#weirdwariii2017eoy

[weirdwariii]

My Top 20 Albums of 2017 Part 2: 10 - 1

10. Alvvays - Antisocialites: What a delightful album. Like, I should just leave it at that, because I’m not sure what else I want to say about it. This is just the kind of indie pop-rock album that felt plentiful and unavoidable 10 years ago, but doesn’t show up as much anymore. But I don’t think its noteworthy just because it’s filling a niche. It’s just an effortlessly tight album. It sounds good, the vocals are great, the songs are amazing. There’s hints of some interesting inspirations sprinkled throughout (someone was listening to Stereolab…), and I just can’t get enough of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the longrun, this album has some more longevity than most of the other albums on this list.

9. Thundercat - Drunk: Let me start here: I picked up this album on vinyl this year, and it’s one of the coolest looking packages to come out this year; great cover art, lots of art inside, and...the album spread across three 10” discs. To get through the album on vinyl you need the steadfastness to flip three different discs after each side, and to put away each disc and replace it with the next at least twice. That’s a lot of commitment for any album, and the very thought of listening to this album on vinyl exhausts me (considering that my turntable is located on the opposite side of the room from my couch). With that said, I’m pleased to announce that I love this album, despite its presentation. I feel like this is the third year in a row that Thundercat has felt like an important part of important music (see also: To Pimp a Butterfly, You’re Dead! and The Epic), and its good to see that its own name on the cover of his work this year. This is an album that feels uniquely his, and somehow makes a song about watching anime in Japan seem as much of an artistic accomplishment as making the best yacht rock song in 30 years with the help of Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins. The entire album is an equal parts quirky and soulful trip and hints that future albums could be even quirkier and more soulful. Just, like, listen to it digitally.

8. Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever - French Press EP: So what does this say: For a 6-song EP, these songs must be exceptional if it was better than all those other albums? Or that, as an EP, there’s less of a chance to be bored with it by the end? Well, for what it's worth, this is the only EP on the list, so it clearly did something right. Honestly, if this was at LP length and was 10 songs at the same quality as the 6 presented here, this would probably rank even higher. As is, this is just a breezy and effortless set of indie rock songs from a new band that sounds like they’ve been around 10 years longer than they really have. There isn’t a moment that goes to waste, and I’m always left wanting more at the end - a quality that even some of my favorite albums this year didn’t have. I sincerely hope there’s a full length on the horizon, and that it makes good on the promises hinted at here.

7. Oh Sees - Orc: Sometimes there’s just the perfect album at the perfect time. Maybe its a band that you’re finally getting into as they put out a new album, or maybe it's an album that just seems to mesh with the kind of music you’ve been into lately. Maybe it's an album that just resonates with how you’re feeling in that moment.  Sometimes it's all of the above, as was the case here. I finally got into Thee Oh Sees last year, absorbing their two albums in my quest for more music that was in the same vein as Ty Segall’s Emotional Mugger. Between these albums, and King Gizzard’s 2017 output (we’ll come back to that), I was 100% on board the fuzzed out psych-garage-punk bandwagon, and that's when this album fell into my lap. I just love everything about this album. It’s raw, it’s weird, it’s loud, it has the most epic drum solo I’ve heard all year on it. My garage-rock sensibilities were spoiled silly this year, and this album played a huge part in that.

6. Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life: I read a review earlier this year for this album, and I’m kind of paraphrasing from memory, but it essentially said: “In a trying year like 2017, you’d think a band like Japandroids would have more to say on that, rather than making more fun punk music.” And that literally made me love the album even more. The best response to the darkness of our world, as it turns out, was to remind you of what it looks when you make it to the light at the end of the tunnel. The band doesn’t necessarily do anything they haven’t done before - there are few risks or moments that would sound completely out of place on an earlier album. But they really are great fucking songs. The title track is, hands down, the best song that was released this year. Yeah, maybe this didn’t call our orange meat puppet a buffoon or anything, but it sure as hell will be playing on my headphones on the day that we wave goodbye.

