I need to get this over with. My top 25 are pretty well set, but after that I would keep changing everything around if I didn't just post it already. Also, my write-ups suck this year. I blame having less time due to work.
Previous AOTY Lists:
2015 |
2014 |
2013 |
2012 |
2011, kinda
01 | Angel Olsen | My Woman
As on her previous album,
Burn Your Fire for No Witness, Angel Olsen concocts an expertly realized mix of poppy, catchy rock tunes and slower, more introspective tracks. The difference this time is that while
Burn Your Fire's sad tunes were generally slow and quiet,
My Woman draws them out into fully fleshed-out ballads that bring just as much aural intensity as the rock songs while still packing an emotional punch - more so, in fact, thanks to Olsen's improved songwriting skills and the impressive ways tracks like "Sister" and "Woman" build to powerful crescendos. So overall, I would call this a better album than
Burn Your Fire, and I awarded that album my number one spot in 2014. So naturally, Olsen comes out on top again.
02 | David Bowie | Blackstar
David Bowie looks back on a stellar (no pun intended...?) career in his final album, released just days before his death.
Blackstar is more experimental than anything he had done in quite a while, and for my money it's his best album since
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). And that's without even considering the impact Bowie's tragic death had on the album's dark themes in retrospect. Listening to the album when it came out, I already loved it. When Bowie died, however, it became that much more incredible; it was Bowie's parting message to the world, a way of transcending death by looking it straight in the eye and molding it into art. The most heavily promoted tracks, "Blackstar" and "Lazarus," seem to be two sides of the same coin. "Blackstar" is about David Bowie, the glamorous rock star, the legend, Ziggy, the Duke, Major Tom, and the legacy he left behind. "Lazarus" is about David Jones the man, the mortal, a confessional track about his fears and insecurities in the face of death. It is this juxtaposition of the two sides of Bowie's life that makes his self-awareness and determination in the face of death so admirable.
03 | Japanese Breakfast | Psychopomp
A breathtaking solo release from Michelle Zauner, frontwoman of Little Big League. The production is wonderfully lush and dreamy throughout, and Zauner's knack for writing perfect pop songs will guarantee that pretty much every track will be stuck in your head for days. The album also features an impressive fusion of upbeat danceable pop and more solemn, introspective themes. There's the ridiculously catchy and saccharine "Everybody Wants to Love You," but also the slow and beautiful "Jane Cum," plus tracks that hit somewhere between the two extremes like the gorgeous opener, "In Heaven." The album's heavier themes are infused with a great sense of humor, with "Everybody Wants to Love You" probably being the most obvious example with its playfully crude lyrics. All of these factors come together to create what is pretty much a pop masterpiece.
04 | Guerilla Toss | Eraser Stargazer
Guerilla Toss's latest release sees them at the height of their strange, abstract dancy noise-rock-dub-post-punk, um, thing. They're difficult to classify, but there is no question that they creatively employ their unique brand of syncopated percussion and weird synth and guitar sounds to create some really sick jams. And as strange as the music is, Kassie Carlson's vocals are even more striking; her spoken word delivery moves fluidly from sardonic observations to baby talk to cheers to outright screams. It's a strange album, but that's really kind of the point; that's what makes it so darn infectious.
05 | A Tribe Called Quest | We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service
A magnificent send-off to one of the most iconic hip-hop groups of all time, and in particular to Phife Dawg in the wake of his tragic passing. Who would have guessed that they'd return back at the top of their game and craft one of their strongest releases yet after all these years? On top of being great musically,
We Got It From Here is also uncannily relevant thematically. Coming out immediately after the US Presidential election, the album provided a catharsis that I think we all needed, expressing our frustration with recent events but also offering hope for the future.
06 | Car Seat Headrest | Teens of Denial
A driving indie rock album that never gets stale despite containing some fairly long tracks and totaling well over an hour. Most tracks feel like they could be quick three-minute 90s indie rock affairs, while actually lasting ten minutes or more and changing enough throughout to keep the listener interested. The tone of the album ranges from mellow to harsh and loud, but the flow makes these shifts work well.
