Other significant twee-chievements in 2007:
– Fishboy’s amazing, the-Who-in-a-teacup, twee pop opera called Albatross: How We Failed to Save the Lone Star State With the Power of Rock and Roll. (”Taqueria Girl” )

– Minty Fresh’s reissue of White Shoes & The Couples Company’s album. (”Sunday Memory Lane” )

– The return of Club 8. The songs of restrained, twee melancholy that make up The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming are some of the best of their long and pretty glorious career. (”When I Come Around” )

– The Owls gave the adult twee pop lover something to keep them warm at night with their lovely album Daughters and Sons. (”Peppermint Patty” )

Citay - Little Kingdom
Citay’s second album is a guitar lover’s paradise. Ezra Feinberg (Piano Magic) and Tim Green (Fucking Champs) play a wide variety of acoustic, electric, and synthesized guitars on Little Kingdom and create a lush, layered sound that rewards close listening, or is perfect for letting wash over you like a stream of shimmering water. The record plays like a stoner version of a Fripp and Eno collaboration with the two guitarists trading licks and creating loads of trippy atmosphere. Read more >>

Damon & Naomi - Within These Walls
The release of their seventh album, 2007’s Within These Walls, means that Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang have been releasing albums as a duo for 15 years. Shocking, yes. Even more shocking is that at a point where most bands or artists are well past their sell-by date, Damon & Naomi keep getting better and more interesting. Their basic sound of gently strummed guitars, melodic bass, innocent vocals, and arty lyrics has been the same since they were two-thirds of Galaxie 500, but each record has seen subtle changes in atmosphere and even some dramatic changes, like adding the guitar of Ghost’s Michio Kurihara (a collaboration that has been working beautifully since 2000’s Damon & Naomi with Ghost album). Within These Walls marks a significant change in sound from the duo. Ironically, given the title, it’s their first record that sounds like it was made outside the walls of their apartment. Read more >>

Miracle Fortress - Five Roses
A couple things come to mind upon hearing the first few tracks of Five Roses. The first is that it sounds a lot like Yo La Tengo; there’s a lot of ringing guitar work and throbbing bass going on, especially on tracks like “Whirrs” and “Hold Your Secrets to Your Heart.” The second is that sounds a whole lot like the Beach Boys; it’s bouncy and musically ambitious, full of soaring vocal harmonies and echoing snares. Now, this isn’t to say that Graham Van Pelt (the man behind Miracle Fortress) is an outright copycat, or that Five Roses suffers under the weight of its influences. On the contrary, the album wears them beautifully; not only that, but it makes for one of 2007’s more memorable and original indie-pop debuts. Read more >>

1990s - Cookies
There are a few reference points for the 1990s’ debut album that you need to forget right away. It doesn’t matter that Bernard Butler produced, or that two of the band’s members were in a band with the drummer from Franz Ferdinand. It does matter that the band in question was Yummy Fur, because if you were a fan of their off-kilter and jagged brand of post-punky pop, you’ll like Cookies. Of course that covers a couple hundred people at best, so let’s say if you’re a fan of off-kilter, spunky and often laugh-out-loud hilarious post-punk influenced pop that ropes in the best elements of Art Brut, the Libertines, Comet Gain and the B-52’s, then there’s a good chance you’ll fall for the 1990s in a big way. Read More >>

The Postmarks - The Postmarks
The Postmarks’ Tim Yehezkely has the kind of breathy, sweet vocal style associated with French singers of the ’60s or Brazilian bossa nova girls of the same era. She’s the focal point of the band’s excellent debut record as she drifts like a cotton candy cloud through sophisticated chamber pop backdrops like Astrud Gilberto’s mopey little sister. The 11 songs on display here sound lifted from the Bacharach songbook, as they’re filled with vibraphones, shimmering strings, gently plucked guitars, and meticulously arranged and produced for full emotional impact. The emotion in question is sadness — sweet, gentle, crushing sadness. Read more >>

• Allmusic’s Favorite Albums of 2007
• Allmusic Editors Pick Their Top Ten of 2007

• Allmusic’s Favorite Country Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite Country Albums of 2007, Pt. 2
• Allmusic’s Favorite Electronic Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite Electronic Albums of 2007, Pt. 2
• Allmusic’s Favorite Hip-Hop Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite Hip-Hop Albums of 2007, Pt. 2
• Allmusic’s Favorite Jazz Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite Jazz Albums of 2007, Pt. 2
• Allmusic’s Favorite Latin Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite Latin Albums of 2007, Pt. 2
• Allmusic’s Favorite Metal Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite Metal Albums of 2007, Pt. 2
• Allmusic’s Favorite R&B Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite R&B Albums of 2007, Pt. 2
• Allmusic’s Favorite Reggae Albums of 2007
• Allmusic’s Favorite Soundtrack Albums of 2007, Pt. 1
• Allmusic’s Favorite Soundtrack Albums of 2007, Pt. 2

• Classical Editor’s Favorite Albums of 2007: Stephen Eddins
• Classical Editor’s Favorite Albums of 2007: Uncle Dave Lewis
• Classical Editor’s Favorite Albums of 2007: Patsy Morita
• Classical Editor’s Favorite Albums of 2007: Blair Sanderson

Most importantly, thank you all for reading and sharing your opinions!

