The Year in Music - 2017

In my opinion (redundancy alert) 2017 was the worst year for new music in a very long time (it was the worst year in a very long time for a great many other reasons too, but we don’t need to get into that . This essay/list was initially scrapped for a combination of reasons, partly due to my intense bitterness and anger about almost everything personal, professional, cultural, political and global, and partly because there weren’t enough decent albums to write about. Having soaked my head in a bucket of ice water (not for charity, because fuck that malarkey), some sanity returned and it appeared that there were indeed a few albums worth mentioning and even to which all due respect might be given. So here we are, angry, bitter, disgusted, sad, disillusioned, but hanging on by a thread to the joy that music can sometimes bring. Someone once said to me, and this is a paraphrase, that they were baffled and perplexed by the role of the critic because the artist puts so much work into their art and it seems mean and unfair to tear it all down, which, ok, fair point, but that overlooks the fact that a lot of art is just straight garbage and sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind.

With that in mind, let us begin with the outright bile that was provoked in me by the stains and blots delivered by The National, the xx, and The War On Drugs, all huge favorites of mine, as you all (and by all, I mean the handful of you who might read this) know. Each of these albums was a massive disappointment to me, and yet not at all surprising. They all felt like part of a common sub-genre that we will call Bleating. To say that I am sick of Bleating would be a significant understatement. All of these albums have been consigned to the nether reaches of my music collection and there is no plan to promote them to the more forward areas any time soon. There were each, in their way, profoundly depressing, which should not be surprising given these bands’ respective aesthetics, but what depressed me the most was that they seemed to be pillaging their own catalogs for depressing material and not growing or branching out at all. The xx have been in the last chance motel with me for a while and this was the make-or-break album. Either you reach for the brass ring and try to make your own version of Everything But The Girl’s all-time classic Temperamental, or I’m done with you. They didn’t do that, and so they are summarily and duly dispatched. The National had a lot of work to do to win me over after that Day of the Dead debacle and they didn’t even come close to clearing that bar here. Sleep Well Beast is a deeply maudlin collection of self-cannibalizing songs that brought me absolutely no joy, not even of the melancholy I-like-to-feel-sad-on-purpose-isn’t-it-beautiful variety. This album was just plain unlistenable (to me), and I haven’t been back to it, nor will I return to this catastrophic site of self-pity and failed irony. This is by far their worst album, and I feel like they are at a crossroads. They need to grow or die. The War on Drugs were always a guilty pleasure because of the dodgy influences Adam Granduciel wears so brazenly on his sleeve. He got away with it in spades on Lost in the Dream, where the influences (let’s not rehearse them here, I’m already on the ledge with the razor blades and the Fentanyl in my hand) were deployed to exhilarating effect. A Deeper Understanding, though, is just a long meandering trip (and not in a good way) to precisely nowhere. Also, I would just like to ask Grizzly Bear to please stop. It’s enough already with the precious jeans-ironing baroque nonsense. I’ve already removed Vampire Weekend to the imaginary gulag. I’m not above sending you there too, your concerns about “making it as in indie band in today’s society and healthcare etc.” be damned. I. Just. Don’t. Care. So, with that the bile has temporarily been spent. Allow me to re-charge while we speak of some more positive emissions from 2017. There will be time enough for a bile re-boot in due course.

What follows, in the first instance, is a list, with some accompanying commentary and annotation, of things that made me feel (marginally) better to be alive:

World Spirituality Classics – Alice Coltrane

The precise and even more general definition of irony continues to elude me (thanks, Alanis) but it is at least interesting that my favorite album of the year is a) a compilation, b) a reissue, c) consists of music from the 1980s and 1990s and d) is a series of ashram meditations (no, it really is), but this album enabled me to survive 2017. It’s a logical extension of what Alice Coltrane was doing with her husband John Coltrane during their sadly brief time together and the work she did subsequently with Joe Henderson and Pharoah Sanders, but it also contains electronic washes that make it sound very contemporary. Don’t be fooled or misled, though; this is a series of meditative chants set to music and it is gloriously intoxicating. You don’t have to be a be-robed cult member to enjoy this (trust me, that’s not my bag, as it were - all respect to the brothers and sisters who occupy that bag - no judgment at all), but if you are at all in a meditative frame of mind, it can do nothing but help your efforts in that general direction.

