Fairly Late Best Songs/Albums of February 2017
I spent the past 4 days going across Louisiana, and I finally got back home to Wifi this afternoon. Here's a list of stuff I liked in February. |
| 22 |  | Joan of Arc
He's Got the Whole This Land is Your Land in His Hands
--BEST SONGS-- |
| 21 |  | Persefone
Aathma
10. Prison Skin: A complete standout on an ironically safe album. This track is basically the best parts of Aathma compiled in to one nice piece, and is pretty pleasing for drumming fanatics like me ;). |
| 20 |  | Grails
Chalice Hymnal
9. Deep Snow 2: Not only does this track fit on the album perfectly with ambient-like tracks such as "Tough Guy" and "Rebecca" flowing into this heavier song, but this song on its own is a very warm (despite its title) and calm track with great guitar tones and background instruments. The layering of these instruments here is quite fantastic. |
| 19 |  | Sun Kil Moon
Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood
8. Bergen to Trondheim: I believe Sun Kil Moon's representative messages of the year 2016 were best expressed in this song. "Bergen to Trondheim" is the closest thing this album gets to a "come together" song, and it definitely helps in counteracting the overly negative/critical tone of the rest of the album. What's more impressive about this song is that Mark Kozelek made this the only song on the entire album with a live-concert-like background to showcase even more of that unison. |
| 18 |  | Jesca Hoop
Memories Are Now
7. The Coming: In an honestly meh folk album, I don't think Jesca Hoop could've picked a better ending. The album was only starting to get my interest by the time "Unsaid" was played, but everything led up to an impressive closer. It's quiet and pretty abstract, so Jesca uses her excellent voice and songwriting on this encore. |
| 17 |  | Jonwayne
Rap Album Two
6. Paper: One of the best extended metaphors on a hip-hop track I've heard in a while. It's pretty personal and relatable much like a lot of Rap Album Two, and it definitely magnifies in certain lyrics. |
| 16 |  | The Menzingers
After the Party
5. The Bars: I couldn't get into this album at all, despite its large praise. The Bars is everything I thought this album could've been: intense, unique, and meaningful. I'm especially impressed with the vocalist on this song, who really pushes his voice to the limits here. |
| 15 |  | Wiegedood
De Doden Hebben het Goed II
4. Ontzeilling: A really awesome black metal composition on a very flawed album. Maybe it's because this is the opener of the album and it's flow matters way less than other songs (consistent flow between tracks on this album is about nonexistent), but there are some quality moments to be heard in the layered sounds. Oh yeah, and the ending is pretty amazing. |
| 14 | | Grails
Chalice Hymnal
3. The Prague: Probably the heaviest track on the album, but its awesomeness comes when you realize that it sounds a lot like a 70's classic rock-styled tribute with Grails's sound mixed in. The mixing and production on here are just amazing, and this song is just another example of how Grails can add their style of music to about anything and make it sound epic. |
| 13 |  | Blackfield
Blackfield V
2. October: This is the Blackfield I remember in their first two albums. In fact, this song is one of their best. Steven Wilson actually carries the song with his vocals here, and his live-sounding chorus with the string section is one of the most beautiful moments I've heard all year. The ending adds just the right punch with the piano-vocal duet. |
| 12 | | Grails
Chalice Hymnal
1. After the Funeral: Much like "The Coming" from Jesca Hoop, "After the Funeral" couldn't have ended this album better. While "Thorns 2" is a great track on it's own, the quality of the album was starting to wane as you could hear some specific recycling from earlier tracks in that song, signifying that Grails may have ran out of material to experiment with. Instead of trying to find a new style to experiment with, they instead do a 180 from the rest of the album and close off with a sound that was in the style of the band Grails, instead of post rock or ambient or any other genre, rather: Grails. The composition is haunting and beautiful while the great mixing of the sounds stays on this track, and many of the background sounds one would hear on the rest of the album are actually forefront here, and that's a sound to behold. |
| 11 |  | Anal Trump
To All the Broads I've Nailed Before
--BEST ALBUMS-- |
| 10 |  | King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard
Flying Microtonal Banana
