I have a soft spot for female-fronted danceish pop, and almost every year-end list I make has an album like this (or Ellie Goulding or Goldfrapp, etc). Full disclosure though: I HATED that Royals song so I never really gave Pure Heroine, her previous album, a shot. That means I have no idea—nor do I really care—if this album is better or worse or if I should really give Pure Heroine a chance because maybe I'd like it!

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"Death is real. Someone's there and then they're not. It's not for singing about, it's not for making into art." And yet that's precisely what Phil Elverum (aka Mount Eerie) has done. His wife died from cancer in 2015, and this album's about dealing with the loss, keeping her memory alive, and learning how to move forward. Fair warning: this is emotionally HEAVY. But it's also really, really good. 

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Hey look, another album about cancer and death. I'm keepin' things cheery early on in this list. Mastodon has been releasing reliably solid metal albums for quite some time now, and this is no exception. Also worth noting: I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention the Nazca Lines in a song before (like they do in Steambreather), so they get bonus points for that. 

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Sidewalks and Skeletons is a British dude you've likely never heard of who makes enjoyable, ethereal witch house music. This type of ~creepy~ stuff (along with the dark ambient genre) has become my go-to when I need to concentrate at work while also maintaining my personal Spotify brand as "guy who listens to nu-metal and folk but also a lot of that weird, dark music too, for some reason."

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Portugal. The Man is such a weird band to me because it SEEMS like they're both unknown and massively popular at the same time. I know Feel It Still is a huge song, but do people actually...like the band? Maybe they're just real big with the festival-going indie/alternative rock-listening youths? I dunno. I've been into PTM for a very long time & love how they constantly reinvent themselves. I dunno if this latest incarnation is their best, but it's definitely their catchiest. 

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Before you even ask, yes, the skeleton mask on the album cover is one of the reasons I opted to listen to this album in the first place. (Which is a trend that will continue later in this list.) I was already familiar with (and a fan of) this guy's music, but sometimes it's hard to get inspired to press play on another singer/songwriter's folksy Americana record on a random morning in early April. Luckily, everything worked out well and the album ended up being quite good. 

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Converge is just wonderful. They've been around forever, their live shows are insane, they're absolute legends in the metalcore scene, and yet somehow each new album they release manages to live up to the ridiculous hype & expectations that people set for them. This is a heavy, chaotic, mammoth of a record that boasts some of the best songwriting of the band's career, and it's an absolute must if you wanna punch something or drive real fast or thrash around the pit. 

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I've been hooked on The Lone Bellow since the moment I heard Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold for the first time back in 2013. "Hey, they mentioned New York City! I love New York City!" "Oh man, there's a shoutout to the F train! I've been on the F train!" Through these (unbelievably unique) shared NYC experiences, I feel that TLB and I have formed a tight bond over the years. As such, I was pleased that their new record turned out to be an enjoyable one!

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He Is Legend will probably never be able to make an album as good as 2009's It Hates You, but I definitely applaud them for trying. To be perfectly honest, I know I'm probably selling this album a little short. It's a really good album, and aside from a couple of songs that are decidedly less good—I'm looking at you, Fritz The Dog—this is exactly what I wanna hear when I listen to HIL. Plus I really like how much the singer dude in the picture I used above looks like WWE Superstar Bray Wyatt™.

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In the mid-2000s, Tom McRae was one of my absolute favorite artists. I distinctly remember a night in 2005 where I was sitting in my car and listening to McRae's All Maps Welcome album during a lunch break at Wal-Mart (I was the frozen food department manager and working overnight because I had some new planograms I needed to set). The album had just recently been released and it was at that particular moment I decided it would be my #1album of that year. Ah, memories. Oh, and this album's good too. 

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My friend Scott was supposed to write a special guest review for this one because The National is his favorite band and he really likes this album. As you can probably tell by now, he did not write a special guest review. But hey, that's okay. He's busy with his wife and daughter and dog and they're probably all off having a great time at the beach without a care in the world about MY needs or MY albums list. And again, that's okay! Have fun, Scott!

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If this album had only been Sharon Van Etten's cover of The End of the World and literally nothing else, that probably would've been enough to secure its spot on this list. That song is, hands down, my favorite (and most listened to) tune of 2017. It's just so darn good. Anyway, I've never watched one second of 'The Man In The High Castle' and probably never will, but this soundtrack—full of songs from the 60s being reimagined by the artists of today—certainly is great.

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Throughout history, there have been many great Ha Has. There's Green Bay Packers safety HaHa Clinton-Dix. There's Nelson's famous catchphrase from the Simpsons. There's Jimi HaHa from Jimmie's Chicken Shack. And there's the response that I get every time I tell a very funny joke. But the most musical of all the Ha Has simply must be Ha Ha Tonka, a band from Missouri that takes their name from Ha Ha Tonka state park, which, as luck would have it, is also in Missouri.

