Top 20 Albums of 2017

2017 In Review

I think I will look back on 2017 as a year of intense, important transition, both for myself personally and for popular music. A kind of "junior high" year, if you will. For myself, 2017 brought a pregnancy, a year off of school, a year to work and get to a better place financially, a year to work at myself, 365 days to battle and overcome my ongoing issues with anxiety and growing up. It's definitely been hard in some ways, feeling almost like I'm stuck in some kind of incubation tank, growing and getting ready for the real world, while some of that real world passed me by. But now that I'm out of that tank, going back to school in January and months away from being a father, I feel like I've been successful. I've gotten to much higher place than I was this time last year, and I suppose that's all one can really ask of oneself, isn't it?

As far as the world of popular music, 2017 brought a pretty earth-shattering, statistical revelation that I find as intriguing as it is important: Hip hop officially surpassed rock as the most popular genre of music in the US, in terms of overall sales and consumption. And in my opinion, hip hop in general has been overtaking rock in general from a critical, quality-of-music perspective, too, for quite some time. The most defining records of this decade are no longer rock or indie rock records like they were in the 2000s. Where artists like Arcade Fire, The Strokes, The White Stripes, and Wilco once dominated both the charts and critics' year end lists, now we have Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Future, The Weeknd, and Beyonce. Of course, this is all speaking very, very generally. But in that general scope, the transition is undeniable. No rock album has been as widely praised as, say, My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy this decade. And no rock artist has been half as popular as Drake.

And indeed, I find it interesting that at the end of the year, looking back on and making the following list of my favorite albums of the year, 7 of my top 20 happen to be hip hop records. Creatively, I feel like hip hop is just exploding as a genre, more than ever before in its relatively short history, I daresay, even compared to the Golden Age of Hip Hop of the 90's. And I am personally finding a lot to love, from the confessional, socially-charged jazz rap of Rapsody to the EDM-fused club bangers for the thinking man that comprise Vince Staples' latest LP. I feel like hip hop artists are pushing sonic boundaries while also staying culturally relevant in ways that rock artists (again, very generally speaking) just aren't. I guess it's mainly just that last part--being culturally relevant--that I find modern rock artists struggling with the most, for some reason. But creatively speaking, there are a lot of great underground rock artists I'm loving these days too, not the least of which being King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Thee Oh Sees, and other garage-style, truly indie acts.

So yes, it's an interesting transitional time in music and an interesting transitional time for me, personally. Overall though, on both counts, it's been a fantastic year, and I'm excited to celebrate the best of the best musically this year. So without further ado....

My Top 20 Albums of 2017

20. Rapsody - Laila's Wisdom

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Laila's Wisdom is a very honest, emotional project, showcasing North Carolina rapper Rapsody at both her emotional highest and lowest, flowing from the swagger of lead single "Power," to album closer "Jesus Coming," which deals very directly with the emotional aftermath of the American epidemic of discriminatory police shootings. It can be a bumpy ride getting from this emotional high to this low, dragging at points, like during some of it's longer tracks. Nonetheless, it was an album I found myself coming back to again and again, for the warmth of Rapsody's soul that pours through her bars.

19. Ex Eye - Ex Eye

Photo cred: https://exeyeband.bandcamp.com/

Changing gears completely now, we come to Ex Eye's self-titled debut. Ex Eye is an experimental jazz/metal fusion project, the product of the collaboration of drummer Greg Fox (Liturgy) and Colin Stetson, whom I can unabashedly call the best saxophonist in the world. Stetson employs circular breathing techniques, allowing him to endlessly wail and shred and push his instrument to its limits and thus, mind-bogglingly, match in intensity Fox's pummeling metal blast beats. The result is something akin to post-rock, in its emphasis on dynamics and textures as the driving songwriting force rather than hooks, but with a backbone of crisp black metal drumming. It can sometimes dip into the indulgent and excessive, the hamartia of many an experimental project, but most of the time it just succeeds in creating epic, apocalyptic pieces that have really stayed with me. It is not only one of the more unique metal albums of the year, but also one of the most essential.

18. Open Mike Eagle - Brick Body Kids Still Daydream

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Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, the latest LP from conscious rapper Open Mike Eagle, is a tribute to the housing project in Chicago in which Mike grew up. It is an interesting approach to a topic that is practically as old as hip hop itself. Rather than focusing on the obvious problems with government-funded housing projects such as his, Mike chooses instead to focus on the memories, the experiences of his childhood that shaped him into who he is. It's a touching album that is also truly thought-provoking: Can any good come from the harsh, destitute realities of ghetto living--poverty, callousness, depression, violence, death--that these "brick body kids" often have no choice but to assimilate into themselves as they grow up? Mike has had to assimilate them--even going so far as to say "My body is a building" on "Brick Body Complex"--but in doing so becomes a living example that, out of those cold, soulless buildings, something beautiful can grow. 

17. Father John Misty - Pure Comedy

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Josh Tillman (aka Father John Misty)'s main appeal, in my opinion, are his lyrics. Something about his delivery--the juxtaposition of his gorgeous, old-fashioned crooning with his very modern, very dark lyrics telling tales of debauchery and apocalypse--makes me hang on to his every word in his songs. On Pure Comedy, FJM aims the scope of his piercing wit at the myriad flaws of human existence itself, which is a big undertaking. On most songs, he is able to skillfully and soundly skewer his subject matter, like on "Total Entertainment Forever," which prophesies the ultimate, fatal conclusion of American consumerism, beginning with the lines, "Bedding Taylor Swift every night inside the Oculus Rift" and continues on to humanity's demise. 

At times, his dryness and sarcasm can make him wax pedantic, like on opener "Pure Comedy," which is perhaps the cheekiest lesson in basic evolutionary psychology ever given. But pedantry is a pitfall natural to his subject matter, FJM endeavoring to tackle some of the biggest problems we face as humans in 2017 Western civilization. And Pure Comedy, overall I would say, succeeds in this endeavor, accomplishing what few other artists would ever dare to do, and for that alone it is worthy of celebration. It certainly doesn't hurt that. the production is gorgeous and the songwriting is brilliant, too. 

16. Joey Bada$$ - All-AmeriKKKan Bada$$

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Yet another great album this year that addresses social issues (if you couldn't infer that from the album title). The 22-year-old, Brooklyn-based rapper Joey Bada$$ has built a name for himself with his throwback, 90's Golden Era, boom-bap style, but on All-AmeriKKKan Bada$$, he makes a U-turn towards a more modern sound. Some found the album to be Joey going "pop," and sure the single "Land of the Free" is probably his poppiest one to date, but I don't know how you can lump such streetwise bangers as "Rockabye Baby" and "Babylon" in that same category. 

To me, the switch from sample-based jazz rap to sleeker, studio-made production actual seemed to focus the lens of Joey's music like never before, making his lyrics and hooks pop out in greater clarity. This increased clarity serves the purpose of the album well, in making Joey's messages on institutional discrimination more impossible to ignore. It grabs your attention from the first track and holds it firmly all the way to the end, the album-closing monologue on this subject on "AmeriKKKan Idol" being one of the more memorable musical moments of 2017 for me. If you're interested in some conscious hip hop that is very easy on the ears, definitely don't let this album pass you by.

15. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Polygondwanaland

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Australian garage rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard famously promised last year to release five albums in 2017. Until yesterday, they had only released four (the fifth, Gumboot Soup, fulfills that promise) but that fourth album, Polygondwanaland, is so good I really didn't really care if the fifth never happened. More than Gumboot Soup, which is a collection of misfit tracks from the recording of the four prior albums, Polygondwanaland is a wonderful conclusion to an absurdly busy year for them, combining elements of much of their past work: the proggy influences of Murder of the Universe, the jazz rock of Sketches of Brunswick East, the acoustic magic of Paper Mache Dream Balloon, and just a hint of the all-out power of Nonagon Infinity. The resulting album, therefore, sounds more uniquely "King Gizzard" than any of those individual albums could on their own. Who else but King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard could create the subdued, acoustic/prog mash-up jam that is "The Castle In the Air"? Or the fluttering, kaleidoscopic closer "The Fourth Colour"? Polygondwanaland shows Gizz utterly unafraid to be their zany selves and unafraid to forge forward into the sonic unknown. Which is exactly what I want to hear from my favorite rock band of the year.

14. Algiers - The Underside of Power

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Wow, I guess I must have had social/political issues on the brain more often than I thought, because I found myself drawn indelibly to yet another album that brilliantly takes on these issues in a unique way. Algiers themselves are a band like no other, combining Southern gospel and soul with post-punk to create a sound I've never heard before. And once you finish wrapping your mind around this killer sound they've concocted, The Underside of Power, reveals itself to be one of the more potent albums this year in terms of social commentary. Vocalist Franklin James Fisher is very clearly full of rage against many machines, like Rapsody and Joey Bada$$, but in my opinion, Fisher is able to channel that rage more deftly than those artists did on their respective albums this year, never coming off as pedantic or ham-handed. In his passionate delivery, Fisher really sounds like he is part of the daily fight (and from reading more about him, he really is!), rather than watching and critiquing from a distance, and is urging you to join with him as on "Cry of the Martyrs:"

With the world to win behind us
Our hands shorn for all to see
They'll till the dirt with our bodies to remind us
Of our defeat at Calvary

13. Oh Sees - Orc

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This was my first foray into Thee Oh Sees' prolific discography (though I guess they're just calling themselves "Oh Sees" now? *shrug*). So I had the always awesome experience of going into Orc not knowing what to expect (for real, I love that feeling of first-time discovery). I was treated to 12 tracks of ear-piercing, mind-expanding psychedelic mania. The first track "The Static God" kicks off with a cacophony of wailing guitar leads, which then evolves into a jam that is simultaneously sinister and playful. Each track thereafter finds similar ways to surprise and delight and challenge my ears, as band leader John Dwyer and his miscreants conistently make this old genre of psych rock sound new and fresh. It's just a very consistent album, making it hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to, I'd choose the epic "Keys to the Castle." Oh Sees bring out some of their catchiest hooks in the beginning verses, jamming and building momentum until it all crashes down, cascading away into this awesome, contemplative, enlightening 6 minute slow jam. One of my favorite rock records of the year, for sure.

12. Alvvays - Antisocialites

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Until Antisocialites, I was convinced I had heard all that the genre of "dream pop" had to offer. In retrospect, that was always a bit of a presumptuous thing to assume, since I, of course, haven't heard every dream pop band ever. But I guess that attitude developed primarily from watching other dream pop bands like Beach House or The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, once the genre's best and brightest back in the late 2000s/early 2010s, churn out album after album of the literally the exact same music year after year. I suppose I came to believe that if they can't make the genre exciting again, who can?

Alvvays can, that's who! Seriously, this band, led by the stellar Molly Rankin, has single-handedly restored my faith in the genre. And I suddenly feel so hopeful about dream pop in general after hearing this album because Alvvays on Antisocialites don't really do anything new or crazy; they're just another group of dorks armed with guitars, bass, drums, a quirky female singer with a cute, sing-song voice, and enough reverb to wash out grape juice stains from a rug. The difference, then, between this band and the army of bland lookalikes is simply the songwriting. Antisocialites is positively overflowing with great hooks, great lyrical ideas, great verses, great choruses... It's an album that is brilliant at the basics, making Alvvays, in that regard, fairly similar to Pavement: an ordinary band that makes ordinary music sound extraordinary. It's a magical ability, the secret to which I still don't quite understand. But if you want to hear some just solid, great, rock/pop songwriting, check this album out.

11. King Krule - The OOZ

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Now on to an album that does do the new and the crazy. Archy Marshall, aka King Krule, is an artist who has always defied genre labels, but the closest ones that fit are... post-punk and post-dubstep? And some hip hop? And jazz. It's a blend of very urban, very sluggish, dreary sounds that he pours out of himself, and The OOZ is perhaps his most powerful offering of this sound yet. For 19 tracks over 66 minutes, as far as the eye can see, this album envelopes you in a cold, blue-colored mist, located somewhere in a London back alley. Through the haze, you can make out Archy and his band, sitting somewhere towards the end of the alleyway, playing The OOZ. 

There are moments on the album when he gets you bobbing your head or even dancing, like on the Halloween-y "Vidual," the distorted "Half Man/Half Shark" and especially on the undisputed album best "Dum Surfer." But most of the songs on The OOZ are these somber, meandering jazz post-punk-hop pieces that don't really go anywhere and just stumble in and out of your ears. To be quite honest, after listening to this album about a dozen times, I still can't identify a lot of these songs from their titles. Most of the time, that is problematic. But The OOZ isn't meant to be a record full of bangers with memorable hooks. It isn't supposed to go anywhere or say anything. It exists to provide the singular opportunity of experiencing this blue cloud that fills Archy's head and music. It's a chilling, striking experience that makes your mind wander to your own latent loneliness and sadness, and chills you to the bone. And in that way--not through pop-y hooks--The OOZ is truly unforgettable.

10. Big K.R.I.T. - 4eva Is a Mighty Long Time

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Alright, we're in the top 10 now, babyyyy! At number 10, we've got the triumphant return of Big K.R.I.T (King Remembered In Time). Long did he languish in mediocrity under the Def Jam label, either because of the label itself or just from a creative dry spell, we don't know. But now that he's off that label, MAN, is he back with a vengeance! This album is just pure, unadulterated Southern hip hop, full of dirty beats that are heavy in their low end, touches of gospel, and lots of swagger and soul.

In fact, 4eva Is a Mighty Long Time, being a double album, can be split pretty cleanly down the middle by the idea of "soul and swagger," with the first disc being "swagger" and the second half "soul," speaking very generally. The first disc, called "Big K.R.I.T." shows him on top of the world, flashing Benjis, bumping his sub in the whip, and otherwise ballin'. The second disc, though, named for his birth name, "Justin Scott," shows the man on the other side of the K.R.I.T. mask. It shows him vulnerable and contemplative, pondering his current status in life and what it is that is truly valuable. After arguing that wealth and status are all that matters on "Confetti" on disc one--"What's a crown if you don't protect it? What's a name if you don't respect it?"--K.R.I.T. comes to realize on "Price of Fame" on disc two that "happiness can't be bought or sold. I learned my lesson, now I see what fame really get you." It's a long ride for sure, being nearly an an hour and a half in lengt, but it's a personal journey for K.R.I.T. well worth following, with dope tracks throughout and a powerful message at the end. Highly recommend. Check it. 

9. Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory

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I'll say this up front: this album was the first time I've listened to Vince Staples, having slept on his other material each year it's come out. So, Vince is still an artist I'm getting to know and understand fully. But this LP really caught my attention. On Big Fish Theory, Vince pushes West Coast rap into the territory of East Cost EDM, experimenting with the creative chemistry between the two genres. I think it's not only a very fresh, exciting approach to hip hop but also a perfect example of hip hop artists pushing boundaries in music while also keeping it accessible and relevant. Big Fish Theory, for all of its experimentation and novelty, contains some of the more popular hip hop singles of the year. It's a very admirable ability that Vince has, to take deliberate, calculated risks that pay off beautifully.

But, again, I am still a newcomer to Vince and his work, so I really don't have anything profound to say about what Big Fish Theory means or how it fits into Vince's self-narrative. I just know that this is one of most exciting and fresh sounds I've heard an artist concoct this year, and that Vince Staples is one of the main artists to be watching right now.

8. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Murder of the Universe

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Murder of the Universe is one of the boldest albums I've heard all year. It's a dense, dizzying, daring garage rock/metal concept album, King Gizzard's second LP released in 2017 and their heaviest of the lot. It tells three unique, epic tales, breaking the album into three parts: The Tale of the Altered Beast, The Lord of Lightning vs. Balrog, and Han-Tyumi & the Murder of the Universe. Each story is narratively separate from the others, but they are bound together by their common themes of doom, transition, and destruction, as well as by their loose connection musically and thematically with MotU's two sister albums, 2015's I'm In Your Mind Fuzz and 2016's Nonagon Infinity.

Now, Murder of the Universe has been a very polarizing album for people, mainly because of the gratuitous amounts of spoken word narration that accompanies every track on the album. And indeed, I believe that your ability to enjoy this album will be directly related to your ability to enjoy this spoken word because it is everywhere, interjected before, after, and often during the music. I agree that at times this spoken word becomes a bit much, especially on first listen. But after giving some time to digest it a bit, I really find that the spoken word generally adds to the album, giving MotU's narratives more clarity than they otherwise would possess. And I especially enjoy the spoken word on part three, where the narrator of parts two and three, Leah Senior, is replaced by the adorable, text-to-speech-voiced cyborg Han-Tyumi. Senior's chilling, intentionally flat delivery works sometimes better than others, but Han-Tyumi is always a treat to listen to.

Once I came to accept and enjoy the spoken word, I was better able to appreciate Murder of the Universe musically, and it very quickly became one of my favorite rock records of the year. The album is able to match compositionally the foreboding, doom-telling stories told throughout, creating really cinematic pieces of sludgy, lo-fi garage rock. It is probably my second favorite King Gizzard album musically after Nonagon, but it is twice as ambitious. King Gizzard had the balls to make an album this big and epic, and while it stumbles at moments, Murder of the Universe is a colossal success.

7. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

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I think all of us fans were really expecting and hoping that Kendrick would follow up his widely beloved To Pimp a Butterfly with some kind of To Pimp A Butterfly 2. But when "HUMBLE.," the first single from DAMN., dropped in late March, instead of getting more politically charged, mainstream-rejecting experimental jazz rap, we got a very straightforward, mainstream-embracing trap rap banger. People got worried and said "Ohhh, he's probably just faking us out... right?" And then DAMN. itself dropped and we got 13 more mainstream-embracing trap rap bangers.  I'll be the first to admit that I was among the worried. I was uncomfortable at first hearing Kendrick "go mainstream," doing a U-turn on the incredible, genre-redefining sound Kendrick had been creating before. But, I had been quick to forget that To Pimp a Butterfly's sound was itself a U-turn back in 2015, when it came out. Everything prior to that had been mainstream in genre and production, not the least of which being good kid, m.A.A.d city, which rivals TPAB in quality despite being so pop-y. 

Once I realized this, the argument that Kendrick is "selling out" or "going mainstream" just sounded silly. Yes, DAMN. is poppier in sound than To Pimp A Buttefly but it still features very rich, intricate production and dense lyrics that string together a cryptic sense of narrative. Kendrick has always wrestled with his internal demons on his music, but never before has it seemed to consume his every waking thought. The song titles themselves play at his duality: Love, Lust, Pride, Humility, God, Man (as in "DUCKWORTH.," "BLOOD.," "DNA."...). The social justice fight K.dot has taken up seems to have taken its toll on his soul, as Tupac told him it would at the end of To Pimp a Butterfly, leaving him sounding weary and forlorn. So now, rather than trying to fix his neighborhood like on good kid, m.A.A.d city or to fix the whole world like on TPAB, Kendrick is just trying to fix himself and finding it a greater challenge than he thought. As said at the beginning of "DUCKWORTH.," "It was always me versus the world, until I found it's me versus me." By the end of the album, after exploring all these sides to his humanity, we and Kendrick seem to come away with some very good questions about God, government, and life, but still no clear answers. It's a bit unsettling, especially compared to the clear conclusions reached at the end of GKMC and TPAB. But I guess you tried to warn us, huh, Kendrick?--Loving you is complicated. 

6. Oxbow - Thin Black Duke

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Oxbow's Thin Black Duke is my favorite experimental album of the year. And I think one of the reasons I fell in love with it so much is that it isn't experimental in the ways I usually expect when I sit and listen to "experimental music," by being artsy and inaccessible and subversive of pop music norms. In fact, Thin Black Duke, at least at first, sounds suspiciously like an average rock album. But the deeper into the album you go, even by the end of the first track, "Cold, Well-Lit Place," it quickly becomes apparent that, even though it's "rock," no other album has ever sounded like this. The music is memorable but at the same time eschews any standard verse-chorus-verse structure. It is accessible but is also incredibly rich and complex. And most of all, we have front man Eugene S. Robinson, who is like no other rock vocalist I've ever heard, delivering vocals so passionate and intense that they are really something closer to a well-acted theatrical performance than music. His performances are fantastic in their dynamic range, fluctuating from gasping whispers to beautiful, pained crooning to feverish ramblings that make him sound legitimately insane.

The titular, fictional Thin Black Duke is an enigma. He is a classical tragic hero who, in trying to battle the ills of modern society, eventually, in true Shakespearean irony, meets his end by succumbing to them. The Duke, whose name is an obvious nod to the infamous, coked-up persona of David Bowie from his Station to Station-era, is as deep and complex a character as the music is compositionally and, also like the music, is gone before I can really make heads or tails of him. And he is also reminiscent of Oxbow themselves as a band, who are shrouded in a similar cloak of secrecy, being a nearly 30 year old band but having next to no information about themselves personally available online. Thin Black Duke is like one of the best magic shows, where the performance and the performer themselves are inextricably, inseparably connected. 

5. Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me

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I really can't make a year end list without celebrating this album. A Crow Looked At Me is an album about death, specifically the death of Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie)'s young wife in August of 2016. We've heard albums about the death of dear personal loved ones before, not the least of which being the widely acclaimed albums Benji and Carrie & Lowell, by artists Sun Kil Moon and Sufjan Stevens, respectively. But A Crow Looked At Me is a completely different experience than any other album about death I've heard before because, rather than coming from the end of the stages of grief where the artist has been able to process their loss into words and music, ACLAM comes right smack dab in the middle of Elverum's grief, where he very clearly has NOT come to terms with his wife's passing, and even making a point of saying that (at least right now) he doesn't WANT to learn anything and that death is just death, without purpose or meaning. 

The songs are sung in present tense, Phil often saying things like "You've been gone eleven days" on track "Seaweed" or "It's August 12th, 2016 / You've been gone for one month and three days," revealing that this album was written literally in the moment of his grief. Also, as those previous lyrical snippets indicate, the album is almost enitrely written in second person, Phil speaking to his dead wife, and talking about intimate details of their lives, their daughter, their love, and her death. In all, it makes the album extraordinarily difficult to listen to, heart-breakingly tender and sad, and utterly unforgettable. 

4. Converge - The Dusk In Us

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A bit like Vince Staples' Big Fish Theory, there is nothing profound behind my reasoning for putting The Dusk In Us on this list, especially this high up, in my top 5. Rather, it deserves this ranking just because it's really freaking good music. Metalcore/post-hardcore band Converge is arguably one of the most consistent, currently active bands in metal right now, and The Dusk In Us continues their win streak. One of the things I've always admired about Converge is the screaming, funnily enough. I feel like most metal vocalists scream because they have to scream in order to have legitimacy in their genre. I feel like Jacob Bannon of Converge, on the other hand, screams because he genuinely has to--because it is really the only effective way to communicate the anger and sorrow inside him. And that quality of his certainly certainly hasn't diminished on this LP, like when he passionately spits in rage, "You don't know what my pain feels like," on "I Can Tell You About Pain."

This combined with fantastic, very natural, analog-sounding production gives The Dusk In Us a feeling of incredible rawness and power that I find very compelling. The songwriting is also top notch, injecting the album with blood-pumping momentum that easily carries the listener from the first track to the last without getting bored, skillfully taking just two breathers for quieter, more melodic songs "The Dusk In Us" and "Thousands of Miles Between Us." It is very rare, these days, for me to love a metal album as much as I love this one, having largely moved past my metalhead days of youth. The Dusk In Us is no average album, though, and very much earns its place in my heart.

