RIUSAB's Year in P/Review

With half of 2007 behind and half ahead, several thoughts:

-Surprising year for indie rock. Old names and new names are blowing it up. We've seen impressive sophomore releases (that Menomena one's, you know, aite too), a really good !!! album, and a great debut from the Besnard Lakes. Of course, indie's a lot less indie these days (Use Your Own Link) - the Monkeys ref here ignores their Brit chart dominance and fuckstillhardtobelieveihavetosaythis but that Arcade Fire album (you know, the one better than Funeral) tore it up over here. There were the predictably bad post-breakthrough albums (We Were Dead Before The Rats Jumped Back On The Ship) and that CYHSY album so hateable I've been feeling ahead of my time, but if we can get all serious for a hot minute, let's just admit that 2007 has been an above-average year for indie already. Is that even worth worrying about anymore? All poptimism aside, I think the answer's yes, esp if we're talking bands like Deerhunter (the Eluvium remix of Sonic Youth or the other way around) that inject something fresh, at least by the genre's own standards. On the other hand, if it's all gonna sound like the latest one-stop-shop-for-cool/2006/a Decemberists' Decemberists' world (omg but that's so mean!!!), fuck it. I'd say time will tell, but I really mean I will.

- Apparently releasing a mainstream hip-hop album in the first two quarters of the year is the path to critical and commercial failure, and nobody's tryin to repeat that move. At the rate we're seeing release delays in the oh-five and two pennies, it'll be four months before I can cop that UGK-Runners track all legal-like (probably just a coincidence that they're on Jive...right?). Other than the man who dared to throw some rims on that vehicle and got unfairly maligned for it, nobody's doing numbers or even TRYING to so far. Look at some of the names scheduled at one point for release pre-summer this year:

UGK (orig Dec 06, now July)
Fabolous (Mar, now June)
Three 6 Mafia (Apr, now July)
Chamillionaire (Apr, now Sept)
Saigon (pretty sure it's never coming out)

Anyway, the good news is we'll all have more to write about in the next six months than just another Weezy mixtape.

-About that Wilco album no one seems to like...I was hoping everyone would learn their lesson from shitting all over that post YHF record of theirs ("ew, there are GUITAR SOLOS on a ROCK ALBUM"), especially since I've seen a lot of backpedaling after people started catching live shows and hearing the Ghost material live. 1:1 at RIUSAB that we're gonna see another round of the same shortly, because the new album's not as good, but it kicks and it'll kick harder live. Look, I hate 'comfortable' sounding material as much as the next rockist amateur (or is that amateur rockist) crit out there, but it's Tweedy and Wilco for fuck's sake - YHF was an aberration, even if it's an extraordinarily good record. They/he are the neoclassicist's neoclassicist when it comes to pop/rock, so get off the bandwagon or get on, and deal already.