Hug of Thunder - Broken Social Scene

Speaking of positivity and collectivism, as we kind of just were, Broken Social Scene lead the rock and roll pack in this area (and they piss all over the charlatans of Arcade Fire, if I may be so bold as to bring back the bile for a moment and taint the positive vibe). The placing of this album at what I suppose is the second spot on the list (and it’s not really in a strict order anyway) is partly due to the sublime and transcendent experience I had when seeing them live recently. The album had already burrowed its way into my bloodstream and my DNA but the live experience really re-confirmed the feeling that these are permanent songs. They describe themselves as anthem-writers and most of this album bears that out, but not in a painful U2 kind of way. I love just about everything about this album and it seems to me that it picks up where You Forgot It In People left off (not that I don’t have a lot of love for the self-titled album or Forgiveness Rock Record, but you can draw a direct line from YFIIIP to the new one). There is something joyous in songs like Halfway Home, Hug of Thunder, Protest Song, Stay Happy, and others. The joy actually abounds and overflows and explicitly sets out to dispel cynicism while not losing site of the shitstorm we are collectively facing. I adore this band and they have come back to themselves with full positive vengeance, and for that I will be eternally grateful to them. I would also like to note that seeing BSS live gave me a much greater understanding of who they are and how they work, endlessly rotating instrumental responsibilities and changing stage positions. What I also learned was the Brendan Canning is easily my favorite band member. Totally chilled out, a stable center while chaos abounds around him, and a fantastic bassist. I would like to be his pal.

Relatives in Descent – Protomartyr 

OK, enough with the hugging and the chanting already. Let’s get back to the nitty-gritty. The easiest word to use in describing Protomartyr’s fourth album is “brutiful,” because it contains such a delicately balanced combination of brutality and beauty, thereby achieving the negative capability of which I remain so very fond. In my more sensitive moments I recognize that the album tips over (that might be too subtle a description) into what we might call “hypermasculinity,” and yet that almost always seems to be in the service of an accompanying critique of said hypermasculinity. Consider for a moment the onslaught of “Male Plague,” wherein the vocalist can be found yelling “MALE PLAGUE, MALE PLAGUE” A LOT. Here’s a lyrical snippet:

See-through skin - barnacles of age 
Male plague, male plague
Old days misremembering
Male plague, male plague
You think the world owes you a stroke 
Male plague, male plague
Fear of the future - losing your hold 
Male plague, male plague

If that doesn’t evoke images of Comrade President Orange then perhaps you need to schedule some extended time at the re-education camp. Songs like The Chuckler, though, are laden with irony and some gorgeous melodic guitar work. This album really walks the line between hedonism and brutalism to stunning effect. And if they’re new to you, please check out their preceding three albums. They’re all worth it.

Fin – Syd

There is something of the bildungsroman about this absolutely lovely and understated album by Syd, who was part of the Odd Future collective and The Internet. It would be (too) easy to label her the female counterpart to Frank Ocean but it makes a certain amount of sense for several reasons I’ll let you discover for yourself. The entire album is impeccably written, performed and produced, but I was especially taken with Got Her Own. The confessional aspect of the album particularly recalls Frank Ocean’s more open and raw excursions into journal and diary translation into intensely affecting song, all the while holding back enough of herself to leave us wondering what Syd is really like. We learn enough here to know that she is a fantastic songwriter, a gorgeous singer, and a person fully in control of her artistic vision. Those are enough worthy comparisons with Frank Ocean to merit mentioning, without intending to sound reductive or condescending. This might be my favorite fully “new” album of the year, also acknowledging my massive and longstanding bias toward Broken Social Scene, who have my heart forever (sorry, BSS and Alice).

Damn – Kendrick Lamar

I don’t really know what to say about this album except that he’s on a trajectory of excellence we may not have seen in our lifetimes and that one of my students is writing their term paper on his lyrics.

A Crow Looked At Me – Mt. Eerie

While I find this album to be more or less unlistenable on account of its tone and its subject matter (spoiler alert: his wife died, tragically, and tragically young, leaving behind a young child), there is no denying its heft or importance. Sample lyric: “I didn’t learn anything from this. I love you.” The album contains some great beauty and no little consolation, but mostly pain. Be brave, young listener. Be brave. It bears comparison in some way to Lou Reed’s Berlin, but that might just drive you even further away, so I won’t make that comparison here.

Hot Thoughts – Spoon

One should never underestimate Spoon, just as one should never take them for granted, although it’s easy to do both of those things. This might be their finest album since Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, partly because they do themselves so well, but also because they have become self-aware enough to begin to subvert themselves from within, to the point where the final song on the album, Us, sees Spoon complete an act of willful self-erasure that Radiohead have been trying to pull off for years. I mean, they even actually wrote a song called How To Disappear Completely, and they still couldn't do it. It’s an amazing and jarring thing to experience, to witness Spoon make themselves disappear, as if they were leaving their clothes on the beach and wading into the sea, somewhat akin to what happens when a band leaves the stage at the end of the show while all of that feedback and reverb keeps ringing out in your already ringing ears. It’s a genius and amazing way to cap of a masterpiece of an album, and skips over any consideration of all the glorious Spoon classics that precede it, not least my own favorite I Ain’t The One, which epitomizes everything that Spoon do so well without sounding at all like a retread. One day we will look back at their body of work and we will feel bad that we didn’t give them more respect, and more of our money.

