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| Clockwise from top left: Beyoncé; David Bowie; Anohni; Mary Halvorson; Andrew Cyrille; Chance the Rapper. Credit Clockwise from top left: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press; Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images; Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times; Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times; Laurel Golio for The New York Times; Michael Zorn/Invision, via Associated Press |
The music critics of The New York Times share their picks for
the best pop and jazz albums of the year.
Jon
Pareles
1. BEYONCÉ “Lemonade” (Parkwood/Columbia) As a set
of songs, “Lemonade” plunges into one troubled marriage: a cycle of distrust,
betrayal, fury, loyalty and wary reconciliation. It moves sure-footedly through
styles from the rooted to the futuristic; it touches down in gospel, blues,
soul and country with all the programming expertise of the 21st century. And it
presents Beyoncé the singer in guises from ethereal grace to raw ferocity and pain. Then, as a multimedia work,
“Lemonade” goes even further: Its video album, directed by Beyoncé and Kahlil
Joseph with crucial interludes of poetry by Warsan Shire, magnifies the personal
to the archetypal, situating Beyoncé among generations of African-American
women in a long, unselfish, unfinished struggle. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
THE BEST IN CULTURE 2016
Highlights from the year
in Movies,Television, Theater, Pop Albums,Pop Songs, Performances,Classical Music, Dance, Art and Podcasts as chosen by the
critics of The New York Times.
2. DAVID BOWIE “Blackstar” (ISO/Columbia) Bowie made his final album not a summation but a
final metamorphosis. He assembled a studio band of forward-looking jazz musicians to play
songs full of tense ambiguities: harmonic, structural, verbal. The album
confronts mortality with a last burst of probing, passionate invention. (Read
the review | Listen to the Popcast)
 |
| Jarobi White and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, which released its first full album since 1998.Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times |
3. A TRIBE CALLED QUEST “We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service” (Epic)
A Tribe Called Quest reunited long enough to record a full album, its first
since 1998, with all three of its founding rappers: Q-Tip, Jarobi White and
Phife Dawg, who died in March. The group reaches back to the dense, swinging,
sample-from-everywhere sound of its 1990s hip-hop, but it replaces its old
whimsical storytelling with a deeper sense of urgency and impending danger. Rich
with multileveled allusions, the raps confront gentrification, nativism, the
dumbing-down of hip-hop and the rise of Donald J. Trump. “Troubled times, kids,
we got no time for comedy,” Phife Dawg rapped, summing it up. (Read the
interview | Read the review)
4. RADIOHEAD “A Moon Shaped Pool” (XL) The sounds are
often gauzy and pretty on Radiohead’s long-gestating “A Moon Shaped Pool”: bell
tones, hovering vocals, shimmery reverberating keyboards, string arrangements.
But that’s no protection at all against the malaise that fills the songs. Gazing
at demagoguery, environmental ruin and intimate betrayal, Thom Yorke croons
threnodies, not lullabies. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
5. LEONARD COHEN “You Want It Darker” (Columbia) Mr.
Cohen’s entire catalog was, in a way, a mediation on love, death and
spirituality. His last album remained somber and sly, still pithy and still
skeptical about both the human and the divine; it was also attentive to musical
detail. Mr. Cohen’s sepulchral, deadpan intonation is set within angelic
voices, Gypsy violins and often an organ that can be churchy or bluesy; each
verse could be last words. (Read the appraisal | Listen to the Popcast)
6. BON IVER “22, a Million” (Jagjaguwar) Justin
Vernon set the homespun aside for his third album as Bon Iver. It applies
Auto-Tune and other gadgetry; it unleashes samples and distortion; it tucks
phalanxes of overdubbed saxophones and backup vocals into its mix. And its
songs take the cryptic introspection of his previous work into even more
convoluted realms. Yet somehow, something comes through all the multitracking:
a yearning, a compulsion to explore, a vulnerable heart within. (Read the review | Read the interview)
7. MARGARET GLASPY “Emotions and Math” (ATO) Ms. Glaspy’s
stubborn songs need nothing more than drums, bass and her own voice and
electric guitar. Her sinewy music finds an intersection of roots-rock and indie
grunge, as she sings, mostly, about relationships in various states of
misapprehension and unequal expectations. Her voice wraps her lyrics in burlap:
flexible, sturdy and a little rough to the touch.
8. ANOHNI “Hopelessness” (Secretly Canadian) The intent
is vociferously political in this set of songs by Anohni, previously known as Antony Hegarty.
