But to compile a list of songs that have shaped your personal year is very different to compiling a list of favourite songs released that year. New releases always lay claim to the limelight of the present, but there continues in the background a slow, personal acquaintance with all the music that came before. My 2017, for example, was flush with formative experiences, and the songs tangled up among them hold a potent nostalgia. These songs did not belong solely to 2017 but include Ventura Highway (1972) and This Must Be The Place (1983). One day I will put together that personal playlist. For now I want to concentrate on 2017 itself.
2017 is the year I finally sign up to Spotify. I'm still not totally convinced. I've read about the algorithms and the corporate undertones, the illusion of choice and democracy. Equally, though, I love to make and share playlists, and stalk the playlists of others, from Teju Cole's 'a history of jetlag' series, to a playlist of every single song titled 'Autumn Leaves', and The War on Drugs' 'road jams' from their recent tour. Before Spotify, I was stuck in a mostly Springsteen-shaped musical rut, and while that is arguably no bad place to be, Spotify has put paid to my musical snobbery and stubbornness, catching my ears and heart and blowing them wide open.
Ran / Future Islands
The Far Field
I begin 2017 running long distances around a wintry Baltimore, which is pretty much what Sam Herring does in the music video for Ran. The single drops at the beginning of February, followed in April by the rest of The Far Field, in which the immediacy of 2014's Singles gives way to something slower, deeper, rawer.
There's the opening/closing line of Time On Her Side: 'the sea was large today, just as any other day'. Debbie Harry making Shadows her own. Beauty Of The Road, about how travel takes you to wonderful places, but takes you far from the people you love. The opening verse of Aladdin, which Herring says he couldn't have written without his hiphop alter-ego Hemlock Ernst. But it was Ran I heard first, Ran which became a staple road-trip song, Ran which I almost bust a knee dancing to at their London show this autumn.
The Far Field takes its name from a Theodore Roethke poem ('I learned not to fear infinity, the far field, the windy cliffs of forever' ) and Roethke's presence, along with other American giants like Jack Gilbert, can be found within the stark beauty of Future Islands' lyrics. A gathering of landscape and heart and synth, their songs celebrate the power of emotional vulnerability.
How it feels when we fall, when we fold / How we lose control on these roads / How it sings as it goes
american dream / LCD Soundsystem
american dream
A hot bright sky beats about our rental car as we ascend a freeway ramp in California, following signs for LA, curving over the traffic that cuts this golden landscape. Then somebody puts american dream on, and the song's opening seconds glue themselves to this particular west coast memory.
After a year spent swapping the American dream for the American reality - observing firsthand post-election pain and sorrow, experiencing capitalism's rampancy in my rent and grocery bills, growing accustomed to the abundance of homelessness - LCD Soundsystem's american dream sounds about right to my ears. Urgent and languorous at the same time - America's two preferred speeds, it seems - the song adds a necessary note of disquiet to the halcyon romance of our Californian road trip.
And you can't remember the meaning / But there's no going back against this California feeling
Shark Smile / Big Thief
Capacity
In June I'm in a succulent-clad coffee shop in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighbourhood when this song starts up. I don't know it's called Shark Smile, but Shazam is about to tell me.
And while Spotify has - for better or for worse - overhauled the way I listen to music, in a way it's Shazam that has proven to be the more radical influence. Travelling around America all summer, Shazam is a way of mapping the cities I walk through the songs I hear, adding a spatial dimension to my interaction with music. Songs become pins pushed into the map of the public sphere, charting coffee shops, bars, Trader Joes stores. Travels dictating taste, songs as souvenirs.
Ninety miles down the road of a dead end dream / She looked over with a part smile / Caught up in the twinkle, it could take a while
Selfish / Future
HNDRXX
There's a low-key beauty to what DIY describes as a 'stand-out slow-burner on an album of shadowy, gloom-drenched rap'. Featuring Rihanna as guest vocalist, Selfish articulates a specific emotion I find tough to describe, except that it's about acknowledging feelings, finally finding yourself alone with that person, and ignoring the rest of the world. The chorus reminds me of a quote from Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller, about how within love, 'times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space'.
Sunscreen / JeanGa and George
European Repetitive Beat
When I hear the first few seconds of this release from the anglo-franco dance duo, I am back on the hot streets of a New York summer, walking over the Brooklyn bridge through a glitter pink sunset, alone in the city with too many feelings to carry by myself.
There's a fire over here / And I miss you so much
Lies I Chose to Believe / John Moreland
Big Bad Luv
Part of me will always believe Bruce Springsteen sings this song. But while John Moreland's voice often has an undeniable similarity to my favourite rugged New Jersey baritone, he possesses a huskiness and a command all of his own. I play this record to death all summer, then catch him live at September's End Of The Road festival. Big Bad Luv tempers the gravelly sorrow in much of Moreland's previous work with the arrival of something happier: love.
