Top Ten Albums I Wrote About in 2016


Merry Happy, fellow humans! To add to whatever festivities you may or may not be celebrating, I present to you the greatest gift of all: words!

Over the next weekish I will be shamelessly reposting my Top Ten Albums I Wrote About In 2016, based as much on the quality of my writing as the goodness of the music.



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#10. Rihanna — Anti

Riri surprised us all as a really quite damn good pop album. This is by far the purplest prose I put to digital paper this year and I regret nothing. Enjoy!


"This album, nay, this oeuvre is a testament to the expressivity of the human voice; proof that in the right aggressively-manicured hands, bleats and ululations may transcend mere speech.

It's all there in the title. Anti bucks expectations. Anti defies definition. Anti twists, inverts, flips and twists all over again. Shucking the mantle of the identical, monolithic throngs of starlets, Riri has truly come into her own. She is a towering monument to postmodernism, capped with a shining beacon of hope not only for pop, not only for Music, but for Art itself."

Click here to read the full article



#9. Michael Giacchino — Soundtrack to The Incredibles

You may have already supped at the nectar of Giacchino's most recent composition project: Rogue One is far and away the best Star Wars prequel yet (though admittedly there is little competition).

When it comes to building on past musicians' work, Giacchino is your guy. His incidental music for the modern Star Trek films recaptures a sense of wonder often absent from gritty modern science fiction. The elegantly angular work of John Williams wraps itself neatly and comfortably around his baton — the new fanfare associated with the Rebel Alliance cheekily takes the opening figure of Williams' timeless Star Wars march in a bold new direction.

The stylish sixties-ish world of The Incredibles inverts every trope of the prototypical superhero film. Who better to bring it to life than Giacchino?


"Giacchino's score is heavy on brass and light on restraint. Recorded in toto on analogue equipment, it feels at once modern, retro and timeless."

Click here to read the full article



#8. Bon Iver — 22, a Million

Those who share my fine musical taste have found some respite from the continuous horrors of this year.

Many hotly anticipated albums finally hit the digital shelves and exceeded all expectations — Radiohead, Bowie, Kanye, Beyoncé, Anohni, James Blake, The Avalanches and many more — and the next entry in the Top Ten Albums I Wrote About In 2016 sits proudly among them.


"The pristine beauty of the American continent is a well-worn muse for good reason. The isolation that inspired Vernon's first two albums of delicate folk music also compelled countless others to craft, to compose, to create.

Ten years and two Grammys later, his hotly anticipated third album has arrived. 22, a Million retains an impression of the charming fireside Americana Vernon so adroitly pens.

But a footprint does not look like a boot. This album is something new, something different, something glorious."

Click here to read the full article




#7. FKA twigs — M3LL155X

A singular artistic statement, crafted of silver and blood.


"Clocking in at just under nineteen minutes, twigs doesn’t waste any time in making a dramatic statement. She deftly welds razor-sharp slices of sound together into impressionistic sketches of emotion.

Complementing her singular artistic voice, raw vocals have been chopped and refracted and jammed back together into a forceful and emotive new syntax.


At once frighteningly alien and devastatingly human, twigs is pushing the very boundaries of what can be called music — and we’re invited along for the ride."


Click here to read the full article




#6. Soundtrack to Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire

Like a small child on a sugar high, I got a little too excited writing about the music of Pokémon games. After the runaway success of this first installment (eleven likes!) I attempted to continue with what my beloved audience clearly craved, but my discourse quickly devolved into messy, rambling polemics. Perhaps in the future I will learn to be more judicious with my editing.

This first one is by far the best and most focused — I rarely include personal anecdotes in my albums of the week, but this one seems to have really struck a chord.


