More than just a cobbled-together collection of songs, playlists can function as snapshots of a particular moment in time, and also provide crucial context for how that moment came to be. Through these playlists, we explored some of the dominant themes in music this year—be it paradigm-shifting innovations, the reemergence of dormant aesthetics, or slow-building movements that reached critical mass in 2017.
Flutes were everywhere in hip-hop in 2017. They provided a wistful counterpoint to the grizzled trap of Future’s ubiquitous “Mask Off,” propped up Drake’s throttling “Portland” with a snaking melody, and popped up on tracks from D.R.A.M. (“Broccoli”), Gucci Mane (“Back on Road”), Kodak Black (“Tunnel Vision”), and Migos (too numerous to list off here). This, of course, is nothing new, and this playlist from Okayplayer provides a quick history of the instrument’s use in hip-hop.
Jason Williamson’s air-hammer delivery and thick-as-marmite East Midlands accent contribute hugely to Sleaford Mods’ appeal, even if some non-Limey listeners may require the use of subtitles—and probably footnotes, too. He belongs to a proud counter-tradition of vocalists who not only defy the pressure to Americanize, but brandish accents that have traditionally been masked as markers of low class in British society. This quality creates a fascinating connection between an otherwise disparate series of singers, poets, and shouters operating not just in the punk and post-punk styles dear to Sleaford Mods, but in folk, electronic, grime, and even sound poetry.
The music of the Internet era has defined itself through diversity, and there are common, shared ideas that emerge from the ethos of digital art. Much of our recent experimental music finds inspiration in the uncomfortable merging of opposing forms—artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and QT spin fantastic new shapes through the juxtaposition of uncanny sound manipulations and inescapably alluring Top 40 mechanics. All of the artists on this playlist share a common inspiration: They pick apart the nature of society’s new favorite medium and the effects it has on our perceptions, memories, and experiences we subject ourselves to. Hit play to take a tour of the sounds emitted from our hyperreal, constantly connected world.
When members of Midlake, Franz Ferdinand, Grandaddy, Travis, and Band of Horses started exchanging ideas via email in 2013, they probably didn’t care that they were taking part in a long, if sometimes neglected, tradition in the music world. Nor should they—the idea of putting together a supergroup for its own sake is pretty dumb. That this particular congregation of musicians savored the chance to play together and socialize is reflected in the title they chose for the project: BNQT, pronounced “banquet.” And they’re hardly the only example of ad hoc all-star ensembles in recent indie-rock history that have redeemed the supergroup concept.
Within days of each other, Cam’Ron and Kevin Gates released tracks with unlikely samples. Cam’Ron’s romantic “10,000 Miles” has him singing “Lookin’ up out my Benz” over the familiar twinkling piano riff from Vanessa Carlton’s massive 2001 hit “A Thousand Miles,” while Gates’ more reflective “What If” utilizes Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us” to inquire if God is “Just a thug like one of us.” Adult contemporary pop is no stranger to hip-hop and it often lends itself to a variety of mood-setting styles. Rappers utilize its piano ballads and campfire-ready acoustic guitar lines, either reworking the lyrics or topping off familiar strums with harsher beats. The final product can yield some surprising results that often are friendly to radio.
Kevin Parker told The Guardian last year that he didn’t think there was such a thing as an Australian psych scene. It seemed an oddly Trumpian (i.e., easily disproven) thing for the Tame Impala mastermind to say, given the amount of evidence to the contrary oozing out of Oz in recent years. Though Tame Impala and Pond have risen the highest in terms of international profiles, they keep close ties to the likes of Mink Mussel Creek, The Growl, and GUM. Over in Melbourne, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have their own posse of like-minded travelers, such as The Murlocs, Pipe-eye, and The Babe Rainbow. Here’s a selection of songs by young Australian bands who may not constitute a scene per se, but who share an eagerness to take you on a trip.
Michael McDonald’s status as a pop-culture punchline is perhaps best epitomized by the 2005 comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, wherein an electronics-store employee played by Paul Rudd squirms with annoyance as a McDonald live DVD plays on a loop at work. But these days, McDonald is about as cool as he’s ever been. The “yacht rock” sound with which he’s associated has become a renewable source of inspiration for dance and hip-hop producers. And over the past decade, McDonald has collaborated with a number of hip younger artists that appreciate the distinctively smoky grain of his voice, including Thundercat, who even reunited McDonald with longtime collaborator Kenny Loggins on his acclaimed 2017 single “Show You The Way.” This playlist charts McDonald’s transition from being your dad’s favorite crooner to your teenage cousin’s.
Over the past two years, there’s been such a remarkable abundance of great music by female artists in the overlapping territories of alt-country, roots, and Americana that it could fill this playlist many times over. From the folky, sepulchral sounds of Pieta Brown, to the Kitty Wells-style honky-tonk throwbacks of Rachel Brooke, to the raw and tender country blues of Adia Victoria, it’s a boom time all round.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the term “LGBT rapper” did not exist. Of course there were lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender rappers out there but, the truth is, they simply were not accepted by the mainstream hip-hop community. The fact that there are now enough LGBT rappers to fill this playlist (as well as enough bad ones that not all of them had to be included) shows how far the genre has come in a relatively short period of time.
When it comes to classic rockers who are revered by punks, alt-rockers, and indie brats, Bruce Springsteen may not possess the lofty stature of Neil Young, but the guy’s also no slouch. His influence tears across the first decade and a half of the 21st century like a ’69 Chevy with a 396. Adam Granduciel’s The War on Drugs–whose 2017 release, A Deeper Understanding, frequently nicks the gauzy, hushed heartache and mechanistic throb of Tunnel of Love—are just the latest in a long line of current artists who worship the Jersey legend.
What made the late Sharon Jones and her band, the Dap-Kings, so unique was their ability to feel unapologetically old-school, yet without any residue of weepy nostalgia. Anchored not just by Jones’ attention-seizing voice, but the group’s agilely stabbing horns and preternaturally metronomic rhythm section as well, their music pops, sizzles, and jumps with a sweaty, determined modernism. It’s a sound that has exerted a huge impact on 21st-century pop, pushing retro-soul into the mainstream while also seeping into the work of more left-field artists.
