The Best Album of 2016 . . .

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Yes, right. Who?

If you like Electronic Dance Music, you'll like these guys. If you like Kraut rock, you'll like these guys. If you like the Blue Man Group, you'll  like these guys. If you're just a nerd, you'll like these guys.

With the exception of the first, I qualify on all counts. Plus I'm a sucker for a live album. And anyone that gives Gene Kranz his props. Give it a listen.

For those of you with Spotify, there's a public Best of 2016 playlist here:





To recap:

2. Honest Life - Courtney Marie Andrews
3. The Last Days of Oakland - Fantastic Negrito
4. Everything is No Thing - Jah Wobble & the Invaders of the Heart
5. Sorrow - Colin Stetson
6. Ouroboros - Ray LaMontagne
7. Rejoice! I'm Dead! - Gong
8. Porcupine Meat - Bobby Rush
9. Everything Sacred - Yorkston/Thorne/Khan
10. Night Thoughts - Suede

Honorable Mention:

11. Gon' Boogaloo - CW Stoneking
12. Dolls of Highland - Kyle Craft
13. Arbina - Noura Mint Seymali
14. The Marcus King Band - s/t
15. Bamboo Diner in the Rain - The Wave Pictures
16. Overnight - Josienne Clark & Ben Walker
17. Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not - Dinosaur Jr.
18. "Awaken My Love" - Childish Gambino
19. Boots No. 1 - Gillian Welsh
20. Burn Something Beautiful - Alejandro Escovedo

The Best of the Rest:

For those of you who complain there's no good music these days, here's 122 albums worth:

