The sheer number of records put out in a calendar year can be positively daunting, but it’s also an energizing reality; while diving into the decision-making below we discovered a half-dozen items that if heard earlier could’ve easily made this list. Put another way, these picks aren’t engraved on stone tablets, they’re just our current favorites from a sea of reissued and archival material made available across 2016. Part one is here.
5. V/A, Subnormal Girls – DIY/Post Punk Vols. 1 & 2 (Waiting Room) + Pylon, Live (Chunklet) The Subnormal LPs span 1979-’84 and are their Berlin-based label’s first releases; the homeland is certainly represented across the entirety, but the first side of Vol. 1 spreads the geography in impressive fashion, covering the USA (IUD), the UK (The Petticoats), France (Zona), Germany (Mannschreck), Italy (Jo Squillo Electrix), Japan (Boys Boys), and Australia (Toxic Shock).
Naturally, Waiting Room’s gender focus is still quite welcome (the albums are a nice match with 2016’s contempo-focused comp Typical Girls on Arizona’s Emotional Response label), but they also emphasize post-punk as a truly global development rather than UK-centric affair. Additionally, while a few of the inclusions do hold posthumous reputations (The Petticoats, X Mal Deutschland, Rosa Yemen), most of this stuff will be unknown to all but the most voracious of post-punk addicts, reminding me a bit of Chuck Warner’s old Messthetics CDR series (but with a global focus).
Live has only grown in my esteem as 2016’s calendar pages have hit the trashcan, with its contents (taped in December ’83 at the Mad Hatter club for an aborted PBS music program) helping to recalibrate post-punk geography more than a little, though admittedly Pylon has long been tagged as one of the USA’s few legitimately post-punk units. It’s still appropriate to group them into the early college rock brigade alongside Athens, GA mates R.E.M. (who covered Pylon’s “Crazy”) and TVD Best Reissues of 2016 counterparts Game Theory and The Feelies, but the arty dance-rock and the vocals of Vanessa Briscoe-Hay underscore their kinship with such units as Delta 5, Kleenex / LiLiPUT, and Au Pairs.
Most of the acts on Subnormal Girls burned brief but bright as part of a grand musical transition, but Live documents one of the major units of the 1980s.
4. Buck Owens, Complete Capitol Singles: 1957-1966 (Omnivore) + OST, Heartworn Highways 40th Anniversary Edition (Light in the Attic) It’s basically romanticizing the issue to state that Merle Haggard, George Jones (and Tammy Wynette), Loretta Lynn, Johnny (and June Carter) Cash, Tom T. Hall, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and indeed Buck Owens produced the first music this writer ever heard. The reality is that they were simply the first artists these ears can remember hearing as part of a larger radio rotation; the rest have long faded from recollection.
The performers sticking in the memory were a cut above. Of the bunch, Haggard and Owens inhabit a special place, and Omnivore’s singles collection reinforces Buck and his band as the architects of a new sound and a striking creative run, constantly fine tooling their innovations and scoring a major string of hits while swimming against Nashville’s pop tide.
Unlike Owens, the “outlaw country” artists populating the soundtrack to James Szalapski’s enlightening documentary Heartworn Highways weren’t as easy to hear as a young lad. In fact, the most of this (sort of) movement’s key contributors struggled beneath the widespread success of Willie and Waylon. Some eventually transcended their underground status, and sadly a few died far too young.
Light in the Attic’s 40th anniversary set comes with enough accoutrements (an 80-page book, an illustrated cast of characters, a poster for the film) that it’s clearly a box set (housed in a wooden container in fact), but the musical core is a terrific 2LP (available separately) and DVD putting the talents of Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Steve Young, Rodney Crowell and others under the best possible spotlight. It’s a logical progression from the titans of Bakersfield and other countrypolitan dissidents; therefore, these releases deserve to be considered together.
3. Terry Allen, Juarez and Lubbock (on everything) (Paradise of Bachelors) + Jim Dickinson, Dixie Fried (Light in the Attic) The Heartworn Highways crowd possessed a higher level of artistic self-consciousness than their C&W predecessors, but there were still clear lines of descent. The same can be said for Terry Allen, though his occasional lumping in with the Texas outlaws is related more to simple convenience than accuracy of categorization.
