February 2018: Album Review Roundup

Swim Into The Sound is back with another Monthly Roundup! I’m honestly not sure how long I’ll be able to stay this “up” on new music, but so far I’ve been having a good time keeping track of new releases and compiling my thoughts.

As great as January was, February was even better, both in terms of quantity and quality, so I’ll waste no time in jumping into it. Here are some of the best/most notable releases from February of 2018.

Cameron Boucher & Field Medic - Split

Released on Valentine’s Day, this lovely and heartfelt split features two songs from Kevin Sullivan of Field Medic and two from Cameron Boucher of Sorority Noise. With both artists coming off wildly-successful2017 releases, this split seems to be a low-key acoustic victory lap of sorts from two of emo folk’s current reigning champs. Oh, and all of the album’s proceeds go to Covenant House, so on top of the great tunes, these two dudes are also class acts.

Hovvdy - Cranberry

Easily my biggest surprise of the month, Hovvdy is a band I’d never heard of until I sat down to listen to this record. When I hit play, I instantly fell in love with the warm, hazy, nostalgic sound of Cranberry, and with each subsequent listen a different track has jumped out at me and grabbed my attention. Both spiritually and stylistically, this album reminds me of Turnover’s Peripheral Vision from 2015. Both albums hooked me on first listen and bear the same fuzzy spaced-out sense of nostalgia. While Turnover’s record is more pop-punk influenced, Cranberry finds itself taking cues from bedroom indie, Americana, and even country at times, but both play out like a distant memory that slowly grows to shroud the listener in their own nostalgia.

MGMT - Little Dark Age

MGMT have had a long and storied history since their humble college-based beginnings in 2002. Continually straddling the line between synthpop, psychedelia, alternative, and indie, their 2018 record Little Dark Age finally seems to have attained the perfect balance of every one of their styles. While nothing may ever be as iconic as the breakthrough “Kids” or instantly-recognizable as “Electric Feel,” this album strives for (and achieves) something much different. From the opening narration-based exercise of “She Works Out Too Much” to the far-off echoes of “Hand It Over,” every move on Little Dark Age seems more self-assured than ever. A compact, addictive, and beautifully-crafted comeback.

Turnstile - Time & Space

Hardcore will never die, and bands like Turnstile are here to prove that single-handedly. Over the course of 25 minutes, the Baltimore group runs the listener through an obstacle course of unbridled ferocity, pure aggression, and raw power. You’ll experience throat-shredding vocals, chest-pounding riffs, and thunderous drums, eventually to be spat out on the other side invigorated and aggressive. Proof that there’s beauty in brevity, the forceful grouping of songs off Time & Space rarely cross the two-minute mark. Turnstyle doesn’t seem to be interested in wasting a second of the listener’s time or expending one ounce of wasted energy.

Various Artists - Black Panther: The Album

Unlike Drake’s More Life, the Kendrick Lamar/Top Dawg-helmed Black Panther album feels more like a playlist than a record. With a (loose) central theme, a wide range of guest collaborations, and consistent contributions from its figurehead, Black Panther: The Album is what all collaborative art should strive to be. Well-performing on its own right outside of the already-successful movie, Kendrick’s accompaniment is both an achievement for Marvel and an artistic work that stands on its own. Between the album’s pop bops, futuristic chase songs, and braggadocious fight music there’s something here for everyone. When I saw a grandma groove out to SZA as the movie’s credits rolled, I was more confident than ever of this album’s universal appeal.

2 Chainz - The Play Don’t Care Who Makes It

2 Chainz has been on a roll for years now. Often opting for smaller, more bite-sizedprojects and collaborations over full-on albums, The Play Don’t Care Who Makes It is the newest installment in Mr. Chainz’ series of low-commitment EPs. Coming in at a crisp four songs over 16 minutes, each song is expansive enough for Tity Boi’s usual comedic bars, a couple of guest features, and even a loving shoutout to all of Atlanta’s strippers. The Play is 2 Chainz incarnate: every song hits, and the short running time doesn’t leave any room for it to wear out its welcome.

Justin Timberlake - Man of the Woods

Whew. I don’t want to spend an excessive amount of time shitting on this record because I’m far from the first to do it, but also because it feels a little over-done… that said, Man of the Woods is a pants-shitting mess from front-to-back. Self-described as “Americana with 808s,” this album was doomed from conception. Even one half-attentive viewing of the “Supplies” music video is a good indicator of the full-album experience: a violently-bright and schizophrenic country-fueled acid trip gone wrong. Each track feels like Timberlake is throwing everything at the wall, indiscriminately mashing ten ideas into one track, laying terrible lyrics over the top, and then just delivering it all in the most earnest way he possibly can. In a way, I admire it.

As a whole, Man of The Woods feels like some sort of Joaquin Phoenix-esque meta career move in which you’re not quite sure how much of this is serious and how much is parody. Featuring Do-wop vocals, dueling harmonicas, and unnerving narration, it’s like Timberlake heard Young Thug’s Beautiful Thugger Girls and thought “I could do this” … but he can’t.

Some cuts are perfectly fine and listenable (“Montana” is pretty great, “Breeze Off the Pond” is at least pointed), but the remainder of the songs are comically bad and go on for minutes longer than they need to. The album’s most definitively bad moment comes in the backstretch when a half-awake Jessica Biel provides the excruciating introduction to “Flannel” which sounds like Lonely Island performing a children’s lullaby.

At the end of the day, this is just a pop album from Justin Timberlake, so I didn’t expect high-art, and I didn’t expect a mind-shifting release. That said, it’s been fun to revel in the collective schadenfreude of watching someone fail at such an audacious genre experiment in such a spectacular and public way. The full album may leave the listener in a state of ongoing agony begging for it to end, but the good thing is: it’s just pop.

Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy  (Face to Face)

For the sake of getting the rotten taste of Man of the Woods out of your mouth, we’ll end with one of the best albums of February: Car Seat Headrest’s remake of Twin Fantasy. Already a breakthrough record in its own right, this 2018 release is a version of the record that’s been completely remade from the ground up. While the original album is still up for streaming in all its lo-fi charm, it’s hard to deny the absolute achievement that Twin Fantasy represents.

Just as verbose, meta, poetic, philosophical, and fraught with emotions as the day that it was first recorded, Twin Fantasy will stand the test of time as an album about the most universal of journeys. About the simplicity of letting go and putting your hands around someone else’s shoulders and the complexity of everything that tends to follow. Temptation, rejection, debauchery, desire, contradictions, fears, manias, sexuality, routine, experimentation, depression, addiction, nervousness, otherness, love, and heartbreak. This album somehow manages to touch on every one of those topics in a raw, poignant, and open way that rarely is captured in life, much less crystallized on an album.

The fact that one of this generation’s most pivotal breakup albums could not only exist but be remade not to its own detriment is a testament to the creative core and message at the center of this record. Car Seat Headrest managed to improve the original, change it just enough that it feels new, and managed to keep the original spirit intact, all of which sounds like an impossibility, yet at the end of it all, there’s this album. It’s the most accurate portrayal of modern love ever captured in sound. It’s love and heartbreak on an oceanic scale. It’s Twin Fantasy.

Quick Hits

Because I may not have a lot to say, but I listen to a lot, and I like to be thorough.

• Rich Brian - Amen: After achieving viral success and undergoing a name change, the Indonesian rapper offers up his first official release packed with chilling, bassy, self-produced songs.

• Ratboys - GL: A four-track EP of slidey, female-fronted emo songs in which every move is measured, and every past action is regretted.

• Towkio - WWW.: Dropped from space, WWW. is this Savemoney crew member’s debut following the excellent .WAV Theory mixtape.

• Dashboard Confessional - Crooked Shadows: Chris Carrabba’s first album in 9 years is the definition of “hit-or-miss.” We’ll probably never get another song as precious or hard-hitting as “Ghost of a Good Thing,” but this album still has its moments.

• SOB X RBE - GANGIN: After introducing themselves to a broader audience with their Black Panther appearance, the group smartly follows-up their newfound exposure with this ballistic sophomore album.

• Rhye - Blood: Adult contemporary, but not in the way you’re thinking.

• Pianos Become the Teeth - Wait For Love: An unrelenting, explosive, and propulsive grouping of 10 songs from the post-hardcore torchbearers.

• American Pleasure Club - a whole fucking lifetime of this: The recently-renamed Run For Cover signees openly noodle, experiment, and remorse for a laid-back genre-less half-hour.

• Caroline Rose - Loner: Yet another album filed under “surprises provided by the internet,” Loner is the exact type of lowkey hyper-conscious slacker indie that’s eternally-appealing to me.

• Superchunk - What a Time to Be Alive: The 90’s DIY-rockers are back with 11 tightly-wound tracks that they volley at the listener without pause.

• Thundercat - Drank: The “chopped not slopped” remix of last year’s Drunk finds even more groovy mellow bass-centered love here.

• Ought - Room Inside the World: Ought lurch forward sadly with this collection of glowing tracks that bubble up to the listener’s ears with palpable remorse and moodiness.

• Palm - Rock Island: Traditional time signatures be damned! The fourth record from the Philadelphian math rockers is polished, jagged, and filled with more unexpected moments than a Black Mirror episode.

• Franz Ferdinand - Always Ascending: It’s ok.

• U.S. Girls - In A Poem Unlimited: Psychedelic, sexy, and occasionally-dancy indie jams that explode with violence and lust.

• Ravyn Lenae - Crush EP: Slow-moving and delicate, this Steve Lacy-helmed EP is a brief outing that should fill the R&B-shaped hole in your heart.

Plus we’ve also got fresh singles/covers from Frank Ocean, The Wonder Years, Beach House, Courtney Barnett, Ryan Adams, Father John Misty, Blocboy, Parquet Courts, Sorority Noise, Underoath, Code Orange, Run The Jewels, 6Lack, Kero Kero Bonito, Girlpool, Mount Eerie, , Remo Drive, Rae Sremmurd, The Voids, Flatbush Zombies, Car Seat Headrest, Post Malone, Julien Baker x Manchester Orchestra, Janelle Monáe,Jay Som, A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, Kim Petras, Chvrches, Soccer Mommy, and Future.

January 2018: Album Review Roundup

For a traditionally-quiet time of the year, January has been a surprisingly fantastic month for music. As 2018 trudges off to a slow start, I figured it would be helpful to collect all of the best projects from the past 31 days in one place.

Truth be told, this is just a writing exercise to get myself going on a particularly-sloggy Tuesday morning, but this roundup is as much for me (to help keep track of the ever-growing mountain of music I love), as it is for you to (hopefully) discover something new and refreshing.

Tiny Moving Parts - Swell

Within the space of two years, Tiny Moving Parts have cemented themselves as one of the most interesting, technical, and personable acts in modern emo. Featuring unpredictable math-rock time signatures, heartfelt lyrics, and shimmering production, Swell is the group’s most concerted effort to date.

Lil Wayne - Dedication 6: Reloaded

After a steady stream of qualitymixtapes beginning in 2015 Lil Wayne has been low-key killing it for years now. As he continues to grapple with ongoing public problems surrounding his forthcoming Tha Carter V, it’s becoming more evident with each passing day that fans may never get to hear that album. Luckily for us, while we wait for the vaporware LP Wayne is still free to drop impeccable rhymes over some of the hottest beats in recent years. From “Plain Jane” to “Gucci Gang,” D6: Reloaded is one of the best mixtapes of the rapper’s career. Interspersed with brief interview clips, each track offers a peek one step further into Wayne’s psyche until we’re deeper than we’ve ever seen before. The mixtape ends up being a 90-minute proving ground of chest-inflating punchlines, pussy-eating poetry, and effortless flows from one of the best in the game. A true return to form.

