Album: False Readings On
Label: Temporary Residence
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/e/eluvium-false_readings_on.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 70
Display Width: 200
Eluvium
False Readings On
If you listen to NPR in the Pacific Northwest, chances are you still occasionally hear Eluvium’s “Genius and the Thieves” or one of a few other tracks from An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death used as interstitial music between segments. That 2004 album, consisting solely of Matthew Cooper playing a piano, was Eluvium’s second, and set the terms early for how flexible the parameters of the project would be. Each subsequent record has tinkered and expanded, but, still, the foggy looseness of False Readings On has the ability to surprise. Weighing on Cooper’s mind throughout the creation process were notions of belief, one’s security therein, and cognitive dissonance — themes that perhaps feel even more on-point now than when False Readings On was released in September. The distant echoes of lost opera transmissions and lunar church organs lend the music solemnity, but there is playfulness in its elastic sense of time and space. — Ian King
Album: Alice Bag
Label: Don Giovanni
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/alice_bag_album_cover.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 69
Display Width: 200
Alice Bag
Alice Bag
Proving the adage that some things do indeed get better with time, original LA Chicana punk rocker Alice Bag released her exception self-titled debut nearly 40 years after first come to prominence with her group, the Bags. In a year that saw political and social divisions at an all-new level of intensity and extremity, Bag’s brand of fiery, lyrically precise examinations and recriminations on topics ranging from domestic violence to the state of the modern American education system to genetically modified crops landed with a level of almost otherworldly prescience. From the scorching opener “Little Hypocrite” — a song that could well have served as the theme song to any number of prominent individuals in 2016 — through the tragic, domestic mise en scène that is “Suburban Home,” Bag shows herself to have lost none of the intensity and social commentary that has marked her decades long career as a musician, activist, writer, educator and mother. — John Paul
We are wholly independent, with no corporate backers.
We can’t survive without your support.
Album: Ten Hymns from My American Gothic
Label: Anyway
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/s/st_lenox-ten_hymns_from_my_american_gothic.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 68
Display Width: 200
St. Lenox
Ten Hymns from My American Gothic
During a political cycle within which the subject of immigration played a pivotal role, there seemed few brave or perhaps compelled enough to address the issue head-on in song form. And while Ten Hymns From My American Gothic is not necessarily a political album, its overarching theme of a second generation immigrant reflecting on his experience versus that of his parents gets to the very core of what should have been the main argument in the pro-immigration camp. Namely, those who have come to the United States — for several centuries now — have done so in hopes of providing a better life for their future generations. In so doing, they seek to leave behind unspeakable horrors including war and political and ideological oppression in the hopes of being afforded a second chance at a better life.
Andrew Choi, the singularly distinctive voice behind St. Lenox deftly conveys these basic sentiments and more within his astonishing pop-based compositions and vocal torrents that ring with the desperation and emotional heft known only to those who have found themselves on the wrong side of American history. Created as a gift to his 70-year-old Korean father, Ten Hymns transcends this single family’s narrative, creating an opening for a broader discussion regarding the immigrant experience in the 21st century via exceptional music. In this, the album proves to be one of the most vital, culturally-relevant releases of 2016. That it’s also one of the best is small comfort in this most difficult of years. — John Paul
Album: Hold/Still
Label: Secretly Canadian
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/s/suuns-holdstill-350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 67
Display Width: 200
Suuns
Hold/Still
Hold/Still is the kind of complete statement that an artist was always capable of producing, but still comes as something of a surprise when it arrives. Suuns’ second album, Images Du Futur, solidified the Montreal band’s chilled, sharp-edged physicality, but their third pushes out further into dark corners and harsh light. The band have spoken about the use and influence of more electronic elements in the creation of Hold/Still, and though guitar, bass and drums are still foundational to their music, the album doesn’t often track as ‘rock’ in a traditional sense. There is space, but there is also claustrophobia. The thick rhythmic slabs frequently laid underneath the wiry melodies and Ben Shemie’s semi-cryptic coos emphasize a recurring sense of barely suppressed postmodern agitation. This is even more pronounced in Suuns’ live performances, as anyone who caught the band on tour this year and felt “Brainwash” rattle the floor underneath them can attest to. — Ian King
Album: Lovers
Label: Blue Note
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/n/nels_cline_lovers.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 66
Display Width: 200
Nels Cline
Lovers
Nels Cline’s resume is one of rock’s more curious ones: avant-jazz guitar slinger, alt/punk hero alongside everyone from Mike Watt to Thurston Moore, and resident Wilco secret weapon/whiz kid since 2004. But through all his different career phases, the album he’s been wanting to make for the last 25 years has been left unmade — until now. Lovers is Cline’s most personal album, his most intimate-sounding one, and — considering his penchant for effects-laden guitar skronk — perhaps his most accessible one. Combining lush arrangements (backed by 23 ace musicians) with his unique guitar flavor, Cline mixes his own original compositions with covers by everyone from Sonic Youth to Rodgers and Hart, resulting in a seamless collection that works both as gorgeous “mood music” and an impressive display of Cline’s many musical gifts. If you have a Wilco fan on your Christmas list who needs to dive into jazz, Lovers has you covered. — Chris Ingalls
Album: Stranger to Stranger
Label: Concord
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/p/paul-simon-stranger-to-stranger.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 65
Display Width: 200
Paul Simon
Stranger to Stranger
When you have a mind as observant, as cutting and as engaged as Paul Simon’s, you don’t grow older; you grow wiser. Stranger to Stranger, the 13th studio album from the Only Living Boy in New York, is a testament to curiosity, a tight, fat-free collection of songs that continues the singer’s later-years winning streak. Single “Wristband” turns from quirky unfortunate backstage experience to a meditation on social injustices on a dime, while the title track is one of the most longing, desperate love songs of the year, no matter the genre. “Most obits are mixed reviews,” Simon intones on one of the set’s most scathing moments, “The Werewolf”. “Life is a lottery, a lot of people lose.” Stranger to Stranger is the sound of a man hitting the jackpot… again. — Colin McGuire
Album: Centres
Label: Fatcat
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/i/ian_william_craig_centres.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 64
Display Width: 200
Ian William Craig
Centres
Beautiful drone music is such a commodity these days that it almost always helps if something out of ordinary needs to be thrown into the mix. That’s why Centres, a huge record of scorching, occasionally harsh ambient music, stands out; the most prominent element in most of these songs is Ian William Craig’s voice, a bombastic beacon of texture that emerges from classically-trained lungs and is manipulated into oblivion. Many of the shifts in these songs are subtle, but the effect they have isn’t. Whether Craig is immersing himself in plodding celestia or pushing the noise up into its higher registers, Centres is so post-linear and committed to maintaining a variety in its textures that the rewards never stop coming. Craig’s attention to detail and ability to ensure the sonic prosperity of every idea is untouchable. Even the songs that commit to more standard drone and tape recording tropes are so turbulent, dynamic, and gorgeous that every new sound is just another invigorating breath. — Max Totsky
Album: The Colour in Everything
Label: Universal
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/j/james_blake_the_colour_in_everything.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 63
Display Width: 200
James Blake
The Colour in Everything
In the era of superstars and intense media attention, James Blake has maintained a relatively low-key profile. He raised his head above the parapet a few times in 2016, including contributions to Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Beyoncés Lemonade, but his shining moment was his suitably understated third record, providing his trademark blend of futuristic soul, R&B, and electronics. Alongside fellow pioneers the xx, Blake introduced the trend for minimal, emotive electronica. Blake built his stark, minimalist sound on a bedrock of dubstep and the glitch influenced beats still underpin much of his work. With each release, however, has come a greater instrumental range, and The Colour in Anything is richly textured, with pianos, synths, and deep bass, yet it remains gloriously spacious in its production.