We remember the heroes and innovators we lost over the course of 2017 by revisiting the playlists we created in their honor, both to celebrate their achievements and/or shine a light on the less-traveled corridors of their career.
The passing of Chuck Berry on March 18 at the age of 90 put the final punctuation mark at the end of this musical pioneer’s story. But the legacy left behind by the man who made rock ‘n’ roll what it is today largely rests on a relatively small group of milestone singles—about a dozen or so, mostly released between the mid ’50s and mid ’60s. And, when you’re talking about an artist like Berry, that leaves a lot of things out. On this collection of Chuck Berry esoterica, you’ll find just about everything you can think of and then some: calypso, jazz, Latin-tinged jams, psychedelic experimentation—you name it.
It’s impossible to imagine what hip-hop, house, and techno might have used for a rhythmic foundation if not for the 808 beat. That’s why the impact that inventor Ikutaro Kakehashi—who passed away April 1 at age 87—had on the past four decades of music is incalculable. Since the fine 2015 documentary 808 tells you everything you could want to know on the subject (and way more), we let the music do the talking with a set that includes many of the most famous uses of the 808 (and its successor the TR-909) by early adopters like Arthur Baker as well as such present-day devotees as Kanye West, who transformed the beat into the sonic epitome of emotional desolation on 808s And Heartbreak.
Few filmmakers ever displayed as much savvy about music—or were so eager to show off their sheer love of it—than Jonathan Demme. The director, who passed away on April 26 at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer, established his impeccable and impressively diverse tastes—from The Fall and The Feelies to Big Youth and Boogie Down Productions—long before indie-movie hotshots like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson followed suit in the 1990s. This playlist includes the iconic tracks famously featured in his films, as well as selections from the many musicians with whom Demme collaborated.
The late Chris Cornell—who took his own life on May 18 at age 52—was one of the most dynamic and adventurous singers to emerge in the ’90s. This playlist highlights the underrated non-Soundgarden songbook of the only rock vocalist to have worked with both Timbaland and the Zac Brown Band, while always sounding unmistakably like himself.
Prodigy of Mobb Deep was one of the best rappers on the planet because he was dark. He didn’t have Pac’s tortured-thug activist energy, Big’s charisma or hitmaking ease, or Nas’s wisdom combined with the ear of a jazz musician. It didn’t matter. While other rappers laughed and joked, or screamed in your ear, Prodigy calmly explained how he would end your life while referencing the Book of Revelations and the Illuminati. The MC passed away on June 20 at age 42 from complications related to a painful life-long fight with sickle-cell anemia; this playlist salutes the greatest writer of threats in rap history.
There’s something almost transcendental about early Linkin Park. They were too anthemic to be fully nu metal, too hip-hop to be rock, and too emo and mainstream to be “cool.” But Chester Bennington’s lyrics had a radically human core, one that embraced and tried to work through longing and alienation. And their music was very intriguing, boasting intelligent percussion, authoritative washes of reverbed guitar, disciplined use of electronics, and methodical pacing. In the wake of Bennington’s shocking suicide July 20 at age 41, we published this playlist tribute to a band who, for certain angst-ridden teenagers, were like The Smiths of their era.
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were already anachronisms when they met as jazz-obsessed teenagers in the late ‘60s and began to write the droll, harmonically complex songs that made Steely Dan one of the greatest and most unique bands of the ‘70s. So it’s not surprising that a duo who worked tirelessly to get the best performances out of skilled session players never had much interest in hip-hop and the art of sampling. But the Steely Dan songs that have been sampled by multiple rap artists offer a case study in how many options the band’s rich arrangements offer to beatmakers. Becker, sadly, passed away from esophageal cancer on September 3 at age 67. But his music lives on—and continues to find new audiences—through the many hip-hop, rock, and R&B tracks collected here.
With ’80s noise-pop pioneers Husker Dü, Grant Hart played the misfit McCartney to Bob Mould’s lacerating Lennon, providing the honey chaser to his partner’s hoarse-throat howls. Following the band’s extremely acrimonious break-up, Hart gradually faded into obscurity, releasing a small handful of under-the-radar records while Mould enjoyed a steady, successful career as an alt-rock elder statesman. Recent years had been especially trying: Hart lost both parents in quick succession, and he was injured in a fire that destroyed his longtime family home in South St. Paul. And then 2017 brought the diagnosis of the kidney cancer that ultimately claimed him on September 14 at the age of 56. With this playlist, we pay tribute to the man who forged the Dave Grohl prototype of the shit-hot drummer who also a tender tunesmith.
Before his death from cardiac arrest on October 2 at age 66, Tom Petty was a man of the people in a way that Dylan and Springsteen couldn’t be, because they just seemed too oversized, too mythic, too huge from the get-go. Like the characters he tended to write about, Petty was always somewhere between underdog and self-made outcast. Yet the chip on his shoulder was the rare and beautiful kind that seemed to make him more empathetic to people rather than less so. That’s what you hear in these songs, some of which are hits, while others are deep cuts from albums that didn’t quite get as much love as they should’ve. (For more, check out this playlist of the contemporary artists keeping Petty’s spirit alive.)
Gord Downie was effectively Canada’s Bruce Springsteen—a rock star with blue-collar blood, whose intimate portraits of Canadian life could stir a patriotic fervor with a simple small-town namedrop. His band, The Tragically Hip, was huge in Canada and in Canada only, however, since Downie’s untimely passing from brain cancer on October 18 at age 53, more people outside the country are tuning into his peculiar genius. Here’s a playlist of 23 songs to introduce non-Canadian newcomers to Downie’s deep discography. While it includes some Hip hits, these aren’t necessarily the band’s most popular songs. Rather, they’re ones that mostly venture beyond the band’s bar-rock roots and don’t require an Encyclopedia Canadiana to decode. And they’re the ones that most directly communicate Downie’s singular combination of outsized passion, white-knuckled intensity, sly humor, absurdity… and grace, too.
