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2016 Blogger Takeover – The Best Thing I’ve Heard All Year

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It is the start of the seasonal roundups, and this is the one I enjoy the most. What’s the best thing you’ve heard all year ? It can be the newest of the new, it can be an ancient 78, or it can be some previously ignored piece of music that you only connected with in 2016.

Or, indeed, it could be an old favourite that somehow makes more sense now than it ever did

So – please share, and please try to limit yourselves to one thing (whether that is a song, and EP, and album … or a piece of news …. or a sound)

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Comments

  1. I’ll start. I have previously been immune to the charms of Lambchop, despite many friends recommending them. Never liked his voice. But on this album, it sounds wonderful. The opening track – In Care Of 8675309 – is especially groovy and wistful

  2. I spent a lot of time this year with Sam Cooke, Live at the Harlem Square Club. It’s an album I’ve been listening to and enjoying for years, but somehow in 2016 it proved even more of a touchstone than usual; always there at the end of a bad day or to soundtrack an evening with good friends.

    Bring It On Home To Me is one of my favourite songs in all the world. It’s graceful, and gorgeous and heartfelt, and it has a superb vocal.

    On the Harlem Square recording it’s absolutely transformed; a thing of raunch and heat, less from the heart and more from the groin. I love that contrast: the sweetness of the original version, with the cookie-cutter vocal, and then…. this. Sam cutting loose and working the crowd to the max, that great soul wail, the sleazy sound of the horns, the voices of the women in the crowd singing along with him, the whooping in the background, the feel of sweat dripping from the ceiling… it’s just bloody wonderful. I love that he doesn’t bother with the male backing vocal from the original version (one of my favourite elements); instead, he just absolutely blasts it solo, a singer I always associate with poise and control breaking free and absolutely bodying that vocal. Love it, love it, love it.

    “Everybody’s with me. Everybody’s with me tonight”. Find me a better party in 1963.

    • Well said! One of my most treasured discoveries of recent years, and BIOHTM is my favourite track too. Someone sent me a vinly version of it this year, and like the CD I’ve been frightened to listen to it much, lest its effects are diminished through overplaying.

      Sod the rationing now, though – it’s going on tonight!

  3. If I’d heard Leon Bridges Coming Home last year it would have been included in the top three of my best albums of the year vote (alongside Sufjan and Public Service Broadcasting). It’s a great feelgood retro album.

    • Bloody brilliant record – I love Dub Housing as well. Both still a bit under-celebrated I’d say. I saw ‘ver Ubu earlier this year – complete with the great Tom Herman on guitar who played on the first 3 LPs and David Thomas was as always funny and a bit terrifying in equal measure.

  6. Niteworks album slipped out towards the end of last year, missing my best of 2015. It still gets an awful lot of listens. The mix of skirl and beats warms my highland blood no end.

    The 2 guys in the middle look as if they need to go out to the shops, or a walk, or something, more often, tho’

    • With slight reservations, there is about 2/3 minutes too much noodling on it, I really started to like Love’s “Four Sail” (£2 charity shop CD) for the first time this year.

      And *DONOVAN fans, working on the entirely road-tested and yet-to-be-proven-in-any-way-inaccurate logic of “What would a 60s dodger and/or Paul Morley do?” and going on to do the polar opposite, the DON’s debut “What’s Been Did And What’s Been Hid” is on repeat play. It’s absolutely brilliant.

      *As an unexpected bonus, which I would have paid another fiver for, the GREAT MAN’S NAME is actually in capital letters throughout the CD booklet!

  8. I’m going for The Monkees “Good Times” especially as HP is no longer here to sing it’s virtues. Mickeys voice, great songs from great songwriters, Daveys sugary sweet song and Mike and Pete get in on the act too. This is just wonderful….

  11. Somewhat to my surprise, my favourite record of the year is Dexys’ “Let the Record Show – Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul”. On paper it looks like a car crash but it is in fact entirely marvellous. nothing has given me more pure unalloyed musical please this year. Here they are with To Love Somebody. I commend it to the House:

        • I’ve been left cold by everything he’s done since the great comeback. It’s good that he’s bringing some grand ballads to an audience that has never heard them before but I can’t go his readings of them at all. I used to love his cover versions but it’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything I like. I suppose my Dexys is 1980-82 – everything after that I can take or leave.

