Top 10 Albums of 2016

Crikey, this was a hard list to make. So many ace albums had to be left off - I considered doing an 'honourable mentions' list as a way of recognising the albums that fell just barely outside my top 10, but that list could easily have included another 20 albums and I probably STILL would have had a crisis of conscience over any I missed out.

So instead of going down that road, I'd simply like to present my top 10 albums of 2016. These are the cream of the cream of the crop, and interestingly, two of them weren't represented at all in my Songs of 2016 list. Just goes to show that the whole is sometimes stronger than the sum of its parts, eh?

Once you've finished reading, feel free to tell me how wrong my opinions are on Twitter.

10) Still Valid by MJ Hibbett & The Validators

To call Still Valid a light-hearted album would perhaps be a touch misleading, given that it contains songs like Burn it Down & Start Again (about corrupt politicians) and The 1980s How it Was (about the hairspray whitewashing of a decade primarily characterised by poverty and nuclear terror). Still, MJ Hibbett's sense of humour always shines through, even - especially - when he's worrying about his age on tracks like Can We Be Friends? and That Guy. In fact, as I mentioned in my (and my mum's) review of Still Valid, Hibbett's lyrics have really helped me to stop worrying about the fact that I'm no longer in my early 20s.

Best Tracks: Can We Be Friends? // That Guy // We Did It Anyway

9) Adult Teen by Lisa Prank

Father/Daughter Records became one of my favourite record labels this year, and Lisa Prank's album Adult Teen is a big part of why (although I would also strongly recommend Air Guitar by Sat. Nite Duets). It's a pretty straightforward set of songs - each track consists of little more than a vocal, an electric guitar track, and a synthetic drum machine beat - but the album's attitude, breakneck delivery, and acute understanding of how messy the transition from teenager to grown-up can be make for a great listening experience. It's flippin' catchy, too. Read my review of Adult Teen here.

Best Tracks: Drive Anywhere // Take it All // Heart 2 Heart

Top 20 Songs of 2016 (10-1)

My top 10 songs of 2016 are listed below. Be sure to read numbers 20 through 11 first!

10) Drive Anywhere by Lisa Prank

(from Adult Teen)

The sound of your life hurtling headlong into the jaws of adulthood like a car speeding towards the edge of a cliff. A rushing thrill of a song with a kernel of time-waits-for-no-man melancholy hidden somewhere in the middle.

Top 20 Songs of 2016 (20-11)

Christmas is less than seven days away, and so it's list week here on The Album Wall! Here's what to expect between now and the weekend:

• Monday 19 December: Top 20 Songs of 2016 (20-11)
• Wednesday 21 December: Top 20 Songs of 2016 (10-1)
• Friday 23 December: Top 10 Albums of 2016

Below is the first half of my 'Songs of 2016' countdown. All of these songs (to the best of my knowledge) were released on full-length albums for the first time this year; some selections, such as #17, were available on singles/EPs prior to 2016, but as this is primarily a blog about albums I'm using the release date of each song's parent album in order to determine eligibility for this list.

(The above rule does mean that a few great songs are sadly absent from this top 20. Most notable are Phoebe's Lips by CHUCK, which first appeared on Happy New Years Babe in 2015 and was re-released as part of the My Band is a Computer compilation this year, and Fuck the Government, I Love You, which was the second track on Ariel Sharratt & Mathias Kom's Don't Believe the Hyperreal several months before it was the third track on The Burning Hell's Public Library. Fuck the Government was actually my 19th favourite song of 2015, so it would be kind of weird to include it in the 2016 list too.)

Without further small print, then, here are my top 20 songs of 2016 (part one):

20) Attached to the Lamp by Sat. Nite Duets

(from Air Guitar)

This is one heck of an opening track. I love the chugging pace, and I love how the words and the tune fit together like two pieces of K'Nex. "Maybe we could go back to Cleveland and play for the sound guy and the other band..." Playing a gig to an empty room never sounded like so much fun.

My Favourite Albums of 2016 So Far

2016 is just about half-over, the last six months having rocketed past with the velocity of a drumstick that the guy on the stool wasn't gripping properly. Today, I thought I'd share ten of my favourite albums from the first half of the year, so that's exactly what I've done: find them all listed below (in alphabetical order, just in case these turn out to be the best albums of 2016 overall - I want to preserve a little bit of mystery for my end-of-year list!)

Adore Life - Savages

"Thrillingly confrontational...almost scarily compelling"

Standout Tracks: Evil // I Need Something New // T.I.W.Y.G.

Read More: Savage Orders

Amen & Goodbye - Yeasayer

"A colourful cornucopia of bouncy pop and blissed-out psychedelia"

Standout Tracks: Silly Me // Dead Sea Scrolls // Cold Night

Read More: A Track-by-Track Analysis of Amen & Goodbye

May Playlist: My Heart Just Sunk

A new month means a new monthly playlist - here are 10 tracks, old and new, that made my ears very happy in May:

1. Waitress - Hop Along

(from Painted Shut)

Frances Quinlan from Hop Along (a band recommended to me in the wake of this blog post) is my favourite vocalist in rock right now. Her voice is at its best when she pushes it to and beyond its limits; there are moments in Waitress when it sounds like her throat is about to explode, and those moments are glorious. Top riff, too.