Ty Segall - Freedom’s Goblin

Packed with funky grooves, hip-swiveling rhythms, and lip-curling fuzz, Freedom’s Goblin is Ty Segall’s unabashedly-glammy double-album. Just as eclectic as fans have come to expect, Goblin dips into dozens of different psychedelic sounds over the course of its 1 hour 15-minute running time. After he borrows inspiration from them, all these disparate genres are then filtered down through one bizarre, unique, and unified multi-instrumental mind. This is a rock album of the highest order.

JPEGMAFIA - Veteran

One of my biggest surprises of the month, Veteran is the fourth mixtape from Los Angeles-based rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA. Taking cues from Clipping, Death Grips, Yung Jake, and Odd Future, Peggy offers up an utterly ballistic assault on the senses with this tape. Attacking everyone and everything in his sights, he uses a deft understanding of music, humor, and internet culture to create something that’s wholly his own.

Jay Some - Pirouette 7”

Following the critical acclaim of the blissed-out bedroom pop found on Everybody Works, Jay Som is back with two new tracks from the same session that didn’t make the initial cut. Equally dreamy, hazy, and intimate, both “Pirouette” and “O.K., Meet Me Underwater” flesh out Duterte’s musical persona and act as supporting evidence that the success of her breakthrough LP was no accident.

Migos - Culture II

With 24 tracks stretched over an exhausting 105 minutes, Culture II is a prime example of an artist doing their own thing. Following-up last year’s impactful sophomore effort, Culture II doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t have to. From earworm choruses to infectious ad-libs, the Atlanta trio busts out trap anthem after trap anthem at an alarming pace until they tire themselves (and the listener) out. The group seems to have accepted and/or embraced their fate as musical popcorn: not exactly filling, but an undeniably fun snack.

No Age - Snares Like A Haircut

With bright, driving, summery rhythms, Snares Like A Haircut is a dream punk album in the style of Japandroids that’s designed for cruising the highway top-down on warm summer days. It’s an album-length injection of adrenaline into your veins that will keep you in motion, either willingly or by force.  

Drake - Scary Hours EP

Unceremoniously released late on a Friday night, Drake’s two-song EP has already been streamed millions of times, shattered single-day streaming records, and then preceded to break them again. Both mid-tempo stream-of-consciousness updates on the 6 God’s life since More Life, these two tracks are merely supporting evidence that Drake is still at the top of the game.

August Burns Red - Messengers Remixed

Messengers, one of the most pivotal metalcore records of all time, enjoyed its tenth anniversary this past July. Supported by a worldwide tour celebrating the album’s enduring success (and hot on the heels of a Grammy nomination for 2017’s Phantom Anthem), the progressive metal pioneers also released a full remaster of their breakthrough LP. Just as hard-hitting as the day it came out, Messengers now sounds better than ever with crushing breakdowns, tight instrumentation, and a newly-balanced mix.

Jeff Rosenstock - POST-

On literally the first day of the year, power pop god Jeff Rosenstock made his mantra for 2018 clear when he unleashed POST- into the world. With optimistic tracks of self-affirmation, aimless aggression, and political defiance, POST- is both the cure for your New Year’s hangover and the solution to everyday lethargy.

Shame - Songs of Praise

Far and away my favorite album of the month, Songs of Praise is the debut record from London-based post-punk group Shame. It’s an aggressive, moody, and surprisingly poetic album that’s currently filling the IDLES-shaped hole in my heart. Cold and grey, angry and calculating, this is an unflinching and immaculate record that took me by surprise and still hasn’t let go.

…and the rest

This month we’ve also been lucky enough to get new singles from Camp Cope, Jack White, The Voidz, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Troye Sivan, Ought, Palm, Alesana, MGMT, Savages, Franz Ferdinand, Car Seat Headrest, and Yo La Tengo. Whew.

We’re off to a good start, now let’s keep it together.

It Gets Brown: Swim Into The Sound's Guide to Ween

Every fandom begins somewhere. No matter what medium, format, time or place, everything you love can be traced back to a single moment when everything clicked into place. While we’re not always conscious of these origins, the fandoms that we can trace back to inception often feel so much more visceral and noteworthy than the ones that unfold gradually. Back in 2012 I heard a song that single-handedly sparked a fandom, ignited an obsession, and sent me on a years-long artistic exploration that remains one of the most twisted and wild experiences of my entire life.

The song in question was “If You Could Save Yourself (You’d Save Us All)” which was placed at the end of the 234th episode of a comedy podcast called Uhh Yeah Dude. I found myself transfixed by the song as I let the remaining minutes of the hour-long podcast play out on my dark gray iPod Classic. Mistified with a strange sense of familiarity, I clicked over to the information screen of my device to find the name of the band that performed the song. Ween. By the time that the ballad had faded out, I felt compelled to research the group further, and I quickly discovered why the song felt so familiar: I’d been listening to Ween since I was a child.

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Thank You, Stephen Hillenburg

It’s already weird to think about what music fandom was like in a pre-internet world. As someone born in 1993, I feel like I’m part of the last generation to experience the “entertainment oasis” that came with only having access to the physical media that’s on-hand. When you were a kid with five CDs, endless free time, and zero taste you’d find yourself listening to the same things over and over again without thinking twice.

Now that the internet is pervasive enough, platforms like iTunes, Youtube, and Spotify have made the entertainment oasis a thing of the past. These services have changed our world so rapidly that it’s interesting to cast your mind back to the time before they existed… though there’s still no accounting for taste.

One of the first CDs that I ever owned was Spongebob Squarepants - Original Theme Highlights which is a 12-minute compilation of songs from the first two seasons of the Nickelodeon show. This album, along with Eiffel 65, Sum 41, U2, and Spider-Man comprised the highly-unlikely and undeniably-absurd quintet of albums that made up my first CD collection. Looking at this list now, it seems inexplicable and extraordinarily embarrassing (especially given how many times I listened to each of these) but like I said, being 8 in 2001 was weird.

I listened to those five albums enough to memorize every one of them word for word because I had nothing else. Of the Spongebob record’s 12-minute running time, 61 seconds are taken up by a Ween song called “Loop De Loop.” I didn’t have last.fm then, but I would hazard a guess that I listened to this song at least a few hundred times throughout my childhood.

Ween resurfaced within the Spongebob oeuvre several years later when “Ocean Man” was used in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie as the film’s closing credits song. I didn’t listen to that movie’s OST nearly as much as I did Original Theme Highlights, but I still heard “Ocean Man” enough times for the song to make a lasting impact on me.

Thanks to Stephen Hillenburg’s apparent fandom of the band, I found myself overwhelmingly susceptible to nostalgia when I heard “If You Could Save Yourself” close out that podcast in 2012. This childhood band had wormed their way back into my musical consciousness in the most unexpected way possible over one decade after I was first exposed to them. I ended up diving into Ween that same year, and the band proved themselves to be a powerful creative force that I desperately needed in my life at that time.  

For the sake of not turning away any more potential readers with further hyper-specific personal details, I’m now going to remove myself from this narrative as much as possible and formally introduce you to the band called Ween.

The History

Ween is a band from New Hope, Pennsylvania comprised of Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo Jr. Formed in 1984, the two met in a middle-school typing class and quickly bonded over their shared love of music and drugs. Eventually, this unlikely pair of slackers set out to record songs of their own using nothing but the cheap-ass equipment they had on-hand. Donning the personas of two brothers, Freeman and Melchiondo became Gene and Dean Ween respectively. Together they combined to form Ween, and the duo began crafting unrelentingly-goofy and drugged-out lo-fi indie music that was “designed to be obnoxious.”

For five years, the pair recorded a series of cassette-based releases in which Gene sang, Dean played guitar, and a pre-recorded beat kept time. Occasionally joined by Chris Williams on bass as “Mean Ween” the group quickly garnered a cult following that was drawn to the band’s absurdist approach to music, songwriting, and life.

By 1990 Ween had released a (relatively) polished debut that culled the best of their cassette tape-era tracks into one commercial full-length. Within one decade of their inception, they were four records deep, playing with a full band, and hailed as one of the weirdest acts in indie. Through sheer persistence, Ween has managed to cultivate and maintain a hyper-dedicated fanbase that simultaneously allowed for the group’s continued success while also allowing them to fly under the radar.

They’ve had a few one-off hits throughout the years that gained them mainstream visibility, but for the most part, Ween has primarily remained a cult band with a long list of semi-impenetrable albums, and an even longer list of b-sides and bootlegs. While the history is important to know, these are just the (very) broad brush strokes of a band that’s had a 3+ decade career. More important than the timelines and the drama is the actual music, so let’s talk about that.

The Sound

The reason I felt the need to create this guide is a simple one: Ween is one of my favorite bands of all time. Unfortunately, as incredible as their music is, they don’t go out of their way to make it particularly accessible. While there’s a slight “barrier to entry” to most of their records, they’re a band that’s worth the effort. Additionally, once their music does click, it’s actually hard to be a “casual” Ween fan because their work is so vast and diverse that each song becomes a rewarding adventure that stands on its own. They’re a group that practically begs to be worshiped, but they definitely test your faith in the beginning.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) their extensive body of music, it’s often hard for would-be fans to find a proper entry point into the group’s work. That goes double for an outsider who jumps into Ween’s discography with no primer or guidance from a long-time fan. In a way, you have to “build up a tolerance” to their sound in order to fully-realize the brilliance of their earlier albums. It’s a long and twisted journey, but it’s worth taking.

Perfectly described by Hank Shteamer as “pan-stylistic,” Ween is a genre bender in the truest sense. Never limiting themselves to one sound or concept, the members of Ween actively embrace just about every type of music under the sun. This is another reason why it can be hard to get into the band. Because they play a little bit of everything, any given Ween album can contain up to a dozen different sounds, accents, and goofy lyrics, so knowing where to start can vary depending on the listener’s taste.

What’s impressive is not the fact that Ween can play every genre, but that they can play every genre competently. Within minutes they can jump from hard rock to country to funk to piano balladry, all without breaking a sweat. More importantly, this isn’t done in some half-assed ironic way, every genre that Ween tackles is done in a full, loving, and complete embrace of the sounds they’re emulating. It’s a universal reverence for art, music, and creativity.

It’s not that their style is hard to define, it’s that they’ve invented their own style.

Early on in their partnership, Gene and Dean coined the term “Brown” to describe the band’s sound. Explained as “fucked up, but in a good way,” Brown is the all-encompassing term (and a major piece of mythology) used by the band and its fans when discussing the music. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you’ll know it when you hear it. Brown knows no genres. Brown knows no limits.

The most frequent comparisons made are typically the Grateful Dead or Phish, but even those do Ween a disservice because it makes them sound like a jam band which they are decidedly not. A more apt comparison would be to Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart but even then, Ween stands alone from each of these artists as a unique entity.

In fact, the closest reference point to Ween may not be music at all, but the broader concept of Gonzo. Unedited, profane, druggy, sarcastic, personable, exaggerated, humorous, and eclectic. All of these words are simultaneously accurate and describe Ween’s music to a T.

Jumping back to why I felt the need to create this guide: Ween’s early stuff is rough and dissonant, and their later material can be more serious and spotty. As a result, they’re a band that benefits significantly from a specific listening order if you genuinely want to sink your teeth into them. If you don’t have a Ween fan in your life, I’m here to be your faithful Ween shaman. This is an album-by-album guide, telling you what to listen to, providing context, and walking you through each of the group’s core works.