4 1/2 - Steven Wilson

A Cure for Loneliness - Peter Wolf

A Force of Nature - Sari Schorr

A Moon Shaped Pool - Radiohead

Abbar El Hamada - Aziza Brahim

Alice Bag - s/t

American Band - Drive-By Truckers

American Football (LP2) - s/t

Animal Races - Cool Ghouls

Aupres du Poele - Ten Strings and a Goat Skin

Azel - Bombino

Bang, Zoom, Crazy . . . Hello - Cheap Trick

Beautiful Scars - Lee Harvey Osmond

Bee in Your Bonnet - Fallon Crush

Black Peak - Xylouris White

Blue & Lonesome - The Rolling Stones

Blues and Ballads - Brad Mehidau Trio

C & O Canal - Eric Brace & Peter Cooper

Carolina - Spain

Cautionary Tale - Dylan LeBlanc

Cayamo Sessions at Sea - Buddy Miller & Friends

Colvin & Earle - s/t

Commontime - Field Music

Couchville Sessions - Darrell Scott

Dead Ringers - Horseback

Death's Dateless Night - Paul Kelly

Deluxe - Omni

Disappointment Island - TTNG

Do Hollywood - Lemon Twigs

Don't Let the Kids Win - Julia Jacklin

Double Take - Frankie Miller

Dusk - Ultimate Painting

Eastside Bulldog - Todd Snider

Electa - The Wharves

Emotional Mugger - Ty Segall

Eric Bachmann - s/t

Everything's Different in the Night - Nudie

Exploded View - s/t

Eyes on the Lines - Steve Gunn

Far from Home - Calypso Rose

Feel Like Going Home - VA

Fera - Husbandry

Fleeting - Glenn Jones

Folk Time - Hart Valley Drifters

For Better, or Worse - John Prine

For the Good Times - Willie Nelson

Fowl Play - Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds

Front Row Seat to Earth - Weyes Blood

Funs Cool - The Prettiots

George Fest - VA

Get Gone - Seratones

Ghost Stations - Marconi Union

Golden Sings That Have Been Sung - Ryley Walker

Good Life Pie - Robert John & the Wreck

Goodbye World - The Relatives

Guadalupe Plata - s/t

Here Be Monsters - Motorpsycho

Heron Oblivion - s/t

High Stakes - Michael Martin Murphy

Hold On! - The James Hunter Six

Hubris - Oren Ambarchi

Hunter St. Blues - The Mayhemingways

If You See Me, Say Yes - Flock of Dimes

I'm Glad Trouble Don't Last Always - Luke Winslow-King

Imarhan - s/t

Innocent Road - Caleb Klauder & Reeb Williams

It Calls on Me - Doug Tuttle

It Is What It Is - Jimmy "Duck" Holmes

Joan Baez 75th Birthday Celebration - Joan Baez

K 2.0 - Kula Shaker

Keepin' the Horse Between Me & the Ground - Seasick Steve

Lazarus - Original Cast Recording

Lodestar - Shirley Collins

Lola - Carrie Rodriguiz

Look Park - s/t

Lost Property - Turin Brakes

Magic Fire - The Stray Birds

Man Made Object - GoGo Penguin

Marlowe's Revenge - Dan Stuart/Twin Tones

Max Jury - s/t

Modern Country - William Tyler

Monolith of Phobos - The Claypool Lennon Delirium

My Piece of Land - Amanda Shires

My Way Home - Lapsley

Ne So - Rokia Traore

New View - Elanor Friedberger

New York is My Home - Dion

Nine Pin - Kaia Kater

Nothing More to Say - The Frightnrs

Old Adam - Fay Heild

On the Ropes - The Honeycutters

Paging Mr. Proust - The Jayhawks

Painkillers - Brian Fallon

Pearls to Swine - Adam Torres

Redshift - Rhyton

Sadler Vaden - s/t

Scheherazade - Freakwater

Sea of Noise - St. Paul & the Broken Bones

Soft Days - Sea Pink

Someday, Buddy - The Trouble with Templeton

Something About April II - Adrian Younge

Stranger to Stranger - Paul Simon

Suicide Songs - MONEY

Supernatural Love - Sidestepper

Telling It Like It Is - Marching Church

That Album - Scotty Brachter

The End of Comedy - Drugdealer

The Olympians - s/t

The Ship - Brian Eno

The Things That We Are Made Of - Mary Chapin Carpenter

The Unity Sessions - Pat Metheny

Theyesandeyes - Lou Rhodes

This Changes Everything - Jim Lauderdale

This Girl's In Love - Rumer

This Is Where I Live - William Bell

Uncertain As it is Uneven - The Lowest Pair

Undercurrent - Sarah Jarosz

Upland Stories - Robbie Fulks

Vagabond Saint - Angelina

What to Fear - Sean Watkins

White Bear - The Temperance Movement

You're Dreaming - The Cactus Blossoms

 

The Best Albums of 2016 - Part 3

Into the home stretch. For 5-7 look here. For 8-10, here.

We're into the funky section now. At number 4 . . .

4. Everything is No Thing - Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart

The former PiL bassist leads a jazz/funk ensemble guaranteed to conjure up the best of that genre from the 70s.



3. The Last Days of Oakland - Fantastic Negrito

This is nothing short of a blues/soul concept album - the What's Going On? of it's era. The Last Days won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album.



2. Honest Life - Courtney Marie Andrews

2015 was the year of the female singer. 2016 saw only one in the Top 10, but what an album Courtney Marie Andrews brought us. A classic singer/songwriter/storyteller in the Lightfoot/Mitchell tradition, Andrews's voice oozes sincerity a la Sandy Denny and the musicianship on this album never gets in the way of the song. A great one from start to finish:



TOMORROW: The Album of the Year

The Best Albums of 2016 - Part 2

Welcome back! Either Part 1 did not scare you off or you stumbled onto this blog directly onto this page. If that's the case, to see what picks 8, 9, & 10 were and for an explanation of how they got there, see PART I.

On with the show . . .

7. Rejoice! I'm Dead! - Gong

And yes, Daevid Allen is. Though he manages to put in an appearance on this album despite (because of?) dying of cancer. Oddly, he's not alone this year as the terminal, both known (David Bowie) and unknown (The Frightnrs) put out great albums.



6. Ouroboros - Ray LaMontagne

I get the feeling LaMontagne goes into the studio to make a perfectly good pop album and keeps coming out of it with some sort of delicious throwback psychedelia/Prog masterpiece like someone who learns to fly by throwing themselves at the ground and missing.

Both Ouroboros and 2014's Supernova showed up atop the Best Of pile. The tracks fit together like a jigsaw puzzle so picking one cut was hard, but I went with . . .



5. Sorrow - Colin Stetson

This one is probably the hardest to swallow. A reworking of a modern classical symphony by an avant-garde saxophonist. It, however, is a truly moving piece. It was hard to rank it this far down. Here's a sample:



We're getting close to the top! Tomorrow it's numbers 2, 3, & 4. Then the big one!

The Best Albums of 2016 - Part 1

OK.

I'm a little lot late this year, but I got a lot of albums dumped on me late, had to go on vacation, blew off FaceBook for Lent, blah, blah, blah . . ..

The point is, you've been asking for my Best Of list! (OK, so ONE person asked for my best of list, but that's one more than the last two years).

Just a reminder of how this works:

Albums - because I am a child of the 70s, sandwiched between the singles era of the 50s and the download era, and I am biased into thinking the album is the highest musical art form. I am right on this. Don't argue.

Best Of - meaning what I would like to hear again and again. I don't care how ground-breakingly sonically forward an album is - if I don't like it, it ain't on here. If I don't want to hear it again, it ain't on here.

That said, I have some fairly wide tastes. The top 10 alone has the Grammy award winning Contemporary AND Traditional Blues albums, Americana, EDM, reworked Classical and straight-up Prog. There's a few here you're not likely to find on other Best Of compilations as evidenced by the fact that five of these don't even have Wikipedia entries.

As per usual, we'll count down from 10 . . .

10. Night Thoughts - Suede

Probably the poppiest  album on the list, the atmosphere and singer Brett Anderson's voice reminds me of a favorite album of mine, Icehouse, by the band of the same name.



9. Everything Sacred - Yorkston, Thorne, Khan

I'm not sure where to start on this one. World Music is kind of a catch-all. Instruments on this cut are Nyckelharpa, Sarangi, and Double Bass. It's trance-y, it's humorous, it stands the test of repeated listens - for me, something World Music doesn't always do. Not for everyone, but I dug it so here it is.



8. Porcupine Meat - Bobby Rush

What can you say? The man is 83-years old and still putting out great albums. Nothing fancy here, just another great Bobby Rush album that nabbed a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues. I can hear Fatha Thimes sayin' "Back it up . . .". Here's the title cut:




That does it for today. Part two tomorrow for albums 5 - 7.