2017 albums of the year - the not-quite-but-still-good runners-up

15 Dec, 2017

Right.

There have been some excellent albums this year. Plenty of stinkers too, but a whole load I've enjoyed. Something's been released pretty much every month that I was certain would be unbeatable, which over the course of the year has almost been tiring! There have been wonderful returns to form, stunning debuts, some jaw-dropping collaborations, and some genuinely impressive reissues.

I don't want to do a countdown of my favourites this year. There's definitely one that, as I write this, is my favourite, but there's just so much that arbitrarily sorting them into an order seems, well, arbitrary.

I'll write a longer post about my very favourite one a little later, but for now, here's a list of Very Good albums from this year that you really should investigate.

The debuts:

Though not technically an album, this six track compilation of original material is rich enough to include the preposterously-named band in this best-of-the-year list. There's a lot here to love. They're a bright, dreampop jangly guitar band very much in the Real Estate guise, and the titular lead track is ten times better than anything off of Real Estate's latest. In fact, that The French Press itself is such a gnawing earworm that its glowing outro has popped into my head every day since first hearing it in the spring. There's no telling yet if the Antipodean RBCF will grow to Nick Cave levels or flounder like Powderfinger, but this is certainly a promising first hello.

Princess Nokia - 1992 Deluxe

Alright, I admit it: Princess Nokia has the strong smell of being this year's big hype, destined to call into a Cults-shaped hole over the next five years. I'm a sucker for curious and punchy debuts regardless of the noise around them, and 1992 Deluxe is something of a treasure. The song contruction is very simple by hip-hop standards, often consisting of the same eight bar sample repeated with very little additional layers or instrumentation. But lyrically Princess Nokia soars, reflecting a very 2017 liberal feminist attitude that's refreshingly different from a lot of her peers. While others talk in metaphors, Princess Nokia is open and honest about her fears, her strength, her culture, and the cultures around her. 1992 Deluxe feels like it could be a watershed moment; indeed, Mine and ABCs of New York feel so vital and raw that her success seems inevitable. Hype bubble be damned!

Second/third album wonders:

Alvvays - Antisocialites

Their self-titled debut was my favourite album in what was otherwise a pretty bleak music year. Antisocialites continues in the same vein: half an hour of female-fronted indie pop in a bit of a C86 vein that briskly moves from the euphoric to the melancholy. This is a little more energetic than its predecessor, moving away from the early Camera Obscura maudlin and more towards a joyous Rilo Kiley at their peak. If there's one criticism, it does feel a little too safe, capitalising on the highs of album one and doing more of them. But still, it lives up to that first album and feels like a happy continuation, which is no bad thing. Plimsoll Punks deserves to be blasted at indie discos for many years to come.

Thundercat - Drunk

If Princess Nokia is liberal feminist hip-hop, Thundercat is weed-addled millenial R&B. It's stuffed with bro-level pop culture references like Sonic the Hedgehog and Dragon Ball Z and it isn't adverse to the odd fart sample, which should make it annoying and easily dismissed. But it's set against thrumming bass-heavy funk that makes it an alarming compelling listen. And the backbone of the album has to be the the biographical lyrics; each song is an honest, easily understood little narrative that constructs a story of a very particular type of person across the whole album. Drunk illustrates a part of society that's lives in the same world as 1992 Deluxe but couldn't be more different.

Sylvan Esso - What Now

Remember five or six years ago, when slightly artsy, crunchy, glitchy electro-math-pop-rock was a thing? If What Now had been released then it'd have been huge, but in 2017 it seems an odd curio. But judging it on its own merits, it's a very good album in and of itself. Kick Jump Twist is one of the highlights of the year, moving as it does between simple Casio keyboard line with vocal through to full-on dancefloor banger. Radio feels very relevant in the post-Weinstein era, combining an anger with a thrusting beat, and Signal and Rewind slow down the tone towards the end of the album to give the listener something of a respite. In all honesty this was in contention for my favourite album of 2017 for a long time... but, being harsh, there's one too many skippable lulls here to make it truly essential. Nonetheless, it's a great album and one that's had far too little attention.

Public Service Broadcasting - Every Valley

Now on album three, Public Service Broadcasting continue the idea of tackling a single topic that worked so well on their last release. While The Race For Space tackled a topic of international significance, Every Valley covers an issue much more local - the growth and death of the Welsh coalmining industry. The change in tone is stark: The Race For Space was pompous and celebratory, ending with a note of optimism for the future. Every Valley is the complete opposite, starting with the glory of the Welsh miners and ending in anger and frustration and bleak sadness. It's an album that highlights the grand promises made by those in a position of power, the frustration of the common man, and the plain sombre truth of how the general public have been let down. It's an obvious reflection of Brexit-seized Britain, and though at times it is heavy handed it's the most mature album that the group have put out to date.

Late career highlights:

Stephin Merritt may be one of our greatest lyricists but few would argue that he's floundered for the better part of a decade now. Though recent albums have included the odd highlight, they've undeniably lacked focus and been largely forgettable as a result. A total cynic would suggest that he's done nothing of note since 69 Love Songs, but it's that album for which he and his group are best known. 50 Song Memoir is most definitely an attempt to recreate that behemouth of an album, and though it always had little chance of straddling those great hights, the conceit of fifty songs celebrating Stephin's fifty years on this planet gives him a narrative focus that's produced his best work in a decade or more. In particular, Have You Seen It In The Snow is possibly the prettiest and best song he's written since 100,000 Fireflies way back in 1991. There are inevitable troughs in quality given the number of tracks here and the latter half is far better than the first, but it feels like a reintroduction to a long lost friend.

Worthwhile reissues:

It would have been so easy for Purple Rain's reissue to be a cynical quick cash-in following Prince's untimely death last year. Some kind of remaster, maybe a few demos, lots of inevitable b-sides from the era is probably all we could expect. How glorious this release actually is. The remaster of the album itself is fine, and that disc of b-sides and single edits is nice enough, but it's the disc of unreleased material from the era that's the real highlight here. What fan of the original album could pass up ten minute long new tracks called The Dance Electric, Wonderful Ass, and We Can Fuck? More pressingly, how is it possible that tracks that so rich and amazing could linger in Prince's vaults for so long? Far from being a skippable curio, it's a disc packed with essential songs that I've been happily diving into throughout the year. A live film from the time is fun but poorly recorded - worth a watch and a fun extra but largely forgettable. But overall for £20 or so, this is a reissue that shows everyone else how it should be done. That patchy reissue of Sgt Pepper's from this year be damned: this is how it's done.

Kraftwerk - The Catalogue: 3D (reissue-ish)

Most definitely released to cash in with their worldwide tour, The Catalogue: 3D presents all of Kraftwerk's albums in a difficult to describe, 'as performed' style. These aren't remasters, they're pretty much re-recordings, presented just as the albums are performed during the tour. It breathes life into the complete catalogue, highlighting just how great those original records are while celebrating the fact that they can still be tweaked, reordered, and made new. Though it'll anger some purists, the versions of some albums here - particularly Computer World and Electric Cafe - may well be better than the original releases. Anyone with a passing interest in the band should give this a try, either in the full boxset discography form or the abbreviated best-of album. Either way, it shows just how important and fun they continue to be.

#album of the year #main #music