B&C's 2016 Albums of the Year AKA End of Times Soundtrack

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To be quite honest I actually never listened to them. The snippets I heard weren't enough to convince me the album was worth the hype.


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B&C's 2016 Albums of the Year AKA End of Times Soundtrack

2010:

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Beach House - Teen Dream
Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
Phantogram - Eyelid Movies

2011:

CunninLynguists - Oneirology
Destroyer - Kaputt
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
St Vincent - Strange Mercy
The Weeknd - House of Balloons

2012:

Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel
Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
Beach House - Bloom
Frank Ocean - Channel Orange
Tame Impala - Lonerism
Jessie Ware - Devotion
Wild Nothing - Nocturne

2013:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
Kurt Vile - Wakin on a Pretty Daze

2014:

D'Angelo and the Vanguard - Black Messiah
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Pinata
Sun Kil Moon - Benji
The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream

2015:

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Julia Holter - Have You in My Wilderness
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
Susanne Sundfor - Ten Love Songs
Viet Cong - Viet Cong

Gonna have to wait and see what holds up for me from 2016, but I don't see how Blackstar, A Moon Shaped Pool, Teens of Denial, Wildflower, Blonde and We Got It From Here wouldn't still be getting constant rotation. Shit, Malibu as well. I loved 2016's music. Untitled Unmastered I could see having less replay value because I'd sooner pick up TPAB, but it's amazing in its own right and holds its own against any of these albums.
 
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Post-Lance & El Mel's lists I'd add Lonerism, Swing Low Magellan and The Idler Wheel to mine.

Thought about The Suburbs for a second and then remembered Rococo.
 
Completely forgot about The Idler Wheel too. I'll have to find room for it.

Thanks for contributing, people. Loved to see your lists, winter is a good time to go back to a bunch of these albums.

It's incredible how much great music has come out these past few years. Not a single weak year so far this decade. 2011 is probably my least favorite year, and there are still 5-10 albums I still love.
 
gump said:
Good call on Grimes, Ax. Art Angels would probably make it somewhere between 10-20 on my list.
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I expect that when it comes time to make a best songs of the decade list in late 2019, "Flesh Without Blood" will still have one of the strongest claims on the #1 spot.

lazarus said:
Wolf Alice - My Love Is Cool
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Well shit, we agree on something. This isn't right.

martha said:
My favorite album of the decade so far is Slave Ambient. It's going to be hard to beat that record in the next few years.
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Honestly, as much as I love Lost in the Dream, I haven't been able to get into Slave Ambient one bit.
 
IMO the best Kendrick project is good kid, m.a.a.d. city. Would anyone agree with this?
 
B&C's 2016 Albums of the Year AKA End of Times Soundtrack

I would, but by only the narrowest of margins and, honestly, I feel like I'm heading in the direction of TPAB over time. From an instrumental standpoint, I think it's the more rewarding record.

They're both masterpieces, landmark albums in the genre that will be treasured for years to come. I think the only reason I prefer GKMC right now is that Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst is on it and that might be my favorite song of the 2010s.
 
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Here is my list finally. I probably wrote way too much, more than anyone is going to actually read, though the only individual enteries that are overly long are Radiohead(which had to be to say everything I wanted to say) and maybe Solange.

This is the first time I've participated in this. I'm not up on nearly as wide an array of new music as some of you. In fact, I didn't even get around to listening to half the records in my top 15 until I started working on this list. I crammed at the end. I still haven't listened to everything I wanted to listen to, but I doubt the ones I haven't listened to yet would've gotten in my top 15.

BTW, 100 points is not enough. I feel terrible about low-balling some of these in terms of points - Solange deserves more than 5, for example - but I just could bring myself to take any points away from the top 5 to offset.

Anyway, here goes...

15. A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service(1)

So, I'm not huge on hip-hop. Generally speaking, I find it difficult to connect with hip-hop records on an emotional level. As a result, I can listen to a hip-hop record, I can think it's very good, I can appreciate it, I can respect it, and then have little desire to listen to it again. Part of the reason is because I often can't even remember any of the lyrics afterward, and with relatively little musical substance present to stay in my head and lead my brain to the lyrics, there's no spark making me want to go back. So long story short, there are a few artists whose work I come back to - Beasties, Eminem, Jay Z, some other older stuff, maybe Kendrick if I listen to his stuff some more - but for the most part new hip-hop records won't rank highly on lists like this for me.

