To celebrate this piece-of-shit year, here's 50 albums I like a lot, with a little blurb about why I like 'em. This'll probably be the last post of the year, so if you're still reading, thanks. Next year I'll post more bad music and try to convince you why it's good. Much love.
50) Gnaw Their Tongues - "Hymns for the Broken, Swollen, and Silent"
An absolutely disgusting black/death/industrial/noise album that will certainly raise eyebrows and freak out suburban families.
49) The Dillinger Escape Plan - "Dissociation"
This legendary mathcore outfit goes out with a bang, landing some of their best singles and most experimental passages in years.
48) Noname - "Telefone"
Simultaneously one of the most uplifting and depressing hip-hop albums of the year, with damn-near immaculate doo-wop and jazz beats under Noname's beautiful vocals.
47) Wreck and Reference - "Indifferent Rivers Romance End"
This duo continue their war on conventional metal, crafting dark and stripped-back instrumentals with fittingly gloomy performances.
46) The Body - "No One Deserves Happiness"
Another heavy duo here, this time melding pop and noise, making an uncompromising metal album with some of the most frightening vocals on a record this year.
45) Ian William Craig - "Centres"
A beautiful ambient album with a singular vision and delivery.
44) Wildernessking - "Mystical Future"
Beautiful post-black metal from the up-and-coming South African group.
43) Okkervil River - "Away"
Will Sheff and co. put out their best album in years.
42) Bookreader - "Dust Bowl Sallads"
One of the most unique noise albums in a while, combining old Americana tunes with disturbing start-and-stop blasts of harsh electronics.
41) Roly Porter - "Third Law"
A great electronic music album that sounds like a demented rave in deep space, with immaculate production and transfixing beats.
40) Mannequin Pussy - "Romantic"
A simultaneously furious and overjoyed album, throwing punk tradition out the window while writing some of the best punk tunes this year.
39) Lemon Demon - "Spirit Phone"
This is a joke album with a remarkably straight face, a gimmick with so many layers it becomes dizzying how great the songwriting is.
38) Genocide Organ - "Obituary of the Americas"
A fantastic power electronics album, probably the best to come out in a while, and also one of the best protest albums this year.
37) KA - "Honor Killed the Samurai"
A stone-faced hip-hop album from this soft-spoken rapper, but one with a remarkable attention to detail and storytelling.
36) Lori McKenna - "The Bird & the Rifle"
The best country album of the year.
35) Radian - "On Dark Silent Off"
An insane blending of rock, electronic, and jazz, with slow-building tracks that reveal themselves over repeated, focused listens.
34) Jambinai - "A Hermitage"
Post-rock done with tons of confidence and unique instrumentation from South Korea.
33) Deathspell Omega - "The Synarchy of Molten Bones"
A great, experimental black metal album from these French legends.
32) clipping. - "Splendor & Misery"
One of the most forward-thinking hip-hop albums this year, with rapid-fire flows colliding with folk music and a cappella wartime chants - it's nuts, but it works.
31) Sex Prisoner - "Tannhauser Gate"
The best powerviolence album this year; absolutely ferocious.
30) Big Ups - "Before a Million Universes"
Big Ups tackle Slint-flavored post-rock very well, crafting rollercoaster-like songs with huge dynamic shifts and great musicianship.
29) Emmanuel Fade - "Un-Flood"
Safari Al jumps into ambient and electronic music while blending hip-hop instrumentals and laid-back beats.
28) Tim Hecker - "Love Streams"
Hecker's happiest album combines chopped-up vocals with sharp, bright synth sweeps and amazing live instrumentation.
27) Diners - "Three"
This thing just fucking makes me smile.
26) Bent Knee - "Say So"
Bent Knee evolve into a huge, towering art-rock group with powerful vocals and intricate musical arrangements.
25) Matmos - "Ultimate Care II"
One of the best electronic albums this year comes from a fucking washing machine - who would've thought?
24) Vektor - "Terminal Redux"
Thrash titans Vektor craft a space-metal opera with some of the best riffs of the year.
23) Nails - "You Will Never Be One of Us"
Todd Jones and Nails continue to make their argument for the label of "heaviest band in the world".
22) Puce Mary - "The Spiral"
This album is where noise should be in 2016: imaginative, frightening, and totally unique.
21) DEAKIN - "SLEEP CYCLE"
Animal Collective member DEAKIN finally puts out his album, full of beautiful soundscapes and fantastic performances.
20) Ab-Soul - "Do What Thou Wilt."
The abstract asshole finally puts out the album we all knew he could put out: a razor-sharp dissection of race, religion, and class warfare from the best penman of TDE.
19) PUP - "The Dream Is Over"
These Canadian punks made an album that's as much fun as playing with four little puppies, and if you know anything about puppies, you know how good this album is.
18) Radiohead - "A Moon Shaped Pool"
Leave it to Radiohead to make one of the bleakest albums of the year, but the surprising thing here is just how pretty the depression is.
17) The Body & Full of Hell - "One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache"
Two of the most interesting groups in metal team up to stretch the limits of conventional genre-based music (metal, noise, industrial) and make one of the most exciting albums this year.
16) Chambre Froide - "Rouges Chappelle"
This elusive French black metal group flew heavily under the radar but ended making one of the best metal albums this year.
15) Eluvium - "False Readings On"
Eluvium puts out the warmest, most beautiful ambient album this year.
14) Swans - "The Glowing Man"
Michael Gira ends this iteration of Swans with a meditative, slow-burn of an album.
13) The Microphones - "Early Tapes, 1996-1998"
Phil Elverum ends his nightmare of a year with a fascinating and heartbreaking look at the past.
12) Xiu Xiu - "Plays the Music of Twin Peaks"
Xiu Xiu not only put out of my favorite cover albums ever but also one of the most interesting and obtuse art-rock records this year.
11) Mizmor - "Yodh"
One-man black metal master Mizmor releases a genuinely disturbing and atmospheric album.
10) Danny Brown - "Atrocity Exhibition"
A great, forward-thinking hip-hop album from one of the most interesting artists in the genre (featuring some of the best production of the year from master beat-maker Paul White).
9) Touché Amoré - "Stage Four"
When was the last time an album broke your heart?
8) Death Grips - "Bottomless Pit"
The punk-as-fuck hip-hop trio put out a rock-tinged record full of overwhelming beats and impeccable performances.
7) The Drones - "Feelin Kinda Free"
The best band in Australia right now release an album that, ironically, says more than any band in America about politics this year.
6) David Bowie - "Blackstar"
Bowie decides to turn his passing into one of the most heart-wrenching and perplexing albums about death of all time.
5) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Skeleton Tree"
But Nick Cave's album about death was just that much more intense and fascinating.
4) A Tribe Called Quest - "We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service"
Another album linked inextricably with death, this one takes its mourning and morphs it into power, making the best album about the year 2016 in the year 2016.
3) Car Seat Headrest - "Teens of Denial"
Maybe it's too early to call, but Will Toledo's meteoric rise into the greats of alternative rock may be the clarion call for a new wave of great, guitar-driven music.
2) Aesop Rock - "The Impossible Kid"
Aesop sharpens his pen and crafts the best hip-hop album of the year with impeccable wordplay, flow, and insane storytelling.
1) Jeff Rosenstock - "WORRY."
Jeff. Fucking. Rosenstock.
