Best of 2007 (Wife Edition)

In addition to being smart, beautiful, and possessing the most spouse-friendly hobby imaginable (cooking), my wife Maureen also has fine taste in music. She looks at blogging with suspicion, particularly having read this and last year's special music festival posts and noting that at least of half of the insightful critical opinions and observations, such as they are, were hers, not mine. I tried citing the timed-honored principle of spousal communal ownership of intellectual property, but she didn't buy it. So, here's Maureen's iPod "Best of 2007" playlist:

Arcade Fire, "(Antichrist Television Blues)"
The National, "Apartment Story"
Radiohead, "Bodysnatchers"
LCD Soundsystem, "North American Scum"
Band of Horses, "Is There A Ghost"
Wilco, "Impossible Germany"
Bloc Party, "Hunting for Witches"
Spoon, "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb"
The White Stripes, "Icky Thump"
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, "The Sons of Cain"
Rilo Kiley, "Silver Lining"
Iron & Wine, "Boy With a Coin"
The New Pornographers, "Myriad Harbour"
Stars, "Take Me to the Riot"
The Apples in Stereo, "Can You Feel It?"
White Rabbits, "While We Go Dancing"
Andrew Bird, "Fiery Crash"
Buffalo Tom, "You'll Never Catch Him"

I might have gone with different selections in some cases-- "Woman King " or "Jezebel" for the Iron & Wine song, for example -- but overall this is a fine way to spend 90 minutes driving to your parent's house for the holidays.

"Best of" lists are often a good way to identify your critical / genre weak spots; I bought The Hold Steady's "Boys and Girls in America" a year ago solely because it was on top of a lot of Ten Best lists from respectable sources. On first listen I was like "Not bad," on second, "Pretty good," on fifth, "Kind of great!" and so on and so forth. By the time I saw them at the 9:30 club last month I was three/fourths convinced they're authentic American geniuses; it was certainly one of the ten best concerts I've ever seen.