The following albums truly stunned me this year. They’re not all from 2017, of course, but I heard them, listened to them, and was in awe of them, throughout this year.
Bolded items below are those that were released this year.
Marian Hill’s ACT ONE
Sun Ra’s Other Voices, Other Blues
Bill Laurence’s Flint
Future Islands’s The Far Field
Jlin’s Black Origami
Sevdaliza’s Ison
Nick Hakim’s Green Twins
Kettenkaurssell’s Insecurity Guard
Joni Void’s Selfless
Songs: Ohia’s Didn’t It Rain
Benjamin Booker’s Witness
SZA’s Ctrl
Vince Staples’s Big Fish Theory
Kevin Morby’s City Music
Tyler, the Creator’s Scum Suck Flower Boy
Japanese Breakfast’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet
Pat Metheny and Ornette Coleman’s Song X
Com Truise’s Iteration
Lana Del Ray’s Lust for Life
Eric Dolphy’s Iron Man
Nine Inch Nails’s Add Violence
Ben Frost’s Threshold of Faith EP
Pat Metheny’s Kin
Yeah Yeah Yeah’s It’s Blitz!
YACHT’s See Mystery Lights
Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City
Utah Phillips’s We Have Fed You All For 1,000 Years
Urban Legends’s Of Old Lost Days
Jana Rush’s Pariah
Sote’s Sacred Horror in Design
Oneohtrix Point Never’s Good Time Soundtrack
Everything, Now!’s Police, Police!
Eagle Seagull’s Eagle*Seagull
Sun Ra’s Unity
Ani DiFranco’s Self Titled
LCD Soundsystem’s American Dream
Sun Ra’s Visits Planet Earth – Interstellar Low Ways
Sun Ra’s We Travel the Spaceways – Bad and Beautiful
Editors’s In Dream
LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver
LCD Soundsystem’s Self-Titled
Buddy Rich’s The Solos
The National’s Sleep Well Beast
Tears for Fears’s Songs from the Big Chair
Einsturzende Neubauten’s Silence is Sexy
Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House
Wycliffe Gordon’s The Intimate Ellington – Ballads and Blues
Wycliffe Gordon’s Bone Structure
Wycliffe Gordon’s The Joyride
Wycliffe Gordon’s We
Nina Simone’s My Baby Just Cares for Me
Superchunk’s Here’s Where the Strings Come In
Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Luciferian Towers
Mount Kimbie’s Love What Survives
Vijar Iyer Sextet’s Far from Over
Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s Symphonic Suite Akira
Chad VanGaalen’s Light Information
D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar
Wycliffe Gordon’s The Search
Eric Reed’s Pure Imagination
Ariel Pink’s Dedicated to Bobby Jameson
Eric Reed’s Musicale
EMA’s Exile in the Outer Ring
Link Wray’s Self-Titled
Wycliffe Gordon and Martin Erickson’s You and I
Chelsea Wolfe’s Hiss Spun
Ben Frost’s The Centre Cannot Hold
Paul Simon’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon
Wiki’s No Mountains in Manhattan
Nina Simone’s Nina Simone in Concert
Ibeyi’s Ash
Tech N9ne’s The Gates Mixed Plate
Courtney Varnett and Kurt Vile’s Lotta Sea Lice
Eric Reed’s The Baddest Monk
Sannhet’s So Numb
The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die’s Always Foreign
Chelsea Wolfe’s Abyss
St. Vincent’s MASSEDUCTION
Fever Ray’s Plunge
AFI’s Black Sails in the Sunset
Odonis Odonis’s No Pop
Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper
John Maus’s Screen Memories
AFI’s The Art of Drowning
Bjork’s Utopia
Jackie Shane’s Any Other Way
Standing on the Corner’s Red Burns
Zazou, Bikaye, and CY1’s Noir et Blanc
King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard’s Polygondwand
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s The Kid
Christian Scott’s Christian aTunde Adjuah
Baths’s Romaplasm
Bitchin Bajas’s Bajas Fresh
Bitchin Bajas’s Self Titled
Bitchin Bajas’s Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties
Expander’s Endless Computer
Yves Tumor’s Serpent Music
Yves Tumor’s Deposit of Faith
Taylor Swift’s Reputation
Equiknoxx’s Colon Man
Einsturzende Neubauten’s Halber Mensch
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’s Soul of a Woman
Jamila Woods’s HEAVN
Arcade Fire’s Reflektor