All The Best Folk Albums Of 2017, Ranked

Editor’s note: The point of more extensive genre lists is to help give shine to albums that wouldn’t make it into the overall best albums list. So, despite the rap-specific list — where ranking is still next to godliness — we’ve opted to leave the albums that appeared on the overall best list off the genre-specific lists. After all, the point of these lists is to examine the way music has changed or moved throughout the year, and our year-end framework will continue to reflect that impetus. Though it is meant to highlight the best work in this genre, hopefully, you can also make some discoveries through this list.

Folk music is a feeling more than a sound. Folk music has always been about time, and the way we make things, how we process them. In a world of chaos and disorder, the often gentle, usually soothing tempos of this genre, and its penchant for reflection, offer a space to sit and feel the impact of what is going on around us. In 2017, folk was more important than ever, and here are our picks for some of the best albums to open up that space.

20. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Best Troubador
Hearing one Southern legend honor another is always an emotional experience, and given this album comes as a tribute to Merle Haggard after his death last year makes it even more moving. While it can be tough to balance an artist’s own aesthetic with that of the one being honored, on Best Troubadour, Will Oldham delivers slightly warped, wry takes on Haggard’s traditional outlaw country, softening the edges without ever comprising the tough and tender country heart at the center. Oldham’s Kentucky roots serve him well here, as he takes these country standards and kneads them until they slot neatly into his own lo-fi folk style. The result is such a loving, heart-warming collection that I would bet somewhere up there, Haggard is looking down with a smile, and maybe a tear or two.–Caitlin White

19. Grizzly Bear, Painted Ruins
When Grizzly Bear returned to the music world in 2017 after not releasing a new album since 2012, the place they came back to was very different. And, they had questions. While pondering the demise of the indie blogosphere, Ed Droste asked, “How do you get people who are subjected to so much noise to actually sit down and take the time with something that you’d really hope they’d take the time with?” If you’re Grizzly Bear, it shouldn’t be that hard, considering the reputation they’ve built and maintained as a band that experiments without losing a sense of melody and catchiness. Tracks like “Mourning Sound” and “Three Rings” show that their dormant period didn’t lead to any creative atrophy, and that Grizzly Bear is still an essential and thought-provoking indie force.–Derrick Rossignol

18. Samantha Crain, You Had Me At Goodbye
After breaking out in 2013 with the stunning Kid Face, Samantha Crain has continued to produce orchestral, physical folk music influenced by the sweeping expanses of her native Oklahoma, and more importantly, her Choctaw heritage. Her 2013 breakout, her last album, 2015’s Under Branch & Thorn & Tree, and this year’s You Had Me At Goodbye were all produced by John Vanderslice, who fleshes out Crain’s vivid folk compositions with a crisp tightness and the occasional electronic impulse, making the quiet moments feel sharper, and the loud ones feel enormous. On album standout “Red Sky, Blue Mountains,” Crain sings the entire song in her native tongue, creating space and respect for her culture no matter the climate in the outside world.–C.W.

17. The Mountain Goats, Goths
John Darnielle decided to make an album about goths for The Mountain Goats’ newest record. While you could almost hear the sound of a collective indie eyebrow being raised at that statement, let’s not forget that the group’s previous album, Beat The Champ, was all about semi-professional wrestling, and that turned out pretty darn well. Wrestling is filled with themes of health and chasing dreams, and Darnielle also saw the potential in an album about goths to tackle topics that go deeper than their surface.

“I mean, young men and women have been obsessed with death forever and forever — you know like Baudelaire, the Decadents in Paris,” he previously said. “There’s plenty of Roman poets who like to think a lot about death.” What Darnielle managed is a piano-driven (and totally guitar-free, by the way) album that presents a substantial look at life and the world, even if that look is through a swoop of black hair covering one eye.–D.R.

