Les Inrocks' 100 Best Albums of 2017

Nearly 20 years into the band\'s career, The National have reached a status attained only by the likes of Radiohead: a progressive, uncompromising band with genuinely broad appeal. Produced by multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner in his upstate New York studio (with co-production from guitarist Bryce Dessner and singer Matt Berninger), *Sleep Well Beast* captures the band at their moody, majestic best, from the propulsive “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” to “Guilty Party,” where Berninger’s portraits of failing marriage come to a sad, gorgeous, and surprisingly subtle head.

Sleep Well Beast was produced by member Aaron Dessner with co-production by Bryce Dessner and Matt Berninger. The album was mixed by Peter Katis and recorded at Aaron Dessner’s Hudson Valley, New York studio, Long Pond, with additional sessions having taken place in Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles.

While making his second album, Nick Mulvey spoke with Brian Eno about the value of collaboration. Those conversations clearly took root: recorded live with a cast of friends, *Wake Up Now* rings with communal spirit, its rich layers of music and vocals accenting the calls for empathy and unity in songs about the environment (“We Are Never Apart”) and immigration (“Myela”). There’s also a hint of Eno in the hypnotic grooves that drive “Remembering”’s Afro-pop and “Imogen”’s skillful fusion of folk and trip-hop, while Mulvey proves equally effective at simple intimacy on closer “Infinite Trees.”

Real Estate’s mellow, deceptively simple sound is one of the marvels of \'00s indie rock. Hazy but precise, delicate but self-assured, the band has pulled off the remarkable feat of refining their style without ever really changing it. *In Mind*, their first since 2014’s shimmering *Atlas*, dives deeper into their suburban reverie, exploring a jammy, psychedelic side (“Two Arrows”), with hints of jazz (“Holding Pattern,” “Serve the Song”) and surf (“Darling”).

IIII+IIII, pronounced “Edgy-Og-Beh” is the title of the nine song debut album from Puerto Rico’s critically acclaimed electronic ensemble, ÌFÉ. Headed by San Juan based African American Otura Mun, himself a Babalawo or high priest in the Yoruban religion, ÌFÉ has captured the imagination and ears of the international community since releasing its first two singles, 3 Mujeres (Iború Iboya Ibosheshé) and House of Love (Ogbe Yekun). Now, following successful European and North American tours, ÌFÉ releases its first full length musical offering, a 45 minute opening ceremony that seems equal parts blessing, adoration, and manifesto. From its opening track to its closing prayer the album conveys a deep sense of spiritual intent, a sureness in its voice and purpose that is both brave and bold while maintaining the vulnerability and unsureness that the most intimate and honest of conversations always require. It’s been clear from the beginning that ÌFÉ is in a space uniquely its own.From the way in which the music is conceived, a live electronic performance, no programming, to its component parts, Cuban Rumba, Sacred Yoruba praise songs, Jamaican Dancehall, and American R&B, to the way it moves seamlessly from English to Spanish to Yoruba, the music is willfully out of genre, yet focused and clear in a way that makes its newness seem rare, compelling. Serene and floating at times, determined, erotic, and raw at others, the music is as improbable as it is natural, a youthful knowing sound, aware of the weight of its voice, the ground that’s been traveled, and the urgency and uncompromising fierceness needed to meet the day.

Prolific producer and Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach is one of those artists whose music always manages to sound fresh yet comfortingly familiar. His second solo album sounds like a lost gem from the ‘70s, mixing California folk-pop (“Waiting on a Song”), soul lite (“Malibu Man,” “King of a One Horse Town”), and a touch of psychedelia (“Cherrybomb”) for a breezy, kaleidoscopic listen that’s perfect for summer.

In a fitting tip of the cap to The Great American Songbook from the Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Bob Dylan’s deep reverence for the originators of popular song is felt in his covers of classics like “Sentimental Journey” and “September of My Years.” Dylan swings along with these showstoppers, his touring band firmly in the pocket. For further study, check out Dylan\'s two previous salutes to romantic standards: *Fallen Angels* and *Shadows in the Night*.

