Top 10 albums of 2016

Well hello there, welcome to my first blog post of 2017 and my first top10 albums list. In 2016 I listened to more music than any year before, constantly trying out new bands and albums and trying to squeeze in more listening hours whenever I could. As many people do, I've formed my thoughts along the way about which albums I liked the most and why. And now I'd like to share them with you!

Honorable mentions:
White Lung - Paradise
Marching Church - Telling it like it is
Kanye West - A Life of Pablo
Katie Tempest - Let them eat chaos

10. Aesop Rock - Impossible Kid

I'm certainly a fan of Aesop's brand of hiphop, starting with topics and themes in his music more relatable to me than the usual "celebration of life" stuff, going through interesting instrumentals which do more than simply set the tone of the track, and finishing on his delivery and vocabulary, which serve each other in the pursuit of giving the listener a relatively refined sound. However, this only seems to all come around and work together every few tracks - the rest of them are often just boring and forgettable. In fact I probably returned to "Rings", "Shrunk" and "Blood Sandwich" more than to all other songs on this 15-track album combined. As I said, I like this brand of rap, but unfortunately, not always the execution of it. Still tight enough to put it on my top10 though!

9. Banks - The Altar

I'm not much of a pop or rnb listener, but every once in a while I find an artist who adds something different that just hits the right spot for me. And thus when I listen to "The Altar", the closest thing that comes to my mind is Lady Gaga's "Artpop", or at least its slower, calmer tracks. More importantly, I can't really put my finger on what is it exactly that I like about this album. Certainly big part of it is Banks' singing, which I heavily enjoyed in its more natural, raw state, but also found interesting when it makes space for more producing tricks. The instrumentals seem very elegant, with simple tracks finding their place in the background and a louder, more complex sound coming over when it's necessary. So, in short, I like everything about it. But not enough to put it higher on the list. It's complicated.

8. Black Mountain - IV

If I were to judge all the albums with their best 3 songs, Black Mountain's "IV" might've ended at the top of this list. "Mother of the Sun", "(Over and Over) The Chain" and "Space to Bakersfield" are just master class prog/psychedelic songs, with crazy guitars, thrilling singing and hypnotizing compositions. However, the rest of the album just isn't up to par. They all have interesting ideas and some creative melodies, but for the most part, whenever I listened to the album, I just wanted to jump to one of those three tracks. I wish I had more to say, but as it is, the 8th place on my list seems fitting to recognize just how good the best songs on it are.

7. Swans - The Glowing Man

Definitely the hardest album to get into on this list. I've read a comparison of listening to the first half of this album with "watching ripples on a lake", which is apt. The first hour of the album feels like buildup towards the second half, which is just insane, but I've learned to appreciate it when I've tried listening to just the second half over and over, and that proved to be overwhelming. However, to less hardcore Swans fans like me, I would genuinely recommend to begin their first listen with track #5 - it has a long intro of its own, but after 8 minutes we reach its first crescendo and overall there seems to be a more usual for Swans balance of ambience and intensity in that second half. Interestingly, they seems to draw influence from blues rock with the middle part of "Frankie M", and tracks "When Will I Return?" and "Finally, Peace" personally sound to me like something Ennio Morricone would've written for this band. Apart from this, there's a lot of what I would consider standard Swans music, with long instrumentals filled with looping, hypnotizing riffs, guitars and pianos fighting for attention and lots of other sounds forming a sonic wall. Just the way I like it.

6. clipping - Splendor and Misery

I think most music fans tend to rate "grower" albums (which take few listens before you actually start enjoying them) relatively high. But what to do when you fall in love with an album and can't stop listening to it for a while, but after a week you almost completely lose interest in it? As you might have guessed, Splendor and Misery is such an album for me. Clipping decided to do something new here, instead of another album of street stories, those absolute madmen made a literal space hip-hop opera. The static and electric noise that fueled instrumentals of their previous albums have been replaced with more industrial sounds of spaceships and futuristic machinery, interlaced with features from a gospel band Take 6. And like I said, for the 5-10 first listens or so, I was blown away. The sounds and compositions are varied and fantastic, and Daveed's rap as stellar as usual. But ultimately, it feels like at some point, the novelty just runs out. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the story being more literal and dealing with less relatable subjects than your standard rap, but regardless never before was I so high on an album for such a short ammount of time. It still deserves recognition and when I returned to it recently to refresh my memory, it was more interesting to listen to than when I left it. So maybe just don't listen to it on repeat like I did.