3. Lorde - Melodrama

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Even rarer than loving a metal album as much as I love Converge's LP is for me to love a pop album as much as I love Melodrama. For a review as in depth as my others on this list have been, check out my full-length review from earlier this month. In short, though, Lorde pours her whole soul into this LP, making music that is intimate and personal and uniquely hers like few artists can. She just so happens to also be able to make this kind of passionate music incredibly catchy and danceable, too, which is just mind-bogglingly impressive, if you ask me. 

2. Fleet Foxes - Crack-up

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Fleet Foxes are mah bois. Something about their music just speaks to my very soul. I've always taken hope from them, that if, in our crazy world of violence and hatred, something as beautiful and genuine as their music can exist, then maybe it's not such a bad place to live after all. Crack-up is a continuation of this sound, the next step in their evolution. It is grounded in good, ol' indie folk songwriting but over the course of the album, frontman Robin Pecknold also comes to transcend the boundaries of his genre. He begins the album with an unsettling, gravely, solitary mumble, rather than Fleet Foxes normal, gorgeous harmonies, setting the pace for the subversion of expectations that follows on the rest of the album. The next song, "Cassius, -" begins with burbling synths, of all things. And lead single "Third of May / Odaigahara," the closest sounding thing to an indie radio-ready single, is still 8 minutes long, devolving from the celestial bliss of the first half into introspective ambiance in the second.

It's easily Fleet Foxes' densest, most challenging album. It took me several, several listens to feel like I had a good grasp of everything going on. In the all-consuming rise of hip hop as the dominant genre in the United States, and as indie music slowly, heart-breakingly, gets the life sucked out of it by corporations coming late to the party, some declared this year that Fleet Foxes' brand of indie folk music was dead. Crack-up is defiant proof that there is still so much that the world needs them to create.

...and finally, at number one!...

1. Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy

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It really has been a great, transitional year, a time of change and coming of age for me personally and for the music industry. Nothing has so quiet captured that zeitgeist for me like Tyler, the Creator's Flower Boy, which is a coming-of-age album for the young Californian rapper/writer/producer, who is just 13 months older than me. I, like Tyler, have struggled for the past couple of years in this state of immaturity, not wanting to grow up but finding life pushing me closer and closer to that adulthood, almost against my will. Tyler inspired me, though, by really me showing what it looks like to grow up while still remaining your quintessential self. Tyler drops the obnoxious, violent persona of his past and finally revealed his true self to the world, warts and all. But this "true self" wasn't someone new; it's the Tyler we had seen hints of all along, goofy, anxious, distracted, and talented. While he is still as emotionally troubled as ever, if not more so, he at least seems to finally know who he is and that gives Flower Boy direction and focus that no other Tyler, the Creator album has had.

As I've come to embrace my own maturation into the man I need to be for my family and for myself, I am also finding the best parts of myself are enhanced and clarified, not diminished. I'm finding myself more caring than before; more driven to become my best self, not a stunted, comfortable version from the past; more creative, like with my renewed resolve to make this blog into something great; and more excited for what lies ahead. Flower Boy has been, more than any other album this, the soundtrack to my growing from childhood to adulthood. This, plus the fact that it's just an amazing album (see: my full length review), makes Tyler, the Creator's Flower Boy my album of the year.

Quick List: Top 20 Songs of 2017

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and all that biz! It's time for my lists of favorite music of the year. I'm currently hard at work making an in-depth, detailed list of my top 20 albums of the year. So, to tide y'all over 'til then, here is a quick, commentary-free list of my top 20 songs of 2017!! Def czech the songs out on the accompanying Spotify playlist. I love each of these songs, and hope you'll enjoy them too! And I'd love to hear what songs you loved and couldn't stop bumpin' this year, down in the comments. Enjoy!

Top 20 Songs of 2017

20. St. Vincent - Pills
19. Open Mike Eagle - (How Could Anybody) Feel At Home
18. Alvvays - Dreams Tonite 
17. Joey Bada$$ - Rockabye Baby (ft. ScHoolboy Q)
16. Oh Sees - Keys to the Castle 
15. Father John Misty - Total Entertainment Forever
14. Algiers - The Underside of Power
13. Gorillaz - Ascension (ft. Vince Staples)
12. King Krule - Dum Surfer
11. Sufjan Stevens - Wallowa Lake Monster
10. Vince Staples - Big Fish
9. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - The Lord of Lightning
8. Oxbow - A Gentleman's Gentleman
7. Big K.R.I.T. - Big Bank (ft. T.I.)

6. Mount Eerie - Real Death
5. Converge - I Can Tell You About Pain
4. Kendrick Lamar - DNA.
3. Fleet Foxes - Third of May / Ōdaigahara
2. Tyler, the Creator - 911 / Lonely Boy
1. Lorde - Liability

Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy ALBUM REVIEW

Photo cred: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/
w/index.php?curid=54483116

If you had told me in 2016 that Lorde and Tyler, the Creator's new albums would be in my top 3 favorites of the year, I would've laughed at you. But yet, against all odds, here we are! If you're unfamiliar with Tyler, the Creator and why I should be so incredulous that I find myself loving his new album, Flower Boy, as much as I do, here's the basic rundown on him as an artist:

Tyler, the Creator is a LA-based rapper and producer, known as the main artist and de facto leader of the experimental, independent hip hop collective Odd Future (aka OFWGKTA). Prior to the release of this album, Tyler's career as a musician has been characterized mainly by an overwhelming sense of immaturity, primarily manifested in him focusing his music on cheap, insubstantial shock tactics: throwing hollow threats of homicide, patricide, infanticide, and other gratuitous violence; boasting about fictional rapes and other such misogynies; waiving around vague Satanic references and homophobic slurs; and otherwise trying to scare your mom as thoroughly as possible. These topics got him labelled, by some, as a "horrorcore" rapper, a subgenre of hip hop usually reserved for the most unpleasant, hedonistic rappers. However, unlike the scarier artists in the horrorcore genre, the teenage Tyler's shocking persona wore away very quickly.

