The Charlatans – Different Days
The band who brought southern soul to Britpop continued to keep their creative vision wide open, as psychedelic sunlight was poured into driving guitar pop not unlike MGMT or Tame Impala.
What we said: The Charlatans’ 13th album is grounded on the band’s own indestructible chemistry, Tim Burgess’s exquisitely happy-sad vocals and their ability to juggle melancholy and joy into exhilarating pop songs.
Myra Davies – Sirens
The year’s best underground release so far, in which pieces by Canadian spoken-word artist Myra Davies are paired with pounding electronic backdrops from producers Gudrun Gut and Beate Bartel. The drolly observational Davies covers everything from retellings of Wagner to slices of life in Istanbul airport, and even a very funny takedown of John Cage.
Richard Dawson – Peasant
Dawson continues to prove he’s one of the UK’s most vivid songwriters, as he delves into Britain’s medieval past in tales of scientists, soldiers and violence in bathhouses. There’s a bit of eastern mysticism and American Primitive in the twanging guitars, blended with superb melodic invention as Dawson’s voice roams from keening falsetto into singsong speech.
What we said: An album that’s out there on its own, and not merely because it’s a song cycle set in the early middle ages that doesn’t make you want to curl up and die of embarrassment. Abstruse but weirdly accessible, recherche but pertinent, Peasant is quite an achievement.
Mac DeMarco – This Old Dog
It may have few of the rollicking numbers that turn his live show into a beer-spattered melee, but DeMarco’s ruminative voice suits his ever more mournful take on soft rock, synthpop and acoustic ballads.
What we said: There’s undeniably a bid for respectability going on here – DeMarco once famously performed with a drumstick up his bum, which is a reputation that takes some shedding. But this melancholic approach – serious themes, stoned demeanour – seems a smart way to reposition himself.
Drake – More Life
The patron saint of Instagram DMs loosened up again after the slightly staid Views album, using a “playlist” framework to showcase his diaspora-straddling take on R&B. Blem and Passionfruit nicely pre-empted summer, while Kanye West and Young Thug brought exceptional melodies to Glow and Ice Melts, and Giggs and Jorja Smith did the UK proud.
What we said: The project is closer towards old-school rap mixtapes, where unreleased tracks sat alongside potential singles and one-off tracks from crew hangers-on. Even if the album lacks the humour of the Views songs 9 or Child’s Play ... the breadth of styles recalls his 2012-2015 SoundCloud that found space for both Fetty Wap and James Blake remixes.
Jlin – Black Origami
After her debut Dark Energy blew us away in 2015, the former steelworker from Gary, Indiana has created another stunningly off-kilter take on Chicago’s high-speed footwork style. Chants and eerie snatches of film dialogue ricochet around restless drum programming that invites seriously wonky dancing. Read Simon Reynolds’ interview with her here.
Steve Lacy – Demo
Despite having only just graduated from high school, Steve Lacy has already been nominated for a Grammy for his production on the Internet’s album Ego Death, and made the backing for Pride by Kendrick Lamar (featured on Damn, listed below). His solo debut may only be 13 minutes long, but its sunbaked, lo-fi take on soul-pop – imagine a more ramshackle Miguel – suggests a very exciting future.
Kendrick Lamar – Damn
The world’s No 1 MC continues to blend earworms with exploratory flow, on a set where Lamar’s lens turns from himself to the world and back again throughout.
What we said: Whether Damn will have the same epochal impact as To Pimp a Butterfly remains to be seen, but either way it sounds like the work of a supremely confident artist at the top of his game.
Lil Yachty – Teenage Emotions
Hip-hop purists can’t stand him for his DayGlo aesthetic and ill-disciplined metre, but more fool them – Lil Yachty’s tremendous debut album features everything from 80s boogie to ferocious trap and sad-boy balladry, in tracks that experimentally push the boundaries of rap.
What we said: This is an instinctively catchy and frequently startling record. Yachty draws on some clear influences – the arrhythmic streams of teen consciousness of Lil B and Soulja Boy, the radical, Auto-Tuned solipsism of Kanye West, the soapbox declarations of Young Thug – and carbonates them into brilliant outsider pop.
