Best of: Top 20 of 2017: My favourite albums of 2017

I just have to have music in my life, especially live music. It makes my heart right and gives me balance, and helps me feel like a complete being.

Here are the albums that meant the most to me in a year when I have been sadly more absent from the care and feeding of this web site, and from music appreciation, than I’ve been in years.

There’s a melody that reaches into your soul, a voice that speaks to your values and your very humanity, a beat that makes you smile uncontrollably, and a hook that brings a tear to your eye; a joy that makes you feel whole. It’s love that comes through your ears from the unstoppable passion of another, through their music.

I can’t listen to everything; especially not in a crazy busy year like 2017. A year when work left me mentally exhausted most days meant I couldn’t get all the concert-going and photo-editing in that I wanted and much of my commute-listening was while otherwise mentally occupied with little things like driving. But undaunted I go into the yearly tradition of listing out the albums that made the biggest impression on me in 2017, in order, my absolute favourites at the top.

Take a look at my other Best of 2017 lists: My 25 Favourite Concert Photos of 2017 and My 50 Favourite Songs of 2017.

Wolf Alice Visions of a Life

Waxahatchee Out in the Storm

The National Sleep Well Beast

Bully Losing

Japandroids Near To The Wild Heart Of Life

K.Flay Every Where Is Some Where

St. Vincent MASSEDUCTION

The Districts Popular Manipulations

Kasabian For Crying Out Loud

Royal Blood How Did We Get So Dark?

The War on Drugs A Deeper Understanding

Charly Bliss Guppy

Diet Cig Swear I'm Good At This

Kendrick Lamar DAMN

Partner In Search of Lost Time


The xx I See You

Casper Skulls Mercy Works

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds Who Built The Moon?

Sumo Cyco Opus Mar

Weaves Wide Open

And if you want to check out my 2017 concert photos of the bands from by best of list, please click the following links:

Wolf Alice

Waxahatchee

Bully

Japandroids

K.Flay

Kasabian

Charly Bliss

Partner

Casper Skulls

Sumo Cyco

And older shots of these awesome bands:

Wolf Alice at The Phoenix, Adelaide Hall and Drake Underground

The National at Field Trip and at Riot Fest
Bully at Field Trip

The Districts at Lee's Palace, The Horseshoe and again at The Horseshoe

Kasabian at Sound Academy

Royal Blood at Lee's Palace
Diet Cig at The Drake Underground

Partner at The Silver Dollar Room and The Garrison

Casper Skulls at Lee's Palace, again at Lee's Palace and The Garrison

Sumo Cyco at Cherry Cola's

Weaves at Lee's Palace

New video for Friction by The xx

The xx are on a roll. Their first album xx came out in 2009 and is fantastic. They followed it up with the equally wonderful Coexist in 2012. They've just released a video for "Fiction" from their latest.

And they wrote "Together" for The Great Gatsby movie.

I love this band.

Last Christmas - Wham! cover by The xx

Christmas Eve.

I'm not particularly religious. At all. But it is the Christmas season.

So here's The xx doing a cover of Wham!'s "Last Christmas" for BBC 1.

My favourite albums: Awesome and cool albums of 2012: My best of list: 20 Albums of 2012

2012 was no different from previous years for me in that I'm still more of a songs guy than an albums guy. It just takes longer for a whole album to show its charms to me and I struggled with what to put on this list, how to rank it, and even whether to do an albums list at all.

So here are the 20 albums from 2012 that made the biggest impression on me. So far. Alphabetically.


2:54 2:54

Band of Skulls Sweet Sour

Blood Red Shoes In Time To Voices

Bob Mould Silver Age

Diiv Oshin

Dinosaur Jr. I Bet On Sky

Dirty Ghosts Metal Moon

Divine Fits A Thing Called Divine Fits

Fun. Some Nights

IAMDYNAMITE SUPERMEGAFANTASTIC

Jack White Blunderbuss

Japandroids Celebration Rock

Ladyhawke Anxiety

Nude Beach II

Stars The North

Sucioperro Fused

The Twilight Sad No One Can Ever Know

The Whigs Enjoy the Company

The xx Coexist

Yukon Blonde Tiger Talk


Check out the rest of my best of posts.

My favourite songs: Awesome and cool songs of 2012: My best of list: Top 60 songs: #20-1

It's been a great year for indie-alternative music. Maybe it's because I've been putting more emphasis on seeking out great music for the blog, or maybe it's just intergalactic forces. Whatever it is, I'll take it.

Just to avoid consistency of any kind, I've abandoned last year's idea of doing 2-year best of posts, like doing "The Best of 2011-2012".

Here's the final post featuring songs 20-1 of my favourite 60 songs released in 2012.