I mean, it was kind of scary at first, on his debut mixtape, Bastard, in 2009, when the then 18-year-old Tyler was still shrouded in a layer of mystique and anonymity. But upon the release of his first full-length LP, Goblin, in 2011, it became painfully clear that all the talk of killing and eating people was just a flimsy act, one which he himself became very quick to break, to make sure people knew it was all "fiction" and to "not do anything that I say in [these songs], okay?" as stated in the intro to the song "Radicals," on that album.

After hearing this album, I really lost interest in Tyler, the Creator. Which I honestly thought was a shame, because, even though I've always been turned off by his gratuitously unwholesome subject matter, I always thought him an extremely talented rapper and beat producer, technically speaking, and that he had real charisma, behind the goofiness and cartoonish violence. Also, to his credit, I never felt like Tyler's villainous persona from those days was pure "fiction:" I thought the violent, hateful lyrics mostly served as an outlet for Tyler to express his very real, intense angst about his love life, anxieties, and especially his upbringing. But, even in spite of these things in his favor, the once-captivating Tyler, the Creator just seemed to deflate before my very eyes, continuing on with 2013's Wolf and 2015's Cherry Bomb.

Golf Wang. Photo cred: http://respect-mag.com/2017/07/tyler-creator-keeps-vintage-performs-911-late-show/

So, yes, believe me: I am as surprised as anyone to be sitting here today, in 2017, naming his new album Flower Boy as one of my favorite albums of the year. So what changed? In a word: EVERYthing. No one knows why, but seemingly overnight, Tyler, the Creator, the musician, has completely changed. Without any warning, he has dropped the hate, the violence, the anger, the misogyny, and most of all the fakeness that permeated his past work. He has killed off his persona of the past. In its place, Tyler gives us an album full of incredible sincerity, self-awareness, and real emotion. He shows us his sensitive side. He raps about loneliness and inadequacy. He sings about love and longing. Heck, he sings, which we've never heard before. I mean, the name of the album is Flower Boy for crying out loud. In short, it feels like we're finally seeing the real Tyler, unafraid to surrender at last to his genuine self.

And in being "his genuine self," he is really still the same Tyler we've seen hints of all along, behind the tough guy mask. He is still very, very depressed and anxious, even pessimistic, as on the opener "Foreword," where he wonders aloud "How many cars can I buy til I run out of drive? How much drive can I have til I run out of road?" He's still goofy and distracted, like on the skit track "Sometimes...." He still gets angry and aggressive, like on the single "Who Dat Boy." I mean, he's still him, in the best way--he's not saying, "I don't want to be the old me, so I'm going to cram myself into a box and call it the new me." He's just finally being his naked self. In fact if anything, after dropping his tough guy shell, Tyler seems more willing than ever to expose to us the full depths of his troubled, depressed, often suicidal mind, in ways that his therapist character on past albums never could.

Musically, this album is also a pretty vast departure from Tyler's past work, generally speaking. In contrast to the more harsh, aggressive instrumentals of his past work, most of the production on Flower Boy (with the main exception of "Who Dat Boy") is much gentler, warmer, even happier, to compliment Tyler's more introspective rapping, and his and the guest vocalists' singing. I mean, "See You Again" sounds like a straight-up alternative R&B ballad, something that would fit comfortably on a Frank Ocean album. This is something I never would've expected from Tyler. 

Swag. Photo cred: https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/07/20/tyler-the-creator-flower-boy-album-title/

And finally, you really can't talk about Flower Boy without talking about what was perhaps the biggest surprise of all: Tyler comes out of the closet on the album. Now, I mean, this is 2017, and entertainers revealing to the public that they are homosexual is usually nothing to write home about, in and of itself, and indeed, an artist's sexuality shouldn't have any bearing on a listener's reception of their work. For me, though, Tyler coming out was shocking because, until this year, he has been pretty unapologetically homophobic in his speech and lyrics, particularly in his love for the word "faggot" as a slur to be used against his enemies. 

Tyler coming out, and of course, abandoning that part of his speech with it, felt to me like Tyler's ultimate victory over fakeness. Tyler tells us on the Flower Boy track "I Ain't Got Time!" that he's been "kissing white boys since 2004." Tyler is fully embracing in himself something he had once scorned and derided, and in doing so, displays an incredible amount of bravery and maturity--risking being called a hypocrite or even being told that he's not actually homosexual, he's still just being a massive troll, lying about this to make his biggest attack on the LGBTQ community yet! Which, yes, unbelievably, has happened. To be so comfortable with this aspect of himself at last that he is willing to risk that kind of backlash shows a maturity that I don't think most people have. Make no mistake: Tyler is still in emotional turmoil throughout the album, but at least with this one facet of his kaleidoscopic identity, he seems finally at peace.

So, when I listen to or think about this album, honestly, the one word that comes to my mind is "victory:" Victory over insincerity. Victory over violence and vengefulness. Victory over self. Victory over the stigma, in hip hop culture, that "real" rappers must never be invulnerable. Victory over the immense weight of fame and the expectation to be who you've always been. Tyler, the Creator, with these 14 tracks, destroyed all of those barriers that had been holding him back. This album is as rich and dense and as complicated as a human being. I'm glad that human being is, specifically, Tyler, because I've always been fascinated by him and his potential. The future has never looked brighter for Tyler Gregory Okonma and the sunflower-laden hills stretch out wide before our hero, the unabashed Flower Boy.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.5
Tyler, the Creator – Flower Boy
1. Foreword 2. Where This Flower Blooms 3. Sometimes... 4. See You Again 5. Who Dat Boy 6. Pothole 7. Garden Shed 8. Boredom 9. I Ain't Got Time! 10. 911 / Mr. Lonely 11. Droppin' Seeds 12. November 13. Glitter 14. Enjoy Right Now, Today	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

