The Hundred Records top 20 of 2017

Our staff picks for the year are:

Released on 18 August

- Ghostpoet Dark Days & Canapes
Dark Days & Canapes is Ghostpoet’s most defining album to date. A stunning and stimulating return, Dark Days & Canapes is a record that captures the sense of unease felt by so many in recent times. After receiving recognition for the beat-driven arrangements of his first two albums, third album Shedding Skin initiated a more alt-rock sound that saw Ghostpoet Mercury-nominated for a second time. New album Dark Days & Canapes, produced by Leo Abrahams, best known for his work with Brian Eno and Jon Hopkins, delves even further into a fuller, guitar driven sound.

Released on 20 October

- Gill Landry Love Rides A Dark Horse
Love Rides A Dark Horse follows Gill Landry’s critically acclaimed self-titled 2015 debut, which featured appearances by Laura Marling and Robert Ellis among other musical pals and earned him dates with Ben Harper, Laura Marling, Brandi Carlile, Justin Townes Earle, Warren Haynes, Bruce Hornsby, The Wood Brothers, and more, in addition to festival appearances in the US, UK, & Europe.
Love Rides A Dark Horse breaks new ground for Landry, the songs exploring a more seductive, stripped-down sound built upon a hushed sense of intimacy that calls to mind Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. The album’s tattered narratives cast aside romanticism in favour of reality.

Released on 14 July

Released on 20 October

Released on 30 June

Released on 13 October

Released on 10 March

Released on 13 January

- Julie Byrne Not Even Happiness
Sometimes it can take years to find your calling. Not so for wanderer Julie Byrne, whose power of lyrical expression and melodic nous seems inborn. But often, what comes naturally demonstrates against speed. Julie’s second album, Not Even Happiness, spans recollections of bustling roadside diners, the stars over the high desert, the aching weariness of change, the wildflowers on the coast of California and the irresolvable mysteries of love. The album archives a vivid world that would’ve otherwise been lost to the road, and exhibits Byrne’s extraordinarily innate musicality.

Released on 10 March

Released on 16 June

Released on 1 September

Released on 22 September

- Eilen Jewell Down Hearted Blues
On Down Hearted Blues, her seventh studio album, Eilen Jewell steps back in time to unearth 12 vintage blues gems written or made famous by an array of artists, from Willie Dixon and Memphis Minnie to Charles Sheffield and Betty James.
Like expert stonecutters, she and her band chiselled the songs into exciting new shapes and forms, honouring history while breathing new life into each discovery. Recorded live and in just two days, Down Hearted Blues finds Jewell making each song her own, while paying homage to her beloved inspirations.

Released on 8 September

Released on 2 June

- Richard Dawson Peasant
No one could accuse Richard Dawson of a lack of artistic ambition. His latest album, Peasant, builds from a beguilingly muted fanfare to a spectacular climax exploring a Dark Ages masseuse’s dangerous fascination with a mysterious artefact called the Pin of Quib. Driven forward by exhilarating guitar flurries, Qawwali handclaps and bursts of choral ferocity, Peasant’s eleven tracks sustain a momentum worthy of the lyrics’ urgent subject matter. Dawson describes the themes of these songs as “Families struggling, families being broken up by circumstance, and – how do you keep it together? In the face of all of these horrors that life, or some system of life, is throwing at you?” Encountering Peasant’s captivating sequence of occupational archetypes (‘Herald’, ‘Ogre’, ‘Weaver’, ‘Scientist’), listeners might find themselves wondering if these multitudes could somehow be contained with one person – surely we all have a ‘Shapeshifter’ and a ‘Prostitute’ within us?

Released on 20 October

Released on 13 October

Released on 7 April

Released on 5 May

Released on 16 June

Released on 20 January