A Round of Sound

40) Adia Victoria – Beyond The Bloodhounds

39) Frankie Cosmos – Next Thing

38) Camp Cope – Camp Cope

37) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Skeleton Tree

36) Preoccupations – Preoccupations

35) Weyes Blood – Front Row Seat To Earth

34) William Tyler – Modern Country

33) PUP – The Dream Is Over

32) Porches – Pool

31) Gallant – Ology

30) Hinds – Leave Me Alone

29) Hiss Golden Messenger – Heart Like A Levee

28) Japanese Breakfast – Psycopomp

27) Touché Amoré – Stage Four

26) Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

25) Savages – Adore Life

24) White Lung – Paradise

23) Shearwater – Jetplane and Oxbow

22) School of Seven Bells – SVIIB

21) The Hotelier – Goodness

20) Blood Orange – Freetown Sound

19) Cymbals Eat Guitars – Pretty Years

18) David Bowie – Blackstar

17) Kaytranada – 99.9%

16) Pinegrove – Cardinal

15) ANOHNI – HOPLESSNESS

14) Big Thief – Masterpiece

13) Run The Jewels – RTJ3

12) Modern Baseball – Holy Ghost

11) Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam – I Had A Dream That You Were Mine

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10) Parquet Courts – Human Performance

[Rough Trade; released 4/8/2016]

Parquet Courts continue to crank out a consistent supply of garage rock tunes, flavored with surprising intelligence; a dichotomy that makes them one of the most interesting bands around.

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9) Whitney – Light Upon The Lake 

[Secretly Canadian; released 6/3/2016]

Made up of members from the disbanded Smith Westerns, Whitney released the year’s finest debut album, besting anything the former group ever released.

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8) Kevin Morby – Singing Saw 

[Dead Oceans; released 4/15/2016]

The third album from the former Woods bass player, and the singer-songwriter appears to have mastered his version of alternative-folk.

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7) Sturgill Simpson – A Sailor’s Guide To Earth 

[Atlantic; released 4/15/2016]

Country music I can get behind; smart, inventive, and Nirvana covers.

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6) Angel Olsen – My Woman 

[Jagjaguwar; released 9/2/2016]

Eschewing her lo-fi folky roots, Oslen’s ambitious My Woman expands her sound in massive ways creating a forceful album; her best and most confident work yet.

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5) Bon Iver – 22, A Million 

[Jagjaguwar; released 9/30/2016]

Justin Vernon’s first Bon Iver release since 2011 continues to evolve his “bearded guy in a cabin” sound to more experimental realms basically leaving the former completely behind.

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4) Frank Ocean – Blonde 

[Boys Don’t Cry; released 8/20/2016]

The long awaited follow up to Channel Orange (my #1 album of 2012), Blonde is a grower and certainly isn’t going to change any of the minds who find Ocean’s music “boring”, but it’s a masterpiece nonetheless, more nuanced than his previous work.

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3) Mitski – Puberty 2 

[Dead Oceans; released 6/17/2016]

One of my more anticipated releases of the year, Mitski’s came through with a powerful collection of complex and anxiety driven rock songs channelling St Vincent in sound and spirit.

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2) Anderson .Paak – Malibu 

[Steel Wool; released 1/15/2016]

The breakout artist of the year, Anderson .Paak has basically stolen the show on anything he’s appeared on recently (Compton, Kaytranada’s 99.9%, NxWorries), but with Malibu he confirms his emergence as one of hip-hop’s greatest auteurs.

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1) Car Seat Headrest – Teens Of Denial 

[Matador; released 5/20/2016]

The first proper release for Will Toledo on Matador records fulfills the potential we saw on last year’s Teens of Style. When things got me down in 2016, this was the album I always found myself coming back to over and over, and the one I couldn’t do without.

Well folks, time again to unveil my top albums of the year, and this year I’ll be scaling things back a bit. I didn’t really have the motivation or time/energy to do any write-ups or even delve too deeply into analyzing all the releases I came across this year, so this isn’t going to be nearly as involved an exercise. As I’ve said in year’s past, this ranking has always been a hybrid of “best” and “favorite” albums, but this year it’ll lean much more towards the latter. However, since there will be less content (Honorable Mentions? Nah. Dishonorable Mentions? Nope. Overrated/Underrated? Meh.), I’ll expand the rankings to my top 40 rather than the usual top 25, and release the whole list at once. Also, you’ll notice I don’t have any song samples accompanying my rankings this year. A band who shall remain nameless (let’s just say it rhymes with Lumford and Puns) recently contacted me and demanded I remove their songs from the site, which led to a little reprimand from the Wordpress police. Therefore, I’ll leave it up to you to track down some tunes on for favorite streaming service if you feel so inclined.

This past year I purchased, in some form, 87 albums, 82 of which are eligible. I do not include EPs, reissues, soundtracks, live albums, holiday albums, or b-side/rarity type releases as eligible for my list. For the first time I debated including albums I merely streamed as eligible, but that became too difficult to manage, and it’s probably best to draw the line somewhere. So as always, there’s plenty of albums that I never got around to procuring meaning there’s going to be very worthy albums that don’t make my list. So if you have questions as to why your favorite album isn’t on my list, well it’s because I either didn’t get it, or just plain didn’t care for it as much as you, simple as that. After the jump, you can see the list of all albums I purchased, in order of release date. As you can see by the schedule over on the right, tomorrow I’ll unveil my complete top 40, and Thursday I’ll post my ever popular mixtape.

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