My Favorite Music of 2017

Well it is that time again, time for my year-end review of my favorite music! These roll around so fast, it really is a marker for me for how fast time goes!  This year, however, since I am very crunched for free time, it will be a very abbreviated entry, but trust me that I have thought about this long and hard.  I start thinking about my year-end music list sometime around March, and throughout the year roughly 6 or 7 albums at one point in time are poised to take my #1 spot, so I am always thinking about it, but the entries will be short and sweet this year. (If you are interested in seeing how the lists of previous years went, you can see them here: 2016  , 2015 , 2014  , 2013  , 2012  , 2011  , 2010 , 2009  ).  I would also like to say up front that Neil Young recently released an album which unfortunately I have not been able to listen to as of this writing.  Also if you are used to getting a year-end mix disc from me, that will still be coming, they are going out in a few days.  If you don’t get these discs but would like to get them, send me a message! I love sending them. So without further ado, the list:

But first! haha. Some honorable mentions that didn’t make the top ten.  Honorable mentions:

Fleet Foxes, Crack Up, Willis Earl Beal, Turn, The Shins, Heartworms, Tori Amos, Native Invader, St. Vincent,  Masseduction, Bryce Dessner, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, James McCallister, Plantarium, El Ten Eleven, Unusable Love, Iron and Wine, Beast Epic, and a major shout out to Sufjan Stevens’ live album of Carrie and Lowell songs, which as a live album was released this year, but the songs were from a few years ago, but it was by far one of my favorite things this year.

Now, the top ten:

10.  Grizzly Bear, “Painted Ruins”

Grizzly finally, finally live up to the blissed-out art rock potential the showed on their early releases.

9.  The National, “Sleep Well Beast”

I love the National, and I love this album, but I was expecting it to vie for the top spot, but instead I only love it and am not obsessed with it.  I want to see them evolve more.

8.  Run the Jewels, “Run the Jewels 3”

Ok so this albums was released in December 2016 but the PHYSICAL copies weren’t released until 2017, so I’m backdooring it.  Hey, if you aren’t listening to RTJ, you literally don’t know what’s going on.

7.  Father John Misty, “Pure Comedy”

A few of the songs on “Pure Comedy” are so good they’re practically transcendent; on the strength of those 4-6 songs, this album deserve all the accolades it is getting. Next time, though, we need less fluff.

6.  Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “Luciferian Towers”

End-times post-rock for the new world; instrumental dirge music that manages to be hyper political.  Godspeed is never less than earnestly terrifying, and they haven’t lose their edge.

5.  Mogwai, “Every Country’s Sun”

It’s a rare year for me when out of the two post rock bands on my list, anyone beats Godspeed, but Mogwai’s new album is a leap forward for them (which is saying something, since they have been around for like 20 years).  It is tender, and brutal, and irreverent.

4.  Real Estate, “In Mind”

This band’s entire aesthetic is about being understated and melodic.  Here they’ve cracked the code for how to do that and be dramatic, too.  Each song crackles.  Your nerves feel this album.

3. Prophets of Rage, “Prophets of Rage”

This album has taken a lot of flack, and yes, it is far from perfect.  But the bright spots–“Who Owns Who”, “Living on the 110”, “Unfuck the World”, “Strength in Numbers”, aming a few others–are so glorious (especially after repeat listens) that the downsides of this project should get a pass.  Could they have done better? Sure.  But who else is even doing anything like this? It truly is a soundtrack for the revolution.  Please give it some spins.

2.  The War on Drugs, “A Deeper Understanding”

In all my years making year-end music lists, I’ve never had a harder time deciding between two albums for the top spot.  This album is astonishing.  Rather than try to do it justice, I want to quote from a review of this album in Pitchfork which I found not only perfectly encapsulated my thoughts on the album, but was itself an amazing piece of writing:

“The band’s lyricist Adam Granduciel doesn’t create fully-drawn characters (other people are phantoms or wishes or memories in his lyrics) but there’s always a desire for connection, and he lets in just enough light to make it seem possible. The album’s first single was the epic 11-minute travelogue “Thinking of a Place,” with a glowing synth swell reminiscent of Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4 and a patient tempo that suggests a slow walk through the woods in the dark, the kind where you keep your hands out in front of you, feeling for branches. It turned out to be an appropriate introduction to this record because “thinking of a place”—somewhere where you can lose yourself, get out of your own head, somewhere else—is what the whole record is ultimately about. A different songwriter—someone like Neil Young, say—might sketch out what this place looks like, tell us about who we might find there. But Granduciel can’t, or doesn’t want to. And that lack of articulation, that inability to identify the source of pain and the path to redemption, becomes another of the record’s themes. But all that happens beneath the surface, almost subliminally; it’s the impossible sweep and grandeur of the music that tells the real story, of how a rush of sound can take us somewhere we can’t explain.”

I mean, yes.

