→ January 3, 2018
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Race for the Galaxy app.

I’ve mentioned previously that I don’t share the broader tabletop community’s love for Race for the Galaxy, a very popular deckbuilding game that ranks in the top 50 on BoardGameGeek, for two reasons – you need to know the deck rather well to play the game at even a competent level, and there’s one strategy (produce/consume x2) that is superior to others (military, trade). That strategy isn’t entirely dominant, but you are also somewhat restricted in your choice of strategy by the ‘home world’ card you’re dealt to start the game; if you get New Sparta, you almost have to use the military strategy, for example.

So it might surprise regular readers to hear me offer a strong recommendation for the Race for the Galaxy app ($6.99 on iTunes or Google Play) given what I’ve said before about the game itself. Those problems still hold true in the app, of course – this is a faithful implementation of the physical game. The app, however, is just about perfect in how it implements the game, with strong AI players (on the hard setting), and because it’s so fast to play, you can start to learn what’s in the deck a little faster to get yourself up to speed.

In Race for the Galaxy, players must build out their tableau of cards, representing worlds, ships, or people in their empire, using specific action types each turn – drawing cards, spending them to play cards, producing goods on cards that have that power, trading goods for more cards, or trading goods for victory points. Cards you play also carry victory point values of their own for the end of the game, and some award bonuses based on what else you have already played. You start with a home world card that, as I said above, kind of dictates your strategy for the game – some home worlds are ideal for trading, some for the military, some for the produce/consume strategy.

On a turn, each player chooses one of the available seven actions, and then the choices are all revealed simultaneously. Every player gets to take all of the actions chosen in that round, but you get an extra ability when taking the action you chose, such as building for one card less than the normal cost, or getting to keep two cards of the ones you draw instead of just one. Turns are fast, and players can usually do their turns at the same time. The game ends when one player has built (played) 12 cards to the table, or when the communal pool of victory point chips is exhausted.

The app is nearly perfect, and it helps reduce the time new players might spend learning what’s in the deck and what cards are useful (or even essential) for certain strategies – for example, if you are trying the military strategy, getting the cost-6 development card New Galactic Order, which gives you one victory point per unit of military strength on all your cards, is critical. The AI players move very quickly, and the actions chosen by each player are clearly visible twice, once at selection, then during the round in a bar on the left side of the screen that highlights the actions in use for the round. You can see the details on any card – the app uses the graphics from the physical game – with a double-tap, which is necessary to play it on a small screen, and you can see key details, like cards or VP tokens remaining, easily on the right side. You can also see how many cards your opponents have played and what goods they have available without expanding their tableaus, so you have ample warning if the game is approaching its end. There’s an undo button on the right-side menu for just about every action you can take, and the app requires your confirmation of certain actions, like discarding cards or trading multiple goods. The trading/consuming mechanism isn’t quite obvious – when that phase starts, cards with a trade or consume function will be highlighted, and you must click the card you wish to use, then drag the good(s) you wish to trade/consume off into the blank area next to your tableau.

I did mention above a few times that the produce/consume x2 strategy, where you alternate turns producing goods and selling them for victory points with bonuses, tends to be the optimal strategy, but the first time I beat two AI players in the app came via a military strategy. I started with New Sparta and blitzed my way through to twelve cards before either AI player could really get rolling with production and consumption:

You’re damn right I’m proud of that one. So it can be done, but it requires a bit of luck and leaves you no margin for error – which I think is more evidence that the hard AI players are up to snuff.

The app comes with the New Worlds mini-expansion, and the Rebel vs. Imperium and Gathering Storms are available as in-app purchases.

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→ January 2, 2018
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Top 17 albums of 2017.

Better late than never, I hope: here’s my somewhat delayed ranking of my top albums of 2017. I thought it was a good year on the album front, better than 2016, including a lot of albums that I’d say I liked halfway – records with maybe two to four really good songs on them but that couldn’t sustain it through the deeper tracks – and twenty-odd records good enough for me to consider here. You can also see my ranking of the top 100 songs of 2017 for reference.

Other albums I liked but didn’t rank: White Reaper, Wavves, Ride, Queens of the Stone Age, Japandroids.

Previous years’ album rankings: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.

17. Afghan Whigs – In Spades. I had missed the Whigs’ comeback album in 2014, but this year’s release delivered in the same way, a more mature, refined sound without losing that essential energy that made them indie darlings in the 1990s.

16. Phoenix – Ti Amo. I thought 2013’s Bankrupt! was a huge letdown after their Grammy-winning Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but this year’s album, the band’s tribute to Italian disco music, was a bit of a bounceback, not quite up to their magnum opus’s heights but a stronger record throughout with more memorable singles, including the title track and “J-Boy.”

15. Akercocke – Renaissance in Extremis. I’d long thought of this British extreme metal act as something of a joke, as they seemed more interested in causing controversy with their black-metal lyrics and album covers than in writing great music … but this album, released after a decade-long breakup, is a masterpiece of highly technical death metal. I could do with fewer blast beats, but that’s just the price of entry for the genre. Other metal albums I liked in 2017 that didn’t make the list included Pallbearer’s Heartless and Satyricon’s Deep Calleth Upon Deep.

14. WATERS – Something More!. Van Pierszalowski’s group returns with a record full of concise power-pop tunes, putting two songs on my top 100 along with several other great tracks like “Molly is a Babe” and “Modern Dilemma.”

13. Washed Out – Mister Mellow. Ernest Greene’s third record is my favorite of his so far, still a bit uneven, but that’s because there are almost too many ideas on the album. This also landed two songs on my top 100, and I’d also recommend “Floating By” and “Burn Out Blues.”

12. Hundred Waters – Communicating. Not quite up to the level of their debut The Moon Rang Like a Bell, Communicating works more as an expansion of the band’s unusual sound than as a collection of singles. “Particle,” “Wave to Anchor,” “Prison Guard,” “Blanket Me,” and the title track are all highlights, but I think this record is best enjoyed as a listen straight through.

11. Quicksand – Interiors. There were some great comeback albums this year from bands that hadn’t released records in over twenty years, including releases from Ride and Slowdive, but none surprised me more than Quicksand’s Interiors, which put two songs on my top 100 in “Fire This Time” and “Illuminant” and is a tremendous document of a band that hasn’t lost its signature sound yet has also matured, at least on record, during its 22-year absence.

10. Ten Fe – Hit the Light. This album is almost too anachronistic to find an audience in 2017, as the band’s indie-pop sound has a soft-rock vibe that would have been right at home in the 1970s or early 1980s. They had one song on my 2016 list, “Overflow,” that’s on this album, plus two more on this year’s list, “Twist Your Arm” and “In the Air,” with “Elodie” and “Turn” also highlights.

9. Death from Above – Outrage! Is Now. A bit like Royal Blood with a little more dance/rhythm sensibility … or maybe Sleigh Bells with some actual sense of melody … but man does it work, a huge step forward from their previous record. Pitchfork describes them as “dance-punk,” but I don’t hear that at all; they’re too polished to be punk, too hard-edged to be dance, but live somewhere in the grey areas between multiple genres. DfA had two songs on my top 100 this year, “Freeze Me” and “Never Swim Alone,” while “Nomad” and “Statues” are also strong.

8. Mastodon – Emperor of Sand. My favorite Mastodon album to date, with some more accessible tracks that don’t sacrifice any of the group’s trademark progressive-metal sound. “Show Yourself” is their most radio-friendly single ever, but “Steambreather,” “Sultan’s Curse,” and “Andromeda” are high points. Lest you think they’ve gone straight commercial, the album ends with an eight-minute epic track for the diehards.

