Year in Review 2017: Music

Best Albums I Missed in 2016

• Lazurus (The Original Cast Recording) — Various Artists

I was torn about including this. I didn’t really like it as an album and as a musical soundtrack it gives some sense of character but almost no sense of narrative (then again, I don’t know that watching the show would make things much clearer.) But there are three songs on here (“The Man Who Sold the World,” “Life on Mars?” and “Heroes”) that are key Bowie songs that I could just never get into but enjoy in these versions, so I appreciate that I now have access to those in a way I didn’t before. There were also a few songs I hadn’t heard of that I liked, so it might get me to finally dive into his discography.

• The Party — Andy Shauf

Concept albums have a reputation for being convoluted and pretentious, but that need not be the case. The Party offers up a series of easily understood, relatable vignettes, delivered with charming melodies and relatively spare arrangements. Shauf recognizes that there’s no need to overly-dramatize these quiet, human moments, instead letting them speak for themselves.

• What Will Destroy You — Kyle Morton

While the follow-up to 2013’s White Lighter isn’t due until January, last year we got the next best thing: the first solo album from Typhoon frontman Kyle Morton. Minus the 11-piece band, the songs center on Morton’s acoustic guitar and expressive vocals. Thematically the album is a meditation on love in the face of apocalypses, both global and personal, and what pieces of ourselves we can afford to offer each other when we are already broken.

Best Discoveries of 2017

• Adam Torres

• Agnes Obel

• Behaving

• Frances Cone

• Glass Animals

• Jay Som

• Johnny Flynn

• L.A. Salami

• Maggie Rogers

• Margaret Glaspy

• Mark Kozelek & Jimmy LaValle

• Middle Kids

• the Mountain Goats

• P.P. Arnold

• Paramore

• Phoebe Bridgers

• Pinegrove

• River Whyless

• Sammus

• Totally Mild

• The Weather Station

• The Weepies

• The Wild Reeds

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Best Albums of 2017

• Belong — San Fermin

On their third album composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone and company continue the shift towards a more electronic, pop sound that they started on 2015’s Jackrabbit. This shift combined with more polished arrangements, the lack of instrumental interludes, and a much looser conceptual throughline than the first two albums makes for San Fermin’s most accessible album yet. Overall, while not as exciting as their previous releases, Belong still offers up a decent selection.

• Clear Language — Balmorhea

With crickets, footsteps, and cool breezes all filling its sonic environment, Balmorhea places Clear Language outdoors—and not the frozen tundra of a Sigur Ros album, but the warm Texas desert. That warmth spreads throughout the album, as does a sense of relaxed but intentional movement, from the melodic bass line of the title track to the insistent, repeating guitar on the album’s closer, “First Light.” Even the beautifully languid “Slow Stone” contributes to this sense of movement by asking it to pause a moment before continuing.

• Gathering — Josh Ritter

Gathering is arguably Josh Ritter’s countryest album ever—just listen to the first few seconds of “Feels Like Lightning” and you’ll think it’s a Johnny Cash song. I’ll admit that it’s not entirely my cup of iced tea, but even if the album lacks, to a certain extent, some of the more expressive musical touches or dense lyrics of his previous work, there’s no denying that Ritter is good at what he does. And even amidst the jangly throwback country tunes there are some quiet moments that stand out, like the hauntingly beautiful “Myrna Loy” or the hazy, besotted waltz of “Strangers.”

• Gone Now — Bleachers

With both St. Vincent and Lorde placing high on a lot of best-of-the-year lists with albums co-produced by Jack Antonoff, his own project has fallen a little bit off the radar. But this year’s Bleachers album is a solid chunk of 80’s revitalization, Bruce Springsteen meets Peter Gabriel but with a modern sound. The subject matter itself is mostly sad but, like most of my favorite foods, it’s covered in a generous helping of cheese. And saxophones.

• I Can Spin A Rainbow — Amanda Palmer & Edward Ka-Spel

A while ago I was trying to make a playlist to soundtrack a game of Betrayal only to find that I had very little creepy music. Well, no longer. Despite its cheery title, I Can Spin a Rainbow is a dark, surreal experience, and one that everyone should have at least once.

