Skip to main content

SPEW pronounces the 21st-30th best albums of 2017. Shazam!

Image
(Steven J Wilson)

21.    Wire – Silver/Lead (Pink Flag)
          Wire are one of my staples, consistent and consistently surprising: https://spewrocks.blogspot.com/search?q=wire




22.    John Murry – A Short History of Decay (TV)
         And then I wrote … https://spewrocks.blogspot.com/search?q=john+murry


23.    Whiffs – Take a Whiff (High Dive)
          I liked it then https://spewrocks.blogspot.com/search?q=whiffs … I like it now. 


24.    Aldous Harding – Party (4AD)
Not that anyone asked, but if Aldous Harding reminds me of any of her contemporaries, it’s Cate LeBon. They both have this striking ability to swing from the confidential to the bel canto stentorian more than once over the course of an album. Harding’s songs, mostly accompanied by her guitar and piano, are koan-like without being obscure. Harding uses space deftly, yet her spare arrangements sound full, partly because her voice is so personal and pre-possessing. I’ve seen Party described as everything from alt-country (she’s from New Zealand) to Goth. And I guess it’s all true, Harding’s songs and performances are declarative without being rigidly defining; she makes room for you in these songs - It’s a skill, people. 

25.    Low Cut Connie – Dirty Pictures 1 (Contender)
Were the cake as good as its ingredients Low Cut Connie would be the saviors of rock n’ roll. Not quite, their composite of Stones, Jerry Lee, and ‘Mats only occasionally lives up to its lineage. But close gets a cigar because these Philly believers are pretty damn good. On this, their fourth album, Low Cut Connie dig deeper, get more soulful, and even show a working class embattled patriotism, providing roadhouse kicks and something almost like vision. 
26.    Kevin Morby – City Music (Dead Oceans)
Kansas City kid, Kevin Morby moved to New York right after he got his GED. With Cassie Ramone from the Vivian Girls he formed the Babies, a refreshingly, unaffected rock band that released two albums. Going solo in 2013, City Music is his fourth solo record, and his best. Recorded with his live band it’s a compelling mixture of introspection and sinewy rock that Lou Reed would have enjoyed for its sly intelligence. 


27.   Courtneys - II (Flying Nun)
These three women sound like a Flying Nun band, veering between power pop and buzzing shoegaze, complete with breathy female vocals floating on the band’s bed of distorted, jangly guitars. A Vancouver band recording for the New Zealand label, the Courtneys measured pop aggression is more market friendly than most of the Nun stable because the Courtneys drive the groove home. Singer and drummer Jen Payne sings about infatuation and heartbreak and the usual ‘girl group’ emotional menu, but the band powers these songs well beyond twee. 

28.    Endless Boogie – Vibe Killer (No Quarter)
The concept almost seems like a joke. Endless Boogie = Blues Hammer. Ha ha ha. But these guys, who all started jamming at the record store in Brooklyn (can’t remember which one), take the most searing parts of Canned Heat’s “Endless Boogie” and the Stones’ “Midnight Rambler” (the sped up part, all wailing harp and guitars) and jam on their facsimiles ad infinitum. You’d be excused for thinking that sounds dull. It’s actually strangely mesmerizing. This is their third album, featuring the closest thing to tunes they’ve arrived at yet, without sacrificing the drone-buzz that stoner rocks you into nirvana. 


29.    JD McPherson – Undivided Heart and Soul (New West)
I gave JD’s first two records a little more respect. His first was a co-number one, his second a top ten record for Reverberations, my older blog. This is a really good record, good writing, inspired performance, and maturity that occasionally slides into mannerism. Such are the perils of excellence, if this were the first thing I ever heard by McPherson I’d think it was amazing. And it kinda is. 

30.    Joan Shelley – s/t (No Quarter)

When an artist goes the self-titled route for a fifth album it suggests either a lack of inspiration or a belief they’ve done definitive work. It’s safe to say that the latter applies in the case of Joan Shelley. Jeff Tweedy’s attentive, but unobtrusive production focuses on Shelley’s guitar playing and riveting vocals. Hers is a voice that’s ice and fire, a Yankee emotional analog to the incomparable Sandy Denny, with a similar emotional range, her songs expressing romantic isolation, romantic gratitude, and most points in between.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

The people have spoken.

10. Alan Vega - It (Fader) ... SPEW'S Top 10 countdown.

(Steven J Wilson)
If you know who Alan Vega is we can move along.  Alan Vega with one of his installations. But maybe some of you don’t.  Alan Vega was part rockabilly hiccup, part electronic futurist. He was a poetic minimalist. Whether as musician, either with his partner Martin Rev in the band Suicide or solo, or as visual artist (his gallery shows were infrequent, but legendary), Vega was uncompromising and unwilling to play the game. He was interested in energy, in process, not in creating a portfolio. One romanticizes artists at one's peril, but Alan Vega didn't have time for bullshit, and his work shows it.  Alan Vega died in 2016; he was seventy-eight years old. Much of his life he’d been a bit cat and mouse about his age, not wanting to let his Seventies “punk” peers at Max's and CBGB's know he was fifteen years older than them. He needn’t have worried. Nothing dated Alan Vega.  His posthumous swan song It i(the back half of a New York 'exit...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keene Kovers

(Steven J Wilson)
I don’t get out much anymore. I try. Hell, I’m a club crawler for a guy my age. But still, measured against my knock’em-back youth. And there’s so much shit on Netflix.   So no, I didn’t make it to Knuckleheads to see Matthew Sweet and Tommy Keene, even though I meant to. I about had my kid talked in to it, but he dropped out because of “homework,” Ya think? But I did listen to music by those guys preparatory to (not) seeing them. In the process I finally dove in to a collection of Tommy Keene’s that I’d never really explored. It’s called Excitement at Your Feet, a reference to the Who’s “See Me, Feel Me.” Just in case you thought it was a collection of songs about foot fetishism. There’s even a Who song on here - “Much too Much,” which is pretty ace. It’s all pretty ace.   A video of that Television cut, "Guiding Light." Some songs are better suited to Tommy’s plaintive aggro than others. I’m not thrilled with his take on “The Puppet” by Echo and the Bunnymen...
Post a Comment
Read more

1. July 30, 2017, Jane Weaver, Justin Bieber, Starcrawler

(Steven J Wilson)
This week I’ve been sampling a lot of music. Sampling in the old school sense, that is.   Jane Weaver is a British artist who’s been around in one group or form or whatever for over twenty years. Her recent solo work has become beloved of the psych-folk crowd, the same people I suspect who get giddy over Joanna Newsom, Meg Baird, and whatever. Her new album is World Kosmology . Whoo, there’s a title that any self-respecting punk in 1997 would have called pretentious twaddle. But these are more generous and inclusive times for fans of outsider music. Boris fans may be Margo Price fans may be Kendrick Lamar fans. Weaver combines trippy analog synths, motorik beats (4/4 time, but rigidly mechanical, favored by Krautrockers), chiming electric and strumming acoustic guitars and her own ethereal vocals. It all works because the songwriting is fetching. Give it a chance and it charms. It probably sounds great fucked up on pot, although I haven’t tried that yet.   I hea...
Post a Comment
Read more