5. Washed Out - Mister Mellow: As we approached the end of 2016 and with the mostly unknown, but likely dark, void of 2017 looming ahead, I vowed to make art more important in my life. It needed to be an escape just as much as a response. And when I felt overwhelmed by the news cycle, or when the inspiration I needed just wasn’t there, Mister Mellow was. Between the “visual album” aspect of this project (that I strongly urge you to check out) and the music itself, it completely fit in with my aesthetic as artist and never failed in giving me a little pep talk. It's not a long album, nor is it an especially deep one. But in terms of style and just being a pool of strangeness to get lost in, this album never let me down. It might not be an explicit reaction to 2017 in itself, but it definitely aided me in creating my own.

4.Tyler the Creator - Flower Boy (or probably, Scum Fuck Flower Boy): The genesis of Odd Future was a weird time for me as an aging fan of music. On one hand, here was this collective of talented young rappers churning out a near-constant stream of albums for free - a concept that was novel and exciting to follow. On the other, between fast-paced Twitter stream-of-thought and community in-jokes, Odd Future definitely felt like the exact moment that I felt like I was an old man who didn’t get what the kids were listening to. And through that, I followed Tyler from afar. He’s a funny guy who you’ve been able to watch mature, year by year, to someone who feels very much like a spokesperson for a generation (am I crazy for thinking this??). This album feels like his most personal, self-aware, and world-aware album in his career, and there’s a quality in the production and the songs worthy of that awareness.  I recognize the lack of hip hop music in my list this year, and that’s a very fair observation. My only excuse (and it is just an excuse) is that Flower Boy was just that hard to beat, for me.  I listened to this album a lot this year, and I found myself relating to some of Tyler’s own personal revelations.  

3. Father John Misty - Pure Comedy: Earlier this year, speaking to a friend of mine about this album, I was voicing my displeasure: “The album is just far too long and says far too much. I just feel like I’ll never have the energy to slog through the whole damn thing.” But, again, 2017. The world needed protest music, or at the very least, music that seemed to understand the world we now lived in. So I slogged through Pure Comedy and...it wasn’t a slog at all. Okay, sure. It’s long. It takes its time. But Josh Tillman GETS it. Its a bad, and darkly amusing, world out there, and he’s here to let loose about it. The album only got better through the year, with every single listen. Even the 13 minute “Leaving LA” centerpiece feels wholey essential, acting as almost an origin story for FJM as much as it's a state-of-the-union on Josh’s personal life. This album didn’t just grow on me this year, it came to feel absolutely essential.

2. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Flying Microtonal Banana, Murder of the Universe, Sketches of Brunswick East, Polygondwanaland: Not only did it not seem right to pick just one album of the 4 (at the time of my writing this) albums released by KG&TLW this year, but it felt like there was a larger picture here that needed to be recognized. King Gizzard promised 5 albums this year, and of the 4 we got, not a single one disappointed. Not a single one felt like a weak link to me. Not a single one felt like a misstep or seemed inessential. In a year where albums from some of my favorite bands bounced off of me after a listen or two (sorry, Grizzly Bear), this one band somehow made 4 albums that I cared about and kept coming back to. Flying Microtonal Banana and Murder of the Universe were both instantly loveable. They feel right into the same psych-rock wormhole that Oh Sees had me traveling through - especially the latter, with its story-driven sections and spoken words just hit the spot in every way possible. Sketches didn’t resonate with me at first, admittedly, perhaps because of its vast difference in sound from Murder - but I came around on it quickly, and its jazz-leaning pop would actually become the second most listened to of the 4 albums (with Murder being 1st). Polygondwanaland, finally, felt like a singles compilation - a complete set of tracks that, while feeling a little disconnected from each other thematically, shows off everything the band is capable of as well as hinting at what could be on the horizon. I honestly can’t say enough good things about this band, nor can I recall the last time that a band’s entire aesthetic just resonated with me so much. And to bring such a great quantity of music (with equal amount quality) to the table was just...perfect.  Or, y’know, close to perfect. Because these albums are only #2 on the list.

