2017: The Navigator - Hurray for the Riff Raff
2017: The Navigator - Hurray for the Riff Raff
Looking back at 30 years of music | Hurray for the Riff Raff, Flo Morrissey & Matthew E. White, Daniel Romano, Dan Auerbach, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and MORE!
2017 was probably the year that I was most tuned in to what was going on in music; what was coming out week on week, who was breaking through and who was putting out the music that you absolutely had to be listening to.
At the time, I was working for Mood Media in the capacity of Music Consultant. What that meant was that I was in charge of curating the in-store playlists for brands like H&M, TopShop/TopMan, Alexander McQueen, New Look, Costa, The Co-Op and plenty others besides. I had to have my finger on the pulse of all the latest trends and tracks and I had to know whose music should be played where, and when.
I spent hours each week poring through music blogs online, listening to pre-releases from labels and promo agencies and reading the monthly reviews in Uncut magazine or The Line of Best Fit. I spent plenty of evenings at gigs or in meetings with labels hearing about all the exciting music they had on the way. I even had the chance to book some of the artists to come and perform for us in the office, acts like Mahalia and Rae Morris, Daniel Meade and Jerry Williams.
Luckily, for someone who was tasked with listening to all the music that was coming out as it was released, 2017 was an incredibly strong year for new releases. The below is an almost exhaustive list of some of my favourites from the year.
The Navigator - Hurray for the Riff Raff
I love new music which has got clear and obvious roots in some kind of tradition, but which does something new or interesting with that history. Music which takes something old and turns it into something new.
Alynda Lee Segarra, operating under the moniker Hurray for the Riff Raff, has always done this with her music; drawing on elements of folk, blues, soul, R&B and even doo-wop at times. Some of her best songs - like Look Out Mama, Blue Ridge Mountain, The Body Electric or I Know It’s Wrong (But That’s Alright) - wouldn’t sound out of place on an old folk record from the mid-to-late 60s.
But, with The Navigator, she made her newest sounding record from those old inspirations yet. All the elements that inspired her before were still evident but she put more of a spin on them than before, and added more of herself into the songs, too. More of her Puerto Rican heritage comes through. “I’ve been a lonely girl”, she sings on Hungry Ghost, “but now I’m ready for the world”.
This time, she’s gone electric as well, and so we’re presented with a more gritty, almost punk-ish album than anything she'd released up to this point. The record is more forward facing than anything she’d made before.
Like a lot of her best work, this is a political album. It’s an album of solidarity and understanding, but it can also be a lot of fun, as well. Living in the City (“well, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard”) gets your body moving as much as your brain.
She mixes the political with the personal on tracks like Life to Save and the beautiful, shimmering Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl. Rican Beach is a funk-infused shuffle through the ruins left behind by imperialism and colonial politicians which is shot through with a stabbing Mark Ribot style guitar line throughout.
Perhaps the highlight is Pa’lante (a Spanish affirmation which translates to “onwards, forwards” and which became the name of a civil rights newspaper in Puerto Rico in the 1960s). The song ebbs and flows, just like real progress does. At times Segarra sounds more impassioned than at others, sometimes she sounds angry but she never sounds defeated. After the first chorus, the song fizzles out and Segarra’s voice is replaced by that of Puerto Rican poet Pedro Pietri’s as he recites his 1969 poem Puerto Rican Obituary.
Then the piano comes back. Segarra’s joins back in more impassioned than ever, in a rallying cry to triumph for all those who came before, and for all those who will come after. On The Navigator, Hurray for the Riff Raff began to really move onwards, to move forwards and it was a triumph.
Gentlewoman, Ruby Man - Flo Morrissey & Matthew E White
Another way of making something old from something new, and far more directly, is by doing a covers album. I love this record, but feel that it doesn’t ever get much love from elsewhere.
A real perfect hazy Sunday afternoon listen, the album takes songs from sources as disparate as Little Wings (Look at What the Light Did Now), Frank Ocean (Thinking ‘Bout You), Leonard Cohen (Suzanne) and even Barry Gibb (Grease!) and turns them into 70s lounge-lizard ballads; complete with soulful guitar parts, swells of organ and strings and tips all that off with smoky vocals delivered in tandem by Flo Morrissey and Matthew E. White.
