- Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, & the Renegades of Nashville, Michael Streissguth
- Music: What Happened, Scott Miller
- The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie & the 1970s, Peter Doggett
- Low, Hugo Wilcken
- Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste, Carl Wilson
- Elvis Died For Somebody's Sins But Not Mine: A Lifetime's Collected Writing, Mick Farren
- Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Dylan, Seeger & the Night that Split the Sixties, Elijah Wald
- Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece, Domenic Priore
- Frank Zappa and The And, Paul Carr, ed.
- 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year In Music, Andrew Grant Jackson
- Anti-Rock: The Opposition to Rock ‘n’ Roll, Linda Martin & Kerry Seagrave
- Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction To Its Own Past, Simon Reynolds
- White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities & 1980s Indie Guitar Rock, Matthew Bannister
- Shock & Awe: Glam Rock & Its Legacy, Simon Reynolds
- Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records & The Transformation of Southern Soul, Mark Ribowsky
- Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, Greil Marcus, ed.
Honorable Mention... #20-11:
20 Kicked Out of Eden, Javier Escovedo (Saustex)
19 Modern Country, William Tyler (Merge)
18 High Beams, 1-800-BAND (Almost Ready)
17 Pile, A Giant Dog (Merge)
16 Stiff, White Denim (Downtown)
15 You’re Dreaming, Cactus Blossoms (Red House)
14 Wild Stab, I Don’t Cares (Dry Wood)
13 On Vacation, CFCF (International Feel)
12 Going Down In History, Waco Brothers (Bloodshot)
11 case/lang/veirs, case/lang/veirs (Anti/Epitaph)
10 Guided Meditation, Hurry (Lame-O): By sheer coincidence, this album was queued up on the morning of November 9 as the soundtrack to my walk to work, and, needless to say, opening track “Nothing To Say” left me a puddle: “There’s no way, there’s no way, there’s no way we are doing this.” That unfortunate association aside, Guided Meditation is a lovely jangle-pop record with tracks like “When I’m With You,” “Fascination” and “Shake It Off” (no, not that one) shimmering and shining like the well-polished gems they are. While maybe not the instruction manual that its album title hints at, Guided Meditation, like the best lovelorn guitar pop, still offers plenty of tips for navigating matters of the easily-bruised heart. RIYL the #9 album on this list. 
09 Light Upon the Lake, Whitney (Secretly Canadian): I adored the first Smith Westerns’ record (2011’s Dye It Blonde -- #03 on that year’s best-of list!), but didn’t connect with their subsequent follow ups, so I was pleasantly surprised that the band’s post-break-up offerings were both solid. Cullen Omori’s New Misery was cromulent, but Whitney’s main men, guitarist Max Kakachek and drummer Julien Ehrlich)’s Light Upon the Lake was a revelation, with string and horn sections, easygoing warmth to spare (just reading that album title makes your blood pressure go down a few points, no?), and, in “No Matter Where We Go”, the charmingest song released this year. 
08 (tie) Leave Me Alone, Hinds (Mom & Pop) / Lost Time, Tacocat (Hardly Art): All the young dudes have had their say on this list; let’s give it up for these bands of ladies (and the one dude in Tacocat), whose cool, confident take on garage-pop was a welcome antidote to the hyper-masculine chest-beating nonsense that forever scarred 2016. Spain’s Hinds seemingly time-traveled from the 1990s with their slacker-y garage, while Seattle’s Tacocat also shared in ‘90s love (“Dana Katherine Scully”) but is also unabashedly on the front lines of here and now: to wit, “The Internet; “Men Explain Things To Me”. Listen up: There’s hope for us all yet. 
07 Up to Anything, Goon Sax (Chapter Music): The sonic equivalent of the introspective kid toeing at an unseen mark on the floor in the corner of the party, Up to Anything exuded a quiet, unassuming charm, one sorely needed in this bombastic year. Aussie frontman Louis Forster (son of the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster) seems largely concerned with bad haircuts, alternately hoping/dreading someone will notice him, and eating ice cream, while his equally low-key bandmates James Harrison and Riley Jones pluck plangent guitar lines, toot piccolos and plink xylophones, it all sounding like it was beamed straight from a jangle-pop album recorded on a rainy day in 1984. If Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial is this year’s Big Picture Young Man’s Album, Up to Anything is its antipodean, quotidian sibling. 
