Top 10 albums of 2017

Various artists covering Tegan and Sara - The Con X: Covers
Everyone's fave digital producer Jay Gabler (no? Just me?) pointed out to me that despite arguably being one of the most important bands of the past 20 years, when's the last time you heard a Tegan and Sara song covered? (If you immediately raised your hand to say "The White Stripes covered Walking With A Ghost!" then I like you, but my rhetorical question stands.) It's immensely gratifying to hear their canon-worthy 2007 album embraced with such love and care by an amazing roster of artists.

Dua Lipa - Dua Lipa
Lipa's husky, powerful voice careens through an album full of pop anthems in a vein somewhere near Sia and Rihanna. The young British singer and songwriter got her start covering songs on YouTube, and has emerged as a go-to for those who love their pop music with a little spunk, generous melancholy, and distinctive boldness. If you haven't seen the music video for "New Rules" yet, you're really missing out.

Feist - Pleasure
Feist released Metals -- a graceful, supple, assured masterpiece -- in the fall of 2011: the start of my junior year of high school. It stuck through two years of high school, three years of college, and a year of young adulthood. And then Pleasure -- delicate, cock-eyed, roguish -- was released this past spring. I basically became my whole entire person between Feist albums. I could be projecting. But that's what Pleasure sounds like.

Lorde - Melodrama
I think we're all exceedingly lucky that Lorde didn't just repeat the successes of her runaway Pure Heroine. We're lucky to have been spared yet another "being famous is hard" album from a breakout young pop star, overloaded with self-obsession and lacking in true perspective. What we have instead is a true work of art, heavy with feeling and saturated with ingenuitive lyricism. The year of our Lorde, indeed.

Mura Masa - Mura Masa
We're waist-deep in this trend of producers-as-supercool-superstars. However you might feel about aggressive trendiness, this young Brit knocks it out of the park with a world-class sense of rhythm and smart collaborations with the likes of Bonzai, NAO, and Christine and the Queens.

Thomas Abban - A Sheik's Legacy
He's an exceedingly gifted guitar player and he can write songs on par with all those rock bands from the 70's that you insist are the best music of all time. That's what you've probably heard. But really he's even better than that, and he deserves the heaps and heaps of praise he's received since seizing the attention of the Twin Cities music scene just a short time ago. Expect great things.

The xx - I See You
For a band that seemed ready to fall asleep at the wheel of their own hype machine, Romy, Oliver, and Jamie sure had one great album in them. Leaning hard into mainstream sampling and production techniques, the enigmatic trio delivered a cathartic record about reunion, reconciliation, and rediscovered love.

Jay-Z - 4:44
Let's take a moment to appreciate just how unusual this dead-simple album is: one man, his words, ten tracks, and all the beats produced by famed Chicago producer No I.D. It's an admirable and stunningly effective reclamation of the form -- no frills, undeniably old-school, but with a Jay who's very much present in the year 2017.

Elliot Moss - Boomerang
The lead single, "Without The Lights," made my list of top 10 songs last year, and the rest of the EP matches it for its mastery of musical haze. If you need something that feels truly different in your catalog, it's not too late to discover Moss.

Ian Chang - Spiritual Leader
Ian Chang, who's been playing on tour with Son Lux for some years now, has a devoted following from the online drumming community. His expressive touch and his ear for compelling and unique combinations of sampled sound make for a surprising and rewarding EP.

Top 10 songs of 2017

Alice Merton - "No Roots"
You haven't heard a bassline this good since "Psycho Killer." Come to think of it, you haven't heard a synth solo this fire since Talking Heads, either.

Kesha - "Finding You"
The best song from a triumphant -- but, even to this diehard, uneven -- album sees Kesha in peak songwriting and singing form. Everything about it ebbs and flows, from the quavering of her voice to the back-and-forth between power chords and intricate acoustic fingering on the guitars.

Kehlani - "Keep On"
SweetSexySavage wasn't much of an album, especially for an artist who broke onto the national stage with music so full of feeling and possessed of a need to exist. But Kehlani, like the rest of us, has people in her life to whom she just won't give the time of day. And that's how we get "Keep On," an opening track so overflowing with swagger it puts most of 2017 music to shame.

Maty Noyes - "Say It To My Face"
Her Noyes Complaint EP piqued my interest at the very end of 2016, and it seems the reign of yet another pop queen -- in what's shaping up to be a kind of mini golden age for them -- may be upon us.

Mura Masa - "Second 2 None (feat. Christine and the Queens)"
If I close my eyes and hold my breath, this song makes me forget wherever I am. An entire world in four and a half minutes.

Noga Erez - "Pity"
My favorite thing to do with this song is to try to listen to every drum individually. Eventually I lose track because I get caught up in the stomach-shifting swell of claps, snares, and synth hooks. It's just so cool every time.

Sims - "Time Don't Fear Me Back"
Sims left me floored with More Than Ever in late 2016, and he seems to be riding a wave of productivity of late. His sound is expanding and mutating month to month, and I'm glad to be along for the ride. More Sims always, please.

St. Vincent - "Los Ageless"
I've never said "wow" upon hearing any St. Vincent song the first time; they grow and settle within me. As opposed to "Los Ageless," which clocks you in the jaw with a bombastic electronic drum kit and a sneering guitar hook. A career highlight for the reliably inventive Annie Clark.

Sylvan Esso - "Kick Jump Twist"
The indie pop duo love mining the tension between Amelia Meath's delicate vocal tics and Nick Sanborn's increasingly aggressive bleeps and bloops for all its worth. It works spectacularly on nearly all of What Now, but especially so on this slow-build banger.

The xx - "I Dare You"
This song would justify the creation of a "Best Song That Sounds Like The End Credits To A Movie" category at the Grammys, if only for this one year so it could win.

The Current Hosts' and Staffers' Top 89 of 2017

Brett Baldwin • Bill DeVille • Jay Gabler • Jade • Cecilia Johnson • Lindsay Kimball • Mary Lucia • Jim McGuinn • Sean McPherson • Shelley Miller • Mike Novitzki • Brian Oake • Anna Reed • Jill Riley • Nate Ryan • Derrick Stevens • Andrea Swensson • Luke Taylor • Mark Wheat • Mac Wilson • Jesse Wiza

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