Modern Pressure - Daniel Romano
I have always thought that Daniel Romano gets overlooked in the modern music scene because there is so much going on, so much to listen to and so many ways to access it all, but if he’d been making the same music in the 70s then he’d have been one of the biggest names around. We'd be talking about him more now if he was big then than we do while he is around as a contemporary artist.
His ability to turn a phrase is matched by his incredible ability to conjure a wonderful melody, as demonstrated here on Roya (maybe my favourite song from the whole year) or When I Learned Your Name. His alternately glorious and gritty guitar parts are always offset by great rhythm sections and unexpected twists, such as the Mariachi-adjacent brass on Modern Pressure that intertwines with a cinematic string section (none of which should work, but which all absolutely does).
The album is front loaded with all its best songs, but there are moments of magic to be found on the second half of the album, too, in tracks like Impossible Green and Jennifer Castle.
With songs like Ugly Human Heart, Modern Pressure, Roya, The Pride of Queens and When I Learned Your Name, Modern Pressure should have been regarded as a Modern Classic.
Waiting on a Song - Dan Auerbach
Another album that could have come out in a bygone age, Dan Auerbach stepped into the spotlight with his debut solo release in 2017. Waiting on a Song is one of my favourite singer-songwriter albums from any time period.
It’s cool, it’s catchy, it’s kitschy at times. It’s fun and it’s funny, but there’s a lot of pathos to be found here, too. Another record that blends brass and strings throughout with great guitar parts and strong rhythms, the albums is packed with feel-good songs like Malibu Man and especially the surf-rock Shine on Me (it's also fun to spot the nods to older songs and albums, too, such as Hard Luck Guy, A Love Supreme and Desolation Row).
Even on the slower Never In My Wildest Dreams, the good feeling remains (“Never in my wildest dreams, would I be loving you / never in my wildest dreams, would my dreams come true”).
If you’re waiting on a song, you could do worse than to listen to the ten presented here.
Triplicate - Bob Dylan
It’s not only new artists who spent 2017 making new music out of old parts. 75 year old Bob Dylan returned with 30 more Great American Songbook tracks, many of which were older even than he was at the time of release.
Gentlewoman, Ruby Man and Waiting on a Song might be the perfect albums to keep you company on a Sunday afternoon, but Triplicate could soundtrack a whole month of them.
I wrote a while back that I think that Shadows in the Night is a top 10 Dylan album, but most of the performances on Triplicate are just as good as anything on that release. There’s more variety here, too; more variation in the tempos and song choices. And what great song choices! Dylan is a master interpreter of other people’s songs, and it is a treat to hear him tackle September of My Years, the heartbreaking I Could Have Told You, Once Upon a Time, That Old Feeling and My One and Only Love - and that’s only from disc 1! Disc 2 boasts Braggin’, Imagination, PS I Love You, The Best is Yet to Come, There’s a Flaw in my Flue whilst the 3rd disc’s highlights are Day In Day Out, I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night, When the World Was Young, These Foolish Things, Stardust and It’s Funny to Everyone But Me.
Some people think that 30 of these songs is too many to have at once, but I wouldn’t want to lose even one of them.
Dark Matter - Randy Newman
Following up his fantastic 2008 record Harps and Angels, Randy Newman was back with his fifteenth album Dark Matter.
Opening with the epic, ambitious and sprawling titular track, Newman is once again having fun with characters and subjects which most other songwriters wouldn’t touch. The song floats between time signatures and genres - and just like dark matter itself, is undefinable in places - as it gets to the heart of the (dark) matter. The song becomes a court room drama, placing science and scientists on one side of the great debate and Jesus and the church on the other. Gospel choirs break out, Charles Darwin goes up on trial and there is a hilarious segment about the dietary habits of the giraffe. Maybe this one needs to be heard to be believed.
The rest of the songs stick to more expected styles and formats. Newman’s trademark barroom heartbreak and shuffles and cinematic string sections abound but the subjects of his songs remain the domain of Newman alone - the Kennedy brothers (deciding to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion in order to save Cuban singer Celia Cruz), Vladimir Putin (“when he takes his shirt off, he drives the ladies crazy / when he takes his shirt of he makes me want to be a lady!”) and the identity theft of Sonny Boy Williamson.
Elsewhere, Newman can still break your heart with tracks like Lost Without You, She Chose Me and Wandering Boy.
It’s as crazy as it all sounds, and the craziest thing is that it all works. Alongside Sail Away, Good Old Boys and Harps and Angels, Dark Matter is one of Newman’s best.