16. Aimee Mann, Mental Illness

While so many other artists beat around the bush about their struggles, Aimee Mann just comes out and says it: Mental Illness. It’s not a concept that’s ever addressed as explicitly on the record as it is in the title, but the profoundly sad undercurrents of just how messed up the human mind can get, illustrated on songs like “Lies Of Summer,” lap around the edges of this record like small waves. Regardless of topic or genre, Mann’s soothing songwriting holds up year after year, and this is another spectacular collection of airy, serene tracks that are uplifting even when they’re addressing rock bottom.–C.W.

15. Billy Corgan, Ogilala
When you see the name Billy Corgan, odds are good that your mind doesn’t spring to folk music. Angst-y, slashing rock. Yup. Sprawling, avant-garde sonic tapestries? Yup. Crazed, psychedelic musings. You betcha. In 2017 however, the Smashing Pumpkins singer pared things down. Retreating to the very Zen space of Rick Rubin’s Shangri La Studios in Malibu, Corgan not only dropped his name — it’s William Patrick, not Billy thank you — he also wove together some of the most pastoral, affecting music of his career.

On Ogilala, Corgan rarely reaches for more than an acoustic guitar and a grand piano. Maybe some strings here and there, like on the soaring centerpiece “Aeronaut,” but not much beyond that. Not even drums. It’s impossible to know whether this album points toward a new direction, or serves as more of a bump in the road of an aggressively loud career. What it does show more than anything else is that even after almost 30 years of doing this, Corgan remains the sharpest writer in his incredible, alt-rock era peer group.–Corbin Reiff

14. Molly Burch, Please Be Mine

It’s hard not to compare Molly Burch to Patsy Cline when you hear her deep drawl. But the ’60s-throwback waltzing sound of her debut record Please Be Mine extends far beyond nostalgia for that era, or the country genre itself. There are too many small, experimental details on this album to pigeonhole it in any one genre, but given the generous palette of folk, it felt like the most natural fit here, where her sometimes confrontational kiss-offs to bad men, and admission of her own mistakes, depict a songwriter who is able to convey emotional pain with a sweet, unassuming grace. Albums focused too much on yearning for love can get heavy, but Burch keeps it light, never giving an inch even when her desires don’t pan out.–C.W.

13. Craig Finn, We All Want The Same Things

Craig Finn is a master storyteller. As a writer, he packs more characters, places, events and memories per square inch than anyone this side of the 1973 version of Bruce Springsteen. On his latest, non-Hold Steady project We All Want The Same Things, Finn turns the lights down low, packing several album’s worth of downtrodden figures into a bleak world of his own creation. The centerpiece is the haunting “God In Chicago,” a nearly five-minute long, spoken word diatribe about coping with the death of a loved one. Two figures, the narrator and a girl take off for Chicago from their hometown in Minnesota after her brother is discovered dead by her mother. They jam to Prince and Led Zeppelin all the way there, then, on a whim, book a room at a Hyatt overlooking Michigan Avenue. They set aside their fear and grief amongst the tall buildings and amid each other’s bodies. But the relief is only temporary, and the sobbing resumes when they pull back into St. Paul.–C.R.

12. Jesca Hoop, Memories Are Now

When I was organizing the albums I loved this year into their various genre buckets, Jessica “Jesca” Hoop defied easy categorization. For a while, I considered adding her to the experimental list, that’s how otherworldly Memories Are Now is. Hoop has been a solo artist for years, but perhaps it was last year’s collab album with Sam Beam (of Iron & Wine, see below) that put her on the map for some people. Regardless, on her fifth album of original material, she uses echoing harmonies and off-kilter samples to construct an urgent world of warning signs and reckoning calls, weaving an air of the ominous into her clever, beautiful compositions. And ensuring, in the process, that these songs will long live on outside of her memory and embedded in ours.–C.W.

11. Angel Olsen, Phases

Angel Olsen’s voice punches through a hazy wall of reverb-slathered acoustic guitars, warbling dreamily about a love never meant to be. “Maybe a love that never existed in the first place. I found a feeling inside,” she admits on the Phases opening track “Fly On Your Wall.” “Or should I say it found me / I turned into someone I / Never imagined I’d be.” It’s astounding to consider that Phases is merely a collection of castoff material and covers and not a fully-formed artistic statement.

