Top Ten Albums of 2017

Welp, here it is. I finally got one of these done before the end of January. At the very least, I had my list finalized by the end of 2017, but I just hadn’t gotten the write-up for each album done. But it’s done. Consider this my annual contribution to the endless stream of content on your various news feeds.

Before I jump into the list, I just want to share some listening stats. I listened to 204 albums that were new to me during the year (I had somewhat ambitiously set a goal of 250, but I fell well short of that). Overall, I listened to songs from 1,298 different albums (that doesn’t mean that I listened to that many albums in total), and 5,800 songs from 752 different artists. In total, I listened to over 14,000 songs in the previous year (shout out to last.fm for the stats, I swear it’s still a thing and I’m not climbing aboard a sinking ship).

I felt fairly satisfied with 2017, despite some underwhelming (Grizzly Bear, The National, Kendrick Lamar (ANTHONY FANTANO IS RIGHT, DAMN. IS A 7/10 TOPS)), and in some cases very disappointing (San Fermin, King Krule, Arcade Fire (to be fair, I wasn’t expecting much based on the singles, but still)) releases from some of my favorite artists. I found myself listening to a lot of emo/punk/power-punk (shout out to Sorority Noise, Jeff Rosenstock, and American Football)—I think I was catching up after missing out on that in middle school.

Enough deliberating, let’s get on with the list.

Album Review: Slowdive – Slowdive

Slowdive’s original run in the 1990’s followed the typical indie rock narrative of the promising debut album (1991’s Just For A Day), followed by the genre-defining classic (1993’s Souvlaki), and capping it off with the polarizing and career ending third album (they were dropped by their label shortly after they released Pygmalion in 1995). Despite their brief first stint–maybe even because of it–Slowdive’s popularity and legend only grew over time. A reunion was inevitable.

Album Review: Long Live The King – King Shelter

King Shelter is the California based project of Florida native Taylor Hecocks.  I heard of them through one of my friends at college who was friends with Taylor, and he urged me to check out his EP he released last December.  I did so, and honestly, I wasn’t impressed at all.  The EP wore it’s influences on it’s sleeve, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s just that it wasn’t nearly as good as it’s influences.  The King Shelter I heard on the EP was nothing more than a Youth Lagoon cover band, and not a good one at that.