What! No Kate Nash? My 100 favourite songs of 2007 (part one)

100 Black Dice * Gore
Instrumental
Black Dice have cropped up in my end-of-year lists a surprising number of times, considering having been listening to them for nearly five years, they've still not even remotely approached a catchy song. This track is unique for being such a haggard mess I didn't even realise I had a warped mp3 of it until about the tenth listen. This is about as close to acessable as Black Dice have managed to date. Give it until 2112, and they might get near a tune. Interestingly, I was in HMV the other day, and they were playing tracks off Screamadelica over the top of this on my headphones. I've never been more glad I don't take drugs.

099 Emperor X * Raytracer
"Did you ever make out on the capitol steps with an AK-47 holding Marxist girl?"
Say, what so you do when The Mountain Goats are on a year off? Listen to their largely inferior and similar-sounding comrades in the war of acoustic wit. This references Elliot Smith and I listened to it a lot when I was cat-sitting in Winchester. At one minute-fifty, this is the shortest song on this years 100.

098 Boris * Pink
indecipherable Japanese lyrics
One of the very first songs I listened to in 2007, let alone listened to the first time. I remember downloading it just before New Years Eve last year after getting lifts to Borders with Richard Morgan on two successive days because the buses were cancelled. This is one hell of a song.

097 Alasdair Roberts * Where Twines the Path
"listen to our language lose it's former grammar"
An ongoing theme in this years chart are the precedence of good, hearty accents of the representative vocalists. Swedish, English, Southern States and Danish all get a look in, but the most exciting for me at least, is the return of the proper 'Hoots Man' Scottish brogue. This is the first of four in this years 100. A nonsensical folk song that rhymes "snuffle" with "truffles cluster in the hollow" that could easily be sung by Ralph McTell as it could by a cult Highlands lo-fi allstar.

096 Arthur Russell * She's The Star / I Take This Time
"She's thinks of us as friends"
Two songs for the price of one. This is one of the few songs I've discovered through listening to the radio. I think I prefer 'I take this time' and often wish it came before 'She's the Star' because the sentiment of the two titles work better in reverse, but that's the way it happened, so who am I to change it? This is one of the less straightforward songs I've liked this year, but that makes it no less damaging. 2007 has been quite an inaffectual year for me, with precious few specific memories I can attribute to each song, although I do recally sitting in the living room in Rhymney Street listening to this, around September time,

095 Okkervil River * John Allyn Smith Sails
"I feel so broke up, I want to go home"
Another two songs for the price of one.I saw Okkervil River live this year, finally. In the worst catch up in history because everybody and their dog I've ever met has seen them a least twice before, but I finally got to see them this year, after three and a half years. And they were shite. It didn't help much that they were trying to promote a lacklustre album and couldn't hold a tune for more than two bars. However, and this is a relatively large 'However', this was just about the only track they managed to hold together, presumable because it's basically a cover of 'Sloop Jon B' with the introduction to 'Black Sheep Boy' tacked on the beginning.

094 Grinderman * No Pussy Blues
"I played her guitar by the hour, I petted her revolting little chihuahua"
Easily the best thing Nick Cave's put his name to in about six years, and that includes The Proposition. As well. As entertaining a song as a raving drunk with a hard-on ranting about how he hasn't had any for ages could possibly be, with Nick Cave in classic pantomime mode, swaggering over what sounds like a combination of fifteen typewriters being jumped on, and someone feedbacking into an oscillator. Completely ridiculous, and a fitting soundtrack to driving down to the bay just before the Cardiff sort began.

093 Fall Out Boy * Thriller
"Y'all F.O.B!"
A Fall Out Boy song with a rapped introduction by Jay-Z, about the pressures of fame. Amazing. Next!

092 Iron and Wine * Flightless Bird, American Mouth
"Now I'm a fat house cat, nursing my sore blunt tongue"
One of the many US indie 'big-hitters' who served up disappointing new albums on a platter this year (see also; Modest Mouse, Okkervil River, Arcade Fire et al), this was the stand out track by an alt. country mile, by a) sounding a bit like 'If I could turn back the hands of time' by R Kelly, whilst simultaneously being an impenetrable metaphor about dustbowl America and the plight of Sam Beams life and loves using a cat / mouse / dead bird theme. Probably. This is another cat-sitting classic.

