“What were 2017’s best albums?” is, to me, a loaded and super difficult question.
2015 and 2016 were both stellar years for me. Quite a few albums from the period still feature heavily in my rotation. Just scratching the surface, there’s Coheed and Cambria’s The Color Before the Sun, Mbongwana Star’s From Kinshasa, Iggy Pop’s Post Pop Depression, Bayonne’s Primitives, Apothek’s Apothek, Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!”, A Tribe Called Red’s We Are the Halluci Nation, Wild Beasts’ Boy King… Hell, I’m still listening to D’Angelo’s 2014 masterpiece Black Messiah on a regular basis.
So how do I feel 2017 stacked up against its predecessors? Not too badly. Here are my top 5 albums of the year (in no particular order).
Tinariwen, Elwan
Tuareg rock. If you haven’t heard of it, you need to go listen to this album immediately and allow yourself to fall down the rabbit hole.
The Tuareg people are a nomadic ethnic group that lives in Africa’s Sahara Desert, primarily in Niger, Mali, and other West Saharan countries. Tuareg rock is a wholly unique rock genre that, by whatever accidents of fate, was developed by Tinariwen in the late ‘70s and ‘80s and has been embraced by the Tuareg people and the world at large.
Elwan, the group’s eighth album, is a real stunner. It combines wildly disparate elements — American and Algerian pop, ‘60s and ‘70s era rock, blues, traditional Arabic and African sounds, and more. The result is rollicking, frenetically energetic, exquisitely well balanced, and the most straight-up rock and roll thing you’ll hear all year.
Queens of the Stone Age, Villains
Villains is an album that has garnered quite a bit of critical acclaim, while simultaneously drawing some pretty strong ire from a decent cross-section of their fanbase. And, honestly, I get it. This album is very different from a lot of what QOTSA has put out before. But that — the evolution of a band’s sound — is something I cherish.
Lyrically, Villains is probably some of Josh Homme’s lesser work. There are lines that flop, lines that are out of place in their silliness, lines that border on cringeworthy. Sink into the music past the lyrics and you’ll find yourself in a surprisingly rich, varied, and successful album.
The trance-y, robotic sound that has defined Queens of the Stone Age for so many years is, while still present, definitely toned down. Synths play a surprisingly large role. Overall, Villains is just a little lighter.
The album’s opener, “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now,” wears it’s Them Crooked Vultures influence proudly on its sleeve, and I hear Homme’s experience working with Iggy Pop on Post Pop Depression in a number of tunes. For me, though, the true standout of the album is “Head Like a Haunted House,” with its unrestrained punkish energy.
Yours & Mine, Yours & Mine
Yours & Mine epitomizes “indie”. A lot of the bands we cover here are signed to labels, and while they’re small indie ones, they are nonetheless labels and they can offer their acts certain benefits. Yours & Mine, a trio based in Queens, NYC, are going it 100% themselves.
The group put out their eponymous debut EP this past June (they were a quartet at the time of recording). The six tracks are rich with influences, heavily drawing from the post-punk and alternative scenes of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Steeped in such varied influences — you can hear the impact of bands like Oasis and Radio, The Smiths and Toad the Wet Sprocket, Weezer and many more — the album is almost chameleonic; one creature yet many creatures.
But don’t pigeonhole Yours & Mine for this fact. That would be a mistake. As I wrote in my review of their live debut, “I had seen a young band of four intensely talented musicians look to the past, pick their favorite bits, amalgamate them, change them, update them, and create something completely, entirely, perfectly new.”
Chon, Homey
Math rock is a really interesting genre — despite being a relatively niche sound not often in the limelight, there’s a surprising amount of bands that fall under the heading (though many aren’t particularly fond of it). Math rock as a whole is defined by incredible complexity, in rhythm, chord choice, chord progression, and so on. More often than not, it’s pretty metal and shred-y.
Chon is a quartet from San Diego, a math rock hot spot. Not particularly prolific, they’ve put out 2 EPs and 2 LPs in the course of about 10 years as a band. Between their first EP, 2013’s self-released Newborn Sun, to this year’s Homey LP, they have undergone quite the transition.
While they maintain their shred-y metal heart, the songs on Homey are almost — almost — jazzy, thanks in large part to their crystal clear, minimally affected guitar tone. Different but familiar. At the same time there’re songs like album standout “Nayhoo,” featuring Masego and Lophiile, which is essentially an electro-hip hop song. (“Berry Streets” and “Feel This Way” are similar.)
Homey is an album that’s got its feet in two, three different worlds at the same time. And I’ll be damned if it isn’t working for them.
Leikeli47, Wash and Set
I read about Leikeli47’s Wash and Set somewhere recently (I don’t remember where, unfortunately). The praise was high — I was intrigued and, as I didn’t have any music on at the time, decided to put it on in the background. Before long I was sitting back, eyes closed and volume high, doing nothing but listening intently.
Wash and Set is… it defies words. It is incredibly inventive, almost impossible to turn off. Throughout the album, Leikeli47 pays homage to the hip hop that has come before her, and at the same time she lights it all on fire and rebuilds it in her own image.
Her energy, her bravado, her confidence are infectious — and the music that she funnels all of that into is infectious. Her rhymes, how she constructs her lines, her production, all incredible and infectious.
If you’re not listening to Leikeli47, you’re wrong.