Life Without Sound – Cloud Nothings

There is something about Dylan Baldi’s sensibility that is both entirely opposite from and at the same time completely in tune with mine. His angry punk stuff was never my bag as a genre, but the sound he makes and the aesthetic he clearly presents with his album art taken together seem to enfold me in an almost opioid fashion. I simply can’t get enough of this album and it represents a significant growth from his earlier albums and his recent collaboration with Wavves. To call a punk-pop album Life Without Sound is clearly somewhat mischievous, but the sounds he makes here are quite sumptuous, albeit that they are not without some cacophony. There is a lot more beatific sound and light on here than just noise, even though the album ends with a flourish of righteous noisy anger that seems like a back-to-basics statement, as if to say, don’t be fooled, I can still punk it up with the best of them. The album begins with a piano and ends with a racket, and every single song is a complete gem. That’s my kind of album all day long. It also puts others, whom I won’t name here, Car Seat Headrest and Green Day, on notice. This is the kind of music that should be on the radio all day and all night, but it never will be, because the world is unfair in every way. Feel right. Feel lighter.

Life After Youth – Land of Talk

Having been sadly unaware of the oeuvre of Land of Talk it was a pure pleasure and delight finally to make their acquaintance this year. Upon first listen they sound like a slightly more grown-up Alvvays, although that is clearly offensively reductive to both bands. These songs are so beautifully crafted and executed, and reflect a life lived in difficulty but with full consciousness. We should all aspire to such a balance. Of course, being one who is now living in that netherland of “life after youth” I was immediately taken by the title, but the songs themselves are things of consummate poignant beauty, giving some sense of paradise lost and partially regained, and who hasn’t experience that. Anyone? Anyone? These are the kinds of songs that some shithead in Nashville would take and give to a New Country idiot and ruin and them, but at least Elizabeth Powell (who is, to all intents and purposes, Land of Talk) would be rich and drowning in goat’s milk and bonbons. I would accept that deal with the devil, I suppose. But this is a truly gorgeous album, what an album should be, just as some books epitomize what novels should be before people started writing them with an eye on the screenplay and movie rights. This album feels like it was written to scratch a true musical itch and without any ulterior motives. Everything works together here to form a unified whole. It’s entirely satisfying and delightful. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to find out about this band. The upside of that is that I have other older albums to catch up on.

What Now – Sylvan Esso

This album represents a quantum leap from Sylvan Esso’s first album. The songs have matured in every way and rounded out the band’s sound to the point where they bring full-on joy in addition to quizzical intrigue. I always listened to Sylvan Esso out of some kind of curiosity, but now I listen to them with enormous pleasure. The album starts off in a rather Animal Collective kind of place, with something like a circular incantation that does not necessarily bode well for what is to follow. But trust me, it blossoms soon enough into exuberant and entirely accessible weird pop music, namely The Glow, an ecstatic song about remembering a good feeling in a group of dear friends. Try sitting still for that one. The synths are deployed to perfect effect before a very simple acoustic guitar accompaniment that brings us back to the hook again. It’s just pure pleasure, tinged with a soupcon of nostalgia, once again, for when we we were younger. Just Dancing is also a delight, but the whole thing is delicious from start to finish. Perhaps I’m projecting my own sense of ageing and mortality onto these songs, but there does seem to be something of a trend in some of the albums I’ve chosen this year. But who can blame us for spending a certain amount of time in the halcyon past when the present is so contaminated with an ideology that seems aimed directly at everything and everyone we love? Sylvan Esso are cavorting their way through the misery with a wonderful spring in their step. What an amazing leap they have made from their first to their second album. I can’t wait to see where they go next, but if they stay right here I will be just fine with that too. I recommend that you play this at parties, if you still have them, or go to them. My party days are sadly over, so I will live vicariously through all of you, but not in a creepy way.

Out in the Storm - Waxahatchee

Waxahatchee are not playing. This is serious, dyed-in-the-wool indie rock music with all the energy, all the discretion, all the power, and all the wisdom you would hope for from a genre (if such it is at all) that trades in jaded, fuzzy beauty. Waxahatchee have evolved into the perfect indie band – stunning vocals, absolute discernment around instrumentation, arrangements, songcraft and lyrics, and more to boot. The opening chords on the opening track Never Been Wrong are a both a tour de force and a statement of full intent to rock your brains out with righteous disdain. The way that Katie Crutchfield spits out “its’ embarrassing” made me feel actual shame, but then she breaks it down with a really sweetly sung little interlude before getting back to the dissing. It’s a rollercoaster, and I love being on it. And let’s face it, I thoroughly deserve the punishment she’s meting out. It’s not all driving fuzzy anger, though. 8 Ball walks a country kind of line, while maintaining a Breeders-like cynical aloofness, also fine by me. The through line from American Weekend to Out in the Storm is a wonder to behold. It’s hard to imagine where they might go next, since this seems to represent an apotheosis. This, by the way, is what Torres should be doing instead of spending each album impersonating her favorite influence of the moment. What a waste of a career that’s turning out to be.