          In a couple of weeks I’ll be doing my last gig with the Bootleg Runners. The band want to do stuff from this album and they can fill their boots after I’m gone. That’s not why I’m leaving – I have my own Irish stuff to do!

  13. Definitely the track that will be posted here with the oldest lyrics. And yes the album is a bit of a vanity project and is a bit silly in places but it’s done with great gusto and verve and is immensely enjoyable. And its bloody Shakespeare!

    Spotify link below

    Only a snippet on YouTube I’m afraid

  15. Money is very tight in Biscuit towers, & new music is a rare treat.

    So, from a very short list of CDs I have bought this year, to my ears the album of the year is
    David Bowies Black Star – wonderful album.

  16. Emitt Rhodes. Rainbow Ends. His first album in over 40 years. A great old fashioned pop album. Short hummable tunes, a nice care worn voice, and some fab musicians – including Roger Manning & Jason Falkner from Jellyfish.
    I’ve already bought an extra copy for a friend.

  17. Stop posting your “Album of the Year”… that’s not what this thread is about, is it?

    But talking of Album of The Year, Senor Tiggs won’t allow 1966 Live in as it’s “historical” but to tell the truth I found this mini-documentary just as good as the album itself.

  18. I’ve liked quite a few albums this year but there are two I love. One from an artist I’ve been listening to for more than 20 years who unexpectedly produced a stunningly good record and another whom I came across accidentally.

    The new one is Real by Lydia Loveless and I just can’t help wanting to listen to it again and again. Here is European from it:

    The older one is Mary-Chapin Carpenter who came up with The Things That We Are Made Of. It is simply excellent.
    Here is the gorgeous, but heartbreaking Livingston

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pixHFNOlJD4

    I also discovered Tom Rush whose album from 1968 The Circle Game I posted a review of a few weeks ago. I said the centrepiece is Joni’s Urge For Going which is brilliant. I can’t see why he didn’t make a bigger impact at the time.

  19. all year? Don’t know about that, but my favourite thing of the last couple of months is Prince Fatty, with help from Horseman and Hollie Cook, taking on this ODB / Kelis tune

  21. I’ve posted before – and possibly at too much length – about the albums that came out this year that mean a lot to me.

    This is the best song on the best album of the year. It is beautiful, and gets me every single time

    • Is the correct answer! Probably. Maybe.
      Saw him sing it live this year – – and the introduction – its about his kid – -and – well – he just like doing magic tricks! Wonderful.

  22. Oh, it’s all Westworld around here now – Arnold this, Dolores that. HBO donchaknow? But while Jonathan Nolan was devoting so much attention to his newest presentation, we fretted that he might drop the ball on our favourite show – Person Of Interest – and all the work of the previous four series would come undone at the last. Then came this scene {*SPOILERS OBVS*} and we let out a “woooooo” like the aliens in the Toy Story movies.

    Go Harry!

    • WHEN are fucking channel 5 going to show Season 5? I can’t even buy it on Itunes until then.

      Meanwhile sticking fingers in my ears to avoid what happens. But I know Bear survives because the showrunners understand that they won’t if he doesnt.

  24. I’ve gone on about this before and I’ll doubtless do so again..

    It’s got everything.. twice

    Look for Superstar – Could it be you

    A battle between Joe’s Band and a BBC Orchestra.
    Still can’t decide who wins.

    Who do you think ?

  27. Went to Hyde Park to see Carole King -one of the support artists was Michael Kiwanuka. I had dismissed him in my head as mainstream over hyped rubbish because he won the BBC voice of 2013 or whenever its was.
    That was unfair of me.
    He came on stage and proceeded to play a Dave Gilmour like intro to the most beautiful song I have heard this year. Cold Little Heart. 10 minutes of pure joy that I have listened to over and over.

