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Year In ReView: Our favorite Boston-ish songs of 2017

It’s December 21, and we’re just finally getting around to our annual list of favorite songs to come out of Boston in 2017. Two conclusions can be drawn from this — first, the year was so packed that our Year End obligations were pushed back to the very last minute, and secondly, we kind of hate these posts. Through our New Sounds features and pages of Boston News posts, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a full portrait of Boston’s year in music. We hope that our dedicated coverage from January to December acts as our compass of what’s good around town; this list here can be best described as a loose collection of our “faves.” It’s in no order, it’s by no preference; these tracks stuck with us over the course of the calendar, and if you missed one or two when released, perhaps it can help fill in some blanks. Because it was a crazy good year for Boston music, and 2018 feels as promising as ever.

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Adventure Set, “Ghost Seller”

This latest act from Boston synth-pop duo Adventure Set has been an exciting one. After first making their name in the local underground back in the early ’80s, vocalist Ken Scales and synthesist Mark Potheir resurfaced in recent years with a minimal classic alternative sound that reconnects the decades. In August they summoned “Ghost Seller,” a moody, retro-fit number that’s warmly original. “For a while I was obsessed with making the ‘new’ Adventure Set always sound contemporary, but these days I don’t worry about that so much,” Pothier told Vanyaland. “No matter what the song, in the end the music is always imprinted with a ‘sound’ that I like to believe is genuine Adventure Set. And though much of the process is solitary one — me in a dimly lit room, recording the same damn synth bit over and over — the songs don’t truly gel until Ken gives them his voice, and spirit. He still sounds amazing.”

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