emusic is doing it’s annual poll of users favourite albums of 2007.
I figured it might be nice to share my picks with y’all so here we are.

1 Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer

Full of energy and earnest confessional lyrics, Kevin Barnes takes some outstandingly bleak and poor times and creates possibly the greatest manic album of all time. So many tracks to love, but I think it’s the balls behind having the full twelve minutes of The Past Is A Grotesque Animal sat in the middle of the album as the both it and the band emerge from a chrysalis as the greatest funk band ever. And it has duelling guitars.

2 Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Spoon + Horns = Supreme. That’s the formula for The Underdog and You Got Yr Cherry Bomb anyway. As ever with Spoon the album is a mix of styles with some really amazing experiments included such as The Ghost Of You Lingers which combines an apparent musical minimalism with their usual lyrical economy.

3 Napoleon IIIrd – In Debt To

Easily both the debut and British album of the year. Caught him first live supporting Fog and I simply can’t fault a lyric like Average is not the best you can do or We’ve got bored of the democratic scene and handed control to celebrities. And all with somewhat oddball instrumentation as well. And yes those lyrics do sound far better sung, naturally.

4 Jens Lekman -Night Falls Over Kortedala

Cor, apparently Jens is now cool with the likes of The Guardian finally lauding him as a minor genius. It’s a brave man who opens his album with a sample popularised by The Avalanches, and it is the continuing enchanting use of samples that makes the album and lets him segue between so many different styles. Also, Sipping On The Sweet Nectar makes me think he should just do an all disco album.

5 Misty s Big Adventure – Funny Times

Someone somewhere reviewed this and said you can’t make songs about requited love using a tuba. Aside from being quite definitively wrong, they need to go and listen to Devotchka and maybe some Mahler. Misty’s have produced a third album of amazing pop, which won’t be popular though they could play up their ska angle and become hip, maybe.

6 A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble – A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble

We all make mistakes every now and then, mine was to fail to and see A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble when they played five minutes walk from my house. Still, I saw them later in the year with Ungar at the helm of his cimbalom. I think Jeremy Barnes takes the folk gypsy music angle and runs with it far better than Beirut, perhaps due to less singing.

7 Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus

To be honest it felt almost like piracy to download SFA from emusic and I’m tempted to pick up the CD in due course. A complete return to form for the Welshmen here, and something that could almost be my favourite album of theirs.

8 They Might Be Giants – The Else

From the moment the Dust Brothers were announced as producing tracks on this album I was looking forward to it, because their remix of Snail Shell – Snail Dust is one of my favourite songs ever. The bass heavy mix was therefore no surprise and I think it’s a great album. And there’s some awesome songs like The Cap’m on here.

9 Peter Bjorn And John – Writer’s Block

Every so often I have a weak moment where I’m in a record store and just end up buying something cos I’ve heard it there, like this. I think Objects Of My Affection is much better than Young Folks though.

10 Beirut – The Flying Club Cup

More lovely Beirut stuff, it’s not as much of bolt from the blue as the first album, naturally. However I can’t get enough of some of his more croony songs like Nantes especially with the thin 70s organ sounds on it.