1.  Priests - Nothing Feels Natural: Nothing Feels Natural was one of the first (if not the actual first) albums I fell in love with in 2017, and it felt like the album that all others would be measured against. And, for the most part, this album always felt like the best. There were times when other albums felt more important in a moment (Murder of the Universe and Flower Boy both immediately come to mind), but when the buzz wore off a little, I was always happy to come back to Nothing Feels Natural. Here, Priests nail both a cohesive sound, yet its done through an assortment of genres. The surf-rock of “JJ” (another contender for year’s best song), the spoken word punk of “No Big Bang” and the new wave of “Suck” all seem to be at contrast with each other on paper, but the entire album flows together effortlessly. The band is tight as hell, and for as much as I want to call them “punk” there just isn’t a lot of the discordant noise I’d associate with that label on this album. There’s a Spoon-esque attention to production on this album - everything feels planned and well thought-out and there’s barely any wasted moments. Musically, I think the album holds its own against almost any other that I’ve listened to this year. Yet, I don’t even think its the music that even puts it here in the top spot - that’d be the lyrics. You’re probably as sick of hearing about the influence 2017’s politics had on music as I am sick of writing about it, so I’ll try and condense it a little...but you get the idea. For songs written prior to the year, they certainly hit all the right spots for the issues that mattered in 2017: Identity. Feminism. Consumerism. Culture. Even if it would’ve been the right album at any time, it still felt especially poignant this year, and the fact that it sounds so great only propelled it the very top.

And that’s it. That was my favorite music of this year. All done. The end. Onwards to whatever black hole of despair 2018 will be.

[weirdwariii]

2017: Good Albums Not on the BEST OF THE YEAR List

Every year when I sit down to make some sort of End of Year music list, I’m never really sure what seems like a good cut off point. I remember once, in my Live Journal days (early 2000s?) I did a Top 50 list one year. And, like, that was kind of dumb. What really differentiates #43 from #42 when they’re all just my opinions (and there’s a good chance that I haven’t listened to whatever #11 through #50 were since then anyways)?

20 or 25 usually seems like a pretty ideal goal. A few years ago, maybe 2013, I did a Top 10 list only because I hadn’t listened to much music that year. Or hated most of what I had listened to, I don’t remember.

Anyways, I had a shortlist of, maybe, 40 albums that I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on this year, and I’ve whittled that down to a Top 20 list, which I’ll slowly dole out for the rest of the month. In the meantime, here are a few of the albums that didn’t make the cut - albums I liked a lot, but just happened to be beat out by albums I liked more.

Bjork - Utopia: A gorgeous album that did a lot to rehab the reputation of the flute after Arcade Fire sullied it earlier this year. If I had more time to absorb this album, it prolly would’ve made the Top 20.

Foxygen - Hang: I feel like I was one of the of the very few people who liked their last album a lot. Even so, this album is pretty weird. Like...indie-pop showtunes? It grew on me a LOT this year, and it continues to grow on me.

Daniele Luppi and Parquet Courts - Milano/A.Savage - Thawing Dawn: Parquet Courts are, easily, one of my favorite bands of the last few years. I ranked Sunbathing Animals as my Album of the Year in 2014 and last year’s Human Performance was #2. And while I liked both of these PC-related projects quite a bit, neither felt as essential as the last two studio albums. That said, I’m very excited about the recent news of a new PC album early next year.

Beck - Colors: I’ve read some negative pieces on this album, but I didn’t think it was too bad. Even if, at times, it felt like Beck was sitting on a chair backwards so that he could rap with the kids, he’s still a pretty good songwriter and it’s always nice to see established artists experimenting. And I don’t care what anyone says, “Wow” is a great song.

Kaityn Aurelia Smith - The Kid: This is a really cool album, and one that I wish I found time to listen to more. This was, probably #21 on my list, if such a thing existed. It’s simultaneously organic and synthetic sounding and there really wasn’t any other album this year that sounded quite like it.

Death From Above - Outrage! Is Now: I wasn’t too thrilled with the last DFA album, their comeback, but this felt like the band making good on a reason for coming back after all those years.

Avey Tare - Eucalyptus: A very good album that recalls both early Animal Collective and something uniquely Avey’s. I know everyone was feeling Deakin’s solo album this year, but I think this one might have been better.

Rozwell Kid - Precious Art: I’ve been following RK since their first album, and I love seeing them get more attention. This album almost sounds like a maturation for the band, but they also sing about boogers, so maybe not. Just fun and witty power pop, the kind that feels harder to come by these days.

Phoenix - Ti Amo: I liked this album quite a bit, though I had it in my head that it was so much better than Bankrupt! because Bankrupt! wasn’t good. But then I went back and listened to Bankrupt! and it was better than I remembered. Oops. Well, still Ti Amo is still probably better than Bankrupt!

