Best New Albums of 2017 *

What's interesting about your comment is that Slowdive are a shoegaze band, from the early 1990's. This was their first album in over 20 years.

So not sure how they would be indicative of anything, good or bad, with pop/rock today. Should we use the new albums from Eno, Mike & the Mechanics or Deep Purple as a gauge as well?

 

My favourite albums (vinyl) this year so far ...
Alt-J - Relaxer
Tangerines - Into the Flophouse
Vant - Dumb Blood
Jesus and Mary Chain - Damage & Joy
Idles - Brutalism

 

This really hasn't gone off rotation since it was released in January. Catchy as hell, aggressive and angry and sounds like it's spoiling for a fight. Great soundtrack for recent times and easily a top ten album of the year for me..

 

I am really enjoying the new Paul Heaton/ Jacqui Abbott. Their voices mesh really well so I am glad he's continuing this series. Heaton is still one of the best song writers out there...maybe not quite hitting the heights of his work in The Beautiful South but that's quite a bar to even attempt to hit. Nice to see him on a major label again too!

 

That's close to how I feel about the latest Depeche Mode, and I can't believe I'm saying that.

 

I've been enjoying Frankie Rose's (ex-Dum Dum Girls, ex-Crystal Stilts, ex-Vivian Girls, ex-catering truck) new album, "Cage Tropical", this weekend. It's very much like her last two albums, "Interstellar" (highly recommended, still I think her best work) and "Herein Wild", in being very spacey, synthy, light, and remote. This one is a little weirder-sounding than the others. It's got even more effects and distortion on it, there's more trance-like, stretched-out synthesizer sounds on it, and I've noticed some interesting percussion on it. It's an especially good record to listen to while falling asleep.

Frankie Rose, "Love in Rockets"

 

Press release: ‘Her’cury Music prize Shortlist announced

My tip: Sacred Paws – Strike a Match
"Definitive musical statement from Rachel Aggs (Trash Kit, Golden Grrrls, Covergirl, Shopping) – possibly the UK’s greatest guitarist – combining what used to be called ‘world music’ with Postcard Records-esque post-punk funk".

 

I second those who mentioned Juana Molina's Halo - such an interesting album to listen to, sonically, and cool grooves, too.

 

Thanks GasL, you've expanded my vocabulary by one. My ignorance should be excused, around that time I was working on the whole pooping-in-porcelain-not-in-your-diapers thing and walking without looking like Mayberry's Otis after a bender. For others similarly in the dark, I give you the final word from the new millennium's version of the mountaintop wise man: "Shoegazing (also known as shoegaze) is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s and reached peak popularity in the early 1990s. The style is typified by significant use of guitar distortion, feedback, obscured vocals and the blurring of component musical parts into indistinguishable "walls of sound". Wiki

What's our species up to with regard to named musical subgenres? Has to be in the tens of thousands at this point. Heck, metal alone apparently requires hundreds to complete a proper family tree.

Incidentally, I've finally made a 2017 "new music" purchase that doesn't seem to have been mentioned in 60+ pages: Greta Van Fleet's EP "Black Smoke Rising". Check it out w/ a thread search if interested, there's been recent discussion. Keep posting - I sample almost everything!

 

I can actually pick out a shoegaze band now (after many years of listening), but in my collection it all gets lumped under either Indie rock or Alternative.

Too many genres just gives me a headache.

 

Can you recommend something to take for that headache because I get the same one.

 

Thanks for the heads-up!
Always liked The Only Ones.

 

Photay - Onism

Highly recommend this to fans of electronic music - really, really cool sonics on this album.
A very fun, engaging listen.

 

Thanks, found many of my personal favorites on that list.

 

Guided By Voices - How Do You Spell Heaven
really great new gbv, I lost interest in their last handful of albums but this is strong, full of the hooks and ear-worms that Pollard can inexplicably pull off after all these years with a muscular and tight newish band behind him

 

Everything Everything: A Fever Dream review – nerdish pop for a troubled planet

 

Modern Pressure by Daniel Romano

I've been playing this one a lot since it came out. I don't really know what to compare it to. When I first heard of him he was doing throwback country music. Before that he did punk rock and folk. This one has elements of all of that plus maybe 60s-70s rock. It all hangs together well and the melodies keep popping up in my head, which is always a good sign.

 

Ooh, one of my favorite bands...ordered this one from Amazon UK so it will take a while, and the wait will be murder...please reply with any reactions once you've heard this, if you are so inclined...

 

Now THIS is good! Sort of reminds me of Bullion's LP from last year, Loop the Loop.

 

Post-punk out of Melbourne. 2nd album from Gold Class, Drum, just out today.

 

Fun album! I especially like its sense of humor.

 

"Desire", the first single, is a fantastic, arresting pop-rock track:

Everything Everything, "Desire"

 

If you're needing a shot of adrenaline, you could do a lot worse than the new KMFDM.

 

Post-Punk from LA: