Favorite Albums of 2017
Here’s my year-end list of the albums from 2017 that had the biggest impacts on me (plus a few bonus albums from past years at the end).
Pleasure — Feist
On my third listen of Pleasure, I knew it was going to stick with me. Many of the tracks off of Pleasure have a powerful and imperfect intimacy that makes them feel like Feist is performing a few feet away from you. The toned-down, delicate production alongside sometimes-soft, sometimes-overpowering vocals make each song carry an emotional weight that impacts me differently on each listen.
This is an album that has dominated my thoughts for weeks throughout the year: “Get Not High, Get Not Low’s” lyrics about opening yourself up to life’s extreme joys and sorrows following a period of detachment, the title track exploring pleasure as a double-edged sword, and the cozy codependence of “I’m Not Running Away” which features one of my favorite descriptions of love:
“The difference between night and day/We watch the moon rise and all that indicates/I got a home in you that noon illuminates/together, alone in you, I’m not running away”.
Highlights: A Man is Not His Song, Pleasure, I’m Not Running Away, Get Not High, Get Not Low
The Far Field — Future Islands
Aladdin is probably my favorite opening track off of any album this year. Weaving heartbreaking, dejected lyrics into upbeat synth-laced songs definitely isn’t a new feat in any genre of music, but The Far Field pulls it off expertly, especially in Through the Roses, a track that’s been in and out of my head all year.
Try: Aladdin, Through the Roses, Ancient Water
Crack-Up — Fleet Foxes
All you need to get a solid understanding of this album is a few listens to the constantly shifting moods and melodies on the appropriately-obliquely-named three-part intro track, I Am All That I Need, Arroyo Seco, Thumbprint Scar.
A bit less straightforward than Helplessness Blues (an album that’s probably in my all-time top 5), Crack-Up grew on me as I became more familiar with its more experimental and unpredictable song structures, though it can definitely take a few listens to get to that point.
Reading list: Third of May / Ōdaigahara, Fool’s Errand, On Another Ocean (January / June)
Take Me Apart — Kelela
This list is considerably less R&B-heavy than last year’s, but Kelela’s debut brings me back to those same heights that Solange, Blood Orange, Tinashe, and others reached in 2016. Take Me Apart spans such a wide variety of feelings and perspectives on relationships in basically every stage of growth and decay, a whirlwind of heartbreak and optimism and all the best and worst things that come from falling in love.
Favorites: Blue Light, Frontline, Better
Something to Tell You — HAIM
For their second album, HAIM swapped out some of their meticulous pop rock instrumentation for twangier production that seems quieter on the surface, though each song hides hooks and choruses that just as energizing as those in 2013’s Days Are Gone.
Something to Tell You really found and exploited whatever emotional undercurrent was behind the Shania Twain phase I had for a few months of 2013.
Start with: Nothing’s Wrong, Ready For You, Walking Away
Crawl Space — Tei Shi
Tei Shi’s debut spans a variety of styles and hooks, some songs serving up cathartic sing-along material while others serve as a showcase for her carefully reassuring melodies. Crawl Space may be an album about facing very personal fears, but the emotional breadth and expansive scope of each song make those fears easy to relate to.
Quick listens: How Far, Your World, Keep Running
Season High — Little Dragon
Little Dragon established long ago that they know how to craft floaty, upbeat soul-infused pop tracks (Nabuma Rubberband was far and away my most listened to album of 2014), but it’s the slower songs on Season High that make it stand out.
Listen to: Gravity, Butterflies, Sweet
Rostam —Half-Light
We had to wait way too long to get a full-length showcase for Rostam’s warm, intimate, slurred vocals, and Half-Light takes the sound profile he developed with Vampire Weekend and expands on it beautifully. Something about his voice cuts right into me.
One caveat: My favorite song from last year, Gravity Don’t Pull Me, didn’t make the tracklist, but you need to listen to it anyway.
Tracks: Bike Dream, EOS, Gwan
Favorite Albums of 2017 That Aren’t From 2017
There are always albums I pick up on a little late and never really have the chance to talk about, so I’m branching out and sharing some of the albums I loved this year that have been around a little longer than the last few months.
These songs aren’t included in my playlist, but I linked to ‘em where I could find ‘em.
Kate Bush — The Dreaming (1982)
I really can’t imagine I have much new to add to any discussion about an album that’s now 35 years old and has been polarizing since its release, but I fell into my first Kate Bush phase for a solid 3 months of this year and needed to say something.
The Dreaming is a little more accessibly experimental than many songs off of the second half of Hounds of Love (the default fan favorite album), so I’m quicker to recommend it as the litmus test to see if Kate Bush’s eccentricities mesh with your taste. It has moments that are cringey and grating and moments that are charmingly dramatic and cathartic and I love it for all the same reasons I hated it at first.
SONGS: Night of the Swallow, Pull Out the Pin, Suspended in Gaffa
Sheena Ringo — 加爾基 精液 栗ノ花 (Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana) (2003)
I’m convinced that my deep-seated love for Sufjan Stevens’ The Age of Adz primed me to love Sheena Ringo’s most experimental release when I finally listened to it this year. Much like my favorite Sufjan album, Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana uses hectic, unconventional instruments and synths that evoke feeling scatterbrained without ever tipping over into overwhelming chaos.
This manic instrumentation that effortlessly drives the album is made somehow soothing in the way Sheena Ringo uses it and contrasts it with her voice. This is an album that I’ve listened to on repeat with translation websites pulled up, absorbing how bizarre and poetic her lyrics are, and I’d recommend it to anyone who can find it (a surprisingly hard feat given how reluctant her label seems to be to release her music outside of Japan).
Listen to: 意識 (Consciously), やっつけ仕事 (Rush Job), 迷彩 (Camouflage)
Joanna Newsom — Have One On Me (2010)
Joanna Newsom’s 2+ hour-long Have One On Me has been one of the most important albums in my life for the past few years. Its narration is filled with emotional inconsistencies and about-faces, constant self-doubt weighed against self-reassurance, and other emotional volatility that’s tackled in a way that validates and assuages those same feelings in myself. By giving me an outlet for so much of what I’ve felt, it’s helped me through mood swings and heartbreaks and even minor inconveniences.
Though I’ve been listening to Have One On Me for 3+ years, this year I’ve spent more time than ever with it, dedicating as much energy to decoding songs as I do to just re-experiencing an album that can so effortlessly fill me with hope and make me feel impossibly devastated. Have One On Me is so densely packed with cryptic lyrics that evoke conflicting emotions that I still feel as though I don’t fully understand it all, however many listens later. But it doesn’t take quite as much out of me to understand that it’s an album I’ll be listening to for years to come as it continues to reward me for the time I spend with it.
What first hooked me: Kingfisher, ’81, Soft as Chalk
Thanks for coming along, everyone.
