2016: A Year Amongst Music

I've been wanting to put a list together like this for years. But every time I tried to assemble it, it would largely consist of older albums I had only discovered that year.

Not so this year.

People keep celebrating how remarkable a year 2016 was for music. But it really sank in when I went to write down every influential album I listened to this year. On one half of the notebook's pages I wrote down all of the 2016 titles. On the other I recorded the older titles. I ran out of room on the 2016 page.

So here then are the 2016 albums, followed by a list of my favourite older discoveries.

1. Paul Simon's Stranger to Stranger

This album gets top mention for three reasons. First, he has promised to take a hiatus from music, very possibly making Stranger to Stranger the 75-year-old's last album. Taken as a whole it is also one of the best of his late-career albums (although I prefer some of the songs of 2013 'So Beautiful or So What'). The production combines Simon's folk and world influence with exceptionally mixed electronic music, embracing the new while continuing the craft of the old. The fact that it's been woefully missing from the best of year lists also prompts its high rank on my list.

Second, this album seems to sum up 2016. "Ignorance and arrogance, the national debate." The music's weary cynicism, schizophrenia, and loneliness speak to the heart of what it meant to be woke in 2016.

Finally, Paul Simon is my favourite artist and in 2016 I got to witness him perform songs of this album live. How could this not become my album of the year?

2. Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book

In the face of what so many have called truly tough year, this album of full-hearted joy has taken the world by storm. So much of this album shouldn't have been; its streaming only, free download status, its label-free release, its unabashed Christianity, and its generous joy. It blissfully breaks down barriers between secular music and Christian, gospel and hip-hop. It taught me to love R&B. It embraces the complexities of the  world and giggles back a song of mirth and praise.

3. Bon Iver's 22, A Million

At first, we weren't sure if Justin Vernon would ever return to the Bon Iver moniker. Yet we were sure that whatever work the man would drop next would be well worth exploring. But nobody counted on something so entirely different and yet so entirely good. Every track on this 33 minute, electronically charged, broken down with expert craft album feels like a prayer. As a whole, it's a minuet and affecting masterpiece.

4. A Tribe Called Quest's We've Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service

First, Phife Dog passes away and there's an outpouring of grief. Then, Quitip announces the final Tribe album just weeks before its realise and we collectively hold our breaths hoping that it is a fitting send off to these legends. And then, during the week of the election and hours after Leonard Coen's death is announced, the album drops and everyone hails it as excellent. There is so much to enjoy here. The beats are fire. The verses are funny, enjoyable, thought-provoking and fun. The messages are some of the most challenging that Tribe have ever worked on. To be honest, I've only really made my way through the first half of the album. Every time I try to listen through the whole thing, I get distracted by the excellence of the first half of the album and have to go back and re-listen to it from the beginning.

5. Frank Ocean's Blonde

2016 convinced me to enjoy R&B. Colouring Book announced that it was worth listening to. Marvin Gaye persuaded me it could became art. And then this album showed me how damn convincing it could be. The music is a roller coaster of pace, tempo, and reach. But above all, this album is emotionally hooking. I have no idea what he is singing about, but I know it is disparately important.

6. Leonard Coen's You Want It Darker

This final album of the man whom Bob Dylan called "the number one song writer of all time" is tragic, tender, and haunted by life, death, and God. It was a beautiful album before he passed away just weeks after its release. After his death its mournful, bittersweet quality, so perfect for late night ruminating, perfectly encapsulated the late evening of a full, yet broken life.

7. Carl Bromel's 4th of July

I'm so glad I discovered this gem of a record. Epic landscape songs like the 10 minute long title track are paired with self-contained songs like Rockingchair Dancer, a delictly told story of how the narrator's assperations changed as he has matured. The music's beat and riff is the perfect complement to the well crafted visuals of the lyrics. This album sustained many late night walks home from work. It rewards repeated listening and I'm happy to recommend it to everyone.

8. Micah Bournes No Ugly Babies

I met celebrated spoken word poet Micah Bournes while in Portland this summer, when he told me about how, despite never singing or playing an instrument, he was hard at work on his first blues album. The songs he was writing could only be told in this medium, and what songs! They are tunes you dance to on your way to work or karaoke to in the shower. They get under your skin with their stories of confidence in the face of despair, commitment in the face of easy love, and joy and hope in the face of pain.

9. Wesley Randolph Eader's Highway Winds

Wesley's world-weary, dust and tear-streaked record of heartache, failure, and disappointment is somehow ballasted by a hope and comfort that sustains despite all odds to the contrary. The production is equally timeless, feeling like some dusty vinyl pulled out of a shelf of old bluegrass records.

10. Christmas Albums: Chance the Rapper's Merry Christmas 'Lil Mama and Josh Garrel's The Light Came Down

This year gave us two very different but both excellent Christmas albums that I'll be pulling out annually for years to come. Chance the Rapper decided he was not content with being named artist of year by every other year-end list and gave us all a pre-Christmas gift of this jewel like EP. Like his more-famous 2016 release, it effortlessly combines the sacred and the secular and is bursting with joy. There is a sadness and tragedy underneath it all too.