[weirdwariii]

My Top 20 Albums of 2017, Part 1: 20-11

Alright, let’s do it. 20 albums that I liked more than the rest of this year’s albums. Some are easy to stand behind because they’re just genuinely and technically great, but there are a few albums that just resonated with me a lot - seemingly in ways that didn’t with others? But, whatever, it’s my list and I’ll forget about all of these albums a few weeks into 2018 when I’m just listening to If You’re Feeling Sinister ten times a day.

20. Black Mass - World Eater:  In what will likely be a recurring theme as I talk about albums that were important to me this year, it was hard not to weigh any art (music or otherwise) against the flaming circus-tent of a year it's been for anyone who wasn’t an old white male billionaire. And while I didn’t always seek out music that seemed to directly react to the state of the world, some albums just seemed to fill that role naturally. In any other year, I probably would’ve embraced World Eater’s dark and noisy aesthetic as a good counterpoint to all the lighter power pop I consumed, but this year, World Eater felt more like necessary noise in drowning out the barrage of darkness in our newsfeeds. For an album without any actual intelligible words or lyrics, it's hard to say just how much of a reaction World Eater is to 2017, but it still managed to fill that role perfectly.

19.  Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors: It’s like listening to your best friend talk about his recent breakup. And you love your best friend, and he tells a really good story. And in the moment you’re thinking “Man, that sounds like it was really hard.” But later on, after he left your house and your mulling it over, you think: “She might have been too good for him.” Look, I don’t know what happened between Amber and Dave, and I’m not supposed to know either - that’s their business.  But they made some of my favorite albums together, and this album - the first without Amber - simultaneously feels both incomplete and like an evolution in the sound of Dirty Projectors. The last thing I wanted was to feel like I was between two of my friends as they broke up, but at least the fallout sounded beautiful.

18.  Los Campesinos - Sick Scenes: What year did Hold On Now, Youngster… come out? Oh, 2008. Wow, seems surreal it's been almost 10 years, and like, 4...5...6 EPs and LPs since then? I gotta admit, I fell off the wagon for a while. It wasn’t you, Los Campesinos, it was me. But, man, am I glad that I checked back in this year. I dunno what happened. Maybe you were fucking killing it the whole time and I wasn’t paying attention, or maybe I just happened to check back when you made exactly the album I was hoping I’d get a few years/LPs ago. Still twee. Still snarky. Still angsty. It’s the bitter version of Belle & Sebastian we needed right about now.

17. Protomartyr - Relatives in Descent: There’s a lot of archaic sounding rock music anymore, right? I still like it, but to stand out in 2017, a good rock album needs to have something special to say. This album, and the band’s Joe Casey, has a lot to say. It’s hard to describe the band’s sound, and I mean that in the best way possible. The Fall’s chatty lyrics and punk sound is a good starting point, maybe a dash of Titus Andronicus (or maybe I just listened to TA a lot this year, and they were always on my mind when I listened to Protomartyr?). This year’s album by Priests actually felt akin to this album, and vice versa (and we’ll talk about that album more later…). But this album felt wholly original, political, socially aware and personal in a year where all of those things mattered more than usual, and we were all better for it.

16. Ariel Pink - Dedicated to Bobby Jameson: More than ten years after having discovered Ariel Pink, I still feel like there’s no artist or band that sounds like him. His honest-to-goodness songwriting knowhow always seems at odds with his continued embrace of absurdism. Whereas his older material always reminded me of listening to someone’s AM radio through the wall (at midnight,after you had a few drinks), his newer material is more like finally being invited into your neighbor’s apartment, only to find out that the music is coming out of the sink. There’s almost a sense of maturation on this album for Pink, but only in that he seems more comfortable than ever in exploring the niche that he’s made for himself and remains alone in.

15. Everything Everything - A Fever Dream: You know those bands, or albums, that you think you know everything about before you listen to them? That. For the last three albums, I kind of wrote off Everything Everything based on nothing more than a bad hunch. “I think they’re from the UK? They probably have a guy on the synths. I bet NME likes them. Nothing to see here, folks.” I was wrong (and why would any of those things have mattered?). I’m always wrong when I do this (sometime I’ll tell you about the years I was really wrong about The Mountain Goats). This band, and this album in particular, feels so much refined and on point than I ever would’ve imagined. The strength of “Night of the Long Knives” alone, and it being the first track, was like a slap to the face. Who else was I wrong about?

