Until Paul McCartney toured Australia we didn't agree on anything in popular music this year, a state of heightened disagreement that certainly reflected the wider world, but that discord also made for music that necessarily sharpened its focus.
Some of the best records in 2017 where by artists who doubled down on their instincts and accentuated their artistry. Over the last 12 months no one stepped up by taking a step back.
Take the 20 albums listed below in alphabetical order as a cross-section of what mattered musically in 2017. Their impact takes in the cultural and the commercial, the spread of generations, and the abiding pleasure of hearing sounds that speak to you in ways both mysterious and immutable.
It was, when you take them all in, a great year for albums.
Cable Ties – Cable Ties (Poison City): The joy of unfettered expression powers this bracing debut from a Melbourne punk rock trio whose three-piece clatter bends and builds so that their exorcisms are made exciting and trauma is reworked as triumphant survival. Jenny McKechnie's voice is a straight up summoning.
Jen Cloher – Jen Cloher (Milk! Records): On her fourth album the Melbourne singer-songwriter's command of her craft allows for distance-laden journeys and intimate admissions. The lyrics are detailed and the playing deceptively accommodating, but the impact is deeply insinuative.
Ecca Vandal – Ecca Vandal (Dew Process): Powered by an insurrectionary spirit that allowed punk's denial, techno's rhythmic force, and hip-hop beats to effectively coalesce, this assured debut album confirmed that the Melbourne musician and producer was a major talent.
Gang of Youths – Go Farther in Lightness (Sony): Breakthrough winners at the recent ARIA Awards, the Sydney rock band's second long player used the cathartic ruin of their 2015 debut as a platform to rise from. Trembling ballads and anthemic surges made renewal a passionate need.
Japanese Breakfast – Soft Sounds From Another Planet (Dead Oceans): Just departed after a brief Australian tour, the Philadelphia experimental-indie musician Michelle Zauner found new realms – physical and emotional – on her second album. Zauner re-purposes Mororder disco and essays heartbreak ballads with equal assuredness.
Jay-Z – 4:44 (Universal): Hip-hop finds the hard fought wisdom of middle age in this incisive album from one of the genre's defining voices. Spurred in part by the vivid force of his wife Beyonce's Lemonade song cycle the personal and public are willingly dissected.
Valerie June – The Order of Time (Caroline): The Tennessee via Brooklyn singer-songwriter takes the history of rural blues, folk and country and runs it through an otherworldly meter so that traditional laments are matched to mantra-like riffs. A true American original.
Kelela – Take Me Apart (Warp): Physical pleasure and philosophical need are burnt through the science-fiction R&B grooves on the debut album from assured American artist Kelela Mizanekristos. The sheen is gorgeously sensual, the detail often sublime.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Flying Microtonal Banana (Flightless): This was just one of four albums released by the prolific Melbourne psychedelic rock combo this year (there may yet be a fifth), and the surging melodies are a worthy introduction to the panoramic approach of frontman Stu McKenzie.
Alex Lahey – I Love You Like a Brother (Nicky Boy Records): Beginning with the exuberant arena-sized anthem Every Day's the Weekend, Alex Lahey confirmed her ease with guitar pop. The Melbourne musician's tracks were raucous and revelatory, funny and fearless.
Kendrick Lamar – Damn (Universal): After the epic ascent of 2015's acclaimed To Pimp a Butterfly, hip-hop's leading voice surveys his world with urgent, inventive understanding as soul samples – both musical and spiritual – dotted a masterfully uneasy record.
LCD Soundsystem – American Dream (Sony): Comebacks by alternative rock figureheads are too often retreads tied to lucrative tours, but James Murphy bucked the trend with this collection of jittery, resonant tracks that furthered LCD Soundsystem's reach in times that suited them.
Lorde – Melodrama (Universal): The comeback of the year – four years after the teenage prodigy's debut that was Pure Heroine, the New Zealand singer-songwriter reappeared with an album that lifted electronic pop to intimate, idiosyncratic, and ecstatic heights.
Laura Marling – Semper Femina (Kobalt): "I banish you with love," the contemporary English folkie declared on her sixth album, and it summed up a record where contradictions were subtly embraced and feminine complexity celebrated with an artfully expanded studio palette.
Robert Plant – Carry Fire (Nonesuch): The veteran who mattered. On the former Led Zeppelin frontman's October solo set his taste for the sweep of world music and rock 'n roll's thump sounded like a tonic for the era. If nothing else, check the Chrissie Hynde duet Bluebirds Over the Mountain.
Queens of the Stone Age – Villains (Matador): Few rock bands have displayed such a fertile connection to the genre's form as Josh Homme's crunching band, and in their 20th year together – with DJ Mark Ronson producing – wired grooves were their artful new noise.
The Smith Street Band – More Scared of You Than You Are of Me (Pool House Records): Reflection never requires solitude on the Melbourne quartet's fourth album, which turn their punk mix of defiant unity and boisterous confession up to 11 and makes setbacks into a shared experience of affirmation.
St Vincent – Masseduction (Loma Vista): In a fallow year for pop music some of the best examples were made by interlopers. Working with a performance artist's rules, Annie Clark successfully remade her alternative textures into spiky, contemporary grooves.
Taylor Swift – Reputation (Universal): The commercial centre of popular music in 2017, Taylor Swift's new album saw her wrangling electronics and hip-hop to her precise compositions. The knack for storytelling suffered, but the mechanics revealed a 28-year-old whose myth-making was intriguingly fractured and sometimes fascinating.
Wolf Alice – Visions of a Life (Liberator): With even the Gallagher brothers moving on from Brit-rock, the time was right for this North London four-piece to graft new form onto the genre's bones. Their second album alternates blissful blasts and spectral melancholy, giving Ellie Rowsell and her bandmates their own distinct identity.