7. Royal Blood – How Did We Get So Dark? “Lights Out” made my top ten, but unlike their debut record, this album has more good ideas than just the one that powers the lead single; “Hook, Line & Sinker” made my top 100, and I also keep going back to “Hole in Your Heart” and “Where Are You Now?” I did think the second single, “I Only Lie When I Love You,” was below the media on the album, but no one consults me on these decisions.

6. Daughter – Music from Before the Storm. I don’t think I’ve ever included a soundtrack on any of my year-end lists, but this record, recorded for a video game that was released in September, works extremely well on its own, a dense, atmospheric listen that molds Daughter’s dream-pop sound around a core idea to produce a compelling listen straight through. “Burn It Down” was my favorite track, but this record is much better enjoyed as a whole than in pieces.

5. INHEAVEN – INHEAVEN. The second-best debut album of the year for me, a record full of bombastic, old-fashioned heavy rock tracks that harken back to ’90s grunge, ’70s hard rock, and even earlier, led by “World on Fire” and “Bitter Town.”

4. New Pornographers – Whiteout Conditions. Do we just take A.C. Newman & Co. for granted at this point? This album sank with nary a trace, but it carried forward the tremendous pop sensibility of its predecessor, 2014’s Brill Bruisers, and I thought was a little better off for the absence of Dan Bejar, whose sound never quite melded with the rest of the group’s. The title track, “High Ticket Attractions,” and “Darling Shade” all made my top 100.

3. Sløtface – Try Not to Freak Out. These Norwegian punk-popsters first appeared on my radar with their 2016 EP Empire Records, and from there released a steady stream of great singles with witty, clever lyrics beyond their years. “Backyard,” “Pitted,” and “Nancy Drew” made my top 100, with “Magazine” a near miss, and there really aren’t any duds on the record at all.

2. Portugal. the Man – Woodstock. “Feel It Still” was my #1 song of the year, with two more songs on my top 100 and three more that I strongly considered (“Live in the Moment,” “Rich Friends,” “Tidal Wave”). I liked the sheer ambition of 2011’s In the Mountain In the Cloud, but it wasn’t until this record that Portugal. the Man converted their big ideas into a set of accessible pop gems that could give them mainstream success.

1. Beck – Colors. Featuring my #1 song of 2015, “Dreams,” plus three songs from this year’s list, and really just one song I would say I don’t like (“Wow” doesn’t really fit this record’s exuberance), this was an easy call for my top album of 2017. Beck is such a musical genius that he can go from 2014’s maudlin Morning Phase to this record’s enormously textured, uptempo, worldly sound and still maintain his essential … um, Beck-ness. Even when he produces something I don’t care for, I can still appreciate the brilliance behind it. Colors, however, is a masterpiece, probably my favorite album of his thirteen to date, the best representation of his complex, imaginative sound so far.

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→ January 1, 2018
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The Obelisk Gate.

N.K. Jemisin won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel for her 2015 book The Fifth Season, the first novel in the Broken Earth trilogy, set well into the future, on an Earth that is plagued by massive tectonic shifts that result in lengthy Seasons where nearly all life on the surface is extinguished and humans must huddle underground to wait the Season out. (You might call this “cli-fi,” although it’s not clear that this kind of climate change is caused by humans … at least, not through two books.) The sequel, The Obelisk Gate, won the Hugo Award again this year, but while it follows the first in chronology and setting, it has a thoroughly different tenor than the first book did.

Where The Fifth Season followed three distinct storylines set apart in time, The Obelisk Gate focuses on just two simultaneous threads: Essen’s life in the underground commune (“comm”) Tarima, which finds itself under threat from within and without; and her daughter Nassun’s journey with Essun’s husband south toward a comm where the father, Jija, hopes his daughter will be “cured” of her gift of orogeny – a sort of magical, innate ability to alter the very molecules of one’s environment, including starting tectonic shifts and communicating with the orbiting obelisks of unknown origin. A massive Season is imminent, likely caused by Essun’s former lover Alabaster, who created the Rift that provoked this season but is now himself turning to stone as a result. Essun wants to find her daughter, but as an orogene in a world where such people are often killed (even by their Guardians) when a Season approaches, she’s also driven toward self-preservation. Nassun, meanwhile, is barely scratching the surface of her own powers, but when she and Jija arrive at the southern comm, she meets the former Guardian Schaffa, who recognizes her limitless potential and begins to train her even as Jija believes she’s going to be made ‘normal.’

The twin but parallel plot strands make The Obelisk Gate a much more straightforward read than its predecessor, in which time seemed deliberately obscured from the reader and the relationship between the three subplots far from clear. That conceit ended up working in the book’s favor, increasing the tension (and perhaps baiting the reader’s impatience), so that The Obelisk Gate feels like a book in the same universe by a different author – not better or worse, just different, more conventional, and thus more dependent on the nature of the two primary characters.

So where Jemisin has created a grim, realistic, almost tangible setting for these books that elevated The Fifth Season, here in the middle book of the series, her weaker characterization becomes more of a problem. Essun and Nassun are both good people, with credible emotional reactions to setbacks and obstacles, but neither is particularly interesting or compelling; you root for these characters because they represent hope, for themselves and humanity, not out of any direct empathy for or interest in either of them. Some of the secondary characters have that interest, such as the complex motivations that drive Schaffa or the bizarre nature of the stone-eaters Alabaster and Hoa, but the two main women lack the texture or depth to carry the book.

Instead, the story itself has to do all of the lifting, and it’s mostly up to the task, although there’s still some Middle Book Syndrome as Jemisin gets further into her world-building and explains more of what’s happening in the book’s present. The nature of the Obelisks is at least partly explained, and she sets up what I assume will be the narrative of the third book, The Stone Sky, how Essun and Nassun will interact with the Obelisks to save the world (or at least parts of it). It’s compelling enough to keep me reading, but I thought this was a step down in ambition and in characterization from the first book.

Next up: I’ve finally begun MacKinlay Cantor’s Andersonville, winner of the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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→ December 31, 2017
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Hi, Anxiety.

Kat Kinsman is a food writer who used to run CNN’s Eatocracy site and now is the senior food and drinks editor at Extra Crispy, a site (also owned by Time, Inc.) dedicated solely to breakfast. She’s also lived with anxiety, panic, and depression for just about her entire life, and since 2014 has been very public about these conditions and the steps she has to take to manage them. Her first book, Hi, Anxiety: Life with a Bad Case of Nerves, is a memoir of a disordered life that is, by turns, funny, sad, aggravating, and most of all, hopeful, as Kinsman has had to overcome mental health challenges beyond what I would call the ‘average’ sufferer has to face – and has done so enough to write this very witty, big-hearted book about it all.

Kinsman’s book is not a how-to, or a self-help book, but is more of a confessional, as she details events or periods of her life, often exposing herself in ways that I imagine were painful for someone with an anxious mind, that were ultimately dictated by her mental health issues. Her mother also had serious depression and anxiety, as well as mini-strokes that appear to have presaged dementia and Parkinson’s, and living with her mom taught Kinsman how to be anxious – how to worry about everything, to blame herself for things beyond her control, and to expect the worst even in harmless situations. Because anxiety tends to feed itself, growing up anxious put Kinsman into more situations that exacerbated the problem, and the medications pushed on her while she was young did not particularly help her and often made things worse.