  30. This was a difficult choice, as this year I’ve been introduced to Mickey Newbury’s American Trilogy albums and there are songs I will cherish the rest of my days, but in the interests of posting something “new” I will go with my other favourite, Jenny Lysander. I got to hear about her from her track on 2016’s Refugee charity record, The Horn Still Blows, and then got her enchanting 2015 album Northern Folk. Originally from Sweden she moved to Scotland where she made the record produced by Piers Faccini. This is one of my favourite tracks, Blackbird, delicate and restrained, yet warm and involving.

    • Hmmm. Rather nice. Thanks for posting.
      I haven’t read anything about Ms Lysander in the media here in Sweden. I see she even does one song in Swedish on her album – Jag Målade Fan På Väggen (“I Made things out to be worse than they were” or, literally, “I painted the Devil on the wall”). Interesting.

  31. Well, I’m not going to select a track from my Favourite album of 2016, because that would take away all the excitement of the duco01 Top 60 Albums of the Year, which I know you’re all waiting patiently for.

    So I’ll choose something else. has anyone, in the history of the Afterword, ever posted anything by Connie Converse? If they have, then I must’ve missed it. So I’ll post something by her.

    Connie Converse appears to have been the original Greenwich Village singer-songwriter, about a decade ahead of her time. She lived in Manhattan in the 1950s, writing songs but never recording them in a proper studio, let alone releasing a record. No film of her exists, and the only audio we have is old home recordings of around 17 songs.

    In 1961 she moved to Michigan and no longer sang. And in 1974, she wrote letters to all her loved ones before disappearing off the face of the earth. She was never found.

    About 7 years ago, her old home recordings were dug up in Prague, of all places, and finally given a proper release, as the album “How Sad, How Lovely”. It’s a revelation. Connie’s lyrics still sound modern – charming, witty, a little wry – while her singing style sounds very much of its time: rather prim, formal, elocuted. I commend “How Sad, How Lovely” to the Afterword. It really is a record like no other. Here’s the opening track: Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains)

  32. I came across this by accident and spent the entire year playing it to anyone who would listen. It’s joyous and life-affirming and the drums lend it a crunchy funk I don’t normally associate with Bollywood music.

  33. I first went to Filbert Street to watch Leicester City in 1980.
    They scraped a 1-1 draw with non-league Harlow Town in the FA Cup and – by and large – have been a bit of a let down in a lot of ways ever since.

    Which made last season all the more amazing, and this into a sound I’ll never forget.

  34. Well…

    I’ve bought/downloaded more music this year than any other year. I shudder to think of the amount of new tracks added to my iTunes library, but it’s in the tens of thousands. It’s helped that I am now longer working (due to ill health), but I can’t remember being as enthusiastic about new discoveries since the early 80s, when as a young teenager I was mining all the great music from the 50s and 60s, especially all things Beatles and Dylan related.

    This year though, it’s all been about rap/hip hop. I’d always had some of the albums that people who aren’t really into hip hop had. I’ve always liked the Beastie Boys and Eminem, for example. But this year really started with Kendrick Lamar and To Pimp a Butterfly. I’ve mentioned it before, but a move of furniture to accommodate the Christmas tree, due to me having squeezed and extra set of shelves for an expanding Blu Ray collection, exposed my CD shelves and stereo, which had spent several years stuck behind the sofa, out of sight and difficult to get to. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I had played less than a dozen CDs in the past 5 years or more, as I did all my listening through the PC or iPod. Seeing my CD racks again exposed the gaps and the Kendrick Lamar CD was slotted into my meagre hip hop collection. So I explored Kendrick Lamar’s back catalogue and from there it went on and on.

    I think I have 15-20,000 tracks in my hip hop playlist and it has necessitated a dedicated hip hop iPod, i.e. i have commandeered the old 80gb iPod I had ‘given’ to the kids that only ever gets used by my 6 year old lad to listen to his bedtime stories or his ‘oldies’ playlist whilst he’s having his breakfast – seriously, his two favourite singers are Olly Murs and Little Richard! So I am chancing it a bit by having an iPod with 15,000 hip hop tracks, 64 rock and roll numbers and the complete works of David Walliams. Hopefully he’ll never feel the urge to start exploring in the ‘artists’ section, or mummy may well be asking daddy where a few of his new words came from.