Elsewhere in the year…
Where to start? This article ended up drifting towards the new albums I liked which had old influences, but it could easily have ended up being about all the great Indie / Rock releases that came out in 2017 or all the great pop songs and albums from the year as well.
Phoebe Bridges released her debut Strangers in the Alps, which boasted her breakthrough track - and still one of her best - Motion Sickness. Marika Hackman moved towards a more full band sound with her second album I’m Not Your Man and again showed off her lyrical prowess with songs like Boyfriend and My Lover Cindy.
The Big Moon released their debut Love in the 4th Dimension, featuring the brilliant rockers Bonfire and Silent Movie Susie. Wolf Alice followed up their 2015 debut My Love is Cool with more of the same on Visions of a Life, whilst there was plenty more great indie rock from newcomers Girl Ray (best track: the funk-infused Trouble), Miss World (best track: the pop-rock Buy Me Dinner) and Anteros (best track: Love).
Paramore re-branded and re-positioned themselves with the infectiously catchy Hard Times, from their fifth album After Laughter. I saw Paramore support Taylor Swift earlier this year and front-woman Hayley Williams was channelling Blondie singer Debbie Harry throughout their set (in fact, they even blended their opener Hard Times with Heart of Glass). Just like Blondie had gone from punk to disco in the late 70s, Paramore went from pop-punk to pop-disco with this release.
Other great pop tracks and albums arrived courtesy of Miley Cyrus (Malibu and Younger Now from the album of the same name), Haim (Want You Back, Ready for Your Love from the Something to Tell You album) and Charli XCX (Boys, the incredibly fun standalone single which came complete with its must-watch music video).
Then there was the brilliant ctrl from SZA, Melodrama by Lorde - which opens with her best track, the euphoric anthem Green Light - as well as releases from up and coming talent like September Rose from Cailin Russo, Song Like You from Bea Miller and a great, understated electro-pop cover of the Candi Staton classic, Young Hearts Run Free by Ralph.
And it wasn’t just the women who were releasing such great music. Both the Gallagher brothers put out their best songs since their time together in Oasis (Holy Mountain from Noel and his High Flying Birds, and Wall of Glass from Liam).
Morrissey was back with another new album which, while on the whole was pretty forgettable, did at least contain one of his best ever compositions and vocal performances in Home is a Question Mark. Unfortunately, it did also contain the abominable Spent the Day in Bed (not to mention the very questionable The Girl from Tel-Aviv Who Wouldn't Kneel and Israel).
Jake Bugg (remember him!?) shed the Dylan tribute act and put out his most mature, soulful work yet in How Soon the Dawn and Waiting (featuring Noah Cyrus) from his fourth album Hearts That Strain.
Arcade Fire released Everything Now, an enormous and enormously fun song that has as much going on in it as the title suggests. I’ve haven’t listened to too much else from Arcade Fire, but I can't imagine they have any better than this one. And why bother listening to anything else when I’ve already got Everything Now? (Mind, there are other reasons to not really want to listen to Arcade Fire anymore. Similarly, another great piece of music from 2017 which has been tainted by questions surrounding the actions of the front man is the Roxy Music-esque Avalon from Foxygen.)
Another act that released a song so good in 2017 that I haven’t been able to get past it yet and explore the rest of their music was The War on Drugs, when their new album A Deeper Understanding gave us Holding On. A life affirming swirl of synths, organs, chimes, pounding drums and floating vocals with anthemic chorus’ complete with a Dylan-esque delivery, Holding On is the sound of your youth running away into outer space; into the sun, into your wildest dreams. It’s a song and a feeling worth Holding On to for as long as you can.
Notable Album Releases
Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice
Father John Misty - Pure Comedy
Kendrick Lamar - Damn
Lana del Rey - Lust for Life
LCD Soundsystem - American Dream
Mavis Staples - If All I Was Was Black
Taylor Swift - Reputation
Thundercat - Drunk
St. Vincent - Masseduction
Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy
Quite a bumper playlist this week - usually these only contain tracks from the article - but this is my original 2017 playlist from the year where I added all my favourite tracks as they came out. For the next few years in the series the playlists will be like this, until I took my finger off the pulse sometime around 2021.
Next up: We’re checking into the Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino alongside the Arctic Monkeys, Courtney Barnett, Conan Mockasin, Nathaniel Rateliff, U.S Girls, Hinds, John Prine and Joan Baez.