If his brother, Angus, is AC/DC’s Chuck Berry (all about dazzling flashes of lightning and speeding, razor-wire licks) then Malcolm Young was their Bo Diddley, a brilliant groove engineer (as well as songwriter—let’s not forget that) who could ceaselessly combine and recombine the essential, fundamental components of boogie. We present a cannonballed salute to the greatest rhythm guitarist in hard rock, who passed away November 18 at age 64 after a years-long struggle with dementia.
The Dowsers prides itself on being the first music magazine devoted to the playlist experience—and in 2017, that experience became all the more multi-faceted. By nature, playlist-making is a highly personal process, an opportunity for anyone to play the role of radio programmer and tailor their song selection to suit a particular mood, activity, or obsession. Increasingly, we’ve seen them become a more communal medium, whether it’s bands releasing a curated mix to hype a new record, streaming services using them to break new artists, fans crowd-sourcing set lists to create shareable post-show souvenirs, or one of the biggest rappers in the world taking the “playlists are the new albums” mantra literally. But in 2017, we also saw playlists that moved beyond the realm of the promotional to the political, be it through pointed statements or charity initiatives. It may still feel strange to think a playlist could change the world, but in 2017, the act of dragging-and-dropping reached new levels of artistry, activitism, and influence.1. Your Discover WeeklySpotify’s Discover Weekly playlist was launched in July of 2015, but with the music service now boasting more than 60 million paying subscribers and playlists eclipsing albums as the dominant way fans consume music, the weekly personalized mix is more relevant than ever. Essentially based on the concept of collaborative filtering, the algorithm looks at songs it knows you like, then recommends you songs adjacent to those songs in other users’ playlists and libraries. The result is often uncannily precient recommendations. If you’ve become as addicted to this playlist as so many others, there’s good news: The more users Spotify adds, the more data there is to mine, and the better these recommendations get.
2. RapCaviarIn 2017, RapCavier was the Avatar of playlists. It adorned billboards, spawned its own tour,stirred up controversy, and turned its creator, Tuma Basa, into an industry celebrity. It’s easy to be cynical about it all, but also very difficult to turn away. Week after week, it simply delivered the goods, helping break an entire new generation of rap artists (it’s no coincidence that Lil Uzi Vert headlined the tour) while also being one of the first playlists to incorporate video. In an era that was supposed to have decimated the tastemaker class, Basa and his playlist provided essential listening.
3. Drake, More LifeThis is among the best of Drake’s clumping-tracks-together things, and that’s very much because More Life is consciously a “playlist.” This isn’t a low-stakes gambit or a cheap marketing gimmick (at least not entirely), but an honest engagement with a new form. More Life is loose and meandering, and sometimes the individual components seem slight and tertiary. But like the best playlists, it captures a moment, a feeling, and a place. More Life is enjoyable and, as anyone who listens to a lot of classic albums knows, enjoying music trumps appreciating it—and this release is infinitely better than any other non-sweater-meme Drake release in years. For that, we can thank the generations of mixtape compilers, playlist curators, radio DJs, and compilation creators for helping define this new form. But, most of all, we should thank Drake for getting that the lines between artist, audience, critic, and curator are porous, and for making an initial foray into what this intersection looks like.
4. Grim Kim’s 150 Raddest Metal Albums Ever Made by People Who Happen To Not Be DudeThis past July, NPR released their list of the 150 greatest albums made by women. On first glance, the list appears to be wide-reaching in its scope. Meshell Ndegeocello, Sleater-Kinney, and Egyptian superstar Umm Kulthum all make appearances, with iconic figures like Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell nabbing the top spots. However, renowned metal critic Kim Kelly quickly noted on Twitter that the “definitive” countdown failed to include any albums metal albums by women—so she Tweeted out a list of her own, and then a Spotify user named Jim Fenner compiled (most of) them all into a 1,023-track, 87-hour playlist. Kelly’s crash course does more than simply construct a history of women in metal; she highlights the diversity in female and non-binary artists who have transgressed the genre itself.
5. The Bathroom BansWithin the Spotify ecosystem, you’ll find a multitude of playlists created by the streaming service in response to current events, be it mixes that benefit Mexico City’s earthquake victims, or expressions of support for American dreamers jeopardized by the Trump administration’s DACA repeal. But The Bathroom Bans (part of Spotify’s recently launched I’m with the—banned series) is more than just a playlist protest against repeated attempts by Republican state government to enforce which type of public restrooms trans people are allowed to use. Threading expository animated videos (narrated by Halsey) with tracks by trans/gender-fluid artists and their vocal allies, it nudges the playlist format toward the realm of narrative documentary.
6. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “For Puerto Rico” PlaylistAll-star charity singles have a bad reputation that is entirely earned. But Hamilton playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Almost Like Praying” (proceeds from which benefited victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico) was unexpectedly fire, bringing together everyone from Jennifer Lopez to Dominican icon Juan Luis Guerra for an impassioned, dembow-driven love song to Puerto Rico. The track was introduced through Miranda’s “For Puerto Rico” playlist, which not only presented a soulful portrait of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and its diaspora in the U.S., it also raised money for hurricane-relief efforts through a Spotify donation based on the number of followers it acquired. As an added incentive, the songwriter pledged that, if the playlist hit 50,000 followers, he would share an old photo of himself, dressed as J.Lo. (At the time of this writing, the count was over 73,000, but we’re still waiting for the big reveal.)
7. Aphex Twin’s Field Day setThere’s a reason why Reddit users frantically threw together a playlist of the tracks that Aphex Twin spun during London’s Field Day just hours after the set ended on June 3. The U.K. producer born Richard James remains one of electronic music’s most cherished and mysterious figures, and the singularity of sound and vision has spawned a fervent fan base that tracks his every movement. Admittedly, listening to a playlist comprising tracks exclusively from a DJ set is an odd experience; as an unmixed, dangling historical artifact, experienced within the confines of headphones or home speakers, it’s not how or where James wanted this music to be heard. But your mind fills in some of the blanks: the 3D mapped light instillation; the entrances and exits of the segues; the sweat and flesh of the festival crowd. It’s an incomplete experience, but it’s also interactive, and feels less like you’re staring through a tiny peephole at a much larger world and more like you’re parsing an ancient, oblique text.