    But I digress. This time last year I had never heard of Gang Starr, or Nas, or MF DOOM, or The Roots, or Brother Ali, or Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, or Binary Star, or Digible Planets. I’d never knowingly heard a song by The Notorious B.I.G., or 2Pac, or 50 Cent, or Wu-Tang Clan, or Snoop Dogg. The only LL Cool J song I had heard was I Need Love, which I bought on 7″ when it came out. The only Run-D.M.C. song I had heard was Walk This Way, which I bought on 7″ when it came out. Actually, that’s a lie, cos I remember the remix of It’s Like That which came out 15 years or so ago. But you get the point.

    So, the best thing I have heard all year? Well, that’s easy. It’s the singing from the Barnsley fans when we won at Wembley for the second time in a matter of weeks to add promotion to the Mickey Mouse Cup. But musically, even though there are a handful of hip hop albums I now like more than To Pimp A Butterfly I am going to have to go for that one, because it started a musical journey that has given me a year of pleasure and is still keeping me going, as I am continuing to dig through the underground rap world, which has thrown up loads of gems, and I am now getting firmly stuck into the UK scene (really, I am as far away from the Grime demographic as you could imagine, but I am just loving it. It’s the first time I have agreed with the Mercury Music Prize winner since Pulp 20 years ago) as well as tentatively dipping my toes into the experimental R&B offerings, as I am really enjoying Frank Ocean and Anderson .Paak. Just having to be a bit selective there though, cos a lot of modern hip hop/RnB is rubbish.

    I call it my hip hop odyssey. My wife calls it a midlife crisis. I’m just down wiv ver kids, innit.

      • I’m a hoarder. But my collection is small fry compared to some on here.

        I get daft ideas in my head at times. When I was working I spent the last 6 or 7 years working from home. As it was mainly computer based I set my work laptop up in front of my PC and had iTunes opened on my PC. I used to pick what to listen to randomly and try to listen to different stuff every day, but I found I was spending too much time looking for what to listen to, when I was being paid for working on the other computer, so I decided one day, on a whim, to listen to the whole lot in alphabetical order. I had around 45,000 tracks on it then and it took me 3 years to finish, albeit with a six month break after being made redundant, whereby I took to my DVD collection downstairs and had other crackpot projects like watching every Carry On film in chronological order, followed by every Hammer horror film, every Elvis film, every Woody Allen film, every X-Files episode…you get the picture. Actually, all of those seasons had pretty similar trajectories!

        But I started with a-Ha (although at some point A.R. Kane jumped before them) and finished with an 808 State track. It was difficult at times. I have a lot of Dylan, dozens of Stones live albums, just about everything the Beatles ever did and 30 discs plus of Get Back (Let It Be) sessions was very wearing. As was Metal Machine Music. But I did it. I did make it practical though, by adding to playlists as I went along and ranking the songs, which comes in really handy when you have to remove a few hundred tracks to make room on your iPod. I just removed the one star tracks.

        I have to admit, I did skip the kids nursery rhymes and bedtime stories and I eventually allowed myself to skip my wife’s rubbish. I can’t remember which straw was the final one, but I wish I’d made that rule before the Carpenters and Coldplay. Actually, I think it was Ed Sheeran, who’s a bit of an odd one, because I’ve subsequently heard some of the stuff he’s done with grime artists. It’s wierd and I can’t decide whether I like it or not, but I think I don’t, just because of the presence of Ed Sheeran. With all the great music out there it’s strange who become megastars isn’t it. Ed Sheeran, Robbie Williams and Adele are rolling in it, whilst Stephen Duffy, Lawrence Hayward and Paddy McAloon have never had a number one single. Crazy!

        It was funny though, cos every time I spoke to our MD he always started by asking me where I was up to in my A to Z.

