2016 Top 40

At long last, here's the top 40 for 2016's albums. It's a lot later than I'd planned to do it - Blame a 2 week blackout with our internet connection for that. I've given a couple of retrospective A* to the top 2 records, they both are something very special and they deserve it. This blog is already miles long, so I'll just get on with it:

40: Kayo Dot - Plastic House On Base Of Sky – B

39: Nine Inch Nails - Not The Actual Events – B

38: Adult Jazz - Earrings Off! – B

37: Kanye West - The Life Of Pablo – B

36: M.I.A - AIM – B

35: Trixie Whitely - Porta Bohemica – A

34: Czarface - A Fistful Of Peril – B

33: Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep Of Reason – A

32: Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression – B

31: Kid Cudi - Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin' – A

30: Roisin Murphy - Take Her Up To Monto – A

29: Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker – A

28: Animals As Leaders - The Madness Of Many – A

27: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Cell Phone Bikini – A

26: Avalanches - Wildflower – A

25: Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct – A

24: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - A Lovejoy – A

23: Anderson .Paak - Malibu – A

22: The 1975 - I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It – A

21: Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid – A

20: Band Of Horses - Why Are You OK? – A

19: 65Daysofstatic - No Man's Sky: Music For An Infinite Universe – A

18: Bon Iver - 22, A Million – A

17: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Sworn Virgins – A

16: Melt Yourself Down - Last Evenings On Earth – A

15: Mystery Jets - Curve Of The Earth – A

14: Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool – A

13: Kate Tempest - Let Them Eat Chaos – A

12: The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation – A

11: De La Soul - and the Anonymous Nobody... – A

10: BADBADNOTGOOD - IV – A

BBNG's 2nd year in a row in my top 10 is a nice surprise to me, a group I'd not heard of 18 months ago but now at the forefront of my listening habits due to their stellar bank of releases. The cinematic, polished Hip-hop beats of Sour Soul, a masterful collaboration with Wu legend Ghostface Killah was one of the finest records of 2015, and they've followed that up with IV, a more orthodox release for BBNG.

What lifts IV above the general hubbub of Jazz records and indeed some of it's very own material is the guest vocal spots, serving as islands of conventional structure that break up the general fuzz of the experimental, drawn-out instrumental bulk of the record. That stuff is the key element to understanding the wonderful creativity behind IV, but those guest appearances - Mick Jenkins' fierce verse on Hyssop Of Love, the only full Hip-hop song on the album, Charlotte Day-Wilson's beautiful vocal take on In Your Eyes, and the top cut from the album, Time Moves Slow, with Sam Herring's velvet-toned delivery - These songs elevate up IV to something really special. Certainly a superb album, but one for those with an acquired taste.

09: Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye – A

Amen & Goodbye is the 4th studio effort from experimental rock arty-New-York-dudes-with-crazy-names group Yeasayer. Famous for their forays into several styles of music at a time, this album is no different, kicking off with the huge, synth-infused epic I am Chemistry - One of the finest cuts of the year - serving as the first song proper on the album. In five minutes, Yeasayer travel through electronica, acoustic guitar breakdowns and a children’s choir. The mutant vista of the song is accessible yet complex; it stretches out its lifespan to a sum much greater than its parts. Songs like Silly Me, Cold Night and Dead Sea Scrolls travel down a more traditional pop/dance/anthemic groove, while Prophecy Gun and Divine Simulacrum explore more experimental realms. Amen & Goodbye covers a huge amount of ground within the set parameters of the group’s earlier work – This feels like a summation of their career to date.   

So it goes for the entire album, as each song starts, a new journey begins. Baroque Pop cuts a deep vein through this record, and is its only true leitmotif. The bridging track Child Prodigy attests to this, a harpsichord solo piece with applause and crowd noise in the background. Some of the lyrical subject matter is academic to an absurd point, which is actually a good thing, as it adds to the classical high-art feel and helps to make Amen & Goodbye a cohesive, end-to-end project. Amen & Goodbye is brimming with hooks, catchy tunes and downright bangers that make the listening experience one of the smoothest and most enjoyable rides of 2016, while keeping the sound fresh and full of variety. Yeasayer’s quirky funkiness is spread joyously across from start to finish, and makes them a shoe-in for the top 10 for the year. A delightful, unexpected treat.

08: Adrian Younge - Something About April II – A

Something About April II was an early year perk-up from Adrian Younge, serial songsmith and much-sampled hero of the L.A scene. Younge’s work has been compared to such disparately positioned artists as Ennio Morricone, The Beatles and Otis Redding. April is as solid a representation of his style as anything else he’s put out in his career, and continues a remarkably prolific arc of releases. Hell, he’s released 2 more since this one!

