Is anything even good anymore? This last year has been a real challenge for my assumptions about myself and the world, and my inner turmoil definitely affected my media consumption. The fact that we all pay so much more attention to the news now, and the news tending to be so bad, drove me to spending a lot of time with multimedia comfort food; lots of movies and TV and old video games I didn’t have to think about too much. But music doesn’t have that escapist quality, tending often to be more reflective, as both Colin and John can tell you, which made my search for a joyous sound all the harder. This wasn’t a great musical year for me, is what I’m saying. I think a lot of albums that others would have called “great” were just “good” to me.

That being said, I do have a few honorable mentions. As always, this is a list that reflects my favorite albums based on my listening habits this last year. There are more albums that I liked and better albums that I didn’t spend as much time with, this is stuff from 2016 that I liked most in 2016. Of the five that just barely missed the cut, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, that album from The Walkmen guy and the Vampire Weekend guy, is the one that makes me the most sad, since it would have been on all three of our lists. There are a couple Colin albums I’d like to listen to more, namely Pile by A Giant Dog and WORRY. by Jeff Rosenstock (which I foolishly ignored for too long). Where’d Your Weekend Go? by The Mowgli’s suits only nice weather listening, but “Spacin’ Out” is definitely 2016’s #1 summer jam. Speaking of jams, the title track from Big Thief’s Masterpiece is awesome. That surprise Childish Gambino release “Awaken My Love!” is cool too. Finally, Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, which deftly showed off how much Jonny Greenwood had learned doing movie soundtracks, was quite good as well.
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