#1000Albums: My Top 25 Albums of 2016

So (hopefully, if I get this written yesterday, i.e. today for me now but I’m in the past whooo spooky) to coincide with Jez’s top 30 albums post, I’m going to do a brief (hopefully by anyone’s standards, not just by mine) write-up of my top 25 albums. I didn’t do as rigorous a sort for this, but when I longlisted all the albums that I liked – and/or had given an Album of the Week, or Runner-Up Album of the Week award to – they slotted quite nicely into four tiers: 

the ‘dregs’ (I’ll do a dump of these later – they’re obviously all good, but they didn’t make that cut);

the ‘third tier’ – really good albums that I enjoyed but not quite enough; 

the ‘second tier’ – these are albums that have really made a difference to me this year, either in my personal taste or in terms of completely changing my lifestyle and world outlook (none of which has happened yet because I’m just being facetious. By the by, what is the only other word in the English language (besides facetious) that has five different vowels in alphabetical order?). 

Then above that, we have not the ‘top tier’ or ‘first tier’ but what I’ve come to know as the ‘elite six’ – my top six albums were really another step above because these were albums that have throughout their life in the music project have really meant something to me personally. And the hardest part was putting that elite six in order.

So hopefully my verbosity is out of the way now and I can treat you to more succinct writing; writing that is deliberately and nutritiously unadorned, without repetition or unnecessary elaboration, in order to hold the reader’s attention for longer and not sidetrack them in meandering sentences with words that don’t make sense thrown in to try and catch people who aren’t paying attention due to the pointlessly long and

25. “Wiped Out” by Mooryc (Polish Folk)

I mentioned in my write-up of “We were Ready” by Mooryc that this guy reminds me a bit of Sufjan Stevens in his sound. You really need the full album to get a handle on his inventiveness; all pretty low-key stuff but really effectively simple.

24. “Sleepin’ Rough” by the Rumjacks (Australian Folk Punk)

Don’t think I wrote up any of these guys songs, but “Kathleen” and “A Fistful of Roses” were probably on my 100-51 dump. There’s literally nothing not to like about a bit of raucous Irish-flavoured folk punk. I love pretty much every example of the subgenre, and these guys are no exception. We were pleased to discover they were Aussies and do a lot of live gigs too, because I reckon these guys would be very much worth seeing.

23. “Loud Hailer” by Jeff Beck (Blues Rock)

With a new Eric Clapton album out this year as well, it’s surprising that Jeff Beck, from whom I’d never heard anything ,gets the blues rock spot in my top 25. But this was quite a revelation: really oldskool gutsy blues vibes, great guitar work and some really catchy hooks. I listened to this album as I walked up and down Missenden Road in the first days of my son’s life, fetching things for Bec and the baby who were locked up in the hospital.

22. “Mothership” by Dance Gavin Dance (Post-Hardcore)

This was another, really surprising, revelation. Throughout the album I kept wondering why they needed the unclean vocalist yelling at me, when their music was otherwise so beautifully orchestrated and constructed. In the end though, the beautiful orchestration won out and won me over, because for a big shouty album this is particularly musical and intricate.

21. “Preternatural” by the Moulettes (Indie Pop)

This is an album that could well have been higher (and I suspect it will be higher on Jez’s list). For whatever reason, despite the really clever sonic construction and really sweet, very catchy tunes, I end up sort of appreciating this music objectively rather than it really getting under my skin (with the exception of “Pufferfish Love”, a top 20 song) so even though it’s brilliant and everybody should listen to it, it just doesn’t enter that upper personal echelon.

20. “Beardtown” by Sheelanagig (Balkan Folk)

You’ll be getting a lot of folk-with-a-modern-twist in this write-up, following on from the Rumjacks and now this (and yes, Jez is well aware there’s another one coming). This album is a great deal of fun from its opening title track that mocks hipsters and social media (in a Balkan folk musical setting) to its more stirring instrumental tracks like “Hassid” and “Sad Ken”. It also really delivers that sense that the musicians are really enjoying themselves in a big way.

19. “Until the Horror Goes” by John Congleton & the Nighty Nite (Experimental Rock)

While all my attention was focused on “Your Temporary Custodian”, my number 33 song of the year, this whole album is a fascinating concept work that just plays crazy games with harmonies and different instruments to create a really absorbing and unsettling experience. There’s plenty of accessible tunes in here as well but for the most part it’s just a wonderful head-trip.

18. “Blackstar” by David Bowie (Glam Rock)

What can I say about this that hasn’t already been said by literally everyone writing about 2016 music in any capacity? Oh, I know, that it’s terrible, and a bad legacy for David Bowie to leave. The reason nobody’s said that of course is because it’s not in any way true. This was a very poignant listen in retrospect, because as I was listening the first time I was just marvelling at how successfully Bowie built longevity by constantly reinventing himself and using the musical zeitgeist to inform new directions. At times this album is even a little too avant-garde but it’s ultimately very Bowie and very brilliant.