6.5/10 Good fuzzy, psychedelic stuff. "Melting" is an especially great track that holds the medal for my favorite drumming song of the year right now. The album starts to get pretty repetitive and boring by the second half in a way that killed my interest for a lot of the album. |
| 9 | | Blackfield
Blackfield V
6.5/10 It's decent. Aviv Geffen doesn't sound good on this album, and a lot of the more cheery songs are really cringy in lyrics and instruments. However, some of the songs here does make up with great composition, such as "October", "A Drop in the Ocean", and "From 44 to 48". I find this pretty funny for almost literally having a bad song every other track in the album order. |
| 8 |  | Ocean Grove
The Rhapsody Tapes
7/10 I really like the industrial sound that Ocean Grove put into many of the tracks on this album. Sometimes this industrial sound goes way too far - particularly in the instrumentals - but it makes for some really neat tracks when done in subtlety, like most of this album. |
| 7 |  | Tiger Lillies
Cold Night in Soho
7/10 I don't really care for the band themselves nor do I really take part their cult-ish fanbase, but that doesn't pose my judgments for this album. Sure, it has one of the worst songs I've heard all year ("Heroin"), but the singer's voice, and the other members' instrumentation have convinced me to admire their very quirky sound. There are more ballads on the album than you might expect, but almost all of them sound great and pretty fun/thoughtful/sad/whatever the mood is for that song. |
| 6 |  | Kairon IRSE!
Ruination
7/10 This is pretty much the only album I've listened to that I could ever consider progressive shoegaze, but it's pretty good considering the somewhat nonexistent genre. A few of the songs were very repetitive, but its repetitiveness was made up in the awesome, droning riffs that would appear. What I really admire here is the band's effort to make something very unique like this album, and I could tell they definitely tried. |
| 5 |  | Ungfell
Tôtbringære
7/10 Once you get used the "crow vocals", they tend to be a grower on the fitting instrumentation here. This album flows very smoothly, and it's quieter sections are definitely a highlight into breaking up the repetitiveness that doesn't really occur too often on this album. The tracks diversify pretty heavily in the guitar riffs and composition, which is key on an album like this, and it certainly succeeds at that. |
| 4 |  | Super Snake
Leap of Love
7.5/10 Great, trippy "static" rock. The subtle changes in the compositions and sounds from track to track on this album is what made me really impressed here. Some songs unfortunately do drag, but they still fit on the album nonetheless as they flow very smoothly into the other tracks, as the entire album seems to do. This album's a lot of fun, too. |
| 3 |  | Quelle Chris
Being You Is Great...
7.5/10 Ahh, the first of the two rap albums in the top three. Quelle Chris mostly makes very likable songs that all seem to give a sense of pride that was needed on an album like this. The subject and lyrics are key as the aforementioned sense of pride showcases a self-aware ego that, again, make the songs enjoyable to listen to. |
| 2 | | Jonwayne
Rap Album Two
7.5/10 This is a pretty personal underground rap album that not only makes a pretty great effort to relate to the listener, but uses very clever lyrics and lines to do so. The beats have a great variety of genres from track to track, ranging from jazz, ambient, electronic. and some others. These beats pair up with the lyrics very well and, except for the beginning of the album, hardly get in the way of, or better yet set a fitting mood for, the lyrics. |
| 1 | | Grails
Chalice Hymnal
9/10 Here's number oneeeeee. If you saw my best songs list descriptions, you could definitely guess this pick. I'm still unsure if this album is better than The Great Old One's EOD, despite them being two completely different albums. I don't really believe that Grails was trying to aim for a bunch of genre tributes on Chalice Hymnal, rather they used their own experimental sound and, well, experience to create their own versions of certain genres that could be heard in each songs. For example, I could hear ambient derivatives in "Empty Chambers" "Rebecca", industrial derivatives in "Pelham" and "Tough Guy", classic rock derivatives in "New Prague", and symphonic derivatives in "Deeper Politics". Again, none of these derivatives can be completely classified as the genre I gave them, but the sound Grails gave them, and that's what I find so amazing about this album. Even with all the different sounds there are to encounter here, none of them seem to clash in tone in any way whatsoever. |
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