• Out In The Storm — Waxahatchee

Katie Crutchfield comes out swinging on Waxahatchee’s new album. From the opening wall of guitars on “Never Been Wrong” this is indie-rock at its rockiest, head-banging and toe-tapping to songs of love, loss, and life.

• Planetarium — Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister

An ethereal collection of songs inspired by the 8 planets, Pluto, and a few other space-related things, largely drawing its themes from the deities after which the planets are named. It basically sounds like a Sufjan Stevens album, as he provides most of the vocals, but that’s not a bad thing. Who doesn’t want a Sufjan Stevens album about space and mythology?

• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Remixed Edition) — The Beatles

If you’re a Beatles fan and/or find hard panning as insufferable as I do, I encourage you to check out the new version of Sgt. Pepper. Where previous remasters have had barely perceptible differences, this new edition completely remixes each song from the original tapes. Producer Giles Martin (son of original Beatles producer George Martin) took the fuller sound of the mono mixes and recreated that in stereo. This means, for example, that instead of having the synthesizer at the beginning of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” sitting in one ear while the vocals sit in the other, the synth pans back and forth across the whole stereo field, and the vocals are right in the middle where they belong. This remix really breathes new life into these songs.

• Three Futures — Torres

When we say an artist made a song their own, we’re usually talking about covers. In the case of Mackenzie Scott’s most recent album as Torres, one feels tempted to say the same of her own songs. On the opening track, “Tongue Slap Your Brains Out,” Scott takes what lyrically reads as a down-home country song and imbues it with an almost gothic darkness, with choir-like vocals, a buzzing bass drone, and frenetic, high-pitched guitars. On other songs she takes the singer-songwriter vibe from her self-titled debut, combines it with the indie-rock sound of 2015’s Sprinter, and adds on a layer of electronica to create something entirely new. Post-80’s, you might call it—moving past the current 80’s nostalgia sound and becoming something more modern, and more compelling.

• Turn Out The Lights — Julien Baker

On Turn Out The Lights Julien Baker expands her range from 2015’s quieter Sprained Ankle, both vocally and musically. Though her verses maintain the personal point of view that marked her previous work, the refrains take that personal angst and make it anthemic. There are examples of this throughout the album, but I keep coming back to “Appointments;” Baker perfectly captures the tug of war between despair and optimism that marks the lives of young people in these increasingly chaotic times: “Maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright / Oh, I know that it’s not but I have to believe that is.”

• What Now — Sylvan Esso

When I first listened to Sylvan Esso’s self-titled debut there were a few songs that I liked immediately, but the rest had to grow on me. Not so with their follow-up. Where Sylvan Esso felt somewhat distant and spare, What Now is warm and welcoming, with a broader sonic space than its predecessor. The duo also got together with some of their friends to record full-band arrangements of five of the songs for NPR, which are quite good.

• 50 Song Memoir — The Magnetic Fields

From I to Distortion to 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields tend to make albums that are what they say on the tin, and such is the case with 50 Song Memoir, containing one song for each year of frontman Stephin Merritt’s life (as of release). Some songs are directly memoir, like “‘68: A Cat Called Dionysus” or “‘93: Me and Fred and Dave and Ted,” while others are reflections of Merritt’s thoughts or interests at the time, or the culture at large. “‘71: I Think I’ll Make another World” describes Merritt’s budding creativity, “‘76: Hustle 76” marks the rise of disco, and “‘81: How to Play a Synthesizer” explains how to play a synthesizer. Coming from someone who tends to be very private and reserved it’s an unexpected project, and the fact that this level of vulnerability is so rare for Merritt lends that much more weight to the songs. That being said, don’t doubt that his trademark dry wit is on full display throughout the album.

Honorable Mentions:

• I See You — The xx

• Lotta Sea Lice — Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile

• MASSEDUCTION — St. Vincent

• Piano Is Evil — Amanda Palmer

• Pleasure — Feist

• Recorded Songs EP — Frightened Rabbit

Best Holdovers From 2016

• 22, A Million — Bon Iver

• Blonde — Frank Ocean

• Coloring Book — Chance the Rapper

• The Hamilton Mixtape — Various Artists

• Painting of a Panic Attack — Frightened Rabbit

• Teens of Denial — Car Seat Headrest

• Visions of Us On the Land — Damien Jurado