And Josh Garrels' lush Christmas complication deserves mention for its dark, comforting, intricate mixture of original tunes, classics, and covers.

11. Other Hip-hop: Kendrick Lamar's untitled unmastered and Sho Bararka's The Narrative

Both of these albums are flawed - Kendrick's, as its name suggests, is messy and unfinished and Sho's is overly declarative in our age of hip-hop storytelling. But both are essential. I turn to the angst and desperation of untitled unmastered to express what I often choose to hide. And I turn Sho's The Narrative to understand the experience of the black Christian in 2016: their despair, injustice, style, commitment, and ultimately their hope.

Honourable Mentions:

Jordan Klassen's moody and polished Javlin, Shearwater's driving Jet Plane and Oxbow, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zero's south drenched PersonaA, Baaba Maal's exotic and emotionally hooking The Traveler, Radiohead's urgently contemporary A Moon Shaped Pool, Sturgill Simpson's richly textured A Sailor's Guide to Earth, Slow Dakota's tragic and lovely The Ascension of Slow Dakota, and Wilder Adkin's affecting Hope and Sorrow.

Non-2016 releases:

The album I'll probably be listening to the most years from now is Liz Vice's timeless There's a Light. I loved the wilderness-haunted pop of Lord Huron's Stranger Trails. I was finally ready to enjoy the excellent merging of hip-hop and R&B that John Givez provides on Soul Rebel. I was seduced by Van Morrison's bewitching albums like Moondance and Astral Weeks. I continued my endless trip down the Bob Dylan highway with only the beginning his Bootleg series and recent Modern Times. And I became obsessed over this little thing called Hamilton.

Desert Island Artists

There is nothing like sinking your teeth into an excellent musician’s back catalogue. The journey of discovery usually begins by falling in love with a single album, spending hours unpacking its lyrics, examining its riffs, and enjoying its virtuosity. Just that one album can be a priceless gift gift, but when you discover that they’ve released other music just as worthy, that journey is like a slow burn of Christmas mornings. An artist with such riches is one I would happily explore forever, an artist that would satisfy for a lifetime, even if the rest of your music library is removed. A desert island artist. I love lists so here are my top five such desert island artists.

Paul Simon

One day some colleagues and I got into a major disagreement over who had produced better music, Simon and Garfunkel or Paul Simon. I proposed, and was ridiculed for my opinion, that Paul Simon’s music has a depth that surpasses the youthful melodies of the famous folk duo. You could give me just his two world albums, Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints and I would have enough complexity of beat and elegance of lyrics to keep me happy for months. But even his recent 2011 album has tracks like ‘Rewrite’, which is my definition of a perfect song. Unlike his earlier efforts, Paul Simon’s best music is a certain intrinsic selflessness, which is why Sammy Rhodes described Graceland as “so full of joy it practically dares you to be sad.”

Start with: Graceland

Sufjan Stevens

One of the great things about Sufjan Stevens is the diversity of his music. Watching it progress over his career is quite a journey. His early lo-fi folk, with its almost medieval flare thanks to the horns and flutes, gave way to an orchestration, complete with choral rounds and chants. Then there is his electronic phases filled delightful, if sometimes obnoxious beats and patches. His recent offerings combine gentle electronic with a light folk that has me eager to see where it will evolve next. But it’s his lyrics that haunt and comfort me. A friend of mine describes one song, Impossible Soul, as the best song to listen to when your depressed. It meets you in your sorrow, cheers you up, and then reminds us that our depression is probably rooted in our own selfishness. And I supposes such is true of his entire discography.

Start with: Come on Feel the Illinois, or Songs of Christmas (depending on the time of year).

Josh Garrels

Josh Garrels is a songcrafter. He’s honed his arsenal of tools and what are a rare mixture they are. He is just as comfortable using organic samples and beats as he is with sparse guitar picking. His voice is equally at home dispatching hip-hop flow as he is soul-stabbing falsetto. This package is wrapped into a lush soundscape that tells stories of heartache and home, the dangers of the wilderness and the contentment of redemption. His are songs I can nestle into and live my life amongst.

Start with: Love & War & The Sea In Between

Humble Beast

True, technically a hip-hop label. But the group’s four artists, united by the label’s lush, acoustic driven production, sit on equal footing in their talents and upon my musical shelf of honour. I turn to Beautiful Eulogy when my soul is dry and my heart is broken, and they restore me in the hope of the Gospel, my cheeks often getting wet in the process. Propaganda is a modern day prophet, preaching into his culture while restoring hope in his community of Los Angeles. Jackie Hill Perry intricate wordplay produces a cracked mosaic drawing us to seek joy in the Lord. And JGivens’s depth of lyrics and intricate soundscapes tell a multi-layered story as complex and as simple as life itself. To say that their music has impacted my life is an understatement.