I’ve written a few times about my own anxiety, including growing up anxious, so the emotional ground Kinsman covers in Hi, Anxiety is familiar to me … but her case is or was certainly more severe than mine. I’ve had lifelong stomach issues, largely related to anxiety, but Kinsman has had to put up with stronger physical manifestations of her anxiety and panic than I ever have, and she’s also had to work harder to maintain control of her environment than I have. She expands on these points in amusing interludes delineating her “irrational fears,” like driving, being driven, or getting her hair cut (in which she also discusses the anxiety around tipping, which I fully appreciate), mundane events that, to most people, pose no problem at all. If you’re anxious, even the simplest tasks become fraught with peril – getting the mail or answering the phone, because you’re afraid it will bring some terrible news or a huge bill; driving to the store, because you might hit someone, or get hit, or just do the wrong thing and make all the other drivers laugh at or scorn your incompetence.

That’s where Hi, Anxiety succeeds most – Kinsman humanizes an anxious life by giving so much detail on episodes from childhood through her marriage where anxiety (and/or depression) prevented her from doing ordinary things, or altered outcomes when she did do something. Many of these events weren’t Kinsman’s fault – she had a few bad boyfriends, one of whom really did a number on her in a way that I won’t spoil because it’s such a “holy shit” moment in the book – but when you’re anxious, you kind of believe the universe is operating against you, or at least that your account with the universe is permanently in arrears, so of course it was your fault, or you had it coming, and why didn’t you prepare better for it?

Kinsman also gets into the techniques that have helped her live with her condition – and those that haven’t, like medications – but is careful not to prescribe for the reader, making it clear in the concluding essay that she doesn’t have the answer and that every anxious person will have to find his/her own solution. For her, it’s talk therapy, some supplements, occasional hypnosis, and avoiding certain known triggers. For me, with a milder case, it’s medication, occasional therapy, some mindfulness techniques, and exercise. Each person’s case is different; there is no single etiology of anxiety or panic disorder and thus no single trick to help you. Hi, Anxiety is the book to help someone understand more about what it’s like to live with a serious mental illness, whether the reader is suffering from it or knows someone who is, and perhaps the spur to go seek treatment. It’s such a quick, compulsive read – I crushed it inside of 24 hours – that you could really recommend it to anyone, even someone with no concept of mental illness, to help them understand something of what it’s like to live with a brain that spends much of its time working against you.

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→ December 30, 2017
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Stick to baseball, 12/30/17.

Since my last links post, I’ve written three Insider pieces, on Colorado signing Wade Davis, Cleveland signing Yonder Alonso, and San Francisco trading for Evan Longoria.

On the board game front, I reviewed Photosynthesis for Paste, and ranked my top ten board games of 2017 for them too. Over at Vulture I did another Best of 2017 list, looking at the best light game, heavy game, board game app, expansion, and more.

The Wall Street Journal asked me to contribute to their annual “Who Read What” series, where 50 avid readers provide one or two books that really stood out for them in the preceding year. I was specifically asked to name one work of fiction and one of non-fiction, and chose The Erstwhile and Betaball.

As always, feel free to sign up for my email newsletter, which costs you nothing and won’t clog your inbox; I’ve only sent three total in the last two months, so if anything, I should probably be sending more. And, of course, thanks to everyone who bought Smart Baseball for themselves or as a Christmas gift.

And now, the links…

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→ December 30, 2017
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Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

I’d only read one Salman Rushdie novel prior to this month, tackling Midnight’s Children back in 2010; I found it a somewhat difficult read, but brimming with imagination, big themes, and incredible prose and wordplay. What I didn’t know until very recently was that he wrote a children’s novel called Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which appeared on the Guardian‘s list of the 100 greatest novels ever written. It’s quite wonderful, featuring more of the wordplay and creativity that marked Midnight’s Children, reminding me in many ways of The Phantom Tollbooth, one of the best children’s novels I’ve ever read (twice, in fact, once on my own and again to my daughter), and the works of Roald Dahl.

Haroun Khalifa is the young son of Rashid, a storyteller who suddenly loses his gift of narration when his wife leaves him, leaving the two of them without any means of support and Rashid without his identity. When Rashid fails to deliver at a speaking engagement, he and Haroun are whisked off to the Valley of K for his next assignment, speaking for the politician Snooty Buttoo – there are a lot of Butts in this book – only for Haroun to discover that his father has lost his ability to weave stories because Iff the Water Genie is trying to sever Rashid’s imagination. This leads Haroun to learn about the Sea of Stories, the plot by the evil Khattam-Shud to poison it and block its source, and the impending war between the Kingdoms of Chup and Gup that will determine the fate of the Sea.

Rushdie makes Haroun the hero of his own story in the tradition of children in literature who have to do something to save one or both of their parents. Haroun faces difficult choices and shows courage in the face of great odds, standing up to the various otherworldly creatures trying to steal his father’s gift or kill Haroun’s new friends from Gup or sew the lips of the Princess Batcheat shut. (He gets no help from the vacuous Prince Bolo, the antithesis of the typical prince-hero character, generally saying and doing the wrong thing or just showing no awareness of what’s happening around him.)

The text itself is replete with puns, references to Hindustani words or Indian historical figures, and even pop culture references. Iff and the Butts work for the Walrus, who employs technicians named the Eggheads, a reference I trust I don’t have to explain. Butt the Hoopoe certainly sounds like a nod to the British glam-rockers Mott the Hoople. Many names allude to characters in the stories of One Thousand and One Nights, including Haroun al-Rashid, a real-life Caliph of Baghdad who appears in many of those tales. General Kitab’s name means “book” in Arabic and Hindustani, and his army comprises numerous Pages. And the fish with multiple mouths, or maws, are referred to as Plentimaws … and there are Plentimaw fish in the Sea. (The book also has a brief appendix where Rushdie explains many of the character and place names.)

It’s also hard to avoid the likelihood that Rushdie wrote this as a reaction to the fatwa issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran after the publication of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses and the general controversy over a portion of the book that some Muslims deemed blasphemous. In the wake of its release, at least ten countries banned the book in some form, including his native India, while many U.S. bookstores declined to sell it. There were also multiple bombings of bookstores and newspapers in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom related to the book’s sale, while the Archbishop of Canterbury called for an expansion of England’s Blasphemy Act to cover offenses against Islam. (That law was repealed entirely in 2008.) Haroun may be just a children’s novel, but it’s probably also a parable about censorship and the threat to the marketplace of ideas, showing how a society might suffer in a world without stories.

Haroun is better for slightly older kids, because the vocabulary would likely be too demanding for children below fifth grade or so, although the story itself would mostly be appropriate – Haroun’s mother runs off with another man near the beginning, but eventually returns without any real comment – and easy for any child to follow. I could see younger kids being disturbed by the threats to sew the Princess’ mouth shut, although Rushdie softens that possibility by having other characters complain about how awful her singing voice is. It’s a book for younger readers, though, so Haroun saves the day, no mouths are sewn shut, and Rashid eventually regains his talent for weaving stories. The beauty of this book is the journey, the literal one Haroun takes to this other world – I haven’t even mentioned the earth’s second moon, Kahani, which you might not have noticed because it moves by a Process Too Complicated to Explain – and the one on which Rushdie takes the reader, with puns and gags flying so fast that you might miss them on your first read. It’s a delight and a testament to Rushdie’s boundless imagination.

Next up: I’m many books behind in my reviews, but right now I’m reading Kat Kinsman’s memoir Hi, Anxiety: Life with a Bad Case of Nerves.

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→ December 29, 2017
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Lotus.