While a long release, its creativity, and strong sonic narrative prevent it from ever dragging and the record manages to remains remarkably insular as Blake sings with often distorted emotion of alienation, longing and lost love. The album also calls on high-profile collaborators, including Justin Vernon and Frank Ocean, and was co-produced and mastered with Rick Rubin but Blake remains central, and his vocal is the greatest strength of his work, as shown on standout “Love Me in Whatever Way”. Although a raft of imitators has long followed in his wake, this record proves Blake is still one step ahead of them. — William Sutton
Album: The Wilderness
Label: Temporary Residence
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/e/eits_wilderness_thumb350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 62
Display Width: 200
Explosions in the Sky
The Wilderness
From “So Long, Lonesome” to Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, it sometimes felt that, throughout the second half of the ‘00s, Explosions in the Sky were slowly rolling out a very extended farewell. Those were certainly not wilderness years for the Austin post rock flagship, but in the fractured and reconstructed light of The Wilderness it is possible to see how the band had for some time been looking for a way to say goodbye to the inimitable-but-not-for-lack-of-trying (see pretty much any television program about football from the past decade) style of The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place that had cemented their reputation. The Wilderness isn’t a reinvention, but it does find inventive ways around expectations and refuses to telegraph its next moves. Explosions in the Sky still get quiet and they still get loud, but not quite in the way they used to. They remain, though, as grand as ever. — Ian King
Album: Let Them Eat Chaos
Label: Lex
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/k/kate-tempest-let-them-eat-chaos.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 61
Display Width: 200
Kate Tempest
Let Them Eat Chaos
Confronting, articulate and engrossing, Kate Tempest’s Let Them Eat Chaos is the work of an artist with direction. Already a lauded performance poet in her own right, the cohesion between Tempest’s sophisticated verse and her buoyantly dark musical accompaniment has come full circle on her sophomore release. Indeed, Tempest’s verse is precocious on its own, but when grounded by minimalistic electronic sounds, it takes on new life. The record’s true power, however, stems from the resonant portrait it paints of our time. Tempest details the political calamity of her world, relating this chaos to the domestic unrest which occurs around all of us. “Europe Is Lost” is a high point in this regard, as Tempest allows her nihilism to shine through immaculately. The record, with its themes of disenchantment and the tumultuous nature of “progress”, is even more harrowing when re-visited post-Trump election. All at once stylistically inventive and contextually focused, Let Them Eat Chaos may be one of the first defining records of a dark new political age. — Jasper Bruce
60 – 51
Album: Blastoma
Label: Self-released
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/n/ngaiire-blastoma.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 60
Display Width: 200
Ngaiire
Blastoma
With her second album Blastoma, Papua, New Guinea-born, Australia-based singer Ngaiire has created a stunning layer cake built of hope, despair, struggle and inspiration. And above all, searching. The title, referencing cancer she had at a younger age, suggests a survivor’s journey — and the album delivers on that, while focusing mainly on matters of the heart. It is a raw, heart-bleeding break-up album that suggests deeper scars and ghosts, beyond the scope of one relationship or situation. Ngaiire’s voice and the entrancing music (a multi-genre groove of melancholic comfort… or comforting melancholy) turn depression into jubilation, join nervous expectation with powerful release. She sings with the air of a perpetual fresh start, with perpetual fresh wounds as well. When she casually expresses sentiments like, “I’m getting sick in the heart / it only gets harder / nobody knows what to do”, it feels like she’s crying and fighting on behalf of us all. — Dave Heaton
Album: Real
Label: Bloodshot
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/l/lydialoveless_real_lpcover.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 59
Display Width: 200
Lydia Loveless
Real
Real is a crowning achievement in Loveless’ already impeccable discography. While previous releases had a devil-may-care sense of improvisation, here the rougher edges are burnished into a lustering sheen. Loveless forsakes much of her ramshackle modus operandi in crafting these songs with a deft precision and a perfectionist’s eye for detail. The alt-country-meets-punk aesthetic is still present, but it’s coated with a genuine pop veneer and a hint of New Wave. Tapping into a range of musical styles also allows Loveless to more effectively convey a range of moods. There’s the aching sweep of “More Than Ever”, the bouncy jangle paired with bitter resignation in “Heaven”, the stomping, surly cynicism in “Midwestern Guys”, and the haunting sparseness of “Out on Love”. Throughout, Loveless retains her defiant and unapologetic attitude, but she’s tempered that by allowing more vulnerability without being outright fragile. This reaches its apotheosis in the finest and most moving number, “Bilbao”, wherein she tentatively admits to some insecurity, proceeds to confess her love for another, then jumps in with both feet in the chorus. Real is nothing short of a watershed moment for Loveless and one of 2016’s most engaging and enjoyable records. — Cole Waterman
Album: Hypercaffium Spazzinate
Label: Epitaph
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/d/descendents-hypercaffium_spazzinate.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 58
Display Width: 200
Descendents
Hypercaffium Spazzinate
Fans of the Descendents, the progenitors of pop-punk, are accustomed to long breaks. Hell, the band’s first full-length, 1982’s Milo Goes to College, was so named because singer Milo Aukerman left the band to go to college for three years. The hiatuses got longer after 1987’s All. Nine years, then eight years, and this time 12 years between albums. But Hypercaffium Spazzinate delivers on both the hooks and angst the band is known for, with adjustments for a punk band in their 50s. The quick hardcore of “No Fat Burger” finds Aukerman amusingly lamenting that he’s no longer allowed to eat non-healthy foods. “Limiter” concerns the frustration of raising an ADHD child, simultaneously raging against the prescription of meds and apologizing for giving in and administering them. The band makes time for some of their traditional nerd rage on “Testosterone” and “We Got Defeat” and self-deprecation on the catchy and silly “On Paper”. “Shameless Halo” brings all the elements together into a two-minute slice of pounding drums, melodic bass, staccato guitar chords, and a huge, harmony-laden sing along chorus. But the band saves the biggest emotions for themselves. Closer “Beyond the Music” toes the line of sappiness while discussing the members’ 30-plus years of friendship. But the Aukerman-penned “Smile” and “Comeback Kid” capture Milo’s genuine sentiments about drummer Bill Stevenson’s brush with death and recovery from a brain tumor in the late ’00s. That the songs are also fast and catchy is no surprise because that’s how the Descendents deal with their feelings. — Chris Conaton
Album: Azel
Label: Partisan
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/b/bombino_azel.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 57
Display Width: 200
Bombino
Azel
Back in the simpler times of early spring, the world watched a rare event unfold in Death Valley: a once-in-a-decade super bloom, bringing thousands of wildflowers to life in the barren desert. In that regard, Bombino’s April release, Azel, seems perfectly timed, taking Tuareg desert blues from the Sahara and spinning them into what he calls Tuareggae, an upbeat style of music that incorporates Bombino’s distinctive and complex guitar lines with reggae and traditional West African drums. Every track on Azelis a new reason to rejoice and an excuse to dance.
For those expecting something more along the lines of Tinariwen-style melancholy, don’t despair: Positivity doesn’t mean mindless levity to Bombino, and each song expresses something poignant, from acoustic love songs to exuberant, pure rock and roll. David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors produces the album, adding subtle touches to make sure every note sparkles and Bombino’s voice, a perfect and pliable tool that creates perfect emotional moments, comes through clearly. Though it may seem like a niche album, Azel is simply music for people who love music, and no matter how fluent your Tamasheq, you can’t help but feel that love. — Adriane Pontecorvo
Album: Splendor & Misery
Label: Sub Pop
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/c/clipping-splendor_and_misery.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 56
Display Width: 200
clipping.
Splendor & Misery
Blasting out into space chanting “All Black Everything”, clipping.’s most recent album Splendor & Misery applies the sonic mayhem worked out on their first album to a thrilling and emotionally affective Afrofuturist space opera. Splendor & Misery shares the flow and the experimental production of their 2014 debut album CLPPNG, but it is radically different in tone. This time Daveed Diggs (Hamilton), William Hutson (Rale) and Jonathan Snipes (Captain Ahab) produced a concept album about a slave named Cargo 2331 who is the lone survivor on an intergalactic transport where all human inhabitants except him have been terminated with gas and a computer falls in love with him.
On CLPPNG, the tangle of white noise, clanks and sawtooth waves with poetically spit pulp crime lyrics was aurally shocking. Whereas on this album, it’s the inclusion of spirituals such as “Story 5” between the tough bangers such as “Baby Don’t Sleep” that are jarring to the listener. The juxtaposition breaks up the flow of rhymes and beats with mourning and hope, grounding the science fiction themes into a musical genre that evokes the Black Atlantic narrative and denies the inherent whiteness of this speculative world. clipping. mixes science fiction tropes, gangsta rap, spirituals and experimental sound on Splendor & Misery, synthesizing the parts into a fantastic journey that claims a place in space for people of African descent and Black culture. — NA Cordova
Album: Oh No
Label: Hyperdub
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/j/jessy-lanza-oh-no.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 55
Display Width: 200
Jessy Lanza
Oh No
It was perhaps a matter of time before Jessy Lanza took that step towards outright pop. The compositions on Pull My Hair Back were too good to exist in the cocooned, insular world for much longer. But Oh No is less of a coming out party and more of a brilliant commentary on pop music itself. In a time when pop artist cannibalize the past for their benefit, Lanza instead chooses to make that cannibalism more apparent, blurring the line between mainstream and underground influences until it barely exists at all. Intentionally or not, Lanza tracks the development and evolution of pop music, evoking the underground pioneers who later made mainstream impact. It all comes together gloriously, and the songs of the exceptionally talented Lanza make Oh No into a pop history lecture worth hearing more than once. — Kevin Korber
Album: JEFFERY
Label: Atlantic / 300
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/y/young_thug-no_my_name_is_jeffery.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 54
Display Width: 200
Young Thug
JEFFERY
Young Thug’s liquid vocal performances, eccentric fashion sense, and tireless work ethic seem to come to him so easily, but as the elegantly designed cover of his third mixtape of 2016, JEFFERY, illustrates, his style is anything but effortless. Still, it’s that fluidity that has pushed his experimental instincts to the point of mainstream viability and this, the next step in the continued fusion of 21st century rap and pop music. JEFFERY thrusts Young Thug into a diverse assortment of styles, moods, and aesthetic environments and he answers back with an extreme versatility of voice and vision. While the sheer sprawling range of the rapper’s craft is staggering, the real success of JEFFERY is that Thugger uses every experimental flourish and each of his personal idiosyncrasies as opportunities to put together hooks, infectious phrases, and pop reversals. This is dexterity almost no one in the pop music sphere or the rap game bothers to discipline anymore, yet Young Thug accesses it with abandon. JEFFERY is immediately approachable because of that adaptability, but it’s also refreshingly elusive because of his downright singular approach. It responds to those deficiencies of the mainstream in many ways. — Colin Fitzgerald
Album: The Hope Six Demolition Project
Label: Island
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/p/pj_harvey-the_hope_six_demolition_project.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 53
Display Width: 200
PJ Harvey
The Hope Six Demolition Project
We live in trying times. How can we balance the strange mixture of despair, amusement, cynicism, and rage that lurks in each of our gullets as the sixteenth year of the twenty-first century lurches to a close? To start, with glorious, horrifying choruses like, “We’re gunna put a Wall-Mart here! We’re gunna put a Wall-Mart here!” That one is from The Hope Six Demolition Project’s lead single ‘Community of Hope.’ Polly Jean Harvey has done it again, not that any of us should be surprised by that. Who better to soundtrack the postmodern nightmare in which we now live? The Hope Six Demolition Project features sweet, infectious melodies alongside Harvey’s incomparable, heartbreaking moan, all tied together by lyrics that describe our world a little bit too accurately. For someone whose career has been as rich, uncompromising, and flawless as Harvey’s has been, it is baffling to consider that The Hope Six Demolition Project may be one of her finest moments. And yet here we are… — Ben Olson
