If It's Too Loud...

To kind of close the book on the year a bit, I wanted to offer up a quickie playlist of my favorite songs this year. Shuffle or not, here's how I might rank them: 1) Royksopp and Susanne Sundfor - "Never Ever" (a song that should have been 2016's "Get Lucky," a much better throwback than Daft Punk did. Song of the year for me, no question) 2) Big Thief - "Masterpiece" (tell me this song isn't the most epic sparse indie rock song you've ever heard) 3) Eric Bachmann - "Mercy" (the Nerf Herder singer/songwriter offered up one of the most emotional songs of the year for me) 4) Margaret Glaspy - "Emotions and Math" (great song, of course, but I still maintain this is actually from the point of view of a dog) 5) The Prettiots - "Suicide Hotline" (this is not a cry for help) 6) Quilt - "Roller" (local song of the year, but also a great groove and catchy chorus) 7) Lauren Mann - "New Beginning...

My top album of 2016 is Ladyhawke's Wild Things . It's my favorite album this year. It's the album I listened to the most this year. There was a moment about a month after this came out where I posted on Facebook something along the lines of "All I do is listen to Ladyhawke now" because I was so addicted to this album. When I wasn't listening to Wild Things , I went back to her older albums and listened to those instead. When I put on my playlist of current obsessions , my wife asked me why I listen to Ladyhawke so much since her songs were probably taking up 10% of the playlist most of the summer. Literally as I write this, my Spotify end-of-year recap came in my email, and three songs from this album are my top three tracks. According to Spotify, I'm in the top 1% of Ladyhawke listeners, apparently. Can you tell I love this album? It's the perfect pop rock album, for sure. It's polished but still feels fresh, it's got melodies ...

My #2 album this year is Margaret Glaspy's Emotions and Math . I remember when Ken first shared "You and I" with me, and I immediately knew this was an album I needed to hear. Quickly, the title track landed followed by the album, and I fell in love with this album. Glaspy is clearly a talented guitarist and songwriter, and this album is the perfect balance between intricate songwriting and hooky melodies. There's a bluesy tinge to a lot of this, but it ends up really just being a solid singer-songwritery effort that hit every possible note for me. There's not a bad song on the album, and it basically hasn't left my rotation since it came out (except for the couple days it fell off of Spotify, which were some of the worst days of the year). If you've somehow slept on this one, change that. And if you listen to "Emotions and Math," we can debate together whether the song is actually secretly from the point of view of a canine. Recomme...

My #3 album is Tancred's Out of the Garden , a 90s-alt throwback solo project that I found late but never really stopped listening to. Sometimes an album just catches you, and this one did that for me. I did not expect to hear what felt effectively like a Letters to Cleo/Juliana Hatfield-style effort from a member of Now Now, but here we have it. I learned later that this was produced by Anna Waronker (best known for being the singer/songwriter of That Dog) and it continued to come together. Lead track "Bed Case" sets the tone, and the rest of the half-hour album just doesn't let up. It feels fresh and modern even though it wears its influences on its sleeves, and given that this is Jess Abbott's second album under this project, you can hear how the transformation of the sound compliments her songwriting style so well. Honestly, the top three albums I have this year probably changed positions on me a dozen times. You won't go wrong by giving this a l...

My #4 album this year is Jeff Rosenstock's Worry . This one caught me by surprise and got more and more additive the more I listened to it. I didn't even list this as my favorite album of the week it came out , but did predict accurately that this would age well, and it absolutely did. This is like that classic 1990s alt-rock album you loved and forgot about, with great hooks and melodies and some nice crunchy guitars to go along with it. It's obnoxious and fun, the lyrics are off-center and provide a solid look into what a less serious album can sound like in this day and age. Overall, just an album that fills me with joy almost every time I listen to it. If you've missed this up until now, you have to check it out. Recommended: "The Fuzz," "Wave Goodnight to Me," "Staring Out the Window of Your Old Apartment"