The new board game app for Lotus (itunes) • android), a 2016 title from designers Mandy & Jordan Goddard, comes from the same studio that brought us the wonderful Lanterns app last year, and the game has a very similar look and feel from the graphics to the animations to the sound. The game itself is quite simple and should lend itself well to the app format, but there are a couple of problems with the implementation that keep me from recommending it yet.

On each turn, a player has two actions, which can include placing one or two petals from his/her hand to a single flower, trading in cards for others from the player’s own deck, or adding a ‘guardian’ with his/her symbol to a flower already underway. Each petal card has a specific color and shows one or two icons of your own symbol; when a flower is finished, there’s a bonus for the player who had the most symbols on the flower, whether from petal cards or guardians. When your turn ends, you can refill your hand from your deck or take ‘wild’ flower cards from the table, which have a specific color but no player symbols, and thus are useful for finishing a flower but not for gaining control of it.

When a flower is finished, there are two bonuses handed out. The player who finishes a flower gets one point per petal on the flower, from three (purple) to seven (pink). The player who had the most tokens on the flower, whether from petals or from guardians, gets a second bonus, which can be five points regardless of flower type, or can give the player one of three special abilities for the remainder of the game: a hand size limit of 5 instead of 4, the ability to play three or more petals to one flower in a single action, or adding a guardian with double the influence. The first two are extremely valuable if you get them early, but I’ve had minimal success with the bigger guardian and prefer to skip it for the five points.

Lotus app screenshot

Lotus largely devolves into a game of chicken, where you’re trying to force other players to play petals so that you can finish off one or more flowers on your turn, especially the higher-valued pink or white flowers. There’s always the five-point bonus you get when you have the most petals/guardians on a flower someone else finishes, but even that is subject to change if an opponent plays wisely. If you finish the most flowers, you’ll probably win, even if you weren’t working too hard on maintaining control via your symbols – you’ll get a few along the way regardless. So often players, even the AI players, will trade cards to burn off an action in the hopes that someone else will place cards that make it easier to finish a flower next time. It’s a bit of a drag, and also boosts the luck factor because you need to get the right cards at the optimal time.

The app is gorgeous and runs smoothly, but I have two real issues with it, one of which is that the AI players are not very good, even on the ‘hard’ setting. I had never played this game before I downloaded the app, but can easily beat the hard AI when playing one or two opponents, and usually win or come in second with three. The AI players just don’t utilize the added abilities well enough to compete with a decent human player. The other issue is the lack of an undo function. You have two actions on your turn, and thus should be able to undo the first one before you’ve taken your second one. This is a simple enough function for the programmers to include and I think it’s a necessary one for a board game app that isn’t real-time or involves revealing information with each action. So while the game itself is pretty and pleasant to play, I think both of this issues need to be addressed before I can recommend it.

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→ December 24, 2017
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The Shape of Water.

The Shape of Water is hands-down the best love story between a woman and a fish-man that you will ever see – and, I would hope, the only one. But despite a trailer that makes it look like a Cold War thriller and a romance at the heart of the plot, Guillermo del Toro’s masterful new film is also a profound meditation on the essential loneliness of mankind.

Eliza Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute but hearing cleaning lady working at a secret military facility and laboratory in Baltimore in the late 1950s, along with Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who rarely stops talking but also serves as an interpreter for Eliza’s sign language. One day, the women learn that the lab is now home to “the Asset,” a humanoid sea creature, capable of breathing both in and out of the water, kept in chains and tortured by the security agent Strickland (Michael Shannon). Eliza, fascinated by the creature, begins to eat her lunch in the lab where it’s held, and forges a relationship with the Asset through gestures and shared hard-boiled eggs. Strickland has convinced his military superiors to vivisect the Asset, then kill it, while the scientist Hofstatter (Michael Stuhlbarg) sees that it is intelligent and capable of communication, arguing that it should be kept alive and studied humanely. Eliza, already hoping to rescue the Asset from Strickland’s cruel treatment, learns of the plan and hatches an escape plan with the help of her painter neighbor (Richard Jenkins).

The trailer for The Shape of Water emphasizes the chase for the Asset once Eliza has sprung it from captivity, but that takes up, at most, the last 15 minutes of the film; about 3/4 of its running time is dedicated to the budding relationship between her and the fish, first friendship and then romance. The film requires you to suspend your disbelief in many ways, but the emotional connection between the two characters is convincing: Eliza is entirely alone in the world, abandoned as a baby and raised in an orphanage, with only her neighbor and Zelda as any kind of friends at all; the Asset may be the only creature of his type, and is certainly alone now that he’s been stolen from his home in South America.

But it’s not merely those two who are alone in this film, even if they exist at the script’s emotional core. Her painter neighbor is a closeted gay man in an era when coming out was not a viable option; he’s lost his job due to his drinking, lives alone with several cats, and says to Eliza at one point that he’d starve if she didn’t show up to encourage him to eat. (He also knows sign language.) Zelda is married to a useless husband, complaining daily to Eliza how he doesn’t appreciate or help her.

And then there’s Strickland, the most problematic character in the movie. Shannon’s performance is excellent, as you’d expect, but Strickland is as one-dimensional a villain as you’ll find. He sees the Asset as an abomination, not an intelligent creature, citing Scripture as it suits his beliefs. He’s racist, sexist, and elitist. He develops a spontaneous sexual obsession with Eliza (because she’s mute) and harasses her, while also treating his wife as a prop and his children as if they were barely there. And there’s no attempt to explain his selfish, misanthropic behavior – he is just what he is. This is not a good man making a difficult decision for God and country, or a complex individual faced with a black swan dilemma; he’s a horrible person in every way, which makes him as dull as the serial killer in a horror movie.

The remainder of the film, however, is superb, not least in how del Toro asks you to suspend that disbelief and then runs with the license you’ve given him. There is much that would be ridiculous if you thought about it, but the fabulist script builds the world so quickly and convincingly that very little of what comes after seems out of place. (I had one quibble: why was Hofstatter the only scientist around the Asset? You’d think there’d be a mob of biologists, anthropologists, and so on trying to study it.) The score mixes sounds you might find in French romance films with some more art-house tracks, and even has a fantasy musical number near the end that, again, asks you to just roll with it.

Hawkins should be nominated for all of the awards for Best Actress, and while the competition is stiff this year (Frances McDormand for Three Billboards is also worthy, and you know Meryl Streep will get her annual nod), she might be my pick to win right now. Her role requires her to express everything through expression and gesture, and the character herself grows from this mousy, childlike woman counting out her life in hard-boiled eggs (and other morning routines) to a woman capable of plotting a heist and risking her life for her lover. She’s utterly convincing at both stages of her character’s development. It’s a tour de force performance, with the higher level of difficulty that voters often tend to favor.

Jenkins and Spencer have both earned Golden Globe nominations for their Supporting roles, and Shannon would also be worthy of a nod, although his character’s stock nature might hurt him. This also seems like a lock to earn nods for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Score, at the very least, and if the fish counts, for Costume Design too. I still have three (or more) major Best Picture contenders left to see, but of the 25 films I’ve seen so far this year, The Shape of Water would only be behind The Florida Project on my own rankins.

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→ December 22, 2017
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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges has become something of a cult film since its 2008 release, earning critical acclaim and a few awards but faring modestly at the box office at the time, instead growing in popularity and stature in the intervening nine years. He’s now back in the critical spotlight for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, another dark comedy, but where In Bruges felt like a farce, or even a slapstick sendup of crime films, Three Billboards weaves its comedy into a far more serious tapestry of grief, violence, and trauma, succeeding in fits and starts but deriving too much of its humor from easy targets.

Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) decides to rent three disused billboards on a seldom-used road near her house to draw attention to the unsolved rape and murder of her daughter, Angela, seven months previously. The billboards name Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) and ask him why there have been no arrests, and by naming the chief Mildred sets off the volatile, dimwitted police officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), who still lives with his crone mother and decides to avenge his boss – who is something of a father figure to him – first by petty methods and eventually by violent ones. (Dixon has also previously been in trouble for abusing a black suspect in custody, although he’s still on the force.) Willoughby, meanwhile, is dying of pancreatic cancer, which makes him a sympathetic figure in the town and further turns many of them against Mildred for putting up the billboards.

The plot twists substantially from there, although there isn’t much more to say without spoiling the rest of the film; it is fair, however, to say that the rape and murder of Angela Hayes becomes less relevant to the story as it progresses, so that when it returns to the surface near the conclusion of the film, it appears as much for the maturation of one character as it does for the plot itself. The script meanders as if written by Richard Linklater’s evil counterpart from a mirror universe, highlighting the various eccentric and generally miserable residents of Ebbing, including Mildred’s abusive ex-husband (John Hawkes), his 19-year-old dingbat girlfriend Penelope (Samara Weaving), their depressed and grieving son Robbie (Lucas Hedges), and James (Peter Dinklage), a little person with an evident crush on Mildred. They’re just about all a mess in one way or another, understandably so in many cases, but the billboards set off an expanding tree of ramifications that end up altering the lives of many of the people in the town in largely unexpected ways.

The humor in Three Billboards is pretty spot-on, at least in terms of generating laughs; it’s more overtly funny than In Bruges, certainly, with many laugh-out-loud lines that are perfectly delivered. Dinklage gets the best of them all, sticking a perfect landing on a three-word zinger at Penelope’s expense. But that’s sort of the problem: Nearly all of the gags, spoken or sight, are aimed at the two idiots, Dixon and Penelope, or the little person, James. The actors are all game, and Rockwell has already earned plaudits for his performance as Dixon, taking the character through the movie’s most complete story arc from screw-up to a unique method of redemption, but after a while the jokes about stupid people start to feel very cheap.

The serious side of the script appears at first blush to be a crime story – this girl was murdered, her mother wants justice, and she’ll stop at nothing to get it – but by the second hour it has become a slice-of-life story covering myriad characters, with a noticeable downshift in pace so the individual personae get more time to develop. It reminded me of an interview I saw with Tom Petty for his Into the Great Wide Open album where he voiced his admiration for the lyrics of Bob Dylan, noting how Dylan would often drop the listener into the middle of a story rather than start a song’s lyrics with the setup or introduction. (I wish I knew where I saw this, or even how accurate my memory of it is, but I have always associated it with the video for “Learning to Fly.”) McDonagh’s script does this extremely well: The crime is past, and we hear about it only after the billboards are up. We get very little introduction to any character up front, although we learn relevant details as we go along. And we don’t get much of a resolution at the end, either. The movie is set off by extraordinary events, and driven by them, but the people remain ordinary and the effects almost mundane.

Rockwell is outstanding in his role, as is McDormand in hers, and they have the two most interesting and well-rounded characters in the film. Dinklage has virtually nothing to do, but at least gives his character a little humanity while he’s generally the butt of various jokes. The revelation for me was Harrelson, an actor whose work has never done much for me in the past, but here he takes a character the viewer is predisposed to dislike – after all, Mildred has all but told us he’s a lazy cop uninterested in finding her daughter’s murderer – and makes him complete and sympathetic for reasons beyond his terminal illness. There’s also a character named “Red Welby,” played by Caleb Landry Jones, interesting for two reasons: It can’t be a coincidence that McDonagh named two characters Willoughby and Welby, and Jones may very well end up in three films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture between this one, The Florida Project, and Get Out.

Three Billboards does turn violent a few times, as is McDonagh’s wont, but not to the extent of In Bruges, nor does it take that film’s tack of using violence for humor. There’s much in this film that is funny, but there’s a clear separation in the script between the laughs and the serious material, so the latter can pose some interesting questions to its audience – most prominently the role of closure in our lives when we are faced with trauma. Mildred doesn’t get it, and she can’t move on with her life. Three Billboards gives that closure to some characters but not others, and then lets us watch the results on everyone in its purview.

EDIT: One last point I forgot to mention – Ebbing, Missouri, is a fictional town. I doubt McDonagh picked that name at random either, and wondered if he was using the word “ebbing,” referring to the movement of the tide back out to sea, as a metaphor for the lives of some of the older characters in the film, or just noting that there is an ebb and flow in every life.

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→ December 19, 2017
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Top 100 songs of 2017.

This is now my fifth annual ranking of the top 100 songs of the year, the sixth year I’ve done such a ranking at all, and they don’t get any easier, really, given the sheer volume of new music released each year – I don’t know if it’s actually more than ever, or if it’s just easier to find it as artists can release singles and EPs directly, even going years before putting out a full-length album. The year in music was a good one, I think, certainly the best year for full albums in ages (despite some huge letdowns from artists who’ve made my rankings before), with far more songs I liked than I could cram on to this list. My list of my favorite albums of 2017 went up a little later.

Previous lists: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.

If you can’t see the widget below, you can access the Spotify playlist directly.

100. Wavves – Daisy. I’m constantly amazed by Wavves’ prolific output; this year brought You’re Welcome, the band’s sixth album, plus two non-album singles. This track opened the album, released in May.

99. Spoon – Hot Thoughts. The title track from Spoon’s ninth album was a rare highlight for me on an album that felt a little mailed-in after the stronger They Want My Soul from 2014.

98. Lucius – The Punisher. This quintet became a quartet late in 2016, then released this non-album single back in January, although it would have fit in just fine on their latest album, last year’s Good Grief, which placed “Almost Makes Me Wish for Rain” at #10 on last year’s list.

97. Japanese Breakfast – Machinist. This is the nom de chanson of Michelle Zauner of Little Big League, and the song comes from her second album, which is kind of dark and moody, like industrial wedded to early gothic new wave.

96. The New Pornographers – Darling Shade. I loved TNP’s album Whiteout Conditions, which came out in April, but it seemed to miss its audience, charting lower than their last two albums did both in the U.S. and in Canada.

95. Liam Gallagher – Wall of Glass. The brothers Gallagher both released records this year, and both albums were mostly sad, derivative reminders of what used to be. This was my favorite song from either of the records.

94. The Districts – If Before I Wake. The line “I’m just a narcissist” feels like it speaks so much to our current times, doesn’t it?

93. Sløtface – Nancy Drew. The first of three songs on this list from the Norwegian punk-pop band; I love their hooks but I think I enjoy their witty lyrics even more.

92. Sleater-Kinney – Here We Come. This felt more like a strong album track from the trio than a lead single for a new record, but we’ll take it.

91. Van William – The Country. The lead singer of WATERS (who appear twice further up this list) is working on his solo album, with this the first of two singles to appear thus far from it. Full disclosure: I’ve met Van once and talked coffee & baseball with him, as he’s a diehard Dodgers fan. I believe he is also the second tallest person ever to ride in my car.

90. The Night Game – The Outfield. It’s catchy, and it gets extra points for the baseball reference, but in particular I locked in on how the chorus sounds so much like something the band The Outfield would have sang.

89. Quicksand – Illuminant. Quicksand’s record Interiors was probably the biggest surprise for me in music this year – that it existed at all, and that it was their best album ever. (They hadn’t released an album in 22 years.) They were one of the defining bands of the post-hardcore movement, but rather than just returning to their original sound, they’ve mellowed slightly and added more melodic elements.