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Margo Price is only 2 albums (and 1 EP) into her career, but I think she's already established herself as one of the best artists in country music today. A lot of her work reminds me—and a lot of other people, I'm sure—of Loretta, Tammy, Dolly, and the other great women who've been so influential & so important to the Nashville scene for such a long time. 

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At this point, I feel like everybody has said everything there is to say about Kendrick Lamar. There are no new takes that I could have about the quality of his work. He's already solidified his place as one of the best & most important rappers of our generation, and his albums are so good that even a weird U2 cameo can't bring 'em down.

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Every year as I'm going through and listening back to some of my favorite music that's been released (and prepping to draft this list), there's always at least 1 album that starts to fly up the charts and ends up way higher on the list than I ever thought it would be. This year, it was Nightmare Logic.  If you're into old-school, thrashy metal with a splash of hardcore thrown in and you haven't listened to Power Trip, boy are you in for a treat.

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The internet is a dumb place. Back in 2014, Wolves In The Throne Room—a black metal band—released an album called Celestite that was synthy & ambient (and really cool, IMHO) but not metal in the slightest, and the internet hated it. Now they've gone back to the guitars, growls, blast beats, and 10 minute songs about the winter solstice and elves and giant oak trees or whatever, and the internet still kinda hates it. Whatever. This album rules.

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I hate being that guy who just puts Kendrick & RTJ on his list and snubs Vince Staples, Big K.R.I.T., Future, and everyone else who made good rap records this year, but here we are. Chances are that I don't need to tell you anything of substance about Run The Jewels. Nor do I need to tell you that they're great and that they probably spoil us with too much music but they really, really need to hurry up and release RTJ4 already. 

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If Max Richter releases an album during any given calendar year, it's gonna end up here on my list. I fell in love with Richter's fantastic brand of "post-classical" when I heard The Blue Notebooks more than a decade ago (I think in a cd listening station at a Borders bookstore, but don't quote me on that), and I've been a huge fan ever since. It's such great music to write to or sleep to or relax to, and I just can't get enough.

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There's a song on this album ("The Alien") that includes a mention of both Lawrenceville, GA and Pleasant Hill, a road that cuts through Gwinnett County, GA. Both of these things are very close to where I grew up and are therefore very near and dear to me. Lawrenceville is right next to Snellville, my hometown! Gwinnett Place Mall, the mall I went to all the time as a kid, is just off Pleasant Hill! The Toys R Us I used to work at is just off Pleasant Hill! The first Super Target I ever visited was near Pleasant Hill! Media Play was near Pleasant Hill! Sometimes I still drive on Pleasant Hill! Man, what a great album. 

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Darkest Hour is my second favorite metal band (behind only Metallica, of course!). Throughout their career, they've tried a bunch of different stuff and incorporated a bunch of different sounds and melodies into their music, not all of which were necessarily a home run. Their last album was especially ehhhhh. BUT! GP&TMF is an awesome return to form for the dudes. It's unrelenting, HEAVY, it's really unlike anything they've released before, and I absolutely love it. 

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Far be it from me to wish sadness and heartbreak upon any other human being on this (or any) planet, but my goodness Ryan Adams' music is so, so great when he's miserable. He's the master of the breakup album, and, as luck would have it, Prisoner is an album about/written as a result of his divorce from Mandy Moore. I'm not gonna say it's his best album, but it's definitely really high on the list. 

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This album has a ghost (and doggo) on the cover and the first track has that Twin Peaks bass sound—you know the one I'm talking about—so obviously I was hooked right away. Granted, I think the ghost is supposed to be a "hey sometimes I feel like a ghost in my everyday life" kinda ghost instead of a spooky "BOO!" ghost, but beggars can't be choosers. This album also features a Connor Oberst cameo, which I would've been STOKED about in 2005. Anyway, this is an excellent debut album from a talented person and it's so honest and so melancholy and so perfect and I am a v, v big fan. 

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This is an album about uncertainty, worry, hope, and love. It's wonderful. Here are the lyrics of If We Were Vampires.

"It's not the long, flowing dress that you're in / Or the light coming off of your skin / The fragile heart you protected for so long / Or the mercy in your sense of right and wrong / It's not your hands searching slow in the dark / Or your nails leaving love's watermark / It's not the way you talk me off the roof / Your questions like directions to the truth

It's knowing that this can't go on forever / Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone / Maybe we'll get forty years together / But one day I'll be gone / Or one day you'll be gone

If we were vampires and death was a joke / We'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke / Laugh at all the lovers and their plans / I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand / Maybe time running out is a gift / I'll work hard 'til the end of my shift / And give you every second I can find / And hope it isn't me who's left behind"

oof. 

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