My Top 20 Albums of 2019 + Supplemental Lists

Introduction

Welcome, patient reader, to yet another self-indulgent, anticlimactic celebration of some of the best albums the realms of “Extreme Metal”, “Indie Rock”, and “Other” had to offer in 2019, now that the page on that year has been definitively turned. I’m glad you’re here. The following post does not/cannot include every great album 2019 produced, since, to maintain my precious sanity, I steadfastly refuse to listen to everything I could. Much of what I do try also kinda sucks. I dunno. More new music is available now than at any point in my life, but with considerably less general buzz around it, not to mention fewer reliable resources with which to uncover it. Every new release is not by rights worthy of inclusion in my personal collection, let alone these countdowns, but the ones that are have something in common. Continue reading “My Top 20 Albums of 2019 + Supplemental Lists”

My Top 20 Albums of 2016 + supplemental lists

2016-year-end

Introduction

Oh, I definitely know I’m late. Believe me when I say that I have no wish to belabor the foul memory of 2016 any further than is absolutely necessary. Truly, it was a vile year, brimming with breathtaking, heartbreaking upheaval on both a political and societal level, and a cavalcade, practically a mocking, extended holiday parade, of unfortunate mortal departures from the worlds of art and film and music, such that I’d never before quite experienced in my own four+ decades on this rock. Eventually, of course, you grow old enough that your heroes die. It’s as incontrovertible as the sunrise. 2016, then, was the year that stated that truism for the record unequivocally, then restated it, reinforced it, and underlined it like an unbalanced grade school teacher a thousand times in neon ink. Continue reading “My Top 20 Albums of 2016 + supplemental lists”