The new Les Discrets album positively surprised me. The trip-hop influences work pretty well within the overall palette of the band's sound. I'll most likely be revisiting this one later this year.
I also found myself immensely enjoying The Magnetic Fields' 50 Song Memoir. Yeah, it's obviously a gimmick album, but it's pretty damn incredible how few duds there are on here. Definitely an unexpected rebound in quality after their last few albums. I found myself smirking a few times cuz of the lyrics.
The Black Angels' Death Song is enjoyable. Cloud Nothings' new album is a lot more mellow than their old stuff, but I still somewhat liked it.
New Grails album is good, but it's basically to be expected, they pretty much consistently deliver the cool tunes.
There's still a lot of stuff on my 'to listen' list (ie: new Ulver, Oxbow, Moon Duo, Wire, Kairon; IRSE! to name a few), and I hope I'll actually eventually get to them before the year ends, keeping up with music is hard as hell.. I feel like I still haven't even caught up with all the good stuff from 2012 lmao
I still don't really understand why people in certain circles are treating the new Slowdive album as if it's the second coming of Christ - It's enjoyable, sure, but it's definitely not the mind-blowing experience a lot of people are making it out to be. I feel like the overproduced, clean sound hurts the album most of all. On the topic of 'shit I don't get,' I'm also still not sure what people see in Mac Demarco. I've tried listening to some of his albums multiple times, but it just won't click. It's not outright horrible, but again, I just don't see how so many people are into it.
Also, re: Paramore, I've never really been into any of their output, but from what I've heard of the recent stuff, it seems to be pretty decent synthpop/electropop-ish stuff in all honesty, they seem to have handled the abrupt genre shift thing a lot better than many.
Considering 2017 is apparently the year of shoegaze 'comebacks', I'm still curious about how the new Ride album is gonna turn out. I don't have very high hopes, to be honest.. I also still need to get around to listening to the new Jesus & Mary Chain album. Curve comeback when?????