20. "Happy Pills" Norah Jones

19. "Let's Fall In Love" Mother Mother

18. "Sunday (Psychic Conversation #9)" Crocodiles

17. "Sex" The 1975

16. "This War" Men Without Hats

15. "You Read My Mind" Ladyhawk

14. "Where Will We Go" IAMDYNAMITE

13. "5678!" Butterfly Boucher

12. "Would That Not Be Nice" Divine Fits

11. "Fire's Highway" Japandroids

10. "Cholla" The Joy Formidable

9. "Angels" The xx

8. "Anything Could Happen" Ellie Goulding

7. "We Are Young" Fun.

6. "Katana Rock" Dirty Ghosts

5. "How Long Have You Known" DIIV

4. "Creeping" 2:54

3. "House that Heaven Built" Japandroids

2. "The Descent" Bob Mould

1. "This Ladder Is Ours" The Joy Formidable

Check out the rest of my best of posts.

The live shot of The Joy Formidable is mine, taken at their recent gig at The Mod Club.

My favourite songs: Awesome and cool songs of 2012: My best of list: Top 60 songs: #40-21

It's been a great year for indie-alternative music. Maybe it's because I've been putting more emphasis on seeking out great music for the blog, or maybe it's just intergalactic forces. Whatever it is, I'll take it.

Just to avoid consistency of any kind, I've abandoned last year's idea of doing 2-year best of posts, like doing "The Best of 2011-2012".

Here's post number two featuring songs 40-21 of my favourite 60 songs released in 2012.

40. "Ropes That Way" Dirty Ghosts

39. "Lost Kids" Blood Red Shoes

38. "Are You Gonna Waste My Time?" Zeus

37. "Little Talks" Of Monsters and Men

36. "In Came The Flood" Wintersleep

35. "Forever" Haim

34. "Waiting" The Whigs

33. "Cold" Blood Red Shoes

32. "To Nothing" Sucioperro

31. "I'm Just Me" Diamond Rings

30. "Stereo" IAMDYNAMITE

29. "Keep Believing" Bob Mould

28. "The Mother We Share" Chvrches

27. "All of Me" Tanlines

26. "Hold On" Alabama Shakes

25. "Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It" Stars

24. "Chained" The xx

23. "Sixteen Saltines" Jack White

22. "Anna Sun" Walk The Moon

21. "Runaways" The Killers

Check out the rest of my best of posts

Official video for Chained by The xx

In my continuing effort to make The xx one of the most posted about bands on this site, here's the official video for "Chained" from Coexist.

The xx on Jools

You'd be right if you detected that I rather like The xx. You'd also be right that this is the third time that this song has appeared on the blog. And they don't even have an official video for it out yet.

Oh well. It's a good song.

Here's The xx on Later with Jools Holland performing the beautiful "Angels" from their latest album, Coexist.

Stream The xx's new album Coexist

The xx are releasing their new album Coexist on September 11 and are streaming the album now.

It sounds absolutely beautiful. I tend to lean towards more loud and insistent music in general. Perhaps that contrast is one of the things that draws me to The xx. They are masters of putting space into their music. That simplicity, combined with the beautiful melodies, makes for a wonderful listening experience.

Another new song from The xx's Coexist

I love the quiet beauty of The xx's music. Here's another new song from Coexist. The song is called "Chained" and the new album is out September 11.

New song from The xx

The xx have released a new song from their new album Coexist. The song's called "Angels" and the album comes out September 11. It's a sparse track with a great melody. I'm looking forward to this album very, very much.

My 25 favourite tracks of NME's 100 best tracks of the '00s

NME posted their 100 Best Tracks Of The ’00s.  I picked out my favourite 25.  It was tough.  Here they are.

100 Maxïmo Park – “Apply Some Pressure”


99 Flaming Lips – “Do You Realize”


95 The Killers – “These Things That I’ve Done”


93 The Big Pink – “Dominos”


79 Muse – “Plug In Baby”


76 Gnarls Barkley – “Crazy”


66 Friendly Fires – “Paris”


59 Interpol – “Evil”


55 The xx – “Islands”


50 Kasabian – “Empire”


47 Britney Spears – “Toxic”


46 Lily Allen – “Smile”


42 Gossip – “Standing In The Way Of Control”


41 The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”


31 Bloc Party – “Banquet”


30 Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”


28 Arctic Monkeys – “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor”


24 Doves – “There Goes The Fear”


23 Muse – “Knights Of Cydonia”


22 The Strokes – “Last Nite”


17 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”


10 Arctic Monkeys – “A Certain Romance”


07 Klaxons – “Golden Skans”


05 Outkast – “Hey Ya!”


02 MGMT – “Time To Pretend”