091 Hello Saferide * I Thought You Said Summer Was Going to Take The Pain Away
"why am I not like the others, and why are you not here with me doing crossword puzzles?"
This year I went to Sweden with my then girlfriend Gemma. Sweden is probably the most terrific place in the world. A place where theme parks with green rabbits in have hand-prints of the stars (including Leonard Cohen) around a themed fountain that 'dances' to the Superman theme tune. A place where river rapids rides hurtle around corners to instrumental versions of 'It's a Sin'. A place where you can find Six By Seven albums for £1 in giant department stores. A place that shows 'Bones' and cop shows with Kris Marshall in at 6 in the evening. There are a lot of Swedish songs featured on the chart this year. This is the first, and was not elevated above the many other good Hello Saferide songs because of it's title at all. This was also the first track on my 'Swedish Hearts' mix CD which my dad didn't like.

090 Kind of Like Spitting * St Swithin's Day
"I just can't bring myself to answer your letters"
A live mp3 of the greatest break-up song of all time, being sung by what sounds like Jeff Mangum yelling beneath an overpass. I've still yet to hear a bad cover of 'St Swithin's Day'. A song for the walk home,.

089 Marissa Nadler * Dying Breed
"Red is the colour of memory"
Very much a november song, ridiculously over-long loaded up playlists to listen to washing the dishes, having to dry my hands every time to turn off the screen saver to check the song titles. I like the way this song sounds like it's been recorded on a sinking ship.

088 Martha Tilston and the Woods * Kinvarna
"I hold my plastic camera up to the dirty glass"
Kate Rusby steals the headlines, but 'Of Milkmaids and Architects' by Martha Tilston outdoes the former in the forefront of acceptable radio 2 folk. As is customary when discussing folk songs, the highlighted twee British subject matter mentioned here is 'the abbey walls', although she does that radio 2 thing of justaposing things like plastic cameras and things to 'contemporise'. Similarly customary with folk songs, despite listening to this more on the streets of Cardiff than anywhere, this reminds me of the bus journey out into the valleys, which I stopped doing on a daily basis this year.

087 Midlake * Head Home
"She reads Leviathan"
Since Uncut stated theming their CDs with things like "the 20 boring shitters who inspired Led Zepellin", and stopped writing aticles about cinema because you had to buy the seperate film magazine, thus creating two crap magazines from one awesome one, like an earthworm with two tails. My point is that this might be the last good song I ever hear from a copy of Uncut. In all honesty, I can't remember why I bought the magazine in the first place, I can assume it wasn't because I wanted to read another article about what Peter Hook thinks about John Lennon's solo career. They don't even bang on about Americana anymore. You know those mornings in the first couple of weeks of January, when you get up, get dressed, walk to work, start work and about an hour later the sun finally rises. That's the time for this.

086 Pelle Carlberg * Go To Hell, Miss Rydell
"They say the pen is mightier than the sword. And I know that feeling, that devestating feeling, because I have been stabbed before"
Swedish. A 'hilarious' song that ultimately ends up more poignant than it's intention, due to quadruple levels of irony involved: Miss Rydell is a music journalist, who slags off Pelle Carlberg, and this song details his rage at her for the review, and the subsequent communication. Pelle Carlberg is essentially an underachieving Swedish indie singer-songwriter who writes songs about being an underachieving singer-songwriter, and basically self-fulfils his own prophecy permenantly. If he didn't have kids, it's be a laugh riot.

085 Jason Isbell * Chicago Promenade
"My back was turned, I did not see"
"Sirens of the Ditch" is one of my albums of the year, which is not going to change anyone's life, although since good as they are, The Drive By Truckers have yet to release a continuously indepensible album, goes to show where the talent in that outfit used to be. This is 'Blue Collar Indie', the best genre of music ever, which I've endeavoured to make additions to this year. See also; Jason Anderson, Minus the Bear.

084 Hellsongs * Seek and Destroy
"Our brains are on fire with the feeling to kill"
Swedish. A ludicrous Metallica cover by a bunch of twee losers that Luke Pavey (big Metallica fan) barely recognised when I played it at Grace and Gemmas graduation party. This was my official song for the night of the Harry Potter 7 launch at Borders in LLantrisant. £4000 in 50 minutes, all identical transactions, and a bunch of horrible children in witch costumes generally ruining my life, and catching out my lack of Potter knowledge. Hannah's 'inappropriate' costume, the night Morgan became Bobby Davro hosting a quiz, and some of the Rhondda Valley's most terrifying, all coming out to play.