Album: Traditional Synthesizer Music
Label: Timesig
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/v/venetian_snares_traditional_synthesizer_music.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 52
Display Width: 200
Venetian Snares
Traditional Synthesizer Music
The present strength of the modular synthesizer market is surprising for anyone with a memory of how fully out of favor the equipment seemed to be, not so long ago. While there is a nod to gear revivalism in the title of Venetian Snares’ Traditional Synthesizer Music, the album emerges as one of Aaron Funk’s purest expressions of covering fresh territory. A result of building and performing songs live with a modular synthesizer, the release is an unforeseen development from an artist whose discography is defined by an incredibly varied collection of sound sources that collide and cohere within Funk’s individualistic, sometimes frenzied, approach to composing and recording with computers. For electronic music listeners, Traditional Synthesizer Music is a worthwhile document of trusted hands changing up the toolkit to investigate new ways through sound. Videos of complete live track performances reinforce the ephemeral nature of the songs. Each take includes unique characteristics. No two stabs are the same. Traditional Synthesizer Music is classicism that offers the thrill of new creation. — Thomas Britt
Album: Love & Hate
Label: Interscope
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/m/michael_kiwanuka_love_hate.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 51
Display Width: 200
Michael Kiwanuka
Love & Hate
Rejection. It can be a hard thing to take at the best of times. However, when you are trying to follow up an album that saw you painted as the soulful heir to Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield and your label doesn’t like where you’re heading, then that can cut deep. That’s the position Kiwanuka found himself in when his record label decided that they didn’t like the demos for his second album. Frustrated and exhausted he picked up a guitar and wrote “Black Man in a White World”, the emotionally heavy and instantly memorable highlight of the album. From that moment he felt he could take risks and be the artist his heart wanted to be. The result is a dark yet soulful album that feels a world away from his more laidback debut. “Cold Little Heart” is a psychedelic soul epic that shows off his guitar playing as does the title track. Nevertheless, he is equally adept at delivering taut, retro-soul numbers like “One More Night” and “I’ll Never Love”. Love & Hate is an assured album from an artist in the truest sense of the word who fought back from the brink on his terms. — Paul Carr
50 – 41
Album: True Sadness
Label: American / Republic
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/t/the_avett_brothers-true_sadness1.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 50
Display Width: 200
The Avett Brothers
True Sadness
Instead of the raw passion that once defined them, the Avett Brothers’ ongoing collaboration with producer Rick Rubin keeps finding new elements in their anything-goes Americana sound. “Divorce Separation Blues”, a yodeling cowboy ballad, takes it too far and gets silly, but the full string orchestra-backed closer “May It Last” makes it work by contrasting those soaring strings with swirling minor key verses. “Satan Pulls the Strings” injects burbling synths instead of a traditional bass part, but it balances this with possibly the most unhinged vocal performance in an Avetts song since the pre-Rubin days. Similarly, opener “Ain’t No Man” blatantly uses the beat from “We Will Rock You”, but buttresses it with a great bassline from Bob Crawford and a great sing-along melody. The Caribbean-flavored “Victims of Life” is cheesy but so buoyant that it’s hard not to enjoy. The quiet songs, particularly the lovely “No Hard Feelings”, are more effective this time out. And “True Sadness” itself successfully mixes a dark premise with bright music and a great chorus. True Sadness by embracing variety and doing it with enthusiasm. — Chris Conaton
Album: Running Out of Love
Label: Labrador
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/t/the_radio_dept-running_out_of_love.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 49
Display Width: 200
The Radio Dept.
Running Out of Love
Insular and globally unconscious as we tend to be, Americans and British, in particular, will desperately need albums like Running Out of Love in the coming years. For one thing, Swedish duo the Radio Dept. provide excellent therapy for the post-election blues, with would-be electro-bangers like “Teach Me to Forget” empathizing with the desire to unplug and escape from political despair, even as tracks like “Can’t Be Guilty” warn against the dangers of complacency. The album also serves as a valuable document of the right-wing nationalist movements that have risen to power and prominence over the past few years across the Western hemisphere by stoking xenophobic fears. Armed with an arsenal of ’80s- and ’90s-inspired techno beats (hey, we all have to start somewhere), the Radio Dept. build upon previous singles like “Death to Fascism” to craft their most focused, extensive, and searing indictment of right-wing politics yet. Running Out of Love is not the Radio Dept. album that will hold your hand through a tough breakup, because who has time for that shit now anyway? Instead, it is a work that will nurse our collective wounds and inspire us to action. — Andrew Paschal
Album: 99.9%
Label: XL
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/k/kaytranada-999.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 48
Display Width: 200
Kaytranada
99.9%
Admired by underground electronic connoisseurs and mainstream superstars alike — Madonna and Janet Jackson are two admirers — Kevin Celestin has become one of the more in-demand producers of the last couple years. The Haitian-born, Montreal-raised artist further cemented his status as a dance music visionary with his debut album, a rich, vivid patchwork of sounds and styles that mirrors the inclusive nature of his adopted home country. Loaded with cameos by the likes of Craig David, Anderson .Paak, Aluna George, and BADBADNOTGOOD, 99.9% skitters between hip hop, house, Haitian music, Tropicália, R&B, funk, soul, and even a little Can-derived krautrock. However, instead of coming across as manic, Celestin’s compositions brim with joy and verve, which in a year filled with tragedy and turmoil, feels like a welcome respite from so much negativity. — Adrien Begrand
Album: Still Brazy
Label: CTE / Def Jam
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/y/yg-still_brazy.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 47
Display Width: 200
YG
Still Brazy
Still Brazy was almost titled Still Krazy, a more consistent title for the follow-up to 2014’s My Krazy Life, but then YG, a man with a lot less to prove than he did to years ago, realized that it wouldn’t make sense to pander towards a more universal crowd for an album that sits so close to his upbringing. Still Brazy shows that he seems to have matured past the point of prioritizing fame, allowing him to buckle down and make a deeply personal album that also happens to have the most upfront musical middle-finger to this year’s disastrous election. Perhaps it’s because fame is what got him shot last year; once the damage is done, why would you pursue it deeper? This is a record that glamorizes nothing and never diverts from its mission to paint YG’s life honestly and completely. Not a single moment on Still Brazy is taken for granted, not even the token features from big dogs like Drake or Lil Wayne. It is this gravity that makes the album such an enjoyable magnum opus, this flawless balance of jubilance and awareness that is unique to YG. — Max Totsky
Album: Post Pop Depression
Label: Loma Vista
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/i/iggy_pop_post_pop_depression.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 46
Display Width: 200
Iggy Pop
Post Pop Depression
As its title implies, Post Pop Depression is something of Pop’s post-modern evaluation of his career. No one has made musical anarchy and lowbrow musings pass as high art quite like Pop, and here, the punk godfather looms large overlooking his decades of work. With Josh Homme serving as his majordomo, Pop creates a travelogue that touches on his Stooges heyday, his proto-industrial Berlin-era, and his more avant-garde proclivities. Atmosphere is paramount. Homme’s inimitable guitar flourishes mixed with ominous percussion, rumbling basses, and creepy keys bolster Pop’s leathery pipes and slithery delivery. From his vantage point, Pop speaks with the authority of one who created a world simply to wreak havoc in. Never one for modesty, Pop spits his observations with an earned sense of braggadocio. He refers to himself as America’s greatest living poet, rails against carrion-feasting media gadflies, laments the intangibility of his legacy, and chronicles his nation’s decline as an apocalyptic seer. The dénouement of “Paraguay” with its misanthropic, get-off-my-lawn rant, says it all. If this ends up being Pop’s final record, we could not have asked for a more apt farewell or a better middle finger from the icon. — Cole Waterman
Album: And the Anonymous Nobody
Label: AOI
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/and-the-anonymous-nobody-de-la-soul.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 45
Display Width: 200
De La Soul
And the Anonymous Nobody
With the help of a crowdfunding campaign that cracked its $110,000 goal in a mere ten hours (before going on to nearly sextuple that number), De La Soul manages to pack an almost impossible amount of star power into And the Anonymous Nobody, a chameleon of an album that features Jill Scott, David Byrne, Snoop Dogg, Little Dragon… the list goes on, and so does De La Soul’s well of inspiration. While De La Soul relies less on the samples that have shaped previous albums, And the Anonymous Nobody stays refreshingly eclectic, with glam rock, dream pop, and even hints of Dirty South folded into De La Soul’s jazzy hip-hop. Holding together all the different superstars and styles, though, is a warmth inherent in De La Soul’s music, and all the Kickstarter money in the world can’t fake that. Twenty-seven years after 3 Feet High and Rising, there’s no question that the trio still loves this work, and that authenticity makes each element on this new album — violin flourishes and all — that much more vibrant. — Adriane Pontecorvo
Album: The Sun’s Tirade
Label: TDE
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/i/isaiah-rashad-sun-tirade-album-350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 44
Display Width: 200
Isaiah Rashad
The Sun’s Tirade
The press on The Sun’s Tirade focused on the darkness within it, on Isaiah Rashad’s struggles with addiction and depression and how they bear themselves out within the songs. All of that is true, and the album absorbs us in the myriad struggles within one human self. But to dwell on that too much is to miss the complexity of its entertainment; Rashad’s capacity to combine jokes, outrage, tributes, celebration and more within one rhyme. A pure love for hip-hop runs through everything, showing in sly references to hip-hop warriors of the past and present, from across regions and decades. And in his flow, with a rugged flexibility that twists and slurs and shows off and confuses itself. Meanwhile, he tries to reconcile a young life’s worth of competing impulses, song by song. — Dave Heaton
Album: A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings
Label: Polyvinyl
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/b/beach_slang-a_loud_bash_of_teenage_feelings.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 43
Display Width: 200
Beach Slang
A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings
Beach Slang drive in a straight line; James Alex writes emotional adolescence with punk rock enthusiasm. There’s no trick to it, except maybe the trick that Alex seems to write through his own youth with enough distance to be accurate, but not so much as to be nostalgic. It’s hard to say whether he ever grew up or not, but all that’s beside the point. Alex spends the disc capturing (or recapturing) an array of feelings — there’s opportunity, there’s hope, but there’s frustration, and there’s hurt, too. All of it turns upward, though, a created self-assurance, a good mixtape, and a celebration of that now can go a long way. With memorable hooks that are part pop, part dive bar, and part rock history lesson, the band perfectly backs up Alex’s emotive vocals. The combination is both a tour through hazy youth and a catchy guide out of it. — Justin Cober-Lake
Album: Pretty Years
Label: Sinderlyn
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/c/cymbals_eat_guitars-pretty_years.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 42
Display Width: 200
Cymbals Eat Guitars
Pretty Years
The recent indie emo revival has given us a number of excellent young bands, but while the subgenre is raw and emotive it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to much sonic variety. On their fourth LP, Pretty Years, Cymbals Eat Guitars manage to deviate from the genre’s standard trappings to make an album that works both for nuanced indie rock connoisseurs and those who simply want something to shout along to in their cars and bedrooms. Singer Joseph D’Agostino deserves a lot of credit; his raspy, guttural delivery, which sounds like it has a natural layer of distortion on top of whatever studio effects were used, is a refreshing alternative to the more nasally cadence of many similar singers. He’s a bluntly powerful lyricist and has a terrific understanding of when to alter his delivery, going falsetto for the chorus of “Have a Heart” and full belt for the operatic “Dancing Days”.
