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JUST WHAT WE NEEDED, ANOTHER BEST OF 2017 LIST: THE MUSIC
And here we are again.
Only this time, this may be the most pointless Top 10 I’ve done, since I only bought 12 new releases this year (with another four gifted to me by friends), although the ten finalists are all worthy of being in a Best Of list.
Upon reflection, I suppose that’s as much the result of me being more judicious about my music purchases as it is not hearing enough good music worth buying. I do find myself thinking, “This sounds alright, but am I still going to be listening to this a year from now?”
Maybe that’s an unfair metric. Or maybe I’ve just listened to so much music over the years that I really need something to make a big enough impression on me to consider it worth spending money on. I’ve also found that despite digital downloads being cheaper, I’m more cautious about buying them because – unlike physical CDs – I can't return them, regift them or sell them second-hand. Once I’ve clicked the button, it's a lifetime commitment.
Well, anyway. I’m happy with the ten selections here, so close enough, eh Jim?
DISCLAIMER: Based on music I actually bought between December 2016 and November 2017, and therefore a useless metric for everyone else.
TOP 10 DEF LPs/EPs I BOUGHT/ACQUIRED IN 2017
1. Sparks, Hippopotamus (BMG/The End Records)
This is Sparks’ 23rd studio album, and their first since 2009 (not counting their 2015 collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, FFS). It’s arguably the album I was most looking forward to in advance of its release, and it was everything I hoped it would be – well-crafted and slightly eclectic pop rock with satirical lyrics. Who else would come up with pop songs about IKEA fetishes, an impatient God, French film directors, a reality show starring the Macbeths, a hippo in a pool, the wonders of the missionary position, and a town where everyone is inexplicably giddy? Wonderful.
2. Big Walnuts Yonder, Big Walnuts Yonder (Sargent House)
From an album I was expecting to an album that came out of nowhere – I only found out about it via a Cargo Collective ad. It’s a supergroup project of sorts featuring Mike Watt, Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos), Nels Cline (Wilco) and Greg Saunier (Deerhoof). According to legend, they formed the band in 2008 but it took until 2014 for them to actually get in the same room together, and then they recorded the whole album in 72 hours. The result is a collection of decent songs with some truly whacked-out guitar parts and arrangements that have kept me increasingly fascinated with this for the last six months.
3. DiCaprio, I Went To The Mall Yesterday And I Got Sick (Bandcamp)
This is a band based in Atlanta hipped to me by The Holloways, and on first pass it reminded me of a number of underground 80s bands – bass-driven, atonal guitars, sprechgesang vocals veering between sarcasm and boredom, it’s all here. The closest analogy I can think of is Flipper minus the booze and distortion pedals, which is probably wrong. No matter – my first reaction was “What the hell?”, but on repeated listens I really started to dig it.
4. The Como Mamas, Move Upstairs (Daptone)
The Como Mamas are a gospel trio from (yes) Como, Mississippi that have been around for decades but hadn’t recorded anything until Daptone Records (who else?) signed them. This is their second LP, and it’s an inspiring slice of old-time funk/soul gospel that sounds like it was recorded in the late 60s. (In fact, I first heard the track “Out Of The Wilderness” on a comp of mostly older gospel songs, and I assumed it was from that era – I was surprised to find it was recorded in 2017.) If there’s a downside, it's that structurally many of the songs follow a similar template. But I still enjoyed this a lot.
5. Primus, The Desaturating Seven (Prawn Song/ATO)
The previous Primus album was a cover of the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory soundtrack. Their latest is a concept album based on a children’s book about seven rainbow-eating goblins. And it sounds pretty much the way you’d expect a Primus album to sound regardless of song topic. Which is terrible if you always hated Primus, but great if yr a fan – provided yr a fan that doesn’t wish they would just keep doing Tommy The Cat and Winona’s Big Brown Beaver over and over again. I’m in the latter category, and I liked this just fine.