Amen & Goodbye by Yeasayer: A Track-by-Track Analysis

Brooklyn weirdos Yeasayer released their fourth LP, Amen & Goodbye, last month, and it's definitely one of my favourite albums of the year thus far, a colourful cornucopia of bouncy pop and blissed-out psychedelia that's easily up there with 2010's sublime Odd Blood.

Yeasayer decamped to the Catskill Mountains to record their latest opus, and they must have done a lot of reading while they were there because Amen & Goodbye is packed to the rafters with arcane scientific and biblical references. As a result, the record's lyrics can seem kind of impenetrable, at least until you remember that Google exists; some might wistfully suggest that search engines have robbed works like this of the bewitching, impenetrable mystery that could otherwise have been such a large part of their charm, but if you yourself are one of those people then I'd advise you to stop reading now because I'm about to perform a Google-assisted dissection of every track on the album.

Second Album Syndrome (and 5 Bands that Beat it)

Mind-blowing debuts are all well and good, but it's the second album that shows us what a band is really made of. Countless acts have released stellar first albums, only to let out a thin little fart of a follow-up before fading into obscurity.

This is known as 'second album syndrome'. Most people agree that the most common cause is a lack of time; artists have years to polish and hone their first set of songs, but once that record has topped the charts and the fans are grinding against their mattresses and moaning for more, the band is under pressure to get the creativity flowing again as quickly as possible.

Of course, the other explanation is expectation. The songs that made up your debut are now lodged in the heart of the nation, and everyone is expecting some serious fireworks from album number two. So you write the best stuff you've ever written, the hotly-anticipated album hits the shops, and...everyone is disappointed, because nothing you could have written would ever have fulfilled the hopes they had for it. The first LP had nothing to live up to, and if you make the mistake of releasing a good first album, the second one will have a pretty long shadow to stand in.

Fortunately, not everyone falls prey to SAS. Here are five bands who sidestepped second album syndrome and whether by craftsmanship, inventiveness, or just sheer audacity, proved that second albums could be even better than their predecessors:

Yeasayer

First album: All Hour Cymbals, an engaging indie/world offering with intricate sounds and semi-chanted vocals.

Second album: Odd Blodd, a far more poppy affair which spawned such hits as Ambling Alp and O.N.E. (the latter of which was featured in FIFA '12). It was still weird, but far more immediate and quite a bit more enjoyable for it.

* * *

Eels

First album: Beautiful Freak, a grunge-tinged debut with plenty of great songs...even though a lot of people seem to remember it solely for their first hit, Novocaine for the Soul.

Second album: Electro-Shock Blues, a deeper, darker set of songs. Where Beautiful Freak was all about being unable to fit in, this album dealt with the death of his sister (by suicide) and his mother (by cancer). Not always a cheery listen, but very, very good nevertheless.

* * *

Mansun

First album: Attack of the Grey Lantern, which proved that Britpop could be artistically ambitious and still reach the top of the charts. One of my favourite albums ever.

Second album: Six, and while I personally prefer Grey Lantern, there are many who disagree with me. Instead of trying to emulate the success of their debut, Paul Draper 'n' Palz just went bonkers with this album, throwing in all kinds of ideas both musical and thematic. While there are lots of proggy, challenging tracks (Shotgun and Cancer, to name two examples), there are a few classic singles on there as well - try Negative, Legacy, or Being a Girl for a slightly  easier way in.

* * *

Grandaddy

First album: Under the Western Freeway, a classic in its own right - any album with Summer Here Kids on it is dandy in my diary - although it did have a few funny loose ends that didn't seem to have any reason for being, e.g. Poisoned at Hartsy Thai Food.

Second album: The Sophtware Slump, which improved on ...Freeway in almost every way. It was more cohesive, there were themes that ran throughout the album, and by and large, the songs were better, too. The Crystal Lake and He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot are fairly well-known (that guy from My Name is Earl even named his kid 'Pilot' after the latter song, presumably because he wanted his child to be simple and dumb), but even the less consequential tracks like 'Chartsengrafs' are gold.

* * *

Radiohead

First album: Pablo Honey, actually a pretty good album, but everything except Creep has since been overshadowed by their more recent work.

Second album: The Bends, perhaps the quintessential non-disappointing second album. It still bore a few remnants of Pablo Honey - see Black Star and Sulk - but everything else represented an astounding leap forward. Who could have imagined that the 'I'm a creep/I'm a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here?' guy would be singing the lyrics of Street Spirit only two years later?

Have a great weekend, everyone! If you think of any other second albums that were notably unterrible, leave 'em in the comments.