Temples’ second album brings increased purpose to the heady psychedelia of their debut, *Sun Structures*. Synths add playful menace to the dynamic grooves of “Certainty” and “Mystery of Pop,” and whether the quartet dabble in freak-folk (“Oh the Saviour”) or motorik glam (“Roman God-Like Man”), insistent melodies are always sewn in. With its euphoric chorus, the widescreen “Strange or Be Forgotten” could have been written to fill arenas. On this evidence, that wouldn’t be presumptuous.

Temples’ 2014 debut ‘Sun Structures’ arrived with sky in its hair and the endorsements of Noel Gallagher and Johnny Marr ringing in its ears, putting the Kettering quartet at the forefront of an exciting new wave of British psych. Yet whereas the artists they were most obviously indebted to – think early Bowie and Pink Floyd, Nazz and T. Rex – employed subversive humour and acid-fried absurdity, Temples themselves were masters of surface-level psychedelia: less a state of mind, more a feat of engineering. - Barry Nicolson NME.com

Polo & Pan debut Album Double LP + included MP3 downloads or CD album Tracklist 1. Abysse 2. Aqualand 3. Canopée 4. Coeur croisé 5. Zoom Zoom 6. Nana 7. Kirghiz 8. Dorothy 9. Plage isolée (soleil levant) 10. Mexicali 11. Chasseur d'ivoire 12. Pays imaginaire

Italian composer Luca D’Alberto flirts with neoclassical shades in this daring and intense record. Equal parts Glass, Stravinsky, and Pärt, *Endless* is an exploration of the feelings that lie beneath tonality and the longing that gets exposed when cyclical violins, cascading pianos, and atmospheric waves collide in space.

Dirty Projectors announce their long-awaited 7th LP. The new album does everything we want and expect from Dirty Projectors — but in a way we never could have imagined or anticipated. In a career of surprising conceptual gambits, unexpected stylistic evolutions, and continually changing lineups — this is, as DJ Khaled says, “ANOTHER ONE”! Dirty Projectors will be out February 24th, 2017 on Domino.

Chuck Berry’s grace was finding a formula and sticking to it. Released five months after his 90th birthday—and three months after his death in March 2017—*Chuck* taps into Berry’s zeal for life, from his wife (“Wonderful Woman”) to enchiladas (“3/4 Time”) to winking at his past (“Lady B. Goode,” the ripping “Big Boys”). He does it all without ever sounding stale—a witty, vital, and fun farewell.

The Shins’ music has always had a Swiss watch-like quality to it: Seamless from the outside, hypnotically intricate when you open it up. *Heartworms*, their first LP in five years, bridges the electronic textures of 2012’s *Port of Morrow* with the jangly, cerebral pop of *Chutes Too Narrow*, touching on psychedelia (“Painting a Hole”), country (“Mildenhall”), and synth-pop (“Cherry Hearts”). It\'s the band’s most adventurous album yet.

In the wake of their arresting debut album, Big Thief find further beauty in ever harsher realities on *Capacity*. It\'s bound together by singer/songwriter Adrianne Lenker, who’s achingly fragile and coldly confident within the same song, as she shares vivid, intimate details of kisses, crashes, and a long-lost brother. Stark acoustic numbers like \"Pretty Things\" and \"Coma\" glow with a warm, vintage sheen, making them timeless, while expansive heartland rocker \"Shark Smile\" gives Lenker\'s wraith-like presence room to truly soar.

Even in the increasingly crowded field of electronic music, Kelly Lee Owens’ debut album arrives as a wonderful surprise. An album that bridges the gaps between cavernous techno, spectral pop, and krautrock’s mechanical pulse, 'Kelly Lee Owens' brims with exploratory wonder, establishing a personal aesthetic that is as beguiling as it is thrillingly familiar.