6. The Fall, New Facts Emerge (Cherry Red)
As reliable as the sun rising in the morning, Mark E Smith is back with album no. 32, which features most of the same line-up he’s employed since 2006 – a record by Fall standards. The exception is keyboardist Eleni Poulou, who quit last year. The remaining band have never sounded tighter – almost every song here is a solid foundation for Smith to carry on snarling and grousing about whatever’s bothering him this year. On the downside, Poulou’s absence is noticeable in the sense that keyboards have almost always been part of the Fall sound – so it feels like there’s something lacking here. Even so, this is their best since Your Future Our Clutter.
7. Mavis Staples, If All I Was Was Black (Anti-)
This is Mavis Staples’ third solo outing with producer Jeff Tweedy. I missed the first two, but I’m glad I didn't miss this one. As the title suggests, Staples has something to say about the problems of ongoing racism in America, but refuses to give in to hate – ultimately her answer is love. Not every song here is sociopolitical, and the ones that are go for blunt truths without resorting to rants or diatribes. A couple of tracks feel a bit weak songwriting wise, but Staples has a great voice to make up for it.
8. The Moonlandingz, Interplanetary Class Classics (Transgressive Records)
This is a project from members of two British groups (Fat White Family and Eccentronic Research Council) that started as a fictional band created for ERC’s spoken-word project about the band’s lead singer, Johnny Rocket. At some point they decided to do a whole album as that band, with Sean Lennon producing at least some of it. The result is seedy, psychedelic electro-glam with surprisingly catchy tunes and an ending track that puts guest vocalist Yoko Ono’s unique singing style to very effective use.
9. Oumou Sangare, Mogoya (No Format)
I’d never heard of Oumou Sangare before, but she’s been around since the late 80s and is a very big deal in her home country of Mali, having defined the “Wassoulou” music genre. That said, she doesn’t get into a recording studio often – this is only her fifth LP and her first in eight years. And this time out she’s elected to expand her sound musically with the help of producers from France and Europe. Which may be why the musical arrangements really stand out for me – Sangare’s voice is great but it’s the multi-layered backing vocals and musical tracks that flesh out the album into something special.
10. Bootsy Collins, World Wide Funk (Mascot Records)
Bootsy is back, although he’s never really been away, having kept busy in various music projects since Parliament-Funkadelic came to an end. This is his first solo album in six years, and you couldn't really ask for a better start than the title track, complete with opening narration by Iggy Pop, that reminds everyone why Collins is one of the best bass guitarists in the business. It’s jam-packed with guest stars, from Snoop Dogg and Chuck D to Buckethead (as well as P-Funk vets Dennis Chambers and Eric Gales). It’s a bit of a mixed bag – the lyrics are mainly more party-party-carpe-diem than P-Funk comic-book madness, though this ain’t P-Funk, so fair enough. Still, there are also a handful of ballads and standard R&B that seem too generic and bog down the proceedings. But the classic-funk tracks are well worth the price of admission. The tribute to Bernie Worrell is a nice touch too.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Public Service Broadcasting, Every Valley (Test Card Recordings/Play It Again Sam)
PSB’s gimmick is creating electronic pop-rock music for imaginary documentaries using soundbites from actual documentaries. I was really knocked out by their previous album, The Race For Space, which covered the race to the moon in the 1960s. This time, they’ve done an album about the rise and fall of the Welsh coal industry – which is obscure enough to be interesting, but somehow this just didn’t push all the buttons that the previous album did. It’s not just the topic – musically there are some really great moments, but other times it’s pretty straightforward Brit-pop.
Tamikrest, Kidal (Glitterbeat)
Fourth album from the desert-blues band from Mali that isn’t Tinariwen. Which I don’t mean in a bad way – Tamikrest and Tinariwen are both good bands, and both have distinctive sounds, but listening to this isn’t much of a different experience from listening to all their other albums. It’s good, mind you, but it just didn’t really stand out for me.
