December 2017 in Review
December 23, 2017
December is a great time to be getting back into music, since there are so many “The Best Albums of 2017” lists, so I’ve been reading through some of these and listening along in Spotify. For example, I listened to at least part of every album on Stephen Thompson’s Best Albums of 2017, and I can tell I need to spend more time with some of these (especially Big Thief and Phoebe Bridgers).
Sylvan Esso
His pick for #1 album of 2017 was What Now, by Sylvan Esso. I happened to watch this band’s Tiny Desk concert on Youtube a few months ago, and I loved how much they seemed to be enjoying themselves. They are two people, Nick Sanborn (beats & electronics) and Amelia Meath (vocals & dancing around in moon boots). I haven’t heard much from What Now yet, but a few months ago they recorded an EP of a few of their songs with a full band. These are called the Echo Mountain Sessions, and I really like that version of their song, The Glow:
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
A friend introduced me to this recently, and I’ll definitely be listening to the album The Nashville Sound more. Right now, the songs that stick out to me are both songs about marriage:
- Molotov, about how he abandoned old promises to himself when making new ones to his wife
- If We Were Vampires, about how his marriage will ultimately end when he or his wife (who sings and plays the violin with him) dies
These are some heavy themes, but the band also jokes around and has a lot of fun together in their Tiny Desk concert.
Other stuff
- Bon Iver - I Can’t Make You Love Me” (cover of the Bonnie Raitt song)
- Youth Lagoon - 17 (found while stumbling around Spotify)
- Vetiver - Houses (I bought this CD for $1 at Half Price Books. This song is a cover; here’s the original)
- Mount Eerie - Real Death “When real death enters the room, all poetry is dumb.”
- This is the Kit - Bulletproof Kate Stables plays a “zither banjo” in this song. The 5th (drone) string is tunneled through the fretboard so the tuning knob is on the head along with the knobs for the other strings.