SPEW crowns the 41st - 50th best Albums of 2017. Wowzers!

Here it is, ladies and gents and humans of all genders and description! Your BEST ALBUMS OF 2017. *

Okay, not really. It's 41-50. Hey, pretty damn good records. It's a competitive world. 

41.   Chain and the Gang – The Best of Crime Rock (In the Red)

42.   Protomartyr – Relatives in Descent (Domino)

43.   Vivienne – STUD (Objects Ltd.)

44.   Flamin’ Groovies – Fantastic Plastic (Severn)

45.   Kyle Craft – Girl Crazy (Sub Pop)

46.   Bully - Losing  (Sub Pop)

47.   Idles – Brutalism (Balley)

48.   Lee Ranaldo – ElectricTrim (Mute)

49.   James Elkington – Wintres Woma (Paradise of Bachelors)

50.   Filthy Friends – Invitation (Kill Rock Stars)

Let's have a look:

Ian Svenious has been a savvy mainstay of Ameri-indie in the post-hardcore era (you know, like, the last thirty years), with groups like Nation of Ulysses, Make-Up (the sanctuary meets resistance) and the Scene Creamers. The Best of Hard Crime is actually a sort-of best-of, but it has a fresh, stripped down garage-rock sound that's cohesive as an album. Chain and the Gang present consumer dialectics to make Walter Benjamin or Thorsten Veblen proud. Speaking of post-hardcore, Protomartyr are an extension of the Gang of Four, early Mekons and the more instrumentally dense aspects of the Fall. Where Svenonius has a precise critique, frontman Joe Casey lends Protomartyr a more muddled, contemporary, apocalyptic sensibility. Protomartyr’s material on Relatives in Descent is thorny sometimes, but rewards repeated listens, as the complex stories and guitar digressions come into focus. 

I’m just a cisgendered farm boy, so my attempts to ascertain all of the gender complexities of the young artist called Vivienne have come up a cropper. But it’s okay. I think he’s a dude who wants to be a girl. if I’m wrong I’ll do time in politically correct purgatory. Vivienne’s urgent, raw songs are about … well, gender, and sexuality, and self-definition in the relationship jungle of sexual freedom. Hey, I’m all for it. I’m also for Vivienne’s vacillations between beauty and horror, gentle guitar oscillations and electronic threnody. Yeah, it’s cool. And Vivienne’s (keepin’ it pronoun free) is still in college, and began work on STUD at seventeen. Them Brits is advanced. Whoooo. 

In contrast, I offer you the Flamin’ Groovies. Fantastic Plastic is their first studio record in a gazillion years. At the time of this recording the band included mainstays like Cyril Jordan on guitar, bassist George Alexander (who has since semi-retired), and Chris Wilson, the singer-guitarist who took over for Roy Loney in, …. cough … 1972. It’s not a great record, but it’s a worthy catalog addition to a great band’s history, with just enough killer tunes to make it all a sweet thing. 

Kyle Craft’s The Dolls of Highland was a mind-blowing debut, equal parts singer-songwriter (70s style) songbook moves and glam-rock (Hunky Dory meets Honky Chateau). Audacious and undeniable. Girl Crazy is a collection of covers written or popularized by female artists that Craft knocked off in-between sessions for his second ‘real’ album. Deeply felt, sometimes chancy, sometimes reverent versions of some pretty great songs - refreshing and sweetly obsessive. Craft records for Sub Pop, as does Bully. Their second album Losing is a dirtier, tighter version of their debut. Bully isn’t reinventing anything, but they are taking what bands like Hole and Babes in Toyland did and personalizing within the genre. Alicia Bognanno has it both ways as tough chick and fetching pop singer, and the dues she paid working with producer/engineer Steve Albini are apparent in her vision of the band’s sound on record. Britain’s Idles are another band that works a post-punk motherlode, this one mined first by the Sex Pistols and the Fall. For more of my take on the Idles check out this review of Brutalism - https://spewrocks.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-death-and-future-of-punk-pt-37-idles.html

Lee Ranaldo played guitar with this outfit called Sonic Youth. You may have heard of them. With songs co-written with novelist Jonathan Lethem, and the musical support of Steve Shelley, Kid Millions, Nels Cline, and Sharon Van Etten,  Ranaldo makes Electric Trim a meditative travelog of a record, miles from the de rigueur dissonance of Sonic Youth. No one can accuse him of being in a rut or resting on his laurels. 

A journeyman in his late forties, whose been a hired gun with artists like Richard Thompson, Jeff Tweedy, and Steve Gunn, James Elkington delivers his first solo record, Wintres Woma. Deft, varied, textured arrangements frame first-rate fingerpicked guitar and sharp songs, Elkington evoking the best of early British neo-folk from Nick Drake to, in particular, Bert Jansch. It’s a quietly exquisite set, and lot better than the damn 48th position this nitwit writer gives it. 

Ah, and last … we have Filthy Friends. A  pretty low-key release considering the band’s lineage. But then again, what constitutes fanfare in 2017? It’s all a bit of throw it and see what sticks, innit? Anyway, the album is Invitation, and it's the first offering from Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney), Scott McCaughey (R.E.M., Baseball Project), Kurt Bloch (Fastbacks), and Linda Pitmon (Miracle 3). Something like that. It’s a treat to hear Tucker in a slightly more conventional rock band setting (bass player? sure!), fun to hear Pete Buck just churning out the rhythm and riffage - trademark Buck stuff outside his most familiar context. The sound is restrained verite, tantamount to live performance; and while it’s musical and rocking the restraint is excessive at times. It would be nice to hear these Filthy Friends a bit further off their leash. Still, a promising start. An Invitation if you will. 

* - Look for updates, corrections, and marvelous new photo illustrations - coming soon!