88. Sundara Karma – She Said. The Guardian once said this Reading act aspired to the sound of Bruce Springsteen, but I think Oscar “Lulu” Pollock and company are much more of a pure pop act, especially on joyous tracks like this one.

87. Washed Out – Hard to Say Goodbye. I would not say I was a fan of Washed Out’s previous album, Paracosm, but Mister Mellow, while inconsistent, had a slew of tracks I really liked; it seems like Mr. Greene focused more on songcraft this time around instead of creating soundscapes.

86. Confidence Man – Boyfriend (Repeat). I’ll guess now that this will be the first song that folks listening to the playlist in order decide to skip; for me, it’s annoyingly catchy, but if you think it’s catchily annoying I understand that too.

85. Kid Astray – Roads. This Norwegian band, who placed “The Diver” (#39 in 2015) and “The Mess” (#8 in 2013) on previous year-end lists, put out two singles this year, with this my favorite of the pair, ahead of what I presume will be a new album in 2018.

84. Earl St. Clair – Ain’t Got It Like That. I don’t know what to call this song – it’s soulful, but it’s not soul; it’s jazzy, but it’s not jazz – other than to say it’s not a genre I typically even listen to. I do love St. Clair’s singing style and the main hook in this song.

83. Japandroids – Near to the Wild Heart of Life. Remember when they were the industry’s darlings in 2012 with Celebration Rock? Their January release, also called Near to the Wild Heart of Life, didn’t sell as well, didn’t get the same critical acclaim, and barely even got much airplay. I wonder if the nearly five-year gap did them in. Anyway, I’m somewhat alone in that I liked this album much more than their previous one.

82. Wild Beasts – Punk Drunk & Trembling. Wild Beasts announced their breakup in September and released an EP of unreleased tracks from the recording of Boy King, my #2 album of 2016. I guess they’re going out on a huge high note.

81. DJ Shadow with Nas – Systematic. Definitely the best rap song ever to include a recipe for a cranberry cocktail.

80. Artificial Pleasure – Wound Up Tight. I’m expecting big things from this London electronic-rock outfit, who have put out a handful of upbeat, artsy, danceable singles so far, with synth lines to make the Human League proud.

79. Splashh – Closer. Yeah, another band from the “let’s misspell a word by one letter just to annoy Keith” school of nomenclature. Splashh has a bit of a shoegaze sound that really fit in a year when many of the giants of the original shoegaze put out comeback albums.

78. Ten Fe – Twist Your Arm. I thought Ten Fe’s album, Hit the Light, was one of the best of the year, but they’re only on this list twice because two of the album’s best tracks were released as singles in 2016. It’s soft rock, just done really well.

77. The Pale White – Downer. A driving, bluesy rock song, in the vein of last year’s “Down We Go” by With Lions, which showed up in the trailer for Logan Lucky.

76. Daughter – Glass. Daughter’s album this year was the soundtrack to a video game, Music from Before the Storm, yet it worked extremely well as its own work of art apart from the game. The band’s atmospheric sound seems to have translated to the video game world just fine, and this record may have more hooks than their last album, Not to Disappear.

75. No Win – You’ll Be Fine. Former FIDLAR drummer Danny Nogueiras helms this new power-pop act that draws from early emo bands like Jimmy Eat World and earlier acts like Teenage Fanclub and Matthew Sweet.

74. Goldfrapp – Anymore. Goldfrapp has lost all the trappings of their earlier rock-tinged records, with their sound now fully in the electronic/house arena; this hypnotic track led off their 2017 album Silver Eye.

73. INHEAVEN – Bitter Town. INHEAVEN had one of the best rock debuts of the year with their self-titled album; this was my second favorite track from the record, a brief downshift that gets the desolation of the title across in both music and vocals, along with an allusion to “Baba O’Riley.”

72. White Reaper – Judy French. White Reaper does not lack for confidence, naming their sophomore album The World’s Best American Band; I guess I wouldn’t quite go that far, but the record did include two banger pop-rock tracks, this one and another higher up the list.

71. Everything Everything – Can’t Do. E2’s album A Fever Dream was a bit disappointing to me, as it lacked some of the musical freneticism of songs like “Cough Cough” and “Kemosabe” or the breathtaking ambition of “I Believe It Now,” but it still had its moments, including this single, which features some stutter-stop percussion and the vocal gymnastics of Jonathan Higgs. I’m lovin’ the bass, I’m lovin’ the drums, indeed.

70. Hundred Waters – Wave to Anchor. Hundred Waters’ sophomore album, The Moon Rang Like a Bell was my #1 record of 2014 thanks to its combination of subtle but strong melodies and the use of vocals as an additional instrument rather than a mere complement to the synths and percussion. Their 2017 follow-up, Communicating, felt a little safe in comparison, still good but lacking the highs of the previous record. This was the most accessible song on the album.

69. Sløtface – Pitted. Few bands on this list – or anywhere in music now – sound like they’re having as much fun as Sløtface does. The earworm in this song is the line about “playing Marry, Fuck, Kill/with every actor that’s ever played James Bond.”

68. Royal Blood – Hook, Line & Sinker. When these guys get heavy, they get heavy, and it’s so damn good. The main riff here could come from a Black Sabbath album track, but the vocals and the riffs behind the chorus turn it into a tremendous piece of hard rock bordering on pop.

67. The Preatures – Girlhood. I still don’t know what the repeated line in the verses is – whatever makes me a modern girl? A moddie girl? – but it doesn’t matter. It feels very ’90s college rock in a good way.

66. Maisie Peters – The Place We Were Made. Peters is a Youtube star who released this, her debut single, shortly after she turned 17. It’s quite a bit mellower than what I usually like, but I love both the fretwork and the melody in the chorus, and this feels like it’s the announcement of a huge talent.

65. Bully – Kills to Be Resistant. I can’t get behind the critical love for Alicia Bognanno’s band, but this song is a bit more accessible – she doesn’t screech the way she does on some of their other singles – and the theme feels quite relevant at the moment.

64. Hoops – On Letting Go. Lo-fi dream pop from an Indiana quartet that can be quite hypnotic, with that high-pitched synth line repeating like a mantra and taking this song back about 45 years.

63. Portugal. The Man – Easy Tiger. Portugal. The Man had the biggest breakout hit of the year with “Feel It Still,” but their whole album, Woodstock, is excellent, my favorite from them so far (surpassing In the Mountain in the Cloud). They haven’t lost their flair for the dramatic at all, evident on several tracks from the album including this one, “Tidal Wave,” and “Rich Friends.”

62. Black Map – Ruin. This hard-rock trio made my top 100 last year in almost the same spot, as “Run Rabbit Run” landed at #65; that song and this one are both on their newest album In Droves.

61. Ten Fe – In the Air. I don’t usually think of this kind of soft-rock/adult contemporary as ‘driving’ music, but this song absolutely has that feel from how the drum and bass lines establish the tempo from the outset.

60. Are We Static – Heartbreaker. This Manchester band calls itself “alt-rock” and cites some mainstream artists as influences, but this song, by far the heaviest on their album Embers, is more into the shoegaze/Madchester vein than the rest of the record, which is why it’s my favorite.

59. Panama – Hope for Something. Upbeat dance-pop from the Australian quintet led by Jarrah McCleary; this is from their third EP, also called Hope for Something. Their last record produced “Always,” which was #51 on my 2013 list.

