These lists get harder to compile each year. After going through something of a rebuild four or five years ago, the Milwaukee music scene is once again in playoff form, but the downside of having so much established talent is it doesn’t leave a lot of room on the roster for rookies. As a result, there are even more perennials than usual on this year’s list: About half of the acts here have appeared on it before, and they’re all so good at what they do that it probably won’t be the last appearance for most of them. But just as exciting are the acts appearing for the first time—the ones just now coming into their own that manage to stand out despite the very crowded playing field.
What follows is by no means a comprehensive list of the best Milwaukee music released this year (it doesn’t include any of the excellent EPs that came out this year), but for listeners looking to sample what the local scene had to offer in 2017, from established brands and upstart talent alike, these 15 albums are a fine place to start.
Apollo Vermouth – Crashing Into Nowhere
Ambient music is an acquired taste that most people will never bother acquiring. Even its biggest aficionados would admit that the genre doesn’t sell itself, and it can be hard to articulate why, exactly, anybody would want to listen to music that sounds like an LP mistakenly played at about 8 rpm. With Crashing Into Nowhere, though, Apollo Vermouth proves that “ambient” doesn’t automatically mean “difficult.” She makes her unhurried washes of sound feel as comforting as a mug of hot chocolate on a frigid January day, blanketing the listener with hope and warmth. A pair of dreamy tracks with guest vocals hint at the more traditional pop directions Apollo Vermouth could explore in the future, but this music is already so sumptuous and openly emotional as it is you don’t need to understand it to be moved by it.
BoodahDARR – Cheat Codes
For years, Milwaukee’s Cream City Motion crew has been defined by one rapper with major star potential, IshDARR, but 2017 was the year that IshDARR’s peers stepped up in a big way, proving they deserve a place in the spotlight, too. On his assured full-length project, Cheat Codes, BoodahDARR casts himself as an authoritative, cold-blooded counterpart to IshDARR’s charismatic everyman, channeling the nihilistic spirit of trap music with his terse prose. Visionary beat maker Canis Major once again proves himself Cream City Motion’s great secret weapon, producing the tape’s entire first half and toying with some of his wildest sounds yet, pushing his synths to fantastic extremes on a pair of gnarly early-’80s horror homages, “Track Day” and “Pretenders.”
The Fatty Acids – Dogs of Entertainment
The Fatty Acids historically have taken a busier-the-better approach to record making. Each of their previous albums has been a circus, performed with all the subtly and understatement of a Japanese game show; listen to them in the wrong mood, and they’ll seriously stress you out. Compared to its predecessors, though, Dogs of Entertainment is a relatively restrained reimagining of the group’s carnival rock, scaling back the hyperactive whimsy to mourn a society that sometimes seems like it’s gone to seed. “Don’t you feel discouraged, it’s the age we’re in,” the group sings on the buoyant “Ghostess.” Leave it to a crazed band to offer comfort in a crazed world.
Fox Face – Spoil + Destroy
Like much of the country, Fox Face found themselves feeling a whole lot more fired up in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. On Spoil + Destroy, the riot grrrl-indebted group wears their politics on their sleeve, concentrating their anger into one of the most pointed Milwaukee punk albums in years and taking particular aim at a patriarchy that minimizes women and enables leering, abusive men. The album was timelier than they could have imagined—its release predated the entertainment industry’s great predator purge by a few weeks—but its rage is universal.
Abby Jeanne – Rebel Love
Milwaukee wailer Abby Jeanne has a robust, jazzy voice that rivals the greats—Ella, Amy, even Janis—and her solo debut Rebel Love delights in showing off every facet of it. It often plays like a talent reel, shuffling through bluesy torch songs, moody trip-hop experiments and unhinged rockers, the constant thread being Jeanne’s go-for-broke determination and her refusal to let the world wear her down. What an absolute thrill it is hearing a singer this powerful just cut loose, free of any genre restraints.
Luxi – Geometric Universe
Now this is what it’s all about: that exact moment when everything about a musician’s sound clicks and suddenly their whole world seems limitless. After several promising albums of introverted electro-pop, singer-producer Luxi dialed up the volume on her ebullient Geometric Universe, adorning her celestial pop songs with lacy R&B melodies and hungry drum ’n’ bass injections. Equally fit for headphones and club speakers, the production awes, but Luxi’s songwriting is what really sticks; she brings a fierce edge to even the album’s dreamiest, most lovelorn tunes. It’s rare that albums this intimate sound this massive.
Midnight Reruns – Spectator Sports
Midnight Reruns have always invited comparisons to their idols The Replacements, even going so far as to record their last album, 2015’s Force of Nurture, with Tommy Stinson. Inevitably, some of those usual Replacements undertones carry through their third album, Spectator Sports—like the Minneapolis greats, they have a gift for brevity, firing off one snappy guitar lick after another. But all those Replacement comparisons too often overshadow the band’s own scrappy charm, as well as what a distinctive, personable songwriter frontman Graham Hunt has grown into. On Spectator Sports, his pointed tunes about hard luck, dejection and the humiliations of daily life are sharper and wittier than ever. Now if only they weren’t so relatable.