I’ve successfully used this same path to turn two other people into fans, and (for the most part) it follows a largely agreed-upon “canon” according to other hardcore fans. I’ve merely composed the words to go along with each record in an attempt to explain why each one is special. While I’m always a proponent of listening to albums in whole, I’ve also selected three cuts from each LP that offer brief glimpses into the variety of sounds and genres contained within each record. You can check out these select tracks in this Spotify Playlist if you’d like, but I’d still say each of these albums are worth listening to in-full if you have the time.

Now that we’ve got all that out of the way let’s dive in.

1 |The Mollusk (1997)

By far the most commonly-agreed-upon starting point amongst Ween fans, The Mollusk strikes a perfect balance between polished accessibility, outlandish weirdness, and objective greatness.

Opener “I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight” immediately sets the tone for the record, kicking things off with a jaunty tuba-filled track featuring multiple distorted vocal takes all simultaneously fighting for the listener’s attention. It’s a curveball right off the bat, but it’s also just short enough that the listener may write it off as a one-off intro track.

From there, the songs range from woozy psychedelia on “Mutilated Lips” and “It’s Gonna Be (Alright)” to rip-ass rock on “I’ll Be Your Jonny On The Spot.” There are straight-up novelty songs like “Waving My Dick In The Wind” and “Blarney Stone,” but even the weirdest tracks here serve to add an additional layer onto the record’s barnacle-ridden Celtic aesthetic.

Most notably, the aforementioned “Ocean Man” was expertly-deployed as the credits song to 2004’s Spongebob Squarepants Movie and probably remains the single best entry point to the rest of the band’s work. Perfectly singable, wonderfully upbeat, and just weird enough to feel “Weeny,” “Ocean Man” will forever be the definitive entry-level Ween song.

2 |Quebec (2003)

Shiny, high-flying, and shockingly mature, Quebec is a melancholic sample platter of everything Ween had mastered after nearly two decades of music creation.

Three years after one of the most polished records in their discography, Ween went back to the drawing board and decided to throw themselves headlong back into the absurdity that got them where they were. Mixing their early psychedelia with very adult-like sadness and grounded realism, Ween managed to craft one of the most well-rounded records in their entire discography.

Featuring some of the most stoner-ready tracks in their discography alongside some of the most shred-worthy, Quebec is a testament to the group’s staying power. With 15 tracks stretched over 55 minutes, Quebec helped the band find a second wind through “Transdermal Celebration” which became a relative commercial success. Occasionally the scope swells to grand operatic scales on songs like “If You Could Save Yourself” only to rapidly shift back to childish goof on songs like “Hey There Fancypants.” In jumping between these vastly different voices, the band fleshed out their sonic scale and landed on a formula that cemented their position as all-time greats.

3 |Chocolate and Cheese (1994)

Chocolate and Cheese takes the variation of Quebec, adds the outlandishness of Mollusk, and then jumps five steps further into humor.

Probably the earliest “accessible” album of the band’s career, Chocolate and Cheese is often cited as an alternative starting point to Mollusk mainly because it bears more of the band’s trademarked comedy and goofiness throughout. Unfortunately, this album is also the tipping point for some fans in this early part of the Ween journey because if you don’t like this record, it’s unlikely you’ll enjoy anything that comes after it.

While the production on Chocolate and Cheese is slightly more limited than Quebec, this record contains the most ideas per square inch than any other record in the band’s career. Some later albums are more “out there,” but nearly every track on C&C stands alone as a well-polished, fleshed-out, and fully-realized concept. Not necessarily the “weirdest” album in their repertoire, but when every track is different, you never have the chance to be bored.

“Voodoo Lady” is a groovy tongue-twister of a bop, “Take Me Away” is a hard-charging opener, and “Mister Would You Please Help My Pony?” is yet another ‘childlike’ Ween track that, if it weren’t for a few scattered “fucks,” probably could have fit in on an episode of Spongebob. There’s a little something for everyone, and no song resembles anything close to the one that came before it.

The definitive song on Chocolate & Cheese comes in the form of its 13th track “Buenos Tardes Amigo” which weaves an epic 7-minute spaghetti western tale of drama and betrayal. It’s a passionate track that’s impeccably-delivered with a jaw-dropping guitar solo centerpiece, all of which makes for a narrative that’s deserving of your full attention. The fact that it’s followed up by a track called “The HIV Song” is a quintessential Ween move.

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While the Mollusk, Quebec, and Cheese make up for a perfect triumvirate of “Beginning Ween Albums,” we now take a few steps further into obscurity with the middle three records in this guide. Featuring later-career albums that are slightly less accessible, and just a little spottier, we now find ourselves in the depths of it all.

4 |White Pepper (2000)

White Pepper is Ween’s most impeccably-produced album featuring a 40-minute collection of powerful would-be radio hits.

Following the (again, relative) success of The Mollusk, the band went back into the studio for several years and emerged in 2000 with White Pepper which represented a noticeable slide towards cleaner production, shockingly-polished instrumentals, and decidedly more thoughtful lyrics.

Perhaps fittingly, there is almost nothing “Brown” about White Pepper, even still, the group manages to find moments of grit with songs like “Stroker Ace” and “The Grobe.” Conversely, there are also uncharacteristically breezy songs like “Even If You Don’t” and “The Flutes of Chi,” but even these objectively-pleasant songs are undercut with a hint of unmistakably Ween-ey humor once you begin to analyze them past the surface level.

The best example of this is “Bananas and Blow” which sounds like a pitch-perfect Jimmy Buffet song if he wasn’t so worried about turning off his listeners with blatant casual drug use. This track features “Buenas Tardes”-esque southern guitar work, female backing vocals, and an island-worthy rhythm section. The exotic instrumental is paired with a wispily-delivered and heavily-accented delivery by Gener depicting an isolated potassium-rich drug bender. Indeed a paragon of the Ween dynamic.

5 |12 Golden Country Greats (1996)

12 Golden Country Greats is precisely what it sounds like: a collection of wonderfully-creative and surprisingly-earnest original country tunes.

Even if you’re not a country fan, the way that Ween finds a way to impress their signature sound on ten songs of differing speeds is worth witnessing. From high-speed hoedowns (“Pretty Girl” and “Japanese Cowboy”) to remorseful bluesy tracks (“I’m Holding You” and “You Were The Fool”) 12 Golden Country Greats hits every measure with pitch-perfect accuracy and surprising grace.

Most impressively, “Piss Up A Rope” has managed to worm its way into all-time classic status as one of the group’s live staples. On the same tip, the heartache-inducing “Fluffy” represents the exact tonal inverse of “Piss Up A Rope,” but still manages to strike a balance between these two mid-nineties goofballs and one of America’s oldest music genres.

It’s not the album that you’d expect following the slight commercial success of Chocolate & Cheese two years earlier, but that’s what’s great about Ween: every move is unexpected, yet they manage to pull it off flawlessly. While 12 Golden Country Greats is obviously as diverse as any of their other records, the band manages to make a full-album genre experiment look like a cake walk.

6 | La Cucaracha (2007)

La Cucaracha is the Ween’s carefree late-career album and the long-form reflection of a decades-long journey.

Already over a decade old at the time of this writing, La Cucaracha is, sadly, Ween’s latest record. While they’ve had a few public brakes and even a full-on hiatus in recent years, it’s still surprising that La Cucaracha is the last we’ve heard from the band in any official capacity. I say that both because I want new songs, but also because this album is a bit of a sour note to go out on. I almost considered cutting it for the sake of the listener experience, but eventually, I decided that I want this list to be comprehensive.

At the end of the day, La Cucaracha isn’t a bad record, it just feels less inventive than everything else that’s come before it. While there are still some scattered highlights like “Your Party” and “Fiesta” there isn’t much to write home about on La Cucaracha, at least nothing that you couldn’t get from earlier releases.

The album’s single most significant contribution comes in the form of “Woman and Man” which is an 11-minute epic that erupts into a ferocious and densely-packed 8-minute instrumental jam.

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After a slightly saggier middle section, we’ve reached the final trio of Ween albums. This is where things get weird. This is where things get great. This is why the previous albums were necessary. The build-up is worth it because the payoff is beautiful. In this final grouping of albums, we fully-descend into Brown, and everything will begin to make sense. Brace yourselves.

7 |GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (1990)

GodWeenSatan is the group’s full-album unveiling to the world with over two dozen songs of lovesick mania.

On Ween’s debut, we find a surprisingly-accessible early version of the band that is already brimming over the top with outlandish ideas. Clocking in at 76 minutes with 29 tracks, nearly every song on here hovers around the 2-minute range which allows the band to showcase their wide variety of genres, voices, and whacky lyrics. Throughout the LP the duo finds themselves quickly springing from one idea to the next with no warning, no regard for the listener, and no concern for perceived “cohesiveness.” Most songs end in improvised conversations, explosions of laughter, or simply incoherent screaming. It just sounds like two teenagers who are having making music… because that’s exactly what it is.

While there’s still more genre variation than any other band, the group occasionally finds themselves visiting similar sounds throughout the record. “You Fucked Up” and “Common Bitch” are both explosive balls-out rock tracks. “I’m In The Mood To Move” and “Blackjack” are pitch-shifted stream-of-consciousness ramblings/word associations placed over minimalistic instrumentation. “Cold and Wet” and “Nan” both find Gener adopting an Adam Sandler-esque voice over rolling bluey riffs.

Meanwhile one of the album’s most ‘traditionally pleasant’ songs “Don’t Laugh (I Love You)” ends in one minute of off-puttingly-loud screeching and uncontrollable laughter, and if there’s a better encapsulation of Ween than that dichotomy, I don’t know it.

Despite how early on it is in their career, it’s incredible how polished and well-produced these tracks sound thanks to a 2001 remaster. While GodWeenSatan has a few rough edges, you can already feel the band laying down the framework for their future releases, plus the tunes are absolutely undeniable. It will overstimulate your senses.

8 |Pure Guava (1992)

Featuring the band’s breakthrough hit, Pure Guava is a psychedelic album in a style that only Ween can do with songs that only these minds could have conceived.

Ostensibly a balance between the ideas founded on their first album and the whacked-out trip of their second album, Pure Guava is Ween at the peak of their lo-fi powers. Both visually and stylistically reminiscent of John Frusciante’s Smile from the Streets You Hold, Guava offers the most refined version of the band’s early sound before they jumped to the relative polish of Chocolate and Cheese.

Songs like “The Goin’ Gets Tough From The Getgo,” and “Reggaejunkiejew” play out like absurdist exercises in which the band is testing the edges of their own sanity by repeating a single sticky phrase over and over again atop an infectious groove. On the other end of these twisted experimentations are tracks that fly in the complete opposite direction stylistically, lyrically, and instrumentally. “Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)”is a soaring conceptual ballad in which the band volleys a non-stop barrage of unforgettable psychedelic imagery at the listener. All of these phrases culminate in a Bohemian-Rhapsody-like vocal break that shines forth unlike anything else in the band’s discography. It’s something so original and unique that it couldn’t thrive anywhere but this album.

9 | The Pod (1991)

The Pod is Ween’s secluded, deranged, and drugged-out masterpiece that quickly reveals its brilliance to those willing to listen.

Even making it this far into Ween’s discography, you may still feel a palpable reaction of “what the fuck” when you first hit play on The Pod. Mutch like adjusting to the warm water of a hot tub, or learning to enjoy your first alcoholic beverage, The Pod comes with a brief adjustment period, but once it’s over, will be an experience you’ll remember forever.

