Leonard Nevarez – Best of 2016

What were the best records of 2016? Leonard Nevarez is here to tell you!

1. David Bowie – Blackstar
It was released on a Friday in January, and by Sunday he was gone. Backed by his most adventurous music in decades, the starman delivered a eulogy for himself and a lament for the condition of justice in the world.

2. Angel Olsen – My Woman
Cinematic, full-throated, vulnerable, maybe a little crazy, she’s ready to assume the title of this generation’s Stevie Nicks.   

3. Big Thief – Masterpiece
On the debut album of the year, this hungry, wiry band play forlorn campfire grunge with an idiosyncratic swing.

4. Sumerlands – Sumerlands
Headbanging lifers shrug off the customary modifiers (thrash, death, black, doom etc.) to release an utterly distinctive, stylistically classic heavy metal record.  

5. Whitney – Light Upon The Lake
One of the year’s easiest-on-the-ears albums, these guys spin Laurel Canyon soul with the wandering spirit of early Neil Young and Paul Simon.

6. Cory Hanson – The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo
Speaking of Laurel Canyon, set the dial on the wayback machine a few years earlier to arrive at the stunning Forever Changes-style orchestral balladry by the dude from that freaky psychedelic band Wand.

7. Idiot Glee – Idiot Glee
On this charming, goofy album, vintage-Eno flights of fancy hot-wire campy piano-man songwriting.

8.  Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression
World, take note: after this inspired, cranky album, the world’s forgotten boy may be exiting the stage once and for all, leaving us all the poorer for it.

9. Hannah Georgas – For Evelyn
Affecting bedroom pop and a fetching voice that pitch an intimate story (the songwriter’s relationship with her aging grandmother) at a universal scale.

10. Steve Gunn – Eyes On The Line
The fullest, best-sounding album yet by this guitarist and reluctant jam-band iconoclast. It could almost distract me from the fact that 2016 was a really bad year to stop smoking pot.