2016 Music: An Intro

Aside from 2016 being a shit year in so many ways, for obvious reasons, it also was a down year in music for me (in some ways). Granted, my girlfriend Sara was living in Pittsburgh for almost half the year, so I had plenty of time to digest new music, and that I did. I listened to a ton of 2016 releases, enough that I could compile and order a list of 15 favorite EPs and 60 favorite albums, making for my most extensive year-end music list yet. I know. I'm a crazy person.

However, despite the sheer amount of releases I thoroughly enjoyed this year, nothing quite hit the highs of the past several years (to the level of To Pimp a Butterfly or Never Hungover Again, for instance). Still, there were plenty of worthwhile releases to be excited about.

Albums that I dug but didn't make the cut for the top 60:

Ryan Allen and His Extra Arms - Basement Punk (Save Your Generation)
Animal Collective - Painting With (Domino)
Mike Bell & the Movies - Room (Lame-O)
Descendents - Hypercaffium Spazzinate (Epitaph)
The Gotobeds - Blood//Sugar//Secs//Traffic (Sub Pop)
Happy Diving - Electric Soul Unity (Topshelf)
The I Don't Cares - Wild Stab (Dry Wood)
Junior Boys - Big Black Coat (City Slang)
Damien Jurado - Visions of Us on the Land (Secretly Canadian)
Leapling - Suspended Animation (Exploding in Sound)
The Lees of Memory - Unnecessary Evil (John Davis Brand Music)
M83 - Junk (Mute)
Merchandise - A Corpse Wired for Sound (4AD)
Owen - The King of Whys (Polyvinyl)
Pity Sex - White Hot Moon (Run for Cover)
Somos - First Day Back (Hopeless)
Teenage Fanclub - Here (Merge)
A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service (Epic)
TTNG - Disappointment Island (Sargent House)
Yuck - Stranger Things (Mame)

Moving on now.