sounds of silver : the best of 2007

Not to let a good year in music pass this blog by, I'm making a last ditch effort to resuscitate it after being long out of commission due to a technical glitch. Nothing serious; my iMac just decided one day to, you know, die, and this trusty PowerBook didn't have the program that lets me stream songs in Flash format, until recently. I'm still going to get a new computer; the act has just been delayed, first because of the wait for Leopard, and now for whatever upgrade comes after Macworld next month. I'm also torn between a new 24-inch iMac and a 17-inch MacBook Pro, but enough of the tedious stuff. I'm back on track, and since it's the end of the year, I thought I'd make the second of what will hopefully be my annual list of the year's best songs.

That's right, this blog is all about songs, not albums, so I won't even bother (We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, Modest Mouse) telling you (Because Of The Times, Kings of Leon) what are (Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird) to my biased ears (In Rainbows, Radiohead) the best albums of 2007 (Boxer, The National) even though (Sound of Silver, LCD Soundsystem) I enjoyed (Crime & Beauty, Suzanne Vega) this year (The Con, Tegan & Sara) more than (Leaves In The River, Sea Wolf) the last (Wincing The Night Away, The Shins). I just wanted to make that clear.

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that alternative rock is entering a new, quiet golden age, not just in the sense of today's music being not of the out-loud variety that grunge was, but also because the independent music scene seems to have found a lasting mode of survival, thriving and happy to be buzzing under the radar like never before. I am, of course, talking more about its manner of distribution than the creation of new styles. MySpace and Facebook have made word-of-mouth not only easier and more effective but also cool again, and these new channels have allowed bands to reach new and old audiences without reliance on corporate marketing. While getting rid of the middleman has long been possible through downloads from artists' websites, the conundrum has always been how to translate this freedom from labels into revenues. Radiohead's pay-as-you-wish model for "In Rainbows" introduced a clever way of doing so, because although it no doubt attracted low-ballers, it also won for the band a new market in those who wouldn't have thought of buying the entire album otherwise. I'm pretty sure it won't be the last, and as new, creative ways of selling songs and albums come up, independent artists will continue to make music the way they really want them to sound.

Which brings me back to my blog. Next year, I'll be back to posting songs not just because they're new and worthy, but because they mean something to me. In the meantime, enjoy this list, which took me a while to compile. A few housekeeping notes: There are two ways to listen to these songs. Apart from uploading them individually, I've also grouped the songs in two virtual mix tapes. All songs in each mix are in the same file, and will play one after the other in the sequence below. You can, however, jump from one song to the next or the one before by clicking the forward and back buttons. You can also play them in shuffle mode by clicking on the cube icon. So without further ado:



Best of 2007 Mix 1
click here or on the image above to stream the entire list, or
click on the titles to listen to the songs individually

1. Australia : The Shins
   
2. Do Me A Favour : Arctic Monkeys
   
3. Don't You Evah : Spoon
   
4. Go Tell The Woman : Grinderman
   
5. Coat Check Dream Song : Bright Eyes
   
6. People As Places As People : Modest Mouse
   
7. Time To Get Away : LCD Soundsystem
   
8. A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene : Okkervil River
   
9. Plasticities : Andrew Bird
   
10. Mistaken For Strangers : The National
    
11. House Of Cards : Radiohead
    
12. The Opposite Of Hallelujah : Jens Lekman
    
13. Somewhere Between Waking And Sleeping : Air
    
14. No Cars Go : The Arcade Fire
    
15. Fans : Kings of Leon
    
16. Makeup : Everybody Else
    
17. Yankee Go Home : Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Best of 2007 Mix 2
click here or on the image above to stream the entire list, or
click on the titles to listen to the songs individually

