Bart McPherson Weblog

Here are my top 25 albums of 2007. They are the albums I think were the best from this year. These are items I’ve actually listened to, so there are probably a ton of artists/releases from this year that belong on the list that I just never got a chance to hear. You can always send your stuff to the station for me and the rest of the programmers to spin if we like it.

25. A Place to Bury Strangers - self-titled
24. The Cave Singers - Invitation Songs
23. Tunng - Good Arrows
22. Wooden Wand - James & the Quiet
21. Steve Earle - Washington Square Serenade
20. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
19. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
18. The Apples In Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder
17. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
16. The New Pornographers - Challengers
15. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir - self-titled
14. The Afternoon Naps - Sunbeamed
13. Boris - Rainbow
12. Caribou - Andorra
11. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog
10. Dreadful Yawns - Rest
9. Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
8. Shout Out Louds - Our Ill Wills
7. The Avett Brothers - Emotionalism
6. Great Lake Swimmers - Ongiara
5. The Sadies - New Seasons
4. Arthur & Yu - In Camera
3. José González - In Our Nature
2. Frightened Rabbit - Sing the Greys
1. Okkervil River - The Stage Names

Honorable mentions go out to the following bands. (Sorry, good stuff. I just can’t fit it all in.)
Buffalo Tom, Citay, John Doe, Dungen, Feist, Meat Puppets, Robert Pollard, Two Cow Garage, John Vaderslice, David Vandervelde, and Mary Weiss.

I did some queries against the database I use to keep my playlists.

I confirmed what I was thinking. My tastes in music are evolving. I’ll be posting my top 25 picks for 2007 in a couple of weeks. It should be quite a diverse list.

Below is a chart of the top 30 artists I’ve played since I’ve had a show on WCSB (and the # of plays they received this year).

You can see that The Pixies took a huge dive in number of plays. This year’s plays only makes up approximately 4% of their total plays on the show.

Here’s a chart of some of the artists I’ve played the most this year (compared to their overall plays).

This year you’ll notice a couple of the top artists are brand new to the show in 2007. My tastes appear to be shifting toward mellower, folky stuff. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still love the noisy, feedback drenched guitar stuff. It’s just not as prevalent in my show as it once was. I have also started to play more types of artists on my show. I played over 500 different artists this year on the show.

I have gone through these musical evolutions before. I was once an industrial music fan. I’ve seen Ministry, KMFDM, and Nine Inch Nails live, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to any of their albums.

I imagine more changes will come. Frankly, I’m glad that my tastes in music are evolving. Otherwise, I might still run around in a Flock of Seagulls t-shirt.