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Uncut's 75 Best Albums of 2017

Uncut's 75 Best Albums of 2017

Original Source →

74.

April 28, 2017
Critic Score
78
38 reviews

The rougher, rawer songs here demonstrate her desire to create music that she can support with her own “musculature,” to use another word she’s used lately.

72.

June 16, 2017
Critic Score
82
19 reviews

The Nashville Sound sees Isbell swaggering confidently along the rockier edge of his range--as usual--he's at his best on the reflective ballads.

70.

May 5, 2017
Critic Score
84
35 reviews

As if suddenly unleashed creatively, No Shape finds Hadreas building on Too Bright in every direction at once ... The queer subtext of Hadreas' work is the source of much of its power.

69.

September 8, 2017
Critic Score
79
23 reviews
The Maels' spectrum of tried-and-true on Sparks Album No 25 is wide and rich enough to provide no end of delights.

65.

March 17, 2017
Critic Score
72
29 reviews

Their gem-like guitar pop songs start meandering a little. Altogether, though, In Mind feels like a collective exhale.

63.

June 16, 2017
Critic Score
77
24 reviews

This wired counterpart pays tribute to a New York tat now exists only in the songwriter's head, or his record collection.

62.

January 27, 2017
Critic Score
75
16 reviews
The beautifully rendered character portraits of Hey Mr Ferryman, shaped into gorgeous studies of sympathy by Bernard Butler’s production, are compelling in their starkness, their raw, unchecked humour, and their kindness toward people who, as Eitzel says, are looking for “something that will lead them to light and safety”.

60.

Bitchin Bajas - Bajas Fresh
November 17, 2017
Critic Score
78
5 reviews

59.

October 27, 2017
Critic Score
77
23 reviews

The uninitiated may hear only a wonky Julian Cope at 25rpm, but somewhere on Screen Memories is the point where performance art ends and genuine mania begins.

58.

September 22, 2017
Critic Score
75
8 reviews

It’s a tribute to their instincts that there’s nothing here that feels studied or overly developed. Instead, Plum fizzes and surprises with the kind of regularity that makes even its fine predecessor, 2015’s 1,000 Days, sound a little prosaic by comparison.

56.

House and Land - House and Land
June 16, 2017
Critic Score
79
2 reviews

54.

February 10, 2017
Critic Score
80
16 reviews

It’s the haunted croak of the band’s main singers, Ibrahim and Abdallah, that are the main draw: the sound of heartbroken gangleader, the world-weary soldier, bravado replaced by tenderness. It’s a sound that suits them perfectly.

53.

June 9, 2017
Critic Score
83
23 reviews

50.

January 13, 2017
Critic Score
81
47 reviews

On I See You, The xx have expanded their horizons without sacrificing any of the emotional intimacy that makes them one of the most compelling acts around.

49.

October 20, 2017
Critic Score
82
7 reviews
True, this may have benefited from the inclusion of, say, 2013's "Lucinda Byre," but the man's unerring ability to quietly lift the heart with melody as he foes in "Rumer" and "Josephine" is ultimately the more valuable sensation to hang on to.

46.

July 7, 2017
Critic Score
75
36 reviews

Some of the most exuberant and immediately engaging music they’ve ever recorded.

45.

March 17, 2017
Critic Score
79
37 reviews

Hot Thoughts finds Spoon at the peak of their considerable powers, their ninth album effortlessly unfolding and gradually revealing its mysteries as they cement their place in the firmament of undeniably great rock bands.

41.

June 16, 2017
Critic Score
81
41 reviews

Distinctive, involving, challenging, accessible, progressive and most other things that continue to be desirable in an indie-rock record, whatever the year.

40.

March 24, 2017
Critic Score
90
20 reviews
Overwhelming and beautiful.

39.

April 7, 2017
Critic Score
82
23 reviews
This intensely personal touch humanises his alien sound design, casting him as a kind of sensual mutant whose comradeship with Bjork makes perfect sense.

37.

June 16, 2017
Critic Score
73
30 reviews

36.

September 29, 2017
Critic Score
80
12 reviews

35.

February 24, 2017
Critic Score
73
24 reviews
The more melodic and less maniacal "Melting" and "Sleep Drifter" point toward newer ambitions and influences. Especially welcome is the turn toward Middle Eastern and North African sounds on "Anoxia" and the title track.

33.

August 25, 2017
Critic Score
75
22 reviews
For shredheads, there's urgent opener "The Static God," while the superb "Animated Violence" alternates between the album's twin moods of sustained guitar menace and reflective percussive ambience.

32.

March 3, 2017
Critic Score
74
25 reviews

The band continue to develop their sound and deepen their levels of engagement.

30.

September 8, 2017
Critic Score
83
18 reviews
Sundfor's first for Bella Union suffers from an occasional excess of affectations, her melismatic vocal style an acquired taste. Fortunately, she's best at her most intimate, this sixth collection's dominate quality.

29.

Michael Chapman - 50
January 20, 2017
Critic Score
77
10 reviews

While there are hacksaw marks here and there, 50 is a finely turned piece that surveys the looming thunderclouds of mortality and the biblical gloom of the times, and – quietly, unshowily – transcends both.

28.

October 6, 2017
Critic Score
78
17 reviews

Taken on its own, The Kid is a hugely satisfying example of Smith’s wholesome and harmonious vision, one that manages to enmesh the wonders of music, memory and nature via analogue synthesis without explicit reference to the healing properties of crystals.

27.

September 22, 2017
Critic Score
78
15 reviews

Hallelujah Anyhow may have been recorded swiftly, but the abandonment is still exquisitely detailed, as every listen to "Domino" reveal further nuance beneath the swagger.

26.

February 24, 2017
Critic Score
80
15 reviews
This is no cold history lesson or dry academic exercise. Giddens inhabits these songs as though taking the stage in short plays, dramatising her characters in a way that makes their predicaments sound visceral and urgent.
Original Source: http://www.uncut.co.uk/publication/uncut/january-2018
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