Category: BEST OF 2016

MAGNET’s #5 Album Of 2016: GOAT’s “Requiem”
GOAT has been trying to convince us that the tiny hamlet from which it hails is home to an ages-old

MAGNET’s #6 Album Of 2016: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ “Skeleton Tree”
It’s impossible to tell how the death of Nick Cave’s son, Arthur, during the recording of Skeleton Tree shaped its

MAGNET’s #7 Album Of 2016: Car Seat Headrest’s “Teens Of Denial”
We don’t need another new Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate notwithstanding. But we sure can welcome a new Bob Pollard. Although

MAGNET’s #8 Album Of 2016: Lucinda Williams’ “The Ghosts Of Highway 20”
Lucinda Williams has been making music for nearly four decades. The Ghosts Of Highway 20, her 12th studio album, is

MAGNET’s #9 Album Of 2016: Beach Slang’s “A Loud Bash Of Teenage Feelings”
“Play it loud/Play it fast/Play me something that will always last,” growls lead singer James Alex on “Future Mixtape For

MAGNET’s #10 Album Of 2016: Dinosaur Jr’s “Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not”
Consider, if you will, two bands from Massachusetts that formed in the mid-’80s, broke up for more than a decade,

MAGNET’s #11 Album Of 2016: Drive-By Truckers’ “American Band”
It’s been an annus horribilis of Nasty Women and Bad Hombres, aggressive groping and building a wall and making them

MAGNET’s #12 Album Of 2016: Mitski’s “Puberty 2”
For Mitski Miyawaki, happiness is neither a self-evident truth nor an unalienable right, instead a boorish lout who eats her

MAGNET’s #13 Album Of 2016: Cass McCombs’ “Mangy Love”
Mangy Love is a slippery album, by turns didactic and Dada-esque, sensitive and pissed-off, somber and humorous. Cass McCombs has

MAGNET’s #14 Album Of 2016: Radiohead’s “A Moon Shaped Pool”
Even after a five-year wait between albums, it’s weirdly easy to take Radiohead for granted. Maybe it’s a slight tempering of

MAGNET’s #15 Album Of 2016: Angel Olsen’s “My Woman”
Angel Olsen has one of those voices. She can belt her songs out, but her control is excellent. This is

MAGNET’s #16 Album Of 2016: The Avalanches’ “Wildflower”
If Happy Mondays were Antipodean rather than Mancunian and plied their wares using turntables and samplers rather than spaced-out guitars,

MAGNET’s #17 Album Of 2016: Bon Iver’s “22, A Million”
Justin Vernon is widely beloved for constructing heartfelt pastorals, but on 22, A Million, the artist radically altered the blueprint.

MAGNET’s #18 Album Of 2016: Parquet Courts’ “Human Performance”
Parquet Courts are the nation’s finest indie-rock band by a very old-guard measure. They churn out quality releases at the

MAGNET’s #19 Album Of 2016: Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam’s “I Had A Dream That You Were Mine”
In food-and-wine pairings, you either go with (congruent) or against (complementary). The same can be said of duos, and Paul

MAGNET’s #20 Album Of 2016: Bob Mould’s “Patch The Sky”
“Will the earthquakes shake our cottage to the ground?/Hear the silence, there’ll be no one left around,” snarls Bob Mould

MAGNET’s #21 Album Of 2016: Wilco’s “Schmilco”
Wilco’s Star Wars wasn’t just MAGNET’s 2015 album of the year; it was also a surprising soft reboot. After a