The Best 100 Albums of 2016 (Part 1)

What a great year 2016 was! Nothing bad happened at all and everyone was unanimously happy! It's hard to even think of a single event that caused anyone heartache or anxiety or anger. Thinking… thinking… nope, 100 percent good vibes this year! Yes siree, 2016 has been smooooth sailing for everyone, with nothing unpleasant to speak of, and we're sad to see it go. So, as we bid these golden 365 days adieu, let us look back at the Noisey staff's 100 favorite musical releases that came out during this not at all catastrophically atrocious shitstain of a year.

Last year, the entire world unanimously agreed that Future was better than Jay Z, Nas, and Biggie combined (this is scientific fact, don't look it up). At the start of 2016, the Atlanta rapper returned with  Purple Reign, an initially divisive project that history will remember as one of his strongest. Tracks like "Inside the Mattress" and "Wicked" find our hero Nayvadius Cash in his finest form: an intoxicating blend of syrupy bass and lyrics that are raw, self-destructive, desperate, careless, sick, hopeless—unwilling to compromise reckless decision making or even recognize pain. Then there's "Run Up," which—fuck, who's ready to stand on some furniture?  Purple Reignmay be looked at as the final act in Future's villain era, a run of projects that continually outdid the previous installment with the ability to both turn up and self-loathe.  Purple Reign's finest moment comes near the end with "Perkys Calling," a linchpin song in the quest for any card-carrying member of #FutureHive—an existence determined by the ability to not only listen to Future, but understand him. — Eric Sundermann

Abra, the pop defender of Atlanta's sort-of-hip-hop crew Awful Records, was born in New York, grew up in London, moved back stateside, and ditched college to write music. This year, the singer and producer hit us with  PRINCESS,an atypically sparse pop and R&B record. Yet another Atlantan with the world at their feet, Abra takes her love of fantasy, rebellion, and 1980s motifs, and wields them to create soundscapes under brutally and cavalierly honest stories of sex, heartbreak, and self-love. For all its bravado,  PRINCESSfeels decidedly coming of age while also sounding way cooler than growing up should be allowed to sound.  — Issy Beech

JANK, the pop punk band from Philadelphia, scored a hit with their first EP, Awkward Pop Songs, and quickly followed up with an equally good if not better second record,  Versace Summer. With a combination of jazz and surf rock, JANK crafts tales of everything from losing a bicycle and hoping it's happy to the Grim Reefer, a nod to the paranoia involved with smoking weed. Like we wrote earlier this year, "If  Awkward Pop Songs was JANK's joke-cracking icebreaker, then Versace Summer is your fourth time hanging out with them, the point where things start to get less funny and more serious." With it, they give listeners a sense of optimistic nihilism, creating sad songs about sad things in a way that allows fans to laugh a little at being sad. — Annalise Domenighini

"[Don't Step on Your] Shadow,"a track from Kaleidoscope's  V.2 N.2: ZONE EXPLORERS, sounds like drifting in and out of heavy sedation while listening to doctors in the corridor outside discuss your brain surgery. Shiva, from New York's JJ Doll, continues his excellent and bizarre take on punk rock that blends elements of Dawn of Humans distortion, the psyched paranoia of Destruction Unit, and some Dead Head-type jams that he somehow manages to pull together through interesting melodic hooks. This is New York punk inspired more by Velvet Underground, Urban Waste, and Eric B and Rakim than any CBGB matinee hardcore stuff, and it sounds cool as hell. — Tim Scott

