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| one million years ago |
In terms of blogging, 2016 was like the four years before it: mostly empty, save for the end-of-year ranking of music. The annual Top Ten was the thing that kept Puke on Your Birthday afloat for a half-decade there. By 2017, we were back fully. The difference was work. And if PoYB dies in 2026, then we're gonna blame that on work too.
In short: shit's a lot different in 2026 than it was in 2016. There are so many obvious reasons this is true, so obvious that they need not be mentioned here. But here's a good bellwether of the change: a Top Ten Albums, reexamined. How has life changed? Look no further than how my tastes have changed. There's not complete upheaval, but the list, were I to make it now, looks a lot different than it did then! Only four of the top ten albums are still in the Top Ten! A new number one! At least one album purposefully forgotten about permanently because the frontman was abusive!
This isn't a necessary blog post for today, it's more just to kill time. But let's take a look at the best music of 2016, according to 2026 Joe, and revel in how much has changed.
10. Bacchanal 'n' Philadelphia by Mischief Brew
9. City Sun Eater in the River of Light by Woods
8. Beyond the Fleeting Gales by Crying
7. Moth by Chairlift
6. Down in Heaven by Twin Peaks
5. DARK THOUGHTS by DARK THOUGHTS
4. Home Wrecking Years by Brendan Canning
3. Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest
2. Nonagon Infinity by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard
1. Cardinal by Pinegrove
Honorable Mentions:
20. Ambulance by the Amazing
19. Midnight Run by Connections
18. Ruminations by Conor Oberst
17. Pretty Years by Cymbals Eat Guitars
16. Emotions and Math by Margaret Glaspy
15. Holy Ghost by Modern Baseball
14. Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown
13. Blisters in the Pit of My Heart by Martha
12. Light upon the Lake by Whitney
11. Blackstar by David Bowie
Top Ten Albums of 2016 in 2026
I couldn't have ranked this album in the Top Ten during the year it came out because I didn't know it existed until 2022, when I fell hard for it. I don't know if you can blame 2016 Joe for not knowing, because at the time, I was either not cool enough to know about it, or too cool to know about it (still haven't decided which, and honestly it doesn't matter, it could be both). In this folk-punk album, I feel the thumb of a different dimension pressing down upon me, whispering in my ear of a life unlived.
Good news: Woods holds up. This is the only album that remains in the same position as it stood a decade ago. Number nine just feels right, because this is quirky and chill and not life-changing but instead infinitely satisfying. Tracing Woods story with another ten years of insight, I'd mark this as the moment they went from DIY lo-fi to widescreen. The results past this point are extremely hit-or-miss, and if I had a gun to my head I'd probably choose the lo-fi stuff like Songs of Shame or Bend Beyond, but I'd be remiss to not point out that City Sun Eater is the album that Woods had the best chance of mass appeal, and they almost grabbed it.
Damn, it sucks when a great album from a decade ago remains the most recent album from that artist. Such is the case with Crying, a singular band that effortlessly combined prog-rock with Game Boy. What are these people up to? There was a one-off EP with J-Brekkie in 2020, but that had nothing to do with Crying. I don't think about Crying too often, but when I do, I wonder if we'll ever get a new album, and whether that album could even sniff at the idiosyncratic greatness that occurred ten years ago.
Here's another album by a band that hasn't released anything in the decade since, but under different circumstances—they simply broke up. Frontwoman Caroline Polachek has put out some solo stuff, of course, and by all accounts it's just as good if not better than her Chairlift material, but I dunno. It's not for me. Maybe I'll come around on it eventually. For now, Moth stands at a particular moment in time for me. I mark this album as the first capital-p Pop album I've ever loved. There have been so many brat summers since, but back in 2016, this was new to me, and it was so goddamn exciting. Pop music can be good, and it doesn't necessarily even have to be short for "popular." Wow.
Sometimes just good ol' fashioned rock 'n' roll survives. I'm talking in this case about how I started listening to Twin Peaks' seminal Down in Heaven in 2016 and liked it, and then as the years went on I just kept listening, to the point that now I absolutely fucking adore this little thing. It's not revelatory, it's just simply good. Just a few kids banging out some feel-good rock, ya know. Surviving can also refer to Twin Peaks themselves, who broke up and got back together and just a month ago played anniversary shows for this very album. Somehow they are surviving even as their name remains ungoogleable (sorry David Lynch fans). Good music survives.