I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone – Chastity Belt

I promise that I’m not about to go on a Women in Rock trip here, God forbid, but I do to confess to having listened to the Waxahatchee and Chastity Belt albums as something of a fuzzy angry piece, and they do work very well next to each other. Chastity Belt’s sound seems to be getting a little cleaner album by album, almost to the point of polished, but by no means anodyne. The chord work (I know nothing of the technicalities of music, so that will have to do as a description) on the opener Different Now is a wonder to behold. But it’s in the lyrics where Julia Shapiro really packs the greatest punch, and not even in anger as you might expect from someone who wrote on the last album (also supremely excellent), “He was just another man, try’na teach me something.” Sample this slice of genuine compassion from Different Now:

“You're hard on yourself
Well you can't always be right
All those little things that keep you up at night
You should take some time to figure out your life
But you're stuck indoors and thinking poorly

You'll find in time
All the answers that you seek
Have been sitting there just waiting to be seen
Take away your pride and take away your grief
And you'll finally be right where you need to be

Take all of it, take everything you're owed
'Til you finally feel okay being alone
Yeah it's different now
Yeah it's different now, you're old

And you try and you try and you try and you try”

I should have those words tattooed on my forehead, and indeed the rest of my head, since hair is no longer taking up any space there. It’s different now, you’re old, and you try and your try and you try and you try. Like so many bands I’m writing about here, they’ve all had a fascinating trajectory from where they started to where they are now, in this case from No Regerts, to Time To Go Home, to this fantastic new offering.

Melodrama – Lorde

Lorde is our new genius and we should treasure her as much as we can. She is the other side of the Taylor Swift coin, growing up in public and away from the spotlight at the same time. If this is an album about a break-up, as it was rumored to be and reviewed in some quarters as such, it names no names, something from which Taylor Swift might consider learning. There are too many gems on here to mention. I know some people for whom Green Light was some kind of anathema. Personally it felt like a tour de force of genre-fuckery, part introspective singer-songwriter offering, part ballad, part banger, shape-shifting and keeping us off balance throughout, which should have been a clue about the album as a whole. This was a mesmerizing experience, and more than justifies the promise suggested by Pure Heroine. I actually think Melodrama is a significantly better album in many important ways, although the first one will always be special to me. The entire sequence of songs (and sequencing is a sorely underrated aspect of what goes into making up a truly great album) on Melodrama is pure genius, from Green Light to Sober to Homemade Dynamite to The Louvre to Liability and so on. It all makes perfect aesthetic and emotional sense and I loved every single Taylor-forsaken second of it. I don’t know what you call Lorde’s acolytes, or if they even have a name, but sign me up. I’ll pay to join that cult.

The Far Field – Future Islands

Future Islands aren’t complicated, but they are strange. They write beautiful baroque pop songs with the occasional histrionic flourish (and rather alarming roar) from Samuel T. Herring. The Deborah Harry duet here (Shadows) is an extra treat and works surprisingly well. Future Islands will not let you down. This is what they do. They’re not for everyone, but if they’re for you, they’re really really really for you. And they’re definitely for me. This album is not really much different from Singles, and that’s just fine. Keep doing what you’re doing, boys. I’ll keep buying your albums until you stop making them.

No Shape – Perfume Genius

We need Mike Hadreas. He’s out there living the id we mostly keep hidden, that beautiful combination of delicate sensitive creature with balls of steel and a spine of iron and front to spare. He has no fear at all, at least not that he shows (except in his gorgeous ballads, and that’s of his own choosing and fully in his control). He is the queen we need in 2017,and No Shape is an exhilarating statement of belief and intent. I haven’t seen his live show but I know I would be transported to realms I haven’t even dared to dream of. The idea of seeing and hearing Slip Away live is just beyond exciting to me. There aren’t many artists who are fully formed and whose aesthetic is also completely manufactured and also perfectly organic at the same time. Perfume Genius is a rare example of the perfect execution of all of that. We are lucky to have them/him.

Modern Kosmology – Jane Weaver

I was first introduced to Jane Weaver by a friend when The Silver Globe/Amber Light came out a couple of years ago and I was blown away. There’s something of the Julia Holter aesthetic at work here, but the opening track of Kosmology (H>A>K) strongly suggests that someone has been spending a significant of time listening to Krautrock lately, which is just fine by me. The Krautrock drone dynamic continues and permeates the album to some extent and it makes for a delightful groove, recalling to some slight extent, the long lost wonder of the dearly departed Broadcast and to perhaps an even slighter extent, the equally wondrous Stereolab. There isn’t anything that quite matches I Need A Connection from The Silver Globe, but that’s ok. This album is very deliberately doing something quite different, and it’s both hypnotic and intoxicating. One of my new go-to artists.