14. Grandaddy - Last Place: I told them not to do it. They probably couldn’t hear me, and I doubt they would’ve listened had they heard me, but I fucking told Grandaddy: “Don’t come back. You’re music is of a time and place, and this isn’t the same world. Nobody’s going to get your slacksadaiscal lo-fi indie-pop. Please, think of me: You’re fan who loves you and who used your music to get through some dark days.” But they went and did it. They came back. And they made an album. And that album sounds exactly like what I would’ve expected from a Grandaddy album 10 years ago. And you know what? They fucking killed it. Welcome back, Grandaddy.

13. Gorillaz - Humanz: Now here’s a doozy. What do you say about an album that, while inherently flawed and less than perfect, is still a blast to listen to? Look, I know, this doesn’t sound much like a Gorillaz album. Even as a mixtape, it's kind of uneven. But, you know, according to Last.FM, this is the album I listened to most this year, and I believe it. A flawed package can’t distract from just how enjoyable most of these songs are. There has never been a time when I’ve heard one of these songs in a playlist or when my library is on random, and I wasn’t excited to hear it. Maybe it lacks the vision and cohesion of every Gorillaz album that came before it, but maybe that's its biggest strength too.

12. New Pornographers - Whiteout Conditions: I know. I knooow. This isn’t the best New Pornographers album, and it probably wasn’t, technically, one of the best albums of the year. AND Dan Bejar isn’t even on this album! Yeah...but I still love this album. Coming off their last album, Brill Bruisers (an album that I firmly believe is one of their best), there is still a thrilling amount of energy left in a band that is pushing almost 20 years together. And, like BB, there’s a continued sense of cohesion here. This sounds less like a bunch of good songs collected on an album, and more like the end result of old friends getting together in a specific mindset and mood. Its an effortlessly charming and smooth power pop album that still sounds manages to demand attention, despite the shadow of their more acclaimed classic albums.

11. Spoon - Hot Thoughts: I dunno, should I just copy and paste the write-up I did for the New Pornographers? I could switch out Brill Bruisers with They Want My Soul, and it’d still be accurate. I could point out that they’re still putting out amazing work this late into their epic career. Maybe the difference here is that while New Pornographers continue to hone and perfect the same sound they’ve always had, Spoon always seems to be stretching itself out a little bit.  Never too far from their core sound, but enough to give each album its own feel. This time out, Spoon leans on some new electronic elements that seem to fit in with their sound perfectly. Britt Daniels continues to seem incapable of writing a bad song, and there are just so many good songs this time around. Like, I predict that I’ll still have “Do I Have To Talk You Into It” in my head when Spoon releases their next album.

[weirdwariii]

2017: Albums I Wish I Listened to More

I am just one human, and there’s an awful lot of sounds out there. And I wish I could listen to every album 200 times but, like, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard put out 326 albums this year (as of the time I write this) and those took up a lot of my time, y’know?

Here are a few albums I a strong initial impression of, but just never found the time to return to. There’s probably a much larger list than this of albums I wish I listened to more, but these are the ones that I have the most regret over not listening to more…

Perfume Genius - No Shape

Jay Som - Everybody Works

Milk Music - Mystic 100s

Black Lips - Satan’s Graffiti or God’s Art: I love Black Lips, but the timing of this album just coincided with a ton of other things I was listening to a lot, and I kept putting this off. Black Lips + Sean Lennon? I really shoulda made more time for this.

Mountain Goats - Goths: I loved Beat the Champ, and I’ve been on a John Darnielle kick between older Mountain Goats albums and reading Universal Harvester this year. So, like, why didn’t I listen to this more? Sad!

Fleet Foxes - Crack Up: Despite being a pretty big fan of Fleet Foxes, I think I did the same thing with Helplessness Blues, where I didn’t listen to it much at the time it came out, only to completely fall in love with it later. I liked what I’ve heard so far, but I just haven’t devoted the time to the album that I think I’ll need.

SZA - CTRL

Big Boi - Boomiverse

Toro Y Moi - Boo Boo: Admittedly, I listened to a LOT of Chaz Bundick Meets the Mattson 2 this year, so I don’t even know what my excuse is for not listening to this more.

Girlpool - Powerplant: I really love seeing/reading interviews with these two women, as I think they’re very smart and cool. But I also wish I spent as much time actually listening to their new album, especially considering how much I enjoyed their last one.