Her voice remains arresting and androgynous, while the perspective, often, is
dystopian and blatantly ironic: calling down a drone bombing, welcoming
constant surveillance and looking forward to boiling oceans and burning
forests. Anohni trades the chamber-pop of Antony and the Johnstons for caustic,
arresting electronica — veering between stark and vertiginous — produced with
Hudson Hawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. It’s not exactly dance music, but it
pushes hard. (Read the interview | Read the live review)
9. SAVAGES “Adore Life” (Matador) Love is a
elemental, colossal force on the second album by Savages: one that can be
barely contained within the drone, gallop, blare and incantations of the
English quartet’s post-punk onslaught. At once muscular and enveloping, the
music nonetheless makes way for Jehnny Beth’s high-beam voice, clear and
determined even as her lyrics battle to figure things out. (Read the review)
10. ELZA SOARES “A Mulher do Fim do Mundo” (Mais Um
Discos) No translation is necessary to recognize the wrath and nerve of “A
Mulher do Fim do Mundo” (“The Woman at the End of the World”) by Ms. Soares, a 79-year-old samba singer who has
long been celebrated in Brazil. She uses the raspy but still commanding state
of her voice to hurl songs about abuse and abusers, poverty and history, lust
and violence. (The album package has thorough translations.) Ms. Soares is
abetted by musicians from São Paulo who describe their music as “dirty samba”;
they spike traditional samba with distorted guitars, pushy drums and unruly
electronics that underline how indomitable Ms. Soares remains.
Jon
Caramanica
1. KANYE WEST “The Life of Pablo” (Def Jam) A grand,
caustic album about grace: finding it, praying for it, falling from it. There
remains no more adept fuser of the sacred and profane working in pop, and no
one else who, time and again, will unflinchingly assess — at his own peril —
the costs of audacity. (Read the review | Read the live review)
 |
Kanye West, who made “The Life of Pablo.”
Credit A J Mast for The New York Times
|
2. BEYONCÉ “Lemonade” (Parkwood/Columbia) The
obvious revenge narrative coursing through this album is about marital infidelity — face value
or fiction, it’s bristling either way. But the more significant revenge here is
against humdrum industry protocols: This is album as medium-length film, and
also album as format-free superstar safe space. (Read the live review)
3. CHANCE THE RAPPER “Coloring Book” (self-released) In a
turbulent year, Chance the Rapper preached the values of exuberance, of sweet
nostalgia, of prayerful vigilance, of shocking jolts of love. (Read the review | Read the festival review)
4. STURGILL SIMPSON “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth” (Atlantic) A
broken soul album from a hardened country singer. Tender yet serrated, Mr.
Simpson finds unexpected fertile ground at the intersection of Bill Withers,
Merle Haggard and Elvis Presley, replete with roadhouse guitar and spiky
classic R&B horns. (Read the interview)
5. YG “Still Brazy” (Def Jam) and PAYROLL
GIOVANNI & CARDO GOT WINGS “Big Bossin, Vol. 1” (self-released) All
nostalgia is imagination of a sort, but not always the same kind. Here are two
complementary interpretations of California rap history. For YG, who is from
Compton, it’s the sound of his upbringing, thick with local hits and local quarrels.
For the Detroit rapper Payroll Giovanni and the Texas producer Cardo Got Wings,
it’s invention and faithful homage. (Read the review)
6. LORI MCKENNA “The Bird & The Rifle” (CN) and DORI
FREEMAN“Dori Freeman” (Free Dirt) Two bare-bones
but astonishingly sturdy albums by female country singer-songwriters. Ms.
McKenna, a veteran, is wry, seen-it-all unimpressed, unerringly wise; Ms.
Freeman, far younger, is well on her way. (Read the review)
7. FRANK OCEAN “Blonde” (Boys Don’t Cry) After four
years of quiet, Mr. Ocean returned with a pile of songs that are slippery,
shifting in and out of focus, and full of characters who are in dialogue but do
little to reassure one another. (Read the review | Read the interview)
8. A BOOGIE WIT DA HOODIE “Artist” (Highbridge the Label)
Heartbreak is the best thing that could have happened to this creaky-voiced
young Bronx rapper, who alternates between puffing his chest and exhaling
sorrowfully. (Read the interview)
9. MAREN MORRIS “Hero” (Columbia Nashville) Yes, the
songwriting is immaculate, and yes, the singing is convincing. But Ms. Morris’s
debut album is most notable for her spitfire wit, poking fun at Nashville
convention, and also at herself. (Read the review)
10. DRAKE “Views” (Young Money/Cash
Money/Republic) and THE WEEKND “Starboy” (XO/Republic) Too big
to fail. (In a good way.) (Honest.) (Read the Drake review | Read the Weeknd review)
11. JOYCE MANOR “Cody” (Epitaph) and PUP “The Dream Is Over” (SideOneDummy) At
every turn, punks are looking inward — in the case of Joyce Manor, the
excavation is in plain sight; in Pup, it’s hidden beneath a squall. (Read the Joyce Manor review | Read the Pup review)
12. A TRIBE CALLED QUEST “We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service” (Epic)
What began simply as A Tribe Called Quest’s long-awaited reunion album ended up
with a heavier remit: to celebrate the life of Phife Dawg, who died in March,
and to speak forcefully to a political moment it couldn’t have wholly
anticipated. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
13. MITSKI “Puberty 2” (Dead Oceans) A stirring,
sometimes harrowing punk album on which meditation meets slashing and burning.