All that said, I dug this Tribe record. There's something really old-school about it. A lot of hip-hop artists nowadays are sort of trying to spread their wings - incorporating jazz/r&b/pop elements into their stuff, trying to actually sing here and there, using autotune for things it wasn't intended for - but Tribe mostly sticks to what I'd call 'straight mc-ing' here, keeping it simple, just good beats and good lyrics. And like most have said, the lyrics really hit home, both in the way they address the current political and racial climate and in how, in other places, they are a poignant send-off for Phife.

I've actually not heard any of Tribe's older stuff. This record has me thinking I should. Whenever I think of delving deeper into hip-hop, my instinct is always to go for golden-age stuff - Public Enemy, Tupac, Biggie, Nas, Fugees, Wu Tang, Jay Z, Roots, etc - rather than newer artists, and Tribe falls squarely in that category.

Good record. Bonus points for making a Saved By The Bell reference('Cause I see things in black and white/like Lisa and Screech).

14. Sia - This Is Acting(1)

So, I know Sia is a bit polarizing. I know some don't care for her cracky vocal style. But I dig her stuff. She's probably my favorite pure pop artist, aside from Robyn, of the decade. Those singles from her last record - Chandelier, Elastic Heart, Big Girls Cry - were huge pop songs that also, imo, made a legit emotional impact. The fact that she writes all her stuff is a big plus too.

This record is comprised nearly completely of songs that she wrote for other people that were rejected. I don't know what some of these artists were thinking. There are some tremendously catchy pop songs here.

Move Your Body might be the make-you-move single of the year. Probably my favorite track here. Other favorites include Bird Set Free, One Million Bullets, House On Fire, Footprints, and Space Between. Sia continues to know how to churn out pop songs that are big, genuine, pretty, and infectious. I dig it.

13. Explosions In The Sky - The Wilderness(1)

I got into EITS for the first time last year. My initial reaction upon listening to a few tracks was that they were a great post-rock band, amazing even. I was eager to dig deeper into their catalogue. But after listening to several full albums, I started to feel like there was a sameness to all their work, that if you've listened to one album, you've kind of listened to them all. I found it difficult to differentiate one record from another.

This record is their first since 2011, marking the longest break between records of their career. I went in with some trepidation, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's still totally recognizable as EITS, but they seem to have toned down the 'quiet beginning building up to an explosive ending' formula. It's still there somewhat, but they've allowed these tracks to breath a little, to evoke in a slightly subtler way, to paint an aural picture without necessarily having to have every track end in the same kind of explosive way. The record was supposed to evoke the feelings you might have if you were in the wilderness, and I feel it did that very effectively. The feeling is still with me.

I'd probably have to go back and jog my memory on some of their earlier records, but this might be top 2 or 3 for me from them.

12. Metallica - Hardwired...To Self-Destruct(1)

The first single from this record - the title track - kind of sucked. It wasn't very good. But the rest of the record is. I've only seen it on one other person's list and that was outside his top 15. Maybe you guys aren't Metallica fans, or maybe you've just completely given up on them and assume that anything they put out anymore won't be worth your time. But I think this record is. It's not as good as their peak work from the 80s. It's not. But it is the best record they've put out since the Black Album, imo.

Stylistically, I'd say it's a cross between the Black Album and AJFA, the desire to be broadly successful of the former(but with less balladry), the musical ambition and longer track lengths of the latter. Elements of Load there in places as well, but not overly so. These tracks are heavy, some full of riffs and solos, some more groove-based. It won't dethrone Metallica's best work, but it's a really solid record, an improvement over Death Magnetic(though I still think its track Suicide & Redemption is the best single track they've done in the last 25 years) and certainly an improvement over the career nadir that was St. Anger.

If you like Metallica at all, you should give it a try.

Favorite tracks include Now That We're Dead, Moth Into Flame, Confusion, Am I Savage?, and Spit Out The Bone.