BEST REISSUE
The Beatles, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Apple Records)
Perhaps not their best album but arguably their most influential, Sgt Pepper gets a new stereo mix from Giles Martin for its 50th anniversary (along with tons of outtakes), plus 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane', which weren’t on the original LP but were created in the sessions that led up to Sgt Pepper. I spent a lot of time listening to this side by side with the original mix, which has always kind of bugged me. The Beatles actually recorded it in mono, which meant the stereo mixes resulted in things like Ringo’s drum kit getting shoved into one speaker – which was noticeable to me because I used to listen to this album on a stereo with one speaker broken, so I could only listen to literally half the album (the left half of the right half). For my money, the new mix sounds fantastic – it’s stills stereo, but it sounds a lot fuller and the drums are more centered and muscular. And you can hear everything so much more clearly, particularly the harmonizing vocals. As the saying goes, it may not have been broke, but they certainly fixed it.
BEST COMPILATION
Various Artists, True Faith (Mojo)
This is one of those comp CDs Mojo magazine puts together every month. For this one, the theme is rock/country/blues gospel, assembled to complement that month’s cover story of Bob Dylan’s gospel years, and an excuse to create a comp that includes a previously unreleased rehearsal version of Dylan’s “Slow Train”. But there’s a lot of great classic tracks here – Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Marie Knight, Mahalia Jackson, Staples Singers, Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, Charlie Rich, Dorothy Love Coates and more. Special shoutout to the Como Mamas track, which hipped me to their new album which made my Top 10.
THE ALBUM I’M SAVING FOR NEXT YEAR
U2, Songs Of Experience (Island)
The new U2 album dropped on December 1, which is right after my self-imposed cutoff date. And I’ve found that with latter-day U2 releases, I need to give myself time to digest it fully before passing judgment – if the first listen doesn't totally blow me away, I might warm to it after a couple more times. The iTunes preview suggests there’s some good stuff here, but I want to give it a fair hearing before I pass judgement on it. So you may be seeing it on next year’s list.
Tomorrow: the films!
This is dF
Only this time, this may be the most pointless Top 10 I’ve done, since I only bought 12 new releases this year (with another four gifted to me by friends), although the ten finalists are all worthy of being in a Best Of list.
Upon reflection, I suppose that’s as much the result of me being more judicious about my music purchases as it is not hearing enough good music worth buying. I do find myself thinking, “This sounds alright, but am I still going to be listening to this a year from now?”
Maybe that’s an unfair metric. Or maybe I’ve just listened to so much music over the years that I really need something to make a big enough impression on me to consider it worth spending money on. I’ve also found that despite digital downloads being cheaper, I’m more cautious about buying them because – unlike physical CDs – I can't return them, regift them or sell them second-hand. Once I’ve clicked the button, it's a lifetime commitment.
Well, anyway. I’m happy with the ten selections here, so close enough, eh Jim?
DISCLAIMER: Based on music I actually bought between December 2016 and November 2017, and therefore a useless metric for everyone else.
TOP 10 DEF LPs/EPs I BOUGHT/ACQUIRED IN 2017
1. Sparks, Hippopotamus (BMG/The End Records)
This is Sparks’ 23rd studio album, and their first since 2009 (not counting their 2015 collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, FFS). It’s arguably the album I was most looking forward to in advance of its release, and it was everything I hoped it would be – well-crafted and slightly eclectic pop rock with satirical lyrics. Who else would come up with pop songs about IKEA fetishes, an impatient God, French film directors, a reality show starring the Macbeths, a hippo in a pool, the wonders of the missionary position, and a town where everyone is inexplicably giddy? Wonderful.
2. Big Walnuts Yonder, Big Walnuts Yonder (Sargent House)
From an album I was expecting to an album that came out of nowhere – I only found out about it via a Cargo Collective ad. It’s a supergroup project of sorts featuring Mike Watt, Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos), Nels Cline (Wilco) and Greg Saunier (Deerhoof). According to legend, they formed the band in 2008 but it took until 2014 for them to actually get in the same room together, and then they recorded the whole album in 72 hours. The result is a collection of decent songs with some truly whacked-out guitar parts and arrangements that have kept me increasingly fascinated with this for the last six months.
