WASHINGTON — The longer I do these lists, the tougher I realize the task is in being comprehensive and the less I try to make this any more than a set of personal favorites. That’s all any year-end list is anyway. Compare my titles with Teta Alim’s top songs and top videos lists from earlier this month and the difference in individual influence will be obvious.
That said, I try not to flat-out ignore anything worth mentioning. With that in mind, before we get to what is on the list, a few quick notes on what isn’t. For me, four albums existed outside the rest of the world of music this year.
Two legends — David Bowie and Leonard Cohen — released new material shortly before their death. This caused an almost instantaneous revisionist history of how good the music actually was, rendering jaded opinions of each.
The third was Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, some of the best of which included hardly any of West at all, and which was immediately pulled back for more edits after its initial release. The final was Beyonce’s Lemonade, an artistic project unlike any other we saw this year, functioning as an album-length music video (film?) in addition to its own merits as a piece of music. Lemonade exists on its own plane, as a singular achievement, in ways others can do more justice than I.
And while Radiohead fans may disagree, I found myself disappointed by A Moon Shaped Pool, particularly in the closing track. It’s a band’s prerogative to record or perform any song as they see fit. But to me, the album version of “True Love Waits” sucked all the life out of what I consider my favorite Radiohead song. My view may change in the future, but not for this list.
With all that said, here are my Top 10 albums for 2016.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
WTOP/Noah Frank
10. Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – “A Man Alive”
When it comes to new music from artists you don’t know, it usually takes two things to stand out: a style that brings something different to the table and a voice that stands out from the pack. Thao Nguyen brings both in heaps with this funky, I-don’t-even-know-quite-what-to-call-it mash of styles and searing lyrics.
Despite her delicate delivery, you won’t miss the power of the hook on “Millionaire” when Nguyen says “Oh daddy I broke in a million pieces / That makes you a millionaire.”
Every song’s direction and melody takes a slightly different twist or turn than your brain expects — a note higher than lower, an electric edit, overlaid background static — drawing you into the complexity and nuance of each song.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
9. The 1975 – “I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it”
I still can’t tell if The 1975’s name is intentionally misleading. But it feels like everything that influences their style, while from other decades, comes from just about anywhere other than 1975.
The anthemic “If I Believe You” evokes John Mayer’s “Gravity” before waltzing quietly toward its repeated finishing line, “If I’m lost then how can I find myself?” in the mold of Death Cab’s “Transatlanticism.” While much of the album carries obvious ’80s influences through both its musicality and its use of synths, there’s an almost gospel-like quality in its appeal for a sign from above to reward its faith. Dreamy slow jams like “Somebody Else” are evocative of that ’80s-style revival that St. Lucia struck so well a few years ago.
At 17 tracks and nearly 74 minutes, it’s nearly as long as its title, when it probably doesn’t need to be. But it’s an immaculately produced piece of pop music, shiny and silver and new despite its obvious decades-old influences.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
8. Bon Iver – “22, A Million”
It’s clear from the opening sounds of the record that you’re getting something different from Justin Vernon, layers of electronic backing supporting, contrasting with and distorting his fragile voice. It’s a trick that wouldn’t work for just any singer-songwriter, and there are times it feels cluttered. The entire thing feels imported from some alternate Vernon dimension, down to the song titles, often mixes of letters and characters.
The record is at its most raw on “715 – CRΣΣKS,” which features various layers of Vernon’s voice on top of itself, but nothing else. Like the rest of the record, it never really begins or ends, often not deigning to wrap its narrative structure in a conventional way.