My #5 album this year is Kaia Kater's Nine Pin . Kaia Kater hit my radar a few years back, and we were both pretty excited about Nine Pin around these parts. The result here is an album that is the sort of raw Americana that I love, with some great musicianship and some interesting songs while still feeling traditional and timeless. It's a really stellar album because of how under the radar it is, but it deserves a lot more attention than it got. The whole thing is just a gorgeous, haunting listen from top to bottom, and it deserves a look if you haven't given it one already. I've gone back to it twice in the last couple weeks because I love it so much. So get on this. Just a great listen. Recommended: "Harlem's Little Blackbird," "Harvest and the Plough," "Rising Down"

My #6 album is Margo Price's Midwest Farmer's Daughter . This one came out of nowhere for me. The retro classic country sound has been making a lot of waves, and Jack White's Third Man Records is really putting out quality stuff in this area, and Margo Price is no different in that regard. It feels classic and timeless while still having that raw quality to it that keeps it sounding fresh. The melodies here stick in my head all the time, and there's not a bad song on the album. And basically? The only thing keeping this from being the album of the year for me is because of how much good music has come out in 2016. If you've slept on this up until now, you still have a chance to come around. If you like classic country at all, you just need to drop what you're doing and give this a shot. Recommended songs: "Hurtin' (On the Bottle)," "Four Years of Chances," "This Town Gets Around"

Andrew Bird's Are You Serious is my #7 album this year. I wasn't expecting this to be my favorite Andrew Bird album, but I wasn't expecting his previous album to be my favorite before that, either. Andrew Bird holds a weird spot for me personally, as he's the better version of a lot of things I already love. This album hit me first as feeling a little more stripped down and different than his past efforts, but a few listens got me right in line with why I enjoy what he does. Yeah, he whistles. Yeah, there's a good amount of violin. But the songs are just so catchy, and they get jammed into your brain and don't let go whether you want them to or not. I hear my wife humming the title track in the kitchen constantly even when she hasn't heard the song in a while. I still maintain that Bird's "worst" album was also his breakthrough, Armchair Apocrypha . Where this will sit in Bird's lineup of music over all these years remains to b...

My #8 album this year is Ruby the RabbitFoot's Divorce Party . When this came out, it felt like a massive departure. We loved her previous album, New as Dew , and the expectation of another solid folky singer-songwriter album was put into question when her cover of Madonna's "Take a Bow" landed, but was completely dashed when "Nicola La" came out ahead of the album. I was skeptical, but wow , this ended up being one of the albums I played the most this year. There's a cool off-center pop sensibility to it while still having the sort of stark, transparent lyrical feel we come to expect from folk music. I know this got some good blog buzz, and I hope this means bigger things for her in the long term. Still, it's one of the best of this year and has a couple of my favorite songs for 2016 as well. Check it out. Recommended: "Nicola La," "Wild Cherry Chapstick," "I Hate You."

Sometimes an album (and even a song) comes along that both speaks to you on a pretty solid level while also hitting just the right nostalgia buttons all at once. Thus Funs Cool , the debut album from The Prettiots. It's unlike anything else that sniffed the blogosphere this year while both harkening back to the anti-folk of a decade ago. It was "Suicide Hotline" that got me hooked. I had a fairly dark start of the new year, and I'm not saying that I needed a song to literally talk me off the ledge, but a song that was described by the songwriter as a letter to her therapist about how she was feeling definitely worked for me, especially with its literary references and clearly self-depreciating attitude. It became a highly-anticipated album, and the whole thing is the same way. "Boys (That I Dated in High School)" is hilarious, "18 Wheeler" appropriately dark, and so on. Overall, the result is an album that stayed on repeat for me for some...

Because sometimes you swap them a dozen times over the course of your final rankings and decide they're both worthy. For Field Mouse, Hold Still Life was my favorite album of 2014 , and the band continues to be a favorite of ours around these parts. The Casket Girls are definitely a band I've come to love at all, with True Love Kills the Fairy Tale a favorite of mine from 2014 even if it didn't make my top ten. With their new albums, we have two bands on two different trajectories, both making for great listens, but for different reasons. With The Casket Girls, The Night Machines is largely more of the same. It's a solid listen from top to bottom with a great share of dark indie pop, but also just haunting melodies throughout. Field Mouse, in comparison, abandons a lot of the moodier, shoegazey style in favor of a more up-front indie rock affair. In both cases, they end up being addictive listens, both in terms of general musical quality but also in terms o...