        I’m currently listening to all 100 of the albums from 2016 that I have bought/downloaded in chronological order, so I can do my own top 100! It took some working out which of my new albums were actually released this year, because I’ve just been following recommendations from magazines, books and websites and going from there. Some albums I thought were 20 years old were 6 months old and vice versa. At final count I had 99, so I downloaded the Paul Simon one to make 100. I’m about a third of the way through them (listened to Drake, Graham Nash, Young Money, Aesop Rock, The Jayhawks and, er, John Carpenter today) and Bowie is still at number 1. Haven’t got to Skepta yet though!

        Edit: Just checked and there are 15,420 in my hip hop folder. That doesn’t include stuff like trip hop and people like Bomb the Bass and DJ Shadow, whereby I keep changing my mind about where to put them!

        • I hear you. I too categorise Hip Hop-related genres separately, so Trip Hop, Breaks, Illbient, Big Beat and Turntablism all have their own patch of ground. I also categorise mixed albums as ‘Mix’ whatever the genre.

          • Now I’ve been listening to hip hop all year, but I’m sure you’ve made a couple of those genres up! Still a lot of learning for me to do.

            Categorising mixtapes is easy though. Those with DJ Drama ruining them and those without. Seriously, I feel like strangling him every time I hear him.

    • Have you heard the new Young Thug record? It’s probably my album of the year.

      Sadly, I’m under the cosh at work, so I’m not going to get time to give it the full length rhapsody it deserves, but I’m also not really sure where to start in describing it – it’s absolutely chock full of interesting ideas and sounds.

      • Not yet. It had actually slipt past me and I only heard of it the other day when I googled him whilst listening to one of his two mixtapes from earlier in the year, as they popped up pretty close together in my 100 countdown (seriously, modern rappers make Neil Young look like a slacker), so I have it in the queue. I’m Up and Slime Season 3 are both good, but not quite top 10 contenders.

        Christmas shopping today in Meadowhell, so only got to listen to one album (Shit Robot – What Follows – okay, but with every release I’m beginning to wonder whether the first album, which I really liked, was a flash in the pan). I did, however, get the missus to turn the awful Steve ‘love the show’ Wright off on the way home and put the new mix on that I made her. We had Ken Bruce heading out, and as much as I like him he never plays any decent records, but I put up with him cos Pop Master was coming on. Annoyingly, we drove into the downstairs car park just as they were doing the 3 in 10, so no idea whether I’d have won the prize today!

        Anyway, my wife asked me to do her a country mix for the iPod, so I asked her a couple of questions and we agreed on a mixture of old and new, western and alt. Country/Americana, British and American. I thought I’d done her a really good mix, but seems she was thinking more along the lines of that awful music from that awful Nashville programme she watches. Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, The Handsome Family and Knife in the Water didn’t cut it for her. She even sniffed at Emmylou Harris, so God knows what she thinks country music sounds like. At least Lucinda Williams got a sort of nod of approval. I’m giving up on her and my boyband loving daughter. I’m pinning my hopes on the 6 year old son. He already knows all the words to Tutti Frutti, so there’s promise.

        • There aren’t any real words in Tutti Frutti, are there?

          Tell me, Paul, during this journey through Rap/Hip Hop, I do hope you’ve given every single one of those thousands of tracks at least six listens.

          • Out of the mouths of babes….

            From Wiki:

            The original lyrics, in which “Tutti Frutti” referred to a homosexual man, were:

            “Tutti Frutti, good booty
            If it don’t fit, don’t force it
            You can grease it, make it easy”

            These were replaced with:
            “Tutti Frutti, aw rooty
            Tutti Frutti, aw rooty.”

            “Aw rooty” was a slang expression meaning “All right”.

            According to Charles Connor, Little Richard’s drummer, the original lyrics were:
            “Tutti Frutti, good booty, If it’s tight, it’s all right And if it’s greasy, it makes it easy”

        • “God knows what she thinks country music sounds like…”

          Probably exactly the same as the millions of people who listen to mainstream country music – Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean, Garth Brooks…

          The average country music fan wouldn’t be able to pick out the Handsome Family or Knife In The Water (or Marty Robbins, for that matter) from a picture line up if you threatened to destroy their truck with a sledgehammer in front of their eyes.
          To the people who buy country, it’s either dudes in cowboy hats or trucker caps or blonde girls in cowboy boots singing about drivin’ their truck down country backroads, drinkin’ beer on saturday nights, smalltown life, girls, boys who do them wrong, nostalgic summer nights and America, not a bunch of po-faced hipsters earnestly picking out an 18th century murder ballad on a banjo.
          I speak as one who despises, DESPISES country in all its forms – traditional, mainstream, alt and americana.

