The 52 Albums I Listened to in 2017, Part I: 52-32

In April, two of my friends constructed, with much assistance from the internet, a list of 365 albums they were going to listen to in as many days. Many, but not all, were considered classics. Some were just albums they wanted to cross off their personal lists. With a few exceptions though, neither of them had heard any albums on the list before, so the whole thing was meant to be an exercise in music self-education. For each album they listened to, they provided ratings, their favorite songs, and brief reviews, which were contained in a lengthy Google spreadsheet.

They asked if I wanted in on this. I told them I had no intention of doing the whole 365, but I agreed to pick those on the list that interested me or that I heard were essentials.

The idea worked longer than you might expect, with one friend filling almost all his cells in the spreadsheet into early August and the other giving his ratings and reviews here and there, but when school started, it became harder to keep up with the list, and the thing just kind of faded away.

However, I kept selectively participating, and on my own, I started listening to other albums I'd heard or read about, or which otherwise got my attention.

I don't pretend to know exactly how many albums I tend to average in a year, but by late November, I started to think that I had to have listened to more than whatever that average was. I created my own spreadsheet where I listed and ranked all the albums I had listened to since the beginning of 2017, and, noticing I was not far away from 50, decided to make that my new goal. When, with a couple weeks left, I reached 50, I got the idea to add on a couple more.

So, I can say that in 2017, I listened to 52 albums in 52 weeks. (Hardly 365 in 365 days, but it's something.) Beginning below, I ranked and reviewed each of those 52 albums. Some I actively sought out, and some I happened to be in the room and heard.

I've divided them into three groups: the top 10; and then the top and bottom halves of the rest. Here is the bottom half, numbers 52 through 32.

52. Toxicity, System of a Down

For moments of Toxicity, I am astounded at the technical ability and time changes involved in some of its songs. It's an impressively complex album that constantly switches from slow to fast to mellow to angry to sad. Throw in some nice riffs, and there are things to like here.

The problem is that few times does it feel truly cohesive. Toxicity is the musical equivalent of a high-speed car crash, with pieces flying everywhere and the listener experiencing whiplash multiple times. It was a painful slog to get through to the end of this album, where "Aerials," the only track that cares about basic song structure, awaits those intrepid few who make it. The journey is made worse by some of the most ham-fisted lyrics I've ever heard. "Chop Suey!" is the one song on the album in which the erratic style works even a little, but it's not near enough to save this record. I hated it.

51. Lonerism, Tame Impala

Hardly a bad album; I can see its appeal, especially as someone who loves the synthy auditory journeys of Pink Floyd. Lonerism, with its heaping doses of electronics, was just way too far outside of my tastes.

50. Dummy, Portishead

Months removed from my first listen, I cannot remember anything from Dummy. According to my review in the spreadsheet, I "like[d] how layered the sound was, but the half-whispered vocals" and focus on rhythm-based song structures "[weren't] my thing." As with Lonerism, I understood how someone could like it, even if I did not.

49. Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots, The Flaming Lips

I tried to like Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots. Despite its apparent creativity, I could not get over how electronic it was, even if it did not approach the levels that Tame Impala did. It was also just generally a little weird.

48. Bleach, Nirvana

Bleach could be really good, but even the high points were marred by excessive feedback and often indecipherable vocals. Most of the album was just too raw. While I got that that was kind of the idea, it was bothersome.

47. Emperor of Sand, Mastodon

An incredible disappointment. The closest Mastodon has ever gotten to pop. (Though they are still decidedly not pop music.)

46. Audioslave, Audioslave

My biggest question is how this album lasts more than an hour. All the songs are the same. Despite some incredible talent on guitar and vocals, it felt like they ran out of ideas very quickly and failed to do anything unique or impressive.

45. In Absentia, Porcupine Tree

My roommates really liked In Absentia after being alarmed by its opening, which promised a progressive metal album. I was disappointed and underwhelmed when that promise went unfulfilled and I was treated to unremarkable early-2000s hard alternative rock. The back half picked up a bit, but it never became too interesting.

44. [Untitled], Sigur Ros

Nice, atmospheric music that sometimes meanders. Not much else to say.

43. In Utero, Nirvana

If you combined the best parts of Bleach with those of In Utero, you would have a legitimately great album. But that is not the case. While I appreciate the existence of such aggressive, personal music that was (and remains) immensely popular, when the goal is to make something unpleasant, it can be hard to get into the music.

I liked In Utero a decent bit more than Bleach because it was more refined and less obsessed with feedback. Both were very hit-or-miss; In Utero had more hits. I do not really get why everyone thinks so highly of "Rape Me," but I enjoyed "Serve the Servants," "Dumb," and "All Apologies." The whole album seemed like it had more direction than Nirvana's debut.