“For me it’s like a diary was stolen and mass produced,” she wrote on Instagram. “That’s chill with me I got nothin to hide.” As a listening experience, Phases feels less like a diary than a 40-minute long traipse through someone’s dream world. You’re never really sure what’s real, what’s imagined, or what’s merely a wish hopefully uttered into existence. Also, and this may be a side note, but is there another artist out there today besides maybe Young Thug who uses their voice with such a stunning degree of versatility?–C.R.

10. Iron & Wine, Beast Epic

Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam has been in a tough spot for a while. Emerging in the early aughts with spare four-track recordings of just voice, acoustic guitar, and banjo, his career has since marked a trail of an artist experimenting with bigger sounds, bigger arrangements, and bigger ideas. But while Beam’s process has been more fruitful for the artist, at some point, some of what audiences most loved about the songwriter began to be obscured. Beast Epic thus becomes possibly the most important album of his career, where artistic ambitions and audience expectations find a sort of reconciliation. The songs take a step back to the warm, intimate songwriting he made his name on, while still providing fully-realized arrangements, lush recording, and some of the best singing performances of Beam’s career. The record feels like a gift to longtime fans, showing that the Iron & Wine of old and new can live in harmony together. It’s not a step backward, but a forward motion of self-aware craftsmanship, demonstrating both what he does best and what satisfies himself as an artist, resulting in his best album in a decade.–Philip Cosores

9. Aldous Harding, Party

This is a folk albums list, yes, but it’s hard to call Aldous Harding just that because there’s very obviously so much more to it than a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar and a plaid shirt. She goes back and forth between deeper-than-expected vocals and an airier style (with some children shouting “Hey!” for good measure) on “Imagining My Man.” She even pokes fun at traditional American music by donning a skimpy gun-slinging cowgirl outfit in her video for “Blend” which is also a far cry from the folk we’ve come to know. It’s folk through a kaleidoscope, one that distorts the genre’s barebones suppositions into an exercise in experimentation, not with funny sounds or fancy new synthesizers, but via creative songwriting and idiosyncratic performances.–D.R.

8. Gun Outfit, Out Of Range

When it comes to lackadaisical, slightly electrified folk with an intellectual bent, there is really no comparison. Gun Outfit occupy a very specific niche, but they occupy it with unrelenting, earnest force. The band came up in the art-freak haven Olympia, Washington, and lean heavily Marxist, two elements that factor into their sound, but don’t define it. Now based in LA, some of the desert has crept into their jangling melodies, adding heat and light to an already fruitful formula. On Out Of Range, their fifth album and second for storied folk label Paradise Of Bachelors, they burn brighter than ever, holding your hand to the heat of American reality with the sweetest motives at heart.–C.W.

7. Joan Shelley, Joan Shelley

Joan Shelley is a national treasure, same as the wilderness lands or epic monuments that populate the landscape across our country. The Louisville singer/songwriter is living proof that folk music is not some staid, archaic form that cannot come gently into the good night of 2017, and beyond, tenderly crafting songs that shine like beacons in the night, guiding you in, back toward some home you forgot you could return to. On her sixth, self-titled album — her third for the independent Philly label, No Quarter — Shelley is at the pinnacle of her powers, quietly continuing a Kentucky musical tradition that will outlast you or I, but will hopefully be preserved in perpetuity.–C.W.

6. Mount Eerie, A Crow Looked At Me

You don’t have to have known Genevieve Elverum personally to feel the pain of A Crow Looked At Me profoundly. You don’t have to have been aware via social media of the woman’s fight against pancreatic cancer, or the young daughter she left behind. Phil Elverum makes sure that it’s all there on the page so to speak, that his intimate portrait of a life with and without his love comes close to getting to the reality of the situation. “Death is real,” he sings as the first words on the album, adding, “someone’s there and then they’re not.” He notes on that song, “Real Death,” that’s it’s not for making into art or singing about, but still he does in a fleeting attempt to come to terms with a pain that the listener can hardly understand.