Side projects like Volcano Choir hinted at a transition away from the minimalism of his first two albums, but not at anything quite like this. The final product almost feels like something delivered after Vernon is saved from some terrible accident, only his brain and voice surviving, downloaded to the mainframe to keep him alive. As the album progresses, his voice reasserts itself more and more over the noise, fighting back and capturing the strengths that make his music so compelling.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
7. Big Thief – “Masterpiece”
It only takes the first listen to the title track of “Masterpiece” to realize that Adrianne Lenker isn’t so presumptuous as to be calling her band’s debut album by such a name as some sort of proclamation. It is painfully obvious that this is rumination on imperfection, on the warts and scars that life leaves upon us. There’s no better example than “Real Love,” a devastating meditation on abusive relationships, where Lenker croons “Real love, real love makes your lungs black. Real love is a heart attack.”
Just as you think the mid-album slow may let the momentum of its opening tracks fizzle, Lenker hits you with “Paul,” a bared-soul admission of bad decisions and not-yet-kicked addictions. The breathless harmonies and sticky lyrics — “I’ll be your real tough cookie with the whiskey breath” — might be the most enduring line of the entire album.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
6. Anderson .Paak – “Malibu”
The same as it does with films, a January release seems to hurt an album’s chances to haul in year-end praise, but there’s no denying .Paak’s sophomore effort, dropped just 22 days into 2016. It’s casual enough to serve as a soundtrack to your day, but complex enough both in its layers and its lyrics to stand alone. More than anything, it delivers a more soulful and soul-filled brand of R&B than many of its contemporaries.
The 16 tracks span better than an hour and are deeply personal and tragic. His father’s incarceration and his mother’s addictions weigh heavily on the themes of Malibu, but there is a hopefulness that floats through each track, rather than anger or melancholy. For a kid from sleepy Oxnard, California, a forgettable town sandwiched in the tract between the San Fernando Valley and Santa Barbara, the steps out to Venice, then Malibu, seem to represent rungs on the ladder of a life aspired to.
“The Bird” isn’t just my favorite song on this album, it’s my favorite opener on any album I’ve heard this year.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
5. Car Seat Headrest – “Teens of Denial”
Loudoun County native Will Toledo’s first major label album of “new stuff” doesn’t sound anything like a first album. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering Toledo, just 23, released 11 (!) albums of material on Bandcamp before last year’s best-of compilation, “Teens of Style,” his first Matador Records offering. As a result, “Teens of Denial” is a sprawling opus nearly 70 minutes long over 12 tracks, many of which seem to have multiple songs within themselves.
Evocative of Wilco or Pavement, Toledo is less concerned with the polish than the process, yet finds his way to some of his most endearing sounds from some of his least conventional beginnings. “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” feels like the album’s anchor, with Toledo’s forced, fragile falsetto slowly giving way to a catchy, bellowing chorus, “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
Refreshingly, “Teens of Denial” is a true concept album, telling the story of a disaffected teen in a more focused, relatable way than, say, Green Day’s “American Idiot.” It also doesn’t offer anything that might be considered too radio friendly, with even the album version of a catchy track like “Vincent” taking over two and a half minutes to reach the first lines of vocals, then stretching nearly eight minutes to its conclusion. It’s an album to be listened to as such.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
4. Lucy Dacus – “No Burden”
Both Dacus’s voice and her songwriting impart a wisdom that belie her 21 years. The Richmond-based singer-songwriter’s fragile lyrics float over a grungier-than-you-expect-for-folk-music guitar backing and little else, other than some background drums, but provides lasting twirls of melodies than linger with you. “Troublemaker Doppelganger” might be the loudest, poppiest, most radio friendly of the bunch, but the 35-minute collective is compelling throughout.
In the same way that JR JR wrapped an album within an album with 2013’s “The Speed of Things,” Daucus folds a repeated lyric into the back of both her middle and final track of “No Burden.” The complimentary elipses on “Dream State …” and “… Familiar Place” make more structural sense when we hear her tell us “Without you I am surely the last of our kind / Without you I am surely the last of my kind” in both songs.
