Spike Press is another independent designer of awesome music prints — I pretty much want to buy them all, including those for bands I’ve never heard of. The only annoyance is that the site doesn’t seem to allow you to add multiple posters to your basket.

I had fully intended to write up a post on my favourite music from 2007 at the beginning of the year, but for one reason or another the, admittedly fairly minimal, hassle of putting together a nice downloadable album and what-not was meant I didn’t. I came across Muxtape the other day, and instantly knew I could knock up what I wanted to do in a few minutes flat. So, fashionably late, I present taster tracks from my favourite albums of 2007.

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Keep The Car Running

Undoubtedly my favourite “single” of the year, it’s a pretty much perfect three-and-a-half minute sonic blast from an equally brilliant album of big sounds. Tracks like Intervention with the church organ backdrop sound huge, but never out of control.

If there was a better driving song released last year, I’d like to hear it. And despite what you might read, it’s as good as anything off their debut Funeral.

Stars – In Our Bedroom After The War

Take Me To the Riot

I loved Stars’ 2005 album, Set Yourself On Fire, and was very much looking forward to hearing what they would follow it with. Despite a few instant gems like Midnight Coward, I was a bit underwhelmed at first but, months later, I’ve found myself listening to it more and more and it’s definitely an album that slowly reveals its secrets, and it now seems a natural progression from Set Yourself On Fire. All in all, it’s such a distinct, polished sound that it well deserves its place here.

Wintersleep – Welcome To The Night Sky

Archaeologists

What do you know — yet more great Canadian music.

It’s pretty refreshing for an album to run at just 40 minutes over 10 tracks too — no filler and no skippers, especially when the last track is an eight-plus minute semi-instrumental epic, and one of the best closing tracks I’ve heard in a long time.

From their previous two albums – both self-titled – I really enjoyed The Jaws Of Life, which I only recently realised uses a similar kind of technique to Archaeologists for building the track up to a point where you think it’s ending, only for it to carry on building after almost coming to a stop. These guys are surely destined for greatness.

Jesse Malin – Glitter In The Gutter

Black Haired Girl

The Fine Art of Self-Destruction was a brilliant debut album from a few years back, but the follow-up – The Heat – was a bit of a disappointment by comparison, so I was really pleased that Glitter In The Gutter took off pretty much where the former left off, albeit with a more direct rootsy rock approach. With Bruce Springsteen guesting on one of the tracks, it even had the potential to get out to a bigger audience.

Great as Jesse’s albums are, he’s a hero live. I saw him play to a couple of hundred people some time last year and it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. He’s also has a great stage-presence, and clearly enjoys telling stories, which makes for great entertainment.

I could have picked pretty much any track to feature here, but the drums and bass combination which drives Black Haired Girl makes it a great introduction if you’ve not heard the album before.

New Pornographers – Challengers

Failsafe

I was sold Challengers on the Shinsy My Rights Versus Yours, which is indeed a great track, but Failsafe is another minor classic. Combining vocals from Neko Case and a guitar riff that pulses in and out throughout the track, they carve out a very unique sound.

The Shins – Wincing The Night Away

Phantom Limb

Ah, those Shins. They sounded amazing, and didn’t look too bad either, in Natalie Portman’s headphones in Garden State, but despite their being no New Slang here, it’s still their best, and most consistent, album to date, which by definition should put it in anyone’s best albums of 2007 list.

The Twang – Love It When I Feel Like This

2 Lovers

I saw The Twang support James last year and, to be frank, they kind of irritated me with their cockney-wideboy on-stage shenanigans. For some reason I got a copy of their album and realised their were more than a few good tracks on it. 2 Lovers is just one, so here it is. Alrite geeza?

Athlete – Beyond The Neighbourhood

Hurricane

I was torn for the 10th spot between a handful of other albums, but in the end iTunes play counts don’t lie, and Beyond The Neighbourhood was one of my most played albums of the year, so here it must feature. I think that about says it all for this album – it’s in no way world changing, but I enjoy listening to it greatly nontheless, and it’s probably my favourite Athlete album now. I also love the moody instrumental In Between 2 States which kicks the album off.