A number of inspired creative choices, like the manic, borderline demented sax on “Wish” or the DIY thrash of “Beam” consistently elevate Pretty Years and keep it from being the kind of emo-tinged record that becomes narcotizing in its angst and self-reflection. Because the sonic landscape is constantly shifting the listener is always paying rapt attention, and they are rewarded with frank wit and stunning instrumentals as a result. — Grant Ridner
Album: Changes
Label: Daptone
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/misc_art/b/bradley-changes-cvr350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 41
Display Width: 200
Charles Bradley
Changes
Enigmatic, soul-oozing crooner Charles Bradley’s trifecta of releases is figure-headed by 2016’s Changes on Daptone’s Dunham imprint. Donning an arrangement of Black Sabbath’s song, that ultimately ended up being the record’s title in honor of his mother’s passing, the album itself is a masterpiece. Not to say the remaining long players lack in 2011’s debut No Time For Dreaming, and 2013’s smoking hot Victim of Love, but 2016’s offering is the exact shot of medicine we as a country needed before we even knew we needed it. If you need an example dial up “Change For the World”, a song I’d like to nominate as our new national anthem, and/or “Ain’t It a Sin” to get your ass out a seat to dance or, better yet, stand up for yourself.
Charles Bradley and the Menehan Street Band cultivated a quintessential collection of heart and soul baffling rhythm and blues, out of your seat jump rock and soul, and culminating in a living, breathing time capsule of American music pulling at every morsel of the audible universe for a spin. Changes pulls together the studio version of a Charles Bradley live show, obsessed with ‘The Godfather of Soul’ since his mere teens and amassing copious amounts of stage time emulating his idol in a James Brown cover band was the perfect concoction to launch his own era, a beautiful treat for the uninitiated. And a heartfelt Godspeed to Mr. Bradley as he battles the demon of stomach cancer at this very moment, albeit singing and smiling his way through another bump in the proverbial road, or at least that’s how I’d like to envision him. — Scott Zuppardo
40 – 31
Album: Blood Bitch
Label: Sacred Bones
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/j/jenny_hval-blood_bitch.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 40
Display Width: 200
Jenny Hval
Blood Bitch
A year after the brilliant Apocalypse, girl, Norwegian artist Jenny Hval returned with a sixth album that turned out to be even darker and more confrontational than before, yet at the same time, displaying a pop sensibility that her past work hinted at but never fully embraced. “For the virgins, the whores, the mothers, the witches, the dreamers, and the lovers,” Hval states, going on to celebrate womanhood in explicit, graphic, harrowing, and dryly humorous fashion. Along with producer Lasse Murhaug, Hval creates a sparse sound that alternately evokes a horror film (“Female Vampire”) and a surreal, gothic form of pop music (“The Great Undressing”). Descibed by Hval as “a love song for a vampire stuck in erotic self-oscillation”, “Conceptual Romance” is the real breakthrough moment here, in which rich poetry, staggering beauty, and musical minimalism coalesce into a thing of rare, awe-inspiring beauty. — Adrien Begrand
Album: Emily’s D+Evolution
Label: Concord
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/e/esperanza_spalding-emilys_d_evolution.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 39
Display Width: 200
Esperanza Spalding
Emily’s D+Evolution
If there were any justice in the world, which there is not, Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro would be filed under “prog”, Esperanza Spalding would have won two Best New Artist Grammys, and this smashing musical hybrid — her fifth album — would be saturating both jazz and rock radio. R&B radio too, what the heck. As it is, Spalding’s probably getting a few spins on college stations from aspiring shock jocks delighting in the bloodcurdling screams of “I Want It Now” (a Veruca Salt cover –the original Veruca Salt). But a few spins more and you can’t escape: the strutting groove of “Judas”, the lush garden folk of “Noble Nobles”, the elaborate vocal overdubs and memorable tunes that stick in your craw on every damn song, make D+Evolution one of 2016’s most unfathomable musical undertakings — and (apologies to the late Mr. Bowie) that includes producer Tony Visconti’s other jazz-rock hybrid further up this list. Every listen is a gauntlet thrown: Try to figure out how Spalding and her band achieved this. And every failed attempt just compels you to listen again. — Josh Langhoff
Album: Puberty 2
Label: Dead Oceans
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/m/mitski-puberty2.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 38
Display Width: 200
Mitski
Puberty 2
As an Asian-American distraught by the lack of Asian role models on the big screen (amongst other things), this hits a little too close to home — the story of a Japanese lost in America with only her guitar, songwriting, and Pixies records to shield her. “Happy”, with its odd insistent beat, deadpan vocals fashioning a boy to life named Happy for the payoff of “I felt Happy come inside of me” and shronking saxophone, and the massive dynamic shifts of “Your Best American Girl” are the biggest draws here, and rightly so. But anyone who thinks the rest is filler needs to have their heads checked. Songs like “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” (wherein she screams “KILL ME, JERUSALEM” match the sheer volume of the choruses of “Your Best American Girl” while “I Bet on Losing Dogs” recalls the tenderness of that song’s verses and “A Loving Feeling” lands somewhere in between. She might not be the moon, but she’s a star in the making, and I hope she sings to the birds at night for a while longer. — Marshall Gu
Album: Anti
Label: Westbury Road / Roc Nation
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/anti-rihanna-350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 37
Display Width: 200
Rihanna
Anti
Freed from a record contract with Def Jam, the first thing Rihanna dropped was “FourFiveSeconds”, hinting to some that she wasn’t quite ready to give up on mediocre pop. To be fair, she’s an alarmingly decent M.O.R. recording artist with an impressive 14 number one singles to her name. Anti added another to that roster in “Work”, her chart-busting collaboration with Drake, but it was the surrounding album that represented perhaps her greatest achievement to date. Immediately more loose than her most recent club-driven work, Anti finds Rihanna embracing silky, dark pop, taking cues from contemporaries as disparate as Sky Ferriera, Beyoncé, and FKA Twigs. Her voice, always best-suited in the mid-range, now doesn’t feel jailed there, but liberated to navigate within its sweet spot. It’s no libel to say she sounds perpetually stoned across the LP, slurring her words with an almost Young Thug-ian mumblecore delight, each line a smooth vaporous slide into the next. Even more impressive is the LP’s production, assembled by a hodgepodge of some of the best talent making the rounds these days. This is an album where the industrial vamps of “Woo” can run up against the electro-swagger of “Consideration”, the nostalgic soulful balladry of “Love on the Brain”, the lush neo-soul of “James Joint”, and fairly straight-up cover of Tame Impala on “Same Ol’ Mistakes” and comfortably feel cohesive and infinitely replayable. — Timothy Gabriele
Album: Commontime
Label: Memphis Industries
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/f/field_music-commontime.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 36
Display Width: 200
Field Music
Commontime
For their sixth album, the British wunderboys behind Field Music tried something new: instead of putting all the music theory they know to ornate arrangements, they this time tried to just find their groove, and boy did they. For their big pop moment, Field Music decided to use Commontime to embrace their influences with boldness and ferocity, sounding like the goddamn living embodiment of both Talking Heads and XTC but with a dollop of funk coating these finely-proportioned servings of brainy dance-rock. Commontime sounds like it came out in either 1982 or 1977 or 2016, and thank goodness it actually did: whether viewed through a lens of pure nostalgia or the contemporary sounds of today, Field Music will just put a damn smile on your face no matter what. — Evan Sawdey
Album: Love Streams
Label: 4AD
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/f/folder1.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 35
Display Width: 200
Tim Hecker
Love Streams
Tim Hecker’s eighth album, Love Streams begins with a bit of a feign — collaborator Kara Lis-Coverdale’s keyboards start its first thirty seconds, a nod to his previous album Virgins. But once this subsides into euphonic winds, the real aesthetic of the album takes shape. With Love Streams, Hecker eases you in with titles that state exactly what they sound like (the feathery “Music of the Air” and the choral warpings of “Castrati Stack”) and some that hint at humor (“Up Red Bull Creek”) that could only come from working in Iceland away from the daily effects of mass-market late capitalism. But above all else, the album title reveals the sound’s greatest secret: that it’s the result of a peerless collective of musicians under the guise of the best ambient artist working today who have channeled the feelings of love in all their terrifying, euphoric might, into a completely fluid experience. — Brian Duricy
Album: The Dreaming Room
Label: RCA
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/l/laura-mvula-the-dreaming-room-2016.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 34
Display Width: 200
Laura Mvula
The Dreaming Room
Moments of quiet beauty are generously scattered throughout Laura Mvula’s stunning new record The Dreaming Room. While her debut album Sing to the Moon proved to be a masterclass in 21st-century soul, no one quite knew what to expect from its successor. Deliriously eccentric, strikingly defiant of any genre limitations, and unbound by pop conventions, Mvula has given her admirers an intimate glimpse into her pain and passions, delivering one of the year’s best albums.