Milo – who told you to think??!!?!?!?!
"Ghiath Matar is dead / Roses are not armor / In my neighborhood, it was become a poet or a farmer,” Milo raps on who told you to think??!!?!?!?!’s opener “Poet (Black Bean).” And so begins another indelible, intoxicatingly dense meditation on art, philosophy, beauty, existence, consumption and survival. As funny and irreverent as the album can be—and, to be sure, for all its sophistication, who told you to think is an absolute joyride, his most capricious project yet—Milo never lets the listener forget that as a black man, there’s always a target on his back. “Guess I’ll keep rapping until they toe-tag me,” he raps, with characteristic understatement. Don’t let his unraised voice fool you; this is hip-hop at its most defiant.
Platinum Boys – Buzz
Another band might lay it on too thick. Platinum Boys’ thrill-seeking, girl-chasing, powder-snorting brand of rock ’n’ roll could easily come across as a grating shtick if it were performed by anyone other than the Platinum Boys, but the Milwaukee rockers have a gift for turning hedonistic tendencies into effortlessly gleeful ear candy. Cleverly produced by Tenement’s Amos Pitsch, who lends the record the same artificial, eight-bit studio slickness that every rock ’n’ roll record had circa 1981, Buzz is lovably euphoric—a PG-rated celebration of a decidedly R-rated lifestyle.
s.al – Little Man, You’ve Had a Busy Day
Some of the most exciting rap is hard and uncompromising, unrepentantly in your face. But the perennially mellow Milwaukee rapper-producer-poet s.al (formerly and sometimes Safari Al) mines the other extreme, rapping as if he’s just finished an especially relaxing shavasana. “Easily distressed and excellent at managing distress,” he sings on Little Man, You’ve Had a Busy Day’s opener “winner + raps,” over a kinetic yet soft-edged breakbeat. We could all use a little bit of that kind of Zen in our lives, and on this soothing, relentlessly entertaining head trip of an album, s.al spreads it around generously.
Soul Low – Cheer Up
Milwaukee indie-rockers Soul Low have been mainstays of lists like these for so many years that it’s easy to take them for granted, yet each year they manage to introduce a new spin on their instantly ingratiating sound. Toning down the nerviness and tension of 2016’s Nosebleeds, their most difficult album by a mile, Cheer Up, shows off the band’s lighter side, delivering a shot of serotonin that makes good on the promise of its title. That there’s a sarcastic edge to the record’s triple-frosted chipperness does nothing to diminish its potency. Soul Low have come through with one hell of a pick-me-up.
Telethon – The Grand Spontanean
A 30-track, nearly 90-minute rock opera is a big ask, especially coming from a band you’ve probably never heard of that flirts with a style of music you may or may not look down upon, pop-punk. But Telethon’s great trick on The Grand Spontanean is making it all go down so easy without ever repeating themselves—track after track whizzes by, introducing one new trick after another, be it the infectious keyboards on the Weezer-sheened “Succinct, The Optimist,” the E-Street Band-style saxophone on “The Runner’s High” or the heavenly Laura Stevenson guest spot on “On Companionship.” Most audaciously, there’s even an album within an album, a quick three minute ska-punk EP from an imaginary band called the Improbable New Sensations. That’s just the right amount of ska-punk.
Township – Impact Bliss
Though they can’t resist the occasional, dramatic guitar eruption, the Milwaukee dream-pop quartet Township spend most of their debut full-length Impact Bliss locked in a leisurely, luxurious daze. The group takes cues from some of the giants of slowcore and shoegaze—bands like Codeine, My Bloody Valentine and Hum—but manages the trick of turning those familiar sounds into something that feels enchantingly new filling songs like “Turquoise Kiss” and “Sleeping in a Bed of Roses” with serene imagery. Even its grungiest moments radiate uncommon grace.
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WebsterX – Daymares
No Milwaukee rapper knows how to make a single an event like WebsterX. For the last several years, he’s come through with some truly mammoth ones—unforgettable tracks that are cinematic in their attention to detail yet hit with the brute impact of a wrecking ball. Until now we’ve only heard him in short exposures, but on his full-length debut Daymares, a chronical of overcoming depression and “crawling back to happiness,” he proves he can sustain that intensity over an entire album, pushing his sputtery, impassioned flow to its limit. There’s no other rapper remotely like him.
Whips – The Ride
Always ones to get to the point, Milwaukee rockers Whips go straight for the jugular on their sophomore full-length. From Ashley Smith’s titanic howl to Christian Hansen’s pressure-cooked guitars and drummer Andy Mrotek’s pulverizing drums, nearly every instrument sounds like it’s been projected through a megaphone. And although the band prefers to play their brand of rock ’n’ roll straight, traces of post-hardcore and dance-punk can’t help but creep in from time to time, lending an extra jolt of jittery energy to songs that are already dangerously overheated.
Stream a playlist of songs from these albums below.