11. Wild Nothing - Life Of Pause(2)

I really dug this record a lot. It's like a rollercoaster ride of retro 70s and 80s sounds. I hear prog-rock influence, some Todd Rundgren-ish pop-rock influence, some 80s synth-pop influence, even some post-punk influence here and there, and more. It's cornucopia of all that stuff. Any record that at times reminds of Floyd or Yes, at times reminds of Rundgren, at times reminds of The Cars, and at times reminds of The Cure - not to mention reminding of more modern acts like Tame Impala - is a winner in my book. One of the most viscerally exhilarating aural experiences of 2016. A lot of fun.

10. Avalanches - Wildflower(5)

Wanna hear something you'll probably find hard to believe? I'd never heard of the Avalanches until they announced that this record was finally going to be released and everyone started getting hyped for it. I still haven't heard the first record. But I gave this a shot because it seemed to be a big deal that it was even finally released after many years, and also because, Travis gave it high praise on his list. This is actually the first of three records I specifically gave a chance to on the recommendation of his list.

I have to say it's not at all what I was expecting. The album was always described in multiple genres, including hip-hop, psychedelic, electronic, etc. But I went in thinking it would be much more of a hip-hop record than it is. It's really not. There's not that much hip-hop at all here. It's just fun, neo-psychedelic soul music.

I'm not really a fan of the interludes(I'm not a fan of interludes in general, I feel like they interrupt the flow more often than they help it), but the proper tracks are nearly uniformly pieces of feel-good escapism. In fact, a handful of these tracks started reminding me of the spacier moments of Magical Mystery Tour - think Flying, Blue Jay, I Am The Walrus, and Harrison's track from that period, It's All Too Much - and that, my friends, is getting close to the highest possible praise I could give.

I particularly enjoy Colours, Harmony, Live A Lifetime Love, and the entire final five-song stretch starting with Sunshine.

If I had more time to listen to this before getting my list in, it might move up a notch or two in my ranking, but this is where it stands for now. Just a really fun, enjoyable, feel-good listen.

9. Angel Olsen - My Woman(5)

This record is bubbling with passion. Olsen's voice and delivery are a disarming combination of strength and vulnerability, and the effect is undeniable. The way she can go from sounding bitter and angry to sounding vulnerable and shaken is something else. Musically, the record goes from folksy one minute to sparse pop in another to rock in another, and does it seamlessly. The record really creates an atmosphere, a world of its own, and it really makes me feel like I'm inside her mind and her heart. She is a captivating, maybe even force of nature, performer, and I hope and expect for more work of this calibre(or better) from her in the future. Great stuff.

Favorite tracks include Intern, Sister, and Woman.

8. Solange - A Seat At The Table(5)

I wasn't aware of this album until some of you guys were talking about it the day after the election. I was feeling down, and there was some big praise coming from B&C for this record, so I gave it a shot, and it really lifted my spirits, as much as they could be lifted that day.

This is just a great record. It's obviously about, and directed at, a certain subset of the population - African Americans - but it's written and delivered in a way that is inviting for everyone. It could've been an angry record, but it's not, it's just vulnerable and raw, and that's a great thing. She never overdoes anything with her voice, always giving just enough power to the vocal to make the point without ever overshadowing any of the songs with her own presence. She lets the songs be the stars. Musically, the melodies and grooves stay with you, it's a very appealing mix of r&b, soul, and jazz. It doesn't sound all that poppy, and that's totally fine. That would've been out of place on this record.

I feel like you can't escape the comparisons to Beyonce's record - which didn't make my top 15 - so I'll say this: Upon my first hearing of A Seat At The Table, having not yet heard Lemonade outside of Formation, I said that I thought ASATT was better than anything her sister had ever done(that I'd heard). Having now heard Lemonade, I stand by that. There are 3-4 really good tracks on Lemonade that I'd come back to, but on the whole, I don't find it to be that great. The standouts on that record for me were Daddy Lessons, Sandcastles, and All Night. In addition to very good performances from Beyonce, these tracks were all musically very solid as well - Daddy Lessons with it's guitar chords and country-ish vibe, Sandcastles allowing to Bey to just sing, almost alone, standard-style, and All Night with that infectious hook melody. Yet on the whole, I found Lemonade to be a record that puts lyric over music more often than not(which I'm not a big fan of, music first, always), and I also found it too be too produced too often - too much of it sounds like it couldn't exist outside the studio. In contrast, on ASAAT, the lyrics and the music are always front and center together. Every song here could probably be played with just a piano or acoustic guitar.