We’ve all surely felt pain before, lost loved ones and felt grief, but death is deeply personal. No one has ever felt the way Phil does for Genevieve, and he is sure to keep things highly specific, giving his relationship the honor it deserves. “I don’t want to learn anything from this,” he finally sings, relaying stray memories, heartfelt declarations, and asking many questions. Often, he sings directly to his dead wife, each line a throbbing elegy. But while it’s a devastating listen, the lasting impression is that love is worth it, that the unthinkable tragedy that struck does not wipe away the beauty of a life lived. Death is real, but so is life, too.–P.C.

5. Valerie June, The Order Of Time

Valerie June’s careworn voice unravels and knits itself back together time and again on her fourth stunning album, The Order Of Time. Skillfully, effortlessly mixing the blues, R&B, country, and folk into one fiery strand, June uses her expansive knowledge of these musical forms to explore the world around her, crafting a rousing, fiery song cycle that explores the cool darkness and unexpected brightness of the south that raised her. Thing is, she’s outgrown the region, superseding small-town fame for national acclaim. On The Order Of Time, she explains the wounds of the world back to herself, thankfully, graciously allowing us along for the ride.–C.W.

4. This Is The Kit, Moonshine Freeze

I have been head over heels for This Is The Kit’s glitzy, kinetic folk-rock, ever since I was introduced to it back in 2015 when she released her breakout album, Bashed Out via Brassland, the label run by Aaron Dessner of The National. Moonshine Freeze is her first new album since that one, and it further builds on her exquisite, thorny sound; a brand of folk that refuses to let go of its favorite rabbit holes, and instead follows them down into a world of dirty mazes that yield infinite returns.–C.W.

3. Bedouine, Bedouine

The soft, self-styled feminization of Bedouine captured at least a thousand hearts this year. Many people dubbed it the best folk record of the year — I couldn’t blame them, even when my heart ventured elsewhere. Azniv Korkejian, born in Aleppo and raised in Saudi Arabia, has the proper right to the word Bedouin, which she altered slightly to indicate her gender. Her debut record came out through Spacebomb, a label well-known for treasuring old-fashioned records produced in old-school ways, as Korkejian’s was. Constructed with Gus Seyffert on analog tape, Bedouine might be the gentlest, most understated record of the year. In this genre, that’s certainly a compliment.–C.W.

2. Laura Marling, Semper Femina

Perhaps Laura Marling had a premonition — women would need a little support this year. Though it came out months before waves of courageous women took up the mantle to stand against their abusers, the focus on female strength that imbues Semper Femina with its staying power feels like a necessary precursor, and requisite revisitation, for the female warriors who are out there on a mission to change our culture. With her signature aloof wisdom and precious storytelling power, Marling has released what amounts to her sixth perfect album in not many more years (nine to be exact). Consider, Marling is 27 — where she will be in another decade is perhaps beyond our current comprehension. I have a feeling she likes it that way.–C.W.

1. James Elkington, Wintres Woma
One of the perks of being a music writer is getting to listen to albums before they’re released to the rest of the world. Which means that since April, I’ve been listening to James Elkington’s official solo debut, Wintres Woma, in full. Even back then, it seemed clear that Elkington’s record would leave an enormous impression on the folk world this year, and when the album came out a couple months later, mid-summer, others took notice.

His sumptuous, elaborate playing is the result of many years spent studying the craft, but this collection also makes the case for innate talent — even with all the time in the world, most people simply couldn’t make a guitar sing the way he does. Elkington’s reputation as one of the best folk guitarists currently working preceded him, and this project stands as the finest realization of his copious talent on the instrument, along with the added bonus of lyrics and vocals — much of his prior work was solely instrumental. The result is a surprising, sometimes puzzling, and always beautiful album that continues to unfold days, weeks, and months after you first heard it.

Guitar gods are so often all pomp and circumstance, too stormy and too focused on showmanship, Elkington crushes these overly loud, bombastic stereotypes with his emphasis on precision, like a sniper taking out a platoon of bumbling marksmen. Not that music is always a battle, but when it is, Elkington is the victor. These songs slot somewhere between lullabies and prophecies, examining the world on the most intricate level and in the simplest terms at the same damn time.–C.W.

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