BJ Barham is known most popularly for fronting the rock 'n' roll band American Aquarium, but a forced quarantine in a Brussels hotel following the Bataclan attacks in November 2015 turned his attention home. Homesick but unable to leave the country, Barham wrote this entire record in the span of those two days, a mix of personal and fictional stories centered around his hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina. In  Rockingham, Barham details the decline of the American Dream from the perspective of a World War II veteran forced to watch jobs promised to him and his fellow soldiers dry up and disappear due to mechanization or lack of positions. Though not written to be a political statement, the album becomes a haunting one in the Trump era of America, where thousands of members of the working class attempted to reconcile who they are with their lack of income in a violent and xenophobic way during the election. By recalling life in his small hometown, Barham tells the stories of these people stuck in dead end jobs in a rapidly decaying town, unhappy and unable to pay the bills, that feel applicable to the residents of America's more populous cities  —Annalise Domenighini

Beach Impediment Records is fast becoming a standout hardcore label, and in 2016 it released records by Warthog, Blood Pressure, Strutter, and Montreal powerhouse Omegas.  Power to Exist, the much anticipated follow-up to 2011's Blasts of Lunacy, has Omegas further exploring weird Die Kreuzen-type outsider Midwest punk and raging early New York City hardcore. Tracks like "Drug Zoo" and "Duster's Blues" come with some heavy "overturned office furniture" vibes, and by the time vocalist Ryan "Hoagie" Hogan gets to the unhinged "Lord and the Stud," it's about time for everyone to get outside and walk it off.  — Tim Scott

Garbage has had a string of shit luck over the last 15 years. It all started with the unfortunately timed release date of their third album,  Beautiful Garbage—three weeks after September 11, 2001. The album was lost in the chaos, and its shortcomings largely derailed the momentum Garbage had gained throughout the 90s that led them to become international superstars. Anyone who remembered the MTV-dominating glory days of Garbage—specifically, its badass cult-icon frontwoman Shirley Manson—was quietly pulling for them to make a triumphant return. The faithful were rewarded this year with  Strange Little Birds, a return to form for Manson and company. Garbage makes no attempt at tacking on cheap modern gimmicks or compromising on their sound, and Manson's attitude is the same as it ever was —a glimmer of light peeking out of an abyss of darkness.  Strange Little Birds is a refined and matured version of the Garbage that people fell in love with in the 90s, and after 15 years, it was worth the wait.  —Dan Ozzi

Blood Bitch is an album about many things, including, but not limited to, vampires, menstrual blood, and capitalism. But beneath those heady themes lies a fundamental human question: Can art exist beyond the politics of power—and if so, what does that look like? In seeking the answers, and in the taboos Hval confronts along the way,  Blood Bitch emerges as a remarkable piece of art unto itself that extends well beyond the sphere of music. Just as remarkable are the pop sensibilities Hval wields to allow an otherwise esoteric pursuit to get under your skin. Alongside collaborators like noise producer Lasse Marhaug, Hval's penchant for hooks, rhythm, and deconstructed pop amounts to a rich, cohesive listen that, for all of its conceptual and sonic complexities, makes it easy to leave on repeat. "Conceptual Romance" and "Female Vampire" are among its more conventional songs, guided by Hval's featherlight voice (never has talk of speculums, technological dread, and "soft dick rock" sounded so sweet), synth washes, and tribal rhythms. By the time you get to the sampling and dissonance of tracks like "The Plague," you'll be too deep into parsing her existential puzzle for it to phase you. Hval herself still may not know the answer, but that's perhaps the point. "Relax," she reminds us. "It's just blood." — Andrea Domanick

In the beginning, there was Torontopia: a romanticized 2000s Toronto where Broken Social Scene's runaway success with its infinite members reverberated as an idea of infinite possibility throughout a community of indie, rock, and punk bands—a notion that they too could access such heights. The end, happily ever after, right? Not so much. Hooded Fang shed any trace of their late Torontopia indie-pop origins on  Venus on Edge for lo-fi post-punk dystopia, exposing the shortcomings of their so-called music city metropolis and others. Barbed, distorted guitar slashes tear down white privilege on "Shallow," commodification on "Dead Battery," condo culture on "Glass Shadows," and then some. With its synthesized death knell, album highlight, "A Final Hello," exemplifies that Hooded Fang's smallest lineup has produced their biggest sound, echoing melodic guitars, eruptions of distortion, and driving bass.  —Jill Krajewski