1. Heart It Races : Architecture In Helsinki
2. Gronlandic Edit : Of Montreal
   
3. Raise The Roof : Tracey Thorn
   
4. Close Call : Rilo Kiley
   
5. Zephyr & I : Suzanne Vega
   
6. Myriad Harbour : The New Pornographers
   
7. Lay Your Head Down : Keren Ann
   
8. I Feel It All : Feist
   
9. Lifesize : A Fine Frenzy
   
10. The Con : Tegan & Sara
    
11. Love Me Like The World Is Ending : Ben Lee
    
12. Basement Parties : Matt Pond PA
    
13. Pioneer To The Falls : Interpol
    
14. Like Something Worth Remembering : Mixtapes & Cellmates
    
15. Pots & Pans : Les Savy Fav
    
16. You're A Wolf : Sea Wolf
    
17. Tonight I Have To Leave It : Shout Out Louds
    

thoughts from a boat ride

cartwheels : reindeer section
click here or on the image below to listen

How much can you write in half an hour? Half an hour is my ferry ride to work. The amount of time it takes for me to decide where I'm having lunch and actually getting there. Three, maybe five, percent of my waking hours that slips past my cognizance as I trawl the internet. (Is that all?) Three hundred and sixty seconds of gainful knowledge as I read the editorial page. Six songs and many years of adolescent memories from my eighties playlist. A tall soya no whip mocha for flatfoot. How do you occupy your mind in a half-hour commute? Sometimes I get to wondering about thought process itself. What do I normally think about when I have nothing to think about? I never knew, or maybe I did, but have forgotten. Thoughts are funnily tentative, like dreams, which are thoughts you didn't know you had. Sometimes I steal glances at other people. Do you look at other people too? Mentally pick on the man next to you for his coffee-stained two-buck necktie from Bangkok? Do you close your eyes and try to take a nap? Reminisce your childhood? Cartwheels are the stuff of childhood. I have never cartwheeled in my life. Or maybe I have, but never with any measure of success. I climbed walls and trees and jumped from them to scare my mom. I tumbled in the grass, on my parents' bed, on our living room couch, which wasn't much of a couch, as the make was firm and you hardly sank. I remember the giant shell on the sofa table. I would put it against my ear to listen to the sound of hollow. The sound of hollow. Empty has a sound. Empty takes aural space. Space is funnily fleeting, just like time. My thirty minutes is over. My ferry is about to dock. Good day.

and i thought it was gonna be the worstest

don't fence me in : david byrne
click here or on the image below to listen

Summer is officially over; how was it for you? I have to say it was good for me too. I didn't think it would be, what with the new job cutting my annual leave days in half to a miserly 12. A change in company policy brought it to 15, and that was good enough for me to go somewhere far for a few days in July. So I spent my birthday in Prague, followed by a series of trips that were small in scale but surprisingly big on fun. Right after returning from the city of a hundred spires, I played host and tour guide to a few friends whom I met at an internet travel forum, then wore a black shirt, black jeans, and black eyeliners to watch the reunion concert of The Cure. Shortly after, I went to Manila to attend the wedding of a friend, saw Gwen Stefani in concert (please keep that thought to yourself), then went to Singapore, China and Japan, both for business and, with careful planning, weekends of pleasure. My legs are still hurting a bit after climbing Mt. Fuji last Saturday. Needless to say, I'm not complaining. So it is with great pride that I present to you this song – one of the few that I promised to deliver during the Triassic period. Don't Fence Me In is a cowboy song extolling the freedom of the open space, and that's enough for me to call it a travel song. Written by Cole Porter, this version is by David Byrne – one of the guys in the picture above – who also wrote what I call the best. travel song. ever!

Watch this space. I'll update this entry with a few pics.

hello, what's this?

everything hits at once (for discos) : spoon
click here or on the image below to listen

Okay, so I'm still officially off the air, but as I was cleaning my iDisk last weekend, I found quite a few songs I uploaded but had somehow forgotten to post. In fact, there are seven of them, and I'm putting them up here in single installments, for added suspense. Or something. This here is the funkier version of the first song off Spoon's 2001 album, Girls Can Tell. Everything Hits At Once is a post-breakup song that captures the uneasiness that sets in right after the end of a relationship. It's not quite sadness, but an emptiness that's almost corporeal. You actually feel something hollow in your chest. A chasm that grows every minute that you're made aware of your sudden solitude. A vacuum that turns into a whirlpool that sucks you in with every memory of your own mistakes. You want to plug this hole. You want to save yourself. You try to do something, anything – a haircut, a singles bar, a pornographic site – just to take your mind far away from your insignificant reality, but you only end up being spaced out, making a fool of yourself as a matter of course. You catch your own reflection on the elevator door, and it mocks you. Get a grip, for heaven's sake! And you let out a laugh, or a sob, and a drawn-out sigh. It feels good. You close your eyes, breathe in, breathe out. And tomorrow you'll get over it. Best Line: Merging in traffic, cross the lanes, and then we become something bigger than just any one. Best Part: The xylophonic loop that's absent in the original.

alternative sounds takes a break

As if this blog wasn't irregular enough, I'm taking a break for about a couple of months.