17. “Royal Blues” by Dragonette (Synthpop)

This is a fun collection of peppy, boppy songs, all very catchy with good synth backing tracks and positive message vibes being broadcast out. It’s always going to occupy a comfortable position in my sweet spot, and the only reason it’s not in a higher position is it was a fairly late release and I haven’t spent very long with it yet.

16. “Eat the Light” by Lotus (Eclectic Pop)

I talked in my write-up of “Anti-Gravity” (my number 21 song of the year) that this album did something really amazing to me. I put it on as my first album of the week when I felt totally shitty and pissed off at the world, and about ten minutes in I was like “This is really good”. It remained really good, with a good bit of eclecticism but holding a common thread of really positive, upbeat music. It’s no small feat to lift me out of a gloomy mood through music alone; I’ve even gone so far as recommending this album to a renowned music journalist for that reason (I got no response, if you’re wondering).

15. “True Sadness” by the Avett Brothers (Country Folk)

So we’re now entering what I called at the top my “second tier” of albums, and this one in particular could have been a bit higher in theory but realistically it’s here because of two or three songs that I really, really loved (including of course my number 6 song of the year, “No Hard Feelings”). The rest of the album probably falls down for me by being more on the country side of folk, even though I’m much more on board with that blend when it’s done this well.

14. “Hit me Baby…” by the Baseballs (Rockabilly Covers)

This is probably the album that objectively doesn’t belong on a top 20 list, but it can be justified on mine through pure arithmetic. If you sum the following things that I love: rockabilly music, genre-bending cover versions, and iconic pop songs from the 90s, then the sum of all of those things together is a surefire hit. But the Baseballs are actually more than a novelty joke for me: they don’t just do rockabilly covers of well-known pop songs and assume the job is done, they actually do it really well, with some really clever arrangements to make it sound as if it were an original. And the tracks on this album that I don’t know (there’s a Selena Gomez song, for instance) work on their own and not just as an amusing twist on something very familiar. I just had enormous fun with this album.

13. “Thor & Friends” by Thor & Friends (Ambient Chamber Pop)

Yes I’m very much in the gimmicky phase of my top 25 here, following on from the Baseballs with this collection of ambient chamber percussion music. There’s very little really here to pull out (although “Jordan’s Song” is on my 207-song longlist) but it’s just a really thoughtful, curious dreamscape of music here, with everything driven by Thor Harris on his vibraphone and his two friends backing up with marimba and various other-worldly sounds, all of which I generally love.

12. “Paradise” by White Lung (Punk Rock)

I could do another arithmetic game here: while I don’t love punk rock as a rule, I love kickass female vocalists, I love synth sounds being introduced in more hardcore music, and not exclusive to punk rock, I do like angry, raucous music. So this album has all of those things and does them all really well. There are some songs that hit the high notes more than others (including of course “Narcoleptic”, my number 10 song of the year) but the whole album is a great bit of provocative and furious energy.

11. “Album” by the Sun Days (Indie Pop Rock)

This is a funny album because it was completely and utterly everything to me the week it came out, but for whatever reason that initial hot pulsating love eventually mellowed out a bit. I can’t deny though that this has everything I like: it’s hugely infectious, sunny-vibed music, with catchy riffs and a general sense of positivity. Maybe the reason it’s slipped out of my top ten is just because it is a bit over-the-top with its happy vibes; I should like it more but my natural cynical grouchiness can’t accept this much sunshine in. My grouchiness likes it a lot while it’s shining but upon reflection it just keeps it at arm’s length. Still, go listen to this album.

10. “Red Sky” by Moon Hooch (Psychojazz)

Perhaps a bit more accessible to my grouchy self is this, because although this whole album is just an orgy of fun sounds, driving energy and just over-the-top silliness, there’s a certain filthy irreverence to it that really sits comfortably with me. There’s not a lot of complexity to the idea here although there are many layers to the music: it’s a group of guys blaring saxophones and other horns in really fun, chaotic ways. Its only potential flaw is that it does get a bit samey, but I love every minute of it.

9. “It Calls on Me” by Doug Tuttle (Psych Rock)

As much as I rhapsodize about this album’s master stroke, the two-sided dreamy rockscape that is “Saturday-Sunday”, the whole album is a brilliant collection of oldskool psych rock music, really thought-provoking with a great composition. It’s also one of the best concept albums of the year, with the songs all bleeding into each other to take you on a fascinating journey through melancholic and sometimes just trippy places. It’s potentially just a great bit of 70s nostalgia (which I don’t have, personally) but it’s particularly well done.

