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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Lilith, “Loaded”

With the returns of bands like RIDE and Slowdive, shoegaze had a banner year. But one need not look to past heroes to feel its full emotion in modern form. Allston trio Lilith released their Apology Plant EP back in February, and while the record flirts with a spectrum of genres, it’s at its best when it floats along with whichever type of -gaze you prefer. The EP’s opening track “Loaded” is an airy and loose rendering of emotive glares that captures shoegaze’s romanticism without the need to turn up the volume, owing a drink to ’90s alt-rock without having to pick up the entire tab. “Loaded” is at times woozy from its guitar-pop heights, but glides along at just the perfect pace so you never lose the sense of where you are.

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