Monday 4 December 2017

My Top 17 Albums of 2017... #17

Is that enough 17s for you?

As is customary in December, I feel honour-bound to count down my favourite records of the year. And what a year it's been. Where I struggled to fill a Top Ten in 2016, I could easily go 20 this year... but 17 seemed like a good place to stop.

As it also customary at this time of year, I'm already discovering new records that may take the place of albums in this list after a few more listens (Fred Thomas, Jeff Rosenstock, Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile), but the cut-off date has to be December 1st... so I'll write about the latecomers next year.

However, 17 posts between now and the end of the December would be a ball-breaker if I waffled as much as I usually do in these reviews... so this year I'm limiting myself to 17 words per album (plus some choice lyrical extracts). For those of you with short attention spans, that will surely prove a blessing...


17. Father John Misty - Pure Comedy

60% genius, 40% pretentious 6th form bollocks...better with choruses. Weirdly, the highlight is 13 minutes long!

More here.
These L.A. phonies and their bullshit bands
That sound like dollar signs and Amy Grant
So reads the pull quote from my last cover piece
Entitled "The Oldest Man in Folk Rock Speaks”
You can hear it all over the airwaves
The manufactured gasp of the final days
Someone should tell them ‘bout the time that they don’t have
To praise the glorious future and the hopeless past



Next... the monster snoozes.


11 comments:

  1. I think you are more forgiving than I am, as I've hardly been able to find ten albums I love this year, let alone 17. Still some very good songs though, with FJM's Ballad of the Dying Man one of my favorites of 2017. I'll have to give Leaving LA another chance

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    Replies
    1. Maybe I'm just being more charitable this year. The Top 10 are more golden - these lower reaches are flawed gems.

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  2. He annoys me intensley. if he was made of chocolate he would eat himself
    17 songs in 17 words is an interesting challenge

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    Replies
    1. My dad used to use that expression, although he would say, "he thinks she's chocolate and everybody wants a lick"... which I always found odd as who licks chocolate?

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  3. He's some kind of a songwriting genius, but as Charity Chic suggests, a bit of an arse.
    (Please note that this comment also contains 17 words!)

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    Replies
    1. You set the bar high, Swede - all your comments to this feature now require exactly 17 words. (See what I did there?)

      As for FJM - exactly: the same could be said for many of the artists I like though...

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  4. I tried with this album. I really tried.
    Ballad Of A Dying Man was and is one of the best tracks of the year, but the "charms" of the rest of the album eluded me.
    I'm still in the position of placing a much, much higher percentage against the "pretentious" tag.

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    Replies
    1. I have a higher tolerance for musical arseholes than most.

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    2. I have a higher tolerance for musical arseholes than most.

      Delete
  5. Gonna be a bumper crop of posts this month, I'm sure. Love the countdowns. I know we share at least one fave that's going to show up here. In fact, it may even be your No. 1. I know it was for a while there, but that was quite a few months ago now. May have been eclipsed.

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