Start with: Fly Exam or Crimson Cord

Open Slot

I know, I know, this is cheating, but honestly, choosing this artist would depend on what I’m most feeling on the day of my island banishment. Would it be U2 (with lots to explore, not to mention two of the best albums ever recorded, The Joshua Tree and Achtung, Baby)? Might I choose Elbow, whose maundering chords and rifts I can sink my teeth into? Or would it be a perineal favourite, Jars of Clay? Right now I would probably opt for Bob Dylan. His talents remain undiminished, his back catalogue offers so much to explore, his broken voice satisfies in ways normal polish just can’t, and his musicianship and storytelling can fill a lifetime

Start with: U2's The Joshua Tree, Elbow's The Takeoff and Landing of Everything, Jars of Clay's The Long Fall Back to Earth, and Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy.

So there they are, my five(ish) desert island artists. Who would you choose? Please share - maybe your suggestions will result in the rest in a new journey of discovery for the rest of us.

Stripped

The first of a three part series on suffering. 

“We fear God will let us down. So we fall back into scurrying about to fill our emptiness with our own resources. But God graciously lets us wear ourselves out, and these efforts come to nothing. Life exists not in us, but in Christ alone and Christ fully. We live in him.” 

“There will be times in life when we feel that everything is falling apart. But such times can crack open our hearts to depend on the living Christ as never before, to always place our endless need before his endless supply.”

-Ray Ortlund, The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ

Friends, this website was quite for a long time. But 2015 was a hard year.

It could have been worse. I’m not out of work (although my job title has changed). I’m not dying of cancer (although a friend did just that). I’m not falling into depression (although I’ve received heath diagnosis that has been momentous to wrestle through). But suffering is suffering, and I’ve experienced some these past months. Everyone experiences trails. These occur in differing degrees of intensity, but how one chooses to handle them can be consistent. So I intend to share some of my experiences and what the Lord has taught me through them over a series of three posts, titled “Stripped”, “Pruned”, and “Sustained.” May they encourage you and may they magnify Him.

In February I received a mental health diagnosis, revealing major weakness that run to the very core of who I am as a person. Initial results of the diagnosis had me cancelling travel plans to visit a university and compete in scholarships, but such losses were least of my concerns as the long term effects of a medical trail sunk in. Not only was my brain and body being rewired by medication, but I was forced to reckon, often in public, with hard truths of who I was and how much I had to learn. It was humbling, strange, and scary.

In the months that followed, as the meds sapped my energy and rewired my personality, I had to let things go. First to leave was my internet presence. Writing reviews, applying for school, and posting articles on this website faded as my energy level allowed for not much more than three things; work, sleep, and rest at home. 

Then, in the space of one brutal week, three heavy blows were struck. On Thursday, a relationship with a very close friend changed, leaving much that I desired unfulfilled.  The following Tuesday I received the news that, due to failures at work, my job, which meant so much to me, was also to changed. And then two days later, we received the news that a young friend had died of cancer, a loss that struck heavy like humid skies.

During that hard month of May, I listened again and again to an album Josh Garrels had recently released. One song, “Leviathan”, seemed written just for me.

“All my life, all I’ve done.

Falls apart, is undone.

Built a tower you tore it down.

I am weak. You are strong. 

Who can tame Leviathan?

Yaweah gives and takes away.

Will you curse of bless the Name?

Trails test us like the flame.”

I was confronted with my own inability, but I began to see that such confrontation was in fact a gift, a realization that I, contrary to all of my self-imposed greatness and ability, am not God. I am only a man, and a broken and damaged man at that. God may have given me talents and abilities, successes and opportunities, but when these gifts puffed me up, they were taken away by the very hand that gave them. So these humbling circumstances were, in the words of another Josh Garrels song from that album, “wounds from a friend, severe mercy.” As I learned, and hope to share in more depth next time, such wounds are only given out of love, only to those whom the Lord cares for enough to discipline (Hebrews 12:6-10, Revelation 3:19). 

Here is another realization that came from this period; If I am not creating, or producing something of value, I despair. If I am not achieving something, or working towards a goal, I worry that my life has no lasting value. So to pretend that my efforts amount to something, I keep a list of every book I read. I watch movies only if they are worth watching (and preferably only if they are on my IMDB watchlist so I can check off one more thing). I’ve never cared for sports trophies that so easily dust, but achievements like internships in high school, career success at a young age, and even the existence of this website were mental belt buckles that my mind had prized and polished again and again.

All this toil. But what does it amount to? In the end, none of these things matter before God. All of them will fade like dust, and be revealed for their selfish motives. Only my position as redeemed in Christ can save me on judgement day. 

“Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul;

Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.”

So if my achievements are taken aware, is Christ enough? In him I am to find my identity, not in my position at work. My persona is not to come from being someone who is educated, or artistic, or creative, or sophisticated. My worth is not in my skill at words, or speaking, or understanding, and even the ways that these skills are being used. It is in Christ. 

The words of Jeremiah Burroughs sum up this entire experience well.  “[The Lord] often makes the fairest flowers of man’s endeavours to wither and brings improbable things to pass, in order that the glory of the undertaking may be given to himself.”

The story continues in Pruned and Sustained.