Allen wasn’t an outlaw but a visual artist who scratched a comparable musical itch in the 1970s and came up with a pair of masterpieces. Lubbock has become a prized item for lovers of country music’s nonconformist wing, and over the years its stature has somewhat overshadowed Allen’s nearly as excellent debut; Paradise of Bachelors smartly brought out ’75’s Juarez first, providing ample time for basking in its endearingly conceptual qualities before completing the combo-punch with the brilliance of its ’79 follow-up.
If the outlaws and Allen branched out of country and folk to predict alt-country and the Americana industry to come, the late Memphis kingpin Jim Dickinson joins them by embodying the messier side of the equation; released by Atlantic in 1972 and largely overlooked for decades, Dixie Fried gradually grew to be cherished by discerning roots lovers the globe over, tapping into blues, country, R&B, rockabilly, gospel, folk, and even low-key pop.
It all blends together exceptionally well, but just as importantly, Dickinson left the seams showing; as per its title (swiped from the LP’s excellent Carl Perkins’ cover) the contents detail what could happen to a culturally curious and artistically famished white boy in the Southern US in the second half of the 20th. Waxed as part of a contract resolution concerning the end of Atlantic Records’ Dickinson-headed studio band the Dixie Flyers (who are featured here along with a top-notch Dr. John), the lack of hoopla benefits a record that’s slight imperfections are an integral part of its value.
2. This Heat, S/T, “Health and Efficiency” and Deceit + Camberwell Now, The Ghost Trade and The EP Collection (Modern Classics) Here’s an example of two halves unifying into a powerful runner-up; This Heat has been discussed so much over the years (with the outfit’s music consistently available on CD and digital) that it can feel as if there is essentially nothing new to say regarding their union of post-punk and art-rock.
Experimental and uncompromising enough to appeal to the early denizens of Rough Trade (said label having initially issued Deceit) while their adeptness attracted discerning prog heads, particularly those hep to Rock in Opposition, This Heat endure as one of their era’s most enduringly relevant bands, predicting indie’s experimental side, the post-rock explosion, and even the edgier strains of electronica.
But if reissued alone, it’s debatable if This Heat would’ve made this list. Yes, their albums and EP were long overdue for a vinyl repress, but as stated above the music has long been around for the hearing; really, it’s Modern Classics’ subsequent issue of Charles Hayward’s post-This Heat venture Camberwell Now that completes and significantly elevates this pairing.
Initially intended as a reignition of activity for This Heat, Camberwell Now ultimately reduced the post-punk sensibility of Hayward’s prior outfit and deepened the experimentation as exemplified by the crucial tape manipulations of Stephen Rickard. Bassist Trefor Goronwy completes a unit that had few peers (and unfortunately not many more listeners) across their too brief existence. Contemplating this combined bundle of reissued greatness is enough to momentarily sidetrack the nagging crumminess of 2016.
1. Bill Evans, Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest (Resonance) + Circle, Circle 1: Live in Germany Concert and Circle 2: Gathering (Stretch) The jazz buff’s conundrum, well one of them anyway, is to end up standing in an isle in a record shop, staring down at an LP while silently debating: “Do I really need another piano trio album?” The answer is almost always yes, and Some Other Time triggers an unequivocal affirmative.
Evans cut a lot of discs in his career, with a high percentage utilizing the trio format, but this group featuring the pianist’s favored bassist Eddie Gomez (in superbly communicative form) and drummer Jack DeJohnette (more subtly expressive in his pre-Miles period), was documented on only one other occasion (five days prior to this date on At the Montreux Jazz Festival). LP one is the shelved ’68 album, the second is loaded with alternates and outtakes; heavy on standards as was Evans’ wont, the results are exquisite.
Due to his accessible nature, by ’68 some evaluated Bill Evans as passé; frankly, that was a severe miscalculation. On the other side of the coin, when Circle emerged in 1971 more than a few were perplexed by the sounds on offer. The quartet put out two albums that year on CBS/Sony; they capture pianist Chick Corea’s too brief immersion into the avant-garde, help establish multi-reedman Anthony Braxton as a leading light in ’70s progressive jazz, and add to the résumés of two especially strong post-Coltrane rhythm men in bassist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschul.
In a better world, these releases from Corea’s Stretch label would include a vinyl pressing, but on a shittier planet they would continue to be “obtainable” mainly in low quality MP3s circulating in the sketchy folds of the internet; these editions sound much better than any digital incarnation I’ve heard previously, and if a physical edition isn’t (yet) in the cards their newfound availability substantially improves our current musical situation.
