2016, where did you go? It was the year I had a hard time getting heavily invested in any one new record. I spend a fair amount of time with the following records: Bowie's masterful departure note Blackstar gave us the jazz record we never knew we needed. Bon Iver's 22, A Million took Justin Veron's experimental and voice-as-an-instrument experiments to the max, leaving those who still think of him as folk singer in the woods far behind. Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial embodied many of the things I still love about guitar based rock music. Verbose songs, with elements of Built to Spill and Pavement, memorable obtuse choruses and songs that grow.
The majority was spend listened to Radiohead's beautiful A Moon Shaped Pool. It was the first Radiohead record completely missing at least one song with distorted guitar, and most closely related to 2007's lush In Rainbows. Depending about how you feel about bands progressing from their initial sound and beauty in music, the record was sleeper or a tonic to the senses. Amazing string arrangements from Jonny Greenwood spattered across many of the songs, where "the guitars sound like pianos, the pianos sound like guitars." With ties to songs that have been the band's repertoire for quite some time, we finally get a studio version of True Love Waits at it's most abstract. Stand out tracks for me included the dreamy Decks Dark, and the soulful Identikit. Broken hearts truly do make it rain.