Fatimah Warner's debut mixtape as Noname now looks like it'll be her last.That isn't shocking, though:  Telefonetook three years to see the light of day precisely because Warner is such a relentless perfectionist. As soon as she ventured into the limelight with a gut-wrenchingly candid verse on Chance the Rapper's  Acid Rap cut "Lost," it was clear that she cared more about her poetic realization than the shiny baubles of critical acclaim. So, in part to emphasize her impermanence,  Telefone opens with a brief manifesto, delivered over soft neo-soul in her semi-detached style: "And I know the money don't really make me whole / The magazine covers drenched in gold." For Warner, it's about "The little things I need to save my soul."  Telefone's focus on mortality isn't a just comment on artistic retreat; young black Americans have to think about death in a way that young white Americans simply do not. So Warner considers death while surrounding herself with a group of prodigies, including Raury, The Mind, Xavier Omar. On closer "Shadow Man," she gathers a few of them to prepare their own eulogies. Saba: "Bury me in satin, tell the pastors say the sad shit." Smino: "Tell em play Metro Boomin' at my funeral." And as for Warner, she speaks to God in public: "My funeral a Disney fable / Cause the King about to take me home." — Alex Robert Ross

Carlotta Cosials's voice sounds like so much fun that it's practically demonic. The Hinds member is and always has been the devil inside the listener's head. She's not just telling you to cancel tomorrow morning's alarm, take another shot, and call in sick. She's telling you to throw your phone into oncoming traffic, sneak in a bottle of tequila, and quit your job. But  Leave Me Alone hides anxieties beneath its wine-addled revelry and Bay Area guitars, with Phil Spector-esque harmonies carrying the same heartache and longing that his 60s girl groups once embodied. "And I Will Send Your Flowers Back," a pretty and ragged ballad, finds co-vocalist Ana Perrote drawling about lost love deferred, Cosials whispering and then wailing above her; first it's a "gap in my chest," then a "search for your soul," and then, finally, "What a fucked up mess." On "Easy," Perotte sings, "You said it was gonna be easy / Now you're driving away […] Now I'm all on my own." These moments of shattering vulnerability suggest that Hinds have plenty of places to go, and they'll be an essential pop band for as long as they damn well please. — Alex Robert Ross

Heartbreak is the central theme to Elise Davis's first full-length album,  The Token. Though it's one of the pillars of country music, female singers are rarely allowed to write about it outside the context of being scorned and destroying their ex's property—see Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead," Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats," or anything by Kelsea Ballerini or Taylor Swift (before she went full-on pop) if you need more proof that women are only really permitted to be angry or in love if they want to make it big in the industry. Instead, Davis writes songs about being in love, losing love, wanting and being wanted, and sometimes just wanting something casual. Elise Davis is able to sing about the highs and lows of it all in a way that's both reflective and forward-moving. She sings about the despondence of a break up and the nihilism that can come with feeling terminally single, of being at the lowest of the lows, while also celebrating the independence of not being attached on songs like "Penny" or "The Token." — Annalise Domenighini

There are only a handful of albums every year that can force a listener to pause, shut off their surroundings, and just listen. But solo guitarist Daniel Bachman releases such albums with a remarkable consistency. His work has always been, loosely, American primitive, tracing the veins of Jack Rose, Robbie Basho, and John Fahey. But the Virginia-based 27-year-old's self-titled album is slower and more meditative than anything that he's previously released. The acoustic drones that ground both "Brightleaf Blues I" and the 14-minute "Brightleaf Blues II" allow Bachman more space to breathe and consider his next slide or bend on the neck. Elsewhere, he has fun: the bright, swung rhythms of "Wine and Peanuts" ramble around, and "Watermelon Slices on a Blue Bordered Plate" winds around itself, the trills and slides sparking off but never deviating from the steady picked pace. Among the chaos of the year, Daniel Bachman was perfect, considered relief. — Alex Robert Ross