Original Soundtrack - Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Australian buddies Nick Cave and Warren Ellis spent a lot of time on the prairie in 2005 and 2007, laying down music for (and even appearing in) the westerns Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. While the former relied heavily on Cave’s doom-laden vocals, Assassination focuses on fellow Bad Seed, Grinderman and founding member of the Dirty Three Warren Ellis’ violin and Celeste-tinged audio landscapes to color the “new” Old West. Like a music box tipped on its’ side in the desert, Cave and Ellis’ all instrumental soundtrack occasionally echoes familiar genre exercises (check out the Morricone-esque “Song For Jesse”), but it’s long, languid motifs are as spread out as the film’s 160-minute run time. Read more >>

Trevor Jones - Dark Crystal: 25th Anniversary
The fantasy film The Dark Crystal is a live-action feature performed entirely by puppets created by the Jim Henson organization, also responsible for the Muppets. As such, it is visually unusual, but Trevor Jones’ score is a traditional orchestral work in the Hollywood tradition. In Randall D. Larson’s liner notes to the 25th anniversary edition of the soundtrack album (reissued to coincide with a similarly commemorative DVD release), Jones reveals that the initial idea was to come up with music just as inventive as the look of the film, but that plan was abandoned when it was decided that audiences needed something to feel comfortable with in contrast to what they were seeing. Read more >>

Robert Rodriguez and Graeme Revell - Grindhouse: Planet Terror
Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez’s half of the 2007 double-feature exploitation celebration Grindhouse, has a very different soundtrack than Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. Like any other QT soundtrack, Death Proof relies on existing music, cherry-picked from obscure pop, soul, and soundtrack records, but Rodriguez is a D.I.Y.-er right down to assembling his own scores (albeit with some assistance from Graeme Revell here). Here, he extends his John Carpenter tribute right down to the icy, grimy synth scores that fueled films like Escape from New York (of course, Carpenter also did his own music, just like Rodriguez). Read more >>

Various Artists - Hairspray
Hairspray began life in 1988 as the first John Waters film to earn a PG rating, despite such subversive elements as the casting of cross-dressing Waters favorite Divine as Edna, the mother of the main character, tubby teenager Tracy Turnblad. The story was further softened in its conversion to a Broadway musical hit in 2002 with a raft of songs written and performed in the period style of 1962 pop/rock; this time, openly gay actor/playwright Harvey Fierstein donned a dress to play the mother, his gravelly bass voice notwithstanding. It is some measure of the work’s ongoing move toward the mainstream that in the 2007 movie musical based on the stage musical that was based on the first movie, John Travolta in a fat suit becomes Edna. Read more >>

Various Artists - I’m Not There
For his impressionistic 2007 Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There, director Todd Haynes hired an army of six actors to portray the singer/songwriter, each thespian representing a different phase or public persona of Dylan’s career. The accompanying double-disc soundtrack — not all of its 34 songs are used in the film — employs a similar conceit, as Haynes and his music supervisors, Randall Poster and Jim Dunbar, rounded up rockers and folksingers of all stripes to reinterpret and re-create portions of Dylan’s immense catalog. Taken as a whole, neither the singers nor the selections are too conventional, as the album alternates between standards and obscurities, old cohorts and new blood, faithful renditions and original interpretations, never tipping too far in either direction or staying in one place too long. Read more >>

Various Artists - The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
The film King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters follows a cross-country duel between two gamers vying for the 2007 Guinness World Record high score in Donkey Kong. Some might argue that compiling a soundtrack for a documentary of this nature would involve simply slapping the film’s name on the cover of Rush’s 2112, but the producers have put together something far more entertaining. Read more >>

Various Artists - Kurt Cobain: About a Son
AJ Schnack’s documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son is constructed largely from interviews author/journalist Michael Azerrad conducted with the Nirvana singer/songwriter when he was writing their authorized biography, Come as You Are. About a Son is also a biography, but it relies on Cobain’s own recollections, pairing it with still photos and newly shot footage of Olympia, Seattle, and Aberdeen, WA, all intended to create the perception of seeing the world through Cobain’s eyes. There is no Nirvana footage in the movie and there are no Nirvana songs on the accompanying soundtrack, which instead relies heavily on songs important and influential to Kurt, along with five interview excerpts and a couple of dreamy, atmospheric instrumentals from Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service leader Ben Gibbard and Steve Fisk, who provided much more of this kind of background ambient music for the film. Read more >>