After the spacious elegance of Sing to the Moon, inviting Nile Rodgers or British rapper Wretch 32 to join her on the follow-up record, surely raised a few red flags and eyebrows within her fanbase. They’d have reason to be anxious, for the overindulgent, “more is more” approach clutters most sophomore efforts. Thankfully, these guest spots prove to be as unorthodox in their collaborative spirit, as the compositional structure of the songs around them.
Upon multiple spins, it is the album’s emotional centerpiece, “Show Me Love”, that resonates long after the “gospel-delia” funk of “Phenomenal Woman” has come to a close. Mvula sings, “You showed me love… of the deepest kind” as strings and lush choral harmonies soar to near cosmic heights. Her loss is unmistakably universal, but the raw clarity and anchored strength in which it is conveyed, prove to be uniquely her own. — Ryan Lathan
Album: I Had a Dream That You Were Mine
Label: Glassnote
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/l/leithauser-rostam-i_had_a_dream_that_you_were_mine.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 33
Display Width: 200
Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam
I Had a Dream That You Were Mine
If there was ever any doubt as to the extent of the creative role played by Rostam Batmanglij within Vampire Weekend, his newly-established partnership with former Walkmen vocalist Hamilton Leithauser should put all that to rest. So dynamic were Batmanglij’s contributions to the overall Vampire Weekend sound of their last album that I Had a Dream That You Were Mine sounds very much the logical extension of his previous band’s Modern Vampires of the City. But where Vampire Weekend tended to stick with a more hipster-approved aesthetic, Leithauser makes no bones about his penchant for pop classicism. Beginning with the soaring, gorgeously orchestrated and sung “A 1000 Times”, the pair embark on an album that feels simultaneously modern and completely out of time. Approaching the work as a whole, it has the feel of another era, one in which the endgame was a coherent artistic statement across the whole of the album rather than a slipshod collection created to supplement a single. Together, theirs is a partnership that could well become one of the most iconic of the 21st century. — John Paul
Album: Light Upon the Lake
Label: Secretly Canadian
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/w/whitney-lightuponthelake.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 32
Display Width: 200
Whitney
Light Upon the Lake
Whitney’s Light Upon the Lake is a brief, beautiful set of elegant indie pop that is equal parts the Band and twee. Julien Ehrlich’s singing voice is high-pitched and thin, but it gives each song an utterly distinct quality. From the ending wordless chorus in “Golden Days” or the haunted “No Woman”, Ehrlich elucidates the youthful searching inherit in the music and lyrics with this delicate vocals. Here, Whitney conjure a sound that’s actively nostalgic, feeling just like those moments when you step outside of yourself and feel the rush of life as it happens around you. Light Upon the Lake is a melodically rich and beautifully produced album—a modern antidote to too-clean digital production as well as the questionable authenticity of folk-driven acts like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Unlike those bands, Whitney never feel cloying. Much more than the sum of its parts, Light Upon the Lake announces a very good band that makes familiar music sound wholly modern. — Tanner Smith
Album: elseq 1-5
Label: Warp
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/autechre_elseq_15.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 31
Display Width: 200
Autechre
elseq 1-5
From 1992-1994, Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence series branded certain artists (including Richard D. James/Polygon Window and Autechre) as fodder for cerebral, rather than physical, musical listening activity. The message of the branding was that this is electronic music but not dance music. In recent years, James’ Aphex Twin project has reemerged to some of the best reviews of his career with proper new releases in the form of LPs and EPs, as well as a Soundcloud dump of more than 150 tracks. Autechre (Sean Booth and Rob Brown), which has released albums of new music more consistently than Aphex Twin, unleashed a project in 2016 that synthesized all these approaches to music distribution and further established the incredible vitality of Warp artists that have been making music for 30 years and continuing to innovate.
elseq 1-5 is an album in five parts, or a series of five LPs, with no physical release. Though the five parts together make up a massive playlist of digital music, the sequencing, style, and artwork of the individual installments make each one an essential component of the Autechre discography. Thus anyone hoping for a new Autechre album in 2016 encountered five such albums all at once. And none of it is “disposable information”.
I hear Autechre in shapes, so perhaps the most illustrative analogy I can provide for installments 1-5 together is the image of the V-shaped equalizer. elseq 1 pushes some upper limits of confrontational dynamics, with opening track “feed1” playing like a moat that must be crossed in order to reach the castle. By comparison, the next track “c16 deep tread” is downright conventional Bounce Music. The physicality of elseq 1-5 subverts the original idea of Artificial Intelligence and Warp pushing its version of easy chair-listening. But the collection is never wearying, as tracks like 2‘s “chimer 1-5-1” make room for the ghost of an ambient past, here reconfigured within whatever the name is for electro sent via wormhole.
The third (middle) installment is the easiest to digest, as it includes the set’s most continuous drone (“eastre”) and most casual beat (“TBM2”). elseq 4 intertwines melodies and ambient style with polyrhythm (“foldfree casual”) and closes with a restless number (“7th slip”) that adds another variation to the ways sounds in this collection fight one another for space. elseq 5 closes the set on a high with a bona fide dance track (“freulaeux”) and “oneum,” which sets the listener up for a drop that never arrives, but does finally provide fades to break the high tension. Despite its more than four-hour running time and bounty of sounds, elseq 1-5 ends with a sense that the grid for Autechre’s game is getting bigger, resetting for the next match. — Thomas Britt
30 – 21
Album: Midwest Farmer’s Daughter
Label: Third Man
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/m/margo_price_midwest_farmers_daughter.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 30
Display Width: 200
Margo Price
Midwest Farmer’s Daughter
Margo Price captures the sound of the classic female country singers of the ’60s and ’70s. Today, as both country and rock are not what they used to be, Price is a rock and roller signed by Jack White who didn’t change a note on her self-made recordings before releasing it on his record label. Price is tough, tender, a realist and a dreamer whose music can tear out your heart one minute and then kick your butt the next. She sings about losing the farm, losing a child, true love and tough times with a swagger and the knowledge that whatever she survived made her stronger and gentler. Price sneers at what she has conquered with a wry smile. She directly takes on the Nashville establishment and others that have done her wrong with a sense of humor and reflection, without ever losing the beat or hitting a false note. — Steve Horowitz
Album: Freetown Sound
Label: Domino
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/b/blood-orange-freetown-sound_350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 29
Display Width: 200
Blood Orange
Freetown Sound
For the most reckless minds, Blood Orange’s masterpiece can be listened to as a purely political, black album. That wouldn’t be a wrong assessment of the whole: this is music devoted to a very specific time and place in mind — funk and R&B, ghettos and Reagan, ’80s and basic human rights. Yet, that’s simply the backdrop for something that takes place below all the political commentary. This is music about longing and saudade, about anguish and acceptance: “You chose to fade away with him / I chose to try and let you in,” Dev Hynes sings sparsely during interludes and in between songs. In the end, Hynes crafted the perfect threshold between sadness and a late night epiphany. — Danilo Bortoli
Album: Preoccupations
Label: Jagjaguwar
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/p/preoccupations-self-titled-350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 28
Display Width: 200
Preoccupations
Preoccupations
It’s already tough to follow up a highly acclaimed debut album, but it increases the difficulty when that follow-up comes with a name change. The band formerly known as Viet Cong are now dubbed Preoccupations and along with the name change the group has also made a notable sonic pivot. The band retain a raw, dark energy and a wonderful use of post-punk repetition, but the edges are softened on Preoccupations. The album seems to lean more towards the atmospheric, allowing the instruments to feel distant, washed in deep and pulsing effects. They drift away from the analog into the electronic more willingly and easily. Preoccupations throttles down the aggression, which might turn of a few fans, but the sacrifice leads to a more connected, nuanced, and thorough musical expedition. — Dan Kok
Album: The Triad
Label: Rough Trade
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/p/pantha_du_prince-the_triad.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 27
Display Width: 200
Pantha du Prince
The Triad
In a year defined by both human coldness and destructive heat, when the politics became downright cynical and regressive, the warm and welcoming cocoon of Pantha du Prince’s music provided a welcome respite. Opening with what it perhaps the most beautiful song of this year, “The Winter Hymn”, this sublime album features a set of ten songs that create an immersive and warm experience enveloped by the heavenly chimes, ethereal vocals, gentle beats, and celestial warmth. “The Winter Hymn” is what I imagine hearing while bathing in the heat of outdoor Icelandic spa waters. These are truly some of the most beautiful sounds this year, and they are utterly transportive. Pantha du Prince creative leader Hendrik Weber has hinted that this may very well be that last Pantha du Prince project, so relax and enjoy this flight into a stunningly gorgeous world that just might convince you that we will all muddle through somehow. — Sarah Zupko
Album: A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
Label: Atlantic
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/s/sturgill_simpson-a_sailors_guide_to_earth.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 26
Display Width: 200
Sturgill Simpson
A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
A “life-lessons” song cycle directed towards his young son, Sturgill Simpson’s third album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, trades some of the country influence for that of heartfelt soul and funky r&b. With a robust string section and brassy horns (courtesy of the Dap-Kings) anchoring the stellar opening track “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)”, it’s clear that Simpson’s influences were a bit more wide ranging here than they even were on his prior releases. The remaining eight tracks drive this point home. Whether he’s quietly seething at dishonest governmental policies (“Sea Stories”), skeptically offering forth life advice (the soulfully propulsive “Brace For Impact (Live a Little)”, or gussying up an old Nirvana tune (“In Bloom”), Simpson brings a diverse musical direction to each track. Just as his lyrical perspective keeps listeners sharply attuned to clues, so does the musical direction. It’s a breezy, yet trippy 39-minute journey into the mind of one of modern music’s most clever songwriters. — Jeff Strowe
Album: My Woman
Label: Jagjaguwar
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/angel_olsen-my_woman.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 25
Display Width: 200
Angel Olsen
My Woman
Financially, the music industry is still in the gutter. But the vinyl resurgence remains one bright spot. And a bonus for that is a renewed focus on ‘sides’ to albums, and how they set moods. A perfect example for this year is Angel Olsen’s My Woman. On the first side, the listener is treated to some fantastic punchy pop, combining ‘60s style girl group melodies with modern-era dream pop guitar riffs. But on the beguiling second side of My Woman, two seven-minute marvels, “Sister” and “Woman” serve as a sort of gentle come-down from the highs of side A. Almost all of the characters in My Woman are sorting through all of the havoc that love can wreck on a person. Far from a breakup album, My Woman gives the listener a full spectrum of moods to get lost it. On probably the poppiest track, “Not Gonna Kill You”, Olsen repeats, “Oh let the light shine in.” On My Woman, the sun is like a disinfectant — hurting as much as it is helping. — Sean McCarthy
Album: The Ghost of Highway 20
Label: Universal
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/t/the_ghost_of_highway_20.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 24
Display Width: 200
Lucinda Williams
The Ghost of Highway 20
