My favorite things in an otherwise shit year: Music edition

This has been a shit year, there's no other way to put it. (Well, maybe there is a more artful way to put it, but I don't feel like it. Describing it as "shit" just seems more appropriate).

I don't think it's necessary to enumerate the many ways in which 2016 sucked. Any year in which David Bowie and Prince died, while Donald Trump was elected president, is automatically a horrible year. All of the other bad things that happened are just more poo clogging the toilet. (Sorry for the scatological metaphors, folks).

So why not take a look at the good stuff from 2016, at least from my perspective.

The year was a good one for music. It has been a long time since I've been as excited about new music as I was in '16.

It started in January when David Bowie released Blackstar, an album that has to rank as one of the best of his career, and there is no hyperbole in that statement. It was as if Bowie knew that this was his final statement to the world, and he put as much care into it as he had any music he'd ever written and recorded.

A few months later, Bob Mould--enjoying a career renaissance--released Patch the Sky. For anyone unfamiliar with him, Bob Mould was essentially the leader and main songwriter in the 1980s post-punk band Husker Du, and then went on to front the power pop band Sugar, as well as recording a number of good solo records. By the early part of the 2000s, he seemed to have lost his way a bit with odd experimental records that didn't quite hit the mark, but in the last four years has returned to what his strength has always been: solid songwriting in a punky but melodic mode. Patch the Sky continued the winning streak begun with 2012's Silver Age and 2014's Beauty & Ruin.

The shittiness of 2016 got even shittier in late May when the Tragically Hip announced that lead singer and lyricist Gord Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. About a month later, the band issued their first album in four years, Man Machine Poem. I covered this album extensively in a previous post. It is one of my favorites of the year.

While on the subject of the Tragically Hip, Gord Downie was busy this year. He certainly hasn't allowed his cancer diagnosis get in his way. If anything, he seems even more driven than ever before. In October, he released Secret Path, a concept album about Chanie Wenjack, a First Nations boy who in 1966 died of exposure in a desperate attempt to return home from a residential school for native children. The entire project is multimedia, with an album, a graphic novel, and a film that was broadcast by the CBC. Naturally, it was almost completely ignored in the United States, but I believe it was one of the most important artistic and cultural achievements of 2016.

One of the few good developments of 2016--for me personally--was reconnecting with the guys I lived with in Shaw Hall at Michigan State. One of those guys, my sophomore year roommate Paul, lives in Texas and has become deeply interested in Texas music. He turned me on to a singer-songwriter named Alejandro Escovedo who a few months ago released an outstanding album called Burn Something Beautiful. The album is a great combination of punk attitude, introspection, melodicism, and heartfelt emotion. It is definitely up there with Man Machine Poem as my favorite record of 2016.

I seem to be running out of time here, so allow me to just list a few more of my favorite records of 2016, and if I get more time I will describe them in more depth.

Drive-By Truckers--American Band (Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are one of the best songwriting duos working in music today).

Childish Gambino--Awaken, My Love! (Childish Gambino is probably better known as Donald Glover, actor and writer of extraordinary talent. He's also a gifted musician, and this record is a must for anyone who likes George Clinton, Funkadelic, Prince, or '70s Philly soul).

A Tribe Called Quest--We Got It From Here...Thanks 4 Your Service (Released just after Trump was elected president--excuse we while I wretch--ATCQ return with a highly politicized salvo, and sound like they never left).

Rolling Stones--Blue & Lonesome (Just when it didn't seem possible, the Stones drop an outstanding album: loose and fun. It's probably because it's a collection of blues covers that it came out so freewheeling and joyous. The Stones didn't feel any pressure to create new material. If this is the last album these guys ever record, they will have gone out in a great way, and traveled full circle to their roots).

The Monkees--Good Times! (Another case in which it didn't seem possible for an old band to record a great album. But the Monkees pull off the seemingly impossible. Of course, it helps that they surrounded themselves with some of the best musicians and songwriters working in the business).

Radiohead--A Moon Shaped Pool (Maybe I'm just a troglodyte, but I've never been overly knocked out by anything these guys have done since OK Computer, but I continue to faithfully buy most of their output because they always push the envelope. This is perhaps the band's most subtle, gentle, and emotional music of their career).

Solange--A Seat at the Table (I actually did the incredibly modern action of DOWNLOADING this album electronically. Do miracles never cease? I did so because I heard all the positive buzz about it and it doesn't disappoint. Beyonce's sister Solange has created an album of atmospheric soul and jazz, with a little politics thrown in).