      • I must admit, this kind of auto-tuned southern rap brings me out in hives. I could maybe forgive the minstrelsy element of the whole shebang (I know that YT is a *bit* different in this regard) if I liked the tunes, but I’ve tried — even with this one — and I just don’t feel it at all.

        • The thing is, I’m normally exactly the same. I hold no brief for auto tune, Southern rap, or Trap music. But this…

          …. this has just somehow really cut through with me, and it had to hurdle a lot of my own prejudices to do so.

          The production has this really weird feel to it that I struggle to pin down. Guwop (below) was my entry point – it’s recognisably a Trap beat, but there’s all sorts of shit going on in the background – it’s got this “ice cave” vibe happening, and there’s an offbeat gentleness offsetting the Trap stylings.

          I also love what he’s doing with voices: his own and those of others. Kanye West above is a great example: I can hardly understand a damn word he’s saying half the time, but he also has these backing vocals shadowing the beat on the chorus where they’re basically just making weird noises, but they kind of work with the song.

          This year I’ve come to realise that what I’m really looking for from music, more than melody or lyrics or rhythm, is a kind of “texture”, for want of a better word. JEFFEREY has this in spades – he’s woven the voices in with the production in a way where there’s loads going on, all this awesome detail that still somehow works as a cohesive whole. It doesn’t feel like anything else, to me.

          He’s obviously also an interesting bloke. Not so much the dress on the album cover (although it is a very nice dress), but the way the lyrics swing between the expected machismo and this weird vulnerability, almost a femininity. Also the way the vocals are just all over the place – there’s a lot of pre gone to shit Lil Wayne in there, in terms of the expressiveness.

          It’s the thing I’ve listened to most this year, edging out even Blonde, and I still feel like I’m trying to fully get my arms around it. I know it won’t be for everyone (lord, do I know that), but it’s most certainly for me; one of those records that makes you excited for what might be done.

    • Great story – I always feel I should devote my time to Hip Hop/Rap collection – which in comparison to you Paul, is to say the least sparse!
      I like Eminem, Kay Z, Kanye West and Nas, but I’m particularly intrigued by Mos Def. Heard a few of his tacks, which are brilliant, so it’s one of my objectives to discovery more of his stuff in 2017.

      • You may be a little disappointed if you dig too deep, as I don’t think he’s ever managed to reach the quality of the Reflection Eternal and Black On Both Sides albums. Those two are great, so I was expecting more of the same, but I haven’t managed to find anything that matches them.

  35. An unexpected treat very late in 2016 (just last fortnight in fact) was a new Demdike Stare album. If you’re not familiar Sean and Miles are from Burnley and I think around the same age as me (early 40s) and they make fantastic electronic/sampled music that just presses all the right buttons for me and they’ve been a constant soundtrack in my headphones over the last 5-6 years.
    They’ve inspired me and my mate to make some music this year too – I love their attitude and approach to things and reading a few interviews it seems we work in a very similar way and have a similar dynamic in our duo – so us old buggers have made some beats!

    Their early stuff got bundled in with that Hauntology/Ghost Box thing (not an unfair comparison) but the new one is almost a Rave record, a lot more beats than usual – albeit a bit twisted and distorted but it’s bloody brilliant and suggests they aren’t tied to a particular sound and I’m looking forward to where they go next.

    • Ah, that’s good to hear. I kept up with Demdike, Haxan, Stott for a while but started to feel I was just hearing the same thing over and over — and good as it was… I’ll give this a try.

  36. The best track I’ve heard all year is this belter from The Blaze. I got married in March and this is the song I attach to that time.
    The production on this is just outstanding and the voice/lyrics/hooks are all bang on.

