There’s nothing like Get Out or Dunkirk in music in 2017!

I have been pretty sick over the past week and though I watch a lot of documentaries, indie film, animation and mainstream Hollywood ‘product’ the end of the year is a great time to watch movies.

I can’t really say enough good about the movie Get Out.  It is so intelligent and well directed and it operates on many, many levels.  In my opinion it is a masterpiece.  I have only watched the first 35 minutes of Dunkirk but it’s a pretty incredible piece of Hollywood movie making and I can’t stand war movies and I don’t like many Hollywood movies at all.

In what I find to be the continually rigged music business, nobody ever appears to compare the quality of movies to the quality of music.  As I’m a painfully honest music listener I’m more than willing to do that!

I’m looking at the top 10 records of 2017 at Pitchfork and it’s Kendrick Lamar (if not overrated, overexposed), and Vince Staples Big Fish Theory, (above average but not straight great across the board), and King Krule (very nice sonics but not much lyrical power).  When you expand it out to the top 50 the list looks tired.  I’m sorry but it does.

When I go to the Guardian which has been dripping out its list for the past few weeks I see Perfume Genius (great opening track, didn’t stay for the whole show), Wolf Alice at #12 (yikes, don’t even know what to say to that), and LCD Soundsystem at #6.  A lot of pouting guitar irony and a lot of half assed booty bumping.  Are any of these dance floor ‘monsters’ dropping anything remotely like Maggot Brain or One Nation Under a Groove?  Could the gent at LCD Soundsystem even be hired to wipe George Clinton’s funky ass?  I’m thinking not.

I heard a lot of really good stuff this year by acts known and lesser known but not as much boundary pushing and passion as I wanted to hear.

And if you think that’s a coincidence then you don’t know much about the music business.