Best of 2016 Compendium

After struggling to flesh out various lists, I decided it's more fitting of the ethos of this blog (highlighting and recommending cool stuff, rather than actual criticism) to just throw it all into one big post. Since it's the last day of 2016, I figured I should really get around to posting it, so here we are. It was a weird as hell year, both for me personally and the country and world as a whole, but there sure was a lot of great music released, so let's keep holding on to that.

Songs:

Astronoid- "Up and Atom"
Awful pun for a title, but a top 3 chorus on the year. I dig the blackgaze-with-clean-vocals thing they have going on, and they show how well it works on the monster hook here. I'm all the way out on calling their style"dream thrash," I'm just as all in on how it actually sounds. For everyone who's ever longed for the crunchiness of the heavier metal styles but didn't want to sacrifice the soaring harmonies and upbeat attitude of the cleaner styles, Astronoid is here for you.
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Pelander- "Umbrella"

Gloomy English folk, which was all the tagline I needed to grab this one. The album as a whole didn't quite live up to , but this lead track showed the high potential this side project (Magnus Pelander's main band is Witchcraft) has. 
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Hexvessel- "Mirror Boy"

More gloomy folk, but Finnish this time. The band got even more psychedelic on this album When We Were Death, and though I don't dig it as much as some of their other sounds, it still came together as one of the best albums I heard this year. If you have any interest in prog rock, psychedelic music, or full-band folk, I couldn't recommend them more highly.
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Oathbreaker- "Second Son of R."

Is calling these guys Deafheaven but with female vocals kind of lazy? Maybe. Am I above that? Not really. They are signed to Deathwish Inc. though, (that’s Jake Bannon from Converge’s label) which also released Sunbather, so I’m not making connections out of thin air. Anyways. Caro Tanghe’s vocals are extraordinary, splitting between haunting cleans and a vicious snarl, and the metal behind it is every bit her equal. This is really good stuff.
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Singles: Two songs from bands that didn't release full-lengths this year:

Ragana- "You Take Nothing"
Raw, angry sludge. It's difficult to separate this track from its release date, the day after the election here in the US. The singer infuses a awe-inspiring mix of rage and defiance into the three words of the title, as the guitars crash around her.

No Hope/No Harm- "This Living Wage"
Slow, melancholic emo from my new home in Boston. The play a style more akin to the earlier heyday of emo than the more atmospheric sound of the current emo "revival" of bands like The World is a Beautiful Place, et al. I kind of get an American Music Club vibe from them. Very excited to see where they head in 2017.



Lines:

“Was kinda banking on a future that’d be involving you/but I couldn’t ask this of you”
(The Hotelier, "Two Deliverances")

I'll write more about The Hotelier a little further down in the post, but Goodness was an album filled with brilliant lines. "Piano Player" is the star of the show, but "Two Deliverances" packs even more of a punch. I don't think I've ever heard a song more accurately capture the sense of empty, unfilled time after a breakup than when singer Christian Holden asks "in the quiet empty hours of my afternoon, what am I supposed to do?"
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“You can’t just forget/ all those other lives you lived” 

(American Football, "Home is Where the Haunt Is")

I mostly avoided writing about American Football's LP2 because I felt it was a very personal album- both in content and context. Decade-plus haituses are always a dangerous thing, and it's often not worth it to only end up with a merely decent imitation of a band's former heights (see Weezer, Blink-182 and Metallica this year, and many others). Others may be invested in knowing that a band still has it (or at least isn't tarnishing their legacy), but I'm usually content to stick with the classics. But I had to hear this one, and I wanted to do so without the burden of what others wanted and expected from the record. So in that spirit I'll limit my own discussion- this album is so, so, good. 

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“Saw your boyfriend at the Port Authority/ sort of a fucked up place” (Pinegrove, "Old Friends")

Evan Stephens Hall has the talent that truly great songwriters possess to fit a world of feelings, meanings and context in a single line (see the “saw Leah on the bus” in the same song for the best example), and does so again here. This album is showing up on top-10's all over the place, and for good reason. Probably example number 1 of why all your "[Indie] Rock is dead" thinkpieces aren't worth the bandwidth it takes to load them.

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“I always thought I’d be/ the picture saved on your screen” (Hannah Diamond, "Fade Away")

No artist other than Hannah Diamond could get away with a line like that. She continues to walk the infinitesimal line between irony and earnest sincerity. The lyric video even spells out the word “meeeeee”! It’s been 2+ years and we’ve still only got 5 individual singles, but two of them (this and “Every Night”) are certified classics. I get why people don’t love PC Music- on their weaker stuff they sound just like the run of the mill David Guetta/Calvin Harris knockoffs they kind of are—but Hannah’s songs aren’t their weaker stuff.
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“I’ll always think of your lips/ When I’m moving mine against his” (Pity Sex, "Burden You")

Goddammit why are all my favorite lines this year about heartbreak…oh, right. Anyways, unfortunately this was the swansong for Pity Sex, as Britty Drake announced she’d be leaving after the album. It’s a shame because I was late to the party on them, but I'm really enjoying the simple, fuzzed out guitar rock they have going on. 

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Albums:

The Hotelier- Goodness

It’s something special to witness a songwriter so utterly sure of themselves that there’s really nothing that they can’t do. It’s a testament to Christian Holden’s force of narrative that he can pull off something as cliché as watching a wild animal in the woods and imbue the moment with existential significance without teetering over the edge into melodrama. I found Goodness to be a dense record I think as a result of its general lack of choruses, and admit that it takes some close listening to really unlock its intricacies. But what a payoff this album is if you take the time.

Goodness is a breakup record, yes, but of a kind I don’t think I’ve ever encountered before. There’s no anger here, no righteous fervor . But there’s everything else- the hurt and the pain, the quiet shock of “what do I do now?” and “what could I have done differently?”, but also the acceptance, the appreciation for everything you did have, and the recognition that nothing is really permanent anyways. It was certainly the album I needed this year, but I think its emotional significance will resonate with anyone who gives it a chance.

The Hotelier has never hesitated to take huge swings in their songs, and it’s stunning to see how frequently they connect. Goodness was an undeniably ambitious record, and now as the year winds down, I can say an undeniable success.

Joyce Manor- Cody

Where the Hotelier made me feel many different things Cody only made me feel one- happy- and that’s enough to give it my top spot for 2016. This is an endlessly replayable record, hitting the sweet spot between keeping songs from overstaying their welcome (the longest is “Stairs” at an eternity-by-Joyce-Manor-standards 4:01) without getting bogged down by a long tracklist. Cody is carefully crafted and endlessly enjoyable pop-punk. This was a fun record that never feels like it's trying too hard to be so- the lyrics get serious at times, but nonstop hooks keep everything jamming. This was the easiest and most enjoyable listen of the year, and if you missed it the first time around I recommend you hop on posthaste.

[That wraps up our regularly-scheduled programming for 2016. See you all in the new year!]