Various Artists - Talk to Me
The soundtrack to the film Talk to Me is not an original score, but a compilation mostly made up of stellar tracks from the Atlantic soul catalog. It’s all hits, from Sam and Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’” to Otis Redding’s “Tramp,” to cuts by Arthur Conley, Archie Bell & the Drells, Booker T. and the MG’s and Clarence Carter. There are a few non-Atlantic cuts tossed into the mix like James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” and a smoking read of Gene McDaniels’ “Compared to What,” by Me’Shell NdegeOcello and Terence Blanchard to close the album with a bang. Read more >>

Jonny Greenwood - There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson’s fifth film There Will Be Blood is too monumental and odd to not provoke sharply divided opinions but all reviews, from raves to revulsion, agree on two points: Daniel Day Lewis’ performance as oilman Daniel Plainview is astonishing, and Jonny Greenwood’s score is extraordinary. Lewis dominates the film, appearing in all but one scene, and Greenwood’s music is used far more sparingly yet it’s no less indelible. From the moment the film fades open to a spare, unrelenting Californian landscape, Greenwood’s tense, coiled score mirrors the eerie emotional undercurrent to the film, pulling suppressed feelings to the surface, often with an almost operatic sense of drama. This is grand music, but it’s also controlled, unleashing its furious clashes of dissonance with precision. Read more >>

Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch - Twin Peaks: All New Season Two Music
For Twin Peaks fans, hearing more of the series’ immediately recognizable music is almost as much of a revelation as another chapter from Laura Palmer’s diary. While “All New” is something of a misnomer, Twin Peaks: All New Season Two Music is a nice way to commemorate the release of Twin Peaks‘ second season on DVD after years of languishing in the video netherworld. This music isn’t as iconic as David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti’s first-season soundtrack, but like everything in Twin Peaks‘ second season, it’s fascinatingly fragmented, while going deeper into the series’ lore and emotions.

Various Artists - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
It goes without saying that a music movie lives or dies by its music, but it’s particularly true with pop music parodies. If the music doesn’t hit the right notes — if it doesn’t feel like the period it’s meant to evoke, if the humor is either too broad or dry — the movie crumbles around it, to say nothing of the soundtrack, which will be hard-pressed to stand on its own as an album. The gold standard for rock comedies is This Is Spinal Tap, as the music felt authentic, and Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean proved that lightning could strike twice with their folk music saga A Mighty Wind. The soundtrack to the John C. Reilly-starring Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story belongs in such rarefied company. Read more >>

Various Artists - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [2007 Soundtrack]
Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Broadway musical Sweeney Todd has been hailed as the composer’s best work and the best musical of its decade, if not of the last three decades of the 20th century. It has been revived frequently and, as a work that straddles the line between musical theater and opera, adopted for the repertories of opera companies. When a stage musical is adapted into a motion picture, it is often the case that the score is given a bigger treatment. Broadway shows use a limited number of musicians, and, due to union regulations, Broadway cast albums tend to be recorded in a single day by casts also performing the music eight times that week on-stage. When the same score gets to Hollywood, producers often employ much larger orchestras and more elaborate recording techniques, for better or worse. Read more >>

Check out Part 1

Monteverdi Opera Cycle
De Nederlandse Opera’s seven-DVD set of the three surviving Monteverdi operas and a staged version of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda represents a brilliant and conceptually unified approach to the works, thanks largely to the absolutely focused dramatic vision of director Pierre Audi and his ability to draw together some of the most gifted early music performers and most inventive visual designers to collaborate on a project. Audi’s approach doesn’t box his collaborators in; each opera has a distinctive look and sound, but they are united by the emotional integrity and economy of his direction, which emphasizes the humanity of the characters and the universality of the complexity of their relationships. For any opera to be fully effective, the singing must be superb, and the consistently transcendent vocal quality and idiomatically appropriate period practice are the other elements that raise these performances to the level of the sublime. Read more >>

Lully: Thésée
Jean-Baptiste Lully, born in Florence in 1632, moved to France early in his career. By the time he turned 30, he had been named music master to the royal family and elevated to the nobility. Italian opera, particularly the works of Cavalli, had become hugely popular in France, and Lully took up the task of creating a tradition of native French opera. In 1775, in collaboration with librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully produced Thésée, a tragédie en musique, which marked a turning point in the synthesis of music, dramaturgy, and dance, and became the model for French opera for nearly a century, until the reforms of Gluck. CPO’s splendid new recording of the opera finally gives listeners the opportunity to hear what made the opera so historic. Read more >>