8. “Dolls of Highland” by Kyle Craft (Glam Rock)

I’d call this the most underappreciated album of the year. Kyle Craft has a great voice as well as a wonderful theatricality, with his songs ranging from gloomy and thoughtful to really outlandish fantastical storytelling (the best example of which, “Jane Beat the Reaper”, got my number 11 song of the year spot). The only reason that this album is outside my elite six is because it just falls outside my personal sweet spot, but I genuinely respect and admire Craft’s prodigious talent in songwriting and performance. If I were compiling a list of ‘best’ albums rather than ‘favourite’ albums, this would probably be top three. And joining it in that illustrious company (outside my sweet spot) would be…

7. “Teens of Denial” by Car Seat Headrest (Indie Rock)

This is basically the top of my second tier, before you enter my elite six. This album, in a similar vein to Lotus, achieved the unachievable: it changed my opinion from hating it at first to completely loving it. I maintain that the song “Vincent”, which All Songs Considered chose to showcase what a brilliant artist this guy is, was a poor choice, simply because it’s quite conventional and doesn’t really showcase Car Seat Headrest’s range and brilliance. The two clear standouts to me (“The Ballad of the Costa Concordia” and “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales”) I’ve already written up as individual songs, but there’s a really grandiose sense to everything on this album. It’s a slow burn, as well, because he’s playing with very familiar sounds and vibes, but he arranges them in really clever ways while pushing that ‘disaffected youth’ persona in really cutting and satirical ways. There’s a lot of subtle variations and effects going on in the music here, whose subtlety is the main reason why it took me a while to get on board with this, because on the surface it can just be enjoyed as a guitar rock album (not really my thing generally) but there’s plenty of layers underneath that I still feel I haven’t quite fathomed.

6. “City Sun Eater in the River of Light” by Woods (Folk Rock)

So the first entry in my elite six is probably the most conventional and predictable, given how much I’ve already talked about Woods. This album also makes my elite six just due to the sheer number of great songs on it that I loved throughout the year, and it finds itself at the bottom of my elite six simply because of the ‘other’ songs on here, I’m not all that enamoured. But I generally love the sound that Woods have, straddling the border between indie rock, folk Americana and even dipping into country, blues and funk territory at times. At the end of the day it’s just really sweet, comforting listening for its runtime, and when you combine the beauty of “Morning Light” with “Can’t See At All”, “Politics of Free” and “The Other Side”, mathematically alone it’s going to be catapulted into my top echelon even if I find some other songs less effecting.

5. “The Space Between” by Jamie Smith’s Mabon (Folk)

For most of the music project this album was considered the benchmark that others were compared to, because it really was the first to make a really big impression. This is that other folk-with-a-twist album I was talking about earlier, based largely around accordion and strings work but with really curious modern interpretations that push it into different directions. I spoke about the silliness that is “The Accordionist’s Despair” but there’s plenty of other variations on the idea including the slightly menacing “Frank’s Reels” and the more upbeat Latino-influenced “48 in Ortigueira”. There’s a lot of fun to be had with this album, and it feels like a really challenging exploration of very traditional Celtic folk sounds.

4. “Brave Enough” by Lindsey Stirling (Classical Pop Crossover)

The funny thing about Lindsey Stirling is that later in the year this became an immediate frontrunner for album of the year simply because of the sheer volume of songs from it that I loved. I think if you acknowledge that I love string music generally, and I love upbeat electronic pop music, then you’ll understand that this was what I called at the time a “musical bomb of Hiroshima proportions” that was dropped on me. It’s a long album, of 20-odd songs, but almost every single one got my attention because it infuses Stirling’s gorgeous electric violin work with some sunny pop vibes as well as some curiously dirty and squelchy electronica music at times. Strangely enough though, I love her whole package but it’s only here in the number 4 spot, because despite being a thorough collection of excellent songs, not one of those songs I loved enough to put in my top 50, and as an album it doesn’t do more than just deliver a bunch of different versions of the same premise, even though that premise is fantastic.

3. “Sonderlust” by Kishi Bashi (Classical Pop Crossover)

On the other hand, and sneaking into the top three ahead of a similarly-themed album is this masterpiece from Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist Kishi Bashi. In many ways this album explores similar themes to Lindsey Stirling, but the reason he pips his musical cousin is simply because of the sheer intellectual complexity that he brings to his pop music. Where Stirling feels at times like she’s playing violin over the top of electropop music, Kishi Bashi weaves his violin work seamlessly into the fabric of the songs, and as such they sound like no other music in either of the crossover genres but instead like their own species. I rhapsodize about my number 4 song of the year from this album “Can’t Let Go, Juno” but there’s far too much variety in here to isolate the genius in one bit of music. It might ultimately be still just a few variations on a theme but it expands and stretches that theme in so many different ways.