A vertiginous, gone-viral stage dive at 2017’s Rolling Loud Festival upheld Uzi’s claims to being a “rock star.” On *Luv Is Rage 2*, he engages one of rock’s other key tropes: peering into the abyss. With his sharply melodic flow, he makes plenty of allusions to his success, comparing his diamonds to Pharrell’s over the video-game bleeps of “For Real” before trading triumphant verses with the man himself on “Neon Guts.” However, he also peels back some layers of an unsettled soul, confronting the pain of a broken relationship on “Feelings Mutual” and “XO TOUR Llif 3.”

‘Dark Days + Canapés’ is Ghostpoet's most defining album to date. A stunning and stimulating return, 'Dark Days + Canapés’ is a record that captures the sense of unease felt by so many in recent times. After receiving recognition for the beat-driven arrangements of his first two albums, third album 'Shedding Skin' initiated a more alt-rock sound that saw Ghostpoet Mercury nominated for a second time. New album ‘Dark Days + Canapés’, produced by Leo Abrahams, best known for his work with Brian Eno and Jon Hopkins, delves even further into a fuller, guitar driven sound. When commenting on the first track from the album, ‘Immigrant Boogie’, Ghostpoet aka Obaro Ejimiwe explains; “I’m usually more comfortable writing in ambiguous terms, but this time around I felt there were specific stories that needed telling.” Serendipity and experimentalism were embraced in the studio and several original ideas evolved or were supplanted by something unexpected. On 'Freakshow’ the addition of manic laughter from a gospel choir, who had turned up to sing on a different track, compounds the crazed nature of the song, whilst ‘Blind As A Bat...’, influenced by Talk Talk’s ‘Laughing Stock’, saw string players invited to improvise with fragments of their performance sampled and overlaid to build something less structured, more wayward and reflective of the state of mind of the protagonist. Typically self-effacing, Obaro says; “there’s a sort of life-force that Leo and the other musicians brought to this record, and that was crucial. I want people to listen to the songs and be able to say, ‘So Isn’t just me then? Phew.”

After playing the last of their 200 shows in more than 40 countries in support of their critically acclaimed 2012 album Celebration Rock, Japandroids took a much needed break to rest and recover after their last show in November of 2013. The band would not play again for three years. This month, they made their triumphant return to the stage, playing intimate shows in Vancouver, LA, Toronto, London and NYC, in which they treated fans to their favorites from Celebration Rock and Post-Nothing, and previewed a handful of new, unreleased songs. Now, the band has announced their much anticipated third album, Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, out worldwide on Anti- this January 27, 2017. Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, was written clandestinely throughout 2014 and 2015 in Vancouver, Toronto, New Orleans, and Mexico City. It was (mostly) recorded by Jesse Gander (who had previously recorded both Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock) at Rain City Recorders in Vancouver, BC (September-November, 2015). One song, True Love And A Free Life Of Free Will, was recorded by Damian Taylor during an exploratory recording session at Golden Ratio in Montreal, QC (February, 2015). The album was mixed by Peter Katis at Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, CT (May, 2016) and mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound in New York, NY (July, 2016). Like Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock, the album is 8 songs. This is because 8 songs is the standard template for a great rock n roll album: Raw Power by The Stooges, Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen, Marquee Moon by Television, IV by Led Zeppelin, Horses by Patti Smith, Paranoid by Black Sabbath, Remain In Light by Talking Heads, Master Of Puppets by Metallica, etc. Like Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock, the album was sequenced specifically for the LP. On Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, side A (songs 1-4) and side B (songs 5-7) each follow their own loose narrative. Taken together as one, they form an even looser narrative, with the final song on side B (song 8) acting as an epilogue.

As a trained chef, Action Bronson knows the value of seasoning. On the mic, the Queens MC has always cut his swagger and braggadocio with valuable splashes of humor and self-awareness. Maintaining that recipe, his latest marks of luxurious living include memory-foam mattresses (“Let It Rain”), pretzels (Rick Ross collaboration “9-24-7000”), and calling limo services to rhyme over their hold music (“La Luna”). When they’re not culled from phone calls, the rich beats and samples are drawn deep from the crates, matching the lyrics for their compelling mix of accessibility and invention.