58. Afghan Whigs – Demon in Profile. The Whigs’ comeback album, In Spades, was one of several shocking returns this year – Quicksand, Slowdive, and Ride all come to mind – and all of those records turned out to be pretty good. In Spades had two standout tracks, this one and “Toy Automatic.”

57. The New Pornographers – High Ticket Attractions. The second of three songs here from this album, I think this one got the most airplay and it was the lead single from the record, but I preferred the title track.

56. The Riff – Weekend Schemes. It starts out like a Madchester track, but when the vocals come in, it’s more like The Hold Steady, not least because the lead singer sounds a hell of a lot like Craig Finn. I would suggest to these fine lads that they work on their lyrics, though.

55. Quicksand – Fire This Time. Quicksand struck a great balance on this album, Interiors between the heavy, hardcore-inspired riffs fans of their earlier work expect and the need or desire to produce something accessible. The minor-key guitar line that powers this song is a perfect example, as it’s dark and inherently heavy, but also memorable enough that it moves the song forward rather than dragging it into sludge-metal territory.

54. Slowdive – Star Roving. Slowdive’s first album in 22 years had two standout songs on, including this one, which sounds like vintage shoegaze with a little bit of Olivia Tremor Control’s “The Opera House” thrown in for good measure.

53. WATERS – Something More. Van Pierszalowski is pretty good at crafting little earworms for his songs; their latest album, also called Something More!, had two lines in particular that stuck in my head, both of which, coincidentally, included the F word.

52. Coast Modern – Comb My Hair. When I first heard this, I thought it was a new WATERS track, as it has that same sort of laconic California vibe and a similar sound from the lead vocalist. That’s all to the good.

51. Beck – Dear Life. Beck’s album Colors was one of my favorites this year, with my #1 song of 2015 (“Dreams”) and a slew of other great singles, and not just the uptempo songs I tend to prefer from him. This has a more relaxed pace but still works for me due to the recurring piano riff that gives it a different sort of rhythm.

50. Birdtalker – One. Old school folk-rock like the Mamas & the Papas or the Byrds used to make.

49. Death from Above – Never Swim Alone. The heavy, whining guitar lick that starts off this song could have come off one of Royal Blood’s albums, and it marks DfA’s progression on their third record, Outrage! Is Now, to crafting complete songs rather than just pushing an intriguing sound.

48. Alvvays – Plimsoll Punks. I don’t care for Alvvays’ lead singer’s voice, and didn’t really like their latest album, Antisocialites, other than this song, which is also more rock-influenced than the rest of the record.

47. Allie X – Vintage. Allie X’s debut album, Collxtion II, came out in June, and it veers more towards the twee end of electropop than I tend to favor, but this song’s chorus is too damn catchy for me to ignore.

46. Wavves – No Shade. I think this is the shortest song on the list at 1:47, but that’s Nathan Williams’ style: get in, drop the hook, get out.

45. Grandaddy – Brush with the Wild. I remember some newspaper music critic saying Grandaddy would be the next Radiohead right around the turn of the century; that didn’t really work out, did it? They split in 2006 and their album Last Place, their first in eleven years, came out in March.

44. Foster the People – Lotus Eater. I liked their 2014 album Supermodel more than most listeners did, I think, but their latest record, Sacred Hearts Club, mostly just bored me – the big ideas from FtP’s last record seemed absent. This one track takes a different, harder-edged direction, really the only song from the album I even wanted to listen to twice.

43. Anteros – Cherry Drop. Wikipedia has this London quartet tagged as “dream pop,” but this song certainly isn’t that – the thumping, serpentine guitar line behind the vocals is almost punkish and gives the song an urgency that you don’t find in dream-pop tracks.

42. White Reaper – The Stack. If you make the girls dance, then the boys’ll dance with ’em.

41. The DMAs – Dawning. They’re constantly compared to Oasis, which is neither apt nor particularly fair; they’re influenced by Oasis, certainly, but by lots of other Britpop and Australian acts who were in turn influenced by classic rock of the ’70s.

40. Ride – All I Want. Ride’s debut album, Nowhere, was a landmark in the shoegaze scene in England, but by their second album they’d already started to shift more into traditional alternative rock territory, with cleaner production and decipherable vocals. Their comeback this year, Weather Diaries, continues in that vein, almost like their final two pre-breakup albums (which weren’t well received by fans or critics) never happened.

39. Hippo Campus – Baseball. I mean, how could I resist?

38. Washed Out – Get Lost. The beginning does sound like a kid playing with his first Casiotone keyboard, but I promise, once the drum beat kicks in, it’s a real song, my favorite from Mister Mellow.

37. Yonaka – Wouldn’t Wanna Be Ya. It’s obnoxious, but in a good way, both from the lyrics and the droning stoner-rock guitars.

36. Wolf Alice – Beautifully Unconventional. I didn’t think Visions of a Life delivered at all on the promise of Wolf Alice’s first record, with a bunch of songs that sounded like someone imitating My Love is Cool rather than building on its foundation. I did like “Heavenward,” the first track, although it goes on a bit too long.

35. Portugal. The Man – So Young. As I said above, this was one of my favorite albums of the year; it’s a shame it’ll be remembered for That One Hit and not for the complete body of work.

34. WATERS – Hiccups. Another extremely catchy, summery track; this one caught some airplay on alternative stations and I think it might have done better if it had come out when the weather warmed up.

33. Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong. I like Katie Crutchfield’s musical style more than her individual songs, as she has a great country/folk/rock hybrid sound going on but doesn’t always hit the melodies for me. This one does, of course, since it’s here, including the harmonies in the chorus and the big guitar-driven build in the song’s bridges.

32. Black Honey – Somebody Better. Black Honey appeared twice on my top 100 last year (not including the song “Black Honey” by Thrice, which also made the list), and I have compared them repeatedly to the power-pop act Velocity Girl from the 1990s, which is very high praise from me. Black Honey dropped three more songs this year, but I’m still waiting eagerly for their full-length debut.

31. Versing – Body Chamber. It takes some stones for a Seattle band to name its debut album Nirvana, especially since they might be influenced a bit by Kurt Cobain but certainly don’t sound much like the grunge icons. Their lead singer, Daniel Salas, is a huge fan of the Mars Volta, and I can hear bits of Sonic Youth, Hum, and the Sheila Divine here. The big selling point here is the melancholy passage behind the chorus, which provides a tension that’s never fully resolved.

30. Everything Everything – Desire. A Fever Dream had a few highlights, but I thought the back half of the record was pretty thin; in fairness, E2 has more ideas in two singles than most bands put on an entire album. The title track from the record didn’t make my top 100, mostly because at six minutes it’s about 25% too long, but they do get points for the ambition of the latter half of the song.

29. alt-J – In Cold Blood. There was only one bigger disappointment for me in music in 2017 than alt-J’s Relaxer — I’ll get to the other one in a bit – as the English trio has moved further away from their minimalist leanings on An Awesome Wave and more into self-consciously weird yet radio-friendly alternative rock. They still nabbed a Mercury Prize nomination for the album, which I assume is sort of like how Rafael Palmeiro won a Gold Glove the year he spent as a DH.

28. Beck – Colors. The title track from Beck’s album is the second of three songs from the record to make this list, and if you add “Dreams” from the 2015 top 100, which appears on this album in two forms (one of which has clean lyrics, because the F-word is so scary). There’s no one like Prince out there now, nor will there every truly be, but Beck is the closest we’ve got – a musical savant who can jump between and meld styles like virtually nobody else.