06 ★, David Bowie (Columbia): Arguably one of the finest “grappling with mortality” albums ever, at turns reflective, restless, mournful, hopeful and fun (dig the absolute blast Bowie and his conspirators are having on “‘Tis A Pity She Was A Whore”), ★ would’ve made the list even if Bowie were fit as a fiddle and still with us mere mortals. Influenced by everything from 17th-century John Ford (the aforementioned “‘Tis A Pity...”) to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly and everything in-between, ★ was, to mix metaphors, the sound of a 69-year-old man pushing the musical ball forward, even as he knew he was racing against the clock. It brings a smile to my face, knowing that people who hadn’t listened to Bowie in years (or decades, even!) queued up ★ after his death to pay tribute to the man and were surprised by the new, adventurous sounds and ideas pouring forth from the speakers. 
05 Human Performance, Parquet Courts (Rough Trade): Second to Car Seat Headrest in the guitar-indie-rock-is-alive-and-well sweepstakes, Parquet Courts finally clicked for me this year, after several albums I admired and enjoyed but didn’t entirely love. To these ears, Andrew Savage and Austin Brown finally calibrated their Pavement/Krautrock/Lou Reed influences, and the results were marvelous: “One Man No City,” “Berlin Got Blurry,” the title track rattle and hum with the excitement of young life in the city, while the lyrics everywhere point to a deeper growth and maturity. 
04 Eyes on the Lines, Steve Gunn (Matador): Gunn proves himself to be the mellowest guitar shredder you’ll ever come across… if you can find him. Eyes on the Lines (be it horizon, highway stripe) is an ode to the life peripatetic, with narrators shrugging over missed flights, stopping to smell the roses, finding their own way, all set to Gunn’s consistently mesmerizing guitar work, tunes unspooling at a leisurely, but never less than gripping, pace. I caught him live at Great Scott in Allston this year, and the crowd was rapt, almost forgetting to breathe. 
03 A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, Sturgill Simpson (Atlantic): When early reports noted that Simpson’s third album would be heavy on Memphis soul, I was delighted at the prospect of having the question answered: What would it sound like if Hag or Waylon recorded at Stax in 1966? Simpson pulls it off with aplomb, effortlessly mixing genres (and throwing in an illuminating cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom”) while tackling Big Topics like fatherhood and manhood in the 21st century, that even this childless weirdo/man-boy can appreciate. While there are a lot of “young” records on this list, A Sailor’s Guide offer proof that there’s plenty of material to be gleaned from growing up. 
02 Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Margo Price (Third Man): Coming on like Loretta Lynn’s granddaughter, right down to the echo of the album title, Price turned in one of the year’s best Americana debuts (and a great SNL performance, to boot). Over 11 tracks, Price chronicles a life of hard livin’, hard drinkin’ and the imperative to share her art with the world, from the unflinching diary of the six-minute opener “Hands of Time” to the tough-as-nails honky tonk of “Hurtin’ (On the Bottle)” and “Weekender”. And like the aforementioned Lynn, she’s got spunk to spare, sending kiss-offs to a selfie-obsessed man on “About To Find Out” and counting up the hours she wasted on a bad boyfriend on “Four Years Of Chances”, before giving him the boot. Equal parts heartfelt, harrowing and hilarious, with Midwest Farmer’s Daughter Price has done her part to keep the classic country fires burning. 
01 Teens of Denial, Car Seat Headrest (Matador): Just as luck would have it, this quintessential Young Man’s Record rocks my world as I hit my mid-30s stride. Never mind the calendar, though; frontman/driving force Will Toledo’s ostensible paean to youth and young manhood transcends age: ennui, shame, loneliness, bad-decision-making… it’s all there. And somehow, in spite of those topics, it’s one of the most inspiring, uplifting, shiver-inducing albums of the year. (“Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales”’s “It doesn’t have to be like this,” are the eight most emotion-wracked syllables uttered this year.) With Toledo deservedly getting kudos, and a Matador contract, after years of DIY, Teens of Denial is 2016’s best proof that old-fashioned guitar/indie/college rock remains a heartfelt, viable, thoroughgoing concern.