I know Lemonade was as personal for Beyonce as ASAAT is for Solange, but the former's record, in addition to being deeply personal, still screams 'I want to be a superstar, I want to perform at superbowl halftime shows, I want to win awards, I want everyone to know my name', while the latter's record just seems much less concerned about that stuff, much more understated, less the next piece in the career of a pop-culture icon and more a standalone piece of self-expression that is more unguarded about its subject matter and, like Travis said, more broadly relatable.

My favorite tracks include Cranes In The Sky, Weary, F.U.B.U., Don't Touch My Hair, Where Do We Go, and Scales.

7. Norah Jones - Day Breaks(7)

This will, probably, be 100% the only Norah Jones mention on anyone's list. She put out a classic piano-jazz-pop record in 2002 called 'Come Away With Me', which received widespread acclaim, won a boatload of grammys, and was regarded by some, probably some of you as well, as elevator music.

In the intervening years, Jones went away from that piano jazz sound and started playing guitar and experimenting with more folksy, country-ish stuff, some of which I wasn't crazy about to be honest. But this record is something of a roots record, with Jones returning to the piano jazz sound that made her famous a decade and a half(holy shit has it been that long?) ago.

And what a return to her roots it is. She is truly gifted at this specific type of music. These songs are a joy to listen to. Her sultry voice, the soulful, simple yet highly effective melodies, and the captivating instrumentation(a big variety of instruments accompany Jones' voice and piano, from bass and drums to an electric organ to trumpet/saxophpone to cello/violin/viola and more) combine to create an intoxicatingly relaxing late night lounge-club atmosphere, that almost puts you to sleep - in the best way possible. It's everything I'd always hoped Jones would someday come back to.

If it interests anyone, the record contains a few covers - Neil Young, Horace Silver, and Duke Ellington.

Favorite tracks include Burn, It's A Wonderful Time For Love, And Then There Was You, Day Breaks, Once I Had A Laugh, and Sleeping Wild.

6. Carseat Headrest - Teens Of Denial(7)

So I heard you guys talking about this record all year long but, save for a track or two, I didn't get around to listening to it in full until I started making this list. I honestly didn't expect to like it as much as you guys, as I'm generally not that into the whole lo-fi/DIY thing, and I though the record was going to be more low-fi than it ended up being. So I was surprised when I realized I loved the record halfway through it.

Toledo is able to mix a classic rock-ish sense of melody and scope/epicness(is that a word? probably not.) with lo-fi DIY production values to create a fairly unique and enthralling sound. Like if the Clash played Eagles songs. Or something like that. This is good shit. The combo of Cosmic Hero and The Ballad of the Costa Concordia is definitely the high point of the record for me, along with the closer, Joe Goes To School, those are stellar tracks. But they're all varying degrees of good.

Happy to have been wrong about it.

5. Crying - Beyond The Fleeting Gales(10)

This is another record I decided to give a try after seeing it on Travis's list. I had never heard of the band, period, before, so beyond Travis's description, I was going in blind.

It was really a blissful listening experience. I'd describe the overriding style as dream-pop, but it's more like dream-rock with electronic elements. Their sound is other-worldly, the melodies go straight to your heart, the singer has a really unique sound and delivery that goes perfectly with the instrumentation, and it all still rocks.

Aside from Esperanza's record(which I just got into), this is probably the first time I've listened to a record and thought 'this sounds like nothing else' since Tame Impala's Lonerism. That's high praise coming from me. It really sounds like it's coming from a dream world.

What a great, gorgeous, unqiue record.

Favorite tracks include Children Of The Wind, A Sudden Gust, Patriot, and There Was A Door.

4. Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Getaway(10)

I know B&C isn't high on the Chili Peppers(and I was genuinely surprised to see one other person put it in their top 15), but they are a legendary rock band, and one of my favorites ever. I doubt they will ever top their peak work with Frusciante(BloodSugarSexMagik and Californication are all-timers for me), and I wasn't crazy about their first record with Klinghoffer, 2011's I'm With You, which sounded like they didn't quite know what they wanted to be with Klinghoffer yet, but I like this record a lot.

The band sounds revitalized and with new purpose, and Klinghoffer sounds like he's starting to create his own sound and style, to take on the tall task of getting out of Frusciante's shadow. The records mixes pop sensibilities with a generally alt-rock sound, with flourishes of funk and even reggae, to come up with something that sounds unexpectedly fresh and dynamic. It is, on the whole, mellower than most Chili Peppers records that came before it, and although I wished here and there that they'd let loose a little more, I dig what they're doing here a lot as well.

Favorite tracks are Dark Necessities, The Longest Wave, Sick Love, and This Ticonderoga.

3. Esperanza Spalding - Emily's D+Evolution(15)

Esperanza Spalding is an artist I'd been meaning to check out for a while now - I knew she was exceptionally talented(because too many people said so for it not to be true) and intelligent(because I'd heard interviews), but I just never got around to it. But I saw this record on Travis's list, so I made it one of the records I'd listen to before compiling my list.

I was pretty bowled over at how good it is. These songs are exciting, vibrant, fresh, catchy, soulful, and full of character. The way she takes all of these jazz elements and rock elements and fits them into (mostly) pop structures is impressive and immensely enjoyable and utterly unique. There's a real spark to the instrumentation, the music is on fire, and her vocals are joy to listen to, smooth and clear and pristine and yet just imperfect enough for her humanity to come through. She's just so energetic and alive and spunky, such a spitfire, and she attacks the material with such gusto and aggression and character, it's just a great performance.

I guess I just have a thing for attractive, intelligent, stupidly talented female artists, but this record is fucking great. Like great enough to be #1 if Radiohead and Bowie hadn't both decided to put out all-timers in the same year.

Favorite tracks include Unconditional Love, One, Ebony And Ivy, and Elevate or Operate.

2. David Bowie - Blackstar(15)

I really feel like this should be a co-#1 with Radiohead, but there can only be one #1, so Radiohead got the nod just by virtue of meaning a little bit more to me personally, but really they're both very special records that are deserving of their likely 1-2 finish in this thing this year.

It's just a mind-blowing record. A harrowing record. A breathtaking record. If I only had months to live, I don't know how well I'd be able to function, let alone create something, let alone create something this great. The fact that he was able to do this is just incredible.

Much has been said about this record, so I guess I'll try to keep it brief and just say three things:

1. I want to give a special-out to the jazz band the backed Bowie on this record - Donny McCaslin on saxophone, Tim Lefebvre on bass, Jason Lindner on keyboards, and Mark Guiliana on drums(got names from wikipedia because I was that impressed) - they just did really, really spellbinding work here, both in performance and composition(I assume they composed what they were playing). Tremendous stuff. Really gets under your skin, you feel it in your whole body. Makes me want to maybe check out more of their work.

2. I've always felt that Bowie, as legendary as he is, as revered as he is, as a songwriter and performer and artist, is somewhat under-appreciated purely as a vocalist. This opinion has been re-enforced over the past year, as this record inspired me to delve into his later(90s and beyond) work that I'd never listened to before. On this record, there is something unbelievably poignant about hearing him still sing so powerfully and evocatively(even if, or maybe even because, his voice is a little weaker in his sick state, the power is still there in the way he emotes, his vibrato, the way he holds his notes, etc) in his last months.

Nowhere is this more apparent to me than in the album's closer, I Can't Give Everything Away. The one-line chorus is so simple yet so heartbreaking, given the context. It slays me every time. Every time I listen to it, I feel like it's playing over the end credits of his life. Definitely my favorite song on a tremendous record.

3. I can't imagine what it was like for him to record this, knowing that it would be the last thing he'd ever record, knowing that he probably wouldn't even be alive to see what people thought of it. If there's an afterlife, if there is consciousness after death, I hope he knows how moved a lot people are by his parting gift, his swan song.