8. Frank Ocean’s BlondedAfter a four-year silence that ended with last year’s widely acclaimed Blond(e), Frank Ocean greeted 2017 with renewed vigor. On top of dropping a handful of new singles, he also released a dynamic playlist, “Blonded,” that appears far more personal and revelatory than the artist-branded content that label publicists crank out for streaming services. The first installment, revealed on February 24, included Celine Dion and Teen Suicide alongside obvious nods like Prince and Nina Simone. His March 10 update ventured further afield with jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, prog-pop enigma Todd Rundgren, and techno iconoclast Actress. And this most recent update from this past August features everyone from Frank Sinatra to Geto Boys to Japanese Breakfast. “Blonded” aspires to the ideal of music consumption in the streaming era—now that we can listen to everything, we can consume anything (and switch things up when the mood strikes). It remains to be seen if Frank Ocean’s ideological generosity will eventually manifest in his music.
9. Four Tet’s 60-Hour (And Counting) MegamixAt the time of this writing, the primary Spotify playlist by Four Tet (a.k.a UK producer/DJ Kieran Hebden) spans 695 songs and runs over 60 hours. By the time you read these words, it will have probably grown. Over the past few months, it seemed to serve primarily as a vehicle for Hebden to build anticipation for his ninth long-player, New Energy, mixing in tracks from the record with songs from peers (Bicep), inspirations (Sly Stone), and aliases (um, 00110100 01010100, which is the artist page stub where an album of Four Tet b-sides resides in Spotify). DJ mixes are a dime-a-dozen, and it’s not hard to find plenty by Four Tet out there in the ether. What’s much more rare to find is such a comprehensive compendium of all the sounds that go into an artist’s aesthetic. For a veteran like Hebden, an experimental cosmonaut who’s as likely to fold 2-step garage into his music as he is ‘70s jazz fusion or Nigerian funk (or…Selena Gomez), a standard 15-track playlist simply wouldn’t capture the breadth of his tastes. Hell, 10 of those wouldn’t. At nearly 700 tracks and counting, this mix is at least beginning to come close.
10. Ivanka Trump’s 991122 PlaylistEven in the streaming-dominant age, it’s still extremely rare for a playlist to make international headlines—but then this feat is probably only the 8,654th weirdest thing to happen under the current presidential administration. On October 15, Ivanka Trump posted this cryptically titled playlist to her Spotify profile, and given its timing (appearing 10 days before her and Jared Kushner’s eighth anniversary) and the egregiously lovey-dovey nature of the songs featured within, manymediaoutletsspeculated that the mix was designed as the soundtrack to a sexy-time couple’s retreat. However when you consider the themes of nostalgia (Adele’s “We Were Young,” Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man”) and looming separation (Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” Passenger’s “Let Her Go”) running throughout the playlist, it’s possible that Ivanka and Jared are actually preparing themselves for a different sort of getaway.
Throughout 2017, we here at The Dowsers have used playlists to provide an alternate lens on the most talked-about albums of the year, breaking down the records to reveal their key influences, collaborators, and sample sources. Here’s your opportunity to chronologically revisit the top records of 2017 with fresh ears:
There may be no other contemporary player who’s logged as many miles, taken as many left turns, or made as many friends on his musical journey than Thundercat. The artist more prosaically known as Stephen Bruner began playing bass at age 15, absorbing the lessons of jazz fusion greats like Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, and Jaco Pastorius. He soon joined his older brother Ronald Jr. as a member of Suicidal Tendencies, serving the L.A. thrash-funk-metal institution for the better part of a decade, while still making time to tour with Snoop Dogg and build a rep as a session musician for the likes of Erykah Badu and Bilal. Even after Thundercat established his own flair for spaced-out, vanguard R&B with his debut solo album The Golden Age of Apocalypse in 2011, he continued collaborations with Flying Lotus on the Brainfeeder label and forged a new one with Kendrick Lamar. He and brother Ron were also a part of Kamasi Washington’s formidable group for The Epic. The influence of these past hookups are easy to hear in the astonishingly diverse sounds of Drunk.
DAMN. is the sound of a young artist at the peak of his abilities delivering his music straight, no chaser. Each song feels as if it is coming from a different universe, be it the ‘90s slow ride of “HUMBLE.” or the futurist R&B of “LOVE.” or the absolutely bipolar “XXX.,” which travels between Metro Boomin minimalism, Public Enemy fury, and smooth boom-bap consciousness in the span of four minutes. Though Lamar’s influences are vast and easily traceable (the bassy Afrofuturism of Flying Lotus, the beat-poetry prophecies of the Last Poets, the self-aware party-rap of OutKast), on DAMN. he synthesizes them effortlessly, letting his own musical voice shine through more clearly than ever before.
The candor that Mac DeMarco display on This Old Dog—in which he reflects on a fraught relationship with his father—is one element that evokes his ‘70s singer/songwriter heroes, a pantheon that includes James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Harry Nilsson. Yet the music’s effervescence and spirit of playfulness demonstrate his deep devotion to mavericks like Jonathan Richman and Yellow Magic Orchestra just as clearly. All the while, he inches closer to his long-stated ambition to make an album as strong as his favorites, with Neil Young’s Harvest and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band as a couple he often cites. Any way you slice it, This Old Dog is a shockingly mature effort for a guy who remains famous for interrupting a gig to stick a drumstick up his butt.
Though her existence has changed immeasurably since “Royals” broke her wide in 2013, Lorde has not lost the unabashed fandom that’s proven to be one of her most endearing qualities. Indeed, she’s continued to be a rarity as a young artist who expresses a keen understanding of a remarkably diverse array of new and old sounds without sounding derivative of any of them in particular. And while many of the most dramatic moments of her sophomore album Melodrama do suggest the influence of a few of her most-cherished touchstones—single “Liability” is a close cousin to Kate Bush’s “The Man With the Child In His Eyes,” for instance—the connection between her own music and the stuff she loves is more a matter of shared energy and attitude.