Lully: Thésée
 

Vivaldi Heroes
Philippe Jaroussky’s countertenor is not a large instrument, but what an instrument! He sings with flawless intonation; a tone that is sweet, pure, even, and focused over the full extent of his wide range; and a breathtaking command of coloratura technique. The impression that his voice is perhaps more elfin than heroic seems of minor consequence in light of its beauty, and the expressive intelligence and musicality he brings to these characters from Vivaldi operas. In spite of the bravado of the album’s title, Vivaldi Heroes, many of the arias are exquisitely tender, showcasing Jaroussky’s strengths in bringing out the characters’ humanity and vulnerability. Any number of arias could be singled out, but “Vedro con mio diletto,” from Guistino, is a standout. Read more >>

Philippe Jaroussky - Vivaldi: Giustino
 

Donizetti: Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal
Donizetti considered Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal (1843), his final completed opera written for the Paris Opéra, to be his masterpiece. In spite of its relative obscurity, on the basis of this recording, one is inclined to agree with him. The opera has several attributes that in the past have proved to be obstacles to its popularity. The first is its length — it’s in five substantial acts and lasts three hours, but that’s not so onerous for contemporary audiences accustomed to Wagner and Strauss. Besides, the composer created an abbreviated version for Viennese audiences, who at that time wanted to be out of the theater by 10 p.m., and that version could be used if necessary. The extravagant scenic and musical demands (at the premiere, there were 500 people on-stage at one point) put the opera outside the capability of all but the largest companies. A third difficulty for early audiences was the relentlessly dark subject matter; besides the many personal tragedies that make up the plot, the opera is ultimately a national tragedy as well — at the finale, Portugal has been lost to Spain, whose ships are seen approaching over the horizon as the curtain falls. Donizetti’s music is appropriately somber, and at times, chilling. For modern audiences, whose sensibilities can accommodate Wozzeck or Elektra, the sadness and brutality of Dom Sébastien shouldn’t be a deterrent to its viability. Read more >>

Donizetti: Dom Sébastien
Donizetti: Dom Sébastien
 

Verdi: La Traviata
Farao Classic’s recording of La Traviata is revelatory, largely because of the extraordinary quality of the principals, who until this release, were largely unknown to international audiences. Anja Harteros is a stunningly effective Violetta — fresh and young sounding, with absolute vocal security and interpretive sensitivity. Her tone is natural and unforced, she sings with beautiful intonation, and the skill and psychological range and insight with which she shapes the vocal lines make this a performance of the highest order. Her of renunciation of Alfredo, and her death scene are heartbreakingly poignant, great moments of theatre. Her voice and her dramatic depth clearly mark Harteros as an artist to watch out for. The same could be said for Paolo Gavanelli; his burnished, vibrant tone in service to a nuanced, compassionate characterization makes his Germont genuinely compelling. Read more >>
 
Verdi: La Traviata
 

Hindemith: Cardillac
Cardillac is one of Hindemith’s oddest creations, but when it’s performed well, as it is in this spectacular DVD production from the Paris Opéra, it’s one of his most compelling. The libretto, by Ferdinand Lion, based on an E.T.A. Hoffmann story set in seventeenth century Paris, requires some substantial suspension of disbelief in order to fly. Every time Cardillac, an extraordinary goldsmith, sells a piece of jewelry, the purchaser is murdered. Somehow, suspicion never falls on Cardillac himself, and when he finally confesses at the end of the opera, he is killed by a crazed mob. His last intended victim, who managed to escape his attacker, castigates the crowd for not understanding the passion of an artist who couldn’t bear to part with what he had created. The repentant mob then sings a rapturously beautiful lament in praise of the fallen hero. Curtain. It takes some pretty inspired direction to pull off such an irrational scenario, but a key lies in giving Hindemith’s sense of irony and of the absurd full rein in creating a sort of parallel moral universe, in which expectations are constantly turned on their heads. Read more >>
 

Martin: Le vin herbé
It’s not surprising that when Frank Martin, one of the twentieth century’s most devout composers, began a work based on the legend of Tristan and Iseult, he turned not to Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur or to Wagner’s source, Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, both of which depict the lovers as totally abandoned to their passion, but to Joseph Bédier’s Le roman de Tristan et Iseut (1900), which was based on sources earlier than Mallory or Gottfried in which the lovers, in spite of their passionate love, remain chaste for the sake of their honor. The combination of chastity and passion aptly characterizes Le vin herbé, Martin’s 1941 secular chamber oratorio, for 12 singers, seven strings, and piano. Read more >>
 
Martin: Le vin herbé
 

Lauridsen: Nocturnes
British chamber choir Polyphony has recorded a collection of music by Morten Lauridsen that includes not only his gorgeous (and ubiquitous) cycle Les chansons des roses, but two less familiar cycles, Mid-Winter Songs and Nocturnes, and several shorter pieces. The sound of the choir is full, rich, and well blended, and the singers perform with absolute confidence, fully secure with the composer’s close harmonies and unresolved dissonances. Their grasp of a full range of articulation, from crisp staccato to velvety legato, is especially striking. Conductor Stephen Layton leads the choir in an unusually nuanced and expressive performance of Les chansons des roses, with great flexibility of tempo, bringing out compositional felicities that can go unnoticed in more conventional readings with straighter tempos. His reading of the cycle Mid-Winter Songs, accompanied by Britten Sinfonia, is notable for its bristling energy and high drama. Read more >>
 