2. “Nostalgia for Infinity” by Sound of Ceres (Dreampop)

My runner-up album of the year, and unlike the preceding few, this is far more than just a collection of songs. In fact, I found my sentiment towards this album cooling as the year went on, as my relistening and reappraisals tended to veer more towards listening to individual songs, and the fact is that this album doesn’t work if you chop and change the order. The whole thing, like Dark Side of the Moon, requires listening in order to get the full effect. Sound of Ceres’ sound is unlike any other: a surreal, breathy dreamscape populated by strange-noises-made-musical, huge rises and falls in mood and tone, and it all culminates in the best song and perhaps the only one that works just as well as a standalone song, “Dagger Only Run” (my number 24 song of the year) which brings a shuffling pop beat to drive the ethereal music home. There’s no doubt the first criticism that would come its way is that it’s utterly pretentious, but if it works for you as it does for me, it’s an other-worldly masterwork.

1. “Cabaret Noir” by Mr Yéyé (Electrorock)

So that leaves us with just one, and after my talk about ‘collections of songs’ vs the whole complete album-ness that is Nostalgia for Infinity, what is it that brings this hour of electropop-infused French hard rock to the top of the pile? As I was relistening to my elite six and agonising over the order, I’d left this one to last, because I regarded it very much as the ‘dark horse’ to take out album of the year. The reason? I had a bunch of songs from this album on my playlist throughout the year and I enjoyed them all very much, but at the back of my mind I had a niggling thought that told me those songs were ultimately quite arbitrary choices, and practically anything on this album deserved a relisten. So when I approached it for relistening I was assessing it on those terms: had I been overestimating it all year? It turned out I hadn’t, and though I went into my elite six expecting I’d put Sonderlust or Nostalgia for Infinity on the top, there was an endless array of enormous fun and positive energy to be extracted from this album. There’s a wide variety of sounds produced from song to song, with differing levels of electro-influence, different paces, certainly different moods and energy, but always resonating in a really visceral kind of rock. But beyond the eclecticism and range the album displays, the fact is that every single song on this album sounds like a potential hit single, and every song could happily occupy a spot on my playlist of favourites; in a year where I listened to more than 1000 albums, and when you’re as grumpy and cynical as me, it’s an absolutely stellar experience to find an album where every song hits your sweet spot. The main reason, though, that this tops the pile and the filter that I tried to apply to make those final agonising decisions, was “who would I be most excited about a new release from?”. And while Mr Yéyé is prolific enough that I already selected follow-up singles from and featuring him later in the #1000albums project, the fact is that I’ll watch for every little bit of rock that he puts out.

So although I should finish at the top of the pile, here are some other strongly considered albums that didn’t make the top 25 but should definitely be considered worth listening to as well (in alphabetical order by second letter of the artist’s name, which is as good an order as any other):

“void beats/invocation trex” by Cavern of Anti-Matter (Cosmic Post-Krautrock Groove)

“Optimist in Black” by Daphne Guinness (Art Pop)

“Soul Rasta” by Fantan Mojah (Reggae)

“Odze Odze” by the Jagger Botchway Group (Afrofunk)

“Empire Builder” by Laura Gibson (Indie Pop)

“99c” by Santigold (Indie Pop)

“Notion” by Tash Sultana (Indie Rock)

“Rosetta” by Vangelis (Neo-Synth-Classical)

“Winter” by Oceans of Slumber (Doom Rock)

“Do Hollywood” by the Lemon Twigs (Throwback Pop Rock)

“Leslie Odom Jr” by Leslie Odom Jr (Vocal Jazz)

“Cosmic Explorer” by Perfume (J-Pop)

“Our Puram” by Pfarmers (Experimental Pop Rock)

“Everything in Between” by Ugly Heroes (Hip-Hop)

“Growth” by Chalk (Hip-Hop)

“Latina” by Thalia (Brazilian Pop)

“Dirge for the Archons” by Diabulus in Musica (Symphonic Metal)

“Eternally Even” by Jim James (Psych-Rock)

“[happy_robot]” by Sim Gretina (Synthpop)

“How to be a Human Being” by Glass Animals (Indie Pop)

“DNCE” by DNCE (Pop)

“Home” by the Boxtones (Indie Rock)

“Afterlife” by No Zu (Instrumental Afrorock)

“Neon Grave” by Zomboy (Dubstep)

“I Still Do” by Eric Clapton (Blues Rock)

“X-Communicate” by Kristin Kontrol (Noir Pop)

“Heiterefahne” by Trauffer (Swiss Folk)

“Air” by Astronoid (Metalgaze)

“Back from the Rave: The Album” by Avro (Breaks)