1.  Arcade Fire, “Everything Now”

This album has taken a lot of flack in the press, mostly because (I think) it’s not what anyone expected.  It is markedly different than their previous albums, much shorter, and veers into pop sound.  But the fact is, it is just so good.  There was a point where the CD stayed in my car stereo for over three straight weeks.  The songs are catchy but artistically sound, the theme of the album well-thought out, important, and brilliantly executed.  Yes, there are two clunkers, but the rest of the songs are absolute solid gold.  Time’s going to bear out that “Everything Now” is, in fact, a rock classic.

 

The Belly That is Always There

It’s there when I wake up.  It’s there when I get in the car.  It’s there when I’m playing with Boy, or watching TV, or running on the treadmill. It’s there when I’m 190 pounds and when I’m 140 pounds.  It’s always there.

Over the years, I have certainly made no secret of my struggle with weight, sometimes with great success, and sometimes with very little success. I also come and go with being extremely into fitness, usually getting extremely fit and then backsliding for a year or so.  Although this time around, I really do have a feeling that my love of fitness is here to stay.  If I can stop getting injured.

Right now, I’m at a pretty good size.  Not quite at my goal weight, but awfully close, and my double chin, love handles, and man boobs are all-but totally gone.  All that being said, something still isn’t quite right. Something is never quite right. When I walk past a large glass window, I can’t help but scrutinize myself.  I run my hands down my body, and watch as they bow out a little bit at my midsection. The belly. The tummy. The stomach. Whatever you want to call it, the gut. I cannot stop thinking about it. And no matter how big or how small I have been, I haven’t stopped thinking about it for probably eight years.

Granted, when I’m at my bigger sizes, I don’t obsess about my belly, because I’m generally sorrowful for the whole damn thing that’s happening to me when I’m fat. But when I’m smaller, the problem comes more into focus. I have a little tiny belly, and no matter how much weight I lose, it just seems to be there. Even at my absolute smallest, if I took my shirt off, there would be a little belly there, and even though the rest of the world might not even know it is there, it would be one of the first things I would think about upon waking up.  I would run my hands down my chest, making sure there was no “rise”, that the belly sunk down immediately following my ribcage.

I must think about my belly a hundred times a day, if not more. Every day. Every time I pass a mirror, I scrutinize myself. First I make sure that my jowls look OK. How is my chin ? I like to see my full jaw line. Then I will look at my pecs. Do I have visible man boobs?  But ultimately it comes down to the gut. I look at it from profile, I look at it straight on, I see how successfully I can suck it in and have no gut. If I can successfully suck it in and have no gut, that means I’m always close to where I need to be. A lot of times, I find myself looking at the midsections of other men, in comparison. When I see a very slender man walk past me, a man whose profile is sleek and perfectly straight from head to toe,  I’ve become intensely envious. Likewise, when I see men with a gut larger than mine, I compare myself, and feel better about myself. Sometimes I notice that those men seem fine, they don’t seem to worry about it, and they might even seem attractive. Sometimes they wear shirts that don’t even hide their gut! That gives me hope. Men can walk through this world with little tiny guts, and the planet doesn’t stop spinning. They still are respected, admired, sometimes attractive men. In the back of my brain, however, I can’t help but think I’m not quite the perfect version of myself as long as I have this gut. Granted, I am a confident, capable, overall ludicrously happy man, but inside, there will be a constant nagging as long as that belly is there.

It turns out, there is a term for what’s happening to me. It’s called body dysmorphia syndrome, and I’m sorry if you’re one of those people who gets all riled up whenever people give names to what is ailing them, but having read about this a couple times, it perfectly describes what I’m going through. Now, BDS does come in many different levels of severity. I think we’ve all heard of the super skinny people, anorexics you were upon their deathbed, weighing 70 pounds, yet still think they are fat. That is a version of this. There are people who literally have phantom ideas of the way they look, can’t reconcile what they see in the mirror with reality. But a less severe version of it does exist. I do in fact have a tummy, I am not inventing that, but my brain blows up the significance and severity of it.  In a small fashion, I also don’t see it quite properly.  I see the real version of my belly, but my brain won’t let me put it into proper context.

I also try to rationalize my belly hatred by saying it is only because I am short that I hate it so much–that I think the gut looks ridiculous on a short man; big men can get away with carrying around fat because it (somehow) seems to denote masculinity in our culture.  I do not think this is entirely untrue.  If I was a full foot taller, having a belly might seem more proportional and aesthetically proper.  But on a 5’2″ frame, to me, it looks as glaring as a road flare.

So, why post a public blog about such an intensely personal issue?  Well, part of it is therapy for me.  Every method I have tried to calm my obsession, short of seeking professional help, has not stopped the nagging in my brain.  Writing about things ALWAYS helps, and often just journaling in a private journal is enough, but for me, putting things out to the world has always been therapeutic.  Something about letting the light into places most people usually don’t–you’d be surprised what a little light can do.  And also, I want to continue to highlight the fact that body issues are not exclusive to women in our culture.  Yes, women have it much harder than men when it comes to cultural norms making them feel shamed or pressured in a multitude of ways regarding their body, but please don’t assume that the men in your life are just always ok with how they look.  Be kind to everybody about their body and their appearance. But you don’t have to be kind to them about everything.  You can bitch at people for not using a turn signal or talking in a movie theater.

Just sayin’.