5. Ka - Honor Killed the Samurai

I think I have a pretty unique taste in rap - Kendricks and Drakes of this world do absolutely nothing for me, but neither do any of the trap or cloud artists. Fortunately Ka offers a very unique sound, aiming for the early 90s hiphop, but at the same time making use of modern technology and techniques to produce something truly amazing. You can just feel the sense of craftsmanship and passion for musicmaking in his work. The theme of samurais really works on this album, both thematically with bushido code references and musically with its martial-arts movie sound. If I had one gripe, it's that the album has only one stand-out track in "Just", and the rest just sort of blend together, which seems weird to me considering the guy allegedly writes thousands of songs and only releases very few of them. But I suppose he's more interested in telling the stories from the streets of the unwanted than in creating hooks and melodies. In fact I'm quite confident Ka isn't creating his music with likes of me in mind, but I'm okay with that. I'll still like the parts of it I like and keep trying to understand the rest.

4. Touche Amore - Stage Four

Three years after "Is Survived By" (one of my favorite albums of all time), Touche Amore came out with a concept album of sorts. Sadly, the theme that ties all of the tracks happens to be that of vocalist's mother dying to cancer. He sings about how painful those last few years were, about all the regrets he has now, and how shitty he feels about being on stage performing the moment she passed away. However, if anything, the band's style of music lets him scream all of this out. The compositions aren't meant to be depressing, we are treated to band's standard barrage of guitar riffs and drumming along with Jeremy Bolm's steady shouting. One obvious association with the album title is that of 5 stages of griefing, with the album being the one last step on the road to acceptance (of course the other is to stage IV cancer). And indeed, the final track "Skyscraper" is something different than TA has accustomed us to. With somber guitars and serene drumming, the track is actually sung on two voices, with Julien Baker joining Bolm, who's actually singing instead of yelling this time. That is until the last chorus, when he seemingly breaks down and lets out the most visceral, primal scream we ever heard from him, seemingly channeling all of the pain, suffering and despair he's felt over the past few years, as the guitars explode into their more usual tone and we end up on a big rock ending. Listening closely to Jeremy's voice sent shivers down my spine more than once, and for me, that's a mark of a great album.

3. Jeff Rosenstock - Worry

For the longest time, whenever I heard Jeff Rosenstock, I though "this sounds like Weezer, but better". The way I would describe it is that a lot of sounds and atmosphere in his music remind me of Rivers' band, but I just think he does a lot more interesting stuff with song structures (some of them reminding me of musical scores) and there's just a little more variety to the overall sound. Perhaps the better way to describe it would be "everything I ever wanted Weezer to be", which Jeff gives me in dozens. On "Worry", he doubles-down on the narrative of a man in his thirties, still yet to grow up, still rebelling against injustices of this world but also wanting to maintain lifestyle with little responsibilities. Interestingly he starts the album with most of its stand-out and varied tracks, notably "We Begged 2 Explode", "Festival Song" and "To Be a Ghost..." and later transitions into parade of shorter and simpler tracks once the listener is hooked and ready to listen to a longer, more drawn-out and less explosive narrative. All these decisions create not only something unique, but also just straight enjoyable to listen to. After last year's "We Cool?", Jeff is starting to become one of my very favorite artists and I can't wait to see what else he's got in store.

2. Garbage - Strange Little Birds

I think with this album Garbage has trumped everything they've done prior to 2016. It has the same style, energy and flair they've always been known for, but this time there's just so much more variety and quality in songwriting, and simply a lot of interesting sounds. Tracks like "Empty" are quintesential Garbage, but then there's stuff like "Blackout", "Even though..." and "Amends" which sound like just nothing else I know of. I think this little ammount of darkness they decided to introduce has worked wonders for them and I hope they stay on this track and keep releasing albums in this style.

1. David Bowie - Blackstar

My mind tells me "This is a 5/5 album. The sound is polished to perfection, the artistry in songwriting shows through and through, and the emotion brimming through it is raw and beatiful." But my heart forces me to doubt myself, asking "Can you really separate this work from its release circumstances? Could anyone?" Maybe in few years I'll be able to answer that question, but it's too soon for that. So for now, I'll just enjoy Bowie's last goodbye, perhaps the most beatiful one anybody has ever gave the world in music format. It's haunting, it draws you in and doesn't let go. The complex compositions compliment otherwordly singing, resulting in some of the best songs in Bowie's discography. A great end to a great career.