Cornelius - Mellow Waves

Boris - Dear: I love Boris as a band, but they sometimes fall into the same trap as other post-rock bands (see also: Mono and Mogwai) of making albums that aren’t especially different than what came before it. So Dear, to me, felt like just more Boris music. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I ended up just coming back to Pink and Heavy Rocks when I needed a Boris fix this year.

Amber Coffman - City of No Reply: I love, and always have loved, Amber’s voice, and I was really sad that she wasn’t a part of this year’s Dirty Projector record (though she had a pretty good reason for not being on it). I was actually more excited for Amber’s record than DP, but I feel like this had a really stealthy release (or an extremely quiet one), and I hadn’t even realized it was out until close to the end of the year...

[weirdwariii]

2017 Albums I Didn’t Like

Obviously I can’t like every album that comes out in a year, nor do I try. I know I won’t like that new Maroon 5 album, but it probably wasn’t meant for me anyways. Still, there are plenty of albums I feel like I should like - some from artists I’ve previously enjoyed, some because everyone else has a favorable opinion on them - but I just don’t. And that’s what this list is: Stuff I tried to like, but didn’t.

I was excited for Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile’s Lotta Sea Lice, being a big fan of both’s solo endeavors. While, admittedly, there’s a charming chemistry between the two, they never seem to push each other or take any chances, thus the whole album just kind of meanders by with few memorable moments. Not a bad album, just not one I’ll ever choose to return to instead of when of their better solo albums.

Lana Del Rey’s first album Born to Die was, at best, just okay. But I bought into her aesthetic pretty hard around that time. I remember reading all the articles, interviews and think-pieces before she even had an album out, and I was listening to “Video Games” endlessly (Last.fm still ranks it as my most listened-to song in the last 10 years). And it’s kind of weird because with each album since then, she seems to have grown as a songwriter, seems to grow her fanbase and seems to get an even better critical reception - yet I continue to cool on her. Fatigue? Did I like her better as an underdog? I don’t know. But Lust for Life did nothing for me.

I’m not bitter about the mainstream attention Portugal the Man found this year. The writings been on the wall for years that this is exactly what the band was waiting for, and they finally found the right balance of weird, pop and Danger Mouse to get them there. Still, the PTM I fell in love with were a different band. Woodstock is my stop, and I’m getting off the train. Thanks for the ride!

People have spoken very highly of Japanese Breakfast, and I really wanted to like Soft Sounds from Another Planet, but it just didn’t happen. Certainly not a bad album in any way, just not one that resonated with me.

2017 was a trying time in the struggle with separation of art and artist. I actually liked Brand New’s album a lot, but in the fallout of the accusations against Jesse Lacey, I find it impossible to return to the album, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Ditto for Morrissey, who I already have a contentious appreciation for. On the same day I planned on going to the record store to pick up his new album, his comments on the Hollywood sexual assaults proved to be the final straw for me. There simply isn’t time to support artists like these when thousands of other bands and artists are actually helping to contribute to and build a safer space for their fans.

I still like Mac DeMarco way more as a human than I do as a performer.  See also: St. Vincent.

Mastodon continued to stray from their epic awesomeness that made me a  fan in the Leviathan/Blood Mountain era. Their latest was alright, but just alright.

I don’t know why I thought The National was going to win me over this year when their older albums (and their most acclaimed albums at that) hadn’t. But, nope, still not into The National.

I defended Weezer for way longer than I should’ve (like, I bought Raditude), but that new album...  No.

I continue to hold out hope that one day War on Drugs will click with me, but it hasn’t happened yet. And I’ve tried! Maybe that just one just isn’t meant to be.

I hope that time doesn’t prove me to be exaggerating when I say this, but Arcade Fire’s Everything Now might be one of the most disappointing albums I’ve heard in a long time. Not to say that they’ve had a perfect track record up to this point, but the worst thing I could say about AF up to this point is that their last two albums were just too long. But there’s just so little of EN that I like. Even the album’s best moments (maybe...”Creature Comfort” or the title track?) still sound like parodies of better AF songs. Everything about EN, down to the marketing and roll out, just felt heavy handed and exhausting. I continue to appreciate AF as a band, and clearly their overall message comes from a good place.

Next: the albums I wished I listened to more this year.