Lauridsen: Sure on this shining night
 

Golijov: Oceana
The three pieces by Osvaldo Golijov recorded here offer more evidence that his is one of the freest and most compelling voices on the scene. Although he came to the attention of the broader public in 2000 with the bold stylistic juxtapositions of La Pasión según San Marco, Oceana, written in 1996, incorporates a comparable diversity of elements. Perhaps even more than La Pasión, Oceana mingles its various idioms into an integrated aesthetic vision. What stands out is Golijov’s fearless rejection of the orthodoxies of modernism, postmodernism, minimalism, and every other -ism that limits the definition of an acceptable aesthetic. Oceana is a large-scale cantata for which the unique sound of Brazilian singer Luciana Souza provided inspiration, and her voice is a unifying thread that runs through it. It’s evocative of oceanic vastness without being imitative, and its moments of grand emotion are passionate, even spiritual; the fact that the ecstatic choral exclamations, “Oceana!” are easily mistaken for “Hosanna!” cannot have been coincidental. Souza’s voice is absolutely astounding in its tonal coloring and expressive range. Robert Spano leads the Gwinnett Young Singers and the Atlanta Symphony & Chorus in a radiant performance. Read more >>
 
Golijov: Oceana
 

Lieberson: Neruda Songs
The history of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs is so freighted with emotion that it’s difficult to listen to them with any objectivity. The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote a hundred Love Sonnets (1960) for Matilde Urrutia, who later became his wife, and Peter Lieberson set five of them for his wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Lieberson’s settings grew out of a full understanding of his wife’s extraordinary vocal and dramatic gifts and are suffused with his intimate awareness of her personal and artistic vitality, as well as the fragility of her physical health. Hunt Lieberson gave the premiere of the Neruda Songs in Los Angeles in May 2005 and recorded them with the Boston Symphony under James Levine in November that year. She died in July 2006. The listener is always aware of the generosity of the husband and wife, composer and singer, in being allowed to participate in the intimacy of their final love song to each other. Read more >>
 
Lieberson: Neruda Songs

Young Buck - Get Buck

M.I.A. - Boys

Bonde Do Role - Office Boy

His Name is Alive - Come to Me

Gravenhurst - Hollow Men

Justice - D.A.N.C.E.

Kanye West - The Good Life
 

Hot Chip - Ready for the Floor

Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger (Live 2007)

Snoop Dogg - Sensual Seduction

Pepe Deluxe - Go for Blue

Queens of the Stone Age - 3s and 7s

Aesop Rock - Coffee featuring John Darnielle

The Royal We - All the Rage

1990s - You’re Supposed to be My Friend

Prinzhorn Dance School - Crackjack Docker

Spoon - The Underdog

White Stripes - Icky Thump

Art Brut - Direct Hit

Liars - Houseclouds

Von Sudenfed - Fledermaus Can’t Get It

Huelgas Ensemble - Thomas Ashewell: Missa Ave Maria, “Sanctus”

 
2. Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer: Le Journal du Printemps
Michi Gaigg, L’Orfeo Barockorchester
CPO
Just when you thought we had run out of orchestral masterworks from the Baroque Era, Michi Gaigg and L’Orfeo Barockorchester locate a key set of orchestral suites from among the earliest phase of the history of Western orchestras; Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer’s Le Journal du Printemps. Published in 1695, this work contains many of the hallmarks of what makes Handel’s orchestral music so appealing, but first appeared when Handel himself was only ten years old. This recording is likewise the result of an exceptionally fine bit of musical detective work, as the score does not provide a proper “recipe” –- i.e. an orchestration –- as much as mere serving suggestions. You would never know that from the performance, which is as natural and characteristically Baroque as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Michi Gaigg, L’Orfeo Barockorchester - Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer: Le Journal du Printemps, Suite No. 7 in G minor, “Passacaille”

 
3. Joseph-Marie-Clément dall’ Abaco: 11 Capricen für Violoncello
Kristin von der Goltz
Raum Klang
This comes from literally “nowheresville” in the pantheon of Western music; a group of 11 pieces –- called “Caprices” but actually are improvisations -– by the son of once-famed Viennese composer and cellist Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco. Whereas the father’s music is scrupulously organized, inherently graceful and clearly composed with the court in mind, the son’s music is loose, visionary, and seems responsive to external stimuli. Each little Caprice — and some are not so little, running seven minutes or more -– seems to tell a story from a wry and emotionally involved point of view. Part of that is due to cellist Kristen von der Goltz’ searching consideration and intuitive understanding of Dall’Abaco’s manuscript and place in historic time, not to mention her superlative skill as a cello player. This is a case where a musician went into the library, turned up some music no one was looking for, and blew everyone out of the water with it. Also strongly worthy of mention in this category, Susanne Heinrich’s Hyperion disc Mr. Abel’s Fine Airs.