Their career may have been short-lived, but G.L.O.S.S. accomplished more in 20 months than most bands do in a lifetime. The Olympia hardcore group, whose name is an acronym for  Girls Living Outside Society's Shit, delivered their first release in January 2015 and it was, in every respect, the most enraged collection of songs ever written for the marginalized and disenfranchised in the face of a violent world. That is until their second and final release,  Trans Day of Revenge, which came out the day after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando—an attack that killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. To some, it functioned as an outlet at a time of acute hurt and hopelessness, but that's what G.L.O.S.S. were always for. They folded political and emotional complexities into blistering whirlwinds of rage, resistance, and possibility.

They may be done, and their entire discography may clock in at around 16 minutes, but G.L.O.S.S. will be remembered as one of the most important hardcore bands of the decade.  Trans Day of Revenge was needed on June 12, it's still needed now, and it'll be needed in the years to come. With that in mind, you would struggle to find a more fitting parting statement than: "Trans day of revenge / Not as weak as we seem." — Emma Garland

Last year, Iceland's black metal scene exploded onto the international stage, dominating the conversation to the point that a near-immediate backlash fomented in forums and snide Facebook comments. Undeterred, the Icelanders continued to assert their dominance, pumping out release after release of cold black fury—often via the Vánagandr tape label and distro. The duo behind Vánagandr also plays together in Naðra (as well as various other projects—Martröð, Misþyrming, Carpe Noctem, and so on), who are one of the scene's most unique entities. They unexpectedly dropped their full-length debut,  Allir vegir til glötunar, following an album leak, but in spite of the release's inauspicious circumstances, the album had an immediate impact on fans and critics alike. More straightforward and melodic than many of their knottier peers, Naðra channels the grandiosity, savagery, and epic, folky inflections of 90s black metallers like Borknagar or Windir, intensifying the effect with their own lo-fi, fiercely DIY approach. Out of all the compelling new black metal projects that continue to sprout like magic mushrooms from the volcanic soil, Naðra most successfully captures the island's wild, untameable essence—and as their new EP,  Form, shows, they're only getting better. — Kim Kelly

At this point, is it a surprise that we've got another promising young rapper coming up out of Chicago's Savemoney crew? Joey Purp—who's been kicking bars around with Chance the Rapper for years—is finally getting his due with iiiDrops, his excellent follow-up to 2012's promising but youthful  The Purple Tape. At times,  iiiDropscan feel like a quintessential party record, with Joey's boastful raps over smooth, laidback soul beats that feel like they fell out of an early Kanye West sample session ("Morning Sex," "Money & Bitches," "Cornerstone"). But at other moments, his lyrical content suggests a deeper and more complicated understanding of the world, and in particular, the city he's from ("Winner's Circle"). The most consistent part of the project is Joey's infectious charisma, which is always there, no matter if he's chasing a minimal dance beat with Chance the Rapper on "Girls @" or contemplating his existence on "When I'm Gone." Joey doesn't try to do anything more than work with what he's given, and that's why it works—he's just a kid from Chicago and isn't concerned with trying to prove much else. — Eric Sundermann

On  Starboy, the Weeknd's Abel Tesfaye presents sharp hooks primed for singles ("Starboy," "True Colors") alongside a persona that's cocky and compelling. We're not so much getting a peek at the real Abel as much as we are of shades of the forces that drive him—and it's all compellingly listenable. "Secrets" meshes an interpolation of the Romantics' "Talking in Your Sleep" with a sample of Tears for Fears' "Pale Shelter," while "Die For You" pays homage to Prince while cribbing an interpolation of the R. Kelly classic "Feelin' On Yo Booty" in a strangely pure-hearted way. At 18 tracks,  Starboy may be bloated, but Abel is clearly having fun breaking away from the succinct tracklists that were staples of his earlier works by putting together an album that is truly the sum of its influences.  —Jabbari Weekes

Regardless of whether you want to call them Minneapolis Uranium Club Band, or just plain Uranium Club, these punks fuse the propulsive sounds of Wire, Dow Jones and the Industrials, and DEVO with weird fun times. This is the sound of the future if it was 1975 in a Saint Paul basement with Fran Tarkenton and Vikings posters on the walls and empty Bud cans on the floor. The frantic "Who Made the Man?" is the musical equivalent of that stiff-armed herky jerky robot dance move, and over the course of five minutes, it transforms from a wild garage rocker into some tense post-punk agitation. It needs to come with anti-anxiety tablets. With ambiguously disturbing lyrics, super tight musicianship, and an odd sense of humor, these guys are up there with Indiana's Coneheads as one of most interesting bands in punk right now.  — Tim Scott

It's impossible to listen to Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds without hearing Leonard Cohen, from Cave's brooding baritone to his exaltations of love, faith, and mortality. But  Skeleton Tree, the Bad Seeds' first record since the tragic death of Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur, is less an act of carrying the torch than of self-immolation: a cruel inversion of the existential excavation that defined both his and Cohen's careers. "You believe in God, but you get no special dispensation for this belief now," Cave sings on the album's opener "Jesus Alone." So goes the paradox that drives the album. As Cave grapples with the mundanity of life in the wake of loss, we see him at his most ruthless as a poet—and, on tracks like "Girl in Amber," his most broken and aged as a vocalist—stripped of his trademark romanticism to reveal something more vital, in the most literal sense of the word: The immediacy and tenuousness of life. It's a difficult record. But it floats along in spite of its gravity, thanks to Warren Ellis and co., who usher Cave's ruminations with atmospheric elegance, a score to the catharsis of pain passing through. "When you're feeling like a lover / Nothing really matters anymore," Cave sings on "I Need You." Like so much of the album, the line is both specific and ambiguous, but its sentiment is immediately familiar. Cave offers a part of ourselves to behold. In the reckoning that is  Skeleton Tree, the 59-year-old advances perhaps the greatest wisdom of his hero's legacy: That, in ceding to the paradox and futility of simply being alive, we find grace.  —Andrea Domanick

Storm of Sedition is part of the same Victoria, BC black metal/crust circle that enfolds Iskra, Not A Cost, and Black Kronstadt, and as such, wear their politics on their sleeve. As their mission statement explains, they subscribe to an anti-political, green perspective that goes far beyond the fight against capitalist institutions and worker exploitation to decry and push back against the effects of civilization itself. It's a lot to digest if you're just in the market for some sweet black metal/crust, but Storm of Sedition nails that part, too; songs like "Mechanism of Defense" and "Death Culture" spotlight the band's deft coalescence of epic crust with lo-fi black metal blasts, staccato punk beats, paranoid riffs, and chugging death metal heft, while the likes of "Natural Chaos" reap the benefits of the band's grandiose, driving melodies and more somber pacing. The dual vocals add an interesting dynamic, and the overall apocalyptic atmosphere feels all too apt. Throw this on, and watch the world burn. — Kim Kelly

When a demo of songs left off of the most celebrated rap album in recent memory is arguably only second to that album, something is being done extremely right.  untitled unmasteredis an eight-song collection of jazzy and funky loosies that, like the bulk of his work, finds Kendrick Lamar standing square in the middle of the universe, circling around, looking for his purpose in it. At times here, he advocates for the therapeutic benefits of getting head and at others, he paints his home city as an apocalyptic scene in need of salvation. And in between revelling in the likeness of God and the secular world, K Dot still finds time to throw jabs at Jay Electronica and Aubrey Graham. Respect.  — Lawrence Burney