(Read the interview)
14. D.R.A.M. “Big Baby D.R.A.M.” (Atlantic) In which
your jester is also your seducer is also your eccentric is also your historian
is also your disrupter. (Read the review)
15. FLORIST “The Birds Outside Sang” (Double Double
Whammy) Florist’s Emily Sprague is a worrier, and sings like a ghost on these
fragile but determined songs. (Read the review)
Nate
Chinen
1. MARY HALVORSON OCTET “Away With You” (Firehouse 12) Ms.
Halvorson, a guitarist, has a knack for unruly but resolvable tensions, and
here she pushes it practically to the limit. Her compositions are drafted in an
original language, full of rattling counterpoint and eruptive flair, and she
inspires fantastic work from every member of her octet — especially the
brilliant pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, whose chiming sustain contrasts
neatly with her own pluck and decay. (Read the interview)
 |
The guitarist Mary Halvorson, who leads an octet.
Credit Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times
|
2. DAVID BOWIE “Blackstar” (ISO/Columbia) More than a
sly valediction (though it’s one of the slyest ever), Mr. Bowie’s final album
is a chamber of secrets, a brave experiment in style and a morbid yet vibrant
work of performance art. It’s also a reminder that when you want to elevate
your sound, your best bet will always be an elite corps of jazz musicians. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
3. JASON MORAN “The Armory Concert” (Yes) A solo piano
recital, but one that reverberates with echoes of collaboration. A clutch of
terse provocations from a composer inclined to take the long view. A snapshot
that ends up feeling like a panorama, irreducible and immersive. (Read the Critic’s Notebook)
4. CHANCE THE RAPPER “Coloring Book” (self-released)
Exuberance — the earnest, embracing, nonaggressive kind — was often in short
supply this year. So give it up for Chance the Rapper, whose third mixtape
fuses the imperatives of a block party and a worship service. Poignant,
judiciously stocked with guests, it’s soul- and life-affirming without ignoring
harsh realities. (Read the review | Read the festival review)
5. ANDREW CYRILLE QUARTET “The
Declaration of Musical Independence” (ECM) Mr. Cyrille, a
master jazz drummer, holds the center here with regal composure, while acting
as chief instigator. His collaborators — Bill Frisell on guitar, Richard
Teitelbaum on synthesizer and piano, Ben Street on bass — bring a fidgety
eloquence, creating music of dreamlike but restive beauty. (Read the interview)
6. RADIOHEAD “A Moon Shaped Pool” (XL) “It’s too
late/The damage is done,” Thom Yorke sings in one of this album’s calmly
devastating moments. Radiohead has uncorked more snarl before, and strained
harder against formalities, but rarely has it sounded surer of its strengths —
or more flat-out gorgeous, as Jonny Greenwood’s orchestrations deepen the
glassy disquiet. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
 |
Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
Credit Ebru Yildiz for The New York Times
|
7. JONATHAN FINLAYSON & SICILIAN DEFENSE “Moving Still” (Pi Recordings) Mr.
Finlayson is an improvising trumpeter almost never caught off balance, and on
this album he applies that poise to compositions inspired by the poetry of the
chessboard. That might sound cerebral, but the music doesn’t, partly because of
the graceful work of peers like Matt Mitchell on piano and Miles Okazaki on
guitar.
8. KRIS DAVIS “Duopoly” (Pyroclastic)
Ms. Davis, a pianist of investigative instinct, digs in separately with eight
worthy partners, including the clarinetist Don Byron, the drummer Marcus
Gilmore and the guitarist Julian Lage. The results, both song-based and purely
spontaneous, reveal a rigorous mind-meld in real time.
9. WADADA LEO SMITH “America’s National Parks” (Cuneiform)
The grandeur of a natural vista poses just one facet of this 100-minute suite
by this trumpeter. The album, on two discs, also explores notions of
conservation, inheritance and social justice, all through the solemn stirrings
of his chamberesque Golden Quintet.
10. JEFF PARKER “The New Breed” (International Anthem)
and “Slight Freedom” (Eremite) This guitarist stamps each of these albums with
slow-burn charisma and a sense of solitude. “Slight Freedom” is a proper solo
effort, recorded live with a Gibson 335 and effects pedals; “The New Breed” is
a retro-futurist jazz-funk reverie, slithery, smart and cool.