There are five bands that I think about when I think about those first few months of parenthood, when being a dad meant sitting in a room with a tiny little thing that couldn't do anything for herself, and just simply trying to keep her calm (and well-fed, sure, and all that other shit, but you get what I'm trying to say). I listened to five albums over and over, and they became my soundtrack for those early months. DARK THOUGHTS is one of those bands. But my first daughter wasn't born for another two years, and I guess that means that AT WORK was the DARK THOUGHTS album that I was into at the time. But I loved that one a lot, and eventually went backward to their first album, and that was obviously good too. There are no DARK THOUGHTS albums that sound all that different from the others, and that's okay. But that also just means that I'm listening to a ten-year-old album and thinking about my eight-year-old daughter, which is chronologically wrong, but that's how it goes!
The great part about Broken Social Scene, but also the confusing part I'll admit, is the open-door policy of the band. If you say you're in Broken Social Scene, then you're part of Broken Social Scene (I am a member of Broken Social Scene). Brendan Canning is a member, and is in fact a co-founder with Kevin Drew. But because of the structure of the band, I didn't really hear all that much from Canning during the promo cycle of the recent Remember the Humans, to the point where I don't honestly know if he is even on the album. I'm pretty sure he is? I'm not too concerned, because I'll always have this little solo album from Canning. It's either the most slept-on album of 2016, or definitive proof that BSS has duped me into fanaticism. I mean, it sounds like one of their albums, and it would probably stand toe-to-toe with a couple of them. I don't really know how else to explain it? It's a secret Broken Social Scene album? Isn't that enough?
The former #1, and still in the Top Three, so don't think of it too much like a tumble downward. I think it's drop by two positions is more indicative of how dramatically the other two album have grown in the past decade than anything regarding Car Seat Headrest's downfall in reputation. Teens of Denial still holds up immaculately. It's still one of the albums of my lifetime that most accurately describes what I mean when I say "I like indie rock." I wasn't bothered by the fact that this is probably, in retrospect, the last time that CSH ever had a good idea. The only GREAT album in the ten years since is a re-do, and the other albums are interesting and fine and nothing more, and now he's out here re-doing Teens of Denial too, making it more, uh, religious? I don't give a fuck. Listening to this one instantly transports me back to my Port Richmond backyard, a big buzz going, getting hit with the fact that this is one of those albums that will live with me forever. I still feel that, every time I hear it.
I think you can probably pinpoint quality more accurately if you pull your nostalgia-tinged glasses off and reexamine. Like, if you remove your personal emotions about the thing and it still holds up, then you know it's a good album. I'm wracking my brain to come up with an emotional connection to Nonagon Infinity, but it's not really like that. I keep this band at a really far emotional distance, to be honest. They are by and large not my band. But they do so many goddamn different things that, mathematically, they are bound to get it right at some point. And with Nonagon Infinity, they got it so right that it's almost baffling. A song cycle that never quits, never lets go of the tempo, the purest psych-rock shit that I have ever or will ever hear in my lifetime. I feel elation, but that has everything to do with the music, not the when or the where or the who or the why. It's just good music. And sometimes, that's a good thing.
I couldn't have known what would happen to and with Pinegrove in the ensuing decade. But we know now, ten years later. I've been with them through it. I fell out just like everyone else. I came back when it was okay to do so. I've listened to Cardinal so many times that I can basically recite it by memory. Every time I listen to it—mostly at night, mostly on the ride home from non-home locations—my heart hurts. It hurts because the music touches some deep part of the human soul, and it hurts because it never portends innocence, because it knows that humans are flawed, and it wears those flaws on its sleeve. I feel flawed when I listen to it, and that makes me feel more whole, in a weird way. Like I know myself better at the end of every relisten, and that makes the long, arduous journey worth it. I will keep this album close to my heart until I die.
MORE HONORABLE MENTIONS: Wriggling by Abi Reimold; Patch the Sky by Bob Mould; 22, a Million by Bon Iver; Caamp by Caamp; Can't Die by Chris Farren; Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not by Dinosaur Jr.; American Band by Drive-by Truckers; Painting of a Panic Attack by Frightened Rabbit; At Hope's Ravine by Holy Esque; Goodness by the Hotelier; Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast; WORRY. by Jeff Rosenstock; Everything You've Come to Expect by the Last Shadow Puppets; Wake Up Laughing by Music Band; Blue Wave by Operators; A Sailor's Guide to Earth by Sturgill Simpson; Album by the Sun Days; We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service by A Tribe Called Quest; Emotional Mugger by Ty Segall; Forever Sounds by Wussy
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