Take Me Apart – Kelela

This is, in some ways, that album the xx should have made if they had the courage. I don’t want to make this little segment about the xx, but seriously, they have enough chops now to break out of their self-pitying bedroom shell. Their live performances of late have demonstrated that they know how to get down, at least as far as most white people are capable of getting down, but they need to let Jamie take the wheel from now on. OK, back to Kelela. This is a beautiful and badass album of love songs that depict sadness and difficulty without retreating to the sadness and self-pity of the (empty) bedroom and the laptop. I still hold that the 2014 mixtape Cut 4 Me was one of the best of that or any other year and Kelela is absolutely fulfilling that promise here. I missed out on 2015’s Hallucinogen, so I need to catch up on that, but I am still following Kelela’s career with avid interest. There’s a certain survivor vibe here that recalls Mary J. Blige, but perhaps without the vocal power and diva energy. But still, it’s a point worth making. My final point, for which I apologize in advance, is that the xx should listen to this album on repeat, take notes, issue an apology for the colossally disappointing waste of time and self-pity that was I See You and go back to the drawing board. Make the night-time album we deserve and which you are capable of making. Leave. Your. Bedrooms. I’m sorry, Kelela, that I made this review more about the xx than about you. Just know that I think you’re setting a standard others would do well to follow. That was really my main point.

Ti Amo – Phoenix

This album is a glorious frippery, and belies some of its more lukewarm reviews. For me, Phoenix lost their way somewhere, perhaps sometime after Alphabetical, although there are certainly some great songs on the albums between that one and this new one. But this seems to represent a return to what Phoenix are about. Exuberant poppy polyglot nonsense that mixes up languages in a fantastically ridiculous way on songs like Ti Amo, Tutti Frutti, and Fior di Latte means that pop music has very deliberately stopped making sense, thereby pointing up the fact that pop music *never made sense to begin with.* Without overthinking it (I guess it’s too late for that by now, sorry), this is just a joyful experience from start to finish, and recalls the blissful days of my favorite Phoenix album, United. I was on a beach vacation with a group of friends once and it was my turn to play the next album on the boombox. I had already played United a few days earlier to universal apathy. I asked one of my co-vacationers what I should play next and she said, “Anything but that United album.” It took a few years, but that really stuck with me and needless to say we are no longer friends. In fact, I wouldn’t piss on that particular former friend if they were on fire, and it’s mostly because of that comment about Phoenix (well, it wasn’t entirely just about that comment – there was disloyalty and generally shittiness too, but you get my point). You just don’t diss Phoenix. It’s a life rule. Learn it, and live it.

Hey Mr Ferryman – Mark Eitzel

Yeah, it’s depressing, surprise surprise, but my God does this man know his way around a song and the twists and turns of the streets of your forsaken heart. Mark Eitzel has been a hero of mine for many years, all the way from American Music Club, and I had the privilege and honor to interview him when they reformed a while back (and he could not possibly have been nicer). And, if I may blow my own trumpet briefly, they used some of what I wrote for Pitchfork as part of the press release for the new album that came out around then, so that was a special thrill. Yay, a really really depressing artist was nice to me once and used my words to promote his new equally depressing album!  It may be hard to make it all the way through this album in one sitting, and it contains none of the exuberance of, say, Phoenix, but songs like The Last Ten Years at least starts off in a jaunty enough manner, until you interrogate the lyric (oh, and the album title, which surely suggests at least a season in hell, if not a lot longer excursion):

The ferryman
Who takes me to my rest
Don’t give a damn
Who’s cursed or blessed
Anyway I give him all my cash
Like some tragic hero
A lightning flash
Followed by a million zeros

Spent the last ten years
Trying to waste half an hour

Every drunk is that VIP
Who only lives inside a rope
Where they show you all the love
Make mine a bourbon and coke
I’m not lying, Mr Ferryman
I always make it home
Though my house is built on sand
Buried deep under the loan

Spent the last ten years
Trying to waste half an hour

I had that real good time
And in the dawn
I saw all the love in the bartender’s yawn
So Mr Ferryman
Do you party where you’re from
Do you know where to go
When the party is done

The following song, An Answer, is also absolutely enchanting and I can’t get it out of my head.  Here are the lyrics to that. Try listening to this and stop yourself from weeping uncontrollably (hint: don’t drink bourbon with this, because it will make everything much worse):

Come on dance with me right now
Right here in your merciful kitchen
Let all the sorrow disappear
While our feet go missing

Under your soft Christmas lights
No one could ever reap what they sow
My dance moves are said to be a delight
As long as we keep it slow

You’re always on my mind
I can’t leave you behind
Make me want to stick around and find
If there’s an answer

Don’t know how I got so broken
If you wanna leave what can I say
Sing a hymn for things left unspoken
A song called “Dance the Night Away”

You’re always on my mind
I can’t leave you behind
You make me want to stay and find
If there’s an answer

And all the love that I’ve known
All the love that I’ve been shown
Picks me up and drags me home
Tries and tries and tries and tries to tell me

“In your merciful kitchen.” The man was sent to us from the gods we don’t even believe in. I don’t think I need to say any more about the album really. That pretty much sums it up.  Enjoy!