Deeper and darker than anything else the band has ever recorded, it’s awe-inspiring how many impeccable melodies and brilliant ideas are hidden just one layer beneath a wall of practically-impenetrable sound. “Strap on that Jimmypac” is the opening curtain raise that attempts to acclimate the listener to the unique brand of narcotized journey they’re about to embark upon. From there each additional track throws the listener for a loop while also maintaining the same thematic range of strung-out haziness throughout. “Dr. Rock” is a punchy punky rock song. “Sorry Charlie” is a woozy saloon track that drips with regret. “Pollo Asado” is literally just a guy ordering Mexican food over muzak. It’s insanity.

Some of the most stellar tracks in the band’s discography come midway through the record in the form of “Captain Fantasy,” “Awesome Sound,” and “Demon Sweat.” These represent some of the most distorted, far out, and extreme lengths the band ever went to musically. Each song generally runs around 3-4 minutes, indicating a little more of a full-album approach than the sketchbook-like approach we saw on their debut.

The Pod is a true masterwork of a band without boundaries, traditions, or limits.

But Wait, There’s More

As much as I love Ween and these albums, this guide barely scratches the surface of the band’s output. There are B-side compilations, two EPs, several officially-released live albums, multiple different solo projects, demo sessions of most albums, radio recordings, and five of those early cassette releases. On top of all this, there’s Browntracker.net which hosts literally thousands of obsessively-made fan-created live recordings.

In short, there’s more Ween than you can shake a stick at, and if you wanted to, you could probably dedicate the rest of your life to listening to one of these a day and still not hear them all. But that’s one of the reasons that the band has such a dedicated fanbase, and it’s one of the things that makes being a Ween fan such a rewarding experience.

Finally

Ween revealed themselves to me at a pivotal time in my life. A time when I didn’t know what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be. A time when I was burnt out life, tired of music, and couldn’t find joy in anything. That was a soul-sapping and destructive feeling, and it’s crushing when it’s something you recognize but can’t shake.

The way that Ween balances abject silliness and utter sincerity felt like a cosmic revelation to me at the time. As I dug deeper into the group’s mythos and their music, Ween’s approach to the world came to influence my own. Simultaneously embracing absurdity and seriousness (or packaging one inside of the other) has been a comedic voice I’ve adopted for years at this point. As much as I love reveling in this bipartisan goofiness, recent events in the world have also given me a newfound appreciation for wholly genuine acts and real emotions. It was fun walking the “Ween line” where no one can quite tell which side of the fence you lie on, but it’s no longer my default approach to life as it was back then.

Aside from this newfound voice though, Ween’s discography along with John Frusciante’s PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone served as part of a one-two punch that year that reinforced and reignited my love of music. These albums blew the hinges off my preconceived notions surrounding art and single-handedly proved to me that there’s still room for untethered creative expansion in the world.

Ween helped remind me that the world is a beautiful place and it revealed to me that there are unheard and unfathomable ideas living within all of us. There are goofy lyrics and serious ballads. There are beautiful paintings and inspiring words. There are things that only you could ever think of, and these records serve as concrete proof that the only limits we place on ourselves are self-imposed.

There are beautiful, goofy, wonderful ideas inside your head that have never been heard, seen, or read before by anyone else. Concepts that, after millions of years, have never been conceived until you came along. And until we can unlock those ideas within ourselves, we might as well appreciate the sounds of others.

Supplemental Material

Dean Ween - Guitar Moves

God Ween Evan Podcast

Ween: An Abbreviated History

Ween - Wah Wah

Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese (33 1/3) Paperback

Ween’s The Mollusk Turns 20: An Oral History By Mickey Melchiondo

Weenology 101: The Early Days of Ween Documentary

WTF Podcast - Aaron Freeman

Swim Into The Sound’s 20 Favorite Albums of 2017

Last Year 

2017 sucked. Politics have sucked. People have sucked. My diet has sucked. Everything is falling apart in slow motion. The entire year has felt like one prolonged exercise in frustration as we collectively fight back with about as much power as a punch thrown in a dream state.

I spent the first half of this year working a job that was fun, creatively fulfilling, paid well, and in my field. That ticks pretty much all of the “career boxes” one could ask for, so as turbulent as the gig was, I was disappointed when it came to an end over the summer. I’ve spent the back half of this year wrangling random freelance gigs, volunteering, looking for a job, and reveling in ambiguous employment.

It’s no coincidence that, after a six-month break, I began writing here regularly back in May because I truly had no other creative outlet at the time. I’d just like to say: thank God for this blog. Swim Into The Sound has proven to be an excellent way to expel my oft-overflowing creative juices, and writing here has provided me more solace, motivation, and guidance than I can ever put into words.

I’d also like to extend a personal and sincere thanks to you for reading. Whether this is your first time here or you’ve been subscribed for months, every reader means the world to me. On top of increased readership, I’ve also received some absolutely incredible responses to my writing this year. I’ve grabbed the attention of artists I love and podcasters that I look up to. I made the front page of /r/indieheads (my internet home), and people that I know in real life have discussed Swim Into The Sound write-ups with me. Most of the time I just write this stuff, edit it until I’m slightly less ashamed, then throw it out onto the internet. It’s forever-astonishing to me that anyone engages with these words, so thank you. It’s been a spectacular journey, and there are already many cool projects brewing for 2018. I can’t wait to see where things go from here.

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To keep from drowning you in personal details, let’s just get straight to the main event. As bad as some parts of 2017 have been, it was actually an incredible year for music. Unlike the past, 2017 has felt like a year with no “clear” album of the year winner. There was no Blonde, Carrie & Lowell or To Pimp a Butterfly. No album that made a massive culture-wide impact, or even wormed its way into my list of all-time favorites yet. Instead, it’s been a year of many, many, many great albums, which in some ways is more exciting.

2017 has also been a year of upheaval. A year where women could rule, creeps could be called out, and our world was at risk of ending at any moment. It’s an exciting, hopeful, draining, and terrifying time to be alive. It has also been a year of unexpected surprises. I’ve found welcome homes in unexpected places, both online and in real life, and these communities have helped make me a stronger person.

2017 was also a year of discovery. I’ve been to more concerts in the past 12 months than I have the rest of my life combined. Thanks to a free 6-month TIDAL subscription, I’ve made more musical discoveries in 2017 than any year previously. From Hamilton to Swans, I’ve broadened my horizons more this year than ever before.

There are a lot of things to say about 2017, but if nothing else, it was the year that I learned about the power of weirdness. The strength that all of us have to stand up to the people in power. The creative potential that lies within all of us. I’ve found excitement in the new, and comfort in tradition. As always, this blog is a place to celebrate both old and new, but December specifically is a time to pause and reflect on the year that’s just passed. The things that inspire. The things that bring hope. The magnificent creations.

I’ve been celebrating 2017 for the entire month of December, and this post officially marks the end of “List Season” here on Swim Into The Sound. If you haven’t checked out our Diamond Platter Awards or Un-Awards, please feel free to peruse them for an even more complete picture of both the good and bad that 2017 has had to offer. But from here on out we find only the great. The impeccable. The cream of the crop. The best pieces from a year of many fantastic works.

So here’s to the weird. The new, the fresh, and the bold. Here’s to staying strong. Here are my 20 favorite albums of 2017.

20 | Slowdive - Slowdive

Slowdive’s self-titled album plays out like a fever dream. From its first notes, the record warmly envelops your entire body, consuming you like a long-lost childhood memory. As the album wears on, it transports the listener further, slowly shepherding them as they venture from their starting point on earth until they’re floating weightlessly in space surrounded only by far-off glittering lights and nostalgic memories from a life that’s not their own.

In keeping with the introduction’s theme of “discovery,” Slowdive is a group that I’d never listened to until this year. Needless to say, the fact that the band’s self-titled fourth album was their first in 22-years was lost on me. Despite the fact that I went into the album fresh and lacking context, the impact of Slowdive’s 2017 release was still severely felt.

There’s a sense of strange familiarity and nostalgia at play throughout Slowdive. Songs like “Star Roving” and “Sugar for the Pill” have an immediately-accessible grungy 90’s sound in which Sonic-Youth-esque vocals pair with reverb-ridden post-rock guitars and precise drumming. Using this word feels weird (especially for a record that isn’t even my favorite of the year), but Slowdive is perfect. It’s a flawless self-contained adventure that’s both accessible to newcomers and satiating to long-time fans. It’s the purest distillation of what dream pop is all about. It’s a monumental record of whirring soundscapes that shift like slowly-moving giants and crash against the listener like dense ocean waves. Slowdive is a masterful release from a band who’s not afraid to wait for greatness.

19 | SZA - CTRL

A “summer album” if I’ve ever heard one, SZA’s long-awaited debut LP is a bright, shimmering, and sunny record packed with songs of unrequited love punctuated by brief moments of carefree enjoyment. Songs jump from soaring infectious melodies to harrowing tales of normalcy at a moment’s notice, making for a manic listening experience that’s just as fun-loving as it is heartbreaking.

CTRL is an album about a normal girl by a normal girl. A collection of songs about the human experience from an honest and decidedly-female perspective. It’s like the R&B version of My Woman sprinkled with breakneck vocals, raw lyricism, and Blonde-esque instrumentation. Even when singing about well-trodden topics like late-night hookups, SZA manages to make everything feel refreshing and new. You get the sense that countless long hours and many late nights were spent crafting this album because the entire LP feels well-worn, well-loved, and well-thought out. CTRL is a single confidently-delivered package that glistens and beams in the sunlight of the listener’s heart.

18 | Jay Z - 4:44

It’s embarrassing to admit, but it’s confession time: until this year I’ve never listened to a Jay-Z project in full. I’d heard the hits, the guest verses, the collaborations, and I know he’s got a trilogy of near-perfecthip-hop albums, but to be honest, I’ve just never been that into Mr. Carter’s approach to rapping. When I heard people raving about his thirteenth album, I decided that I had nothing to lose, so I took full advantage of my TIDAL subscription, set my reservations aside, and give it a shot.

Ever since Beyonce’s 2016 album I’ve been invested in the “Lemonade Narrative,” and it turns out 4:44 followed that album up directly by providing listeners with some sense of conclusion and finality.

While I came for the People Magazine drama, I stayed for everything else. It turns out 4:44 is a stunning, honest, and compact album that features Jay-Z at his most reflective and adult-like state yet. I guess scandal, nearly losing your wife, then having twins is enough to change anyone for the better. On top of Jay’s refreshing take on himself, we have an album that’s centered around his old sample-based soul sound. Helmed entirely by No I.D., this led to a record that feels complete, consistent, and singularly-visionary throughout. While Jay-Z has been resting on his laurels artistically for some time, this album proves he still has a strong voice, important things to say, and an impactful message that’s worth conveying in 2017. As he moves into the position of hip-hop’s father figure, I’m now excited for the first time in my life to see what Mr. Carter has in store for us next.

17 | Father John Misty - Pure Comedy

It was unclear where Father John Misty would go after 2015’s breakthrough I Love You, Honeybear. Turns out the answer was everywhere. From tormenting Ryan Adams to duetting with Tim Heidecker, Tillman’s extra-musical antics are simply too innumerable to list in one single blurb. The good thing for fans was, as overwhelming as the avalanche of news updates sometimes felt, each headline managed to be entertaining and (more often than not) resulted in fresh music.