(Somehow, I never got around to Nevermind, which I understand is like watching the Star Wars Original Trilogy except for Empire Strikes Back. I intend to hear it at some point.)

42. Moanin' in the Moonlight, Howlin' Wolf

While I always liked blues-based rock bands like Led Zeppelin or AC/DC, diving into the work of Stevie Ray Vaughan has inspired me to explore more of rock's forefathers and pioneers, especially if they had a direct influence on Vaughan specifically.

As the result of this effort, I found my way to Howlin' Wolf. Moanin' in the Moonlight features "Smokestack Lightning," a song with a brilliantly simple riff and impressive vocals. After that, there were not a ton of songs to which I really clung, but I more or less liked it and saw its importance.

41. Grace, Jeff Buckley

Good enough. Gutiarwork was understated but good; Buckley's singing could too often lean on falsetto but conveyed enough emotion.

40. Hardwired... To Self-Destruct, Metallica

I knew exactly what I was getting when I listened to Hardwired... To Self-Destruct, and that was the problem: Metallica, like a lot of older metal bands, have entered the rut of getting by on their name and past successes much more than they are on the quality of their new releases. Some artists evolve in old age; many others throw up their hands and put out what people want, which is what Metallica did here.

Hardwired... To Self-Destruct is far from a bad record. It's just Metallica trying to sound like Metallica, which is unimaginative and ingenuine.

39. The Last in Line, Dio

If you remove Ronnie James Dio;s vocals, this is a pretty plain 80s metal album apart from the two highlights, the title track and "Egypt (The Chains Are On)." His presence makes it a lot better than that, but not near enough for me to consider it a real classic.

38. Nonagon Infinity, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

A roommate played Nonagon Infinity while we were studying. I took a moment to check this album's Wikipedia page, and two things stuck out to me:

1. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their first album in 2012. Nonagon Infinity is their eighth, and in 2017, they released five more.

2. Edgar Wright is a huge fan of this album. This makes total sense, because from start to finish, it is an onslaught. Just about every song is a high-speed rocker that fades almost seamlessly into the next one. (This includes the last and first tracks: the album works as a perfect loop.) I admire the musicianship that went into this, and I wouldn't call it unenjoyable, but it's just a bit too much for me.

37. Origin of Symmetry, Muse

My brushes with Muse in the past have been fairly brief: I played "Knights of Cydonia" on Guitar Hero III; everyone heard "Uprising" until it was beaten into the planet's core; and I ran into various songs here and there, finding that despite the band's mainstream successes and presence in Twilight (the most uncool of all middle and high school phenomena), they were seemingly considered reputable by the people I knew who liked similar music as I.

Still: Until Origin of Symmetry, I never took any full-on dives into Muse. Now that I have, I can report that they are perfectly okay, albeit not a band whose work I really want to pursue further. I listen to the heavy opener, "New Born," every so often, but that is the only song on the album that has made it into my rotation.

I was bothered a bit by how frequently Matthew Bellamy breathed directly into the microphone, and by how it felt at moments he was trying out an impression of an even angstier Thom Yorke, but I thought his vocals were pretty much fine. The same goes for the rest of the record.

36. It Still Moves, My Morning Jacket

It Still Moves is a good album that is soaked in reverb and lasts too long without changing enough between most songs.

35. Thickfreakness, The Black Keys

If you've heard The Big Come Up, the band's debut, you've heard Thickfreakness. I like its bluesy style, but it doesn't even attempt to innovate.

34. ¡ Torquila Torquila !, Quaker City Night Hawks

The Quaker City Night Hawks are a DFW-based band that deals mainly in an interesting fusion of modern alt-rock, blues rock, and general Texanness. There are not many songs on ¡ Torquila Torquila ! that astound the listener or stick out from any of the others, but I thought it was quite solid overall.

33. The Who Sings My Generation, The Who

This is not the same The Who that helped define classic rock. This first album is kind of a work in progress, with proto-punk classics in "My Generation" and "The Kids Are Alright" and brief signs of their eventual sound on "The Ox." It is mostly straightforward music that happens to feature Keith Moon occasionally doing something crazy.

32. Changes, Charles Bradley

I first heard of Charles Bradley, as I am sure so many did, from a friend who knew I like Black Sabbath and who wanted me to check out this old soul singer's cover of "Changes." I did check it out, and I was mightily impressed: Bradley's weathered voice was powerful, and while "Changes" is far from typical Black Sabbath, you never really expect anything by Black Sabbath to work so well as soul. But Bradley makes it his own.

There's much more to the album than the title track. Once you get past the awkward spoken word introduction of "God Bless America," there is plenty to like in Bradley's classic 70s style. Perhaps a trained listener of soul music could tell me it is all derivative and unoriginal, but as I am not a purist, I had no problems enjoying it.

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Next time, we do 31 through 11.