Lorde - Melodrama ALBUM REVIEW

Photo cred: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/
lorde/melodrama/buy/

Since I was on a mission throughout 2013 and most of 2014, I missed the sudden, wave-making arrival of Lorde onto the music scene back in 2013. Which also meant I was oblivious to its tectonically impactful lead single "Royals," which catapulted this naught-but-16-year-old girl into the stratosphere of pop stardom before any one could even blink. "Royals" was still so popular once my mission ended, about a year and a half after the single's release, that I very quickly got exposed to the song and its accompanying album Pure Heroine. I thought it wasn't a bad song, for a teenage pop up-and-comer, but it didn't captivate me by any means or make me want to check her album out. So, to be frank, until this album dropped, I never gave Pure Heroine or Lorde the time of day. And as three years proceeded to pass without a word from Lorde, I just subconsciously assumed she was another pop one-hit wonder.

But all that changed with the release of this new album, Melodrama. Out of seemingly nowhere, Lorde has come out of the shadows and released what I think is the best pop album of the year, and one of the most emotionally salient pop albums in recent memory. Where Pure Heroine was Lorde's hollow-sounding framework, showing her potential as a songwriter, Melodrama fills in the empty spaces with color and emotion and just plain good songwriting.

The best example of this may be the single "Liability." We find Lorde alone at a piano in a dark room, writing in a diary via keys and voice about lovers current and past. And it feels almost intrusive that we are here, too--watching and listening and peeking over her shoulder at this diary and all its intimate details. We watch as she confesses her insecurities and her deep, passionate emotions of love and regret towards a boy and towards herself most of all. Heartbreakingly, she concludes by agreeing with her emotionally aloof lovers: that it's always her fault when passion dies--she just isn't good enough.

With this song and other album stand-outs--"Writer in the Dark," "The Louvre," and "Supercut"--Lorde exhibits a rare gift to distill these complex, yet relatable emotional experiences not just into concise, smart lyrics, but also into immediate pop gems. The album, throughout its tracklist, recalls the best musical moment of artists with this same gift, like Adele, Whitney Houston, or even Alanis Morissette.

Now, of course, it isn't a perfect album or a masterpiece or anything. Lorde still succumbs to pop cliches, like on "Green Light," which begins promisingly enough with these same confessional lyrics and piano balladry mentioned earlier. But then the song just kind of stumbles into a dance pop, let-me-see-your-hands, singalong chorus that feels awkward and like she just didn't know what else to do after the verses. This same, safe kind of songwriting pops up on songs like "Homemade Dynamite" and "Hard Feelings/Loveless." Still, even if these songs aren't as bold and breathtaking as others on the album, they're still enjoyable enough pop pieces.

Lorde has definitely proven she has something special to say and a gift for saying it. As she continues to take risks and be bold like this, Lorde is quickly and impressively cementing her place among the pop greats, and away from the depressing one-hit wonder status that was previously threatening her. It will definitely be interesting to see if she can continue to produce solid material like this.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.0
Lorde – Melodrama
1. Green Light 2. Sober 3. Homemade Dynamite 4. The Louvre 5. Liability 6. Hard Feelings / Loveless 7. Sober II (Melodrama) 8. Writer In the Dark 9. Supercut 10. Liability (Reprise) 11. Perfect Places	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Sketches of Brunswick East ALBUM REVIEW

Photo credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/KGATLW/comments/
6o03x2/artwork_for_sketches_of_brunswick_east/

It's been one year since my last music review of any kind, the last album review being of Australian garage rock septet King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's triumphant, lo-fi opus Nonagon Infinity, which I absolutely loved. And in these twelve short intervening months, King Gizzard have given us three more albums, with allegedly two more to come by the end of the year. So, to say Stu Mackenzie and his cadre of musical miscreants have had a busy year would definitely be an understatement.

Not to mention they found time to make their American television debut on Conan in April!
Photo credit:https://livemusicblog.com/2017/04/18/watch-king-gizzard-the-lizard-wizard-the-lord-of-lightning-live-on-conan-4-17-17/

In February, we got the first of this year's releases, Flying Microtonal Banana, an album billed as an experiment in microtonal compositions. The songs were enjoyable enough, especially "Open Water" and lead single "Rattlesnake," but the microtonal aspect of the music really served as a melodic flavor served over King Gizzard's standard minor pentatonic blues fare rather than a compositionally defining characteristic of the music harmonically. It was a good album, but just not the most memorable or musically diverse project in their discography.

Next, in June, came the much hyped and quite polarizing Murder of the Universe. It served as both a narrative and musical sequel to Nonagon Infinity, sharing a large amount of the lyrical ideas, defining melodies, and rhythmic motifs of its 2016 sister. The main turn off for many people was the heavy, heavy use of spoken word throughout each song of the album. Myself, I felt like it was at times definitely too much, but at other points, particularly on the last third of the album, I felt the spoken word really added a lot, giving the music a unique and memorable angle. Either way, it certainly helped King Gizzard tell (and I think finish?) the story told on Nonagon Infinity and started on 2014's I'm In Your Mind Fuzz. 

Now onto Sketches of Brunswick East. Given how incredibly dense Murder of the Universe was, I think all of us King Gizzard listeners--both those who loved that album and those who didn't--needed a cleansing of our palates and a change of pace. This year's third album for King Gizzard (and their 11th overall), Sketches of Brunswick East, provides just that. Far removed from the megaton-heavy, blistering, psych rock marathons that were Nonagon and Murder, Sketches of Brunswick East is a breezy, lazy, jazzy stroll through a cartoon version of the 60's. The white-hot distortion of the guitars is traded in for a clean, bright tone. The arena-sized, doomsaying organs are swapped with sunny, meandering jazz keys. And even frontman Stu trades his woops and hollers and ominous lyrics for a more breathy, sing-songy approach. In fact, it's such a 180 from those previous albums that I think a lot of new listeners unversed in King Gizzard's past genre-switching acrobatics might not ever guess they're the same band.