S/T - Kelly Lee Owens

A late and very welcome addition, brought to my attention by friends who were scouring the internet for end-of-year lists and came up with this one on the Piccadilly Records list, with which I have a lot of disagreement, but not in this case. This is a rare gem. If you were looking to place it in a tradition of any kind it might sit well alongside people like Laurel Halo, Jessy Lanza and Liz Harris and even Katelyn Aurelia Smith, but there I go again with the Women in Rock nonsense, so never mind all that. Ethereal is such a lazy word to use about music, so I won’t do that here, but it has a certain something in that area going on. This is a very lovely wash of sound that makes no grand statement, but perhaps that is the grand statement in and of itself.

Change of State – Novella

Feels like this album came out a long time ago, back in the depths of winter we are about to re-enter. It’s one of those Stereolab kind of deals, droning and melodic. They sort of remind me of Electrelane, whom some of you may remember from way back. A good, solid indie album that does what good solid indie albums should do. Impeccable credentials, well-made songs, lovely harmonies, all the drone you could ask for (and I ask for a lot). No complaints here at all.

French Press - Rolling Blackouts CF
This is a lovely, if short, album, by a band with a rather odd name. Another incredibly strong piece of work from yet another great little Australian band. I continue to be baffled by the sheer volume of high quality music coming out of that country, in this case Melbourne. I have previously had no particular desire to visit Australia, but the music scene there makes me want to go there if only to visit Thornbury Records and seek out some undiscovered (by us) gems. I’m going to be keeping a very close eye on Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever (CF), whatever that means. French Press is a diamond in the rough.

Silver/Lead – Wire

It’s probably safe to say that Protomartyr might have learned a thing or two from Wire. I’m generally not a fan at all of reunions. The only one I endorsed, and enthusiastically, was when the Go-Betweens got back together to make three perfect albums in the early 2000s. I guess technically Wire probably never went away, but their recent output, Wire, Nocturnal Koreans and Silver/Lead, has been nothing short of remarkable. They have taken non-depressing gloom to an entirely new level of excellence. I like to think of these three albums as something of a trilogy and I seem to remember that some of the songs on the latter albums were “left over” from the first one, but I may be experiencing faulty recall, which is what happens when you get to be as old as the members of Wire. The thing is, they don’t sound the least bit out of touch. This stands right up against Protomartyr and Cloud Nothings. You can’t see the generation gap at all, not even a little bit. They’ve retained every aspect of their jaded noise-front along with an enthusiasm for it. There is not even a tiny hint that they’re mailing it in. I would recommend listening to all of the last three albums back-to-back and tell me it wasn’t ridiculously cathartic. Long may they angst. I know that angst isn’t a verb. Sue me.

In Mind – Real Estate

Having resolved some deep unpleasantness with a now-former member of the band (the one who is now in Ducktails and whose lovely albums I can now no longer listen to because he’s yet another one of those shithead sexual predators, apparently, from whom there is now absolutely no escape, if there ever was), Real Estate just picked up right where they left off and made, well, another Real Estate album. It’s really no different from any other Real Estate album, so you may not need it. I just like to get everything good by bands I like, so I got this one. It’s utterly unsurprising, but also completely lovely. They are in the Jingle-Jangle Hall of Fame.

Cry Cry Cry – Wolf Parade

Much though I have an innate distaste for reunions, this was a “reunion” I was excited about and could get behind. The problem was that Spencer Krug has been putting out such stunningly raw and emotive material as Moonface for a few years that I wasn’t sure we needed another Wolf Parade album. But let’s face it, there’s something special about the Wolf Parade energy, even if I wasn’t quite in the mood for their brand of darkness this year. I have my own precious darkness to attend to, thank you very much, and its soundtrack jars against this particular sound. But they haven’t lost it, I’ll say that for them. Not many bands can get away with the histrionic drama of Wolf Parade, but they have a certain kind of testicular fortitude that makes their bluster seem blasé and it absolutely works for them. Long may they strut and preen in their dystopian glory.

Lotta Sea Lice – Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile

This was a pleasant, if ultimately patchy surprise. The two lead tracks, Over Everything and Continental Breakfast were terrific, and got me excited about the album, but I found the album itself to resemble recent Courtney and Kurt solo albums. They just didn’t hang together all the way through somehow. But I’m glad this is out there and I hope that it grows on me as I continue to listen to it in 2018.

A Quality of Mercy – RVG

I came to this relatively brief album through a tenuous Go-Betweens connection – I think they might be part of Lindy Morrrison and Amanda Brown’s 16 Lovers Lane revue, which includes guest vocalists. Anyway, I checked them out and kind of loved these eight-tracks of consummate Australian indie music. And how witty of them to end the all-too-short album with a track called That’s All. Oh, how I laughed. The influences are not hard to spot. But that’s ok. It’s a terrific little listen that takes me back to a particular time without sounding at all dated. Classic line: “You’re going to have lose somebody else’s mind. It won’t be pretty and there’s sure to be a fight.” That’s what I’m talking about. It also contains a sample of an old dial-up modem, just in case that might be the last piece of the puzzle you need to hook you in.

