The comedy of man starts like this - our brains are way too big for our mothers' hips

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017.

#17 : More Life - Drake

Very much not an album, according to Drake – instead this “playlist” gave him an opportunity to show off his taste by teaming up with his favourite artists. Baritone London rapper Giggs makes multiple appearances, as does silky-voiced Brum singer Jorja Smith. Thanks to solo tracks like Passionfruit, More Life is also proof that Drake’s tropical-tinged blend of rap and R&B is as seductive as ever.

If Drake says it's not an album, I'm happy to take his word for it - so this doesn't count, right? Either way, it doesn't matter because we've already met it.

#16 : Pure Comedy - Father John Misty

Ever since his 2015 album I Love You, Honeybear, Josh Tillman’s wry surveys of contemporary America have felt increasingly indispensable. Clever, funny and usually despairing, his scabrous social commentary takes on a less arch and more heartfelt tone here, with acidic lyrics cushioned by gorgeous strings and calmly plodding piano.

Our second album visit with Father John - I quite enjoyed the last one and I also enjoyed my live visit, so I'm hoping this will be good.

Yeah, I liked this - he reminds me of Nick Cave but he feels to have slightly more of a sense of humour. This is all very fatalistic though and very much feels like a response to the times - which has been a bit of a theme for this year. I particularly liked "Leaving LA" (but would have preferred it to be less than 13 minutes long) but all the tracks are pretty decent and there are some cool track titles, including "Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution", "When The God Of Love Returns There'll Be Hell To Pay" and "A Bigger Paper Bag" - it's also got a cool album cover.

Wikipedia tells us this is his third album and it "touches on themes of progress, technology, fame, the environment, politics, aging, social media, human nature, human connection and his own role in it all" - I wish I had enough of a sense of self-importance that I believed I had a role in anything! As if that wasn't enough, he wrote an 1800 word essay to his fans as part of the release announcement - lucky them, eh? Critically, it was obviously pretty well received but there were more dissenting voices than we've seen on recent entries with complaints he'd lost his sense of fun, but it still made a load ot year-end lists. Commercially, it did well here, getting to #8 but it actually did better in Ireland, getting to #7 - it also got to #10 in the US, which seems like a very decent effort.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for three quid but if you want the limited edition, numbered, club (whatever that means), double vinyl with a sunset cover and burgandy/gold marble vinyl then it's going to set you back £65 (and take you a considerable amount of time to say, if nothing else). This is a very decent album though which I'd like to remember to revisit.

#15 : V - The Horrors

Southend outfit the Horrors were never an average indie band: instead of meat-and-potatoes guitar-pop, their 2007 debut bristled with nightmarish garage and goth rock. A decade later, they’ve produced their most celebrated record yet. V swings from busy post-punk to languid electronica, with the morose new wave of closer Something to Remember Me By providing a gratifying climax.

I met The Horrors as a new entry one week and liked it a lot more than I was expecting - I believe this is supposed to be their best album, so I'm quite looking forward to it.

Yeah, this is pretty decent as well - it has a strong Gary Numan vibe to it, which I wasn't particularly expecting but it all hangs together as an album pretty well. And I don't think I have anything more to say on the matter - other than I don't like the album cover!

Wikipedia tells us this is their fifth album and that's pretty much it - except that, excitingly, we've got a "controversy" section. Except that it's very boring controversy because the guy who designed the artwork for the "Machine" single was accused of plagiarising another artist, who (reasonably enough) got a bit shirty about it - until it was pointed out that his original artwork shared suspicious similarities with someone else's work, at which point he (quite sensibly) decided not to make a fuss about it. Critically, people were very nice about it, although there were quite a few comments along the lines of "it's only taken them ten years to live up to the hype". Commercially it did well here getting to #8, but it didn't set the rest of the world alight (it is quite a British sound) with #63 in, surprisingly, Spain being the best it did anywhere else.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up the CD for £11, but if you want the 180gm double vinyl album then it's going to set you back £49. This is another decent album - I can see teenage me would have loved this, but it also doesn't sound dated, just different. 

It probably won't surprise you to hear Drake's not going to take the round (it's not even an album, after all) but either of the other two would be very worthy winners. So The Horrors can consider themselves unlucky to have come up against a particularly fine album from Father John Misty because they've have taken it against most other competition.

#20-18 - Three impressive albums