Syd, of The Internet and Odd Future fame, shows another side of her musical persona. *Fin* takes a carnal R&B turn with all the complex emotions it brings. Her demure voice gives strong vapors of Aaliyah and *Velvet Rope*-era Janet Jackson on “Drown In It,” “Body,” and “Know.” Syd gives herself a pep talk on “All About Me” and gets lit on “Dollar Bills” and “Nothin to Somethin.” And this being Syd, the tracks glisten with futuristic shine.

Beautiful and evocative and recorded in his home-town of Liverpool between March 2016 and June 2017, the album is the culmination of four years of hard work. Equal to his finest moments, Adiós Señor Pussycat will undoubtedly only further cement his reputation as one of this generation's greatest songwriters. Since a self-imposed hiatus in 2008, Michael Head has been working with a fluid concept of an ever-rotating band format to provide a flexible platform for the range of his new live and recorded works. Under the guise of Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band in 2013, they released their sought-after debut EP, Artorius Revisited, and followed this with a double A sided 7”, Velvets In The Dark / Koala Bears in 2015. A soulful and poetic genius, fate, bad luck and circumstance and often conspired to deny him his rightful dues. Loved and lauded by fellow artists and critics alike, he started out in the early 1980s with The Pale Fountains, with whom he recorded a brace of acclaimed albums, Pacific Street (1984) and …From Across The Kitchen Table (1985). He subsequently formed Shack with his brother John and went on to record five albums over almost twenty years including the much loved and acclaimed Waterpistol and HMS Fable in 1999 which saw the band briefly flirt with chart success and hailed from the cover of the NME as “our greatest songwriter” Head released what is often regarded as his classic album, The Magical World Of The Strands under the name of Michael Head & The Strands in 1997, and with Shack currently on hiatus, he has been performing as the Red Elastic Band since 2008.

Leslie Feist’s striking fifth album follows a series of left turns: the tidy indie pop of her early work, the commercial appeal of *The Reminder*, and the earthy about-face of *Metals*. Like *Metals*, *Pleasure* feels almost like a blues album, more spacious and stripped down than its predecessor, but strikingly dynamic, filled with rustling and whispers that swell into clangs and shouts. It proves that Feist is one of the most quietly unpredictable songwriters—and gifted vocalists—working today. “Come with your true arc/To fall all the way down,” she sings on the breathy centerpiece “Baby Be Simple,” sounding as exposed and mysterious as she ever has.

Since his release from prison in 2016, Gucci Mane has worked tirelessly to reengage the fan base he built via his sizable mixtape catalog. The front end of his career is defined by his conquering of Southern street rap during a time that will likely be considered the genre\'s golden age. *Mr. Davis*, Gucci’s third album in 12 months, finds the rapper hitting his stride once again, recording over uniquely bombastic backdrops from longtime collaborators Mike WiLL Made-It and Zaytoven. Featured guests like Rae Sremmurd, Big Sean, and ScHoolboy Q turn in inspired verses, clearly relishing the chance to rap alongside one of their influences.

Sinatra. Vandross. Thugger. Young Thug gets in touch with his inner crooner on this mixtape, touching on R&B, dancehall, even country. There are sublime music beds and acoustic guitar flourishes (“Me Or Us,” “Family Don\'t Matter”)—he’s clearly having fun accessing new levels of expression as guests like Snoop Dogg, Lil Durk, Future, Millie Go Lightly, and Jacquees serve as able foils.

Until a late flurry of percussion arrives, doleful guitar and bass are Solána Rowe’s only accompaniment on opener “Supermodel,” a stinging kiss-off to an adulterous ex. It doesn’t prepare you for the inventively abstract production that follows—disembodied voices haunting the airy trap-soul of “Broken Clocks,” “Anything”’s stuttering video-game sonics—but it instantly establishes the emotive power of her rasping, percussive vocal. Whether she’s feeling empowered by her physicality on the Kendrick Lamar-assisted “Doves in the Wind” or wrestling with insecurity on “Drew Barrymore,” SZA’s songs impact quickly and deeply.