083 Peter, Bjorn and John * Up Against the Wall
"I almost wish we hadn't met at all"
Swedish. Everyone talks about 'Young Folks' like it's a revolutionary song that's made everyones lives better. It's not. At best, it's an averagely good radio-friendly indie hit which builders can whistle. It's also only got a lifespan of about 20 listens before you want to garot Peter, Bjorn, John and the woman.After Radio 1 picked it up, suicide beckoned too, Conveniently, the rest of album has some real gemstones hidden away, not least this seven minute epic, which works perfectly as an album closer and opener, from a mixtape point of view, and it more than enough evidence that people should still, in 2007, look beyond the 'hit.

082 Leonard Cohen * Avalanche
"When I am on a pedestal, you did not raise me there"
There really is nothing like buying 'Songs of Love and Hate' on the same day as getting ditched. Weird thing is, I bought the album beforehand. I've always loved the cover of 'Songs of Love and Hate', Much like the cover of 'The River' by Bruce Springsteen looks like could be the cinema poster for a Robert Mitchum b-movie in the vain of 'Night of the Hunter', the cover of Songs of Love.. could easily be a long lost sequel to Nosferatu, starring noted Swedish theme park visitor... Leonard Cohen!

081 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark * Maid of Orleans
"Her dream's to give her heart away"
FACT OMD are amazing. FACT they were one of the most talked about bands of the early eighties and their masterpiece album was called 'Architecture and Morality' and was about just that. FACT they released two top 20 singles in successfion, both about Joan of Arc (of which this is the better). FACT they shit on Joy Division, The Cure AND The Smiths. FACT the re-release of aforementioned album was one of the best CD releases of 2007 bar none, regardless of it's age and credibility. This oddly reminds me of buying food in the takeaway on Salisbury road, which I don't remember doing on my own at any point (due to the social stigma of being since alone in a takeaway), but I must have done.

080 Jens Lekman * A Sweet Summers Night on Hammer Hill
"Oh I still remember 'Regulate' with Warren G"
Swedish. We didn't listen to much music when we were in Sweden, but I still had this in my head for the majority of the time we were there. The fact it was the hottest weather in Gothenburg for 60 years meant there was a kind of party atmosphere in places, particularly around the stadium when 'Monster Jam' was there, and the kids by the crazy golf course in the park. Oddly, this was one of my least favourite Jens Lekman songs until about a week before we left, but memories and atmosphere can play havoc on your tastes.

079 Blonde Redhead * 23
"How many times? As long as you wish"
Worth a million Asobi Seksu's, this particular song reminds me of travelling back to Winchester on the train, the day before travelling up to Leeds for my Grandads funeral.I was reading 'And then we came to the end' by Joshua Ferris (Douglas Coupland- lite picked up by Richard and Judy for their spring book club, bizarrely) during that train journey, and the whole of '23' makes good reading music, because it's energetic without being obtusive, dreamy without being forgettable. I didn't go on enough train journeys this year.

078 Richard Thompson * Guns are the Tongues
"Bring peace to the grave of my father, bring peace to the grave of my brother"
By far and away the best song he's put his name to in a ridiculously long time, and the best song song on a fantastic album that nobody, including Richard Thompson himself, knew was coming out. I just turned up at work one day, and wow, a new Richard Thompson album, and he announced a tour the next day. This reminds me of loads of incredibly tedious work-related matters which aren't worth explaining in any detail, but it involved shifting the science, maths, religion and history sections in order to create a biography section upstairs. Which took about a week, This song marks some unintentional frat-boy humour about 'wanting to smell (your) love on my fingers". Ho ho ho.

077 Fucked Up * Crusades
"We died, then we're born again."
ANY punk song that starts with a spoken word quote from Corinthians over a guitar impersonating a motorcycle revving, and then explodes into an Arthur Baker 12" remix of a Ramones track with a bloated Deryck Wibley being bagpiped over the top, before breaking it's own legs and freefalling into a completely outrageous middle section which nobody's expecting, and then neatly severs itself at the 6:44 mark after the worst most illogical stadium chant, is going to be special. The fact that it's THIS special, is a gift to us all from Fucked Up

076 Shout Out Louds * Impossible
"you're just like your mother, I'm just the same as the others"
Swedish. This is a BIG song. I downloaded 'Our Ill Wills' by the Shout Out Louds one weekend when I was at home in Winchester. It might have been the same weeknd as my Grandad's funeral, but I remember listening to this on my CD player on the train home, and I think for Grandads funeral, I still had Gemmas mp3 player. I forget. I remember buying a Subway sandwich from the shop on the corner opposite the bus stop, and then I tried to eat it on the train, and got my bags, and shirt, and jacket covered in meatball and lettuce and cheese, because no matter how careful you think you are, the rickety 122 bus to Tonypandy is no place to keep an unsteady Subway, steady.