My iMac, which has the program that converts my songs into the format you see here, has died on me. Here's what happened. I'm still thinking whether to buy a new one or have it fixed. Either way, it'll take a while before my online life gets back on track. If you wish to know when I start blogging again, please e-mail me at alternativesounds {at} gmail.com

Now as to why I've been quiet for a longer while than usual, yes, that was a bit rude, not making good on my promise of a diverse all-woman March. Weird as it may sound, my frame of mind has just been focused on something else. Since my last post, I've not only quit my job, but I've also left the world of journalism where I spent many happy years. Truth is, I had long been wanting to shift careers, but it wasn't easy for me to do, being in a place the language of which I don't speak, and not having letters of higher learning after my name. You can imagine how happy I was when I got this new job – the title and description will bore you, but it's exactly what I'd been looking for – and so I wanted to make sure that my mind was a fresh, clean slate before my first day. I'm still getting through the learning curve, but I think I'll be fine.

In other news, I had 10 days off in between jobs, and during that time, I finally had the chance to organize my CDs. I think I overdid it. I separately alphabetized my English-language and world-music albums by artist name. Then I stacked my compilation CDs by genre and alphabetized them by album title, then my soundtrack albums by film title, and then my freebie CDs by the names of the magazines they came from.

I've also been buying a lot of new albums. Here are some of them, and it pains me that I couldn't blog about them just yet:

• Air : Pocket Symphony
• Andrew Bird : Armchair Apocrypha
• The Arcade Fire : Neon Bible
• Archie Bronson Outfit : Derdang Derdang
• Arctic Monkeys : Favourite Worst Nightmare
• Bright Eyes : Cassadaga
  
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah : Some Loud Thunder
• Everybody Else : Eponymous
  
• Grinderman : Eponymous
• Kings of Leon : Because of the Times
• LCD Soundsystem : Sound of Silver
• Low : Drums and Guns
  
• Matt Costa : Songs We Sing
• Modest Mouse : We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
• Rodrigo y Gabriela : Eponymous
  
• The Shins : Wincing The Night Away
• Tracy Thorn : Out of the Woods

Anyway. I was actually able to convert three songs into Flash format before my iMac died. Here's the rest of what I promised last month.

fall at your feet : mary black
click here or on the image below to listen



Fall At Your Feet by Crowded House ranks high up in my favorite songs of all time, and this cover version doesn't disappoint. Mary Black, an Irish folk artist, made it her own and even infused a lot more emotion than the original.

zomaye : gigi
click here or on the image below to listen

A strong reminder that some of the best beats in music can be heard outside the English-speaking world. Gigi is from Ethiopia.

recovery : new buffalo
click here or on the image below to listen



I saw this act in Sydney last year. Very good.

women's march : part 2

I uploaded these songs a few days ago with the intention of writing some kind of a tribute to each of the artists, but I realized that's too big a job for the amount of time that I have, as these are some of my favorite female artists from the 90s whose work I find still immensely relevant to this day. The 90s were a great era for women in music; there was so much diversity in rock alone, from Hole to Mazzy Star to PJ Harvey to Tracy Bonham. These are the ones I listened to the most, and here they are, with whatever comes to my mind. Next up: notable female artists from this decade.

sinéad o'connor : red football
sinéad o'connor : sacrifice
click here or on the image below to listen



Did you know that more women aged 15 to 44 suffer death or disability from domestic violence than from war, cancer, malaria and road accidents combined? Sad but true. I grew up in a household full of strong, nurturing women, who selflessly raised, educated, and provided for me and my siblings. It is simply beyond my understanding why women should suffer from violence at home, and biases in the workplace, in politics, in many other facets of society. Not a lot of female pop artists take up these issues in their work, as these women do in one way or the other, and you can't blame them. It's not a light issue, and forms of entertainment, be they music or film, are less likely to have mass appeal when the contents are heavy. Never one for commercial success, Red Football is doubtlessly Sinéad O'Connor's most up-front statement for women's rights, followed closely by No Man's Woman. What this song achieves is it delivers an unequivocal message without being moralistic, because with the kind of statistics I cited earlier, calling an end to violence against women no longer needs to appeal to people's morals and hope for change. It needs to confront. It needs to provoke. It needs to agitate, as the ending of this song does. Of course, Sinéad is not only to be appreciated for her bravery, but also for her vocal uniqueness. Which is why I also have to post Sacrifice, her remake of the Elton John song about infidelity, which Sinéad delivers with unfurling anger – you will notice her tone change when she sings "We lose direction, No stone unturned." Even for a Sinéad song, this song is heavy on reverb at the start, but it only highlights what she can do with her voice.