Pity Sex's co-leader, vocalist, and guitarist Britty Drake announced she'd be leaving the Michigan alt-emo punk band in August, just a handful of months after the release of their ace sophomore album  White Hot Moon. One of the things Pity Sex does well on the album is play between the differences of its male (Brennan Greaves) and female vocalists both in the sounds they produce and how they shape the story told in the song. On their excellent debut  Feast of Love, Drake's quiet vocals pushed through fuzzed out guitars and emo tropes of heartache and longing. She often felt central to the song's story. On  White Hot Moon,her vocals told a bit more of a defiant story, like on the track "Burden You." The demureness of her voice with gritty riffs is more triumphant but slightly, and smugly, a little on the apathetic side.  White Hot Moon still bears the imprints of Feasts of Love's more feelings centric themes paired with sharp, sometimes booming riffs. What will be of the band after Drake's departure is unknown. But before she left, Drake left a sweet and bold mark on Pity Sex. — Sarah MacDonald

Small, former mining villages across the UK rarely get the credit they deserve for producing some of the country's finest artists. In this case, sentimental anarchists Martha, from a town in Durham that is literally called "Pity Me," write from a working class experience that often gets sidelined by London-centric politics. Whether it's falling in love with someone at the supermarket after seeing them "getting bollocked" by their supervisor, forging passion "under a four pound box of wine," or something as simple as name-dropping  Countdown or saying "mam" instead of "mum," Martha's punk-laced pop singalongs are both playful and devastating depending on how long ago your last breakup was. It may be considered inherently political, coming from a collection of queer anarchist vegans, but the politics itself is incidental. At the heart of it, Martha are as lovesick as the rest of us. They just know how to express it in ways that make you want to drink some unfavorably cheap booze and have a dance.  —Emma Garland

The Dirty Nil is a rock band, straight up. That's a rare thing these days, with everyone quick to pigeonhole acts into hyper-specific subgenres—shoegaze, emo, or whatever mutated indie rock happens to be in style that year. But The Dirty Nil is timeless and all-purpose—nothing fancy, nothing revolutionary, just solidly crafted, hard-hitting, loud-as-hell jams. For close to seven years, the band has skated by on only a handful of singles and EPs, before finally dropping their long-awaited debut LP this year,  Higher Power. The album flexes the Canadian trio's worship of guitars, distortion, and walls of amplifiers—specifically the volume knobs turned all the way up.  Higher Powercelebrates a better time in rock 'n' roll history without sounding outdated or campy. The Dirty Nil is a rock band, alright. And a fucking good one at that.  —Dan Ozzi

Vince Staples is the future. The whip-smart MC consistently finds himself in headlines pointing out the hypocrisy in a generation too busy to look away from a phone to examine itself. At age 23, he's already being called a prophet—and with good reason.  Prima Donna,despite being an EP and nearly a quarter the length of his incredible 2015 debut,  Summertime '06, is the project of his career that encapsulates that sentiment. His technical skills as a rapper are nearly unmatched by his peers, with songs like "War Ready" and "Prima Donna" showing how his lips move just as fast as his brain, unafraid to crack a joke immediately after discussing the institutional racism in America. Vince appeared on our list last year, as well, and he might as well get comfortable—because he's going to be talked about for a very long time. — Eric Sundermann

Electropop heaven is a Jessy Lanza record.  Oh Nois love at first arpeggiator, a world of new wave energy with contagious handclaps, drum machine beats, and synth hits that live up to the charm of pioneering Japanese electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra, Lanza's greatest source of influence on the album.  Oh No fits right at home in the new wave revival of today, but rather than settle for being a  Stranger Things-style cut-and-paste of 80s pop tropes, Lanza absorbs the best of the era into a style of electropop that's all her own, her soft, angelic falsetto like a silk ribbon to her incredible production gifts.  Oh No evokes sound-to-color synesthesia, flashes of neon pink, blue, and yellow as bright as her music video for its bouncy title track. It's a record that brings to mind the power of girlhood, play and love. When Lanza sings "When you look into my eyes, boy / then it means I love you," you believe it, and can't help falling either.  —Jill Krajewski

