For this week’s best-of-music-in-2007 issue, we polled local independent record stores–yes, there are a few of them left–to list their best-selling records for the year. The lists below come from Adams Morgan’s Red Onion Records. “While we are primarily a used store, we do carry some select new titles,” explained owner Joshua Harkavy in an e-mail.

Red Onion Records & Books

1901 18^th St. NW, (202) 986-2718, redonionrecordsandbooks.com

New:

1. Home Blitz, Home Blitz (Gulcher)
2. East of Underground, East of Underground (Wax Poetics)
3. The History of Cut Nails in America, Shortstack (Gypsy Eyes)
4. The Psychic Soviet (book), Ian Svenonius
5. Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label (Numero Group)

Used:

1. Remain in Light, Talking Heads
2. Low, David Bowie
3. Revolver, Beatles
4. Beggars Banquet, Rolling Stones
5. Mendocino, Sir Douglas Quintet

Best Record Store for that Afropop comp: Melody. Every time I think nobody in town is going to have some obscure reissue I’m craving, Melody seems to have it on its shelves. The store just keeps getting better.

Best local blog: This one. It’s out of Towson, Md. Does that count as local?

Best Music Story (long form) by CP: This one.

Best Alan Lomax impersonator: Jack Carneal. You can read a review of his finds here.

Best Show: No Age at the Hosiery.

Best Protest: Hear Mount Pleasant.

Best Rumor: Fugazi playing Fort Reno. Yeah. They didn’t. But you can still watch them here.

Biggest Surprise: Antelope’s Reflector album. It’s just so smooth.

Best Reunion Show: The Dismemberment Plan benefit show at the Black Cat. To see photos of the show go here.

Best local hip-hop album: Food for Animals‘ Belly.

Most Improved: The Apes. They got a great fucking singer and they actually signed to a local label.

Best Venue: The Rock and Roll Hotel. I know this may be a controversial choice. But it’s small, comfortable, and cheap.

Did I get any of these picks all wrong? Do you have a favorite show or album that deserves mention? Fire away.

My song of the year: Dan Deacon’s “Wham City.”

The song’s epic length (12 minutes, 12 seconds) is almost the point. But it still shames every single folk-artist-with-musical-ambitions out there, outshining anything Brother Danielson can dream up in his Jersey basement, getting spiritual without name-dropping Him (i.e., Sufjan), and still manages to offer quaint homage to B-More’s now-legendary arts collective while still being just inclusive enough, you can dance to it. An insider’s anthem to his own people shouldn’t be this much fun for the rest of us. But it is.

Here’s part one of a live performance of the song in San Diego:

And part two:

5^th Gear, Brad Paisley (Arista)

Aman Iman: Water Is Life, Tinariwen (World Village)

Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird (Fat Possum)

Autumn of the Seraphs, Pinback (Touch and Go)

Crunk Hits, Vol. 4, Various Artists (TVT)

Curtis, 50 Cent (Aftermath)

Double Up, R. Kelly (Jive)

Drums and Guns, Low (Sub Pop)

Everybody, the Sea and Cake (Thrill Jockey)

Good Bad Not Evil, Black Lips (Vice)

It’s a Bit Complicated, Art Brut (Downtown)

Mapmaker, Parts and Labor (Jagjaguwar)

Myths of the Near Future, Klaxons (Geffen/Polydor)

New Wave, Against Me! (Sire)

Playtime Is Over, Wiley (Ninja Tune)

Sirens of the Ditch, Jason Isbell (New West)

The Stage Names, Okkervil River (Jagjaguwar)

Tones of Town, Field Music (Memphis Industries)

Two Sevens Clash: The 30^th Anniversary Edition, Culture (Shanachie)

We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Modest Mouse (Epic)

Screw Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Van Halen, and Led Zeppelin. The greatest showing by a veteran performer in 2007 belonged to Joni Mitchell.

The Canadian singer-songwriter, you may recall, disavowed the entire music industry five years ago, pronouncing it a no-class “cesspool” in Rolling Stone and declaring that she would release any future music (and she wasn’t so sure there would be any) through the Internet if that’s what it took to control her own artistic product.

Somehow, Mitchell found less corporate whoredom in the Starbucks boardroom, signing to their Hear Music record label this past summer. In September she released Shine–her first collection of new music in nine years, and, wonder of wonders, her first Top 20 recording since 1979’s Mingus. It’s also the most acclaimed work she’s done in quite a while, figuring prominently in a number of critics’ best-of-2007 lists.

But Joni alone is not responsible for Joni’s resurrection. On the very same day that she released Shine, jazz legend Herbie Hancock and his all-star band put out Shine: The Joni Letters. It’s a record of some of Mitchell’s best and most adventurous songs (“Both Sides Now,” “Amelia”), some of which feature vocals by Mitchell herself. Again, it spawned rave reviews and superlatives from the critics.

How many others this year not only had critical and commercial rebirth with their new material, but had their old material restored to glory at the same time? Now that’s a comeback.

Adding to the list-mania here, below are a few the best albums I discovered online this year.

1. Colored Balls, Heavy Metal Kid
Some friends introduced me to Queensland born pub-rock hero Lobby Loyde and his band the Coloured Balls during a recent extended road trip. I was able to locate a sorta pricey reissue of the band’s first record–Ball Power– at Ameoba Records. But nowhere in the next 20 or so cities that I was to visit could I find a copy of Heavy Metal Kid. Luckily a friend clued me in to a blog that had posted it in its entirety. Tight braids of ferocious boogie guitar and thick ropes of throbbing bass.

2. Francis Bebey, Akwaaba
I found this record posted on a music message board. Mainly composed of thumb piano, eerily distorted vocals, and light percussion, Akwaaba is minimal, repetitive, and surprisingly reminiscent of modern house music—in the best possible sense.

3. The Ex, Live in Ethiopia
I had read about the Ex’s Ethiopian tour with drummer Han Bennink but never thought I would get to hear anything from it. This is a great soundboard recording from one of their sets that I randomly stumbled into on a message board. All covers of Ethiopian songs, slightly more melodious than the band’s usual output but just as gnarly. Ethiopiques for post-punk people.

4. Lifetones, For a Reason
The guitarist from This Heat’s solo dub record weds his previous band’s odd melodic and rhythmic sensibilities to lush delays and afro-pop guitar riffs. Never reissued and seemingly impossible to locate this was my nerd-rock holy grail. The songs “For a Reason” and “Good Side” are killer hip-hop samples waiting to happen.

5. Brian Jonestown Massacre, My Bloody Undergound
Jonestown’s sole permanent member and chief nutjob Anton Newcombe posted this “album preview” on the bands website and–surprise!—it’s actually pretty good. Long drones, evil distortion, and fucked up vocals that I can’t understand. If he had pressed this onto colored vinyl placed it in a spray-painted cardboard sleeve and put somebody else’s name on it hipsters might have bought this. After listening to this I walked over to my dresser to fish out my long-forsaken Jonestown T-shirt–wondering if I maybe didn’t hate them anymore. Well, at the very least I can say that I don’t hate this. Totally worth it, because it was free.

6. Kandja Kouyaté et l’Ensemble Instrumental du Mali
Pulled from the Awesome Tapes From Africa blog. Gorgeous, ethereal music from Mali that I know little if anything about.