ASTRONOMY CLUB GHOST STORY
DELIVERS THE GOODS
right here
http://www.myspace.com/astronomyclubgs


TOP TEN OF 2007 - SONG BY TOAD, PHAWKER, HERO HILL

SONG BY TOAD
http://www.songbytoad.com
9.
Ray's Vast Basement - Starvation Under Orange Trees
Beautiful, wistful and very old fashioned. This is an album of dust-bowl Americana with a sprinkling of loveliness, all based on the work of John Steinbeck which, on listening to the album, is no surprise at all.


HERO HILL - MOST AMBITIOUS PROJECT OF 2007
http://www.herohill.com/2007/11/best-of-2007-most-ambitious-projects.htm
3
This record came out of nowhere for me. Jon Bernson was originally asked to write songs to accompany a theatre production of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. He ended up creating a masterpiece. Of Mice and Men is one of my favorite novels, so naturally the project intrigued me, but trying to capture Steinbeck's voice and settings in song is no easy project, especially when every hipster loves his work and was probably waiting to dismiss it out of hand.

Not only did Bernson succeed in sound tracking a play, but he manages to evoke imagery from a collection of Steinbeck novels, without losing his independence. The songs stand on their own, with beautiful instrumentation and tone. Considering it was written for a small play and resulted in one of the most beautiful records of the year, it deserves special mention.


PHAWKER
Best Record of 2007
Hear Ye! Starvation Under Orange Trees
Dan Buskirk
Phawker.com
A Philadelphia Blog
http://www.phawker.com/2007/09/14/hear-ye-starvation-under-the-orange-trees/

BY DAN BUSKIRK I am willing to wager double nickels on the dime that you have never even heard of what is quite simply the Best Album of 2007: Ray's Vast Basement's Starvation Under The Orange Trees. Well, now you have. Starvation is the San Francisco band's third release and it's their most fully-realized disc to date. Their name stems from their highly theatrical past: The band's early shows were mixtures of staged scenes and musical performance, conjuring the fictionalized history of a tiny corner of the rocky coast of Northern California where a guy named Ray ran a speakeasy out of a cave. This morphed into their first release On The Banks of the Time (2000) which included a stack of hand-screened postcards giving a timeline of the history of the cave and the many colorful denizens who occupied the imaginary town of Drakesville. Despite its self-release and its limited distribution it found its way to David Dye's desk, who proclaimed the disc "a homemade masterpiece" and invited the band to perform on the World Café.

All this self-created myth is the brainchild of Jon Bernson, a young man whose family history evaporated in the tumult of the Holocaust that enveloped Europe in the second World War. This deep-seated need to secure the past gives Bernson's writing a unforced resonance that makes his stories come alive and escape being merely musty nostalgia for a world gone by. With Starvation Under the Orange Trees the band breaks away from the Drakesville cycle but it is still consumed by the past, its song written for and inspired by a recent staging of John Steinbeck's Of Mice & Men.

Wide swaths of that Central California landscape that Steinbeck wrote about is remarkably unchanged and the disc find ways to capture it with earthy shading provided by musical saw, harmonica, washboard and cornet. Keeping the disc from turning into a retro hoedown is an underpinning of found sounds and field recordings. And then there is the songs themselves, beautifully arranged little nuggets of love, regret, hope and apocalypse — complex emotional weather systems that are as much tomorrow as they are yesterday.

In a world aching for music this rich and real how could this miracle of a record miss? Maybe because it's a real full-length album, it songs building and cohering, as opposed to a collection of tracks jingling around like loose change in our I-Pod driven world. Maybe it's too grand for our lowered expectations. Certainly that isn't you though, just click on to Phawker radio and separate yourself from the teeny-boppers as Ray's Vast Basement quietly burns down the universe and re-imagines it to their own liking.

SHIPWRECKERS TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2007
Posted in Music Related on December 31, 2007 by Doll Is Mine
Simply put, it's been a disappointing year for music, and in particular, for well-known indie artists. Music from artists that I've come to count on to challenge me musically, instead released albums that were at best, safe and uninspiring, and at worst, unlistenable. Not many could have predicted that a Blonde Redhead album would not make my year's end list, but unfortunately, their latest has the distinct honor of officially being my biggest disappointment of year, followed closely by releases from Beirut, Caribou, and Electrelane. In contrast, newly discovered artists, most of them in non-indie rock genres, replaced the stagnancy of indie rock stalwarts such as the Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, at least, making 2007 a bit more enjoyable.

My Top 20 of 2007

1. Burial - Untrue
2. Portugal. The Man - Church Mouth
3. Sole - Sole & The Skyrider Band
4. Thee Moths - Glytchvölk Musique Concrète
5. Skeletons And The Kings Of All Cities - Lucas
6. Telephone Jim Jesus - Anything Out Of The Everything
7. Blockhead - A Page From Uncle Tony's Coloring Book
8. Deerhunter - Cryptograms
9. Woods - At Rear House
10. Doseone - SkeletonRepelent
11. The Mary Onettes - The Mary Onettes
12. Odd Nosdam - Level Live Wires
13. Nostalgia77 - Everything Under The Sun
14. Kiln - Dusker
15. Amon Tobin - Foley Room
16. Secret Mommy - Plays
17. The Besnard Lakes - Are the Dark Horse
18. The Bird Names - Wooden Lake/Sexual Diner
19. RAY'S VAST BASEMENT - STARVATION UNDER ORANGE TREES
20. Lo ModA - Gospel Store Front