Year's coming to an end. A lot of fantastic works have seen the light and some artists made their shiniest attempts at expressing things through music. It was a surely complex year both economically, socially and culturally, yet music was still one of the purest, most moving things we all have, and it's indeed our duty to preserve it and value it.
However, 2017 was also a year sullied by marked, sadly profound flaws: some records didn't work out really well and, primarily, some artists made their comebacks in bleak, weak and uninspiring ways. And that's why I felt that this topic deserved a particular spot in my year's lists.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not pointing at the worst albums of 2017; I'm just selecting the ones I was really anticipating for or hoping to be great, and came out being middle-of-the-road, underwhelming or lackluster. Works that I turn to to find how incapable they are to make me feel good about them. Works that are, simply, a disappointment.
Here they are:
10. Miley Cyrus - Younger Now
I've never been a Miley Cyrus fan, and I've never liked her music - and especially, I've never been a fan of the transformation she suffered after Can't Be Tamed in 2010. But somehow, and contrary to what most people felt, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz shiftmarked her career and opened a door to the psychedelic/experimental pop spectrum, and while some songs didn't work and the project was excessively long, I came out liking the record! But I was hoping for Miley to dig deeper into that style and continue to finetune and mature as a left-field artist. What I got here, though, is just another bland "go back to roots" mainstream country-pop album that's anything but special. It's just a collection of mediocre tracks that don't harm but don't affect. Younger Now is insipid, shallow and hallow. A real pity.
9. Mount Kimbie - Love What Survives
I've always respected the British duo and their approach to soft electronic music, and while their music gravitates between sleepy and slowy, I never considered to call it boring or uninspiring. That wasn't going to be the case in their latest record this year, at least not especially after the beautiful first glance at it with "We Go Home Together". But how disappointed I was when I heard the whole project for the first time, and the second and the third. Completely forgettable tracks that get lost into one another, and a constant feeling of self-depricating listlessness make Love What Survives one of the most sedating records of the year, for the worst of it.
8. Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice
I love Courtney Barnett. I love Kurt Vile. I don't love this record, I don't even like it. One can expect a true blast of introspective wit and cerebral joy pairing these two up to a collaborative project, but instead, what we get is an invitation to a private talk we don't get much about, that's not that interesting and that's surely not that rewarding. I still have hopes for a moving group work of these artists, and I'm still sure it will eventually happen. By now, I just have this album as evidence to say that not all that glitters is gold.
7. Beck - Colors
Maybe I wasn't expecting a lot from Beck (yes, I love his 90s stuff and his clear knack for mixing alternative rock with hip hop and some off-kilter retrotwists, but those abilities were not that present in his last albums), but that's not enough to forgive the fact that the cringy millenial pop record Colors is bad at the edge of pathetic. Dull lyrics about a self-proclaimed freedom, flavourless instrumentals that try to (but don't succed in) appeal to bigger audiences, and a worrying sensation of losing it all while still attempting to smile as if everything's going fine make the album a concern for the artist's future and take on music and musicality.
6. LCD Soundsystem - American Dream
This is not a bad album, not even by a mile. But after a break-up and seven years of silence, the hype was high and ever-growing, and one could have easily expected much much more from one of the most important alternative bands of the last decade. Some astounding tracks left aside, the songs here move to excessively dubitative corners and they more often than not get trapped in their own alleyways. And even though it's as lengthy as their previous albums, it's the first time in their career that an LCD Soundsystem record feels a bit (too) long, redundant and repetitive.
5. Björk - Utopia
I'm a huge Björk fan. I love her approach to music, nature, life and common sense. I love her entire career and the fact that each and every single one of her albums feels like an entirely different universe. She's that capable, and she didn't show the opposite on her latest record. Sadly, it's the first time I can't seem to connect with something she releases. Most of the tracks here are excessive in its nature and execution, the flow is inconsistent and while the messages are certainly empowering and optimistic, they aren't strongly developed or performed for me to get jaw-dropped or mesmerised. I think Utopia would have benefited more of itself had it been twenty minutes shorter and with less influence from co-workers like Arca or Rabit. Future will tell if I'm finally able to get this record. So far, it hasn't happened.
4. Shamir - Revelations
"Why would you even want to try to give up on the sole thing that made your music so enjoyable and alluring in the first place?": that would be the first question I'd ask Shamir if I had the chance to meet him. It's a pity that leaving his hip-house style behind costed him more than his signature mark on his sophomore record since, in my opinion, the songs here could have touched gorgeous skies given the exact necessary production and curation. What we get instead, is a group of lo-fi, bedroom pop tracks that exist just because they can, almost as whims. And even the title feels ironic, since nothing here even comes close to being revelatory or schocking.
3. Fever Ray- Plunge
I'll repeat what I always say about this record: 8 years of silence and this is the best Fever Ray could offer to us? Some tracks are unnecessary, but some others should have simply never existed. The entire process and experience involving Plunge feels like a mistake, and a strong disappointment for someone who got really hyped by such an amazing band as The Knife and, especially, such a forward-thinking, moving and entertaining record as Fever Ray was. Will I wait for her to come back again? Sure. Will I give this album more chances to grow on me? I don't think so. Will the third try be this erratic? Let's hope not.
2. Gorillaz - Humanz
Another comeback record and another huge disappointment for me this year. Instead of focusing on the sounds that made them so cool and cleverly fun in the first place, they decided to go full mainstream and fully rely all their tracks in hands of collaborators that, for the most part, ruin and/or diminish the otherwise interesting songs that fulfill Humanz. The biggest sin for Gorillaz was to become unimportant and uninspiring, and they committed it.
1. Arcade Fire - Everything Now
Everything Now is terrible, period. It's terrible by any band's standard, just imagine how it is for the one of one of the most important and life-changing bands of the century. Who would have thought they were as able to throw a cringe-worthily bad record as they previously were to give us some beautiful indie anthems. They prove capable of hitting every single wrong note here, and they exemplify in a truly majestic way how an Arcade Fire should never sound like and should never be. It's the saddest I felt listening to an album this year, and it's one of the things that disencouraged me the most about it.
