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Heard Presents: ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2017!!!



Ahoy!

We’ve reached the end of 2017! I hope your year was as good as mine. With the last post of the year the Wonderfish and I are revealing our picks for Album of the Year (AOTY). Let’s get right to it.

Honorable Mentions
A lot of amazing music came out this year. Far too much for me to try and rank so here’s a list of albums that were near the top of my listening but not quite AOTY material. They all deserve many listens and I’d like to hear why anyone of them should have been named AOTY. In no particular order…

Julien Baker- Turn Out the Lights
Steven Wilson- To The Bone
Oded Tzur- Translator’s Note
Caligula’s Horse- In Contact
Chris Thile- Thanks For Listening
Three Fall- Four (With Melane)
Brother Ali- All the Beauty in This Whole Life
Rhiannon Giddens- Freedom Highway

Runner Up
The Stranger- The Stranger

This debut album from Australian prog band The Stranger is simply amazing. I had a very hard time not giving this AOTY. It features sublime guitar players on both acoustic and electric, amazing vocals, clean and dirty, and some of the best bass playing I’ve heard on a prog album in a long time. The balance between really heavy tracks and soft ballad tracks is spot on and the only negative thing I can say about it is that the last track ends on a fade out. In the end the reason The Stranger gets number two is that, for me, it lacks that ineffable “epic” quality.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR!!!!
Leprous- Malina

Words fail me trying to describe this album. To begin with it has a huge soundscape. It’s hard to put into words but the album just sounds big without having to always be loud. Malina is distinctly a prog album but from the start it has a very different feel than most. This album is not about shredding guitars and crazy long instrumentals. It’s obvious the guitar players are extremely talented and perhaps this is why they sound so mature on this record. Each song weaves into the next without any of them having to be long and drawn out (even though I happen to like long instrumentals). The two separating factors between this and The Stranger are: 1) each song on Malina holds its own as an individual track and at the same time is a vital piece to the overall picture and 2) the amazing use of orchestral strings, particularly the “The Last Milestone” which features just a string section and vocals. It stops my world every time I get to that song. The beauty is deep, the emotions real, and the music amazing. Do not miss out on this album.

There you have it, my top albums from 2017. Gear up folks, 2018 is right around the corner and a whole new game is about to start.

Until next time,
Heard
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