“Jimi Hendrix said you need fantasy,” says Toronto’s Lydia Ainsworth, “to see reality more clearly.” On her sublime second album, Darling of the Afterglow, Ainsworth upholds Hendrix’s wisdom in the best way. Vividly imagined and richly felt, the follow-up to Ainsworth’s Juno-nominated Right from Real (2014) is an album of intimate emotions projected in heightened widescreen, where yearning pop classicism and classical smarts merge with other-worldly synthetic sounds and weird-gothic R&B influences. For Ainsworth, it represents a great leap of confidence from her prodigious debut, whether she’s conjuring the crystalline harmonies and death’s-head rhythms of ‘The Road’, the lush earworm pop of ‘Ricochet’ or the small-hours reverie of ‘WLCM’. Blessed with an extraordinarily supple voice, Ainsworth commits herself fully on all fronts, honouring the words of ‘Afterglow’: “To play it safe is not to play at all.” The haunting cover of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ is a test-case; embracing its vocal challenges live, Ainsworth relished stepping outside her comfort zone. “I usually have to be out of my element to get that spark of inspiration,” she says. The album title itself came to her while she was out of her element, explains Ainsworth, living near LA’s Echo Park - home to the Art Deco statue ‘Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles’ (Queen of the Angels). “Walking around the lake just after sunset at a time when I was desperate for human connection, I found comfort in this statue. She gave me the inspiration for the lyrics to the song. It was as if she was singing them to me.” Pass the message on: Darling of the Afterglow is a bold, beautiful album from a voice ready to be heard.

Born in the bleak isolation of the secluded prairie city of Edmonton, Canada, Homeshake's Peter Sagar worked with friends in a number of local bands before picking up and moving to Montreal in 2011 to begin recording under the Homeshake moniker. Following two self-released cassettes (The Homeshake Tapes and Dynamic Meditation) and two acclaimed full lengths (In The Shower and Midnight Snack), Sagar cracks a window open with his third album for Sinderlyn – Fresh Air. Started immediately following the recording of Midnight Snack, Fresh Air continues Sagar’s exploration of dreamy, downtempo bedroom R&B and draws inspiration from such disparate artists like Sade, The Band, Broadcast, Prince, and Angelo Badalamenti. As the title Fresh Air suggests, Sagar’s songs were created to clear his listeners’ minds of negativity. Full of smokey, laid back love songs and airy productions, Sagar’s decidedly stoned sound is a breath of fresh air.

The L.A. rap collective’s second album of 2017 is a victory lap for their brand of gonzo boasts and unbridled creativity (or, as they put it on “QUEER,” “Spaceship doing donuts/It’s written I’m the POTUS”). Rage and joy go hand-in-hand on songs like “GUMMY,” a tough-as-nails G-funk bruiser, while “JUNKY” is a harrowing tour of the psyche’s dark side. “SWEET,” though, is an effervescent celebration of being at the top of one’s game, with each rapper twisting his voice up “like licorice” over an effortlessly irresistible beat.

Frontman Joe Newman describes his band’s third album as “a great landscape eliciting different emotional reactions.” It’s fabulously treacherous terrain, dotted with unpredictable twists, turns, and rabbit holes. Even the most immediate track—“Deadcrush,” simmering space-funk inspired by deceased objects of desire—is dazzlingly rich in ideas. The band’s ambition reaches towering peaks on “Pleader,” which samples Ely Cathedral’s choir *and* its heating system while snaking through gentle folk, dystopian discord, and symphonic majesty. A remarkable balance of invention and accessibility, *Relaxer* places alt-J in a lineage of great British rock innovators that stretches from Pink Floyd to Radiohead.

BROCKHAMPTON call themselves a boy band, but take that with a grain of salt: With “HEAT,” the L.A. rap collective’s first album of 2017 opens with a grinding beat and the ominous admission, “I hate the way I think/I hate the way it looms.” It’s not all so aggro: “GOLD” is a breezy ode to self-love over a golden hook, while the spacious, springy “BOYS” lets the crew’s rappers show off their range of flows—playful, slinky, menacing, and above all, seductive.