I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia it was just a false alarm
----
I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams Amelia -- dreams and false alarms
I was a big Fleetwood Mac since I was a child, mostly due to the ubiquity of Rumours in our house. If there had been a favorite album of mine as a young boy, this was probably it. I obsessed over that copy of ours (which I still have, although it's virtually unplayable due to the scratches on the vinyl). Tusk (which I loved and still even more than Rumours) followed by the Live album after that. But I was hungry for more Fleetwood Mac and in 1981, Lindsey Buckingham released his first solo album Law and Order. My mother, on a work trip to the Australia, brought it back for me (I dutifully wrote down names of albums in her little black notebook to bring back whenever she went abroad).
Although I loved a couple of tracks, I was somewhat underwhelmed by Law and Order as a whole, puzzled more by the sound of it than the songs themselves. They had a slight '50s vibe, combined with what I thought was 'new wave' with sprinkled bits of the Beach Boys. But there was one song, which totally matched the magic of Fleetwood Mac, "Trouble," and in fact if Fleetwood Mac had released it at the time, it would have been a massive hit. It's no accident that Mick Fleetwood played on it, although it turns out that Buckingham merely looped a 4-second loop of Fleetwood playing through the whole song. It's the kind of 3-minute slice of sheer pop heaven that I've always loved to find in music. The transcendence of Abba, the Beatles, Big Star, 10cc, the Beach Boys, all wrapped in Top 40 sheen. So lovely, so beautiful. And like most of Fleetwood Mac, it still pulls me heart strings as much as it did in 1981.
My favorite albums of 2017, mostly without commentary. Lot of good music last year and far too much to keep up with -- so much so that this is by definition a selective list. But my listening preferences have generally gravitated towards a lot of electronic music, a bit of indie rock, and that's about it. Nothing too surprising or cutting edge. That being said, instead of ranking all the 25 entries in alphabetical order (which I usually do), I'll do most of them in alphabetical order, with the top 6 in terms of my favorites. So here's the top six:
TOP 6
6. Nine Inch Nails - Add Violence (EP)
5. kara-Lis Coverdale - Grafts (EP)
4. Jlin - Black Origami
3. The National - Sleep Well Beast
2. Sudan Archives - Sudan Archives (EP)
1. Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins
The remaining 17:
1. Arca - Arca
2. Arcade Fire - Everything Now
3. Beck - Colors
4. Bedouine - Bedouine
5. Eluvium - Shuffle Drones (EP)
6. Fever Ray - Plunge
7. Four Tet - New Energy
8. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lucifer Towers
9. Chris Mars - Note To Self
10. Lauren Halo - Dust
11. LCD Soundsystem - American Dream
12. METZ - Strange Peace
13. Mogwai - Every Country's Sun
14. Slowdive - Slowdive
15. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - The Kid
16. Tinariwen - Elwan
17. The xx - I See You
New Stuff by '60s Hippies That I Liked:
- Robert Plant - Carry Fire
- Roger Waters - Is This The Life We Really Want?
Best Dad Rock Reissues
- The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night
- John Hassell - Dream Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume Two
- Prince & The Revolution - Purple Rain Deluxe
- The Verve - Urban Hymns
Not Sure What Category To Put In
- The Replacements - For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986
- Neil Young - Hitchhiker