Charli XCX has always been a bit of a mystery. She kept popping up everywhere—raging on Icona Pop's "I Love It," as the Tai Fraiser to Iggy Azalea's Cher Horowitz on "Fancy," and singing the hook to Ty Dolla $ign's "Drop That Kitty"—without having a real identity of her own. Then she linked up with SOPHIE, the Vroom Vroom EP happened, she got her own Beats 1 show called  The Candy Shop, which remains the greatest place on the internet to find Britney Spears, PC Music, and Justin Bieber's "Baby" on repeat, then dropped a track with Lil Yachty. So, it's safe to say that 2016 is the year in which Charli XCX has officially "arrived." The EP itself sounds like someone mashed up some popular techno with the sound of a box of tools falling down the stairs. It contains more outrage than The Daily Mail comments section and a level of sass usually reserved for RuPaul's  Lip Sync For Your Life.It is, in short, everything you'd expect from a collaboration between the princess of modern bubblegum pop and a producer famous for making things that sound like two latex-gloved hands fondling a balloon.  —Emma Garland

As we've mentioned before, Mare Cognitum has always stood a head and shoulders above the scrum, though, by sheer virtue of how goddamn good Jacob Buczarski is at imbuing even the bleakest, harshest chords with the grandeur of the cosmos.  Luminiferous Aetherharnesses that beauty and uncertainty with aplomb, conjuring up an overwhelming feeling of expansiveness. The album feels big in a way that few extreme metal albums muster, and swears allegiance to sci-fi instead of Satan. Two years after the band's last LP, Mare Cognitum's calling cards remain, twinkling out of the void—the cinematic feel, the understated vocal rasps, the lush melodies, the nimble riffs—and its creator revels in progressivism, flaunting a disregard for genre constraints even as Buczarski executes the traditional tremolo and chromatic scales with studied grace. This is night sky black metal, ripe for stargazing and contemplation—utterly cosmic black metal for an uncertain age. — Kim Kelly

White Lung fans were caught off guard by  Paradise. It wasn't the same pissed-off punk band they remembered from 2014's crushing  Deep Fantasy. Instead, the band experimented with a few new tricks this time around, namely, third-person storytelling, a poppier sound, and some full-on singing from frontwoman Mish Barber-Way, as opposed to the angry snarls she'd become known for. While White Lung's core DNA is still intact on  Paradise, the record is a fun exploration of what they can do with it. And for a band testing ambitious new territories, they pulled off a surprisingly cohesive record that sees them pushing their limits with ease and confidence. It's impossible to say where White Lung will go from here, and that's the way they like it.  —Dan Ozzi

When some bands come out of retirement, they gamble big on their legacy. A lackluster comeback album can forever tarnish the memory of a once great band. The formerly defunct Planes Mistaken for Stars, on the other hand, were sitting on a royal flush with  Prey and bet the farm, because they had absolutely nothing to lose. In their run from 1997 to 2008, the band always had a hard time finding an audience. They weren't heavy enough to catch on with the hardcore crowd and weren't cool enough to garner critical acclaim—misfits among the misfits. They were the group of sweaty marauders who would roll up to a venue, howl on their guitars for anyone who would listen, and drink all the whiskey in sight. So suffice it to say,  Prey was not a highly anticipated return. But for those who were smart enough to catch on to Planes' raspy style of filth-rock, and awaited the day they might rise again,  Prey is their just reward. The album sees the band in their truest form, still penning songs about fighting and fucking, still wild as all hell. Maybe the world will finally catch up to them this time.  —Dan Ozzi

