My 40 favorite albums of 2007, Minus One

So The Benign Comedy has slacked off something miserable. And let me tell you something: I'm miserable about that.

I have a fantastic excuse, the best excuse this side of terminal illness and massive gambling debt: MY ENTIRE LIFE HAS CHANGED SINCE AUGUST. How can I be expected to write much more than a grocery list (which this, coincidentally, is) in these conditions?

But although everything else in my life seems to be in a state of okay manageability these days, lately the writing thing has really gotten to me. It's made me very upset. I don't care what great advancements I've made in personal stability or personal hygeine recently. I feel lousy because I don't write.

And now the holidays are coming on so I have to cook all this food.

Also: I can feel my talents easily slipping away. The talents of perception, critical thinking, joke-writing, sentence construction, grammar, stapling. They're all being eroded. It's all the insurance companies. Their fault. Plus the reality shift. And my absolute inability to not eat every single tortilla chip still throbbing in the room.

Then I had a scary thought: What if I'm one of those writers who really does need to get his drink on? What if, despite my best and noblest efforts to maintain a lucid stream of thought, I actually can only think when I've had a drink?

Why, just look at the difference between these two sentences:

Before Drink: Radiohead's In Rainbows is a broadside at the very heart of musical economy, a modernistic tour-de-force that may one day be as notable as the stalwart OK Computer for its uneasy embrace of the sentimental into to mechanical, and the listener is rewarded for it.

After Drink: Holy Mother of Moog, can these limeys accomplish anything without an erector set and tweezers? AW SHIT, I HATE IT WHEN I CONTROL-Z THE ENTIRE FUCKING REVIEW... WHERE'S MY BOONE'S FARM....

See? No question about it. I'm Dylan Thomas in a fat suit.

Anyway, I was gonna listen to more albums than I did so I could get a better overview of the year and not feel like I was leaving anything out. But screw it. I'm done. I'm giving you my Top 40 list now, except for 1, which I really am going to write about later. Google has made annotation redundant. I'll come back when, as Bob Mould so eloquently put it, I have something new to say.

In the meantime I think you could do much worse than these records. Go steal them from your parents.

40. Flynnville Train, Flynnville Train
39. The Great Unwanted, Lucky Soul
38. Sirens of the Ditch, Jason Isbell
37. It's a Bit Complicated, Art Brut
36. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Miranda Lambert
35. The Movie, Clare & The Reasons
34. American Gangster, Jay-Z
33. Memory Almost Full, Paul McCartney
32. Nu Med, Balkan Beat Box
31. The Ultimate Victory, Chamillionaire
30. Lady's Bridge, Richard Hawley
29. Make Sure They See My Face, Kenna
28. The Black and White Album, The Hives
27. Voxtrot, Voxtrot
26. Our Love To Admire, Interpol
25. Sky Blue Sky, Wilco
24. Grinderman, Grinderman
23. Under the Blacklight, Rilo Kiley
22. Dwight Sings Buck, Dwight Yoakam
21. Revenge!, Robbie Fulks
20. Versatile Heart, Linda Thompson
19. 100 Days, 100 Nights, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
18. We Are The Pipettes, The Pipettes
17. Human the Death Dance, Sage Francis
16. Mirrored, Battles
15. Graduation, Kanye West
14. Panic Prevention, Jamie T
13. Wagonmaster, Porter Wagoner
12. Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective
11. Somewhere, Anywhere, New Buffalo
10. Because of the Times, Kings of Leon
9. The Reminder, Feist
8. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon
7. Kala, M.I.A.
6. Neon Bible, Arcade Fire
5. Back To Black, Amy Winehouse
4. Jarvis, Jarvis Cocker
3. Tones of Town, Field Music
2. The Deep Blue, Charlotte Hatherley
1.