SZA has been upfront about her eclectic influences. She’s indebted to powerful vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald and Lauryn Hill, who grew up near SZA’s hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey. She’s professed love for Purity Ring, who produced “God’s Reign,” an Ab-soul song on which SZA appears. And SZA’s music exudes a calming effect akin to that of Little Dragon, blending elements of other genres to push R&B into stranger and more interesting territory. It must be difficult to be a singer on a Top Dawg Entertainment roster dominated by rappers, but a few years of background work seemed only to prime SZA for a stronger solo debut.
Flower Boy is Tyler’s coming-out party. It’s the point where Odd Future’s enfant terrible pulls off the bandages, and reveals a true(r), more mature self. He still has the same tools in his kit—he’s still ripping off the Neptunes, and he’s still a very self-conscious provocateur—but he does refine, expand, and, ultimately, negate his prior persona. It’s an exciting and unexpected transformation.
American Dream—an alternately moody, anthemic, inspirational, cranky, and expansive masterwork if there ever was one—sounds like it could’ve fit into David Bowie’s back catalog. If you’re looking for a precise location, it’d be between Low and Lodger, the point in Bowie’s Berlin tenure when he shifted from Krautrock- and Kraftwerk-influenced experimentalism into a harder rock and dance sensibility. Yet the most Bowie-esque element of the new album is its adventurous spirit, something that’s continually been part of the LCD Soundsystem aesthetic as Murphy refined and extended the hallmarks first heard in the dance-punk moment of early-‘00s New York.
Harmony of Difference is the soundtrack to a film by A.G. Rojas that premiered during the Biennial at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2017, and it shows the growth and diversification of Washington’s sound. He already draws heavily from the often overlooked glory days of the early ’70s when musicians extended the jazz tradition into rock, funk, and African music. Deeper grooves power some of the tracks on Harmony, and the solos are more concise—where The Epic’s definitive tracks clocked in at longer than 10 minutes, the best music here often comes in under six. All of Washington’s stylistic advances are represented on “Truth,” which also provides a nifty recapitulation of what made The Epic so special, with its robust rhythms, a choir carrying a soaring melody, and a solo that would do John Coltrane proud. It’s jazz eclecticism at its best—music that is both inclusive and deeply artful.
Now 23, Archy Marshall has applied his inherent cool to two King Krule LPs, both of which feature an inimitable postmodern pastiche of blues, dub, lounge, hip-hop, jazz, downtempo, and experimental noir. His latest, The OOZ, is an itchy, bleary smear of atmosphere and attitude, swinging on saxophone and laden with songs about marginalized Bohemian existence, sung in Marshall’s tongue-swallowing Cockney twang. Given his lifelong exposure to off-the-radar music, it’s no surprise that Marshall’s stated influences—and the less obvious ones—comprise a sonic roadmap through the global underground. From ’80s New York no wave to golden-era hip-hop to mid-century country crooners to Jamaican classics to of-the-moment indie agitators, King Krule has swallowed it all and spit out something wholly unique and utterly captivating.
Taking a plunge into Karin Elisabeth Dreijer’s sound world can be as unsettling as it is exhilarating. Even though the sometimes brutal yet oddly buoyant electro-pop of her (now-defunct) sibling duo The Knife remains a fundamental element of the songs she creates as Fever Ray, the project continues to expose her broad range of influences, from dark metal to African music to the soundtracks of David Lynch and Miami Vice to the work of Meredith Monk and Kate Bush. And while the cumulative effect can be as chilly as a New Year’s Eve party in Göteborg, there’s always a charge—and sometimes even a warmth—thanks to the stormy emotions and vulnerabilities that exist just below the surface.
When we ask artists to curate a playlist for The Dowsers, we request two things: a) their list of 10-20 songs, and b) a brief statement explaining their playlist concept. We’d like to thank all the artists who shared their collections with us this year—each provided a unique insight into their influences and obsessions. But we were especially amazed by the notable names listed below. They didn’t just provide us with a simple synoposis of their playlist, they crafted lovingly detailed liner notes that encourage you to follow along at home. Click on the links below for the full experience, and click here to browse our complete collection of artist-curated playlists.Dennis Lyxzén’s Favorite Songs From the American UnderbellyThe frontman for Refused, The (International) Noise Conspiracy and, currently, INVSN took us on a journey into the dark side of the States: “Growing up in the north of Sweden as a working-class kid there are certain elements of American culture that fascinate and enthrall ... under the glamour and glitz, there’s a darkness and depth that give way to a more nuanced picture of America.”Partner’s Favorite Songs to Get Stoned ToListen to Partner’s delightful debut album, In Search of Lost Time, and you will quickly learn that Canada’s foremost queer-positive fuzz-pop duo are also massive potheads. For this Dowsers playlist, they reveal the songs they like to crank up when they spark up, from Young Thug to Black Sabbath.Sweet Apple’s Songs of Sorrow PlaylistSweet Apple is the power-pop supergroup featuring vocalist John Petkovic and guitarist Tim Parnin of Cobra Verde, and bassist Dave Sweetapple and drummer J. Mascis of Witch. (You may also know the latter from another band.) To mark the release of their second album, Sing the Night in Sorrow, Petkovic created this Dowsers playlist featuring songs from the record, and the classic tracks that directly inspired them, from Devo to the Get Smart theme.Dale Crover’s Favorite Drummers / Buzz Osborne’s Favorite GuitaristsThe founding members of veteran sludge-masters The Melvins provided separate playlists saluting the preeminent players of their respective professions—though they both skipped over the obvious names to shine a light on more unsung heroes.Sparks’ Favorite SongsNow approaching their 50th (!) year as a band, Sparks (a.k.a. Ron and Russell Mael) have been at the forefront of many crucial developments in pop music—glam rock, electronic disco, New Wave, neoclassical baroque ‘n’ roll—and have put their own singular, absurdist stamp on them all. As their fabulous recent release, Hippopotamus, proves, Sparks’ flair for extravagant art-pop and whip-smart lyricism remains undiminished. And as their contribution to The Dowsers attests, nobody puts together a playlist quite like the Brothers Mael.Dälek’s Unsung Hip-Hop Heroes