Joined by an astounding cast of players, including guitarists Bill Frisell, Greg Leisz and Val McCallum, Williams takes the listener on a journey through a disappearing past, reminding us of life’s transitory nature. That theme is writ large via “Dust”, with words from her late father, Miller Williams. The music is spare and haunting throughout, though “Death Came”, the nine-minute “Louisiana” and the titular piece are especially so. She also breathes new life into Bruce Springsteen’s “Factory”, proving that it’s as relevant today as it was more than 30 years ago. Williams has outdone herself with this two-disc set, a sprawling effort that never wears out its welcome and reaffirms her place as a dedicated seeker and seer within American music. Released in the wee hours of 2016 it provides an accurate portrait of life in a country on the verge of either revolution or resolution in that year’s dimming days. — Jedd Beaudoin
Album: Skeleton Tree
Label: Bad Seeds Ltd
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/n/nick_cave_and_the_bad_seeds-skeleton_tree.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 23
Display Width: 200
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Skeleton Tree
Nick Cave explores a full range of emotional polarities on Skeleton Tree, a pitch-black affirmation that takes from the swampy recesses of his past oeuvre and transforms them into funereal ballads. The confidence that he typically radiates is nowhere to be found, and instead we get a weary brooder who’s bound by tragic circumstance. Cave wrote portions of Skeleton Tree while still mourning the death of his 15-year-old son, and though not directly related it’s clear to see how this life event informed his creative sensibility. The messaging is rather oblique throughout the album, where he chooses to look back on past struggles while looking ahead to future challenges with a ponderous and heavy gait. What remains unimpaired through these arduous eight songs, though, is an artist whose life-long allegiance to his art continues to flourish with unabated prosperity. — Juan Edgardo Rodríguez
Album: Teens of Denial
Label: Matador
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/c/car_seat_headrest-teens_of_denial.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 22
Display Width: 200
Car Seat Headrest
Teens of Denial
Every lyric is a mantra, every stanza is a universe. But it’s the oddest of things, because Will Toledo isn’t some aspiring poet, he just calls them the way he sees them. Or maybe it’s exactly for that reason, since most indie rock lyricists tend to go for vague abstractions, he narrows in on specific details: the smiling Beach Boy-loving child he left behind (“Destroyed by Hippie Powers”) in search of meaningful porn (“Not Just What I Needed”). For the people for whom lyrics mean nothing, rejoice, because each song hits like a brick: the groove of “Fill in the Blank”, the drum-horn interplay of “Vincent”, the rousing codas of “Drugs With Friends” and “1937 State Park”, the choruses of “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales”. Having toiled for years releasing album after album, he finally emerges with his best and most polished yet, and it doesn’t look like our Cosmic Hero is going to be stopping any time soon. — Marshall Gu
Album: Sirens
Label: Other People
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/n/nicolas_jaar-sirens.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 21
Display Width: 200
Nicolas Jaar
Sirens
Nicolas Jaar’s Sirens proves that the personal is always political. While largely an impressionistic and meditative lyrically, with only glancing implications to actual events that have occurred, the album still undoubtedly feels political. Why? In its subtly subversive way, Jaar challenges our notion of melodic electronic music in the myriad of sounds he mines in his second full-length album. He flits between ambient textures, Suicide-inspired synth rock, techno, and, finally, doo-wop balladry. It’s an uncanny album. Like his debut, Space Is Only Noise, Sirens conjures many sonic and emotional associations, pulling you into its orbit, making each choice, no matter how abstract, somehow feel intuitive. While Jaar’s work in the past could sometimes feel like a mapping of his own, brilliant introspection, Sirens feels more outwardly expressive. Its sound mirrors the turbulent world in which it was created. By channeling the painful history of his home country Chile’s struggle with the dictator Augusto Pinochet (specifically in the centerpiece “No”) and transmuting it to America’s unfortunate political climate, Jaar has created an unsettling and beautiful work about history repeating itself. — Tanner Smith
20 – 11
Album: We Got It From Here, Thank You 4 Your Service
Label: Epic
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/q/quest-we_got_it_from_here_thank_you_4_your_service.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 20
Display Width: 200
A Tribe Called Quest
We Got It From Here, Thank You 4 Your Service
Released eight months after the tragic death of legendary MC Phife Dawg and just three days after a harrowing, historically divisive presidential election upset, We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service can only be described as a turbulent album for turbulent times. As the monumental return of one of hip-hop’s greatest groups, the record was forced to balance extraordinarily high expectations and Tribe’s near-spotless legacy with the trauma of a death in the family, the fractured 21st century transformation of rap music, and an increasingly dismal political reality that now seems worlds away from the halcyon days of “Bonita Applebum” and The Low End Theory. Through it all, Q-Tip, Jarobi, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and the late Phife Dawg have only cemented themselves as all-time greats, devouring the controversies and wielding the many complications to empower their supreme artistic vision, all while rejecting yesterday’s nostalgia and today’s rap ephemera. It’s classic hip-hop for the modern era. — Colin Fitzgerald
Album: I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It
Label: Polydor
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/l/leep_for_you_are_so_beautiful_yet_so_unaware_of_it.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 19
Display Width: 200
The 1975
I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It
What part of The 1975’s sophomore effort do you hate the most? You have a lot to pick from: there’s the pretentious-beyond-belief album title, the steady influx of Peter Gabriel LPs they mainlined and used as templates for their pop songs, the too-many, too-meandering synth wash clouds that dot the album’s latter half, etc. For all of its neon flaws and against all the odds, I Like It When You Sleep is one of the most ambitious major label pop albums to emerge this year next to Lemonade. Singer Matthew Healy’s lyrics are a mixture of ego-driven braggadocio, cutting insight, unspeakable vulnerability, and pure bratty pranksterism, all while Adam Hann’s guitar work leaves an indelible melodic impact on tracks like “Ugh!” and “She’s American”. While their debut album was more satisfying than their boy band-esque appearance belied, who would have guessed that their second set would be stacked with absolute masterpieces like “The Sound”, “Loving Someone”, and the aching “If I Believe You”. Its flaws may prove to be just as exciting as its undeniable successes, but the part that I hate the most about the 1975’s second full-length? How much I love it despite having written them off once before. Rest assured: that’s never going to happen again. — Evan Sawdey
Album: American Band
Label: ATO
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/d/drive-by-truckers-american-band-album-cover-art1.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 18
Display Width: 200
Drive-By Truckers
American Band
There wasn’t a whole lot of joyful cheer in this perplexing and sinister year of 2016. Among the assorted acts of national and international violence, the running tally of musician deaths, and of course, our disconcerting election season, the days accumulated with doses of dread, uncertainty, and consternation handed out in equal fashion. Leave it to veteran rockers, Drive-By Truckers, to masterfully encapsulate all of these disparate emotions. On American Band, their aptly titled 11th studio album, co-songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, proudly wear their emotions on their sleeves, offering forth musically lean, yet emotionally heartfelt ruminations on the metaphorical cancers that are continue to threaten an equal America for all. It’s unadorned protest music of utmost urgency, delivered with impassioned sincerity. A near perfect summary of these turbulent times. — Jeff Strowe
Album: untitled unmastered
Label: Aftermath / Interscope
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/k/kendrick-lamar-untitled-unmastered-350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 17
Display Width: 200
Kendrick Lamar
untitled unmastered
In another universe, we may have never heard this collection of demos and outtakes ripped from the recording sessions of last year’s greatest album, but the fact that a rap superstar like Kendrick Lamar with a perfect critical and commercial track record was actually willing to expose the crude, unrefined byproducts of such an arduous recording process to a rabid public that was still fawning over his generation-defining masterpiece(s) is indicative of exactly the quality of character that has made him such a refreshingly authentic artist for our time. untitled unmastered., by nature of its very existence, amplifies the vulnerability Kendrick daringly faced up to on To Pimp a Butterfly, and it continues the trends of bold social commentary, earnest self-reflection, and sonic individualism that have given him his well-deserved fame. It turns out that after his explosive 16-track, 78-minute excursion through the darkest parts of society and self, King Kendrick still had plenty more to say. untitled unmastered. is a testament to his continued artistic sacrifice, showing him once again exorcising demons through postmodern contortions of jazz and funk unlike any who came before him. — Colin Fitzgerald
Album: Black America Again
Label: Def Jam / ARTium
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/c/common-black-america-again-album-cover-art-350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 16
Display Width: 200
Common
Black America Again
The last few years have been eye-opening for all of America. A chunk of America’s populace had fallen into a complacency, a sedation. Then it all cracked and the truth came out. Black America Again is where Common handles America’s recent turbulence with his hands, grapples with it with words, turns it over and looks at the underside, and offers his sense. The self-proclaimed “Tupac Deepak Chopra” approaches institutional racism, women’s equality, loss, recovery, power, intimacy, and most importantly, hope. For Common, the answer lies in fellowship, love, and god because as he says on the closing track, “A cruel hand taking hold. We let go to free them so we can free us. America’s moment to come to Jesus.” Although, he is not as low to the ground as Kendrick or as cerebral as the new Tribe, Common has crafted a relevant and important document of the times with Black America Again. — Christopher Laird
Album: Wildflower
Label: Modular / Astralwerks / XL / EMI
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/avalanches-wildflower.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 15
Display Width: 200
The Avalanches
Wildflower
How do you follow-up a modern classic? For many years it looked like we’d never find out, at least in the case of the Avalanches. Since I Left You, the Australian band’s 2000 debut, is widely hailed as a masterpiece of sonic invention, wit, and whimsical nostalgia. A dizzying maze of countless samples from an endlessly diverse array of source material expertly welded together into a kaleidoscopic electropop dreamscape, Since I Left You is a genre unto itself. After a 16-year gap, the group reappeared this year with Wildflower. While it may not completely reach the magical heights of their debut, it’s still a stellar return. The exquisitely painstaking craftsmanship, the overriding sense joy and wonder, the ears-wide-open to an infinite universe of sonic possibility are all there. If music can be a salve for the soul in deeply troubled times, then Wildflower arrived just in time, just when we needed it most. — Chris Gerard
Album: The Life of Pablo
Label: Def Jam
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/k/kanye-west-the-life-of-pablo.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 14
Display Width: 200
Kanye West
The Life of Pablo
In the coming years, I hope that Kanye West gets recognized as he should for being the first to capitalize on the possibilities of popular get-it-now streaming services — we can now literally ‘stream’ an artist’s work as they first release it and then continue to tweak it. Why can’t an artist ever edit the work they put out, especially when they don’t have to commit to printing physical copies that sell less and less each year? On the varied aural tapestry The Life of Pablo, Kanye proves that he knows he could make quality songs some quadrillion different ways, from the open-armed, soul-bearing beauty and confession in tracks like “Ultralight Beam”, “Real Friends”, and “FML” to the car-booming, party-ready jams like “Feedback”, “Highlights”, and “Fade”. The duality that he’s showcased throughout his career — balancing braggadocious hedonism with remarkable thoughtfulness and funny-or-painful honesty from line to line — has possibly never been in as-full effect as on this release.
