#neaux

When SAINTE was first revealed, it was pitched as songs written as We Are the In Crowd but didn’t really fit the mold of the pop-punk band. What we got with SAINTE was an awakening, a refresh. Smile, and wave is poppy rock baked in neon-y ‘80s influences – it’s catchy and bright, but it’s not shtick. Whereas the last album We Are the In Crowd put out (Weird Kids) hopped around different song styles, this new band goes full steam ahead in one direction. It’s honest – not just musically, but lyrically, and this hits you hardest when you realize that Jardine spent a good portion of the previous year under the thumb of depression and anxiety. As such, this music is cathartic, especially the freeing and poppy “With Or Without Me,” the optimistic “If You Ever Feel Alone,” and the cruising anthem “White Lies.” And the first track, “Eyes Are Open,” debuts the whole project: “Starting right now, our eyes are open.” This record is a reason for you to keep yours open, too.

Jule Vera – Waiting On The Sun

When Jule Vera dropped their sophomore album Waiting On The Sun, it was a radical departure from their previous EP, in a great way. Waiting On The Sun mixes and matches all these influences that you would never expect to pair well together. But they do. It’s modern, but it’s folksy, too and has influences from a wide selection of genres, not to mention a palpable sense of southern rock. Each song’s separate identity keeps you going through the album because you’re not exactly what the band will throw out next. Fittingly, the album closer, “Can’t Help,” is the most enigmatic song on the album and leaves you thirsting to go back the beginning and try to process the range of music you heard.

Neaux – Fell Off the Deep End

This one was actually released in 2016, but it got a re-master and re-release in 2017, so we’re counting it for 2017. Neaux’s music, a violet-tinged mashup of shoegaze, grunge, emo, and punk, is captivating even if you’re completely uninterested in the genre. This is especially true of Fell Off the Deep End, which bleeds deliberate lo-fi meandering. It’s possibly the most un-pretentious album of the year. These eight sludgy songs are industrial addictions, conjuring up images of leather jacket smokers in dark alleys on cold nights. This is an album that is difficult to listen to only one song off of. Sierra Kay’s blunt honesty makes her an open book, and it makes this album great to just zone out to.

Neaux also released their follow up, Chain Up The Sun, this year, but we felt it didn’t have quite the magic to it that makes Fell Off the Deep End so good.

Lorde – Melodrama

In the realm of mega-pop, so much of what a musician does can often instantly induce cringe – this is the case with Taylor Swift’s catastrophe Reputation or the disappointingly theatric After Laughter (by Paramore). It almost comes with the territory. Big pop names, in an effort to re-invent themselves every record cycle, often go way over the top. But Lorde, the New Zealand pop singer/songwriter behind the radio hit “Royals,” did the opposite and blessed the world with one of the best pop albums in recent times. Melodrama is a hit because it does what daring pop does: It exists within the confines of a genre that encourages homogeneity by rejecting said homogeneity. Lorde’s glittering vocals glide next to grandiose piano and dreamy electronic arrangements that crash into deep and powerful drum-and-bass segments that echo of some of the grooviest pop of the last decade. All this considered, the album’s best song is “Liability” because it’s just Lorde alone with a piano riff and a heart-wrenchingly honest confessional: “They say ‘you’re a little much for me / You’re a liability.’” Such melancholy coming from a “star” shows us the universality of sadness that can go straight to our core, but don’t over-analyze this song – it just makes you feel.

It’s actually astonishing how well put-together this album is – Jack Antonoff, who you’ll see later on in this list, had a major hand in this record, and it’s his trademark production and co-writing that brings out the depth of this record, although most credit of course goes to the songwriter herself. Lorde is unafraid of not only pushing boundaries, but totally destroying them, and it shows: Melodrama is critically acclaimed all around the music journalism world.

Lights – Skin & Earth

We went into depth on Lights’ latest release in our full-length feature, but as the year has progressed, Skin & Earth has stood strong. Our last three albums on this list all stand out because they have a remarkable sense of journey and adventure, a thread that gets carried throughout the entire album. This is especially true of Skin & Earth – “Intro” and “Skydiving” set the tone for the entire album: Fresh and exciting and a new version of Lights in a growing discography of different things. Skin & Earth is Lights’ take on the broader themes in pop in 2017, but of course in her own way. This album is practically bursting with songs you can’t skip.