Favorite tracks include I Can't Give Everything Away, Blackstar, Lazarus, and Dollar Days.

1. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool(15)

(Apologies for this excessively long writeup, but I couldn't help it.)

"Alone among their commercial peers, Radiohead are held to not just release albums but make grand artistic statements worth dissecting and poring over."

The above is a quote from a review of AMSP, and I feel it is accurate. This is a band that is held to a higher standard as a result of the near-uniformly brilliant records they have released over the years.

That higher standard is probably why King Of Limbs has been seen as a disappointment by many for years. I feel like I can't fully say what I want to say about AMSP without first saying something about TKOL, so bare with me.

The follow-up to the universally acclaimed and beloved In Rainbows, TKOL wasn't nearly as accessible as its predecessor, the combination of its relative lack of traditional instrumentation, experimentation with dense, swirling electronic soundscapes, and often-times abstract songwriting making it a challenging record to penetrate. That alone doesn't by any means mean anything negative about a record - that description could just as easily apply to Kid A, after all - but in this instance, the record is fairly anemic in length, clocking in at 37 minutes, and some of its eight tracks seem to keep it from being a cohesive whole(Little By Little, Morning Mr. Magpie). I remember feeling, when it was first released, like maybe they didn't actually have a full albums' worth of material, and like as good as at least half of those tracks are, they too often sounded like Thom solo efforts more than full band efforts.

My opinion over the years has shifted somewhat, and I now feel that if you remove Magpie and Little By Little and add Staircase, The Butcher, and Supercollider, you get a whole the feels more cohesive, that feels like it has more meat on its bones, and that is as interesting and captivating and even beautiful in its own way as anything they've done, but that still doesn't quite feel alive, that still doesn't quite feel like a group of people playing music together as much as it does an experimentation of sound that too often feels somehow removed from humanity, and that lacks the overall 'wow' factor that most of the band's prior records have for me, even if it's still a very worthwhile entry in their catalog and still growing on me all the time.

So going into A Moon Shaped Pool, I didn't know what to expect. I felt like maybe the band was finally beginning to be a spent creative force, to borrow a phrase I read somewhere else, having at that point released only two albums in 13 years since leaving EMI, and the latter being so short in length and shorter in quality(in its official form), but it's Radiohead so I could never count them out. I loved Spectre right away on Christmas night 2015, and Burn The Witch was exciting as the first single, as it was the most energetic, direct thing they'd put out in a while. But then it was followed up with Daydreaming which, while I love it now, struck me as merely pleasant on first listen, outside the context of the album.

The experience of listening to the record straight through for the first time on release day is one I won't soon forget. Once the first two tracks - that I was already familiar with - finished, I sat with bated breath to hear what the rest would be like. I wasn't disappointed. In fact, I was pretty blown away the whole way through.

I was overjoyed to hear some of the most direct songwriting Thom has done since probably HTTT all over the record(the lyrical content was intriguing at first, and then heartbreaking once news of Thom's split with his ex came out, and is now finally just absolutely devastating after the news of his ex's passing). I was overjoyed to hear all of the robust instrumentation, from the intense strings and percussion in Burn The Witch to the jam session at the end of Decks Dark to the brooding bass and percussion in Ful Stop, to the guitar solo at the end of Identikit, on and on. I was overjoyed to hear all of those gorgeous, thrilling, exciting string arrangements of Johnny's on pretty much every track, signaling that Spectre wasn't a fluke(the second half of Tinker Tailor is magical). I was overjoyed to hear the choral arrangements in Decks Dark and Present Tense(the choral melody in the middle of the track is perhaps my favorite single musical moment of 2016). I was overjoyed to hear the beautiful melodies in Daydreaming(which clicked in a big way for me in the context of the album) and Glass Eyes and Identikit(possibly the catchiest track they've done since Reckoner) and True Love Waits(haunting).

Why use the word overjoyed so much? Because it's hard to explain the feeling you get when a band or artist that you love, but think might be on the verge of being creatively past it, proves you wrong and puts out a piece of work that blows you away from day one. But overjoyed seems like a good word for it.

