Top 10 albums of 2017

ARCADE FIRE Everything Now

The best album of 2017 is loud, joyous, melodious, funky, cool, quirky, innovative and topical, with strong undertones of melancholy and great lyrics. In other words, yet another proof (the fifth consecutively) that Arcade Fire is the greatest indie rock band in the world.

FEVER RAY Plunge

Karin Dreijer's second album under her moniker Fever Ray could easily be misconstrued as a new album by The Knife, her now defunct musical collaboration with her DJ brother Olof, because it explores the same beautiful, disturbing sound and similar subjects of love and anxiety. But with Plunge, Fever Ray has taken her artistic sensibilities to new, ultra-weird levels, as exemplified by the accompanying artwork, some of which look like the self-portraits of a mad woman. In all, a rather demanding but very rewarding electronic album.

JOHN CARPENTER 

Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998

After two albums of original material, film director John Carpenter has now assembled the ultimate collection of his film scores, with absolute classics like Halloween and Escape from New York at the core, but also featuring lesser well-known gems like Assault on Precinct 13 and Ennio Morricone's The Thing. All presented in an innovative and glossy format that is both state-of-the-art but also suitably retro in the best possible sense, resulting in 42 minutes of pure ecstasy.

CREEPER Eternity, in Your Arms

I remember a time when it was generally accepted that punk was dead. These days however, I would say that punk is very much alive and well, especially in England, where you can find acts like Slaves, Idles, Sleaford Mods and new-comers Creeper. Their remarkable debut is a real pick-me-up, full of ceaseless punky, poppy hard rock energy and drive that's catchy as hell. Although they sometimes sound a little bit too much like My Chemical Romance, there are moments, particularly during the more quiet and calmer songs, when you can hear that they have a lot more talent and ambition than that. 

TEMPLES Volcano

On their new album, Temples' first since 2014, the English band has perfected their Beatles-like psychedelic pop to bring a multifaceted and extremely charming album, which could just as easily have fitted in during the British Invasion in the mid-60s and it feels at home in 2017

OMD The Punishment of Luxury

Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark's third album since their reformation in 2006 is another top-notch synthpop album and although they've now been around for 40 years, they don't sound like they've aged a day, with the same beautiful Kraftwerk-inspired sound that have put them, in my opinion, at the top of their field. The Punishment of Luxury is the most uplifting denouncement of the modern age you're likely to hear.

MYRKUR Mareridt

The second album from goth rocker Myrkur ("Darkness" in Danish) is a real masterpiece, one that seamlessly blends different styles and sounds, including black metal and viking-like folk music. With Myrkur's voice as versatile and wide-ranging as the music, what the award-winning Mareridt amounts to is proper escapist music that will fill your head with images of fjords, dark forests, dragons and witchcraft

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG Rest

Charlotte Gainsbourg is not just a great actress, she's also an accomplished singer-songwriter. Rest is in fact her fith album, so this is not a case of an actress dabbling in music on the side; music is in fact Gainsbourg's first vocation. Rest is a wonderful collection of ultracool and supersad songs, alternating between the French chanson tradition that she got from her father and the British indie pop sensibility of her generation, featuring funky collaborations with none other than Paul McCartney and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk. 

BLANCK MASS World Eater

A difficult album to define. It's not exactly dance music, though there is a lot of rhythm to it. It has a lot of chillout moments on it, but they are too offset by splendid noise to be chillwave. It has the hypnotic quality of a good trance album, without being trance music. I guess the closest term is ambient techno. But what it is is a strong, imaginative, original experiment in electronic music that (calling the wolf chops on the cover to mind) alternately bites you and then licks your wounds. 

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD 

Murder of the Universe

In 2017, Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released five albums, which in itself is an impressive feat, made even more so by the fact that one of them is an epic concept album of outrageous proportions. Murder of the Universe tells three weird tales, mixing song and narration ingeniously, but must be listened to from start to finish to be properly appreciated. Definitely not for all tastes, but for those who are interested this is a 46-minute voyage with music that is dark, heavy, complex, freaky, macabre and utterly brilliant.