs into clubs. At clubs, it’s all about the audience/crowd/clubbers, so they prance about in order to get noticed by the opposite (or the same) sex. Like greasy birds of paradise, they leap and whoop, attempting to attract a temporary mate, or a shout out from the DJ. But gigs should really be about the band on stage. And it’d be nice if there was some applause between songs, instead of the TOTP-style shrieking of teenagers and waving of glowsticks.

OK, you want some crowd atmosphere, but you don’t want it to completely envelope the band’s performance. Or at least, you probably don’t want that if you’re 32 years old. If you’re 17 and into New Rave, it seems that this is exactly what you want. So perhaps that’s what the link back to Rave music is; self-absorbed tossers in search of a beat that they can wave their hands at.

I’m not prepared to stand by these comments, by the way. I’m just angry about not being able to see or hear 3 bands who I was curious to see and hear. Glowsticks made it more annoying than it needed to be, I think.