3. DiCaprio, I Went To The Mall Yesterday And I Got Sick (Bandcamp)
This is a band based in Atlanta hipped to me by The Holloways, and on first pass it reminded me of a number of underground 80s bands – bass-driven, atonal guitars, sprechgesang vocals veering between sarcasm and boredom, it’s all here. The closest analogy I can think of is Flipper minus the booze and distortion pedals, which is probably wrong. No matter – my first reaction was “What the hell?”, but on repeated listens I really started to dig it.
4. The Como Mamas, Move Upstairs (Daptone)
The Como Mamas are a gospel trio from (yes) Como, Mississippi that have been around for decades but hadn’t recorded anything until Daptone Records (who else?) signed them. This is their second LP, and it’s an inspiring slice of old-time funk/soul gospel that sounds like it was recorded in the late 60s. (In fact, I first heard the track “Out Of The Wilderness” on a comp of mostly older gospel songs, and I assumed it was from that era – I was surprised to find it was recorded in 2017.) If there’s a downside, it's that structurally many of the songs follow a similar template. But I still enjoyed this a lot.
5. Primus, The Desaturating Seven (Prawn Song/ATO)
The previous Primus album was a cover of the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory soundtrack. Their latest is a concept album based on a children’s book about seven rainbow-eating goblins. And it sounds pretty much the way you’d expect a Primus album to sound regardless of song topic. Which is terrible if you always hated Primus, but great if yr a fan – provided yr a fan that doesn’t wish they would just keep doing Tommy The Cat and Winona’s Big Brown Beaver over and over again. I’m in the latter category, and I liked this just fine.
6. The Fall, New Facts Emerge (Cherry Red)
As reliable as the sun rising in the morning, Mark E Smith is back with album no. 32, which features most of the same line-up he’s employed since 2006 – a record by Fall standards. The exception is keyboardist Eleni Poulou, who quit last year. The remaining band have never sounded tighter – almost every song here is a solid foundation for Smith to carry on snarling and grousing about whatever’s bothering him this year. On the downside, Poulou’s absence is noticeable in the sense that keyboards have almost always been part of the Fall sound – so it feels like there’s something lacking here. Even so, this is their best since Your Future Our Clutter.
7. Mavis Staples, If All I Was Was Black (Anti-)
This is Mavis Staples’ third solo outing with producer Jeff Tweedy. I missed the first two, but I’m glad I didn't miss this one. As the title suggests, Staples has something to say about the problems of ongoing racism in America, but refuses to give in to hate – ultimately her answer is love. Not every song here is sociopolitical, and the ones that are go for blunt truths without resorting to rants or diatribes. A couple of tracks feel a bit weak songwriting wise, but Staples has a great voice to make up for it.
8. The Moonlandingz, Interplanetary Class Classics (Transgressive Records)
This is a project from members of two British groups (Fat White Family and Eccentronic Research Council) that started as a fictional band created for ERC’s spoken-word project about the band’s lead singer, Johnny Rocket. At some point they decided to do a whole album as that band, with Sean Lennon producing at least some of it. The result is seedy, psychedelic electro-glam with surprisingly catchy tunes and an ending track that puts guest vocalist Yoko Ono’s unique singing style to very effective use.
9. Oumou Sangare, Mogoya (No Format)
I’d never heard of Oumou Sangare before, but she’s been around since the late 80s and is a very big deal in her home country of Mali, having defined the “Wassoulou” music genre. That said, she doesn’t get into a recording studio often – this is only her fifth LP and her first in eight years. And this time out she’s elected to expand her sound musically with the help of producers from France and Europe. Which may be why the musical arrangements really stand out for me – Sangare’s voice is great but it’s the multi-layered backing vocals and musical tracks that flesh out the album into something special.
