The 30 best albums of 2017
The IndependentSign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The Independent’s Album of the Year: Loyle Carner, Yesterday’s Gone open image in gallery “Basically we’re bringing it back to basics.” Some may have forgotten Loyle Carner’s jewel of a debut record, given that it was released right at the beginning of the year. Lorde, Melodrama open image in gallery “Unconventional pop that still bangs” was how we described Lorde’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut Pure Heroine. Ghostpoet, Dark Days + Canapes open image in gallery “The trip-hop rhythms may have been replaced by a more varied range of beats, from the languid funk groove of “Freakshow” to the de-syncing drum machines of “One More Sip”, but the mood and manner of Ghostpoet ’s fourth album is steeped in much the same themes and textures, hauled up to date and delivered in a nonchalant deadpan akin to Roots Manuva.” The Independent‘s album critic Andy Gill awarded Ghostpoet’s record five stars, praising how a song like “Live>Leave” uses a “shifting backdrop of flanged guitar and sporadic piano chords over an itchy drum shuffle to carry its tableau of cramped, paranoiac millennial hedonism struggling with forces beyond its control”. open image in gallery Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA told The Independent in an interview earlier this month: “We’re lucky hip hop has a Kendrick.” The release of K Dot’s fourth studio record marked another masterpiece for the rap canon; the master storyteller outstripping his closest competitors once again in a work that was impossible to second-guess.
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