BEYOND ’BEST OF’ LISTS, MORE GREAT 2017 MUSIC,
The last two columns in this space were about my favourite records of 2017.
Having spent much of the last month reading everyone else’s lists, as well as clearing off my desk, here are a few things I missed that I’m now fully in love with.
MOSES SUMNEY “AROMANTICISM” (JAGJAGUWAR)
This has to be the most astounding debut album of 2017, surpassing even the likes of Sampha or Daniel Caesar — two men who had a banner year with novel approaches to gospel-tinged R&B. Like them, Moses Sumney has a wonderfully elastic voice that lends itself well to R&B seduction, but this 26-year-old L.A. singer is not bound to genre or expectations of any kind: he owes far more to Joni Mitchell, Radiohead or Jeff Buckley than he does Frank Ocean or Solange (he sings on Solange’s album “A Seat at the Table”). His voice is drop-dead gorgeous and downright hypnotizing, enticing the listener to follow him just about anywhere, and he employs it with the skill of a veteran jazz stylist. His instrumental arrangements steer away from conventional structure or harmonies. His layered backing vocals are swirling and complex, creating one of the most important textures of his music — in the case of “Self-Help Tape,” that’s all there is to the entire song, other than a delicate electric guitar accompaniment.
For all the seductive powers of Sumney’s music, he claims “Aromanticism” is a concept album decrying coupledom, about the societal scorn heaped on those who choose to remain single. (“If lovelessness is godlessness, will you cast me to the wayside?”) If true, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going on for those who fall hard and fast for this man’s music, with which you want to cosy up beside and spend the rest of the long winter in bed.
Stream: “Lonely World,” “Quarrel,” “Doomed”
BIRD CITY “WINNOWING” (LABEL FANTASTIC/COAX)
If you’re a Guelph music fan, you know Jenny Mitchell. But you haven’t really known Mitchell at all until you hear this album, a crowning achievement for the musician after almost two decades on the scene, featuring many songs that were given years to mature before committing to tape.
Mitchell has been a pillar of Guelph’s music scene since the early 2000s: as a musician, as a promoter (at the late Family Thrift Store), as a label owner (Label Fantastic), as a community radio DJ, a karaoke host and as the driver of “the Golden Bus,” a school bus that doubles as a mobile music venue, a spot for film screenings, and as a travel agency shepherding music fans to Sappyfest in Sackville, N.B. Though she’s recorded as Jenny Omnichord and a member of the then-teenage Barmitzvah Brothers, Winnowing is her debut as Bird City, her most musically traditional solo project.
Three years in the making and made with local hero Scott Merritt (whose 2015 album “Of ” was a quiet masterpiece), it features many of the city’s finest, including drummers Nathan Lawr and Steph Yates, lap steel guitarist Rich Burnett, bassist Scott Haynes, former Barmitzvah Brother Tristan O’Malley, and the Constantines’ Bry Webb, whose hushed harmonies blend perfectly with Mitchell’s understated vocals. Merritt keeps the arrangements sparse and lovely, the focus set on Mitchell’s storytelling and her delicate accompaniment on banjo and tenor guitar.
Much of Mitchell’s earlier work, dating back to the band she formed when she was 16, could have been dismissed as “quirky,” both in her choice of subject matter and instrumentation. But Bird City is decidedly mature and melancholy, the work of an arts activist, entrepreneur and mother of two who still lives in the town that nurtured her creativity and spirit, a work made with a musical veteran who also happens to be the father of her first drummer. It’s a record where the many threads of Mitchell’s life come full circle, a deeply personal record rooted in the local that manages to transcend all of that and resonate on a larger level.
“Winnowing” is a tiny triumph that opens up the second chapter of her rich and rewarding artistic pursuit.
Stream: “Hours,” “A Band End,” “Salvage Diver”
ARCA “ARCA” (XL)
Arca is the Venezuelan Londoner who is best known for having collaborated with Bjork on her last two albums, including last November’s “Utopia.” His harsh, often abrasive sound design, is, incongruously, simultaneously beautiful and ugly; his first two albums were innovative and more than merely interesting. But it’s here, on his selftitled third album, where his music boasts a new confidence and clarity. Perhaps it’s because he’s also allowing himself to be vulnerable, singing for the first time on one of his records. He does so in his native Spanish, and on a series of what he claims are first takes. For someone who’s only unveiling this particular talent now, Arca proves to be a remarkable singer, bringing an emotional depth to his music that elevates it far beyond just soundscape. No doubt Bjork brought that out of him; she’s built the entire latter half of her career on marrying spirited vocals to experimental textures. Arca, of course, is nowhere near the singer Bjork is (who is?), but while his boss’s 2017 album collapsed under its own weight, Arca’s own record revels in its agility and endless surprises.
Stream: “Piel,” “Saunter,” “Sin Rumbo”