Kristen von der Goltz - Joseph-Marie-Clément dall’ Abaco: Caprice No. 2 in G minor

 
4. The Virginalists
JungHae Kim
JungHae Kim (via Magnatune)
Harpsichordist JungHae Kim has been working steadily away in the Bay Area early music scene for years. As opportunities to record had managed steadily to elude her year after year, Kim decided to put in for a grant and take care of it herself. The Virginalists, however, is no vanity project; Kim, a former record store employee and longtime consumer of classical recordings, understands how to add value to her project within extremely limited means: a friendly environment in which to record her instrument, a good engineer, an instrument that is in good repair and working order, an attractive cover image. Beyond such considerations, there’s something simply magical in the way Kim plays these English virginal pieces. Some of that magic derives from her spontaneous and fresh manner of varying repeats. This was standard operating procedure for keyboardists of the Renaissance and Baroque that has not always found enthusiastic adherents in modern times. Fans of harpsichord music will want to listen to The Virginalists again and again; in its way, it is rather addictive.

JungHae Kim - John Dowland: Can She Excuse

 
5. John Luther Adams: for Lou Harrison
Stephen Drury, The Callithumpian Consort
New World
Speaking of magic, John Luther Adams’ For Lou Harrison applies a little Northern alchemy -– Adams is based in Alaska –- to the musical tradition exemplified by one of the greatest composers of Northern California -– a company that includes Henry Cowell and Terry Riley –- Lou Harrison. Intended as part of a trilogy of tributes to Adams’ parents –- his mother, father and “musical parent” Lou Harrison -– Adams weaves a mysterious web of sound out of a combination of string quartet, string orchestra, and piano duo that constantly shifts through a skillful blend of modalities one associates with the work of Meister of Aptos. Not everyone is crazy about Harrison’s music; particularly in New York, there is a strong contingent of opponents to the warmth and sunny optimism of his familiar, Pacifically-oriented manner. Adams, onetime president of the American Music Center in New York, realizes that in siding with Harrison one is taking a stand both political and musical, but the result here is mainly emotional, and very powerfully so. Harrison’s sun is sinking slowly in the West, and the darkening of the timbre is not the coming of night but Adams’ own sorrow at having to bid him farewell; it is as moving and serious a statement as can be found in the music of the early 21st century.

Stephen Drury, The Callithumpian Consort - John Luther Adams: for Lou Harrison

 
6. Leo Ornstein: Complete Works for Cello and Piano
Joshua Gordon & Randall Hodgkinson
New World
2007 was both a good year for the cello (see the Kristen von der Goltz entry above, plus 2007 albums by Wilhelmina Smith, Joey Redhage and others) and a good one for New World as well. Joshua Gordon’s Leo Ornstein: Complete Works for Cello and Piano appeared early in 2007 and under normal circumstances one might lose track of such a disc in a year’s end survey –- but not this one. Usually full surveys of a composer’s output in particular medium contains a mixture of “the good, the bad, and the ugly” -– successes, failures and the ragged shreds of unfinished projects. When it came to writing for the cello, Leo Ornstein had access to a friend who was an extremely talented player, Hans Kindler, who at age 19 played the important cello part in the uproarious world premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in Vienna. Ornstein did not save his most “futuristic” music for Kindler, however -– what he explored was the part of his personality that was rooted in the music of his childhood in Russia, tempered with the questing spirit of the modern era. It is an impressive, highly personal output, and Ornstein’s skill in handling formal development and other echt-Romantic devices within in a modern context is something that still informs us today, even though these pieces had to wait more than 70 years to find a home on recordings.

Joshua Gordon & Randall Hodgkinson - Leo Ornstein: Prelude No. 6

 
7. Nostalghia: Piano Works by Valentin Silvestrov
Jenny Lin
Hänssler Classic
Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov has been getting a lot of attention of late, and belated it is -– he turned 70 in September of 2007. So far there is nothing but confusion and discord among musicologists as to just who was responsible for turning back the tide away from serialism and towards tonality late in the 20th century; clearly it was not a single person so much as it was a kind of zeitgeist among composers in distantly related societies and situations. Silvestrov, for his part, was at it very early, by about 1970, however his reclamation of traditional harmony and melody was affected by his experience in the “Kiev avant-garde,” even though he was not in the least afraid of being accused of indulging in “nostalgia.” It’s nostalgia tinged by regret, sorrow, loss, and sometimes a sense of hopelessness, and pianist Jenny Lin captures precisely these qualities in her carefully nuanced exploration of his keyboard output. Wisely, Lin programs a couple of Silvestrov’s earlier, avant-garde works to illustrate what he took from his earlier styles into the new, which in itself still seems fairly avant-garde, even though it is stated in the language of traditional tonality.