Communicating – Hundred Waters
Currency EP – Hundred Waters

Hundred Waters are really sui generis as far as I can tell and as such hard to write about. I have loved them since The Moon Rang Like A Bell and the remix album that followed it. This album just feels like straight-up sorcery to me, which does not, I repeat not, make me a Wiccan or a hippy. Let’s just get that out there right now. In my vision of them, these people are white witches and warlocks who conjure the very best kind of mysticism in some remote desert hideaway. I have no evidence to the contrary so that’s what I’m going with. The music is just beautiful, so perhaps try to forget about my mystical sidetrack just now. Sorry about that.

In Between – The Feelies

Another reunion. And another successful one. It feels like they never went away, and this feels as relevant as anything else in 2017. The title seems very appropriate, because the Feelies have always somehow occupied some sort of in-between space, but between what and what I’m not quite sure. The Feelies are just, well, The Feelies. They are immanent.

Moon Duo – Occult Architecture, Vol 1 & 2
Moon Duo – Killing Time EP

OK, so this kind of dark mostly instrumental psychedelia isn’t for everyone, I’ll admit, and it may not even be for me, but there’s a place for it in my warped mind and I did very much enjoy Shadow of the Sun from 2015. But let it not be said that these practitioners of the dark arts are lazy. They put out three pieces of strong product in 2015. The EP Killing Time might be the most relentlessly dark of the three, but they all plumb the depths to some extent (although I have to say that there is a lot more light in the albums, a lot). They might remind some a little bit of The Warlocks (the new ones, not the old ones) and that’s not a bad thing. If you like extended jams but you don’t like jam bands, this might be the jamming non-jam band for you.

Soft Sounds From Planet Earth - Japanese Breakfast

At first I was disappointed in this follow up to the majestic Psychopomp, but I came around to it when I realized that Michelle Zauner was doing something a little different here. This is a lusher and more diffuse sound than we got on Psychopomp, and it’s mostly a good thing. And why would we want a carbon copy of that anyway. Japanese Breakfast are one those bands onto whom I seem to have cathected and I fancy that I will go wherever they lead me, including on this sometimes rather meandering and ambient excursion, because it’s a pleasure, and because I feel like we belong to each other somehow. I will say, though, that the new album has significantly less edge than its predecessor, so my enjoyment of this one is not unqualified. It just takes a little getting used to. Perhaps this is Michelle Zauner’s way of shedding skins, and who doesn’t want to do that at least a dozen times in a lifetime?

Try – Faith Healer

Cosmic Troubles was one of my favorite, if not my favorite album of the year in which it came out (2015). I have to confess that I have ordered this new one and for some reason it’s taking forever to arrive, so I’m putting this here as a place holder while I wait. I have high hopes, but I had high hopes for a lot of things in life and look how all of that turned out. Not. Well.

Note: I gave it a brief listen on Spotify and was slightly perplexed – they sound like a completely different band, much like Local Natives did on that last album which seemed like a craven and desperate bid for “mainstream” success (and what on earth is the point of that?), but I live in hope that it’s a grower. Early signs are not good, though.

Dust – Laurel Halo

I went through a prolonged and fairly extended electronic music binge a year or so ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I appear to be over it now. This album made no sense to me at all. I’m just too edgy in general to be able to tolerate this spasm-inducing music, albeit that there are moments of beauty. Too many glitches and pops for me. Sorry, Laurel. By the way, I felt the same way about the Four Tet album, although I’m trying to get over it, because I’ve been very loyal to him over the years.

Before I Wake – Kamaiyah

Too early for me to form a full opinion of this, but I include it because Kamaiyah’s 2016 mixtape A Good Night in the Ghetto was a tour de force and a four-alarm three a.m. wake-up, so I have very high hopes for this. I’ll probably update this one I’ve allowed time for it to sink in a little bit.

In The Same Room – Julia Holter

I’m not entirely sure of the point of this album, but I’ll take all the Julia Holter I can get. This is basically a live studio recording of existing material, so it may or may not be a good place to start for “beginners.” It’s very enjoyable, but it doesn’t really break any new ground. But Julia Holter is Julia Holter. She can basically do no wrong.

Antisocialites – Alvvays

The first Alvvays album was so lovely and perfect that I have to confess that I had been afraid to listen to this one for fear of being disappointed. But once I did work up the courage I discovered that there was nothing to be afraid of after all. The dreaded sophomore slump did not happen to Alvvays. This second album has all the delights of the first album and perhaps a little bit more backbone. A magical album for sure. 

Nothing Feels Natural – Priests

I liked this album a lot when it came out, but when I went back to it I don’t remember what it was that I liked. It just felt jarring somehow. I need to go back to it again when I’m in the right mood. I’ll just say this: punk’s not dead.

Goths – Mountain Goats

I found this album a little bit disappointing after the highs of recent Darnielle offerings, but perhaps I need to give it another try. It just seemed a tad uninspired, and I could give less than a shit about Goths anyway. But having said that, I couldn’t possibly care less about wrestlers either and that album was great.

