I feel relatively guilt free on this as well. My current fave new ones (may not be 07 but close enough) are The Broken West, Midlake, and also Besnard Lakes (thanks to Derek and Kyle for this one)...it's all about the Lakes in 07. Broken West is a fantastic summer groovy power pop record for those of you who don't remember its unveiling at the last CD club.

I would argue that if anything there is a tendency to put too much emphasis on finding something "new", and therefore discount bands' second, third, or fourth releases. How much time do spend talking about the latest from The Shins, Arcade Fire, etc? Despite loving their previous releases.

Finding new music can be akin to a sugar high, where the latest is the greatest and nothing else matters. I defintiely play this game so mea culpa....but from another perspective (a) I think each generation produces only a few great artists (Bjork is one of them in my view - I can see a list question coming up), and a few times greater number of strong contributors (say, Built to Spill for ex) , and it makes perfect sense to chase down each artistic step from these few and/or check in on the others (b) Great bands get better over time, not worse, so I'm pretty comfortable with following their progress to see if they continue to grow (or not). (c) Great music is great music whether the artist is cool, young, and British, or 72, Jewish and has no teeth, or in the case of Elliot Smith, dead. To me it's always about finding the great music - or so I tell myself, and so try. And I know you believe this too Stuart so I'm not trying to convince anyone.