Loud and Quiet's Top 40 Albums of 2016

Loud and Quiet's Top 40 Albums of 2016

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39.

October 7, 2016
Critic Score
75
19 reviews

38.

September 23, 2016
Critic Score
75
32 reviews

Never before has the group’s vocal interplay sounded so lush, so implausibly otherworldly, while Stella Mozgawa’s beats have grown into combustible walls of polyrhythms, meaning that this is the Warpaint’s most danceable, most tactile record to date.

37.

March 4, 2016
Critic Score
70
26 reviews

‘United Crushers’ is here to debunk the notion that Poliça are doomed by their own experience with the simplest of tools – better songs.

36.

April 23, 2016
Critic Score
90
38 reviews

34.

March 11, 2016
Critic Score
75
10 reviews
Created in a month-long haul of 12 hour sessions, ‘Luneworks’ sighs every second of its nocturnal isolation.

33.

May 13, 2016
Critic Score
78
29 reviews
Where ‘Pull My Hair Back’’s seductive lullabies were occasionally so diaphanous as to almost disappear, the increased tempo here adds a welcome heft to Lanza’s slinky songs, leaving a record of confident statements in comparison to its predecessor’s whispers.

32.

September 2, 2016
Critic Score
86
39 reviews
Olsen’s immense talent hovers under the surface throughout, and of course the vocals are consistently stunning.

30.

September 30, 2016
Critic Score
88
30 reviews
It’s brilliant. I can’t emphasise that enough. It’s surprising and clever and current. But its real genius resides in Solange’s radical political voice — she veils her anger in a soft, soulful sound that even her detractors will find hard to ignore.

27.

September 16, 2016
Critic Score
78
26 reviews

The overall experience is simply a much more listenable one; the LP puncturing the occasionally overwhelming sense of foreboding and paranoia with one of positivity – euphoria, even – just as Flegel sings about “suicide machines” et al.

26.

September 30, 2016
Critic Score
82
25 reviews

Part of the beauty of what Hval does is the way her art takes you to a place you didn’t know existed, but in a way where you don’t notice the journey.

25.

June 3, 2016
Critic Score
78
17 reviews
Sublime and hopefully an indication of things to come, this is where Badwan and Zeffira move beyond even the skies, towards the heavens.

24.

July 1, 2016
Critic Score
76
43 reviews
It’s certainly BFL’s most downbeat work to date, but, in it, there’s also a message that hope and strength can crawl out of even the most tragic of situations.

23.

Virginia Wing - Forward Constant Motion
November 11, 2016
Critic Score
83
6 reviews

22.

March 18, 2016
Critic Score
70
13 reviews

An orchestra of influences bubble, perceptibly, into a delicious mash-up that, like any great cocktail, is stronger than the sum of its parts. Exciting and original. And proof that not quite knowing who you are is just fine.

21.

January 22, 2016
Critic Score
80
44 reviews

By basing any adjustments on empirical evidence, the band have imbued this second album with a sense of vindication that ‘Silence Yourself’ lacked.

20.

September 9, 2016
Critic Score
72
15 reviews
‘Splendor & Misery’ is no prog indulgence, and doesn’t come with A Message, a shoehorned “plot” or a shred of ponderous pomposity.Instead, it’s a magnificent, nerve-jangling and altogether rather riveting blast of unflinching white noise and throb, virtuoso rapping and, most improbable of all, richly romantic gospel-choir interludes.

19.

September 23, 2016
Critic Score
80
26 reviews
It’s a concept that plays out beautifully with Rostam’s production softening Leithauser’s lupine power and makes ‘I Had a Dream That You Were Mine’ a storied, sepia waltz through more sentimental times.

18.

September 30, 2016
Critic Score
87
48 reviews
The obvious attraction here lies in admiring Vernon’s artistic skill, but the greater pleasure is in the album’s simple honesty: this is unmistakably the music Vernon felt he had to make – not self-pitying or even particularly sad, but still with an abstracted sense of longing that feels as universal as it does personal.

17.

June 17, 2016
Critic Score
85
30 reviews

‘Puberty 2’ features all of those teenage troughs, and the confusing, thrilling peaks too – the starry eyes, manic ambition and constant distraction of sex.

16.

May 27, 2016
Critic Score
78
20 reviews
After the glitching melodies and bright, busy eclecticism of his debut, and the Orient-inspired, analogue imagination of the follow-up, album number three is Derwin Panda’s most optimistic to date.

13.

June 17, 2016
Critic Score
74
18 reviews
It’s not without the missteps you’d expect from a debut this wild (‘Sleep Song’ is overlong; ‘Chocolate Sludge Cake’ annoying in part) but it seems reductive to denounce ‘I, Gemini’ on account of its lack of focus when we’ve grown so tired of young musicians obsessed with a nostalgia they can’t remember but we can and are sick of.

12.

July 8, 2016
Critic Score
75
27 reviews
‘IV’ ends up resembling more two adjacent EPs than a single body of work. While that might be to the detriment of the whole, the split doesn’t detract from its individual parts, which remain stylish, sensitive and expressive throughout.

10.

October 14, 2016
Critic Score
79
8 reviews

8.

June 3, 2016
Critic Score
79
24 reviews

I could list every track and rhyme off a whole catalogue of touchstones so let me keep this simple: ‘Light Upon The Lake’ is a beautiful thing. Its melodies are beautiful and its honesty of emotion is beautiful. Make it a part of your life.

7.

May 13, 2016
Critic Score
87
3 reviews

6.

July 1, 2016
Critic Score
81
47 reviews

With that enchanting inscrutability, in fact, ‘Wildflower’ feels almost like the Avalanches incarnate: curiously stoic, utterly unique, and the purveyor a weirdly dazzling trip.

5.

May 6, 2016
Critic Score
81
38 reviews
Aside from some staggeringly strong songwriting, the genius of the collaboration is the juxtaposition between these synthetic textures and the soulful, innately-empathetic timbre of Anohni’s voice.

3.

September 27, 2016
Critic Score
84
36 reviews

With ‘Atrocity Exhibition,’ Danny Brown cements himself as a hip-hop great.

2.

March 4, 2016
Critic Score
80
2 reviews

1.

March 4, 2016
Critic Score
81
8 reviews

Half of ‘Varmints’ eschews vocals but with odd exception Meredith manages to cloak high-minded experimentalism in playful pop sensibility.

Original Source: http://www.loudandquiet.com/short/best-albums-of-2016-the-loud-and-quiet-top-40/
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