Losing – Bully

I loved Bully’s 2015 album Feels Like and this seems to pick up where that one left off. While one might lump it in with Waxahatchee and Chastity Belt there is absolutely no concession to roots music here. This seems to come straight out of the old 1990s DC Hardcore scene, but with no concession either to any kind of nostalgia, or just to retreading tired old 1990s tropes and passing it off as your own work in the way that Speedy Ortiz seem to have turned into their stock-in-trade (burn alert). I don’t love this album, but I do like it. I suppose that’s a distinction worth making.

Reassemblage – Visible Cloaks

Now this is the kind of electronic music I can get behind. Very beautiful washes of sound (check out also the reissue of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s 1982 album Music for Nine Postcards, which is a true delight). This is music either for when sitting in your house doing nothing, or when you’re on a train going somewhere but someone else is in charge of getting you there. Really a spiritual reset album, if you need one of those in your life. Play it along with Music for Nine Postcards and you might achieve a level of enlightenment you hadn’t previously imagined. Or not. You might just like it.

Love What Survives – Mount Kimbie

I just got around to listening to this, and although I’m not a fan of King Krule and I’m rapidly going off James Blake (both of whom guest here), this album did some tingly things to me and I’ve loved Mount Kimbie for a long while. I fancy that this album will take up a lot of my time in 2018. It starts strong with the very “atmospheric” (lazy music writer word) Love What Survives, it seems so shape-shift even during the course of that song, and I love when that happens. This album is a grower. It’s growing on me write now even as I write this. I will say, though, that the King Krule appearance on track two (Blue Train Lines) almost ruins the whole thing – totally disrupts the flow. What’s the deal with that guy? He’s trying way to hard not to be white. Needless to say he’s failing. If I could edit that song out, I would. The album would be much better without it. 

The Greatest Gift - Sufjan Stevens This is yet another one of those sublime Sufjan Stevens albums that I can’t even listen to because it’s just too emotional. It’s mostly re-workings of stuff from Carrie & Lowell, which I also couldn’t listen too, even though adored it with all of my broken and grieving heart. Some of these remixes are ridiculously beautiful. If you can listen to something like this and stay on your feet, then you are a much stronger person than I. I really wish I could listen to this on repeat, but it’s just unbearably sad, so I could only listen to it once and then I had to put it away forever, among the sacred and banned texts of my life. There are not many of these, but Sufjan has authored more than one of them.

Infinite Worlds – Vagabon

Everybody Works – Jay Som

These two albums did a lot more for others than they did for me. I just found them boring.

American Dream – LCD Soundsystem

I’m not writing about this because it’s on my list of albums of the year. I’m writing about it because it isn’t. The whole thing went wrong around track 8, the title track. It was going fine until then. After that the album lost its way and was not able to find its way back. I still wish they had stayed broken up. This was a mistake. They broke up perfectly. Why do some bands never learn? James Murphy seemed all-too self aware, and relatively talented, albeit that he ripped off Bowie and Byrne to a ridiculous extent; I still loved LCD Soundsystem. This comeback album isn’t quite as egregious as Jordan going to the Wizards (what could be), but it does taint their legacy for me. If they’d put out a seven-song EP and left it at that, I would have been hailing their continued marketing savvy and ongoing hipster status, but they just went a little bit too far, tried a little bit too far, and tipped over into, well, crapness. As just about everyone does eventually. So consider this a dishonorable mention.

Capacity – Big Thief

Here’s my thing with Big Thief: If they had made one album that eliminated the folky songs from their previous two albums and just kept the fuzzy rock songs, that would have made for one stunningly fine indie rock album. As it is, I only like half the songs on each of those albums, so it’s hard for me to make a judgment of either of them. I seem to skip every other track to get to the fuzzy ones. I have no time for strummy acoustic shit anymore. Life’s too short. Rock me, baby. All the time. Unless you’re Syd or Alice, in which case you can feel free to mellow me all the way out.

The Rest

Arca – Arca
Black Origami – Jlin
Real High – Nite Jewel
Blurred Harmony –Parson Red Heads
Something to Tell You – Haim
B-Sides and Rarities – Beach House
Fear/Nothing – The Belle Game
Masseduction – St. Vincent
There Is No Love In Fluorescent Light – Stars
Stranger in the Alps – Phoebe Bridgers
Drunk – Thundercat (a little bit busy – listen more)
Routines – Hoops (Real Estate Lite)
Harmony of Difference EP – Kamasi Washington
Somersault – Beach Fossils (what is *up* with “Rise”?)
Narkopop – GAS
Wild Pink
City of No Reply – Amber Coffman
Dirty Projectors – Dirty Projectors
New Energy – Four Tet
Process – Sampha

The Dregs

I See You – The xx
A Deeper Understanding – War on Drugs
Sleep Well Beast – The National
Do Make Say Think
Painted Ruins – Grizzly Bear