This is similar to Anderson .Paak’s Malibu, released the same month and lauded by critics. April was far more slept-on, unjustly – It’s a supreme, expansive accessible Jazz/Pop record, as short as you like, 13 songs all under 4 minutes, all sweet, radio-friendly numbers, simple and polite. Intricacy takes a hike for the beauty of melody. Most of the rest of this top 10 are well-known hits of 2016. This one’s a bit more exclusive. Take the time to listen to it.

07: A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service – A

One of the most celebrated rap records in 2016 came from one of the biggest acts in the game, barely 6 weeks before 2017, topping many end-of-year lists and rubbing shoulders with the genre’s newest and brightest stars. There’s a new golden generation coming through, but it seems there’s still room for some of the old heads to have their say.

Thank You’s staying power lies in the weird idiosyncrasy of its content. Nothing sounds quite like a Quest record, the scope of their sound is immense, flitting from the mellow head nodders like Melatonin and The Killing Season to whacked-out nutty sessions like Mobius, Kids…, and Black Spasmodic and the straight-up experimentation from Solid Wall Of Sound, they don’t settle for an easy beat or soft landing.

Quest’s sound has an unmistakable old-skool edge to it, the intro to Dis Generation, the hook to Lost Somebody, the bassline to We The People, it all harks back to their signature 90’s sound. There’s a millennial glow to it all though, and along with the guest spots from some of the finest contemporary princes of Hip-hop, they strike a solid balance. Thank You is a worthy way to honour the late Phife Dawg, and a huge statement for Quest to bow out with.

06: Frank Ocean - Blonde – A

Blonde has that instant classic quality, the sound you know will go down as the sound of the decade. The vocal harmonies touch on Pop, Soul, R ‘n B and Hip-hop sensibilities, while simultaneously transcending those labels and forming into something more. This multi-textural distilled chill-out is Ocean’s bread and butter, he floats along the lazy river of each song’s fuzzy-lude-dream delivery and watches as it dissipates into the atmosphere.

Blonde is the album I think Kanye wanted to make with The Life of Pablo. It’s light dustings of keys over vocal sketches, field recordings and library footage. It’s deep organs and vocal trills. It’s short compartmental suites that flow through together and form sweet little pockets of 3 or 4 songs you have to listen to in one go. The guest spots are nuanced - I didn’t notice half of them before reading the credits. This is Ocean’s salutation to life. As Ocean observes in Pink And White: “Like glory from above.”

Blogger is very helpful and only lets you put videos from Youtube on your blog, so. Yeah. Here's the Vimeo link for Nikes: https://vimeo.com/179791907

05: Bat For Lashes - The Bride – A

Bat For Lashes is the musical vessel for the multi-instrumental efforts of Natasha Khan, one of the most talented and brilliant songwriters to come out of the UK in the last decade. her 4th record The Bride is a concept album about a woman whose fiancee dies on the day of their wedding. The Bride deals with the story from that point, all the fall-out and emotional turmoil that such a life-changing event would bring is explored and laid bare. It's a complex, difficult album, but it's highly rewarding on repeat listens, and that's why it sits comfortably in the top 10 from 2016.

It's tough to categorise this album, Khan's lyrical consistency and song(wo)manship makes it tempting to lump her in the Singer-Songwriter trope, but that's far too broad a definition for her work. At times, the musical content of The Bride is challenging, with some sparse noise tracks, but it's all held nicely together by the concept and storyline. There's no "single" as such on The Bride. It's not easy listening, or something you play in the car with your grandparents. That's the point, though. The Bride pushes you to understand the weight of passion and despair contained within it, and once you let yourself in to the lonely, depressive world of The Bride's eponymous heroine, you unlock a superb record that begs to be listened to in full, over and over again. 

04: Laura Mvula - The Dreaming Room – A

This has been one of the most slept-on releases of 2016. I’m disappointed that more outlets didn’t pick this one up, because it’s exactly the kind of album music critics love. There’s a lot of styles explored on The Dreaming Room, Mvula plays around with elements of pop, rock, funk and world music, but in the end though, I think it’s best described as experimental pop. Mvula’s song writing touches on a wide variety of themes and that coupled with the fantastical magic realm of her music makes The Dreaming Room an irresistibly rewarding album to listen to.

There’s a feeling on this album that I get while listening to Bjork’s music. The way Mvula sings and manipulates her voice in post-production makes it sound alien at times, and like Bjork, Mvula uses her voice as an instrument first, and as a conveyance of lyrics second. This attitude of her vocals being fair game for experimentation opens up a huge amount of possibility.