PlaylistSince the late ‘90s, New Jersey trio Dälek has been pushing hip-hop into harsh, dissonant realms, and their latest album, Endangered Philosophies (Ipecac Recordings), honors their reputation for raw rhymes, bruising beats, and extreme sonics. On this playlist, the crew’s namesake MC salutes his fellow rap iconoclasts: “This is a collection of songs and groups that move me. It is a playlist of underground musicians who each, in their own way, have pushed the culture of hip-hop forward. What strikes me is the sheer variety of styles, sounds, and experimentation here.”Uni’s Ultimate Glam-Rock PlaylistUni are a fab new glitter-rock trio from NYC featuring Nico Fuzz, David Strange, and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, best known for collaborating with Sean Ono Lennon in their psych-pop outfit The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger. The band recently released their starry-eyed first single, “What’s the Problem?,” with a full-length coming out in early 2018 on Ono Lennon’s Chimera Music label. To give you a taste of what to expect, the group curated a playlist that salutes their glitter-rock gods—and provided highly informative, totally fact-checked, irrefutable liner notes about each song’s creation.Shirley Manson Presents: Take All of My Broken Toys and Fix Them All—A Sad-Songs-Only PlaylistStill flying high on their 2016 release, Strange Little Birds, and their summer 2017 tour with Blondie, alt-rock icons Garbage also recently released a coffee-table book chronicling their two-decade history, titled This Is the Noise That Keeps Me Awake. But on this playlist, frontwoman Shirley Manson reveals the songs she turns to when she wants to cry herself to sleep.Tremor’s Latin American GamechangersTremor recently issued the Ave Reina Mora EP, which finds the veteran trio continuing to fuse Argentian folk traditons and modern electronic production in fascinating new ways. For this playlist, they salute the artists who’ve been at the frontlines of Latin American musical revolutions dating back to the 1940s up to today. “LatAm Gamechangers is a playlist of Latin American musicians that are of defining influence in our band’s opinion. Their approach to LatAm folklore music was daring for their time. They took risks and, in some particular cases, they experimented with elements, sounds, and arrangements that sometimes took decades for the audience and even other musicians to catch up with.”Los Macuanos Presents: Apocalyptic Political TheaterIn the spring of 2017, Tijuana avant-electronic duo Los Macuanos released their third album, Epilogo, an equally impressionistic and visceral work that reverberates with the unrest felt all over the world this year. Their playlist of key influences also doubles as a history of politically provocative electronic music: “There are common threads in all the works featured on this list: a global-mindedness that still references regional politics; an exploration of the body and identity as affected by larger systems of oppression; and a decolonial and hyper-aware approach to cultural referencing. It is, in broad strokes, the sound of living in the perpetual, perceived end of history.”
Playlists allow you to play the role of musical tourist, immersing you in a regional scene on the other side of the world without the need for airfare. Or sometimes, the scene is less a geographic construct than a spiritual one, coalescening around a record label or common, internet-facilitated aesthetic. These are the scenes we were drawn to over the past year:
The emergence of a viable rap scene in Seattle didn’t happen overnight. Even as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis briefly took over the pop airwaves with “Thrift Shop” in 2012, less-celebrated artists were determining the future of the Northwest city’s sound. In fact, much of the Seattle rap underground resembles other U.S. homegrown scenes that formed in the wake of indie rap icons like Lil B and Odd Future: The music is amorphous and electronic, the lyrics tend toward chemically enhanced streams-of-consciousness (with Shabazz Palaces’ surreal, Afrocentric-inspired treatises serving as a touchstone), and there are enough sonic quirks to make you want to crawl down a SoundCloud wormhole.
Profound Lore was founded in 2004 by Chris Bruni as a casual venture, but within a few years it grew to be a serious metal label. Based in Kitchener, Ontario—about an hour’s drive west of Toronto—Profound Lore has produced some of the most vital voices in contemporary black, experimental, and heavy metal.
Chicago’s underground has been on fire the past few years. Every other week seems to deliver a new batch of releases from the Hausu Mountain label, purveyors of madcap electronics and cyborg-bopping eccentricity. The shadowy Beau Wanzer, whose icy and forlorn productions disintegrate the divide between post-punk and techno, is nearly as prolific—and that’s just one dude. And then there’s Jaime Fennelly’s always progressing Mind Over Mirrors project: his latest album, the critically lauded Undying Color, wanders dense, rippling expanses of pastoral art folk and baroque électronique. For this playlist, we focus primarily on musicians, bands, and oddball geniuses who stalk the back alleys, linking DIY electronics, industrial, droning experimentation, and mutant dance music.
Maybe it’s the cheap rent that’s essential for sustaining the vitality and vibrancy of artists and culture in a modern metropolis, or maybe it’s the proximity to beloved landmarks and bit players from The Wire and the movies of John Waters; either way, Baltimore continues to thrive as a musical hotbed, one that retains a fierce loyalty among the many great acts born and bred there. With the release of Future Islands’ fifth album, The Far Field, we celebrated the city’s indie scene with a playlist of Baltimore acts you may already know and love (Beach House, Dan Deacon), and others who deserve more than hometown-hero status, like Ed Schrader’s Music Beat and relative newbies Sun Club.
Los Angeles rappers have a propensity for giving themselves two letter names. YG is the city’s most well-known export, but there’s also RJ, AD, T.F, and KR. Most of these artists have collaborated with each other, and are a hit or two away from breaking through at the national level. This playlist contains songs by these two-letter rappers, as well as the rest of the city’s best young talent.
On what feels like a weekly basis nowadays, Dais Records revive some long-forgotten synth/ambient masterpiece or a vintage industrial jam that’s exquisitely dark and dreary. Dais isn’t just an archival label, however—their catalog features churning brutality from hardcore-troublemakers-turned-EBM-fist-pumpers Youth Code, and Sightings, the most important noise-rock band of the 21st century. And not everything Dais puts out seeks to obliterate eardrums: On top of their taste for the ugly and abrasive, they have a deep love for the beautiful and sublime.