27. The New Pornographers – Whiteout Conditions. Carl Newman is a fountain of great pop ideas and bold arrangements for his supergroup (although this album didn’t include Dan Bejar, who also records as Destroyer). The rising vocal lines here give you the sense that you’re always ascending, something Franz Ferdinand could learn from.

26. Space Above – Let It Still. The new project from the keyboardist for The Naked and Famous, Space Above is … well, spacier than TNaF’s output. It’s atmospheric without sounding like something you’d find on a New Age station, boosted by vocals from Maddie North of So Below.

25. Bad Sounds – Wages. I’ve got my guilty pleasures in music too, although I was bummed that Bad Sounds’ subsequent singles didn’t carry forward this Soupdragons/Space Monkeys kind of pop ebullience. If any song on this list is going to get you moving, this is it.

24. Daughter – Burn It Down. More from their soundtack to Before the Storm and easily the best use of Elena Tonra’s voice, which ripples with angst and keeps the tension going for the whole song. I really need to try this game.

23. Sløtface – Backyard. That’s three songs on the list from their debut album Try Not to Freak Out; “Magazine” just missed, and the album didn’t include 2016’s “Empire Records” (#29 last year). I guess I’m a fan.

22. The Amazons – Black Magic. I heard this song and thought we had another great bombastic British rock act … but there isn’t another guitar riff to rival this one on the rest of their self-titled album.

21. Death from Above – Freeze Me. This song had me right from that introductory keyboard riff, which is just syncopated enough that it throws me off balance and never quite lets me regain it until the song ends.

20. Ride – Lannoy Point. I believe this is the longest track on the list at nearly six minutes, although it doesn’t feel quite that long because the drums keep things zipping along. “Chrome Waves” was one of my favorite Ride songs from their 1990s run, and this has a very similar vibe.

19. Phoenix – Ti Amo. I get the sense the moment for Phoenix has passed, as their album Ti Amo didn’t sell like 2013’s Bankrupt! even though this was a much better record start to finish; they’re not going back to the sound of their Grammy-winning 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, nor should they. The French popsters incorporate more international/world music rhythms on this album, including the two-step percussion line on this track, as well as on lead single “J-Boy” and “Goodbye Soleil.”

18. Manchester Orchestra – The Gold. Manchester Orchestra is at its best when they swing for the fences – they’re like the George Springer of rock groups: swing hard or go home. They connected on this one, with the gigantic chorus nicely offsetting the soft-rock verses.

17. The Wombats – Lemon to a Knife Fight. I won’t lie – I’m pretty well in the tank for these guys, as they keep churning out great pop hooks and silly lyrics that nearly always get a laugh out of me. Their next album is due in February, although I am not as enamored of the second single, “Turn.”

16. Hatchie – Sure. If the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan had partnered with early Lush, you might have gotten this song.

15. Alice Merton – No Roots. Other than the two songs at the top, this is probably the most-played song on the list on commercial or satellite radio. It was an immediate hit with my daughter, whose musical tastes are definitely independent of mine … but when we both like a song, I figure that’s a good reason to stuff it on this rankings.

14. MisterWives – Machine. I find Mandy Lee’s lyrics a bit overwrought most of the time – even here, the “I believe in individuality” line makes me cringe – but they’ve hit on a huge, shout-along chorus here, and Lee sounds more than a little like Shakira while wending her voice around the horns.

13. Porches – Find Me. Porches’ music always feels a little creepy to me, but in the sense of, say, a gothic horror movie; I love how the drum machine is mixed towards the front of this song, setting the dark mood right out of the chute.

12. Beck – Up All Night. This is peak Beck for me; he’s at his best when he’s throwing everything against the wall like he does here, sounding like he’s leading a band of twenty musicians and turning it into a tight, cohesive three-minute pop gem.

11. Django Django – Tic Tac Toe. I suppose “Default” will always be their signature song, but the Djangos aren’t resting on the laurels from that Mercury Prize-nominated album; listen to the interplay between the guitar and the off-beat drum lines behind the chorus here, which is as inventive as anything on their last album.

10. Mastodon – Show Yourself. Mastodon d oesn’t usually get this accessible – and I do like much of their music – which is why I’ve often favored their albums as a whole but rarely highlighted singles like this one. Emperor of Sand has already made a few best-of-2017 lists, as they haven’t lost their progressive tendencies but harnessed them into some tighter and more radio-ready tracks.

9. Dan Croll – Bad Boy. The 27-year-old graduate of the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts released his sophomore album, Emerging Adulthood, this summer, featuring this overlooked gem of a track that features big hooks in the chorus and the bridge.

8. INHEAVEN – World on Fire. INHEAVEN absolutely kills it on this song, the best track on their generally strong self-titled debut album, a song that wouldn’t be out of place on a playlist of New Wave of British Heavy Metal tracks.

7. Cut Copy – Black Rainbows. Cut Copy have been around since at least 2004, but in all that time they’ve never quite produced a song I could say I liked and remembered – their style may be in my wheelhouse, but other than 2010’s “Where I’m Going” I don’t think I’ve ever had a song of theirs grab me for more than a listen or two. This song, however, is a hit, a little bit Vince Clarke, a little Spandau Ballet, and a little Heaven 17 all rolled into one.

6. Oh Wonder – Ultralife. Their new album, also called Ultralife, was very inconsistent, but brought two great singles in “High on Humans” and this title track with its whirling, jubilant chorus.

5. Slowdive – Sugar for the Pill. Sorry to bring things down a bit – everything else in the top twelve is upbeat – but of all the shoegaze-revival stuff released this year, this was the one song that did the best job of bringing me back to the early/mid-1990s when bands like Slowdive, Ride, Jesus & Mary Chain, Curve, and Lush were at their creative peaks.

4. Royal Blood – Lights Out. Appropriately sinister and heavy, not as slow as doom or sludge metal but every bit as dark, “Lights Out” gives us the best of Royal Blood and shows us, again, how much you can do with just a bass guitar, an octave pedal, and a drum kit.

3. Arcade Fire – Everything Now. Arcade Fire’s album of the same name was easily the biggest disappointment of 2017 in music for me; at several points, it was downright embarrassing, like the “Infinite Content” diptych, which felt like something from a 14-year-old’s poetry notebook. Winn Butler isn’t afraid to go after big themes on his albums, like suburban sprawl and the vapidity of its culture (The Suburbs) or alienation in the modern world (Reflektor), but this album’s swings at modern materialism were such a whiff that Butler ended up on his ass before the ball hit the catcher’s mitt. The album gave us one truly great song, the only one that works musically (aided by a sample from Cameroonian musician Francis Bebey) and lyrically; the fair “Signs of Life;” and a lot of dreck.

2. Queens of the Stone Age – The Way You Used to Do. When Josh Homme comes up with a great riff, clear the dance floor because we’re going to need some room. I was skeptical that a QotSA album produced by Mark Ronson (“Uptown Funk”) would work, but it absolutely does – Ronson encouraged Homme’s groove/funk tendencies and it gave one of the best songs in their catalogue.

1. Portugal. The Man – Feel It Still. It would be entirely disingenuous for me to put any other song here; “Feel It Still” made my March playlist, hit the Billboard Hot 100 in late June, reached #4 there, set the record for the most weeks any song has spent at #1 on the magazine’s alternative chart, and earned the band its first Grammy nomination. Spotify even confirmed for me that it’s the song I played the most this year, which I assume includes all the times I listened to their album Woodstock in its entirety. And if you missed it, they recorded a fantastic cover of Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger” back in September. I’d be lying if I said anything else was my favorite song of 2017.

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