When it came time to release his third album under the Father John Misty persona, Josh Tillman turned his gaze outward. Shifting from the self-destructive personal tales of Honeybear, Pure Comedy finds Misty openly waging war against the universe and everyone in it. In the album’s slow-mounting opening track, a winding piano skitters around Tillman’s biting stanzas, ensuring that neither it nor the listener are trampled underfoot. As the lyrics outline the cosmic absurdity of existence, the piano pulls away, the vocals mount, and a gently-brushed drum begins to keep time just as Tillman belts out the album’s title. It feels like an announcement. An exercise. The catharsis of two albumless years and an election gone awry.

Featuring grand, swelling, and sometimes rambling songs, Pure Comedy blurs the lines between a post-apocalyptic near-future and present day. The album becomes a microscope through which humanity is observed, and everyone’s a smug asshole including our narrator.

The album’s definitive moment comes with its last two songs “So I’m Growing Old on Magic Mountain” and “In Twenty Years or So” which together make for an epic 17-minute meditative send-off. Both songs are massive, colorful, and awe-inspiring ballads that hit you with a crippling emotional gut punch before landing on what’s essentially a twist ending. Best experienced as the conclusion to the album’s 74-minute journey, Pure Comedy may take some time to sink in, but once it does, it will linger with you forever.

16 | (Sandy) Alex G - Rocket

Alexander Giannascoli is an enigma. A wonderfully-gifted singer, willfully-obtuse songwriter, and prodigy of melody, Alex G first rose to prominence through a series of increasingly-prolific Bandcamp releases culminating in DSU, his indie-wide breakthrough. Since then, he’s made a name for himself continuing to record artistically-acclaimed small-scale releases in between working with Frank Ocean, and more recently, he’s undergone a name change rebranding himself by adding “(Sandy)” to the front of his title.

Much like the man behind the music, Rocket is a mysterious and wandering album full of bright sounds and brilliant ideas. From jaunty country duets to auto-tuned croons, and even hardcore noise rock screams Giannascoli wields an astonishing amount of genres effectively throughout Rocket’s 41 minutes. Despite the fact that nearly every song takes a different musical approach, the entire record maintains a strong sense of self and wholeness throughout. Each additional sound and layer of weirdness adds merely one more brush stroke on to the bigger story that’s already been painted, resulting in a beautiful and one-of-a-kind work.

15 | Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

Kendrick Lamar’s fourth LP is one of the most important records of 2017. A shared experience, a communal soundtrack, and a cultural anthem, DAMN. is a stadium-packing monument to the marginalized, underrepresented, and underserved. Despite an impressive prelude, intricate self-referential throughlines, and conceptual frameworks (both real and imagined), the Compton rapper’s 2017 release is fantastic but falls just short of his last two LPs.

Taking neither the cinematic route of Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, or the jazzy cultural takedown that was To Pimp A Butterfly, DAMN. lies somewhere in the middle as a primarily-autobiographical record that finds Lamar contextualizing his existence within a broader cultural landscape. Each song is a personal unmasking of the man behind the music, and the demons that live within him. Each word lets the listener a half-step deeper into Lamar’s psyche.

While DAMN. isn’t bad, I feel the need to defend my decision to place it towards the back of this list (in opposition to apparently every other publication this year). At a certain point, whatever album followed the magnum opus that is To Pimp a Butterfly was destined to be a disappointment, or at the very least feel like comparing apples to oranges. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been enjoying DAMN. all year (and listened to it more than almost every other album of 2017), but I can’t shake the feeling something is missing that kept it from being truly next-level.

Part of the reason I’d rank DAMN. below some of Lamar’s earlier albums is how piecemeal it feels. Songs stand alone (for better or worse) and rarely feel like part of a cohesive point that the artist is making. While this allows for some incredible variation and sonic experimentation, it also means DAMN. feels formless and aimless at times. The reason it gets #15 is that even a good-to-great Kendrick Lamar album is better than most other records any given year.

“HUMBLE.” is an unparalleled cultural anthem. “DNA.” is a blood-pumping, muscle-flexing, and stank-face-inducing track. “FEAR.” is a foreboding tale that recounts three pivotal ages in Kendrick’s life. Each of these songs have become standouts of 2017, and even some of Lamar’s best. A commentary on race, sexuality, and our nation, DAMN. is just a pit stop in the career of the greatest rapper alive.

14 | Idles - Brutalism

I’m a punk at heart. While I’m not as angry as I was back in high school, I often forget how deep those roots go and how influential that genre of music has been for me. Sometimes a record comes out that rekindles a long-lost love and can bring you back where you were at a specific moment in time, and for me that’s Brutalism. Hailing from Bristol, Idles are an English punk band that has been active for nearly half a decade at this point. After a stringofEPs, Brutalism marks the group’s first official LP, and while it’s only the group’s debut, that five-year cooking time is evident in how fleshed out this record is. It feels like a career high, and it’s only our introduction to the band.

“Heel / Heal” kicks things off like a powder keg as the drum unrelentingly pounds forward with engine-like momentum. Soon singer Joe Talbot enters the mix and exasperatedly exclaims “I’m DONE” as the bass and guitar explode beneath him. Tracks like “Well Done” and “Date Night” perfectly capture the directionless anger that accompanies mid-20’s joblessness and sexual frustration, all captured in biting two-minute takes that bounce back and forth between the walls of the listener’s skull.

“Mother” is the album’s snarling high-point as the group weave a tale of matriarchal political betrayal. Hooking the listener with a twist chorus as a well-placed pause allows them to unveil a beautifully-poetic “Mother… Fucker.” It’s barebones, simplistic, straight-forward punk music that evokes the best parts of the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and The Sex Pistols, all presented in a surprisingly clean and well-produced 40-minute package.

13 | Tyler, The Creator - Flower Boy

There’s no doubt about it; Tyler, The Creator grew up before our eyes. The enigmatic figurehead of Odd Future made a name for himself at the dawn of the New Internet by leveraging a deft understanding of new media and shock value as fuel for the unparalleled rise of a group of 20-something Californian teenagers. Tyler’s solo career has wound from Horrorcore to Death Grips-esque industrial hip-hop, but on his latest LP, he eschews all that for a veneer up-front of transparency.

On the opening track “Forward” we witness Tyler as he wrestles with everything from waning popularity to racist cops to his own sexuality. It’s here that we begin to realize we’re in store for a more honest record. While the album still has some scattered bangers like “Who Dat Boy” and “I Ain’t Got Time!”, the remainder of the album is a jazzy and shockingly-reserved outing that allows Tyler to vulnerably open up more than we’ve ever seen before. “November” and “See You Again” both revel in nostalgia while “911 / Mr. Lonely” and “Where This Flower Blooms” offer hopeful rays of positivity that claw towards the possibility of a brighter future.

When Flower Boy leaked two weeks ahead of its scheduled release date, most of the discussion online surrounded “Garden Shed,” the album’s revealing centerpiece that, combined with a handful of references scattered throughout the record, seem to allude to Tyler coming out of the closet. While there have been severalhints up to this point, Tyler addressing this topic so entirely feels like the coming of a new age. The hip-hop figure who made a name for himself eating cockroaches and embracing vulgar darkness is now crooning and singing about kissing white boys. It’s refreshing, shocking, and reassuring all at once. Undeniably his best work, the world now finds itself rapt as we wait for the newly-matured Tyler, The Creator to make his next move.

12 | Julien Baker - Turn Out The Lights

The most spiritual experience I’ve had with music this year (maybe ever) has been interacting with Julien Baker’s Sprained Ankle over the summer. I say ‘interacting with’ because it was much more than just listening. The album deeply affected me. It touched me. It was affirmation that everything was going to be okay and my feelings weren’t invalid. I spent a month or two going on long, multi-hour, half-drunk, wistfully-existential walks, the feelings of which I detailed in this write-up over the summer. What initially began as a lazy way to get my Fitbit steps in, quickly evolved into therapy. Something I needed to do to work out issues I was going through at that time. My first job had crumbled before my eyes, and I’d never felt more isolated and alone. When Baker announced her sophomore album was coming out by the end of the year, I found myself emotionally-drained, but hungry for more.

Turn Out the Lights begins with the arid creak of an old floorboard and a slowly-mounting piano line. That piano bleeds into “Appointments,” and soon Baker unveils herself as the force of nature that she is. The keys become eclipsed by a faintly-glimmering guitar as Baker regretfully explains that she’s spending the night at home. The song slowly mounts into an explosive cry of shaky self-assurance “Maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright / Oh, I know that it’s not / but I have to believe that it is.”

The remainder of the album’s songs follow a similar pattern, often focusing on one single instrument and Julien Baker’s incredible voice as she outlines tales of death, regret, and religion. It’s a heart-breaking album of stunning moments and impeccable songwriting that manage to articulately explain the dark, dull pain of a deep depression. I believe in God and Julien Baker.

11 | Smidley - Smidley

I first stumbled across Smidley in a half-hearted attempt research the bands who were opening for Tigers Jaw on tour this spring. After 33 minutes of listening to the group’s breezy self-titled record, I calmly collected myself, picked my jaw off the floor, and listened to the whole thing again.

Probably one of my biggest “surprises” this year, Smidley’s self-titled record is brought to us courtesy of Foxing’s frontman Conor Murphy and features a collection of ten refreshingly-unique pop-punk tracks. Often fueled by bile and anger, the songs on Smidley range from soccer mom takedowns to dead dogs, yet every song bears the same airy, happy, summery disposition, and I can’t think of any other artist that could deliver a chorus of “Fuck This” in such a pleasant tone.

While “Fuck This” may have been a personal chant of mine throughout 2017, the most striking moment of the album comes in its closing song. Preceded by a dark ballad of drool-inducing drug binges, “Under The Table” is a cresting pop-punk depiction of a relationship that finds Murphy singing the song’s chorus in a whispered voice. As he sings the song’s title, his words are punctuated by a towering drum strike and the track explodes to life as a set of double-tracked vocals pair with a bouncy bass and rigorous guitar. It’s a cathartic and throat-shredding closer that left me in awe, the ballsy ending note to an album that surprised me with brilliance from its first seconds.

10 | BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION II

My first exposure to BROCKHAMPTON came when I sat down to listen to the first of three records the group released this year. Encouraged by a friend to check them out, I went into the Saturation Trilogy knowing nothing more than the fact that BROCKHAMPTON was an Odd Future-esque music collective that preferred to be labeled as a “boy band.”

The first thing I heard when I hit play on “HEAT” was 10 seconds of a garbled ambient hum. Suddenly a series of drum hits and a nastily-blown out bass forced their way onto the track accompanied by the first set of lyrics: “I got pipe dreams of crack rocks and stripper poles.” and every muscle in my body stiffened at once. After these introductory lines, the group’s members went on to trade bars about everything from race to self-medication over the song’s four and a half minutes before culminating in a brutish scream of “FUCK YOU.” I was hooked.

Gripped by the song’s lyrical and instrumental ferocity, I was hungry for more, but the next song sounded nothing like the first, and the third sounded nothing like either before it… yet they all worked. The first tape’s other highlights include the pop-culturally-dense “STAR” and “BUMP,” a track that jostles the listener from pop-punk-esque singing to gritty hip-hop bars. The boy band seemed to be intentionally trying to throw the listener off at every turn, packing as many ideas, sounds, voices, and topics into one project as humanly possible, and the crazy thing is that it worked.

At this point, it practically feels cliched to talk about BROCKHAMPTON’s origin (a group of teens who met on a message board and all moved into a house to create music), but it feels necessary because it gives context to the group’s output. Having released three albums, a documentary, TV show, and tour all within 365 days is a feat. The fact that all each of these multimedia creations are of the same impeccable quality is what’s worth writing home about. BROCKHAMPTON are prolific young creators incarnate. Handling everything from production and art direction in-house, the group is DIY-ing their way to the top of the rap game through sheer brute force.