Laurel Halo – Dust
The underground electronic producer has dabbled in everything from dub techno to synth jams in the past, but empties out her entire paintbox on this ambitious and brilliant record. These are songs from the very outer reaches of pop, loose but with a unique centre of gravity.
What we said: An album that brilliantly reimagines jazz songcraft for the 21st century … a triumph of impressionism, where the digital and organic coexist in a radically beautiful whole.
Laura Marling – Semper Femina
A reflection on femininity partly borne out of studies of muses, painters and psychoanalysts, this is a smart, beautifully produced album held up by surefooted rhythm, draped in gorgeous strings – and of course anchored by Marling’s clear-eyed lyricism.
What we said: Punchy and confident ... an album that’s as big on telling details as it is on big ideas.
Paramore – After Laughter
The eternally feuding emo-punks carry on their decisive march into pure pop, with tight funk licks, soft-rock moods and Hayley Williams’s ever-instinctive attraction to chorus melodies.
What we said: The grooves they always possessed are brought to the forefront on this peppy, vibrant record ... 80s pop production and highlife rhythms lead Hayley Williams’s powerhouse vocals to unexpectedly fun heights.
Perfume Genius – No Shape
The most robust album yet from Mike Hadreas, as echoing strings, distorted noise and his own voice – lilting with an elegant touch of vibrato – cohere around grand and somewhat gothic songwriting.
What we said: The tunes are so uniformly fantastic that it’s easy to overlook the rich seam of strangeness that runs through the album’s sound ... a unique talent coming into full bloom.
Pixx – The Age of Anxiety
2017 has seen more solo female pop stars than ever before, but Pixx cut through the noise with an authoritative, futurist LP that took in motorik guitars and PC Music-style gloss on the way to an electropop classic.
What we said: A riveting and refreshing debut, which balances weirdness with sweet and soothing electropop joy.
Sampha – Process
His debut album may have come years after his first tracks, as he paused to collaborate with everyone from Drake to both Knowles sisters, but it was worth the wait: a digital soul record given tremendous emotional power by his keenly hurt voice.
What we said: Nothing feels in thrall to current trends in R&B, either sonically or emotionally ... a weighty, powerful album with an identity entirely of its own.
Rikard Sjöblom’s Gungfly – On Her Journey to the Sun
The year’s most impressive prog album blended Sjöblom’s soulful vocals with intricate and cosmically meandering guitar lines. But it crucially doesn’t go on a quest up inside itself, instead retaining a universal pop sensibility.
Tomasz Stańko New York Quartet – December Avenue
Aided by some gorgeously pensive piano motifs from David Virelles, Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko is given space to create a stunning series of improvisations, from energetic ferreting to dazed melancholia.
What we said: Nobody holds a single, long-blown trumpet note like the Polish pioneer Tomasz Stańko – a wearily exhaled, soberly ironic, yet oddly awestruck sound that is unique in jazz ... an exquisite exercise in haunting tone-poetry, occasionally pierced by urgent avant-swing.
Syd – Fin
The one-time Odd Future DJ and bandleader of The Internet stepped out on her own for this sensual set, where she weaved breathy yet steely vocal lines through minimalist trap atmospheres.
What we said: As hinted at by the record sleeve’s oceanic shadows, Fin has depths that only become more apparent the longer you spend engulfed in them.
Thundercat – Drunk
The virtuosic bassist created his best-loved album yet, recruiting everyone from soft rock legends Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald to rappers Wiz Khalifa and Pharrell Williams, for funk songs that zipped around the stars.
What we said: Takes you down a rabbit hole and turfs you out in his lopsided wonderland of funk, soul, hip-hop and soft rock... an eccentric, surreal and oddly hypnotic listen.
Wiley – The Godfather
After grime’s belated ascendance to global attention over the last couple of years, its enigmatic originator reminded everyone that he is still one of the best, deploying his pinpoint-accurate flow over everything from club bangers to soulful tales of woman trouble.
What we said: His demeanour on this blockbuster album is of a foreman nodding with satisfaction as he looks across a building site – if they’re not already guesting on it, Wiley is praising his fellow UK MCs almost every other bar.
Selected by Rachel Aroesti, Lanre Bakare, Ben Beaumont-Thomas, John Fordham, Harriet Gibsone, Kate Hutchinson, Tim Jonze, Dom Lawson and Alexis Petridis.