Songs For Our Mothers is a disturbingly brilliant album. On the one hand, it's an invitation to "dance to the beat of human hatred." On the other, as we found out when we spoke to frontman Lias Saudi, it's the collected work of a bunch of history fanatics. Thematically, the album is centered on a haunting narrative that revolves around Ike and Tina Turner, Harold Shipman, crumbling friendships, and the final hours of the Third Reich. Sonically though, it's all presented like a hyper-sexual yet lo-fi disco—the kind you might find on the battered outskirts of Berlin. Ultimately,  Songs For Our Mothers is like a decomposing onion, with layer upon layer of ideas, that somehow reinterprets and builds on their debut release,  Champagne Holocaust, in the way all good art should. It's a perfectly ominous album, a grand piece of deliriously unpleasant art to arrive in a desolate and dark year.  —Ryan Bassil

Views was actually pretty good. No, really: Drake's fifth full-length may have been derided by some for its unfathomable largesse and repetition of themes previously and more capably explored in his catalog, but look deeper and… actually, don't. If Drake's previous albums suggested emotional depths and sky-high pettiness that contained multitudes,  Views is all surface-level texture—a pristine, gigantic lake on an airless day, one that exists in its essence whether you pay any mind to it or not. What Drake lacks in rap versatility on  Views—some of the verses here, admittedly, are the worst in Drake's career since "Last name ever, first name greatest," suggesting that he would've been better off with Quentin Miller back in the saddle—it makes up for in cannily crafting some of the finest faux-global pop since Bieber went trop-house. The plastic new-wave of "Feel No Ways," the admirably goofy sonic patois of "Controlla," the easy UK Funky-biting shake of "One Dance," and sweeping Olympic-stadium anthems like "Too Good" and "With You" all resonate on a purely sonic level, suggesting an artist at the top of his hit-making game. It's increasingly questionable whether Drake knows himself as well as he once claimed to—but he still knows how to make listeners happy, and if that's all we can ask of him for now, we may as well settle for it.  — Larry Fitzmaurice

As far as comebacks go, Gucci Mane's 2016 could rival anyone's against-the-odds story in recent memory. For nearly half of this year, he was still incarcerated, but has already positioned himself into pop stardom with more visibility than any point in his career and an embracing of rap's new guard (Rae Sremmurd's "Black Beatles.") Within two months of coming home, Gucci released  Everybody Looking, an impressively sharp album that, thanks in part to his new sober lifestyle, gives a smoothness to previously rattled vocals. "Out Do Ya" is a perfect showing of that refinery, with Gucci boosting his perseverance against the lot, backed by Zaytoven's flutes and pounding drums. He glides with Kanye over a Mike Will Made-it beat ("Pussy Print), enlists Drake for a hook ("Back On Road"), and snags one of his most successful prodigies, Young Thug, for "Guwop Home." On "All My Children," he reminds us that it's his mark on rap that has shaped much of the current landscape, and for that reason, Gucci wins with  Everybody Looking. — Lawrence Burney

When Angel Olsen released the trailer for the video "Intern"—the first single from her forthcoming third record  My Woman—something seemed delightfully amiss. Olsen, standing alone in a blacked out room, donned a tinsel-inspired silver wig and headset as looming, deep pulsing synth crept up around her. It's fair to say that Olsen was still riding the critical wave of her 2014's  Burn Your Fire For No Witnesswhen she was readying the release of  My Woman. Her sophomore effort is a folk-rock record that is minimalist in feeling, but is far from being thematically or lyrically sparse. The sharply titled  My Woman builds upon the heartache and hard lessons learned on  Burn Your Fire For Witnessbut with a few instrumental change-ups that show Olsen's sonic evolution. She isn't limited on this album. There is a steady and palpable provocation on the first few songs, like "Shut Up Kiss Me," "Not Gonna Kill You" and "Give It Up." Olsen slides back into a familiar sound and mood on the gloriously lengthy "Woman" and the nearly eight-minute track "Sister." Rhythmically, Olsen repeats "all my life I thought I'd change" on "Sister," which, however lamenting and mournful, feels almost optimistic because that sentiment shows itself all over My Woman. — Sarah MacDonald