FAVORITE NON-2016 MUSICAL DISCOVERIES
No Other, Gene Clark (Rhino/Elektra, 1974): Between my enjoyment of the the Numero Group’s “Cosmic American” box set and the deeper dive I took this year on the Byrds’ discography, it would have been impossible for Gene Clark’s third album not to end up in heavy rotation. What a revelation! An expensive risk-cum-failure at the time -- Geffen spent nearly $100,000 on an album from a guy who hadn’t had a hit in nearly a decade -- and with its odd mix of psych/‘70s country/singer-songwriter/gentle funk/rock, it didn’t stand a chance at the time, but it’s now rightly recognized as a masterpiece. 
Live ‘70, Fela Kuti & Ginger Baker (Regal Zonophone, 1971): After seeing footage of these two doing their thing in the British music documentary, All You Need Is Love, I knew I had to track down this album, and I was not disappointed. It’s a non-stop Afrobeat party (the opening track is called “Let’s Start,” so you can’t say Fela didn’t warn you), punctuated by horns, howls and Baker’s explosive drumming. To ensure that my weekends got off on the right foot, I listened to this album nearly every Friday night this year. 
Low, David Bowie (RCA Victor, 1977): Like everyone else, my first quarter of 2016 was monopolized by Bowie. ★ got quite a few spins, but among the older albums, Aladdin Sane and especially Low got the nod when I wanted to pay tribute to Mr. Jones. Crisp, clear and brittle, Low will, for me, forever be associated with January, to say nothing of providing the perfect soundtrack for reading about Bowie, which I spent all that month doing. And it provides me another opportunity to share my favorite album title pun of all time.
post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys: Having devoured Uncut magazine’s “Ultimate Music Guide To The Beach Boys” back in early June, I gave myself the summertime project of getting acquainted with everything from 1967’s Smiley Smile through 1979’s L.A. (Light Album), a dozen albums of varying quality, but ones that were never less than interesting. Do we need songs about Johnny Carson (the synthpop-dabbling Love You’s “Johnny Carson”) or eleven-minute disco remixes of thirteen-year-old songs (“Here Comes The Night”)? Oh, probably not. In a twisted sort of way, exploring these albums provided me an opportunity to think about music fandom “back in the day” (to say nothing of what it meant and took to be a “career act” in the 1970s). It’s a well-trodden point nowadays, but If I was a Beach Boys fan in 1978, I had to go out and buy a hard copy of M.I.U. Album and learn to like “Hey Little Tomboy” and “Match Point Of Our Love” to maximize my ROI. In 2016, I pay Spotify $8 a month and gorge on second-tier Beach Boys to my heart’s delight, with only a fraction of the emotional involvement. It’s the trade-off we’ve all made. Of course, I just overpaid for a vinyl copy of M.I.U., so it all comes out in the wash.
Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson (Sire/Reprise, 1988): A minor detour on the abovementioned BB journey, but a worthwhile one. Drowned in synths as all hell, but the songs are there, and knowing what Wilson went through (hi, Dr. Landy!), this album’s existence, to say nothing of its enduring quality, is a miracle. And in the raging storm of 2016, what better lyric to grab onto than “Love and mercy to you and your friends tonight”? 
Otis Blue / Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul / Live at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go (Re-issue), Otis Redding (Volt, 1965 / 1966 / 2016): Better late than never, right? After a promise to myself to investigate Stax as much as I had Motown -- after a viewing of the great Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story documentary -- and being blown away by clips of Redding’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, it was time to dig into Redding’s albums. It’s a sadly small discography (and I didn’t go in order, and haven’t even gotten to the posthumous stuff), but these three got the most attention. (This auditory investigation was augmented by Mark Ribowsky’s 2015 book, Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records and the Transformation of Southern Soul, which proved to be a fine companion guide to the man, his label and his music.) 
‘60s Hammond Jazz: Not so much a specific artist as a vibe, maaan. Inspired by a love of Shirley Scott’s “Soul Song,” (which WMBR DJ Brother Wayne plays at the end of his weekly soul/R&B/funk “Lost & Found” show) I fell down the Hammond rabbit hole and created a Pandora station fueled by the likes of Jimmy McGriff, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Lonnie Smith, Charles Earland, et al, pressed play, clicked “thumbs up”, poured a martini or two and felt impossibly hip.
SOME STRAY, NEW-TO-ME TRACKS
“Sun Goddess,” Ramsey Lewis
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