MUSIC TO OUR EARS
The Oklahoman’s favorite national albums of 2017
Welcome to the edge of 2017.
I spent exactly one month of my life streaming music on Spotify this year. You add up the time everyone who contributed to this article and you’d have a mathematical anomaly. The Oklahoman invited DJ’s, Woody Guthrie enthusiasts and a handful of music lovers to reflect on 2017’s best nationally recognized albums. Tune in next week for another list of our favorite Okie records.
ST. VINCENT — 'MASSEDUCTION' (LOMA VISTA)
More than any other current recording artist that comes to mind, Tulsa-born art-rocker St. Vincent turns a new album into an event.
I don’t mean the usual albumrelease hoopla like television performances and social media blasts, although those are certainly involved.
I’m talking about a full-blown artistic re-imagining that includes the development of a new storytelling persona (on 2011’s “Strange Mercy,” it was a bored housewife on pills; on 2014’s eponymous effort, it was a near-future cult leader; and on “MASSEDUCTION,” it’s a “dominatrix at the mental institution”), a new visual aesthetic (in keeping with the album’s sexy-meets-absurdist themes, the new one boasts bright color blocks, latex knee boots and slinky leopard-print catsuits) and in this case, the bonus of a tongue-incheek series of video clips scripted by “Portlandia’s” Carrie Brownstein.
The best part is that the singer, songwriter and guitarist who was born
Annie Clark always makes unique and virtuosic music that can hold up to that kind of elaborately self-generated hype — and “Masseduction” is her best and most accessible collection yet. Considering 2014’s “St. Vincent” won the Grammy for best alternative album, that’s saying quite a bit.
After showcasing her formidable skills as a guitarist on her self-titled effort, the Oklahoma-born and Texas-bred musician started her “MASSEDUCTION” rollout with the surprising first single “New York,” a wistful, f-bomb-spiked piano ballad spotlighting her satiny mezzo-soprano.
She followed it with a pair of cleverly worded synthesizer- and drum machine-driven satires with “Los Ageless” and “Pills.” And that’s more or less how the whole album goes, veering unexpectedly from the synthy avante garde poetry of “Hang on Me” and “Sugarboy” to the almost painfully stripped-down acoustic ballad “Happy Birthday, Johnny” to the gorgeously tragic plea-with-strings “Slow Disco."
While many recording artists this year paid musical homage to the 2016 deaths of David Bowie and Prince, few did it more memorably or modishly than St. Vincent. Her urgent glamrock tour title track “Fear the Future” calls to mind the stylings of the late Goblin King, while the album’s title track practically pulsates with a sexy funk sound that The Purple One surely would have appreciated.
Coproduced by St. Vincent and pop guru Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Pink, Lorde), “MASSEDUCTION” (yes, it’s pronounced “Mass Seduction”) is her most personal album yet, but it feels relatable rather than self-indulgent in its musings about loss, love and loneliness.
— Brandy McDonnell, The Oklahoman
PERFUME GENIUS — 'NO SHAPE' (MATADOR)
I don’t think music’s ever been more important to me than in 2017.
As much new music as I consumed, tracks from last year dominated my playlist, and I found myself returning to old favorites.
There was comfort in the familiar, and I wasn’t gravitating toward anything new. Perfume Genius threw a wrench in my logic with his fourth studio album, “No Shape.”
Seattle-based songwriter Mike Hadreas steers the project and mines what’s already great about rock ’n’ roll. He also subverts it and gives it a delicate touch. His albums can go from tough to tender, sometimes within the same few seconds. The album highlight — an alternately quiet and triumphant love song called “Slip Away” — was born out of bullying. In interviews, Hadreas has shared how he was teased for being gay well before he dated men.
He responds to his haters by slipping back into that discomfort, using studio instruments he’d never seen before and channeling themes of defiance. I remember hearing "No Shape" described as a protest record of love and devotion. That's spot on. There’s moments on here that feel designed for a stadium concert headlined by Bruce Springsteen paired with scenes so sensitive that I'm surprised they left the safety of a notebook.
“No Shape” manages to be passionate and contemplative at a time when thinking for yourself has never been more popular. Consider Perfume Genus as a soundtrack to discovering different shades of beauty. In the end, everything’s equally fleeting. Sashay away.
—NP
MOUNT EERIE — 'A CROW LOOKED AT ME' (P.W. ELVERUM & SUN)
Earlier this year I got a job in a new industry on the other side of the state where I temporarily moved in with my parents, who then had been driving to and from Arkansas, where a longestranged family member was dying of an advanced form of cancer.
During one of those early morning highway commutes, my face screwed up and I cried big, ugly tears. The source of my sadness was deeply familial, tucked away like a vast reserve of oil, suddenly and violently tapped by Phil Elverum. His rickety, unsparing eighth studio album as Mount Eerie, “A Crow Looked At Me,” wholly concerns the death of his wife, Genevieve Castree, who passed in 2016, just months after the birth of their only child.
Elverum’s music — mostly just guitar chords ambling under clearly spoken, barely sung words — is not particularly poetic, seeks no tension or resolution and refuses solace in the sentimental or aspirational. He is a man hollowed out. The arrival on his doorstep of a gift for their daughter — prearranged by his wife without his knowledge — renders him bulldozed by grief. Their house haunts him, and he can’t even consider the minutiae of the natural world — birds flying and thunderclaps — without interpreting it as some kind of signal from the other side.
Art isn’t really a good way to reconcile with the death of an intimate. Elverum acknowledges that right up front. But then again, death isn’t convenient or discrete. It stops us where we are, whether we’re driving to work, writing a song or planning a future with children and a home. Death has power over us. There's nothing wrong with pop music; it's just kidding you that you're going to live forever.
— Matt Carney, for The Oklahoman
As a matter of self-preservation, I spent a lot of 2017 consuming media that upset me as little as possible: bingewatching sitcoms and indulging in the Katy Perry-Taylor Swift beef and relishing in the thinly veiled snipes in their new albums. (Team KP for the feud, Team Snake for the music, if anyone’s keeping score.)
In the end, the magnetism of a sad-girl-with-a-guitar hooked me, like it always does. This was a good year for it. St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Land of Talk, Samantha Crain and Nicole Atkins all made records with such gorgeous bummer songs that they made being in the dumps feel sort of glamorous for a few minutes at a time.
My favorite record of 2017, Julien Baker’s “Turn Out the Lights,” doesn’t do that. The album stuns with reverb-heavy vocal, guitar and piano-forward production meant to highlight lyrical precision. Other accompaniment feels sparse, leaving the impression of Baker — the album’s sole songwriter and producer — alone, working through some stuff.
It’s a portrait of someone just on the other side of despair, of coming to terms. In lead single, “Appointments,” Baker sings, “I think if I ruin this / I know I can live with it,” and there’s a hopefulness in that enlightenment, the kind of anger you swallow because it makes you stronger. In the tense closer “Claws in Your Back,” she comes full circle with the sentiment: “Living with demons I’ve mistaken for saints / If you keep it between us, I think they’re the same.” The record ends with her screaming, “I wanted to stay,” and then, as if completing a thought, the piano lid closes. Feelings, processing, acceptance and catharsis in 11 songs flat.
“Turn Out the Lights” is good enough for me to welcome the upset I spent so much time avoiding.
— Becky Carman, for The Oklahoman