With such a wealth of sounds present on The Dreaming Room, it’s exciting to think that this is only the 2^nd full length album from Laura Mvula. The work accomplished on this album will hopefully be a taster of things to come. It’s going to be well worth following Mvula’s career – She’ll more than likely be putting out records of this calibre for many years.

03: Regina Spektor - Remember Us To Life – A

The hugely talented Regina Spektor released her 7th album in 2016, carrying on her legacy of solid, masterful records. It’s another sleeper release; too many publications shoved Remember Us To Life in the doldrums of a top 100, or missed it off completely. Such a shame, but their loss is our gain. The album’s intro salvo is positively rambunctious, Bleeding Heart starts off as a blippy pop-indie cut and finishes with a full-on rock guitar outro, Older And Taller is a summery, sentimental American Folk tune, The Grand Hotel’s rich piano melody sounds like a warm 90’s Hollywood blockbuster soundtrack, Small Bill$ stalks and undulates through a moderate beat, and before you know it, Spektor has covered any number of musical styles and genres within 20 minutes.

My top pick from Remember is the vast, symphonic cut The Trapper And The Furrier, the emotional zenith of the record, a scathing monolith of a piece that begins with a haunting spoken word intro and builds up into the stratosphere, at times Spektor’s hands slamming down on the piano keys make you almost want to click the volume down a few notches to save your ears. Pure passion.

The rest of the album follows suit, the key element binding this together is Spektor’s magnificent songwriting, the fact that she sits alone on the piano writing these tunes and envisions the enormous compositions they are going to be makes the music that bit more personal. Her lyrical content deals in the literal, metaphysical and downright cryptic, most songs encapsulating all three. Spektor enjoys telling us about her personal tragedies, she creates characters with back stories, and she opines on the world in her own unique fashion. It’s all tied together sweetly to form a bright and brilliant gem of a record. You gotta listen to this one!

02: Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered. - A*

Kendrick Lamar’s latest record might just be his finest moment. From the high reached last year, it would have been understandable if Kendrick took a break to work on a follow-up, after all, how can you follow such a huge project like To Pimp A Butterfly? The answer is with untitled unmastered.

What strikes me about this record is the brazen roughness of it. Releasing it with no promotion and putting out straight on to Spotify requires a huge level of self-confidence. The lack of song titles, some tracks holding more than one song, the extended jam and studio chatter at the end, it’s all so mutant and frayed. It gives the project a truly unique sound, the experimentation is magnified with every dud note and odd key stroke.

Kendrick’s the brightest star in a golden generation of rappers. To Pimp A Butterfly was truly magnificent, perhaps even era-defining, but it was too opulent. That’s what pushed it off the edge of being a perfect record. untitled unmastered strips that sheen off and gives us the goods with no pretension and that’s why it’s so important. History may forget this quicker than Butterfly, but after all’s said and done, this is the top rapper in the game at his best.

The nature of this project means there's been no official music video release yet, so take a look at this superb live performance from last year:

01: Chance The Rapper - Coloring Book - A*

Legendary albums are zeitgeist. It’s a vital quality of any top-tier release to represent the time it was released. People go on about “timeless” albums, but do they really exist? That’s a question worthy of lengthy discussion, for sure. When a great record comes out that could only have been released when it was released, that cranks it up a notch. Coloring Book is one of those legendary classics.

Chance’s moniker may lead the uninitiated to believe that this is a Hip-hop record, when it’s actually much more than that. Yes, Chance does rap, but there’s also a full gospel choir on most of the songs, there’s Sou­­l and R ‘n B tracks, there’s a centrepiece slow-jam track featuring Justin Bieber, all this and more to form a sweet, sunny ultra-feel-good album. One of the songs is just D.R.A.M, a friend and collaborator of Chance’s repeatedly affirming that everyone is special in their own way – “This I know is true, when I look at you.” The album’s cover is a shot of Chance smiling and holding his newborn child, the songs Blessings and Angels are about the joy of friendship, love and fatherhood. Joy is the theme throughout Coloring Book, and it never lets up.

One of my absolute favourite songs from 2016 is on this album, Same Drugs, a sentimental nostalgic piano-led piece about growing up and seeing old friends after years apart – “Wendy you’ve changed, Wendy you’ve aged/I thought you’d never grow up, I thought you’d never…/Window closed, Wendy got old/I was too late – A shadow of what I once was.” Childhood is so fleeting in memory. A genuinely spine-tingling moment.

With the tumultuous socio-political situation in the USA becoming more chaotic by the day, it’s comforting to see such a positive record released by a prominent artist from the POC community. Dark times tend to bring out the best in good people. Coloring Book implores and obligates you to be the finest person you can be. An album that spans so many genres, has a unique sound and has such a peaceful message has to top the list of 2016’s albums.