07 | Sarah Neufeld | The Ridge
Sarah Neufeld, member of Arcade Fire and collaborator with Colin Stetson, releases a beautiful album full of soaring strings, interesting percussion that complements the music well, and vocals to flesh it all out. It's just wonderful to listen to.
08 | Pinkshinyultrablast | Grandfeathered
Pinkshinyultrablast's sophomore album sees them experimenting more with their sound while retaining their ethereal shoegaze sensibilities. It's a more consistently enjoyable album than their previous one, featuring noisy reverb-drenched guitars and synths, soaring vocals, and ultra-catchy blissful melodies. And since they don't have to compete with My Bloody Valentine this time, I'd say this is probably my shoegaze album of the year.
09 | Mothers | When You Walk a Long Distance You Are Tired
The biggest hurdle to enjoying this album is probably the vocals. The singer's voice is odd and unique and a lot of people probably won't like it, but I feel it lends an additional charm to the album. Vocals aside, the songwriting and arrangements are excellent. At times it features a folky singer-songwriter sound, but many of the tracks build to breathtaking crescendos that almost make it feel like the sort of post-rock that became popular in the 2000s in the wake of GY!BE. The end of the closing track, "Hold Your Own Hand," is particularly amazing, but it's excellent throughout.
10 | Mitski | Puberty 2
Mitski's songwriting skills continue to improve, and
Puberty 2 is full of songs that are equally catchy and heartbreaking. There's the excellent noisy lead single "Your Best American Girl," the lo-fi rock "My Body's Made of Crushed Little Stars" that juxtaposes the wonder of existence with the mundanity of everyday life, and the utterly depressing yet beautiful "I Bet on Losing Dogs." It's all pretty melancholy, but it's delivered in a variety of styles that all make for enjoyable listening.
11 | Deakin | Sleep Cycle
Deakin's infamously delayed solo album is finally out, and it turns out it was worth the wait because as far as I'm concerned it's the best Animal Collective-related release since
Merriweather Post Pavilion and possibly the best AnCo solo outing since
Person Pitch. Every track boasts excellent songwriting and production that is often reminiscent of Animal Collective's earlier work, like
Sung Tongs and
Feels. The tracks range from mellow and relaxed ("Golden Chords") to noisy and energetic ("Footy"). Deakin got a lot of hate for dragging his feet on this album for so long, so now it's time for him to get the recognition he deserves.
12 | Crying | Beyond the Fleeting Gales
This is quite simply an amazing power pop album, with some of the catchiest songs of 2016, plus some interesting loungey influences on some tracks that help to mix things up and keep you on your toes.
13 | Wye Oak | Tween
Apparently these were supposed to be throwaway tracks between "real" Wye Oak albums, but it's so good. I think I actually prefer it to Shriek. From the shimmering "If You Should See," to the Cocteau Twins-esque "No Dreaming," to the steady beat of "Better (For Esther)," which partway through becomes punctuated by noisy riffs, to the catchy and upbeat outro "Watching the Waiting,"
Tween legitimately contains some of the band's best songs yet.
14 | Radiohead | A Moon Shaped Pool
Radiohead's latest outing proves that they've still got it even after some 25 years in the business. Many of the tracks on the album are ones we've heard in live performances, or at least heard
of, but hearing them fully produced and with Jonny Greenwood's excellent use of strings through makes it a thoroughly new experience regardless. I didn't dislike
The King of Limbs as much as a lot of other fans did, but I would still consider this an excellent "return to form."
15 | Yumi Zouma | Yoncalla
A brilliant pop album that has strong 80s leanings, but doesn't use them as a crutch. Its dreamy melodies and light, airy atmosphere keep it afloat effortless for its duration. I knew this band was something special when I heard their first EP, and the LP delivered.