"A bracing electric bass solo accompanies the player up the smoky reds of a volcano, soothing strings conduct the way across Hoenn's cool blue seas and, most excitingly, a decent facsimile of an orchestra propels its ways through the rich, dense jungle. So sharp and intricate and precise were the instrumentations on that grueling trek to Fortree City that they shone bright, even through the battering rainstorm. The booming timpani, rolling snares and crashing cymbals are thrilling enough, but the superlative brass sections would go on to attain coveted meme status, becoming a shorthand for the sense of unadulterated excitement and joy Ruby and Sapphire brought to the Pokémon series.

From the broader route themes guaranteed to be looped dozens of times to the brief, tense pre-battle jingles, these games present a tight, unified soundtrack worthy of the technological leaps and bounds they accompany. Ruby and Sapphire remain the most cohesive of the lot, at least as seen through my thick rosy nostalgia goggles, though certainly and objectively not the best."

Click here to read the full article




#5. CHVRCHES — The Bones of What You Believe

Of course, in with the new does not mean out with the old.

Almost all artists show growing pains through their first few releases before really honing their sound. But some appear fully formed, as if they have sprung from the forehead of Zeus himself.

Barely three years old, this is already an instant classic.


"They have created a maximalist masterpiece. Layers upon layers of bright, shining synthesisers serve not to suppress emotion, but to augment it. Thumping drum machines are not some perfunctory metronome, but a veritable heartbeat, pumping polyrhythms and arpeggios."

Click here to read the full article




#4. Jon Hopkins — Immunity

In this universe, making something from nothing is tragically prohibited. But Jon Hopkins doesn't care.

He takes formless static — the hum of a hard drive in heat, the buzz of a refrigerator groaning with uneaten hams, the whirr of a car engine mercifully whisking you away from your relatives — and crafts it into something special.


"The sculptors of the Renaissance laugh in your general direction. Marble in such expert hands melts and flows and bends, elegant and fluid. Though each work is hewn from a single solid block, they bear exquisite detail — creases in the flesh, locks in the hair, folds in the garments."

Click here to read the full article



#3. Beyoncé — Lemonade

This is the greatest album of 2016. There is nothing more to say about it.


"If ever one should find oneself in a moral conundrum, there is but a single question one must ask oneself: what would Beyoncé do? Acquire prohibitively expensive life-saving medicines? Search one's pockets for a spare sapphire or two one surely has lying around. Steal bread to feed a starving family? The mere touch of Beyoncé's impeccably manicured finger would cause a loaf of Wonder White to instantly multiply into a cornucopia of brioche.

But when presented with the realisation that one's husband has been playing fast and loose with the monogamy clause implicit in one's marriage? What does one do when life delivers one lemons?

Beyoncé made Lemonade."

Click here to read the full article



#2. Vienna Teng — Inland Territory

Taking out the silver is a criminally underrated songstress.

Tori Amos and Fiona Apple have achieved the fame they sought. But Vienna, for all her modesty, wit and charm, deserves much more.


"Inland Territory, the fourth album from erstwhile software engineer Cynthia Yih Shih is an oasis of calm. The deceptively simple character sketches that compose her prestigious discography are here allowed space to breathe and stretch, to mesmerising effect."

Click here to read the full article



#1. Björk — Vespertine

I adore Björk. Though Beyoncé and her well-deserved bronze came close, there is nobody else who could take out the gold.


"Vespertine is Björk's masterpiece — at once warm and wintry, she spins intimate tales of breathtaking beauty. Her vocals beckon, reclining on gentle pillowy strings embroidered with harp glissandi. Distant seraphim halo the proceedings, underlaid with icy crunches of percussion. This album is reclining in front of a roaring fireplace wrapped in a tartan blanket while snow blows past your window and hot chocolate warms your belly."

Click here to read the full article

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Thank you very much for continuing to indulge my pet project. I hope you have enjoyed this year's albums of the week and I look forward to continuing through 2017 and beyond, reality permitting.

If you have any feedback you would like to share with me (positive, negative, constructive, insulting) or suggestions for albums you would like to see me write about, feel free to send those my way.

Excelsior!