And love ain't a sickness, though I once thought it was / When I was too surrounded to see
Aboard My Train / Kevin Morby
City Music
We're driving around the foothills of North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains, where 'there ain't no soul I know / no commotion for me to be a part of'. The roads are slick with summer rain, the banks and verges lush green, and Kevin Morby is singing about tears.
The poignant yet playful wisdom of 2014's Still Life continues in City Music. Morby already had me with tracks like Dry Your Eyes and Flannery (an excerpt from Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It All Away) but I really love Aboard My Train too.
In my time I'd like to stay young forever / Like a tide, the crest beneath sunny weather / May we fill these lungs with laughter / And may we shake these bones with style
Cut To The Feeling / Carly Rae Jepsen
I recently read an excellent piece by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib about Carly Rae Jepsen, the Kingdom of Desire, and falling in love with friends. Cut To The Feeling is a perfect pop song and I refuse to be embarrassed by the number of times I've listened to it.
Take me to emotion, I want to go all the way
In Undertow / Alvvays
Antisocialites
Wishy-washy indie pop, but done so damn well.
"What's left for you and me?" / I ask that question rhetorically / Can't buy into astrology, and won't rely on the moon for anything
Put Your Money on Me / Arcade Fire
Everything Now
Oh, Arcade Fire. Their first album in four years glittered with promise: Everything Now, the first song to be released, was described as 'ABBA-meets-Talking-Heads' (what more could this girl want?), and the album aimed to tackle issues of modernity, technology, and connectivity, in the band's usual grandiose style. What defines Everything Now for me, however, is lazy lyricism and a sound that doesn't quite come to anything. I don't care if the lax lyrics are a meta-comment on the dumbed-down superficiality of today's society. This album promised so much, and it hasn't delivered.
Except for Put Your Money on Me, a song so good it almost makes up for the rest of the record.
If you think I'm losing you, you must be crazy / All your money on me
Right On Time / Nadia Reid
Preservation
We're in a field in Dorset on an early September morning and it's raining hard. Turns out our green Aldi pop up tent isn't too concerned with repelling water: everything's soaked, from roll mats to underwear. To top it off, the tent's zip is broken halfway up, so we have to essentially dive out into the soggy grass.
The rain is an uninvited headliner on the final day of 2017's End Of The Road. Regular festival-goers sit smug-faced in waterproof palaces, poaching eggs on proper stoves. I've seen tents with chimneys. I've watched somebody hoover the floor of their tent. But the majority of folk are like us, glumly packing up a day early, wrestling with pop-up tents and sleeping bags in pounding rain, trying in vain to keep possessions dry. We join a doleful procession heading to the car park. My arms ache. Everything is drenched. It is miserable.
Once the car's packed, though, there's a dry set of clothes, hot tea and a cooked breakfast, and the warm fug of the Tipi Tent, through which Nadia Reid casts a spell over its rain-sodden occupants. Her voice is strong and graceful. I will reach my destination, she sings. I will reach my destination.
There's a ship out in the harbor / Carrying my love / I ain't gonna wait forever / I ain't a turtledove
Evening Prayer / Jens Lekman
Life Will See You Now
With underlying disco rhythms and an infectious pop sound, Life Will See You Now continues Lekman's trademark buoyant melancholy. His End Of The Road set is a testament to this record's desire to make you dance. Later that night, walking back to our tent, I hear Lekman's dulcet Swedish tones drift across the dark field and realise he's one of the secret midnight acts. I'm still sad I missed the chance to hear Your Arms Around Me, the best ever musical reference to an avocado.
Nobody Else Will Be There / The National
Sleep Well Beast
It's tough when one of your favourite bands release a new album. You're so wrapped up in love for their previous material that you don't know if you've room for anything more. And then they somehow convince you that you definitely, desperately need these new songs in your life, that Slow Show and About Today and Graceless were never the only answers.
Meet me in the stairwell in a second / For a glass of gin / Nobody else will be there then
Nothing To Find / The War On Drugs
A Deeper Understanding
I see The War On Drugs at Ally Pally in November, and remember the mediative quality of their live shows, how you lose yourself in the drawn-out dreams of their songs. During the slower burners my thoughts meander around everything and nothing, only to be brought back to earth with punchier tracks like Nothing To Find. Their music is built for summer sun, and though I've listened to this album a lot already, I know I'll be listening more deeply come spring.
Oh I'm rising from within / I see it every morning / Tell me where the rhythm ends
* * *
other deserved mentions
On Lankershim / Foxygen Hang
Sick Bug / Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever The French Press
DNA. / Kendrick Lamar DAMN.
Jag bryr Mig / Mwuana Triller
Soulfire / Little Steven Soulfire
Love / Lana Del Rey Lust For Life
Many Moods At Midnight / Ghostpoet Dark Days + Canapés
Another Weekend / Ariel Pink Dedicated to Bobby Jameson
Caledonia, My Love / Hiss Golden Messenger Hallelujah Anyhow
Lush / Four Tet New Energy
New York / St. Vincent MASSEDUCATION
No Exit / Tennis
I Don't Know / BADBADNOTGOOD