Jenny Lin - Valentin Silvestrov: Melodie

 
8. George Crumb: The River of Life; Unto the Hills
Ann Crumb, James Freeman & Orchestra 2001
Bridge
Just because avant-garde composers have reclaimed some elements deriving from tonal music doesn’t mean the avant-garde itself is dead. Take for example George Crumb, now among the most senior of senior American composers of the front rank. Ancient Voices of Children in 1970 established Crumb as one of the enfants terribles of the day, even though he was over 40 in a time when you weren’t supposed to trust anyone over 30, except maybe Norman Mailer or Timothy Leary. Crumb has not suffered a fall from grace such as with those characters, and if anything, his reputation has grown since the time when counterculture was in control of youth culture. His recent song settings The River of Life and Unto the Hills return Crumb to the scene of the crime, his roots in West Virginia and its Appalachian heritage of folk and religious songs. Joining him in this journey is his daughter Ann Crumb, whose other primary connection is to the Broadway stage and the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber; it is a tribute to Ann Crumb’s virtuosity that she is just as at home with her father’s challenging music as she is with that of the Great White Way. While The River of Life/Unto the Hills may not be able to answer Crumb’s rhetorical question as to whether “there will be any stars in [his] crown,” it makes clear that, even nearing the age of 80, George Crumb still has plenty of wind in his sails.

Ann Crumb, James Freeman & Orchestra 2001 - George Crumb: The River of Life, “Amazing Grace”

 
9. Polytopia: Music for Violin & Electronics
Mari Kimura
Bridge
Like JungHae Kim mentioned above, Mari Kimura labored for years as a virtuoso in the concert scene, both in New York and internationally, building a strong following through her challenging and unique pursuit of combining the violin with electronic gadgets, computers and through her advocacy of new instruments such as the GuitarBot and Zeta violin. Nevertheless, the prospects of recording remained elusive until Bridge Records decided to take a chance on Kimura with Polytopia, and what a compelling result it is. Combining age old techniques, such as sub-harmonics possible on the violin through special techniques in bowing, with such newer resources as signal processing units and interactive computer programs, Kimura successfully redefines and expands the stringed instrument that in itself tends to define what “classical music” is. The compositions on Polytopia are not experiments to be taken as examples to illustrate a given technical operation much as Max Mathews’ pieces with the IBM computers of the early 1960s were intended –- but fully finished works that provide distinct musical experiences and give ample evidence of Kimura’s dazzling virtuosity on the violin.

Mari Kimura: GuitarBotana

 
10. Classical A-Go-Go
Frankenstein Consort
Sfz
While the instrumental make up of rock bands tends to vary, the basic components remain essentially the same -– an electric guitar or two, singer, drummer, bass player, and maybe a sax if you’re lucky. Although chamber music is to a large extent defined by it’s established combinations –- string quartet, woodwind quintet, violin and piano, and others -– the possible varieties within a chamber context are potentially endless. Frankenstein Consort leader Erik Lindgren represents a previously overlooked generation of classical musicians: those who got their start playing in punk and New Wave bands. Surprisingly many of these musicians had some degree of formal music training, and Lindgren is best known through his involvement with the 1980s group Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, a group so “classical” that in 1994 they were named artists in residence at Dartmouth College. Classical A-Go-Go combines Lindgren’s electronic keyboard playing with the Sonare Wind Trio, some additional winds, and a rank of string players, and covers musical territory ranging from Raymond Scott to Edgar Winter’s 1972 heavy rock hit Frankenstein. Classical A-Go-Go is fun, fresh and defenestrates the notion that nothing that “rocks” ever so slightly can ever be “classical.”

Frankenstein Consort - Erik Lindgren: Baroque-A-Go-Go

John Anderson - Easy Money
Like many veteran country stars, John Anderson didn’t retire so much as fade from the spotlight as his new records slowly started to sell less and less. After an early-’80s peak, his hits started to dry up after the mid-’90s and while he continued to work, cutting records and playing shows, he slowly fell off of Nashville’s radar. Cut to the middle of the 2000s, when Big and Rich were major players in the Music City, and their key songwriter, John Rich, approached Anderson with the offer of producing and collaborating on a new record. Anderson accepted and the resulting album, Easy Money, saw the singer returning to his first major label, Warner, but it’s a homecoming in another sense, too, because it’s the biggest, boldest, and best record he’s made in a long, long time. Read more >>

