40. BTW — Wings
Courtesy of Big Hit Records
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Wings not only broke the misconception that male K-Pop groups are just about pretty boys singing about puppy love. The album also progressed from the darkness involved in toxic love, to breaking free and featured a solo track by each group member. The album thus included rap tracks, solo ballads and songs where the seven BTS members collaborated as usual.
— Viri Garcia
39. Jordaan Mason — Form Less
Courtesy of Funeral Sounds
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“Are you hoping to have/a crisis of faith in your front yard/for all of your neighbors to see/your new complicated sexual identity?” This is how Jordaan Mason ends “They Harmonize,” the solemn opening track on the Toronto-based musician’s solemn 11th release, Form Less. The album seems to play out very much like that “crisis of faith” which they sing about: throughout its 11 short, sparse tracks, Mason lays themself absolutely bare, divulging everything except what secrets manage to hide behind the rare jutting monoliths of their opaque poetry in an otherwise desolate landscape of longing and confession. From track to track, Mason is accompanied by little more than a coy guitar here, an undulating electronic pulse there, and the effect is invariably chilling. To say that 2016’s most convincing meditation on personhood came in the form of a quiet independent Bandcamp release might seem like a bit of an exaggeration, but it isn’t. Once you’ve listened to Form Less, you’ll realize that it isn’t at all.
— Troy Sherman
38. The Fall of Troy — OK#3.2
Courtesy of The Fall of Troy
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The title OK#3.2 isn’t a joke. Progressive post-hardcore trio The Fall of Troy decided to not just release their first album in seven years (OK), but also a different mix of that album (OK#2), an instrumental version of that album (OK#3.1) and an instrumental version of the different mix of that album (OK#3.2). It’s a mouthful to describe but, ironically, the takeaway from OK#3.2 is that less is more. Stripping away singer/guitarist Thomas Erak’s vocals allows listeners to focus on the group’s intricate, thrashy compositions. In an album in which the recently reformed group explores new sounds and modes (see: the reggae-inspired breakdown in “401K,” the plodding intro to “Love Sick”), Erak’s often superficial lyrics are not missed.
— Shay Collins
37. Adult Jazz — Earrings Off!
Courtesy of Tri Angle Records
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Just half the length of 2014’s still-mesmerizing Gist Is, Earrings Off! is certainly a transitional release for Adult Jazz. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of just as much praise as its predecessor; in fact, Earrings Off! is in some ways a beast so different from Gist Is that it seems a little perverse to talk about them in the same breath. Gone are the sprawling, endless dirges and seascapes of incomprehensibility. Earrings Off! is more about concision, about iteration and revolution (in the literal sense). Listening to it is like turning around a star in your hands and letting it seep slowly through your fingertips. Where once they succeeded despite an unruly proliferation of ideas, here Adult Jazz makes do with just a few fragments recycled into a disorienting oblivion. The result is a captivating irreconcilability between their music and meaning which finally matches singer Harry Burgess’s aimless shrieks. Earrings Off! is certainly one to sit with.
— Troy Sherman
36. Daughter — Not to Disappear
Courtesy of 4AD
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The shock in these tracks is not that Daughter is ruminative, or filled with angst — this shouldn’t be news to anyone. But the stand-out comes here in the form of levels of desolation unexpected. Elena Tonra, Igor Haefeli and Remi Aguilella have crafted an album that continuously teases you into vulnerability, much like the lyrics admit to feeling, before dropping you into an expanse of sound that leaves you feeling breathless and beaten. Even as the album wanes off, Tonra is still telling you, only half-believing it, that you’ll figure things out. You have to wonder who she’s actually talking to, as Haefeli’s guitar whispers out sweet nothings and Aguilella drums on, dreamlike.
— Jessie Weber
35. Drake — Views
Courtesy of Young Money Records
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Views is lyrical and personal. It is Drake at his best, championing his type of hip-hop without compromising for shallow “hype” songs just for the sake of hype. When Drake sticks to his style, that’s when he gets the coveted Billboard spots and critical appraisal – Views is case and point.
— Andrei Kozyrev
34. Tim Hecker — Love Streams
Courtesy of 4AD
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So much music in our world asks nothing of the listener — no commitment or engagement, no demand to follow the performer deeper into the world they create for us. But at least Tim Hecker’s still here, speaking to us in forms both pure and distorted. Love Streams is a typical release for him in terms of style, yet it stands among the popular releases this year as a testament to music’s ability not just to make us dance and sing, but also to overwhelm us in a wholly unique intensity.
— Stephen Meisel
33. Miranda Lambert — The Weight of These Wings
Courtesy of Vanner Records
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For an hour and a half-long double album, Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings feels remarkably short. The album’s sense of brevity comes from the simplicity of Lambert’s tracks, which are so clever in their Southern wit and so dead-on in their straight-to-the-point riffs that it’s damn near impossible to not replay every one. The Weight of These Wings is also a wide-ranging album musically, home to both synthed-up indie rock tracks like “Pink Sunglasses” and roots-y anthems like “Highway Vagabond.” Lambert never sounds out of her comfort zone, though, and how could she when she’s delivering biting turns-of-phrase like, “If you use alcohol as a sedative/and ‘bless your heart’ as a negative”?
— Shay Collins
32. Angel Olsen — My Woman
Courtesy of Jagjaguwar
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Few vocalists are able to make words sound as bleak, and yet, as vibrant and bloody as Angel Olsen. On My Woman, unending images and sensations of a violently unrequited love are delivered to us in Olsen’s warm bleary, spacey warble, backed by scuzzy guitar. There is a new desperation, acridity and weary intensity to My Woman, that we haven’t seen before from Olsen — reminiscent of a scorned, indie-rock Lucinda Williams. On the standout track, “Shut Up Kiss Me” Olsen, with hair-curling ferocity to her lilting voice, shouts in a voice-broken staccato “We could still be having some sweet memories/This heart still beats for you/Why can’t you see?” commanding the subject of her frustration over and over again, to “Shut up kiss me, hold me tight.” The album tracks a heartbroken mind: from Olsen’s declarations to never give up on a love on “Never Be Mine,” and “Give It Up,” to interrogations of a lover’s psyche on “Heart Shaped Face,” to her quiet surrender on “Pops.” The album ends with the bludgeoning lyric: “You can go on home/You got what you need/Take my heart and put it up on your sleeve… I’ll be the thing that lives in the dream when it’s gone.” Needless to say, heartbreak suits Olsen.
— Jael Goldfine
31. Elvis Depressedly — California Dreamin’
Courtesy of Run For Cover Records
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Elvis Depressedly have long excelled at building sad, hazy worlds in their songs. With lyrics like “Cop poet/pig blood corporate day dream/delusions and murder fantasies” and “I prayed to leave my body/and become an angel’s guillotine,” the lo-fi duo also prove themselves to be subtle poets on California Dreamin’. Released as a compilation with 2013’s Holo Pleasures, California Dreamin’ attests to Elvis Depressedly’s growth. There’s no obvious jolt when the release jumps three years between “Thinning Out” and “Angel Cum Clean,” but the new tracks are even further distilled into potent thoughts that stay always a bit out of reach. As Mat Cothran sings on “Holo Pleasures (California Dreamin’),” “Trust the mystery, you’ll never solve everything.”
— Shay Collins