The National – Boxer

Apartment Story

Speaking of opening tracks, Boxer features possibly the best opening track since man discovered sliced bread. The way it builds from a simple piano line to an ensemble of guitars and then horns will make the hair on your neck stand up on end with every spin. Listen to the lyrics and it’ll whisk you to your own escapist Fake Empire.

I’m featuring Apartment Story here because it’s my second favourite track on the album, but I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere unlike Fake Empire. With lyrics like “Tired and wired we ruin too easy / sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave / but I’ll be with you behind the couch when they come / on a different day just like this one” it follows the same melancholic need for escapism.

Boxer isn’t quite on a par with their previous album, Alligator – which I’d recommend in a heartbeat, but it’s up there.

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

Lump Sum

Bon Iver was a late discovery at the end of the year, thanks to stumbling across a couple of samples floating around online, but something about the hauntingly beautiful sound of tracks like Skinny Love, Blindsided and Re: Stacks had me hooked from the outset. The story goes that the album was made in a three month long spell of winter isolation deep in the Wisconsin woods, fueled by self-felled firewood and a deer he (Justin Vernon) hunted and fed upon for the rest of his hibernation. I don’t know how much of this story is embellished, but it makes for a fine tale all the same, and I love the idea that an album, or anything creative, can be created out of a period of isolation like this.

For Emma, Forever Ago is another album which takes a little work to get under the surface of, but it’s well worth putting in that effort.

Muxtape

Just a quick parting word on Muxtape itself: I absolutely love it. With it’s big iPhone style interface, it’s simplicity itself but, because of that, it’s fast, keyboard navigable (arrow keys to skip forward/backward, enter to pause/resume) and doesn’t get in the way of the music in any way.

Hopefully record companies will see it for what it is, particularly as there’s no way to download the music, and realise that it’s a perfect way to promote artists in these digital times.

Even better, combine it with Fluid and the Coverflow plugin on OS X, as described in this screencast, and you’ve got a stellar way to browse and discover new Muxtapes. It’ll be even better if contacts and genres are added to the service.

All in all, I’m pretty sure the next mux won’t be too far around the corner.

Honourable Mentions

Finally, here’s a few other albums I considered including which are also well worth checking out:

• Andrew Bird — Armchair Apocrypha
• Iron & Wine — The Shepard’s Dog
• Rilo Kiley — Under The Blacklight
• Ryan Adams — Easy Tiger
• Turin Brakes — Dark On Fire
• The Manic Street Preachers — Send Away The Tigers
• Bruce Springsteen — Magic
• Twighlight Sad — Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters

And here’s the link to the Muxtape again in case you missed it earlier.

I came across Jason Munn’s brilliant collection of illustrated music posters last night, and nearly bankrupted myself by buying them all about 15 minutes later.

As well as great taste in colour and illustration, it seems Jason has excellent taste in music too — you’ll find original artwork for the likes of The Shins, Josh Ritter, Iron & Wine, The American Analog Set, The Flaming Lips, Calexico, and lots more. Unfortunately, quite a few of the older posters are out of print now as they are nearly all signed limited editions, which is a bit of a shame, but it does at least mean if you did buy one, it’s that bit special. Dive in.

Last.fm keeps revealing new or previously undiscovered cool features. Here are two I’ve noticed recently:

If view your own or a user’s currently playing tracks, and one of these happens to be available on the free downloads list (of which there are many more than I originally thought), it will be indicated right in the stream listing.

Josh Ritter’s “Wolves” is, I should add, a fantastic track, from one of my favourite albums from last year.

A second excellent feature allows you to indicate a gig you’ve been to or are going to, so you can find other last.fm users who are doing the same. This is no doubt a great way of finding users local to you who you share similar tastes to, but is interesting even if you just want to poke around their listening habits.

I’m sure with yesterday’s $280m/£140m buyout, many more great things will be in the pipeline.