On Saturation IIthe group finds an even more refined sound. I went in cautious, wondering if they could even brush the same level of greatness as we saw on the first Saturation, yet the group managed to exceed even that. Early album cut “QUEER” represents a single-song encapsulation of what makes the group special, jumping from punchy “fuck you” hip-hop to infectious mid-verse chants to jarring crooned choruses, the song swings between multiple sounds and genres all in less than four minutes. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the penultimate “SUNNY” interpolates “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia in a moment that sent me into a powerful spiral of nostalgia the first time I heard that iconic late-90’s guitar slide.

To put it simply, everything is better on Saturation II. The earworm-ready choruses are refined further, the verses are tighter, and the beats are even wilder. The whole album is more polished and cohesive with songs that can work on their own and exist within the context of the larger album. Flawless, unreal, and unlike anything else this year.

9 | Half Waif - form/a

Half Waif’s form/a EP is an introverted, lush, and secluded 19-minute collection of electronic songs single-mindedly concerned with emotions and moods. Sung solely from the perspective of frontwoman Nandi Rose Plunkett, this EP finds her reflecting on impactful and pivotal moments from her childhood using a cold Celtic electronic soundscape as her icy backdrop.

Throughout the EP Plunkett finds herself reckoning with what it means to be a woman in the world, and what decisions have led her to this exact moment in time. Her voice is haunting and calculated. Her keyboards swell just when she needs them to, and the drums kick in at just the right moments. It’s clear that Nandi has a strong command over every piece of the world that she’s exposing you to, a carefully-constructed recreation of her memories, tragedies, and thoughts forever documented lovingly on the 19 minutes of form/a.

It’s an album about missing out, getting lost in your own head, and vanishing into nothing. Opening and closing with a set of lyrics about emotions, she finally reveals the album’s meaning in “Cerulean” as she sings “My mood has no form / It sits on my chest heavy and warm / My mood is not an invited guest / It takes over my body and gives me no rest.” It’s a striking and introverted sentiment dripping with emotion and rawness, delivered over a cold and unfeeling electronic beat.

A seemingly common topic for Nandi, this idea of formless and untamable moods is something that feels surprisingly missing from music. Songs are so often about feelings and the actions that they inspire, but rarely ever the moods themselves. form/a is a beautiful and sprawling expedition of the self that feels familiar and foreign at once.

8 | Sorority Noise - You’re Not as Alone As You Think

For a while Sorority Noise was just another half-silly, half-serious emo band that sang about girls, and sad feelings. While I thought I preferred the group’s earlier carefree approach to emo, 2017’s You’re Not As _____ As You Think takes the seriousness of 2015’s Joy, Departed to the next level musically, lyrically, and mentally.

In an interview with Stereogum, the group’s primary musical force Cameron Boucher detailed an experience that served as the record’s driving force. Following the suicide of a childhood friend, Cameron found himself back in his hometown:

“Sean had been passed away for about a year, but I didn’t remember that. And so I was like, I’m gonna drive by Sean’s house and just stop by and say hi. And then I drove to his house, and when I pulled up in front, I realized he wasn’t there. That’s what the chorus of [No Halo] is about, and the whole song in general… I think I literally just sat in my car and wrote 90% of the lyrics right there.”

We saw the immediate effects of Sean’s suicide on It Kindly Stopped for Me, an EP that was never meant to be released to the public but was put out in hopes that it would help others in the same way that it helped Cameron. In that same interview, Boucher revealed that he primarily writes songs from emotion, as a way to cope with reality, not really thinking about what they mean or needing to explain them down the road. What we see on You’re Not As _____ As You Think is someone who’s sat, meditated, and grown from the pain of this loss. It tackles drug abuse, depression, religion, and everything in between with some of the most raw, honest, and heartfelt lyrics that I’ve ever heard.

In late October the group released Alone a follow-up 7” that was meant to fill in the blank space in You’re Not As _____ As You Think. Containing two songs that add an additional layer of gravitas, and reflection to the full LP, these two releases combine into one singularly-impactful emotional gut punch that candidly addresses depression openly and honestly.

7 | The National - Sleep Well, Beast

On the cover of The National’s new album, we see a black and white photo of a happy home. Composed of five straight lines, the house is simple and picturesque as if it were drawn by a child. The sky is grey and muted like a fall morning at 3am. Inside of the house, we can make out a handful of figures. The house is missing a door. We’re not sure what’s happening, we’re not sure if they’re happy, but all we know is that we’re on the outside looking in.

The music contained behind this cover is suitably just as grey and simplistic. Jutting around drunkenly with jagged songs of sadness and regret, Sleep Well, Beast is The National’s great monument. I’ve been listening to the band casually for years now, but nothing has ever grabbed me the way that this record has. I listened through a few times thinking ‘this is good’ but then one fateful day, an old relationship sprang back into my life while “Carin at the Liquor Store” was playing and The National made cosmic sense to me at that moment. Suitably wistful, overwrought, and trapped in their own heads, this is music made for turbulence of the soul. Music for a world that doesn’t make sense, but you must exist in nonetheless.

On a late October episode of Comedy Bang Bang, the National found themselves playing acoustic renditions of Beast songs in between interviews with zany characters. Before playing “Guilty Party,” lead singer Matt Berninger explained that the record about “looking over the edge of ‘what if?’” It’s an album about hibernation. About emerging from depression and combating the dregs of the world with dogged consistency if nothing else.

Beautifully-composed with dashes of electronic elements and long, swaying melodies, every song contained here showcases a different strength of the band. It’s an album that makes you happy to have lived. Even if you’re encountering a constant stream of bullshit, slowly being beaten down and drained by the great torrent of life, Sleep Well Beast assures you it’s all worth it by letting you know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Hope for us all in the grey dawn.

6 | Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in the Alps

Phoebe Bridgers’ soul is haunted. Throughout Stranger in the Alps, her guitar, voice, and thoughts drip with tangible darkness and unshakable regret. It’s a 44-minute soul-bearing expedition that will leave you physically and emotionally drained by the end.

Beginning with “Smoke Signals” a rolling, arid track that finds our hero dying vicariously through Lemmy and Bowie, the album twitches and swirls with life, reveling in the shifting blackness of the afterlife. Throughout the record we see flashes of a life well-lived: singing at funerals, unearnest hypnotherapist visits, and basking in the half-comfort of a shower beer. All of these tracks center around Bridgers’ confidently-delivered vocals, impeccable guitar work, and brilliant stretches of self-destructive storytelling.

One of the most haunting works comes at the album’s halfway point in the form of “Killer,” a measured piano-ballad track that finds Bridgers taking after indie folk Gods like Sufjan Stevens by comparing herself directly to a renowned serial killer. In the back half of the song she flashes forward to her own death as the piano flutters and a subtle hum of strings enter the mix. Stranger is one of the best debut albums I’ve heard in years, and as Bridgers embarks on a nationwide tour on the back of this record’s success, I absolutely can’t wait to see what she has for us next.

5 | The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding

Long-time fans will know that when I call something “background music” I mean it as a compliment. For months now, The War on Drugs A Deeper Understanding has been my go-to “background album” for nearly every situation and I believe it deserves props for that alone. When no other music presents itself to me, when I can’t think of anything else to listen to, when my queue is empty, this record is always there.

There’s something to be said for an album that’s calm and steady enough to lie in the background, yet musical enough to stand on its own. Some of my all-time favorite groups like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and Russian Circles are all bands that I adore and lovingly refer to as background music. They’ve helped me read, write, and create. They’re the perfect soundtrack to life, and now A Deeper Understanding joins their ranks as a fantastic album of infinite subtleties, musical vastness, and ever-cresting sonic landscapes.

On top of this situational flexibility, A Deeper Understanding also manages to improve upon the band’s previous effort Lost in the Dream which is astounding. The highs are louder and more blistering, and the lows hit even harder. Every song is a journey, and each solo implores you to get out and explore the world. A romantic record that inspires with each breath it takes.

4 | Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked at Me

Phil Elverum has a message to declare: Death is real. Recorded after his wife’s passing in July of 2016, A Crow Looked at Me is the draining of grief. An exorcism of pain. A confessional, first-hand account of the soul-wringing agony that is inflicted in the wake of the death of a loved one. How you live. How your infant daughter lives. The crushing pain of mundanity and how everything you see is a memory. A past. A future. A plan that never got to unfold. It’s not an album, it’s grief incarnate. It’s not fun to listen to, but it’s one of the most important releases of the year. The more you dig into the album, the more it hurts. Each line is a painful, poetic, being-shifting barb in which you empathize with Elverum unlike any other artist.

Recorded entirely on his wife’s instruments, the physical record has exact times demarcating how long each song was written from the time of her death. Some songs use a respirator for the beat and contain lyrics about how even the old garbage in the upstairs bathroom serves as a reminder that your loved one is gone. Every moment is beautiful, and every second hurts. It hangs heavy in your chest and will remain there for the rest of your life.

3 | Lorde - Melodrama

On the polar opposite of Crow, we have Lorde’s Melodrama a bright, joyful, and carefree album that, yes, is about a breakup, but handles that topic with as much happiness as a pop album possibly can.

Lorde’s first album in four years, Melodrama was one of 2017’s most highly anticipated releases. From aged poptimists to teen streamers and radio-ready moms, everyone was looking forward to the iconic New Zealander's return to music, and the most miraculous thing is that Lorde managed to please every one of these groups with the same album. Melodrama is musical enough to stand on its own against “high art,” poppy enough to be played on the radio, and has just enough flourishes to reward repeat listening.

To put it simply, Melodrama is the best of every possible world. A sophomore album that manages to please fans both old and new. A shining example of the heights that the pop genre can achieve, and the barriers it can break. It’s the continued and never-ending story of how one sixteen year old can rocket herself from a 2013 Song of the Summer to industry mainstay, segueing all that into the creation of one of the best releases of an entire genre. Melodrama is a pure, unbridled, and brilliant success on every level.

2 | Feist - Pleasure

Like most other denizens of 2007, my first exposure to Feist was through her fluke pop hit “1234.” As previously documented, I was slavishly devoted to late-2000’s-era pop music, so this song’s cultural impact was not lost on me. Like many other listeners, the song quickly faded from my consciousness and I wrote Feist off as a one-hit-wonder. After all, “1234” was essentially a Sesame Street song and, while catchy, wasn’t particularly deep. So I categorized her in the same vapid Adult Contemporary genre as Teddy Geiger and James Blunt: not offensive, but not something I’d ever seek out on my own. Aside from a one-off reference in a 2009 episode of The Office, I seemed to be right for the most part, at least she never broke her way back into my iTunes library.

When I saw people glowingly discussing Feist’s 2017 record I was intrigued, to say the least. Assuming it would merely be a pleasant and well-polished pop album full of slightly-Canadian tunes, I sought out the record and let it play through.

Expertly-deployed as the first song, “Pleasure” is an absolutely stunning introduction that immediately dismantled every one of my previously-held 1234-based notions. Boldly opening with 20-seconds of near-silence, “Pleasure” lulls the listener into a false sense of security with single row of, slightly-distorted guitar plucks and a reserved Leslie Feist on vocals. The melody slowly unwinds as Feist expertly pairs her voice with her guitar. Soon the music cuts down to almost nothing and Feist’s voice is reduced to a whisper as she moves closer to the mic croons the album’s title. Then, just as the listener is leaning in, straining to hear the song’s delicate melody, Feist cranks her guitar up to eleven as a simple snarl-inducing riff consumes the entire track. Towering over the rest of the mix, the distorted guitar strings swallow everything in their immediate proximity, blistering through the riff as the listener is shaken by the sudden change of tone. It’s a beautiful bait and switch, and merely the first example in an album that is brimming over the top with one-of-a-kind moments.

