#hon. mentions: Nicholas Krgovich - In An Open Field

[becausegoodbye]

My Favourite Albums of 2017

You’re supposed to do this before the end of the year, but -- well, maybe you’re not supposed to do it at all. 

Partner - ‘In Search of Lost Time’

I don’t like the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ in music, but the closest thing to a guilty pleasure I have is probably early Weezer. Nowadays I mostly talk about them as an archetype of 90s softboy misogyny, but at the same time: holy shit those first two albums were great, right? Melodically, they came imbued with this deep sense of pop hooks, and emotionally, they tapped into a potent vein of impotent anger and wasted apathy and sly humour. Partner, from Ontario, seem to agree, which is why they’ve set about conquering that territory on behalf of the queers. ‘In Search of Lost Time’ is an album of queer goofball stoner anthems, and it’s every bit as tight as the best power-pop the 90s ever created. The hooks are there, the humour is there, the sneaky musicality is there, the wild air-guitaring-while-jumping-up-and-down-on-your-bed is there. I’m making it sound like a throwback, but it’s not really; it’s a joyful conquering and flexing and flag-planting. I didn’t have more fun with an album in 2017.

WHY? - ‘Moh Llean’

I don’t even know what to say about this. It’s magnificent, and I don’t feel like I know it at all. It’s like ‘recommending’ someone the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like, yeah, sure man, they’re a good read. Dizzying and dazzling and inscrutable. After a bunch of duds, the band who made Eskimo Snow is finally back, and they sound like they died on a mountain and got reborn as a convocation of eagles. Nothing else sounds like this. Nothing else has the guts.

Adult Mom - ‘Soft Spots’

From the very opening moments of this album, when the soft acoustic strum is coloured in by the autumnal electric lead, I don’t stop swooning. Adult Mom are always pitching these very mild curve balls at you: a song that starts with a dancey backbeat is subverted by folky plink-plucking; a song that starts out as a regretful elegy erupts into a shimmering choral hymn. It’s just a gorgeous album, which I probably ended up spending more time with, all told, than any other album on this list.  

Aminé - ‘Good For You’

The melodic juice on this album, I swear to God. There’s a deadpan humour here, a colourful bounciness, and moments of sincerity that cut right through. It’s one of those albums where, when you go through it looking for favourite tracks, you end up with, like, ten. I keep watching this NPR Tiny Desk concert he did with a five-piece band, and marveling at the springy beauty of these songs.

Milk Teddy - ‘Time Catches Up With Milk Teddy’

Gorgeous and full-throated with pockets full of pennies. This is always what I wanted a Milk Teddy record to sound like, and now it finally does. I keep imagining it as the soundtrack to an Australian-Irish co-production Christmas film: fake snow shot on Super 8, a pile of wet scarves piled by the door. This isn’t a ‘uniquely Australian’ album; it’s just a unique album, made by an utterly unique band, and its deep Australianness is all the stronger for not being forced. My record player sits by a window. When I put on Time Catches Up With Milk Teddy, I always open the window to let the city listen. 

Rostam - ‘Half Light’

At first, I thought this album was pretty thin. Some nice melodies, some interesting textures, but not really all that much to it other than as a musicographical puzzle-piece, allowing us to see what Rostam Batmanglij had brought to Vampire Weekend over the years. But then I just kept wanting to listen to it. I kept going on walks at sunset just to listen to it. I kept swaying to the strings and gulping down the hurried mumbled lyrics. It kept stopping my scroll, and closing my eyes. I was wrong -- this is a special album. 

Florist - ‘If Blue Could Be Happiness’

I feel like as I get older, what I want from music is becoming more simple. I want to be calmed, I want to be held, I want to be rivered. This is an album of simple touch, of dusting brush. It’s filled with earnest truths, whispered under doona covers. It’s beautiful and kind, and a place to hide. 

Aldous Harding - ‘Party’

I find it too distracting to do anything else while this album is playing. I always have to stop what I’m doing, and sit there balancing on the quaver in her voice. Sinking in the seas between her fingers. Aldous Harding’s music is intimate and ghostly and beautiful and stark. She has a cannibal’s sense of humour, and a queen’s bearing. She’s operating at like seven different levels. She’s whiskey poured from a gun in a dive-bar in heaven.

Coma Cinema - ‘Loss Memory’

The final album from one of my favourite projects of recent years. A lonely, fragile-boned collection of bedroom-pop, bound in gauze and blinking at the stars. Every single song has at least one lyric that makes me ache, at least one instrumental layer that makes me tingle, and a terrible sadness that makes me quiet. It’s plainspoken, heartfelt, and perfect. I hope he’s okay. 

Mount Eerie - ‘A Crow Looked At Me’

I’m not going to say anything about this. I can’t. Here: 

"Written and recorded August 31st to Dec. 6th, 2016 in the same room where Geneviève died, using mostly her instruments, her guitar, her bass, her pick, her amp, her old family accordion, writing the words on her paper, looking out the same window. 

Why share this much? Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger, about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love? Our little family bubble was so sacred for so long. We carefully held it behind a curtain of privacy when we’d go out and do our art and music selves, too special to share, especially in our hyper-shared imbalanced times. Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important. (I still don’t want to tell you our daughter’s name.) Then in May 2015 they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic, and the ground opened up. What matters now? we thought. Then on July 9th 2016 she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore. My internal moments felt like public property. The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver, a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known. 

"Death Is Real" could be the name of this album. These cold mechanics of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an alienating, detached sharpness. But it is not the thing I want to remember. A crow did look at me. There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’s why. - Phil Elverum”