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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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Soft Skies Inc., “Only Paranoid”

One of our absolute favorite tracks of 2017 comes from Soft Skies Inc., a project from brothers Ryan and Martin Rex — both known for their work in acclaimed Boston psych-pop outfit Lockgroove, with the latter also responsible for the driving beat behind the already-missed Ghost Box Orchestra. “Only Paranoid” has such a wonderful classic alternative feel to it, a lost gem off that mixtape you made for your lover back when all of life’s highs and lows could be summed up on Side A. It’s a remarkable head-trip; raw but polished, clean yet gritty, reserved but still full of sonic intensity. “Despite some Gallagher-brothers-esque blowups and the occasional hurting of large items at the other’s head — it’s the best,” Brothers Rex told Vanyaland in a joint statement about making music together. “There is nothing we’d rather be doing that creating music in the studio or playing live when the timing is right. We don’t have musical telepathy, per se, but we are on the same page aesthetically and really and truly help make each other’s ideas better.”

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