Sadly, the most recent headlines regarding the superstar are about his mid-tour admission to UCLA Medical Center for psychiatric observation due to exhaustion, depression, and dehydration. The public is, at last, getting an inarguable impression of West as a “tortured artist”, something he’s previously admitted in interviews in those precious moments surrounding the paparazzi-flashed sound bites that get cut and circulated without due context. A younger me’s deep love for rap music began years ago from seeing three things (each thanks to MTV networks, wow): Eminem’s “Without Me” video, A Tribe Called Quest’s “Award Tour” in the midst of a Golden Age hip-hop marathon, and Kanye West’s “All Falls Down” video. I hope that West — the one “from A Tribe Called ‘Check-A-Hoe'”, the one who has yet to release an album that’s been anything short of fantastic — recovers strongly from his current malaise, and that he keeps blessing both his fans and his detractors with whatever labor-intensive fruits he chooses, music or otherwise. — John DeLeonardis
Album: 22, A Million
Label: Jagjaguwar
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/misc_art/b/bon-iver-22-a-million-c350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 13
Display Width: 200
Bon Iver
22, A Million
In a year where the world’s biggest artists have redefined how albums should be released, Bon Iver took their own unique approach in releasing the long awaited follow up to 2012’s self-titled sophomore record, premiering it in full live at the Eaux Claires festival which frontman Justin Vernon curates. It also marks the latest step in the evolution of Bon Iver’s sound. The isolated acoustics of For Emma, Forever Ago of Bon Iver is replaced by warped jazz and industrial synths, developed through extensive sonic experimentation at Vernon’s April Base studios. These conflicting and at times radical influences are matched by slightly bemusing song titles, religious and philosophical overtones and symbology throughout.
At its core, however, 22, A Million is a richly melodic album filled with modern love songs. Progressing from the sadness that dominated previous releases, this record is still deeply uncertain in its outlook but also moves towards a sense of growing self-understanding, particularly on “29 #Stratfford APTS” and “21 Moon Water”. Vernon sounds enchanting throughout, alternating between autotune and his bewitching falsetto with ease to create one of the most experimental and deeply affecting records of the year. — William Sutton
Album: Hopelessness
Label: Secretly Canadian
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/anohni-hopelessness.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 12
Display Width: 200
Anohni
Hopelessness
Hopelessness is not an easy album to listen to, dedicated as it is to telling uncomfortable truths. Each song demands we view ourselves as Americans in an unfiltered mirror that reveals our collective blemishes in harshest light. Anohni aims her album’s title directly at our current, celebrated president, accusing him of failing in his promise (remember the “hope” posters?). This recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, she reminds us, not only continued the military’s drone bombing operations; he expanded them. She infuses the album with a perpetual specter of death at the hands of the powerful, the knowing, the uncaring: drones rain silent death from above; cameras record our intimacies; the planet burns at “Four Degrees”; the innocent are executed and forcefully forgotten. Again, not an easy album to listen to, Hopelessness is, nonetheless, a beautiful and necessary one. Delicate, angry, danceable, and jarring, Anohni makes the personal global here. — Ed Whitelock
Album: You Want It Darker
Label: Columbia
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/l/leonard_cohen-you_want_it_darker.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 11
Display Width: 200
Leonard Cohen
You Want It Darker
Released just two weeks before his death, Leonard Cohen’s 14th album caps off a late-career renaissance for the ages. Dire financial straits inspired Cohen to tour and record new music starting in 2008, and You Want It Darker is not only his strongest work from this period, but one of his very best. Produced by his son Adam and recorded in his living room, the making of album accommodated Cohen’s increasingly frail body, but what you hear from the title track on is the man’s strength, be it vocally, literary, or musical. Whether it’s his own mortality (“You Want It Darker”) his past lovers (“Treaty”) or the world he sees around him, these nine songs pack a monumental punch, that deep, smoky voice contemplative but still indefatigable. After spending the last couple years of his life away from the spotlight, Canada’s greatest singer-songwriter returned with one final gift for his audience, the final crenellation on a mighty tower of song. — Adrien Begrand
10 – 1
Album: Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future
Label: Universal
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/b/barbara_barbara_we_face_a_shining_future.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 10
Display Width: 200
Underworld
Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future
Sometimes you can lose a band. A couple of mediocre albums, an unrealized promise of a ‘return to form’ and without knowing it, you’ve grown apart. However, just sometimes a band can surprise you and dazzle you all over again. After a few missteps and interesting side projects, Underworld reconvened to release arguably their best album since Beaucoup Fish. Everything that is good about Underworld is present but this no mere retread or nostalgia trip. The band find new ways to display their characteristic mix of house, club beats and techno, layered with Karl Hyde’s instantly recognizable drawl and place them squarely in the here and now. It’s sounds like them but equally like nothing else in their catalogue. “I Exhale” is a dark, evenly paced gem while “If Rah” doffs its cap to their acid house roots. “Low Burn” is a euphoric high point while “Nylon Strung” illuminates the gloom with airy keyboard flourishes. There is a overarching feeling of progression, akin to a rebirth on this album. It’s an album that will win your heart all over again. — Paul Carr
Album: A Seat at the Table
Label: Saint / Columbia
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/s/solange-a_seat_at_the_table.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 9
Display Width: 200
Solange
A Seat at the Table
Hit with a lime by several white ladies seated behind her, her husband, and their son at a Kraftwerk concert in New Orleans because they were dancing (?!), Solange went higher as our FLOTUS advised. She decided to focus on the entirety of black music’s rich history — blues, jazz, hip hop — instead of focusing on the haters. What comes of adversity is 2016’s most historically relevant piece of art.
A Seat at the Table celebrates blackness at a time when racism continues to rear its ugly head like it’s 1959. “Don’t Touch My Hair” explains through an elaborate metaphor why such a seemingly harmless curiosity causes harm: within each fiber exists a struggle that cannot be understood by those outside the struggle. Recorded in jazz music’s cradle, New Orleans, with help from producer/songwriter Raphael Siddiq, the musical range and sophistication makes this Solange’s monumental moment. “Cranes in the Sky” addresses callous heartbreak with tender resignation. Interwoven between tracks are interludes from her mother, father, and Master P. Coming from their emotional exhortations, especially Tina Knowles proud declaration for being black in the backdrop of 2016’s apparent whitelashing.
Cautions against self-neglect, songs like “Borderline” and “Scales” also declares the power black women possess to significantly shape the future. They, too, are America. Whether someone agrees or disagrees with this premise is immaterial. — Stephan Wyatt
We are wholly independent, with no corporate backers.
We can’t survive without your support.
