Music: Top 40 Albums of 2007 29-25

25) Ween – La Cucaracha
Ween are method musicians... doing blissed out techno pop for "friends", haunting balladry for the truly screwed up "Object", sneery post punk for "Shamemaker". Like DeNiro in his prime, they believe it, so we believe it. Oh yeah and David Sanborn guests. That's commitment.
Here’s the video for “Friends”:


26) Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Raisin’ Sand
Mummified Led Zep wailer Plant and beloved bluegrass warbler Krauss seem like an odd couple setup. But when those voices start a-twining and a-pining on these great songs the proverbial magic happens.

Here’s the video for “Gone Gone Gone”:


27) Nellie McKay – Obligatory Villagers
McKay has always been on the right side of the Crazy/Hot graph for me. She surprises here with a relatively compact set of songs but the arrangements and delivery shout out "Broadway!"
Here’s the delectable Nellie McKay doing “Zombie” :


28) The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes are The Dark Horse
Where Arcade Fire uses it's broad expanse of sound and musicians to create a communal vibe, Besnard Lakes is insular and brooding. Gripping and engrossing.

Here’s the video for “For Agent 13”:


29) Mark Ronson – Version
Ronson is the uberproducer responsible for last years great album by human trainwreck Amy Winehouse. Here he imagines britpop gold (and Britney Spear's "Toxic") as products of the Motown era.
Here’s a 40 sec. pop of Mark Ronson and Lily Allen’s cover of Kaiser Chief’s “Oh My God” (Columbia records, like a number of major labels, are too stupid to realize that videos are PROMO and not PRODUCT – so no full version to embed. Dumb wankers.)

Music: This Week's New Releases

Neil Young

This week's new music is headed by grizzled vet Neil Young's sequel to a record that never came out, Chrome Dreams II. Like many Neil records following the original aborted Chrome Dreams, II is a Frankenstein's monster of songs from here and there including the epic 18 minute plus "Ordinary People" from his 1988 Bluenotes era.
Here's an odd photo montage of rusted cars set to "new" track "Dirty Old Man":


The non-brothers Ween return with La Cucaracha which sadly is not a Latin-tinged affair but happily is still Ween. Oh, did I mention David Sanborn guests on the track "Your Party"? Here is the live version of new song "Learnin' to Love":



Led Zeppelin frontman and aging eclecticist Robert Plant teams up with bluegrass megastar Alison Krauss for Raising Sand, a collab that's already garnering raves from the music press intelligentsia. Here's a promo vid:



Black Dice blow their load with Load Blown.

Rhino release their redundant Brit Box boxset of Britpop.

Re-issues include Can's Anthology, alt-country pin-up girl Neko Case's first album The Virginian, and Of Montreal's early and very interesting If He is Protecting Our Nation...Who is Protecting Big Oil?