The Wheel's Still In Spin

Best Albums of December 2007

The final month of the year usually doesn't bring the strongest releases. Let's face it, between the holidays and the emphasis on compiling the year's best of lists, most people don't highlight the new releases of the month. From the slim number of albums debuting this month, there were a few bright spots.

1. Wyclef Jean - Carnival II

   For his first album since 2004, Wyclef Jean returns to the with a secondary title to his first solo album. Carnival II is subtitled "Memoirs of an Immigrant" and some subject matters of the songs focus on immigration themes. One of Wyclef's strongest attributes is the diversity of artists he works with as a producer. On this album he has a wide range of musical guests including Mary J. Blige, will.i.am, Akon, Paul Simon, Nora Jones, Serj Tankian, and Shakira.



2. Tender Forever - Wider | buy it at insound!

   Tender Forever is the musical nom de plume of Melanie Valera. Hailing from Bordeaux, France, the second album from Tender Forever is layered with keyboards, synths, electronic drums, and vocal stylings that bring to mind Mates of State.



3. Pants Yell! - Alison Statton | buy it at insound!

   This Boston area trio appears to be musical anglophiles. Adding horns and backing vocals to their gleaming guitars and bouncy rhythms, the band has expanded their pop sound with this release.



4. Okkervil River - Golden Opportunities Mixtape | Download the album from the band's website

   After releasing this year's best album, The Stage Names, Will Sheff and Okkervil River "released" this EP of covers recorded on tour. Some songs were recorded at live performances, from people's apartments, from hotels, and even songs from radio shows. Then the band gave the album away with a higher quality download from their website complete with liner notes and cover art. Sheff has announced the songs were somehow related to the songs on The Stage Names. "Some of the tracks were chosen as direct pairings to Stage Names material. Some of them are songs that informed Stage Names songs... Certain references are there for other people to pick up on; others are subtler and there just for myself, because I think it gives the outside listener a sense of a richer world when there's a kind of personal secret iconography going on in something." "At the same time, I feel like if this stuff isn't a little mysterious, even to me, than some kind of wholeness is broken. And if it's not mysterious to listeners than the whole album can be thought of as just a bright fluorescent-lit room with nothing in the corners, no secret doors, nothing hidden, nothing special. Ultimately, I like the idea of taking myself, and the listener hopefully too, someplace deeper, into some kind of hidden passageway where I'm just as confused as they are."

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As Smart As They Are: The Author Project

This site was created to present a platform for music reviews in a creative writing format. Music and literature. One is the muse for the other. Hence the short story reviews of albums. It was this relationship between writings and music that piqued my interest in the documentary As Smart As They Are: The Author Project.

Natty Man Blues (mp3) by One Ring Zero, lyrics by Paul Auster

The band One Ring Zero created an exceptional and novel (pardon the pun) album entitled As Smart As They Are. They became the house band for the nonpareil publishing house McSweeney's. Hosting weekly literary readings, McSweeney's invited One Ring Zero to perform and create a unique experience in the unmarked storefront full of unusual knick-knacks.

Composing mostly instrumental music with accordion, claviola, thermin, and a diverse array of instruments, Joshua Camp and Michael Hearst decided to solicit lyrics from a scattering of authors. After receiving lyrics from Paul Auster, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman, Myla Goldberg, Denis Johnson, Jonathon Lethem, Darin Strauss, and many others, the band set out to create The Author Project. The end result is an album of unequaled and varying musical landscapes set to non-typical lyrics. The subjects include a song from the point of view of a cockroach (Lethem's "Water") to an ode to vegetation (Amy Fusselman's "All About House Plants") to the narrative of a hermaphodite (Clay McLeod Chapman's "Half And Half").