And to be fair, they're kinda not the same band this time around, since Sketches is a collaborative project with fellow Aussie musician Alexander Brettin, the sole member of Mild High Club (I guess no one else wanted to join). According to the band, Sketches was born when Alex once crashed at Stu Mackenzie's place for a few weeks late last year and started hashing out some song ideas. They picked it back up later by sending each other more snippets or sketches of songs (get it??) via iPhone and which were later fleshed out into this album.

This organic, loose creative process definitely shows on Sketches of Brunswick East, in that the whole record flows together like one big jam session (slash) dream sequence, which often works very well, but at times doesn't. For instance, the opening track "Sketches of Brunswick East I" is a jammy little theme song for the record. It's enjoyable enough the first time, but then it's more or less copy and pasted to make the later tracks, "Sketches of Brunswick East II" and "III." And generally speaking, the instrumental tracks--the places where the album feels very improvised--are weaker than the tracks with vocals, with the main exception being "Cranes, Planes, and Migraines" which features this really tight, funky rhythm section that makes the song very memorable.

But really, that's my only big gripe: the instrumentals can be a little meandering and in one ear and out the other. Besides that, I think the rest of the album sounds fantastic! Opener "Countdown" shows the band jelling together on a difficult 9/4 in duple meter beat, and features a very tasty, certified-jazz E-piano solo on the bridge, which I'm pretty sure is performed by Mild High Club? (If anyone happens to know if it isn't him, leave a comment! I want to know for sure, because that solo is impressive!) 

Many of the tracks on Sketches give some limelight to other members of the band besides normal frontman Stu, which gives the album a unique freshness: "Tezeta" is a fun, catchy, exotica shuffle, with lead vocals from Gizzard guitarist Joey Walker. "The Spider and Me" features Gizzard multi-instrumentalist (and my homie) Ambrose Kenny-Smith on vocals, who spins gold with his delicate, boyish performance. 

Da band: From L to R: Joey Walker, Stu Mackenzie, Eric Moore, Ambrose Kenny-Smith!, Lucas Skinner, Cook Craig, and Michael Cavanagh
Photo credit: https://www.relix.com/blogs/detail/king_gizzard_and_the_
lizard_wizard_play_whats_in_my_bag_at_amoeba_records

And then there's my personal favorite track, "The Book," a standout on the album not only because of how immediate and well-written it is, but because of how, just, dark it is compared to anything else on the record. In his best, deep-voiced Mike Patton impression, guitarist Cook Craig tells the tale of a schizophrenic man who thinks God is telling him to kill all the sinners in the world, and eventually himself. Tthe man regards these messages as his own kind of pageless Bible, or "The Book".... Yeah, dark stuff no matter what album it's on, but especially on this otherwise lackadaisical, dreamy project. But it's a really good different that makes the song stick with you. And again, it has a really strong, Disco Volante- or California-era Mr. Bungle vibe that I really dig.

All in all, to wrap up this rather long review, I am really loving Sketches of East Brunswick. It definitely has its flaws, and at rare points, the kind of meandering, piecemeal creative process that birthed it shows awkwardly. But, outweighing this are the great musical ideas that King Gizzard and Mild High Club cooked up and served together. If you haven't been huge on King Gizzard's past lo-fi, dense rock 'n roll, and especially if you weren't keen on the last album, Murder of the Universe, definitely give this a shot. I know personally I'll be spinning this album a lot, alongside the other great albums of 2017 and in King Gizzard's discog. I'm excited to see what they put out next!

OVERALL SCORE: 7.9
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Sketches of Brunswick East
1. Sketches of Brunswick East I 2. Countdown 3. D-Day 4. Tezeta 5. Cranes, Planes, and Migraines 6. Sketches of Brunswick East II 7. Dust to Dawn on Lygon Street 8. The Book 9. A Journey to (S)hell 10. Rolling Stoned 11. You Can Be Your Silhouette 12. Sketches of Brunswick East III	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

Life Update 8/21/2017

Hello, hello! I am not dead and, more importantly, am back into blogging! I would say it's been a crazy, busy year and a half since last I wrote, and while it definitely has been, crazy and busy just seem like the new norm--dealing off and on with my mental health, changing jobs within my company, getting back into school, and especially since now my wife and I are expecting! 

Yep, little Baby Spendlove is due in March 2018, and we are just ecstatic. I mean, just look at the little guy! (I'm convinced it's a boy. My apologies, baby, if you are a girl and I'm calling you the wrong thing.) We have been waiting a long time to be able to have a baby, and this little cutie just fell in our laps out of nowhere, virtually on the eve of Rachel having surgery to be able to get pregnant! Hashtag surgery averted. 

Our little tyke!!

I suppose us having a baby and preparing for his/her arrival is helping me straighten up my schedule and prioritize my time, so that I make sure I'm getting the important things done each day. And in that straightening up of my schedule, I'm finding myself with free time and the desire to write again. I've been writing in a physical journal for the past week or so, and that's been helping get all the thoughts in my head out as well as, I think, helping me get bit by the writing bug again. So, a week ago or so, I went back and read all my posts on this blog and I realized just how fun it was and how much I missed it. And I wasn't as scatter-brained a writer as I remember being, honestly!

So, here we are! I'm starting up album reviews again with the new King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard album that dropped just last week--Sketches of Brunswick East--which I find rather fitting because my last album review before my sabbatical was for their 2016 release Nonagon Infinity, and that album was my gateway drug into the rest of their prodigious discog. Anyway, expect that review to be coming soon, and for many more to follow!

Thanks, those of you who are still here and still interested, for taking the time to read and to share your passion for music with mine. Music is one of the things that makes my blood pump in my veins, that gets me out of bed in the morning, and that simply makes me happy. I'm excited to start writing and discussing it again and to contribute in some way, hopefully, to turning you guys on to good, new releases as they come out. Stay tuned!