Album: Malibu
Label: Steel Wool / OBE / Art Club / EMPIRE
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/reviews_art/a/anderson-park-malibu-cover-350.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 8
Display Width: 200
Anderson Paak
Malibu
Neo-soul, more than most contemporary genres, demands a mastery of both musical craft and conceptualization, but on his break-out second album Malibu, Anderson Paak eagerly demonstrates that his superior technical artistry, emotional dexterity, and ability to navigate political, philosophical, and social values at once are all up to snuff. Still, Malibu, as sprawling and forward-looking as it is, is all about heritage: cultural, racial, and personal. With an uncertain future facing the world, Paak seems to search the past for understanding, for the warmth and safety of nostalgia, drawing on the distant dialects of classic funk, gospel, and jazz and recontextualizing them within today’s revolutionary sonic currents. While a nostalgic sentimentality informs every moment of Malibu, the album can only bring us those memories distorted through the lens of today, through the framework of modern cultural tumult, heightened racial tensions, and Paak’s deepened personal anxieties. Malibu is not only a celebration of a collective heritage, then, but also a recognition of its renewed vulnerability in contemporary society. It’s groovy, passionate, and rapturous, yes, but also prophetic of a dystopian age of division and alienation. There’s hope in the music, at least. — Colin Fitzgerald
Album: Hollowed
Label: Planet Mu
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/i/ital_tek-hollowed.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 7
Display Width: 200
Ital Tek
Hollowed
Hollowed is Ital Tek’s soundtrack to post-truth hysteria. Elevated lows and abysmal highs underscore the anxiety-ridden uncertaint facing the world at large. Voices haunt high-tech lowlifes on “Redeemer”. “Beyond Sight” rings the alarm before curving slowly toward an automated reality that has become permanent extensions of our bodies while slowly eroding souls. Planet Mu’s most ardent comrade, Alan Myson, uses technology to explore the tension between today’s preferred head-down existence, faces firmly focused on a text, a tweet, a video emanating from our palms, and crippled ability to examine one’s self. Digital textures paint over each other on “Terminus”, its suffocative atmosphere shifts between harsh ambient themes and future beat rhythms deficient enough for diminished attention spans. “Memory Shard”, Hollowed‘s most poignant track, connects three different themes in one piece. Like a sonata, except where the closing movement disintegrates into rote repetition in time to chase the next fleeting distraction. — Stephan Wyatt
Album: Coloring Book
Label: Self-released
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/c/chance_the_rapper-coloring_book.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 6
Display Width: 200
Chance the Rapper
Coloring Book
Coloring Book is not an album, but a mixtape, according to Chance the Rapper. He’s strident about that; it’s an ideological and aesthetic position. The aesthetic stance presents itself through a purposeful amateurism — the uneven mix of the first track is the first sign. But by aligning himself with mixtape culture he’s also standing up for hip-hop culture and history. There’s romance, almost nostalgia even, to the view of hip-hop here but it also feels fresh as can be, born of the moment. And so many of the songs share that same perspective, as Chance and his bounty of on-point associates contemplate the joy and pain of maturing, from growing away from friends and lovers to finding greater strength in faith and community. He’s maturing as an artist, too. No verse he has here is as knockout strong as his guest spots this year (on albums from Kanye West, Jamila Woods, Joey Purp), but overall there’s a unified vision at work that makes Coloring Book as affecting as anything in music this year. — Dave Heaton
Album: Blackstar
Label: Columbia
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/d/davidbowieblackstarcover.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 5
Display Width: 200
David Bowie
Blackstar
On 8 January 2016, David Bowie’s 69th birthday, the day his final album Blackstar was released, and two days before his shocking death, I wrote in an enthusiastic review for this very publication the following: “Blackstar… [is] trippy and majestic head-music spun from moonage daydreams and made for gliding in and out of life… This is why the world still needs David Bowie—for the unexpected, and the thrill of discovery. Who knows what he might do next? If nothing else, Blackstar is a lesson to us all that we never need stop growing, exploring, lurching in new and challenging directions, as long as we draw breath.”
Now we know what he’d do next, and it was nothing any of us expected. Almost a year has passed and our darkened world still needs David Bowie, more so than ever, only he’s gone to take his place amongst the moondust and starlight, and we’re left with broken hearts and the extraordinary musical legacy he created. Blackstar wasn’t hailed simply because of his death, as some might suggest — its wildly experimental and emotionally potent brew of spacey jazz-rock had already been universally praised before anyone but his inner circle even knew he was ill — but once the full context of the album was revealed and the circumstances under which it was created were understood, its power and gravitas expanded exponentially. The haunting video for “Lazarus”, rich with symbolism and meaning that was difficult to grasp initially, suddenly came into crystal clear focus. In an instant we knew the album for goodbye, the final chapter in a peerless career, a stunning last gasp of creative powerful that Bowie held on to see unleashed upon the world… and then he was able to unclench his fists, exhale one last ragged breath, and let go. At peace, just like that bluebird in “Lazarus”, free. — Chris Gerard
Album: Blonde
Label: Boys Don’t Cry
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/f/frank_ocean-blonde.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 4
Display Width: 200
Frank Ocean
Blonde
There isn’t another album released this year (by a major artist or otherwise) that opens up a richer universe than Frank Ocean’s second studio album Blonde. Throughout, Ocean synthesizes classical R&B songwriting with generous use of guitars, pitched-up and pitched down vocals, and production that is spiritually if not superficially reminiscent of the searching, experimental quality of the very best artists of decades past like the Beach Boys, the Beatles, or Pink Floyd. Like those artists’ classic albums, its experimentation is expertly controlled, simultaneously breaking new ground while lulling your into a new, immersive world. Lyrically and vocally, Ocean presents a multifaceted self that is just as fluid as his sexuality. It’s a brilliant, beautiful, and generous album from one of our very best artists, shaking a male R&B singer’s persona free of any preconceived notions, but doing so without breaking a sweat. Blonde, like Ocean himself, is slippery. You’ll never hear the same song twice. In this densely layered, immaculately produced tapestry, he’s made an album for active re-listening. Blonde is a grower, speaking to you differently on different days with different moods. It’ll be a part of your life soon: “Now and then you’ll miss it, sounds make you cry.” — Tanner Smith
Album: Atrocity Exhibition
Label: Warp
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/a/atrocityexhibition1.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 3
Display Width: 200
Danny Brown
Atrocity Exhibition
“This is the Way / Step Inside,” Ian Curtis instructed on Joy Division’s “Atrocity Exhibition”, an invitation into his own personal pathologies mapped onto a canvas of sonic and societal turmoil. Conventional lore has it that Curtis crafted the LP that “Atrocity Exhibition” opens as a premature obituary, a punctuation mark on a life surrendered. This is total B.S., but it’s hard to dispel as a current in rock mythology because of the way the LP confidently cemented its suffering within a closed narrative. Danny Brown, thankfully still with us, opens his suicidal tract Atrocity Exhibition on a note of uncertainty; “I gotta figure it out/ Cause it’s the downward spiral.”
What follows is a blistering course through raw paranoia, mass confusion, withdrawal, and rock bottom depression, producer Paul White playing Martin Hannett and matching Brown’s rugged psychosocial terrain with bombastic contorted phrases and busted-neon-hued trap versions. Brown’s nasal screech is often played to comic effect, like a court jester of sex gags, but here he’s haggard and coarse, cotton mouth so ragged it threatens to choke him and eyes so bloodshot he looks possessed. Of course, the square root of all this latter-day psychedelia, twitchy stoned glares, and amped-up amphetamine tension is drugs. Brown looks down the barrel of his substance abuse and its toll head-on, which is nothing new in recorded sound but rarely has it been captured in such an exciting and expressive palette of emotionally distraught nihilistic sounds. There’s even a perverse sense of fatalism, not too far from Curtis’s own, in the record’s conclusion, as the “B.O.B”-referencing speed rush of “Today” detonates into the numbing, blissed out directive of “Get Hi”, a prescriptive narcotic erasure of the real stresses and complications of the album that preceded, Brown’s own version of surrender which promises to start the vicious cycle anew. Publically shared for your listening pleasure. — Timothy Gabriele
Album: A Moon Shaped Pool
Label: XL
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/r/radiohead-a_moon_shaped_pool.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 2
Display Width: 200
Radiohead
A Moon Shaped Pool
In the history of Radiohead, albums with concrete subject matter, like Pablo Honey‘s youthful insecurities and Hail to the Thief‘s global political confusion and consequence, are remembered less fondly than albums with more abstract concepts (chiefly Kid A, but to varying degrees everything else). A Moon Shaped Pool shakes up this framework by achieving new kinds of artistic excellence with the most prosaic themes and lines of the group’s career. More than any other topic, A Moon Shaped Pool is about time. “Decks Dark” imagines a “darkest hour” and “sweet times”. “Daydreaming” posits the certainty of being “too late” with the inscrutable, possibly misheard examination of “half my life” passing by. “Present Tense” considers the threat of the moment, and ways to escape. The list goes on.
Yet the more interesting relationship between A Moon Shaped Pool and time is the way the album bears the years in a way that only a late-career, middle-aged effort is capable of doing. “True Love Waits” has been in the works for more than two decades, and only now does it land on a studio album. Four of the other songs have been part of the band’s unofficial repertoire for years. But there’s a kind of temporality here that goes beyond the individual songs and lyrics to a force that permeates the album.
That is to say, only now have Radiohead reached a place where the band can deploy songs as directly and confidently as they seem to do here. What better way to follow years of fan decoding and tinkering with a speculative Radiohead song list singularity than to have the songs fall alphabetical order into a track list. Only now after years of creating film scores and other contemporary classical ventures can Jonny Greenwood’s arrangements define, instead of supplement, the compositions of his primary group’s songs.
Here on album number nine does Radiohead do the most revolutionary thing it could do at this point: to play the sentiment completely straight after years of comparatively anxious distance. Single “The Numbers,” at once full of cliché and at war with cliché, creates the impression of two ways through life, two horns of a crescent whose arc only now allows them to begin to see one another. Even if A Moon Shaped Pool comes down to Thom Yorke trying to maintain his composure amidst chaos, sharing his headspace has never sounded so welcoming. — Thomas Britt
Album: Lemonade
Label: Columbia / Parkwood
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/b/beyonce-lemonade.jpg
Display as: List
List number: 1
Display Width: 200
Beyoncé
Lemonade
Wars could be waged over which is the superior album: 2013’s Beyoncé, or this year’s Lemonade. Beyoncé was the beginning of the singer’s personal emancipation from convention, a tirelessly inventive pop experiment that nonetheless sounds positively straightforward compared to its follow-up. Lemonade is unlike anything we’ve ever heard before, not least because of the controversial intrigue surrounding its themes of marital infidelity. Exactly how such themes relate to Beyoncé’s personal autobiography remains conjectural, but it hardly matters. Hinging on the deconstructed, explosive, Jack White-featuring maelstrom that is “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, the first half of the album confronts the narratives of the “crazy ex-girlfriend” and the “woman scorned” and reclaims them as sources of power, or at least embodies them without fear. As if that alone weren’t enough, Beyoncé broadens the scope of the album in the second half to address issues of blackness, heritage, appropriation, and racial violence, closing with the proudly defiant anthem “Formation”. How exactly these twin narratives fit together is not immediately obvious, but it is exactly this interpretive thorniness, this inability to apprehend the work fully and neatly in one critical swoop, that makes Lemonade so endlessly compelling. — Andrew Paschal