The Smu Reviews

2017 End of the year review

There’s been a lot of great stuff out this year so I’m going to do both an albums and a singles/tracks list. 

Albums

White Lies – Friends: Electro retro crooner pop with soul and squidgy bits.
Highlight Track: Is My Love Enough?

Lana Del Rey – Lust For Life: Lana doing what Lana does best, with a little help from her friends.
Highlight Track: Beautiful People Beautiful Problems

Rationale – Rationale: Soul, pop, funk – much awaited debut and One To Watch.
Highlight Track: Phenomenal

Lorde – Melodrama: Smart, sexy sophistopop from the reigning queen of mainstream indie.
Highlight Track: The Louvre

Cigarettes after sex – Cigarettes after sex: Melodic, melancholic, occasionally joyful but always intimately beautiful.
Highlight Track: Apocalypse

Blondie – Pollinator: Punchy, punk-pop that proves Debbie still does it better.
Highlight Track: Long Time

Beck – Colours: Funky, optimistic, electronic – Beck at his poppiest. 
Highlight Track: Fix Me

Alison Moyet – Reassuring Pinches: Another gorgeous (and criminally overlooked) release taking the blueprint from The Minutes down slightly darker paths.
Highlight Track: Reassuring Pinches

Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie: Exactly the kind of collection of romantic harmonies, hooky choruses and Americanna love stories you would hope for from this collaboration.
Highlight Track: Red Sun

The Killers – Wonderful Wonderful: Return to form reunion album that fuses the best bits of late era Killers and Brandon solo into a dustland pop-rock banger.
Highlight Track: The Man

–

Singles

Black Honey – Cadillac
HMLTD – Satan, Luella & I
Marika Hackman – Boyfriend
Sinkane – Telephone
Cloves – California Numb
Harry Styles – Sign of the Times
ionnalee – NOT HUMAN
Mark Fernyhough – Steal My Love
Arca – Desafio
Miley Cyrus – Younger Now
Liam Gallagher – Wall of Glass
Us – Till the Dying of the Light
Pumarosa – Dragonfly
Penguin Cafe – Cantorum
Grandaddy – Way We Won’t
Joe Goddard – Human Heart
Toothpaste – TV Years
Kesha – Old Flames (can’t hold a candle to you)
Morrissey – Jacky’s Only HappyWhen She’s Up On Stage
Veda Rays – False Coloured Eyes

_{All words by Susan Sloan.}