Part Three of our Five-Part Series of Albums I Really Liked this year continues…

15. Bobby Conn - King for a Day
Song: “Mr. Lucky”

ADHD-glam, with weird, awful ventures into metal. Skip the metal tracks - I do. Stick to the insanely over-arranged glitter-rock symphonies (”A Glimpse of Paradise,” “King for a Day”, “Anybody”). The best of all is “Mr. Lucky,” where Conn passes the mic to wife Monica Boubou and indulges in some some Jon Brion-produces-Aimee Mann orchestration until… well, I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, but the moment from about 2:53 to 3:12, and the overwrought proclamation (”I wanna live! / With all the aaaanimals!”) might be the best moment/line delivery in any song this year. Top notch.

14. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
Song: “Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo”

The very gall of Jens Lekman - whose first album was an inspired Morrissey knockoff and whose second was a formless collection of EPs - to release this album is astonishing. Lekman knows that Kortedala is his ’stepping-out’ bid, and he seizes on it, crafting an Avalanche of sample-laden pop that ends up sounding somewhere between 70s production music, Esquivel’s Space Age Bachelor Pad, and well, Morrissey. It’s so Swedish: the best track, linked above, features not just an awesomely cheesed-out saxophone and classic rock-and-roll tempo but also the signature piano trill from “Dancing Queen.” The gall!

13. Mary Weiss with the Reigning Sound - Dangerous Game
Song: “Cry About the Radio”

Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las sings garage-rock. Her voice is rougher, beaten down, but resilient - she couldn’t hit the high notes of “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” now, but could she ever? Her sense for delivery is as strong as ever, and her song choice is impeccable, resulting in a surprisingly powerful song cycle that serves both as exclamation point and asskicking to the recent drag-act girl-group revivalism. Notably, this is one of two records on this list (Sarah Borges is the other) featuring a cover of the Reigning Sound’s early-90s power pop stomper “Stop and Think It Over.”

12. Sir Richard Bishop - Polytheistic Fragments
Track: “Rub Al Khali”

Polytheistic Fragments was like the soundtrack of everyday for a solid month this fall. I couldn’t escape it, was constantly playing it, was completely sucked into this whole world of recent guitar musics (James Blackshaw, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones). But this album towers above them all, even above Bishop’s ambitious three-track entry While My Guitar Violently Bleeds from earlier this year. He skips between styles and genres nimbly, combining and deconstructing at will. It’s fun, playful, melodic, virtuosic. It might strike as a bit academic to run between Moroccan-influenced Spanish guitar, Bulgarian chalga, and Appalachian folk in the span of a few minutes, but the results are thrilling - completely overwhelming if you let it.

11. Lucky Soul - The Great Unwanted
Song: “My Darling Anything”

Are you kidding me? I melted when I heard “My Darling Anything” for the first time - it’s pretty much been fine-tuned for a listener like me. I’m so predictable. You give me Northern Soul string arrangements, lilting, thin vocals by British girls, and a pretty melody and I’m sold. Which made me initially suspicious of this album - is there anything below the aesthetic, any deeper meaning or ironic twist to the way this collection of songs indulges in trendy retro-fetishism? Answer: there isn’t. Does there need to be? Answer: of course not. I started listening to this in June and it hasn’t left my playlist since.

Tomorrow we enter our top 10 - what albums that you thought were ‘pretty okay, I guess…’ are gonna make it this year?

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « 25 Albums for 2007 (Part Two)
• » 25 Albums for 2007 (Part Four)

• BROWSE / IN Music
• « 25 Albums for 2007 (Part Two)
• » 25 Albums for 2007 (Part Four)