16 | Anna Meredith | Varmints
Anna Meredith crafts strange, offbeat pop melodies and harmonies featuring weird synths and percussion and even some wind instruments for good measure. The opening track, "Nautilus," begins with only looping horns, developing into a jaunty repeated swung tune before the percussion kicks in unexpectedly and adds a layer of syncopation to the entire thing. "Taken" features a quick and catchy synth loop throughout with a simple distorted guitar riff on top, with vocals that are practically reminiscent of a Nirvana song. "Something Helpful" is an almost amusingly upbeat song with its bells and layered vocals. It's the strange mixture of classical, electronic, and rock sounds all contributing to a consistent driving energy that makes
Varmints so interesting.
17 | Low Leaf | Palm Psalms: A Light to Resolve All Darkness
Low Leaf takes her music in a still more jazzy and psychedelic direction, incorporating lounge melodies and vocal harmonies. The album includes interesting use of harp and various other instruments both traditional and electronic, in such a seamless way that they seem to complement one another perfectly. The mood ranges from the upbeat jazz sound of "Psychlez" to the mellow, almost ambient sound of "Latent Bliss."
18 | September Girls | Age of Indignation
September Girls' first album left me thoroughly unimpressed when it came out. It felt like yet another "____ Girls" knockoff with no real identity of its own, and the songs were largely forgettable. With
Age of Indignation, however, they've come into their own and developed a unique sound that I can't get enough of.
AoI is significantly darker, more psychedelic, and more punk-oriented, with minor keys, aggressive guitars, pounding percussion, eerie synths, and sardonic vocals. Despite the darker sound the album retains a thoroughly pop sensibility with pretty much every track being an earworm, but with enough creativity to set it apart from the rest of the pack.
19 | Mermaidens | Undergrowth
A wonderfully dark psychedelic rock album with slow but heavy-hitting riffs and harmonized vocals. Most songs go through several sections, changing in tempo and dynamics several times and remaining consistently interesting throughout.
20 | Katie Gately | Color
The production on this album is wild. It's a crazy mish-mash of noise, random samples, wind instruments, crashing percussion, all coming together to form what is primarily a pop album in terms of structure, albeit with some interesting off-kilter beats. It does get a bit more out-there and ambient at times, but many of the tracks are both catchy and fascinating due to the beats and melodies and the odd sounds used to create them. It's thundering and cacophonous yet extremely listenable.
21 | Jenny Hval | Blood Bitch
Jenny Hval's previous albums have been more concerned with noise, sound collages, and spoken word with some more melodic touches thrown in.
Blood Bitch reverses the formula; it's much more melodic than her other albums under her own name (not necessarily her Rockettothesky albums, though), but it doesn't do away with the more experimental elements entirely, resulting in an album that's still compelling but that's also more accessible; for example, "In the Red" is composed primarily of the sound of Hval breathing, but the songs preceding and following it, "Female Vampire" and "Conceptual Romance," are dark but pleasant pop tunes. The mood of the album is dark and hazy, with reverberating synths and vocals, but it still contains plenty of pop melodies and lively beats that work well with the production style. And of course, Hval's enigmatic lyrics concerning gender, sexuality, violence, and politics are as strong as ever, although she amusingly oversimplifies these themes in a recording of her telling somebody that the album is "about vampires...and blood." Which is kind of true.
22 | Daughter | Not to Disappear
It may not break any new ground in terms of sad indie pop, but
Not to Disappear's songwriting and production are stellar, each track full of emotion and lovingly crafted in a way that's smooth and listenable but not glossy or overproduced. The dramatic crescendos and potent silences, along with some faster but still depressing tracks like "No Care," make it a wonderful listen.
23 | Banned Books | Banned Books
Really fun noisy mathy rock with intricate guitar riffs and angular rhythms that constantly goes in ways you're not expecting but still maintains a pop feel. And that's all you really need.
24 | Cross Record | Wabi-Sabi
Ominous, drone-filled pop music that's equal parts strange and fun. "Two Rings" contains some brilliant use of mallet instruments, "Something Unseen Touches a Flower to My Forehead" is full of peaks and valleys and almost doom metal-like guitar, and "Basket" features a quiet beat layered with ghostly high-pitched vocals, erupting in an ear-splitting burst of sound at the end.
