SPEW presents the 12th-20th Best Albums of 2017. (#16 is a tie. This is my world ... and so is #10.)

12.    EMA – Exile in the Outer Ring (City Slang) 

I had this to say when this album came out … https://spewrocks.blogspot.com/search?q=ema

I would still say pretty much the same. 

13.    Kendrick Lamar – Damn (Top Dawg/Interscope)

Hip-hop. I know what I like. It’s impossible not to like Kendrick. Named for the Temptations’ Eddie Kendricks, Lamar is straight outta Compton, section 8 housing, the life. He’s also an artist unafraid, not reluctant to mix genres and sounds or to speak his truth, plainly and poetically. His last, To Pimp a Butterfly, was universally, justifiably acclaimed. Damn is harder, more personal, and just as impressive. ‘Duckworth’ (Lamar’s real last name) is a lyric tour de force of black millennial life. A story too good to be true, but that don’t matter,  because it says what it says so powerfully. 

14.    Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile – Lotta Sea Lice (Matador)

Barnett has, along with a punk-assertive aspect, a droll, laconic side. Vile is all droll, laconic side. Together, they keep it loose, dry and dreamy, and they clearly enjoy each other’s musical company. They stroll into songs, sometimes collaborating, sometimes covering each other, in one instance doing one of Barnett’s wife’s (Jen Cloher) songs. In the end it’s Vile’s sensibility that predominates, but Barnett’s wit gives his zone out gaze a sharper focus. Smoke a bowl, sink into the couch and Lotta Sea Lice just envelops you. 

 15.    Julien Baker – Turn Out the Lights (Matador) 

On her second album, 22 year-old Baker, wrestles with little hurts and big questions, her guitar and piano accompaniment sometimes joined by strings, sometimes stark. I suppose you can find female singer-songwriters archetypes who’ve informed her work, but none of them did time as punk-rock singers. Baker is from Memphis - Christian and Lesbian, and in her beautiful, haunted voice she does her best to make sense of what some would consider contradictions. As she sings on “Claws in Your Back” - “I’m better off learning how to be/Living with demons I’ve/Mistaken for saints/If you keep it between us/I think they’re the same." Hey, what she said. 

16.    Girlpool – Powerplant (Anti) and Girl Ray - Earl Grey (Moshi Moshi)

Cleo and Harmony are L.A. girls, now situated in Philly and Brooklyn. If I were seventeen I’d be pretty sure they had just invented indie-rock, their blend of riot grrrl, folk-rock, and uninhibited, confessional lyrics is that infectious. Girlpool songs sound like two friends riffing on each other, conspiratorial confidences on a leisurely stroll. Musically, they drift from Brit-pop jangle to post-grunge loud-soft-loud motives. Only twenty-eight minutes, bracing, fresh and to the point. 

Girl Ray, on the other hand, are three nineteen year-olds from North London, whose mid-fi, analog radiance channels the melancholy and longing of C-86, the NME collection from the same year, that launched an idiom of bedsit pop. But they are on that wavelength without emulating any particular bands. Instead, primary vocalist Poppy Hankin filters Sandie Shaw through Nico while her bandmates supply surprisingly sophisticated harmonies. Girl Ray’s arrangements span styles and decades, ultimately sounding timeless and fresh. 

17.    Alvvays – Antisocialites (Polyvinyl)

Molly Rankin’s soaring voice comes from a family of Canadian folk heroes (the Rankins), but she and guitarist Alex O’Hanley bonded over mid-Eighties British pop-punk; think C-86 (yes, again), Jesus and Mary Chain, K Records, and later Teenage Fanclub. They write of everyday blahs and daydreams, culminating in “Forget About Life,” a seductive sing-along that praises drinking cheap wine and other quotidian defenses. 

18.    21 Savage and Metro Boomin’ – Without Warning (Epic)

I have four hip-hop records in my top 50. Nice work, white man. Trap music, three of them. I like that Southern sound. I know that there are some good records, too, that I just haven’t found time to check out - by Tyler, the Creator, Vince Staples, and others. Haven’t spent much time with SZA. I regret this. But I’m a rock n’ roll guy first and I’ve had a lot of rock records to absorb and enjoy. Plus, however strong my commitment to ‘new music’ is - by God, I still have to make time to listen to Exile on Main Street every week or so. Sustenance, you know? Do you know the difference between an album and a mixtape? Well, it’s fuzzy. Anyway, Without Warning is a mixtape. Producer Metro Boomin’ brings the horror with spooky, ominous tracks, while 21 Savage and Offset (from Migos) both trade jabs and work in tandem. Their styles contrast, but dovetail; the result being terrifically entertaining. 

19.    Laura Marling – Semper Femina (More Alarming)

Ho hum, another brilliant Laura Marling album. Greek for Always Woman, Semper Femina is indeed an exploration of, well, women’s emotional terrain. More direct, less myth and metaphor than, say, Once I Was an Eagle, Femina is musically a tour de force of Marling’s confident and original mixing of folk, jazz, and (yes) rock strains - “Wild Fire” is partly recasting of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” As an artist there’s not much that eludes Marling; she’s fully realized at a tender age and will likely only get better. As my “another brilliant Laura Marling” comments suggests, this crappy #19 ranking is probably a byproduct of genius fatigue. My stinking problem, not hers. 

20.    Songhoy Blues – Resistance (Fat Possum)

"We grew up listening to old music by the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and John Lee Hooker. But our main diet was hip hop and R&B. We can't stay in the traditional aesthetic of our grandparents; that was another time. Besides, we love electric guitars too much” … thus spake Songhoy Blues Garba Touré. They may be from Mali, but this isn’t Starbuck’s idea of ‘world music.’ I’ve heard their music described as ‘desert blues,’ and that’s catchy, as well as capturing some of the diaspora spirit of their music. The members of Songhoy are from northern Mali, overrun by jihadists, who outlawed a buncha shit, including … music. So, they fled home (Diré) for Bamako, the south’s capital. There’s a fun cameo from Iggy Pop, but it wasn’t necessary to drive home the idea that these guys flat out rock. Their synthesis of rock, hip hop and Mali guitar music (Tinariwen are an example - the style is hypnotic, serpentine, dervish guitar circles) is personal and vibrant, and proof Resistance can be a joy.