Greetings from Laurel Canyon!
2017’s best of “Idelic Hits” #’s 1-20 | Kevin Morby, Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, The Clientele, Childish Gambino, Aldous Harding, Randy Newman, Protomartyr, Father John Misty, The Jesus & The Mary Chain, Queens of The Stone Age/Ty Segall, Culture Abuse, Together Pangea/Orwells, War On Drugs, Fleet Foxes, Wolf Alice, King Krule, Phoebe Bridgers, Psychic Temple, St. Vincent, Everything Is Recorded
The other day a respected colleague told me that he felt I was a bit “lost.” Indeed in 2017 I can take that point to heart. After all I’ve been the music business for over twenty-five years, the last seven of which I’ve ended my week by posting a carefully curated playlist of songs in the form of an FM style radio hour. Each week I enthusiastically followed that post by singling out one newly released song. Every Friday for the last seven years I’ve proclaimed those records as “finds,” or as I like to call them “Idelic Hits.”
Why? I’ve clearly lost my mind. My wife gave up years ago trying to convince me that I was spending too much listening to and posting music. Why be so passionate about new music? After all, don’t we live in a world with an attention span of fifteen seconds? I have to say I often do feel a bit lost. Music has always lead the way for me. Buying records used to be an obsession. Now I’d rather share a song than buy one. I’m clearly not treading the road on “bloody red shoes.”
All said, I hear in 2017 that the music business is back to a healthy state—or is it just that music blogs are dead? Do you remember Pitchfork? They called 2017 “The Year Of Disappointment.” It’s a concept that any blogger looking to make a “Best Of” list for 2017 would duly note. Talk about lost, it took some heavy searching to find a few great start-to-finish albums. Even fucking Google couldn’t find you the best album of 2017.
Pushing aside my disappointment with 2017, I’d say The Clientele’s Music For The Age Of Miracles and Aldous Harding’s, Party were, for me, the year’s greatest surprises. Not to mention Jim and William Reid’s I dare say brilliant comeback album, Damage and Joy.
Hey do you think the Reid Brothers are likely lost too?
Each day I wake / Is gonna be my last / I hope it’s gonna pass / I hope it won’t last / Each drug I take / Is gonna be my last / I hope I don’t fry / I hope I don’t die / I have taken a vow / I have taken a vow / To [prove/love] myself / To find me
Then there’s my favorite Idelic artist of the year Kevin Morby, who brilliantly released a stream of cool and confident songs to Spotify and made the new music streaming paradigm work to launch a cool career. Well, someone had to figure out how to make a great new artist work. So shall we all!
OK, these are my best Top 20 (or so) for 2017—rock on!