As an album, Pleasure finds itself oscillating between tender fragility and raw power. In a pre-album interview, Feist explained that the album is said to “explore emotional limits: loneliness, private ritual, secrets, shame, mounting pressures, disconnect, tenderness, rejection, care and the lack thereof.” and Pleasure manages to handle every one of these topics with extraordinary grace.

Sometimes the scope of the songs will pull out to reveal the larger context, but for most of this album, you’re just listening to Feist and her guitar. The songwriting and melody are sharper than almost everything I’ve heard all year, and I emerged from my first listen ashamed. Mad at myself for writing her off as a one-hit wonder when the reality couldn’t have been further from the truth: Feist is an artistic force to be reckoned with.

Funnily enough, there are also moments that come across as very trapped in time like references to flip phones, a spoken word passage by Jarvis Cocker, and a completely left-field Mastodon sample. The beauty of Pleasure is that somehow none of these elements feel out of place or make the album feel trapped in 2007. Instead, they make the record all the more special. They serve as one-of-a-kind instants that would feel ingenious anywhere else. The musical equivalent of well-worn leather. A double-helix of unique and unpredictable beauty.

Pleasure is a barebones album that’s deeply-personal and loving, occasionally violent and explosive, and wholly beautiful. Tracks like “Lost Dreams” feel like controlled explosions: moments of eruptive vitriol, surrounded by pensive waves of rocking harmonies.  Songs like “Baby Be Simple” smolder and rumble onward, often carried forward only by Leslie’s voice. You find yourself so lost in these songs that when the guitar does enter the mix, it seems like an explosive burst, even though it’s just a single gingerly-strummed chord. It’s an exercise in reduction, reservedness, and deceiving looks. Fierce and unpolished, uncomplicated and bare, Pleasure is songwriting and guitar work in its purest form. One of my favorites of the year, and an absolute hidden treasure.

1 | Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds From Another Planet

If years could have mascots, 2017’s would be Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. Aside from listening to her throughout the year, seeing her live twice, and being my 4th most-played artist of 2017, she has become symbolic. A figure that represents my shifting personality, internal monologue and grappling with the reality of the world. I feel like she’s simultaneously speaking to me and for me. I’ve found a new voice through hers.

As much as I enjoyed every other album on this list, my “album of 2017” can’t be anything but Soft Sounds From Another Planet. There are sadder albums, deeper albums, dancier albums, and maybe even “better” albums that released this year, but Soft Sounds represents more than that. When I think about my life next week, or next year, or five years from now, I know that Japanese Breakfast will still be a part of it. Albums come and go. Phases, genres, and artists all rise and fall, but Soft Sounds is something that I can see venturing back to forever.

I know this because Michelle’s music has already been something that I’ve been able to return to all year. Her debut album Psychopomp was one of my best discoveries of 2016 and a record that drew me in from first listen. It’s not often that I order a vinyl record before I’ve even finished my first listen. Another distinction Zauner is honored with is being one of the first "real" reviews I’ve done for this website thanks to an early vinyl shipment. That said, between that review and my female-fronted profile of her in October, there’s not much more I feel like I can say about this record on a technical level.

Despite my hype, it’s not a record I expected to be my favorite until I sat down to really think about what has impacted me this year. I took a long break from Soft Sounds after listening to it endlessly for that review, and when I came back to it after multiple weeks, I was surprised to find that I knew every word. I’d memorized every melody, and internalized every beat. That’s something I can say about very few records, let alone one that I’ve only been listening to for five months.

Michelle posted her own year in review on Instagram, and even a cursory glance reveals an incredibly happy, humble, and wholesome person who deserves every ounce of success she has earned. To watch her shoot from “Underground Bandcamp Musician” to one of the biggest names in indie over the past year has been astounding to behold.

I remember hearing “Road Head” for the first time as she sampled her vocals and made a beat of them live on stage. I remember being transported by the 90’s bass-centered groove of “Diving Woman.” I remember watching her perform “Boyish” to a silent room as a disco ball twirled above the audience’s heads. I remember dancing to “Machinist” alongside Michelle as she jumped into the audience at our small Portland show. I remember finding solace in “Till Death” as the news seemed like a constant stream of cruel men winning things that they don’t deserve. I remember tearing up to the fan-like synth of “The Body Is a Blade” as childhood photos flashed on screen. I remember full-on crying to “This House” as Zauner recounted her life in scattered flashes following her mother’s death. This album is my 2017.

Michelle Zauner is the absolute best that humanity has to offer. A shining star of this world. A phenomenal voice, a gifted director, and a musical visionary. Her music makes me want to be a better person and improve myself just for the sake of attempting to one day achieve what she already has. Thank you for the music, and thank you for the voice Michelle, you are who I want to be.

Swim Into The Sound’s 2017 Un-Awards

Welcome to Swim Into The Sound’s first annual Un-Awards! In this direct (and more negative) companion piece to our Diamond Platters, we take a moment to reflect on some of the worst moments in music over the past year. From bad lyrics to tasteless cover art, this is a quick-hit version of the lowest points that 2017 had to offer.

In a year where we keep thinking “well, at least things can’t get any worse” 2017 always managed to surprise us. From politics and celebrities all the way down to movies and music, this was a year of general-purpose deplorable behavior and reprehensible choices. While there were plenty of good moments over the past 365 days, you will find that none of that light reaches these depths. This post is a place of darkness, a hell devoted solely to the most soul-crushing and life-questioning music of the year.

I’d also like to throw out a disclaimer that I don’t particularly like being pessimistic, especially when it comes to art that people have (presumably) worked hard on. Aside from that, negativity stands in direct opposition to the ideals that this website was founded on in the first place. What I’ve found is that it’s hard to talk about the good without also thinking of the bad, especially for a year like 2017. As I mentioned before, the previous post is the exact inverse of this one, and the next article going up will cover our favorite albums of the year, so if you are searching for affirmation, this is not the place to find it. Just think of this as the lone negative meat in a positivity sandwich.

Truth be told, aside from a few visibly-frothy entries, most of these awards are positive spins on negative experiences: moments that surprised me, music I’m embarrassed to enjoy, or weird synchronicities that I noticed throughout the year. I could have gone out of my way to shit on Katy Perry, The Chainsmokers, Imagine Dragons, or any number of middling radio-ready albums that were released this year, but at a certain point that all just feels redundant and hack. I prefer to be original in my distaste. So without any further adieu, I’m proud to present Swim Into The Sound’s list of the most spine-chillingly-regrettable music of 2017.

Biggest Disappointment

Winner: Queens of the Stone Age - Villains

Being a fan is a mixed blessing. The upside is that you get to enjoy the rollercoaster of hype that is an album rollout and you get the sweet experience of listening to a highly-anticipated album for the first time when it releases. On the flip side, that fandom can easily backfire if your expectations have been built up too high. While I love Queens of the Stone Age, in 2017 I fear that I may be outgrowing them. The group’s 2004 release Songs for the Deaf is literally my favorite album of all time, and there’s no higher praise than that. Each record since then has been good to great until 2013’s …Like Clockwork which just didn’t sit right with me outside of a select few songs.

This year, the group’s seventh LP represents a new artistic low. Featuring limp “dancy” grooves, irritatingly-clean instruments, and some of the most laughable lyrics I’ve ever heard, the band we see on Villains bears little resemblance the one that I fell in love with years ago. I recognize that wanting a band to stay the same is a shitty thing for a fan to ask, but I just can’t understand, enjoy, or tolerate the direction that the group is headed. I’m a lifelong fan, but that makes these recent records hurt all the more. When you love a band, you devour each release that they put out. Even if the last few records haven’t hit as hard, you stick with them because you want them to be better. The excitement of something new is impossible to stay away from, but now after months of listening, all I want is for Villains to stay away from me.

Runner-up: Portugal. The Man - Woodstock

While I wrote glowingly about Portugal. The Man’s entire discography last month, Woodstock (while not bad) is not an album that I particularly wanted. It’s not the band’s worst, but it’s the most sterile, safe, and poppy album that the group has ever created. Outside of a handful of adrenaline-pumping car-ready songs, Woodstock takes no risks. The album breaks no new ground, asks nothing of its audience, and seems entirely too content to settle. While those qualities are the exact opposite of what I expect from the trailblazing Portlanders, I’ll hold my reservations until I hear what comes next.

Album I Feel Like I Will Adore In A Few Years

Winner: Fleet Foxes - Crack-up

Until earlier this year I never particularly liked Fleet Foxes. In preparation for their 2017 release, I found myself endlessly replaying the group’s self-titled LP alongside Helplessness Blues while doing other things. Somewhere along the line “inoffensive background music” turned into brilliant folk epics, and I finally understood what made the band so unique. However, in a Bon Iver-esque pivot, Fleet Foxes’ third LP Crack-up represents an experimental shift in sounds, and unfortunately, it’s a change that doesn’t sit particularly well with me. There are some awe-inspiring moments scattered throughout this record, but as a whole, it’s not a release that stuck with me in the slightest, let alone one that can hold a candle to the band’s earlier work. I recognize that there’s something special going on in Crack-up, but I feel like it will just take some time for me to properly excavate it, just as I did with the group’s first two records.

Runner-up: Sun Kil Moon - Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood

Sun Kil Moon is another artist that I’d never listened to until 2017. After hearing this year’s mouthful of an album Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood, I came away pleasantly surprised. Featuring solemn, looping instrumentation and long podcast-like narration by Mark Kozelek, I listened to all two hours and ten minutes in complete fascination. I dipped back into his previous work like Benji and loved it just as much, but for whatever reason, I never ventured back into Valleys after that first listen. Maybe it was the album’s lengthy running time or the idea that the narration would prove too distracting for a casual listen, but Valleys always felt too daunting to dive back into. I feel like one day when I’m a middle-aged dad with a couple of kids I’ll finally have the time to revisit this album and it will speak to me on an entirely new level. The songs and stories here feel like something that I will find solace in when I’m older, but I just don’t have the 2+ hours right now.

WTF Moment of the Year

Winner: Bhad Bhabie

Of all the memes to emerge from 2017, few have been as successful as 14-year-old Danielle Bregoli. She first gained traction in January thanks to a Dr. Phil clip in which Mrs. Bregoli challenged an audience member to “cash her outside.” The teen’s delivery of the phrase caught fire and became a meme/infinitely-renewable social media caption for a hot minute. One of the more perplexing news stories of 2017 (and that’s saying something) was Danielle’s announcement of her music career as “Bhad Bhabi” complete with a deal on Atlantic Records. Preceded by an appearance in a Kodak Black video, this announcement blindsided the music world and spawned a million think pieces. However when Bregoli released her first song in August the unthinkable happened: It wasn’t that bad.

The video for “These Heaux” was the first part of a one-two punch alongside “Hi Bich” that set social media ablaze in September. As everyone collectively remembered the months-old meme from what seemed like a lifetime ago, most people took this as an opportunity to laugh at her once again. Meanwhile, I watched the same videos as everyone, and recognized it as bad music, but found myself embarrassingly enjoying both songs. “Heaux” and “Hi Bich” are both competent and well-produced Rae Sremmurd-esque bangers that, yes, are propped up by production, but still enjoyable. The truth is, they’re musical fast food. It’s not nutritious, healthy, or even filling, but sometimes you just need to bask in the utter trashiness that is Bhad Bhabie.

