Opening with a prayer and benediction – “Love Is All We Have Left” – that finds Bono leaping down a rabbit hole of pop-vocal processing to deliver one of his most emotive songs ever, U2’s latest finds the band coming to terms with a world closer to the brink than at any time during their career. It proves that Plant’s athletic power, like his musical idealism, burns undiminished.
One fine example of that spirit: his duet with Chrissie Hynde on “Bluebirds Over the Mountain,” remaking a Fifties gem recorded by Richie Valens and, later, the Beach Boys, into a slow-roll barn-dance Bacchanal, complete with a levee-breaking yowl. More impressive is the way that, at 69, he remains youthfully committed to rock & roll rejuvenation. The overall feel is at once ancient and new, cutting Led Zeppelin III‘s Maypole majesty with the Velvet Underground’s careful guitar violence (see the “All Tomorrow’s Parties”-tinged “Dance With You Tonight”), and the patient power of Plant’s golden-god-in-winter singing can be astonishing. “New World…” is a wearily surging “Immigrant Song” for the age of xenophobic travel bans “Bones of Saints” surges with “Going to California” promise, then becomes an anthem against mass shootings. With a title that evokes primal discovery and heroic burden, Carry Fire finds Plant nuancing the mystic stomp of yore for darkening times. SZA melded emo self-evaluation with the sounds of modern R&B, Chris Stapleton joined classic soul to contemporary country, Jlin added experimental cutting-edge textures to Chicago dance music, Valerie June explored decades of American music and Drake pulled sounds and collaborators from all across the world. Some of the year’s best classic rock came from pop stars like Kesha and Harry Styles some of the year’s most acclaimed pop statements came via glossier sounds from alterna-rock icons like Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, St.
But music in 2017 was also about a more slippery sense of self, as genre lines fall away and artists searched for identity and purpose in weird times. And indeed, artists did get explicitly political, from Randy Newman to Jason Isbell to Jay-Z. Albums came with titles like American Dream (LCD Soundsystem), American Teen (Khalid) and All American Made (Margo Price). Music was full of fury, confusion and resistance in our first post-election year.
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