I’d tell you I can’t wait to see her play at Rock & Roll Hotel in late February, but that isn’t going to happen without a little luck — the show’s already sold out.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
3. A Tribe Called Quest – “We Got It from Here…Thank You 4 Your Service”(Warning: Explicit Lyrics)
Alongside the discussions of which album is the best of the year is a related but different topic: which album is most of the moment, reflecting our life and times most appropriately. These are not always also among the very best of the year as well, but when they are, they have the promise to be an enduring piece of art for the future.
With their first studio album in 18 years, and the first since the passing of founding group member Phife Dawg, Tribe has plenty to say and no qualms about letting it all hang out. While it sounds funny to hear a group we may associate with another decade drop lines about Uber, the racially charged hook of “We The People” — “all you … you must go” — speaks very much to today’s tension and anger and sets the mood for an album that picks up the slack for any ambiguity of message in Tribe’s absence.
With a blistering performance on “Saturday Night Live” just days after the presidential election, in which they lowered a memorial banner to their fallen friend, Tribe showed that they are still very much of the present, not some revival act from decades past. “We Got It from Here …” reminds you that they have been here the whole time, preparing for this moment. They are ready, whenever you are.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
2. Pinegrove – “Cardinal”
The very first of the 2016 albums I really dove into, Cardinal opens with its strongest statement in “Old Friends,” a song whose nostalgic swing befits its title. But Pinegrove manages to tap into that elusive stirring that exists only in our best folk, rock and Americana music in a way that so many other bands that sound similar on the surface often fail.
With lines about solipsism and even a track called “Aphasia,” one might think Evan Stephens Hall would lose access to his audience’s ear. But Pinegrove has ways of delivering lines that cut right to the core of the human experience, like when you realize the title reference in “Old Friends” comes from the line “I saw Leah on the bus a few months ago / I saw some old friends at her funeral.”
In a musical age where non-instrumental sounds and filtered voices command more and more of the available space, “Cardinal” stands as a throwback to minimalism. I have high especially hopes for what we’ll see next from Pinegrove after watching their Tiny Desk performance of “Need,” a track not on Cardinal, that they use to open that set. The format is the perfect way to appreciate a band whose simple, straightforward appeal is actually crafted through delicately layered levels of instrumentation and harmony. I didn’t listen to any album more all year.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
1. Run The Jewels – “RTJ3”(Warning: Explicit Lyrics)
I usually feel bad waiting until the very end of the year to put this list out, but this year my patience was rewarded. That’s because after the sun set on Christmas Eve, after dinner was finished and presents were opened, Run The Jewels came crashing through America’s living room wall like the Kool-Aid Man in a Santa hat to deliver the group’s third LP a few weeks early and not a moment too soon.
The listening is still fresh, so the impressions are raw and not fully formed yet. But RTJ3 comes across as less clever, yet lyrically deeper than its predecessor. Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t clever. On “Hey Kids,” Killer Mike manages to flow seamlessly between ideas of wealth redistribution and his method of doing so, invoking retired running back and national treasure Marshawn Lynch’s funniest (but not-safe-for-work) line.
The record opens hard musically, but ramps up lyrically as it goes, like the first words of the coming uprising. There’s “Thieves,” which is backed by a driving, minor riff reminiscent of “Fight Club” era Dust Brothers, bookending a takedown of CNN’s Don Lemon with samples from an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” and Martin Luther King Jr.
And as is RTJ’s style, there are no punches pulled. When Killer Mike opens “Talk To Me” with a reference to “the Devil and Shaytan, He wore a bad toupee and a spray tan,” there’s no question to whom he’s referring. On the closing track, when the vocal Bernie Sanders supporter says “Choose the lesser of the evil people, and the devil still goin’ win,” it doesn’t feel like an accident. The word “revolution” is only spoken twice, but it’s perhaps the strongest impression left by the 14 powerhouse tracks.
Or, as Killer Mike says on the closer: “Coming soon on a new world tour / Probably play the score for the World War / At the apocalypse, play the encore.”
If this is a preview of music to come in 2017, fasten your seatbelts.
(WTOP/Noah Frank)