Home to international stars like Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and, um, Die Antwoord, South Africa has always been known for its music. Even during the days of apartheid, this country of 55 million people was a hotbed for pop, jazz, choral, and dance music. While Paul Simon worked with South African musicians back in the 1980s to make his career-defining album Graceland, these days it’s artists and label heads like Kode9 who are looking to the country amid the rising global popularity of gqom, the moody, broken-beat take on South African house that was first divined with the help of cracked Fruity Loops setups in the coastal city of Durban.
Afrobeats is the sound you heard on pop radio for much of 2016. It’s not to be confused with Afrobeat, the funk-based form that Fela Kuti made famous in the 1970s. Afrobeats emerged from Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana in the mid-to-late 2000s, and serves as an African response to post-millennial hip-hop, electronic music, Jamaican reggae and dancehall, and R&B. There are tracks that rely on familiar tropes—Auto-Tuned vocals, English-language lyrics about partying and sex—as well as build upon distinctive traditions like highlife and Afrobeat, resulting in songs that could only be African.
As cassette tapes and CDs proliferated in the ‘80 and ‘90s, music began to travel to uncharted territories—like small villages in South America. And thanks to the vast reach of MTV and, later the internet, that cultural cross-pollination has only accelerated. One of the more intriguing results of this process has been the rise of Latin American shoegaze: young South American musicians in thrall to U.K. bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride, but putting their own spin on the genre.
SoundCloud rap sounds like an extension of a thread that arguably began in 2010 with Odd Future. As the genre of rap becomes more notional than actual—lyrics are harmonized and sung in barely recognizable hip-hop cadences, and beats are reduced to murky approximations of a boom-bap tempo—MCs trade form for texture, and professionalism for bellicosity. SoundCloud rappers are representative of the genre’s post-regional phase, when it’s no longer uncommon for a Philadelphia hook-man like Lil Uzi to sound like a trapper from Atlanta, a Texas melodicist like Post Malone to sound like a rapper/singer from Chicago, or a Florida bedroom producer like SpaceGhostPurrp to sound like a gangster from Memphis.
Even if you dont take part in Christmas (whether its because of religious reasons, a disdain for the hyper-commercialized culture surrounding it, or youre just a miserable bastard), you can at least appreciate the fact that, if you only for a day, the world seems to slow down just a little. The streets are emptier, social-media notifications seem more infrequent, and the possibility of receiving work-related emails after-hours momentarily diminishes. And hey, in an age where our smartphones have all but genetically fused with our fingers, thats something even this Jew can all celebrate.In that spirit, weve put together a playlist of songs that may be (directly or tangentially) about Christmas, but theyre nobodys idea of a traditional Christmas song. Sure, some of them actually chronicle the birth of a certain future messiah, but in Big Stars "Jesus Christ," Alex Chilton announces his arrival with all the matter-of-fact nonchalance of a newspaper birth notice, while Lou Barlows beautifully blasphemous "Mary" posits that the whole immaculate-conception deal was concocted by JCs mom to disguise the fact she was knocked up by the man next door. (Neil Young goes one further by suggesting, "Maybe the star of Bethlehem/ Wasnt a star at all.")Other songs here delve into the dark side of the season, be it portraits of drug addicts with no capacity for holiday cheer (The Falls "No Xmas for John Quays"), or cautionary tales about beaten-up department-store Santas (The Kinks "Father Christmas). Or there are songs where Christmas is merely invoked as the fantastical backdrop to animal-liberation missions (The Flaming Lips "Christmas at the Zoo") or as an ironic counterpoint to scenes of everyday urban malaise (Run the Jewels "A Christmas Fucking Miracle"). And then are the abstract instrumentals (Mogwais "Xmas Steps" and Aphex Twins "XMAS_EVET10[120][thanaton3mix]) whose Christmas connection may not amount to anything more than a randomly applied song title, but nonetheless carry a palpable wintry chill.So if youre the sort of person who wouldnt be caught dead in a Santa hat, or you have a burning desire to tell the carollers outside to fa-la-la-la-fuck-off, heres a Christmas playlist for atheists and assholes alike.
"Is this the end of America?" Lana Del Rey asked this question over and over again on her fever-dreamy "When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing," her voice trembling and swooping as she pondered an existential query that spoke to my heart in 2017, too. The stream of headlines touting rollbacks and tax cuts for the super-rich, the heightened Tweetstorms, the Facebook comment wars, the sky looking just a little bit more tinged with gray every day—it was a rough year for everyone.Music helped. Kendrick Lamars DAMN. was a potent parable no matter how you arranged its tracklisting; most of it could probably make it onto this playlist, but I especially enjoyed "DNA.," a rebuttal to stereotypes of black America that has the added bonus of making failed Al Capone excavator Geraldo Rivera look like a particular fool. MCs like Jeezy and Dreezy also addressed the current situation, and Rihanna spat acid-tinged fire on N.E.R.D.s confrontational "Lemon." Foxs Star, which balanced the pulpy with the political in its two post-Trump-election seasons, called back to the civil rights era with the storming "America Dreaming."Its worth noting that few of the explicitly political songs by even the biggest artists crossed over to radio, which attempted to remain neutral in the wake of the nations torment. While the bleaker global mood was certainly reflected in Logics anti-suicide dirge "1-800-273-8255," Khalids doomed-generation anthem "Young Dumb & Broke," and Post Malones hazy, irritating dive into self-loathing "rockstar," the conditions that led to this malaise were taboo. Blame the precarious financial situation of pop radios corporate parents, or the nationally determined nature of the stations playlists, but the relative crappiness of songs like "rockstar" compared to charged-up hits of the past like Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Youngs "Ohio" (or this years cover by Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste, soul revivalist Leon Bridges, and guitar demigod Gary Clark Jr.) made plain just how shared problems being talked around robbed radio of a crucial spark. (If only streaming-music services included "Political" as a mood... although Spotifys "Im with the banned" project, which paired American musicians with artists from countries affected by this years attempts at a travel ban, is a good start.)Either way, President Donald Trump is likely happy that hes affected the mood of so many people, even