Adding to that sentiment is the fact that we just don't know how much longer Radiohead is going to be doing this. I very much get the sense that they're not like U2 or the Stones or any number of other bands that will continue doing their thing as long as they're physically and mentally able to. I very much get the sense that they could say 'we're done' at any time, because I very much get the sense that they're the kind of band that would rather burn out than fade away. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. So any record we get from them, much less a record as good as this, is a gift.

A lot of us in B&C weren't alive or weren't old enough to be aware of it when the Beatles were putting out their records, or when Zeppelin and Floyd were putting out (most of) their records. The point being that all-time level bands and artists more often than not exist as bands and artists from the past that we get into after the fact. There are lot of good, even great, artists and bands around now. But all-time level artists and bands are by definition scarce.

Radiohead is an all-time level band, and they're still putting out really great records, records as great as AMSP, and we're all here and alive while they're doing it. They could say 'we're done' at any time and that would be it, and all of the children of the future will be left to view their work as greatness from the past, much the way we look at The Beatles or Floyd or Zeppelin or whoever, while we all got to witness it live as it happened. I just feel like it's something that we shouldn't take for granted, something we should really appreciate and savor, and that's one of the main things this record made me feel. And it speaks highly of any record when it makes you appreciate the artist - even if it's an artist you love - in a way you hadn't before.

So yeah, I really love it, and it's my #1 record of the year.

Favorite tracks include all of them.
 
Very glad that I could inspire some productive listens late in the game with my list. :up: Part of the reason I pushed to get mine out early was in the event that someone wanted to submit but needed a few recommendations to get them over the line.

Did you like the album Norah Jones did with Danger Mouse? I feel like she's been on a nice upward trend lately but haven't heard her newest.
 
LemonMelon said:
Very glad that I could inspire some productive listens late in the game with my list. :up: Part of the reason I pushed to get mine out early was in the event that someone wanted to submit but needed a few recommendations to get them over the line.

Did you like the album Norah Jones did with Danger Mouse? I feel like she's been on a nice upward trend lately but haven't heard her newest.
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I actually haven't listened to that one in full. The one or two singles I heard from it were fine, but I've never really been tempted to listen to it in full. I just loved her first two records and was disappointed when she moved away from that. I always admire artists who spread their wings and try different things, but I also get a little frustrated when artists seem to actively try to stay away from the one thing they're actually great at.

I should probably listen to that Danger Mouse album in full though.
 
Loved your write-up on AMSP namkcuR. A great piece on what makes the album, and Radiohead in general, so great.
 
Great write-ups, namkcur. It's very nice to see why people are passionate about music that you also love, so I appreciated your extended comments.

Is anyone else around here still planning to submit a list? I'm thinking we should probably close this by Sunday and have the results thread next week. What do you think?
 
Nice words namckur, I too think A Seat at the Table is better than anything Beyonce has done, and great words on Radiohead and Bowie. I'll be posting my blog link soon, I hope people will have a read :)

Need to listen to that Esperanza Spalding record.
 
nielsgov said:
8. Wild Beasts - Boy King (5)
Favorite track: Eat Your Heart Out Adonis
Click to expand...

I'm glad someone else mentioned this album. Wild Beasts are a fucking great band. Smother - Present Tense - Boy King is as good a three-album run as there is in indie rock right now.
 
I've been a bit OOTL here lately, but I did manage to get a list together, am I still good to submit it?
 
1) Shearwater - Jetplane and Oxbow (10)

2) Preoccupations - Preoccupations (9)

3) David Bowie - Blackstar (9)

4) Chairlift - Moth (8)

5) Yumi Zouma - Yoncalla (8)

6) Sunflower Bean – Human Ceremony (7)

7) Common – Black America Again (7)

8) Bat for Lashes – The Bride (7)

9) St. Lucia - Matter (6)

10) Daughter - Not to Disappear (6)

11) Blood Orange – Freetown Sound (6)

12) Wild Nothing – Life of Pause (5)

13) Kanye West – The Life of Pablo (5)

14) Solange – A Seat at the Table (4)

15) Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial (3)
 
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