paula cole : happy home
click here or on the image below to listen



If you knew Paula Cole from her breakthrough album This Fire, you would know right away that Happy Home, from her debut album Harbinger, would be anything but happy. In fact, it's a song about the opportunities that women miss and the compromises they make – willingly or otherwise – when they carry the role of wives and mothers. But what's good about this song is it's a story of two people: the mother suffering a crisis of what defines her identity – a problem identified and best described by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique – and the well-meaning daughter trying to figure out what was going on. It reminds me of the relationship between the young Ed Harris and Julianne Moore character in that excellent film, The Hours. Best Line: But everybody could feel the suffocation, Underneath the façade of a happy home. Best Part: The mix of acoustic and electric guitars after the bridge where she sings "Home sweet freedom, flowing in my mind." Oh, and on a side note, Paula Cole is coming up with a new album, Courage, due out on June 12 from her own record label, Decca. It's been a long time since her last album Amen, and I can only expect the kind of brilliance she displayed in This Fire, which earned her only the second-ever female Producer of the Year nomination at the Grammys.

crossroads : tracy chapman
click here or on the image below to listen



Yes, I know Crossroads – both the album and the single – came out in 1989 as a follow-up to her hugely successful self-titled debut. Like many, I had ignorantly dismissed Tracy Chapman as a one-hit-album wonder, until she released the song Give Me One Reason in 1995. The album where it's from, New Beginning, renewed my interest in her music. While I listened to the loud spawns of the grunge era, I was also rediscovering and enjoying the quiet acoustic beauty of her sound, which is why I will always associate this song I'm posting with the 90s. If you really think about it, even in songs like The Promise, there's a lot of sorrow in her music, but she never makes them sound hopeless or desperate. Her voice doesn't have the range or versatility that the rest of the artists here have, and that many others use for dramatic effect, but it beats in itself, not with anger, but with willpower. Hers is the voice of quiet defiance, and this is something you will hear in Crossroads, which is about a woman's refusal to make compromises – over what is open to interpretation. It's easy to think she's singing about her creativity as an artist and selling out, but a woman forced into a marriage she didn't want could also probably relate to it. Best Line: Standing at the point, The road it cross you down, What is at your back, Which way do you turn. Best Part: The intro hooked me to the rest of the song.

caught a light sneeze : tori amos
click here or on the image below to listen



I'm not a Toriphile, but I did enjoy her music immensely from Under the Pink to Boys for Pele. The albums that came after were just too labored to the point of being ponderous for my taste – save for the couple of cuts she did for the soundtrack to the film Great Expectations in 1998 – until she released Scarlet's Walk in 2002, which was a watered-down version of even her old self. That said, what I liked most about Tori Amos was not so much her lyrics as her voice and her sound, from the piano-and-voice restraint of Merman to the more elaborately arranged Tear In Your Hand. Most of the time, her lyrics are too coded for me to comprehend; I don't think I've ever agreed with anyone about what Silent All These Years meant. Caught A Light Sneeze is no less easy, but there are enough hints to say it's about the meltdown of her relationship with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails – the reference to Pretty Hate Machine, the Nails album that catapulted them to fame, was a giveaway. Best Line: I need a big loan from a girl zone. I have no idea what it means, but it sure sounds good the way she sings it. Best Part: How she lengthens the words "building tumbling down" at the chorus.

ghost : indigo girls
click here or on the image below to listen



I first learned about the Indigo Girls when their album Swamp Ophelia was given to me as a birthday gift by someone I dated. While the relationship didn't last long – it was in fact my shortest ever – the impact of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray's music on me did. I was so impressed with that album that I immediately looked for their prior work and discovered Rites of Passage, where Ghost comes from. Where do I even begin talking about this song? This is a true gem, one of those that immediately capture you with its sound, then with its lyrics bit by bit, and then ultimately its totality. Your appreciation of it just grows the more you hear it. There's just so much natural beauty in this song that whenever you listen to it, you're touched by one aspect of it that's different from the last – from a poetic line or two, to Emily's tearful wail, to Amy's somber backing vocals, to the way their fingers slide on the strings of their guitars. What first struck me was the first line in the chorus – There's not enough room in this world for my pain. It sounds so spontaneous and therefore sincere that it reaches out to your own sense of pain and longing. And when Emily sings I'd walk into the fingers of your fire willingly, you feel your own vulnerability. The literary references – from Helen of Troy to Achilles to the Pied Piper – are cleverly employed. I get goosebumps every time I hear this: And you kiss me like a lover, Then you sting me like a viper, I go follow to the river, Play your memory like a piper. The best line? It's hard to choose, but it would probably be the first line in the final verse: This bitter pill I swallow is the silence that I keep, It poisons me I can't swim free, the river is too deep. The best part? I love the bridge, where Emily delivers an evocative wail, followed by the reversal of the duo's vocal roles.