Runner-up: Lil Pump

Earlier this year I wrote a 3,000-word post in which I attempted to reconcile my newfound love of trap with my extreme dislike of the current crop of SoundCloud rappers. While that write-up was primarily inspired by the reprehensible human being that is xxxtentacion, I now regret lumping Lil Pump into the same category. While his brand of blown-out hyped-up trap is of the same school as xxx, Lil Pump isn’t nearly as bad on a personal or musical level as Onfroy. More surprisingly, I actually found myself liking his breakout single “Gucci Gang” more than I am comfortable admitting. Featuring a worryingly-mindless chorus and the same laundry list of flexes as most trap hits, “Gucci Gang” manages to be an infectious banger that has also propelled Pump to the forefront of both the charts and popular culture.

Most Un-sexy Sex Song

Winner: Alt-J “Hit Me Like That Snare”

In an interview with Q Magazine, Alt-J’s lead singer Joe Newman described “Hit Me Like That Snare” as an “atypically filthy psychedelic grind.” Wow, guys. Wow. If you want to avoid listening to the song, I don’t blame you. All you need to know about this track is that the band rhymes “slithering” with “scissoring” (yes, that kind), and the lead singer describes the song as “spicy.” Whew.

Runner-up: DJ Khaled “Wild Thoughts”

While I thought “Wild Thoughts” was exceedingly-sensual on first listen, the song now has too many things working against it for me to find any titillation here. From Rihanna’s baby talk to memories of dancing hot dogs, I just can’t listen to this song without picturing Santana’s face, or DJ Khaled screaming. The single achieved a level of cultural-pervasiveness so quickly that it became saturated beyond its original artistic vision. God knows I have no problem with DJ Khaled, but this track now contains too many distractions to remain pure. The music video is still unspeakably steamy, but as a whole, “Wild Thoughts” has lost what little sexy luster it initially had.

Am I The Only One Seeing This Shit?

Winner: Rappers Counting

I’ll admit that this category was created with the sole purpose of repurposing already-written articles, but that doesn’t make the observations contained within them any less valid. The first of these two hyper-specific happenings of 2017 can be found in this article where I outline three examples of rappers using numbers as lyrics. Not like clever wordplay involving numbers, but counting upwards sequentially one numeral at a time. It’s a weird thing to have happened multiple times in one year and feels like such a lazy cop-out of songwriting, but at the same time, each artist in the list manages to make it work for one reason or another.

Runner-up: 21 Savage’s Food Lyrics

Another weirdly-specific phenomenon of 2017 is something that I noticed while listening to 21 Savage’s debut Issa Album over the summer. Despite his tough gangster exterior and dark, moody beats, 21 also managed to fit an alarming number of food references into his first retail outing. While not particularly jarring, these references provide a weird contrast to the rest of the Mr. Savage’s “murder music” and end up sticking out like (multiple) sore thumbs throughout the record. It happened just consistently enough that I began laughing every time they poked up, and I felt the cosmic need to compile them somewhere, so I did.

Most Insensitive and Heavy-handed Song about Suicide

Winner: Arcade Fire “Creature Comfort”

On this second single off Arcade Fire’s Everything Now, we hear Win Butler clumsily address the topics of suicide and self-harm. The song’s first verse explains “Some boys hate themselves / Spend their lives resenting their fathers / Some girls hate their bodies / Stand in the mirror and wait for the feedback.” Taken on their own, these lines aren’t particularly offensive, but it’s the second verse where things get truly tactless: “Assisted suicide / She dreams about dying all the time / She told me she came so close / Filled up the bathtub and put on our first record.” I mean, what a pretentious and shitty way to insert yourself into someone else’s misery. It’s such a bizarre form of narcissism and masturbating to your own past, this line truly is one of the grossest sentiments that I’ve heard put to music over the past year.

Runner-up: Brand New “Same Logic / Teeth”

While it’s true that suicide isn’t exactly a groundbreaking topic for an emo band, Brand New somehow manages to stumble over it fantastically one of the few times that they tackle the subject. Surrounded by excellent songs of diverse sounds, styles, and topics, “Same Logic / Teeth” sticks out as Science Fiction’s  most significant blunder. With questionable lyrics, bizarre vocal choices, and overwrought sentiments, it’s easy to see why most bands would prefer not write songs about killing yourself because the only time I have ever wanted to end my life is when I’m hearing Jesse Lacey sing about how fish won’t judge me by my faults.  

WTF Moment of the Year 2: Weird Boogaloo

Winner: Vulfpeck “Captain Hook”

Venturing back to the “WTF Well” for two more entries, another of 2017’s biggest surprises came at the end of Vulfpeck’s Mr. Finish Line. The band’s third full-length studio album is a stone-cold chiller, but after half an hour of unspeakably funky tracks, “Captain Hook,” the record’s final song threw me (and every other listener) for a massive loop. Teased as a collaboration with Bootsy Collins, most fans expected a brainwave-shifting epic of an album closer, a modern “I’d Rather Be With You” but with even tighter instrumentation. What we got was a goofy comedy track featuring two of Vulfpeck’s members affecting the voices of an infant and an old Jewish man. Bootsy’s contributions are noticeable but minimal, and as a whole, the track is just a fantastically-bizarre experiment. “Captain Hook” is a weird child-like song featuring a trio of the three most disparate voices you could ever imagine, however (now that I know what to expect), I absolutely adore the song. It’s such a weird marriage of voices that, when combined with Vulf’s approach to music, circles back from annoying to endearing. It’s one final cherry of weirdness on top of the funk sundae that is Mr. Finish Line.

Runner-up: Taylor Swift “Look What You Made Me Do”

Preceded by snake imagery and a dark rebranding, “Look What You Made Me Do” marked Taylor Swift’s long-awaited return to the forefront of pop. After 2015’s 1989, numerous turbulent relationships, a public unmasking via Kardashian, and a complicated legal battle, the song represents Swift’s full embrace of the dark side. As the first single released off Reputation, “Look What You Made Me Do” was met with waves of confusion when it dropped this fall. From the Right Said Fred sample to the thinly-veiled jabs at her detractors, nearly everything about this song was poked and prodded through upon it’s August 25th release. There’s a strange schadenfreude to watching the biggest pop star flail to spectacularly, but at the end of the day she’ll still make a million dollars, sold-out rock stadiums, and be more successful than the richest DC supervillain, so as much as I want her to succeed, I guess it’s also okay to laugh. I definitely haven’t “come around” to the song, and I doubt I ever will, but the air of “what the fuck” was palpable the night that this song was released.

Weirdest Flex

Winner: Lil Pump “Gucci Gang”

After a brief intro and meme-ready chorus on “Gucci Gang,” Lil Pump surveys his surroundings and begins to describe them in the song’s sole verse. “My lean cost more than your rent” he boasts, “Your momma still live in a tent” he continues, “Still slangin’ dope in the ‘jects / Me and my grandma take meds.” These lines are so outlandish and bizarre that I can’t help but love them. First, we get the worrying comparison between the upkeep of his own opiate addiction to monthly rent, then the (uncalled for) implication that the listener’s mother is homeless, and the final cherry on top: the fact that Pump spends quality time popping pills with his grandmother.

It’s actually one of Pump’s numerousreferencesto theelderly on his scant number of released songs, leading me to think that this is either A) a genuine lyric, or B) a worrying cry for help. At least he’s spending some quality time with his elders before they pass. Even if it’s a drug-fueled haze, I hope that both parties treasure their remaining time together.

Runner-up: Drake “Gyalchester”

On one of More Life’s most hard-hitting tracks, “Gyalchester” finds Drake braggadociously displaying his opulence in rapid lyrical flashes. Halfway through the first verse, the song’s beat cuts out just long enough for Drake to exclaim “I don’t take naps / Me and the money are way too attached to go and do that.” While the sentiment of money over everything is hardly new for the rap game, using naps as a framing device to explain how fond of currency you are is such a “Drake way” to go about it. At this point, Drake is far beyond the memes of his earlier career, but lines like this one are how he got that reputation in the first place. All this said, I’m not gonna begrudge anyone their beauty sleep or lack thereof, everyone has their own unique schedule… Plus the song bangs, so cornball lyrics are easier to overlook.

Most Abhorrent Cover Art

Winner: The Darkness - Pinewood Smile

I honestly don’t want to write too much because I just want to stop looking at this. The facial hair. The teeth. The nose ring. The Photoshopped band members. I’m sorry I had to subject you guys to this, but this abortion of a cover is too bad to not share.

Runner-up: Maroon 5 - Red Pill Blues

*Adam Levine walks into the studio*

“Hey, have you guys heard of Snapchat?”

Most Undeservedly Shit Upon

Winner: Arcade Fire - Everything Now

For the sake of ending on a somewhat positive note, I’m going to wrap up by talking about two albums that were widely disliked, but I managed to appreciate. First off we have Arcade Fire’s fifth LP Everything Now. While I did just spend a paragraph dunking on the album’s suicide track, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this record. I’ll start this off by saying I have no reverence for this band, I don’t care for their older work, and they’ve always struck me as a painfully average indie group. Perhaps thanks to this lowered expectation, I emerged from my first listen of Everything Now with a smile on my face. It was goofy and cheesy, and about as far from subtle as you can get, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. Since the album is in this “shit upon” category, I guess it goes without saying that I was largely alone in this sentiment.

Maybe people were turned off by the unrelenting social media campaign, or just expected more based on the group’s previous work, but either way, it seemed like indieheads the world over were sick to their stomachs after hearing this record. I personally think the album has a wonderful Abba-esque charm to it. There’s a tremendous melodic through-line with the titular “Everything Now,” there are memorable choruses on “Creature Comfort,” and even a gloriously chunky riff on “Chemistry.”

At the end of the day, I think I enjoy Everything Now for the same reason that I enjoyed M83’s Junk. I went into both albums with low expectations and ended up loving the cheesy throwback vibe that they embraced. I can totally understand why that pivot would turn off long-time fans, but apparently, this sound is right up my alley. It’s not going to be on my end of the year list or anything, all I’m saying is Everything Now is good for what it is. You know what? It’s great for what it is. If fans could take their blinders off, remove their feelings on the album’s lead-up, and take this as a standalone adventure, they would probably enjoy Everything Now for the goofy romp that it is.

Runner-up: Foo Fighters - Concrete and Gold

Even before Concrete and Gold was released, I saw about a half dozen articles about how the Foo Fighters have nowhere else to go and are the embodiment of “New Dad Rock.” While it’s true that the band is unchallenging to listen to and don’t exactly think outside of the box, the criticism is a double-edged sword. Aside from being a thinly-veiled put-down, the dad rock label means that Foo Fighters won’t ever release a “bad” record, but they’re also never going to release another “classic” like Colour and Shape. While I agree the group is in a weird spot career-wise, I resent the idea that they won’t ever release something impactful as Colour and Shape simply because they’re older. Apart from the fact that 2011’s Wasting Light was one of the band’s best, on Concrete and Gold we see a band that’s still incredibly hungry.

Eschewing the conceptualframing devices of their past couple releases, Foo Fighters set out to make a straight-up rock record, and they succeeded. The band still go through their usual motions, oscillating from biting punky tracks to slow moody epics, but as a whole Concrete is a record that’s well-paced, well-produced, and solid from front to back. Just because it’s played on the radio doesn’t mean it’s an inherently “okay” album, and just because the band is growing old doesn’t mean they’re settling. Concrete and Gold is concrete proof of that.