Toby Keith - Big Dog Daddy
After he becoming a bona fide superstar in the wake of “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue,” Toby Keith refused to play it safe, blowing up his persona to mythic heights on 2003’s Shock’n Y’All, stretching his musical legs on Honkytonk University, and calling off all bets with the Lari White-produced White Trash with Money, where he got soulful and soft in equal measures. After that trilogy of exploration, Keith snaps back to the basics on Big Dog Daddy, his first self-produced album and his first album of nothing but pure, hardcore country since his star rose in the early years of the new millennium. This isn’t a retreat as much as it’s a reaffirmation of his strengths as a singer, songwriter, performer, and interpreter. Read more >>

Martina McBride - Waking Up Laughing
Martina McBride scored big with Timeless, her collection of classic country tunes in 2005. It was yet another feather in the singer’s cap. McBride’s reign near the top of country music’s pantheon has been near constant. She’s picky about the songs she chooses to sing, she works with sympathetic producers, and her voice is, well, timeless. She’s got the Southern twang, but its timbre carries within it a vast scope of American music. Check “Anyway,” the first single and video from 2007’s Waking Up Laughing, and one of two tunes on the set McBride had a hand in writing (and she produced the set herself — she’s earned the right). Read more >>

Brad Paisley - 5th Gear
Brad Paisley is in a strangely nostalgic mood on 5th Gear, its title both a reference to its status as Paisley’s fifth studio album and to the numerous car songs scattered across this album. Those car songs aren’t mere celebrations of magic machinery; they’re infused with nostalgia — he holds to a very teenage interpretation of the power of the car, meaning that the automobile is the embodiment of freedom, and this isn’t his only gaze back to adolescence, either. He’s even writing letters back to his 17-year-old self, consoling him that things are gonna turn out OK after all is said and done, which gets to the core of 5th Gear: Paisley is happy about how things have turned out but he still can’t help but look back just a little wistfully. Read more >>

Leann Rimes - Family
LeAnn Rimes planned to succeed This Woman, her 2005 return to country, with a pop album called Whatever We Wanna in 2006, but as This Woman continued to sell steadily in the U.S., that album wound up seeing the light of day only in Europe. Instead of issuing Whatever We Wanna in America in 2007, Rimes released an entirely different, brand-new album called Family, a record that was closer to country than her 2006 Europop excursion. Of course, this makes it tailor-made for the American market, where she is still seen primarily as a country singer, not a pop star, but Family isn’t quite a crass commercial move. Read more >>

Pam Tillis - Rhinestoned
Let’s face it: there is only one Pam Tillis. Her voice, one of the purest country instruments to come out of Nash Vegas in the last 30 years, draws on the music’s rich and varied tradition, and points forward to the place where country, bluegrass, rock, pop, swing and soul meet. She may not be recording for the major labels anymore, but, as evidenced by Rhinestoned, she’s making better music now than she’s ever made in her life. The 11 cuts here, penned by some of Nashville’s finest songwriters, are delivered with the kind of savvy and artistry that only a veteran can muster. Tillis delivers “Something Burning Out” with all the ache and confusion of a woman who cannot understand why love itself is not enough. Read more >>

Josh Turner - Everything Is Fine
The man with the biggest, most distinctive bass voice in country since Johnny Cash is back with album number three. Josh Turner scored big with the “Long Black Train” on his debut and took it over the top with the two big singles off his breakthrough sophomore album “Your Man,” (the title track) and the monstrous hit “Would You Go with Me.” While it’s true that Turner kept producer Frank Rogers on board, along with mixing king Justin Niebank and many of the same musicians, there is still more of his actual personality on Everything Is Fine than on his previous albums put together. Read more >>

Carrie Underwood - Carnival Ride
The pivotal American Idol moment for Carrie Underwood was when she teased her hair to the heavens and sang Heart’s “Alone,” belting out the power ballad with sincerity and a natural flair for drama. It was the surest sign that Carrie wasn’t merely the country star the show gladly pigeonholed her as, that she was a pop star by any measure. Of course, the great irony was that Carrie had little interest in being a pop star; she wanted to be a country singer, but the sheer magnitude of American Idol meant that she was already a pop star who needed to cross over to country, a reverse of the usual crossover move. Underwood pulled off that tricky maneuver with a deceptive ease on her 2005 debut, Some Hearts, which turned into a smash success, turning sextuple platinum at a time when many albums struggle to go gold, even surpassing the sales of the original Idol, Kelly Clarkson. Read more >>

Gretchen Wilson - One of the Boys
Gretchen Wilson set the country music charts on fire with her smash single “Redneck Woman” and her debut album, Here for the Party (2004). The track — though composed by colleague John Rich (of Big & Rich) — became an anthem for women all over America. Written especially for Wilson, it is from-the-gut, working-class feminism for the post-feminist age, straightforwardly sung with a celebratory vengeance. As a slice-of-life singer who embodied and brought to life each cut on the album, she became an “overnight sensation.” Her follow-up, All Jacked Up (2005), was recorded and rushed out by Sony a year later. Certainly the marketing department wanted to capture Wilsonmania, since her debut sold five-million copies. Read more >>