25 | Kero Kero Bonito | Bonito Generation
I certainly didn't expect to have this at number 25, but I've had it on repeat long enough that it would be unfair not to. It's just a straightforwardly fun album. The beats are creative and cartoony without ever getting super weird, and Sarah Midori Perry's lyrics are playful and somehow simple, despite being bilingual. Some deeper meaning can be read into some of the tracks, such as "Try Me" being a critique of the job market or "Picture This" focusing on today's selfie-obsessed generation, but even then the band never specifically condemns any of the subject matter, making the album enjoyable as just simple fun well-made pop.
26 | Super Unison | Auto
27 | Cavern of Anti-Matter | void beats/invocation trex
28 | Chairlift | Moth
29 | Deep Sea Diver | Secrets
30 | Future of the Left | The Peace & Truce of Future of the Left
31 | Flyying Colours | Mindfullness
32 | Parquet Courts | Human Performance
33 | Kate Tempest | Let Them Eat Chaos
34 | Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | Skeleton Tree
35 | Outer Spaces | A Shedding Snake
36 | Tortoise | The Catastrophist
37 | NV | Binasu
38 | BADBADNOTGOOD | IV
39 | Julianna Barwick | Will
40 | Run the Jewels | Run the Jewels 3
41 | Camp Cope | Camp Cope
42 | Programm | A Torrid Marriage of Logic and Emotion
43 | Nots | Cosmetic
44 | Danny Brown | Atrocity Exhibition
45 | Katie Dey | Flood Network
46 | Crescendo | Unless
47 | Emma Ruth Rundle | Marked for Death
48 | Open Mike Eagle + Paul White | Hella Personal Film Festival
49 | Oliver Wilde | Long Hold Star an Infinite Abduction
50 | Sioux Falls | Rot Forever
51 | Exploded View | Exploded View
52 | Sound of Ceres | Nostalgia for Infinity
53 | Beverly | The Blue Swell
54 | DTCV | Confusion Moderne
55 | Minor Victories | Minor Victories
56 | Steady Holiday | Under the Influence
57 | Greys | Outer Heaven
58 | Oneida & Rhys Chatham | What's Your Sign?
59 | Deerhoof | The Magic
60 | Horse Lords | Interventions
61 | Marissa Nadler | Strangers
62 | Living Hour | Living Hour
63 | The Hotelier | Goodness
64 | Eleanor Friedberger | New View
65 | Teen | Love Yes
66 | PJ Harvey | The Hope Six Demolition Project
67 | Bat for Lashes | The Bride
68 | Maria Usbeck | Amparo
69 | El Perro Del Mar | KoKoro
70 | Big Thief | Masterpiece
71 | Death Grips | Bottomless Pit
72 | The Range | Potential
73 | Casey Mecija | Psychic Materials
74 | Glenn Jones | Fleeting
75 | Cat's Eyes | Treasure House
76 | Preoccupations | Preoccupations
77 | Jay Som | Turn Into
78 | Nisennenmondai | #N/A
79 | The Julie Ruin | Hit Reset
80 | Solange | A Seat at the Table
81 | Pity Sex | White Hot Moon
82 | Let's Eat Grandma | I, Gemini
83 | case/lang/veirs | case/lang/veirs
84 | Mint Julep | Broken Devotion
85 | Heron Oblivion | Heron Oblivion
86 | Big Ups | Before a Million Universes
87 | Swans | The Glowing Man
88 | Touché Amoré | Stage Four
89 | Esben and the Witch | Older Terrors
90 | American Football | American Football
91 | Samaris | Black Lights
92 | William Tyler | Modern Country
93 | Half Waif | Probable Depths
94 | Doprah | Wasting
95 | 大森靖子 [Seiko Oomori] | TOKYO BLACK HOLE
96 | Eerie Wanda | Hum
97 | Tiny Moving Parts | Celebrate
98 | Pascal Pinon | Sundur
99 | Crocodiles | Dreamless
100 | Kedr Livanskiy | January Sun
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