women's march : part 1

March is all-women month at Alternative Sounds, being that part of the year when we celebrate International Women's Day, which was on the 8th. I thought I'd make a conscious attempt to increase the representation of female artists in my blog. This first installment consists of artists from the 80s. The next one will be those from the 90s, followed by women of folk and women from around the world.

all i want : susanna hoffs
click here or on the image below to listen



Before there was Lisa Loeb, before there was Natalie Imbruglia, before there were Frente!, Luscious Jackson and The Corrs, there was Susanna Hoffs. The most prominent one-fourth of The Bangles was the original pop-rock sweetheart, who exuded vulnerable sexuality with her delicately saccharine voice and wistful acoustic guitar. To someone growing up in the 80s and who was just beginning to form his own hormonally influenced notion of an ideal woman, Susanna Hoffs was the definitive girlfriend material. Madonna was too wild. Cyndi Lauper was too weird. Bananarama were just too bleached. With her hoop earrings, tapered jeans and Aqua Net-architectured curls, Hoffs came out of VH1 and MTV like a singing porcelain doll, a small, shapely creature with the face of an angel, graced by a full set of lips that broke into a disarming smile, and wide eyes that charmed every time they half-closed. In other words, Susanna Hoffs was the first female artist that gave me the bone. She came to her peak in 1989 when the band released Eternal Flame – that irresistibly mushy ballad to undying love, the first three words of which provoke a universal sigh. But at age 48 – basking in the acclaim of Under The Covers, her 2006 album of duets with Matthew Sweet – Hoffs is still beguiling as ever, outlasting her 90s facsimiles, while her voice has hardly changed. I'm posting her 1996 cover of the Lightning Seeds classic All I Want, which she manages to make cute and edgy with her trademark rasp at the chorus. She only changes the instrumentation, giving it an minimalist treatment but keeping to the pace and form of the original. Best Line: Confidence, coincidence, call it a sin, it's just like people say. Best Part: I love the drums at the intro and the jangle of acoustic guitar at the first chorus.

soap and water : suzanne vega
click here or on the image below to listen



If you're not new to this blog, you might notice that there's a new personality in the header art. Why didn't I think of putting Suzanne Vega up there the first time? I've been a fan since Luka, which I realized even at 13 or 14 was a remarkable song. I had been exposed to pop music that dealt with social and political issues before, or since I cared enough to actually mull over the lyrics – from famine (Do They Know It's Christmas?) to war (State of the Nation) to teen pregnancy (Papa Don't Preach) – but somethig was different about Luka. For one, who thought of writing a song about child abuse from the point of view of the abused child? (If you hear something late at night, Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight, Just don't ask me what it was) The words are haunting enough; the melody couldn't have accompanied them better. The brilliance of the songwriting becomes even sharper when compared to What's The Matter Here?, about the same theme, released on the same year (1987). (I'm tired of the excuses everybody uses, He's your kid, do as you see fit.) Make no mistake – the 10,000 Maniacs song, written by vocalist Natalie Merchant, is equally brilliant, but Luka is more poetic and empathetic. In fact, a poet who happens to sing is what Suzanne Vega is. Her songs are always full of symbolism. They're not always obvious, but they speak to you in ways only you can understand – just listen to Gypsy. Luka is one of the easy ones; Soap And Water is another – a song about a couple's separation and how it ravages the emotions of the child. But see how beautiful she illustrates tragedy – Soap and water, Wash the year from my life, Straighten all that we trampled and tore, Heal the cut we call husband and wife. It's hard to think of another female singer-songwriter who approximates her breed of intelligence. Best Line: The verse I just quoted. Best Part: The six guitar notes that run throughout the song.

circle dream : 10,000 maniacs
click here or on the image below to listen



Resolute is one of the words I use to describe Natalie Merchant's voice. It's an amazing instrument she has. You hear her sing, and you know she's out to make a statement – from depression (Like The Weather, which you can listen to right here) to media desensitization (Candy Everybody Wants) to unwanted pregnancy (Eat For Two). Or at least that's what I think the last song is about. Motherhood is a theme that Merchant writes about with emotional acuity, free of clichés and mawkish testimonies. Circle Dream, from the band's 1992 album Our Time In Eden, is a celebration of life – and here you'll see some parallelism between her and Suzanne Vega's songwriting, because it's from the voice of the unborn child itself. Best Line: Her warmth coming near, calling me "sweetness," calling me "dear". Best Part: Natalie's own backing and harmony vocals.