Top Ten 2017 - Year in Review

1. Lorde – Melodrama

I didn’t see this one coming. Sure, I heard her debut because it was everywhere and I kinda liked it but before Melodrama I wouldn’t have called myself a fan. With this piece of pop perfection that has certainly changed. Intimate yet playful, and uniquely funny, it hits its marks from front to back.

2. Leif Vollebekk – Twin Solitude

I read that Leif made this album as one that he would like to listen to himself. Well get me this guy’s record collection because his ear for stripped back folk is spot on. Not to mention that beautiful and sometimes delicate voice delivering lyrics to the heart via the ears.

3. War On Drugs – A Deeper Understanding

The production value on this record is worth a million bitcoins. Although the composition must have been pored over for ages it doesn’t feel like it, it just plays exactly the way it should. I don’t know anything about composing, playing, singing or producing music but I like to think that I know what it sounds like when masters of these arts are at work.

4. Future Islands – The Far Field

Yes, I’m now fully on board with the band that everyone should have known tens of records ago. Discussing their discography is not my objective here though, it is to say that this is the album that caught my ear and compelled me to spin it over and over again.

5. St.Vincent – MASSEDUCATION

Another artist that I’ve known and respected only from the second deck until this album. There’s the guitar work that she’s made her name on but there’s also evocative lyrics and varied songwriting that is all top quality. MASSEDUCTION brings me down to the front row.

6. Idles - Brutalism

Whether their swagger is legitimate or for show(s) is irrelevant as the music they put down on tape roars (and that is not a knock on their incendiary live gigs). It rocks those earworms right into your skull. Extra points for the current, cutting, politically-forward lyrics that give this record another imperial tonne of weight.

7. Run The Jewels – RTJ3

El-P and Killer Mike have each been at it a long time and now on their third album collectively they may have hit their sweet spot. El’s beats are as razor sharp as ever while the lyrics hold their edge too, even during those times when it feels like you’re eavesdropping on a couple of bros ribbing each other.

8. Weaves – Wide Open

Weaves are making some of the most interesting music anywhere these days. Yet it’s not completely out there, "WTF-is-that?" kinda music; it’s immediate and relatable, truly engrossing. I can’t even form the sentences to describe it, you’d be much better served listening to it yourself.

9. Japandroids – Nearer to the Wild Heart of Life

Sure, I may have a soft spot for these two but I do think this album hit it right. They’ve evolved their game and if it has a few more “ballads” and the odd sentimental lyric, as opposed to reckless abandon and nostalgia, this comes as a sign of maturity. Japandroids are yearning less for younger us and appreciating the now, and it still resonates.

10. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.

I could not get the hype. Each time I put on M.A.A.D City or Pimp a Butterfly it would get turned off before long without leaving much of an impression on me at all. Then DAMN. dropped and all things changed. Die-hards may hear this as a turn to the mainstream and, if so, it has worked because it converted this non-believer.

11. Broken Social Scene – Hug Of Thunder

BSS have their sound and they are masters of it. Polished, bombastic tracks that soar with male/female vocalists and ratcheted up brass. It works, it’s good - very, very good - and just because this album follows the sound does not make it derivative or repetitive. The addition of Ariel on vocals helps to breathe a fresh voice here too. I’d be remiss not to shoehorn it in here, especially with that closing song. 

Long-List Considerations

Lana Del Rey – Lust For Life

LCD Soundsystem – American Dream

Wolf Parade – Cry, Cry, Cry

Los Campesinos – Sick Scenes

The National – Sleep Well Beast

Sylvan Esso – What Now

Cloud Nothings – Life Without Sound

Jens Lekman – Life Will See You Now

Beck - Colours

Author’s Address

In the year of the #metoo movement many horrifying actions have come to light, where people of a privileged position manipulated that power, and it has been sickening to read. There are essays to be written on the merits of art versus artist but this will not be one. However, I will take this opportunity to add another voice as a supporter of those who were taken advantage of and to consciously choose not to glorify the perpetrators nor their work. 

Japandroids - Celebration Rock: (Year-End Album Review)

A preview of my forthcoming annual, year-end, favourite albums post. Below is an album that is definitely under consideration - time will tell where it ends up on, or off, the final list.

Short and strong - Brian and David have made another powerhouse rawk album. Between the (literal) fireworks they do as they always seem to do - surge ahead with skin stretching drums and face melting guitar. They thrash through a mere 35 minutes of let-loose anthems, including the re-released Younger Us. Thankfully they didn't touch a thing on this their most nostalgic, and arguably the best, of a long line of singles. The album is complete with belt-em-out choruses that they became famous for with Post-Nothing, their first (and supposed to be only) full-length. "If they try to slow you down, tell 'em all to go to hell." Thank the gods of rock and roll for keeping the duo together to keep lighting this dynamite of pure energy into the Canadian scene.

Feel free to check out last year's list or my Top Albums lists dating back to 2002 on my previous Vernacular blog.

Japandroids, Cadence Weapon (Lee's, June 23/12)

It does seem an interesting bill - one of Canada's most eclectic MC's (and former poet laureate) in Cadence Weapon, opening for the power duo, Japandroids. Brian (of Jpndrds) introduction of the rapper shone a light on this but also highlighted how this introduction shouldn't really be necessary in their homeland. And in reality it wasn't though I'm sure it didn't hurt. People were really into the small ball of rapping energy too as he tore through a bunch of new tracks from his Polaris long-listed recent release, Hope in Dirt City. It was impressive that he didn't miss a beat on songs new and old, including Real Estate, Oliver Square and House Music, while also throwing down some pretty funky dance moves too. The Born Gold DJ held down the beats in his USA t-shirt allowing Cadence to do his thing while the crowd was oddly receptive. Cadence wrapped up an impressively solid set (my first time seeing him) with Loft Party.

Japandroids album (also Polaris long-listed) is called Celebration Rock and much has been made of the title. I, for one, am with the masses in deeming it a worthy and appropriate name for their style of music pumped out by Dave's spectacular drumming and Brian's hugely amplified, and distorted, guitar licks. From song one the energy was there and it did not wane throughout, even with the inclusion of album closer, Continuous Thunder. I'd love to give a breakdown of the songs but I was too busy surviving the frenetic pit to take notes. A tonne of new material was played; in fact, it looks as if the entire new album made its way into the evening highlighted by single The House that Heaven Built and the deservedly-rehashed-for-this-album Younger Us. It's almost cliche to say how much output there is from "just" as two-piece but it needs to be reiterated as Brian really made the guitar soar - so much so that he broke a string and left Dave to drum solo while he swapped mid-song, sans guitar tech. The crowd responded as well to new music as old, though I was pleased to shout along to Post-Nothing "classics" (everything but Heart Sweats and I Quit Girls). In a respectable move they announced that they were going to give it their all with For the Love of Ivy (who knew it was a cover?) and not encore. True to their word they both gave it their all, with Brian perched atop Dave's kickdrum, and left us shouting for more even despite the exhaustion from rocking out for over an hour.