10. Bootsy Collins, World Wide Funk (Mascot Records)
Bootsy is back, although he’s never really been away, having kept busy in various music projects since Parliament-Funkadelic came to an end. This is his first solo album in six years, and you couldn't really ask for a better start than the title track, complete with opening narration by Iggy Pop, that reminds everyone why Collins is one of the best bass guitarists in the business. It’s jam-packed with guest stars, from Snoop Dogg and Chuck D to Buckethead (as well as P-Funk vets Dennis Chambers and Eric Gales). It’s a bit of a mixed bag – the lyrics are mainly more party-party-carpe-diem than P-Funk comic-book madness, though this ain’t P-Funk, so fair enough. Still, there are also a handful of ballads and standard R&B that seem too generic and bog down the proceedings. But the classic-funk tracks are well worth the price of admission. The tribute to Bernie Worrell is a nice touch too.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Public Service Broadcasting, Every Valley (Test Card Recordings/Play It Again Sam)
PSB’s gimmick is creating electronic pop-rock music for imaginary documentaries using soundbites from actual documentaries. I was really knocked out by their previous album, The Race For Space, which covered the race to the moon in the 1960s. This time, they’ve done an album about the rise and fall of the Welsh coal industry – which is obscure enough to be interesting, but somehow this just didn’t push all the buttons that the previous album did. It’s not just the topic – musically there are some really great moments, but other times it’s pretty straightforward Brit-pop.
Tamikrest, Kidal (Glitterbeat)
Fourth album from the desert-blues band from Mali that isn’t Tinariwen. Which I don’t mean in a bad way – Tamikrest and Tinariwen are both good bands, and both have distinctive sounds, but listening to this isn’t much of a different experience from listening to all their other albums. It’s good, mind you, but it just didn’t really stand out for me.
BEST REISSUE
The Beatles, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Apple Records)
Perhaps not their best album but arguably their most influential, Sgt Pepper gets a new stereo mix from Giles Martin for its 50th anniversary (along with tons of outtakes), plus 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane', which weren’t on the original LP but were created in the sessions that led up to Sgt Pepper. I spent a lot of time listening to this side by side with the original mix, which has always kind of bugged me. The Beatles actually recorded it in mono, which meant the stereo mixes resulted in things like Ringo’s drum kit getting shoved into one speaker – which was noticeable to me because I used to listen to this album on a stereo with one speaker broken, so I could only listen to literally half the album (the left half of the right half). For my money, the new mix sounds fantastic – it’s stills stereo, but it sounds a lot fuller and the drums are more centered and muscular. And you can hear everything so much more clearly, particularly the harmonizing vocals. As the saying goes, it may not have been broke, but they certainly fixed it.
BEST COMPILATION
Various Artists, True Faith (Mojo)
This is one of those comp CDs Mojo magazine puts together every month. For this one, the theme is rock/country/blues gospel, assembled to complement that month’s cover story of Bob Dylan’s gospel years, and an excuse to create a comp that includes a previously unreleased rehearsal version of Dylan’s “Slow Train”. But there’s a lot of great classic tracks here – Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Marie Knight, Mahalia Jackson, Staples Singers, Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, Charlie Rich, Dorothy Love Coates and more. Special shoutout to the Como Mamas track, which hipped me to their new album which made my Top 10.
THE ALBUM I’M SAVING FOR NEXT YEAR
U2, Songs Of Experience (Island)
The new U2 album dropped on December 1, which is right after my self-imposed cutoff date. And I’ve found that with latter-day U2 releases, I need to give myself time to digest it fully before passing judgment – if the first listen doesn't totally blow me away, I might warm to it after a couple more times. The iTunes preview suggests there’s some good stuff here, but I want to give it a fair hearing before I pass judgement on it. So you may be seeing it on next year’s list.
Tomorrow: the films!
This is dF