    I know this is a blatant disregard for the rules of this thread (sorry), but here are the 50 best things I’ve heard this year;

  37. It’s been a hard year musically I have been and still am devastated by the death of David Bowie it rocked me to the core. I went to see Lazarus the week it opened and I was a crying mess by the end even though I thought I’d be fine. I’ve been finding it hard to listen to his music and I’ve found ‘I can’t give it all away’ the track I listen to most. Thinking about it now this track has been what I have enjoyed the most this year – ‘Me and Magdelana’ – The Monkees.

  39. For me. It’s been a year of writing, recording and mixing music, so not much room for anything other than research and chasing sounds. One thing that did cut through was Michael Kiwanuka and his absurdly good ‘sophomore’ effort, Love and Hate.

  40. My thanks to whoever posted this earlier in the summer – not my usual sort of thing but played more often than most tunes and sort of sums up the year.

    And this – best UK soul track of the year – from a decent album.

  41. Miranda Lambert’s new album The Weight Of These Wings is my favourite new thing this year. Here’s Smoking Jacket from it, which is a lovely very sexy little thing. I want to marry this song. Just don’t tell my wife.

  44. I’ve been thinking long and hard about my answer, and in the end I didn’t choose any particular artist, or album, or song, or even one particular gig. I choose the sound (and atmosphere) of the audience at every gig at this year’s Stockholm Music & Arts festival.
    You probably know how us Swedes are – a bit stiff, and shy, and polite, unless you get us drunk.
    Ths is also true most of the time at gigs. We’re quiet, in a polite and appreciative way, and we applaud vigorously after each tune, but artists can easily mistake our intense and polite listening for disinterest and boredom and lose a bit of energy and inspiration in the miscommunication.
    But that seems to be changing, if the three days at Skeppsholmen this August is anything to go by. It’s been getting better each year for a while, but his was the year when the audience seemed to throw away what Howard Jones used to call their “mental chains” and just have loud and uninhibited fun all the way through every gig; bombarding the artists with love and ongoing appreciation. And not only did we, in the audience, have a great time while we were going bananas; the artists were visibly energized and happy and even moved by the reactions (especially the smaller acts) – and between the gigs while the stage was being redressed, we could sit down and still be polite, and a bit quiet and shy, the way we feel most comfortable being…the best of both worlds! 😉
    But if you do want a specific moment combining that audience energy with seriously wonderful music, then I’ll nominate the Dungen slot at said festival. The love, the hippie head-bobbing, the insane and gorgeous psych/prog freak-outs – including jazz flute! – the happy sing-alongs, the mad dancing, the band’s beaming smiles at the end…a perfect gig (and, after being a fan for many years; my first Dungen gig).
    That’s what I’ll choose to remember about 2016.

  47. One of the Massive posted this nugget recently:
    All Them Witches – “Dying Surfer Meets His Maker”

    From 2015 but the best thing I’ve heard all year.

  48. Angel Olsen’s album is a late entry into my albums of the year list and this track is magnificent. I love everything about it – the slow build, the simple arpeggioed guitar early on; the yearning lyrics, the final repeated ‘All my life I thought I’d change’ which starts to build, which she then takes right down, then up again with a perfectly judged exultant guitar solo. It’s seven and a half minutes long and doesn’t outlast its welcome for a second

  50. Hello AW! It’s been a while. How’s tricks?

    I kinda ‘got’ jazz this year. First time in my 46 years on this planet. I blame The National Anthem by Radiohead for this entirely.

    So spent much of my listening time exploring Count Basie, Coltrane, Parker, Theolonious, Keith Jarrett but the one that has had the most respins has been without question, Bitches Brew. It just mangles my head. These noises came from a core of basically three guys. Something new pops up on every listen and, oh man, THE DRUMMING!!

    • Welcome back, Six. Miles used two drummers and two bassists on all bar one track on Bitches Brew. Then, there is the bass clarinet as well. Have you heard A Tribute To Jack Johnson?

      • Not heard that one Tigs. Just a toe in the water at the moment.

        Can really hear the two basses on Bitches Brew. Last record I played with two bassist’s on would have been, I think, Grey Cell Green by Neds Atomic Dustbin.

        Now there’s a tangent!

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