Greetings from Laurel Canyon!
For a year in music, 2016 was well… sad. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t all suck, but 2016 is a year that will go down in history for things “stranger” than music. What we did have were some great melancholy albums and only a few breakout newcomers. From my turntable, here are the standouts.
It’s too late to articulate it / That empty feeling / You share the fate as the people you hate / You build yourself up against others’ feelings / And it left you feeling empty as a car coasting downhill / I have become such a negative person / It was all just an act / It was all so easily stripped away / But if we learn how to live like this / Maybe we can learn how to start again / Like A child who’s never done wrong / Who hasn’t taken that first step
Almost out of thin air, indie rocker Will Toledo emerged under the awkward moniker Car Seat Headrest with anthem after anthem for a generation of Millennials who have seemingly gone MIA. Maybe they’re too loaded to climb out of their sleeping bags at Bonnaroo, but I’m predicting (hoping) young artists have more to say in 2017 than they did in ’16.
Other top 2016 standouts: the soulful collaboration of Ray La Montagne and My Morning Jacket, the master future prog of Yeasayer, swan songs from School of Seven Bells, sad songs from Nick Cave, Dandy Warhols return to form, and Frank Ocean got it together enough to make a groove. The Growlers finally made the cool album we knew they could. Great singles streaming from Cat’s Eyes, Parquet Courts, Brian Jonestown, Angel Olsen, Childish Gambino, and Leithhauser & Rostam.
Then there was Radiohead in their third decade producing a phenomenal release and performing live with more passion and soul than ever. And finally there was Blackstar, Bowie’s 25th and final album. Call it the most memorable album of the year and the finale of this set of Idelic Hits. I’m daydreaming of Bowie standing on his own star far beyond the problems of life on Earth in 2016.
Something happened on the day he died / Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside / Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried / (I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)
Long live the Thin White Duke, long live The Idelic Hour—and good riddance to 2016.
The Idelic Hit of the Week: Car Seat Headrest – Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales
