Final Top Ten

This poll, Critics Poll 27 on the Tris McCall site, has been around

for 27 years, and while I haven’t done all 27, I have been 

taking part in it for several years. A lot of fun, with the difference 

between my earlier top ten post and this, 

is that I had to rank albums and singles. Enjoyed them all, and  

the catagories. They were also a lot of fun to do.

Album of the Year Nice As Fuck S/T

#2 Tegan and Sara Love You To Death

#3 Mitski Puberty 2

#4 Darlingside Birds Say*

#5 Game Theory -  Big Shot Chronicles 

#6 Angel Olsen My Women

#7 Margret Glaspy Emotions And Math

#8 Esme Patterson We Were Wild

#9 Game Theory  Lolita Nation

#10 Whitney Light Upon The Lake

Album honorable mention(s) Case/Lang/Vires, Warpaint Heads Up, Joesph I’m Alone, No You’re Not, Sad13 Slugger, Mavis Staples Livin On A High Note, Speedy Ortiz Death Note, Moth Chairlift, Tacocat Lost Times, Shaky Graves, And The War Came*, Colleen Green, I Want To Grow Up.

Song of the Year - Special Teams SunFire

         #2 Nice As Fuck  Door

    #3  Game Theory - Erica’s Word    

       

         #4  Tegan & Sara U Turn

         #5 No Matter Where We Go  Whitney

  #6   Tacocat The Internet

       

         #7 Darlingside Go Back*

 #8 Game Theory Slip

         #9 You and I Margret Glaspy

             

         #10 Angel Olsen Shut Up Kiss Me

Single honorable mention(s) Sad 13 Get A Yes, Joesph White Flag, and SOS (Overboard), Angel Olsen Give It Up, NAF Cookie Lips, Warpaint New Song, Mitsuki, A Loving Feeling & Your Best American Girl,  Daws When the Tequila Runs Out, Roll With The Punches, Miniature Tigers Crying In The Sunshine, Tacocat I Hate The Weekend, Case/Lang/Viers Atomic Number, The Shins Dead/Alive, Courtney Barnett Three Packs A Day, Mavis Staples High Note, Bonnie Raitt, Gypsy In Me, No Such Thing As Illusion Chairlift, Margret Glaspy Emotions And Math, Colleen Green Pay Attention, Tegan and Sara Boyfriend, Shaky Graves Dearly Departed*, Quilt Roller, Tancred Bed Case.

Bed Case

Best singing Darlingside - the whole band harmonizing.*

Best rapping The cast of Hamilton.* 

Best songwriting Jenny Lewis (Nice As Fuck)

Best lyrics Tegan and Sara.

Best album cover Darlingside Birds Say

Best album title Angel Olsen My Woman

Most welcome surprise Whitney Light Upon The Lake

Biggest disappointment Mavis Staples Living On A High Note 

Best production: Special Teams SunFire

Best live show(s) you saw in 2016 Rikki Lee Jones solo at World 

Cafe Live.  

2016 album that wore out most quickly Case/Lang/Veirs

Most overrated artist/album Frank Ocean Blonde.

Crummy album you listened to a bunch anyway The Lumineers Cleopatra

Album that turned out to be a hell of a lot better than you first thought: Mitski Puberty 2. Taylor Swift

Album that felt most like an obligation to get through and enjoy Daws We’re All Gonna Die

Thing you feel cheapest about liking: songs about horrible relationships, a dime-a-dozen, but when done right,  irresistible. 

Most sympathetic or likeable perspective Lake Street Dive, Call Off Your Dogs. 

Most alienating perspective: Trump anything

Artist you respect, but don't like Taylor Swift

Worst song of the year Foals Mountain At My Gates

Song that would drive you craziest on infinite repeat The Record Company Off The Ground. 

Hoary old bastard who should spare us all and retire Bob Weir

Young upstart who should be sent down to the minors for more seasoning Car Seat Headrest

Good artist most in need of some fresh ideas Bonnie Raitt 

Will still be making good records in 2026 The Pretenders 

Prevailing theme or trend of 2016: Everyone waking up politically, even as the great protest songs will be in 2017.  

Coming musical trend of 2017 Everyone continues to get political and write lots of protest songs, most of them wonderful. 

Additional comments? Your own wiseguy questions? 

Special Teams: Kelley Deal and friends, experimental rock, and it works like anything. It’s also why this song 

is the Best Production. It sounds great, especially the vocals.

More here: https://specialteamsmusic.bandcamp.com/releases

The Game Theory songs and albums are in the main lists as they stack up favorably now, just they did when they were originally out in the 80s. 

Whitney, not associated with Houston. Two guys, one from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the other from the Smith Westerns. And sound a little like the Mac, maybe a good song Lindsey or Christine would have written.   

*Albums released in 2015, but didn’t hear until 2016. Of the three, Darlingside, a great neo-90s folk group. That is updated just the way musicians like Dar Williams did in the 90s. Heard on the radio. 

Shaky Graves, not goth, an Austin singer/songwriter, but Dearly Departed is a ghost story. Is one of the lovers in the song dead, but haunting his/her house anyway, and still finding love. Or are both dead, still in love, and haunt their own house? Indie folk music.  Esme Patterson is the other voice, wonderful on her own album, too. If you like the folky side of power pop, you’ll like her. These two I also heard on the radio.  

Hamilton you know. A great history/civics lessson, and what rap should be 24/7. It was seeing excerpts of the musical on the Tony Awards that sold me on this one. 

Lastly, the honorable mentions are unranked. They’re all good, just some more than others. 

TV/NAF

Jenny Lewis

The Voyager

Warner Brothers

Lewis’s final album for Warners has been described by her as her most personal. And it’s easy to see why, as these songs allude to the breakup of Rilo Kiley, insomina, and the death of her father. It’s also a woman wiser, and older taking stock of everything. 

Musically, this is adult rock, and wonderful at that. It’s very tough minded, but also thrilling throughout, none more so than on Slippery Slopes, the album’s best track, about trying to keep a relationship together while realizing that everything about it is a slippery slope to nowhere. 

If you like adult rock that isn’t sedate, this is an album to get, as well as Lewis’s latest project. It’s the first for her own label Loves Way, the supergroup Nice As F**k. NAF rocks, differently than the Voyager, but just as tough, and just as big hearted. 

Andrea Weiss

Pod

The Breeders

Pod

4AD

I became a fan of the Breeders with this album, and never looked back, when I heard the band’s cover of Happiness Is A Warm Gun on the radio. I’d been lucky enough to have heard Eatontown’s WHTG, when Matt Pinfield was programming the music. And beside’s the cover, which is great, later on I heard Only In Threes, a fun, and funny song about a threesome. Loved it. 

Arty fun is the M.O.here. Kim Deal, Josephine Wiggs, and Tayna Donnely. Before Kelley joined the band, and Jim. The drummer on Pod was Britt Walford, have a grand time making much quirky fun. For Deal and Donnely, a cool way to step into the spotlight, and they never let it go. So if you give thew album a chance, chances are you’ll never let it go either. I didn’t.  

Andrea Weiss

TTK

The Breeders

Title TK

4AD

“Title TK” is a publishing term that means “To Come.“ It’s very apt, since this third album was a long time in coming. 

The biggest change in their sound.It’s a different rhythm section than on Last Splash. The music is now adult Indie rock, when that genre was beginning to get off the ground. That doesn’t mean sedate. These songs are anything but mild. It just means different for a different time and place. 

The songs are wonderful. And just as fun as LS, with “Sinister Foxx” being a great example of both. I was glad to buy this album when it was first out. My CD has been retired, so now it’s in digital form. Sounds terrific on headphones, too. 

Andrea Weiss

TNP - MR

Mass Romantic

The New Pornogrpahers

Matador

While I’ll still review some new or current albums, a few that given me lots of writer inspiration over the years, starting with Kelley Deal’s projects, and now TNP. 

One of the best in TNP’s catalog, I’ll put MR on, along with Electric Version, and Brill Bruisers, Twin Cinema is good, even though I’d always had qualms about its production, and while Together and Challengers have their moments, especially Together, they’re a little too mellow for me to really get into now. 

Pop with much power in it, always bubbly, always sparkling and effervescent, with lyrics that can be clear, like “Letter From An Occupant” is a breakup song. Most aren’t, which adds to the fun. Take anything you want from their lyrics. Neko Case sings the showcases, but Dan Bejar wouldn’t hit his stride until Electric Version. Carl Newman is at his best on”The Body Says No,” another breakup song that likens it to world wide diplomacy UN style. 

This album is really where to start with TNP, and then whatever suits your fancy. It’s all here, and you can’t go wrong with any of it. I hear the band will release something next year, and it will be interesting to hear what they do next. 

Andrea Weiss

LS

The Breeders

Last Splash

4 AD Records

Full disclosure: I‘d reviewed the LSXX boxed set as a promo from 4AD, when i was on the download servicing list for Beggars Group. I stand with the review’s conclusion that it’s a must for Breeders fans, but there was too much gush, and over excitement, marring the review. So I’ll set the record straight here. 

This album holds up really well. It sounds as fresh and different today as it did in 1993, but could it have been a hit? On the album charts, yes. “Cannonball,” maybe. I suspect it would succeed as a download/stream/You Tube clip. That it was a hit at all means that it was a good song. The time was right for it too. 

And there isn’t a bad track here either. I like them all, 26 years after hearing it for the first time. I finally got to see the band in 2013, performing the album live. Wonderful show. It was like they never stopped. I never got to see them in the 90s, a rock regret of mine, and I was glad to remedy that years later. 

Andrea Weiss

Rise EP

R. Ring

Rise EP

Mass Market Recordings

I’ve had this EP for a while, but never got the time to review it, until now. In 2013 the duo of Mike Montgomery and Kelley Deal toured Europe. This EP was released then. It’s now available at Bandcamp.

Mike’s song "Steam" is very good, and very sad. It’s aid and comfort to a friend whose wife left him. But for all the sadness, there is also empathy and hope. It’s also the most polished song here musically, which suits it well.

As good as Mike’s song is, it’s Kelley’s songs that power the EP. All are about obsession. “Rumine's,”  statement of, “I am cruel, I don’t care,” extends into the question: “Are you mine?” I like the roughness of these three recordings, especially “Rumine,” as it gives them a really warm feel.

All in all, a great EP. And am looking forward to their first full length album in the spring. 

https://rringsings.bandcamp.com/album/rise-ep

Andrea Weiss