David Bowie Blackstar
The year started with both a heartbreakingly brilliant album release and a tragic piece of news. But what a great artist he is, David Bowie, that he leaves his devoted fans with this fond farewell. There aren't that many rock stars in his position that would be that generous. Blackstar is not just a great album and an amazing "swan song," but could very well be one of the best albums in Bowie's entire catalogue. Impossible not to choke up when you hear him croak, "Look up here, I'm in heaven" on Lazarus, but that's the way Bowie has always affected you in magic and mysterious ways.
Standout track: Blackstar
Leonard Cohen You Want It Darker
Another heartfelt goodbye in 2016 came from Leonard Cohen, a pure artist who remained one of the coolest and truest singer-songwriters in the world to the very end. Cohen's always been a spritually deep and solemn poet, but when you consider that he managed to turn out such beauty and strength in his music and his words when in such a state as he was at the end of his career, his status as one of the world's most hard-working and honest artists is cemented. On You Want It Darker, he sings that he's "leaving the table," and calls to the Lord that he's ready to go, but it is no way a morose or depressing album, because the humor and the love is still there. That's what we'll remember him most fondly for.
Standout track: Traveling Light
Crystal Castles Amnesty (I)
Crystal Castles' third album III in 2012 seemed to be the last that we would hear from them, but happily this turned out not to be the case. They rose from the ashes, just as strong and unique as ever, and we got to enjoy their trippy dance music yet again.
Standout track: Char
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree
2016 was a year tinged with tragic losses in the music industry, and on Skeleton Tree you can hear Nick Cave dealing with some very heavy grief. Cave's always been a very personal rocker, going through breakups and hardships in his music, and here he is going through a very tough time indeed, as it was created in the wake of the accidental death of his son. A very minimalist record which is, to be honest, very hard to listen to, though none the less rewarding. Still, in tracks like Distant Sky there are slivers of beauty and hope to bring some light in the darkness.
Standout track: Jesus Alone
MIA AIM
MIA's supposedly final album is admittedly not her best album, but it's still a great cap on an overall great music career that still retains the cool and flavor that has always made her stand far above most hip-hop artists. AIM is MIA's most overt hip-hop album, with less middle-eastern sounds, samplings and Indian beats, but to her credit she pulls that off with her usual panache. Nice to hear a couple of nods to her earlier stuff scattered throughout.
Standout track: Freedun
Justice Woman
Justice's third original studio album has a certain glow of confidence to it that is quite infectious. Woman is obviously a record made by a group at the height of their creativity. A far more even and less experimental album, you can hear that by now Justice has truly found their style and honed it to perfection.
Standout track: Fire
Goat Requiem
The best music group from Sweden since The Knife, it is kind of amazing that such joyful and colorful music can come out of such a cold, dark and wet place. Requiem is a flower pop album mixed with world music, kind of like Canned Heat meets Miriam Makeba. I really love the production of the album as well, it has what feels like an intentionally lo-fi, underground, home-made quality to it, which pleasantly harks back vividly to a simpler time when music had a little more life and a little less technical perfection.
Standout track: Trouble in the Streets
Lady Gaga Joanne
Joanne is mostly a more scaled-down and toned-down album. I think it's Lady Gaga's best by far, because it's her most complete record, where she shows that she's so much more than a popstar. Particularly in the ballads, she shows what a talented singer-songwriter she really is, which of course is nothing new to her fans but Joanne has a level of maturity and experience that puts her in a new kind of light, which really suits her.
Standout track: Come to Mama
Survive RR7349
If you like the music to Netflix's hit show Stranger Things, you'll love Survive, because these are the guys behind that music. RR7349 could very easily have been the soundtrack to an 80's sci-fi flick that was never made, it has that kind of structure and feels like it's telling a story. A story without words but with tinny synthesizer layers and echoing industrial beats.
Standout track: Wardenclyffe
The Weeknd Starboy
How could I not love The Weeknd's masterful third album Starboy, since it's bookended by two tracks featuring collaborations with none other than Daft Punk. Although it's a bit too long (over an hour in total) and a couple of the tracks sound a bit too similar, what's really impressive besides The Weeknd's beautiful voice, is the range of styles and genres that the album manages to cover and also that virtually every track sounds like a hit.
Standout track: Starboy
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