The Kings of Leon have made a rogue with Because of the Times, an album that feels like it’s fighting out from down in a foxhole, but also running away from home with the sweetheart whose parents completely disapprove of a love that’s meant to be in the two young hearts. There are children out of wedlock – those bastardized babies, there’s illegitimacy and there are demons inside these heads that don’t have that new car smell anymore. Done love us some damaged goods, some broken up boys with spicy tongues and just the right numbers of spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down. Kings of Leon, for all intents and purposes, is arguably the best American band operating right now (with nods to Wilco, Dr. Dog, Cold War Kids and My Morning Jacket) bands that just ooze “our America,” the one that inspired some stoners to put on a glorious thing like Woodstock, the one that smells like hard work, cold beers, good souls and lawnmowers. Because of the Times holds the distinction of getting so good during tracks No. 7, 8, 9 and 10 – so late in the record – that you flit back to the top without a second’s hesitation, you’re the one on repeat. You just can’t break free from the centrifuge – the rusty guitars, the loose and husky vocals and the Vietnam-era feeling that something’s happenin’ here and what it is ain’t exactly clear, just that we know it’s sheer honesty and grittiness we can wrap our arms around.

Daytrotter’s Best 15 Albums of 2007
15. John Vanderslice — Emerald City
14. The National — Boxer
13. These United States — The Forest and the Garden
12. The Teeth — You’re My Lover Now
11. Dr. Dog — We All Belong
10. Brother Ali — The Undisputed Truth
9. Delta Spirit — Ode To Sunshine
8. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings — 100 Days, 100 Nights
7. Kings of Leon — Because of the Times

Daytrotter contributor Jacob Henneman’s Top Albums of 2007
11. Sondre Lerche Phantom Punch
There was no reason to believe Duper Sessions was to be the permanent face of Sondre Lerche, but what is shocking is how chameleonic he has become in his ever so young career. From Europop, to jazz, to sleek garage guitar rock with Phantom Punch has been a rewarding journey, but this may be his most rewarding release yet. Lerche doesn’t quite achieve knock-down-drag-out results other artists with the same guitar sound and a less blue-eyed crooner background catalog, but perhaps that’s what floored me in the first place.

10. Siberian With Me
Although this band hails from the Pacific Northwest, you can’t help but feel a little Union Jack has been infused in their roots. It’s not out of the question to believe all their copies of The Bends have been worn out by repeated and repeated spins. With Me is Siberian’s full-length debut with lots of guitars battling each other for spatial harmony and superiority. It all sounds as though this could be their 4th or 5th album, which bodes well for their future and all the eyes and ears that could and should be devoted to their guilty pleasured sound in due time.

9. Jens Lekman Night Falls Over Kortedala
We all have our own Kortedala, or at least I hope we do. Lekman’s storytelling isn’t as heart-on-the-sleeve emotional as other artists on this list but damned if it isn’t just as real. I’ve never visited the “Drive-In Bingo,” I don’t have an embarrassed friend “Nina,” and whether many of the things on Kortedala really did happen to Lekman are inconsequential because this album is the definition of nostalgia. He does it with those horns and strings and winds that skirt the gap of time between antiquated and modern like they could have been spewing out of a Victrola or blasting out of a radio over the joy and color of a city parade.

8. Vic Chesnutt Northstar Destroyer
Pulling off satire in music is nearly impossible in my mind, but Chesnutt’s “You Are Never Alone” is one such exception. Sarcasm drips on lines like “It’s OK, you can have an abortion and keep on keeping on.” The majority of Northstar Destroyer is not so sarcastic, though. Instead, it is a bitingly truthful eye on the state of America and issues that affect the rest of the world. Chesnutt tackles healthcare, politics, religion and whatever else is in his wrecking path. With help from A Silver Mount Zion and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, this album is a southern gothic-folk masterpiece that is heightened by the aforementioned bands’ strings and guitar work that create an intense paranoia that crawls up your skin and tingles your spine and generally helps piss you off as much as Chesnutt is. Listening to this album from start to finish is an experience. In the words of Chesnutt on “Marathon,” Northstar Destroyer is like “training to run a marathon with your dress shoes on.”

7. Songs of Green Pheasant Gyllyng Street
A man standing alone on a cliff overlooking the sea graces the cover of Songs of Green Pheasants Gyllyng Street. That man could be Duncan Sumpner, a schoolteacher who made a tape that eventually landed in the hands of record companies who were eager to sign him. The only problem was they had no contact information and no idea exactly where Sumpner was. He was eventually tracked down and this is his third release since his 2004 self-titled debut under the Green Pheasant name. Gyllyng Street is much like its predecessors stripped bare, desperate but powerful folk music. “Alex Drifting Alone” and “West Coast Profiling” are open spaces filled disparately with minimal instrumentation. That person on the cover could be anyone. It may be Duncan Sumpner, or as you fall deeper and deeper under this albums spell it could become you.

6. Elvis Perkins Ash Wednesday
Few bared their souls and cleared the skeletons from their closets as Elvis Perkins did this year with Ash Wednesday. Dealing with some trying personal losses, Perkins delivered an album full of finding one’s place in the world, of coping with tragedy. This album is a procession. There will be tears, laughs and black and white photographs, and you won’t forget any of it. Perkins’ Dylan-esque storytelling on universal truths like loss and love are as relevant in 2007 as they will forever be.

5. Cass McCombs Dropping the Writ
I’m just going to come out and say “That’s That” and “Petrified Forest” might be the best back-to-back songs of the year. Come to think of it this album has a half dozen of the best tracks I heard all year. I didn’t know if it was possible to improve on McCombs first few releases, but his off kilter autobiographical lyrics can stand up to even Morrissey, and his songs are all gorgeous and sensible but he also takes many chances. Particularly, he uses his voice as the deciding instrument, inflecting in unpredictable places just to weird the album out enough to give it an edge.

4. Deerhunter – Fluorescent Grey
“I woke up in the middle of the night/I called out/I called your name.” And so the four song EP starts like waking up from a nightmare in a cold sweat. But what if you never woke up and life itself was the nightmare, a world full of fluorescent grey fleshed corpses and faceless useless bodies polluting crowded city streets. Fluorescent Grey is glooming with surrealistically macabre soundscapes that make you feel like you’ve been transmitted onto the canvas and world of a Dali painting.

3. Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Ga x5 is a “Cherry Bomb” exploding with razor sharp guitar lines and indelibly catchy pop hooks. It becomes clear early from the searing “Don’t Make Me a Target” that the Texas band is traveling on their way to the pinnacle of what has already been a brilliant discography. The most important lesson this album can teach us all, though, is to never, under any circumstances, underestimate the underdog for you will not survive.

2. Radiohead In Rainbows
No surprise, Radiohead dropped a bombshell again by announcing their new album just days before its release. The only thing more unpredictable than that bit of news was how the album was going to sound. Would it be another Kid A? Would they return to their guitar rock days? Well, the answer turned out to be both and neither. It’s a mix of atmospherics and straight forward guitar lines, of piano ballads and danceable rock songs. It is both diverse and cohesive in the way only Radiohead can achieve.

1. Luke Temple Snowbeast
If Stanley Kubrick made a folk album, Snowbeast would be the result. These are definitely folk songs by a folk artist, but the album is dark and brooding with some archaic synths and altogether original recording techniques. And say all you want about the recording of the album, Snowbeast is all about the songs and that voice of Temple. It’s fragile and delicate, but always undaunted and unwavering in the face of the darkness around it. This album is a damn strange trip full of darkness and light, of an angelic voice traveling through purgatory and coming out, of course, on top.