It’s time for Late Night Wallflower’s year end wrap ups! First up, our official “all things Philly” representative and lord of the dance floor, Leah Pavlik.

Top ten lists are always a little difficult for me since I have the memory span of a mentally challenged goldfish. This usually results in my end-of-year lists being suspiciously heavy on albums that came out in the past month or so. Instead of doing a top ten list, these are the albums that I just really, really liked this year. There’s probably better albums, or more groundbreaking albums that came out in 2007, but hey - if they don’t stick in your mind enough to remember them, who cares? Minus five scene points for me, I suppose.

Best Summer Album
There is a tie between Against Me!’s New Wave and Minus the Bear’s Planet of Ice. I basically listened to New Wave on a continuous stream all summer long, with short breaks where I cheated on it with Planet of Ice.

Best Surprise
I bought Crime In Stereo’s Is Dead on a whim when it came out in October, not really expecting much. It’s since become a definite favorite for the year, and “…but You Are Vast” gets my nomination for best song. Seriously, even if you think Crime in Stereo took a turn for the worse with this LP, you gotta admit how great that song is.

Keep reading more of Leah’s picks after the jump.

Artist I Most Regret Not Seeing Live
By all accounts, Andrew Bird is one of the finest, most talented live musical performers today. The man plays four or five instruments (including whistling! He’s a classically trained whistler, for God’s sake!) and uses a looping machine with the sparsest backing band possible to create his lush, classical-tinged songs in a live setting. His 2007 release, Armchair Apocrypha, is not to be missed.

Most…ah…Funnest Album
Dan Deacon and his Spiderman of the Rings album is filled with so many goofy, surreal musical moments that it’s almost impossible to take it seriously. In most cases, that would be a bad thing, but this album kind of makes me feel like I’m a little kid again - a little kid who’s into cartoonish performance art.

Best Makeout Album
Jose Gonzales? Covering Massive Attack’s “Teardrop?” Excuse me while I take a cold, cold shower. Gonzales’s full-length In Our Nature gets the title for this track alone. The rest of it isn’t bad either, nudge nudge, wink wink.

Album on the List Just Cause I Like It, A Lot
I mention instrumental band Explosions in Sky every other post on Late Night Wallflower, so I feel it’s only my (very happy) duty to put their early 2007 disc All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone on here. No particular reason; it’s just awesome.

Honorable Mentions:
A Wilhelm Scream - Career Suicide
Rocky Votolato - The Brag & Cuss

Best Shows
Daft Punk - Keyspan Park - Coney Island, NY
Hands down, best show I’ve ever been to. It wasn’t even a show, it was an event. A mind-blowing, seizure-inducing, dance-so-hard-you-can’t-move-the-next-day event.

Explosions in the Sky - The Starlight Ballroom - Philadelphia, PA
This night is best summed up with my friend Travis’s parting words after Explosions had finished nearly killing the entire crowd with “The Only Moment We Were Alone,” their encore: “Later guys, I gotta go find my soul now.”

Girl Talk, Dan Deacon - The Starlight Ballroom - Philadelphia, PA
Girl Talk gives hipsters an excuse to dance to popular music they secretly like. And dance, we did. A show like this isn’t a success in my book unless you come out completely soaked in sweat and wondering what hit you. Dan Deacon live is like living in a Saturday morning cartoon.

Tags: Best of 2007, best of, staff //