The Maine – Lovely Little Lonely

The Maine are easily one of the most under-rated bands in the alternative/rock industry. They may have caught their initial break in the Vans Warped Tour scene, but they’ve long outgrown that. They’ve gone (and stayed) independent and have released phenomenal album after phenomenal album, coalescing with this year’s Lovely Little Lonely. Vocalist John O’Callaghan’s pensive and poetic lyrical voice is at its strongest on this album, and musically, the band sounds more refined than they have before. Lovely Little Lonely is a walk through all the emotions that make us human, and with the record’s wistful transition tracks (“Lovely,” “Little,” and “Lonely”), this album stops to breathe and let the listener absorb everything. O’Callaghan has always had a knack in bringing out meaning in life’s ups and downs, and songs such as “Taxi,” “I Only Wanna Talk To You,” and “Don’t Come Down” send you through such roller coasters. But Lovely Little Lonely is no one-man effort. The Maine may qualify as an alternative rock band, but the tag doesn’t even begin to do it justice. Lovely Little Lonely is genre-bending and utilizes just enough dreamy and baroque instrumentation (such as in the title tracks) to slot it truly within its own world, something of a rare white elk in the music world. It is no coincidence that a truly independent band with a respectable work ethic put out one of the best albums of 2017. Out of all the albums on this list, Lovely Little Lonely is the one with the broadest appeal. It’s a record for nearly anyone.

Bleachers – Gone Now

The margin between Lovely, Little, Lonely and our album of the year was so slim it was almost non-existent. What both albums do spectacularly is transmit their particular sense of emotion with almost 100 percent accuracy. Both of these albums make you feel, and they make you feel heavily. They’re both cohesive and filled with variety and great musicianship, but there can only be one number one, and that goes to Bleachers’ Gone Now.

Gone Now is so well-done it may not only be the album of 2017, but one of the best of the entire decade. If you’re not in the know, Bleachers is the brainchild of Fun. member and general music savant Jack Antonoff, who has had a hand in producing some of pop’s biggest recent hits (he worked on Taylor Swift’s 1989 and Reputation, as well as Melodrama, which I previously discussed, and with countless other big names).

That being said, Antonoff’s best work is with Bleachers, a format that finds him engaging himself at his quirkiest. Often, self-indulgence can be boring and pretentious, but Gone Now is a liquor shot of authenticity in the most Antonoff way possible. Nearly anything Antonoff touches reeks of his style, a unique watermark on a piece of music. Gone Now is this as well – it’s weird at times, infinitely self-referential, and often forgoes typical song structure (because it can), but all of this only enhances the struggle at the core of this album. Gone Now is a beautiful rendition of loss of youth and depression and self-care and working through internal strife. These things, give or take, are often at the core of music, but Antonoff has excelled at writing heart-tugging music since his days in Steel Train, and Gone Now just shows how much he’s honed it. These songs don’t just dump their messages on you all at once; they build up to sonic crescendos and get increasingly neurotic before dropping huge weights on you, resulting in some profound sing-along moments. The lead single, “Don’t Take The Money,” is a great example of this. That’s kind of an anomaly, as most lead singles are just there to catch ears, but each song on the album burns with its own intensity and takes your hand through to the next one. Consider how it starts out with “Dream of Mickey Mantle,” a song about an actual dream, before transitioning into the Ben Folds-esque “Goodmorning,” a song about waking up in the morning and feeling the crushing weights of life fall onto you.

Granted, it could be difficult to process the wild variation in tone and style that this album has, as songs go from ‘80s influenced pop to having experimental saxophone hooks to repeating lines distorted by bizarre vocoder effects, but once you realize that this is actually Antonoff at his most honest, it feels right. In fact, Gone Now works because of how experimental it is, not in spite of. Heck, the album ends with “Foreign Girls,” which starts off sounding like it’s going to be something out of a ‘70s sci-fi movie, but turns into a warm and endearing ditty. Unpredictability explodes from this album, but underneath all of it is genuinely cathartic and meaningful pop music, and that’s what makes it my album of the year.

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Article and photos by sonder editor Andrew Friedgen. Album art by the respective bands. Like this? Sonder is an independent music, travel and photography publication at sonderlife.com. Give us a follow here or at our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook if you like this!

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