if those who referenced him specifically didnt have many nice things to say about him or his friends. Juliana Hatfield took on Trumps administration on the ferocious Pussycat, which featured the gently grooving reckoning "Kellyanne"; Randy Newman used Russian president Vladimir Putins life as fodder for the rollicking "Putin"; Neil Young mused about "A gameshow host/ Who has to brag and has to boast" on the shuffling "Almost Always." Propagandhi used some of the more vulgar snippets from the leaked tape of Trumps gross 2005 chat with Access Hollywoods Billy Bush to underscore the point of "Adventures in Zoochosis."Not all of this years political songs focused on Washingtons reality-TV circus. Austras mournful "43" was a deliberately downtempo stomp written in memory of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College who were kidnapped in Iguala, Mexico in 2014; Belle & Sebastians brightly strident "The Girl Doesnt Get It" gave a tongue-lashing to Brexit supporters; Pissed Jeans grinding "Its Your Knees" took self-loathing masculinity to task, while Margo Prices swaying "Pay Gap" was a working-womans anthem that aimed its lightly worn vitriol at "rich white men" who view women as housework-capable pets.And then there was the years most unexpectedly gripping political statement, which wasnt about the Trump administration specifically but which might as well have been. In June, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released Murder of the Universe, their second album since February (of a promised five in 2017); its a sci-fi rock opera replete with chillingly ominous narration and flutes and frantic riffing. It tells the tale of a cyborg who builds a "Soy-Protein Munt Machine," a self-loathing apparatus designed to cover the world in vomit. The apparatus eventually balks at its mission, so the cyborg takes over, finding unfathomable pleasure in utter destruction—"I turn lakes into porridge and buildings into bile/ I am a noxious soup filling valleys with vomit-torrents/ Castles crumble in landslides and I munch the rubble/ It tastes good," he robotically growls over the finale and title tracks increasingly clamorous musical bed. (Sorry for giving away the ending.) The nihilistic pleasure that the protagonist takes in destroying absolutely everything had a particular resonance when it came out in June—sample the New York Times headline from that week: "Can Trump Destroy Obama’s Legacy?"—but the albums combination of absurdity, grossness, and musical audacity added up to a stunning comment on 2017 that one can easily freak out alongside.After the murder, however, comes the process of rebirth, and more than a few artists were expectantly looking toward the horizon in search of better days. Björks enveloping "Tabula Rasa" is a prayer for the next generation, hoping to envelop them in as much "grace and dignity" for as long as possible; Big K.R.I.T.s gospel-jazz cacophony "The Light," from his towering double album 4Eva Is A Mighty Long Time, brings Robert Glasper and Bilal along for his trip to a more welcoming home; Vic Mensa and Ty Dolla $igns "We Could Be Free" and Miguels "Now" also offer messages of determination.Hulus adaptation of Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale wound up being one of the most talked-about episodics of 2017, both because of the eerie parallels between Atwoods dystopian visions and the greater (read: more traditionally patriarchal) America staked out by the Fox-evangelicalist likes of Mike Pence. The book and shows Latin refrain—“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”—got loosely translated into English and turned into a rallying cry for Kesha on "Bastards," the opening track to her triumphant comeback Rainbow. "Dont let the bastards get you down, oh no/ Dont let the assholes wear you out," she wails with increasing fervor, a choir eventually joining in. Taken with civil-rights veteran Mavis Staples powerful "No Time For Crying" ("No time for tears/ Weve got work to do/ Weve got work to do," she belts over simmering country-soul), its a rejoinder to Lana Del Reys plaint, a firm "hell no" rooted in a desire to make the world better not just for the present, but for future generations.
Pop songs with party sounds in them constitute a genre of their own, one that we’ll call party-sounds pop. I mean this literally, as these songs contain the actual sounds of celebration (laughter, genial greetings and affirmations, clinking bottles and glasses, general carousing) and loosely, because songs with party sounds in them are almost always party songs. They are songs about partying, with the sounds of partying in them, meant to incite partying or augment partying already in progress. How meta!The majority of these songs sound like they were recorded in a studio packed with people engaged in actual partying; imagining these scenes of debauchery is part of the fun in hearing these songs. Others sound like they were edited to include field recordings or found sounds, sometimes in experimental ways, like Dean Martins "(Open Up the Door and) Let the Good Times In," The Beach Boys "Wonderful," and Van Morrisons "Virgo Clowns." Live songs with audience noise in them were not considered, unless the audience sounds more like a party than a concert crowd (see: "Let Me Clear My Throat" by DJ Kool, "Mercy Mercy Mercy" by Cannonball Adderley, "Voodoo Chile" by Hendrix). Some, despite the mirth, are melancholy ("Tracks of My Tears" by the Pharoahs, "Undone - The Sweater Song" by Weezer, "Good Times" by Eric Burdon & the Animals, a song that presages Modest Mouses "The Good Times Are Killing Me" by 37 years).Regardless of the particulars, the ultimate effect of putting party sounds in a pop song is a sense of living, breathing atmosphere. It creates narrative and adds context, putting you right there in the song, sharing a high point of someones life. Also, hearing party sounds is infectious. Run this playlist to a room of people on the brink of a good time and youre all but guaranteed to tip the proceedings into full-blown throwdown.
Are you all year-end-listed-out at this point? Well, we regret to inform you we have one more for you. But this one looks forward instead of back, collecting the most tantalizing teasers from albums due in 2018. Hear ace new tunes from reigning chart royalty (Migos), returning mid-2000s sensations (Franz Ferdinand, The Go! Team, Fall Out Boy, MGMT), returning early-2010s sensations (Rhye, Tune-Yards), bubbling-under phenoms due to break through in a big way (Hookworms, Lucy Dacus, Rayvn Lenae, and Kyle Craft, pictured above), still-vital ‘90s veterans (Superchunk, Belle & Sebastian, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Efrim Manuel Menuck), and left-field curios who’ll soon be your new favorite bands (Texan Thai-funk fusionists Khruangbin, Tijuana shoegazers Mint Field). And cap it all off with what’s either the weirdest Jack White song yet or a messily edited audio trailer for what sounds like Jack White’s weirdest album yet. Hit play and feel the future—because 2017 is soooooo last year.
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Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
