Couldn’t remember if this was in 07 or not. This would be in my top 5. Hated nothing personal when it came out. Hadn’t listened to it in a decade till they re-recorded it, which I absolutely love.
pretty surprised i'm the only one in the thread with pretty massive records from: Wilco, queens of the stone age, spoon, the white stripes, nine inch nails, and a few others. i guess I'm more into bigger indie rock than most here though. i didn't really get into ap.net scene type bands for another few years, outside of a handful.
For a long time, this was my favorite Will Hoge record. I don't think it is anymore; I tend to reach for The Wreckage a lot more frequently, as well as Never Give In and maybe even Small Town Dreams. But that could also just be because Draw the Curtains is a crushing break-up record and can be kind of a tough hang if I'm not in the right headspace.
Probably the most important year of music in my life. Making a best of list was so damn hard cause there was just so many great records that had come out.
Heh I didn’t like what I considered watered down neon pop punk albums the first time through, so there’s probably not gonna be a change with a lot of those. Early Maine, Mayday Parade, FTSK, Cobra Starship, etc. was when I realized how much I didn’t like where pop-punk was going. Even those early All Time Low albums were more about individual songs and potential versus the full album.
One of my worst live music memories is having my eardrums absolutely mangled by Cobra Starship when I saw them open for (or maybe co-headline with?) Boys Like Girls in 2009. The Maine was also on that bill, as were A Rocket to the Moon, Versa Emerge, and maybe one other band. It was the longest night of live music that I have ever experienced and Cobra Starship were far and away the loudest band I've ever seen. Kind of a punishing experience.
I still enjoy a lot of that first Maine record, though, even if I would never have predicted them becoming as good as they became.
I didn’t really like those first Maine or Mayday Parade albums much, those bands ended up improving a lot imo, but the ATL and BLG albums are still great for me
I actually specifically avoided the neon pop pink stuff as much as I could during that time because I couldn’t stand the way things were trending either. It’s crazy how much things change, but i’ll never forget how much I dug my heels into the Yellowcard/Jimmy/MCS type stuff and intentionally avoided The Maine/ATL/FTSK stuff.
Ah...2007. You brought me my favorite album of all-time. I forget how relatively weak this year was for me though: 1. Anberlin - Cities 2. Andy Gullahorn - Reinventing the Wheel 3. Deas Vail - All the Houses Look the Same 4. As Cities Burn - Come Now Sleep 5. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago 6. Relient K - Five Score & Seven Years Ago 7. Thrice - The Alchemy Index, Vol. 1 & 2 8. Radiohead - In Rainbows 9. Jimmy Eat World - Chase This Light 10. Emery - I'm Only a Man 11. Paramore - Riot! 12. The Dear Hunter - Act II 13. The Chariot - The Fiancee 14. Falling Up - Captiva 15. Dashboard Confessional - The Shade of Poison Trees Edit: SHOOT! For Emma, Forever Ago was 2007. Sorry Mae, you're out.
Those neon bands were my introduction into the scene (but I probably started listening to them around 2009/10). It's interesting to see how distinctly people viewed them from the rest of the scene. I certainly didn't perceive that at the time. To 14-year-old me, Jimmy Eat World and All Time Low seemed to have a pretty similar sonic blueprint.
Another great read, thanks Jason! What a fun project. I assume when people say they miss AP.net they actually miss that time, when we were all younger and less jaded and all our pop punk/emo favourites seemed to be on top of the world as opposed to their current niche status. We could all hang out and feel validated in our musical preferences and create echo chambers where we called every second album "pretentious". (I was immature but even then I couldn't stand that term being thrown around so much). It's often the same when people prefer an artist's older sound. Of course you enjoyed an old album more if you were at high school with no responsibilities and naive enough to think a new CD was the coolest and most important thing in the world. For me, 2007 was kind of the death knell for the "AP.net music scene". I remember feeling like '05 was a peak for pop punk, especially commercially, and '06 was a peak for all the pop-punk bands finding new and exciting sounds. After that, all the pop-punk/emo music that came in '07 left me cold. I remember absolutely hating the new albums from The Used and Sum 41 in particular. But in a way this was a good thing as it forced me to look into other musical styles -- mainly still via AP.net of course. I think a lot of us were starting to expand our tastes at the same time. It's no exaggeration for me to say the AP.net review of We Were Dead by Modest Mouse changed my musical tastes completely. I had no idea who the band was, bought the album without hearing a song beforehand, and it sounded so foreign to me. I grew to love it and MM became one of my favourite bands ever. The AP.net review for In Rainbows had a similar effect. At some stage that year the review for Graduation (with its talk of the Kanye v 50 feud) literally got me into hip hop. So maybe AP.net wasn't so bad after all!! My top 10 from 2007: 1 - Kanye West, Graduation 2 - Modest Mouse, We Were Dead… 3 - The Gaslight Anthem, Sink or Swim 4 - Radiohead, In Rainbows 5 - Lifetime, Lifetime (anyone remember this banger? I was stunned that it didn't make Punk News' top albums of the decade list) 6 - The National, Boxer 7 - Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago 8 - Arcade Fire, Neon Bible 9 - Jimmy Eat World, Chase This Light 10 - LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
Boxer and In Rainbows are two all timers for me. other than that I really don't remember what came out in 2007 that I like(d). edit: after reading through the thread, The Cool and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga would definitely be on my 2007 list! 2nd edit: oh shit and Act II by The Dear Hunter, that album totally took over my life from the first time I heard it