6 Albums from 2016 That Should Have Been Huge Hits (but Weren’t)

Much like life, pop music isn't always fair. For every talented artist that makes it big in music, there's another that's unfairly ignored. It's easy, and often even necessary, to overlook artists and albums in an industry so crowded with aspiring newcomers, but it's still a shame to see a deserving record, full of ambition and ideas and creativity, go unrecognized. So with 2016 drawing to a close, we're recognizing the releases from this past year that didn't generate the critical or commercial buzz they rightly deserved. 

 

Ryley Walker — 'Golden Sings That Have Been Sung'

Ryley Walker draws upon a few relatively straightforward genres — folk and blues chief among them — but then infuses his influences with a psychedelic ingenuity that makes his music particularly hard to describe. His fourth album in three years, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, is a tapestry of warmly produced cosmic folk rock, rich with complex interplay and perfectly integrated flourishes of swelling orchestras, tribal drums and electronic keyboards. The songs are exploratory and often defy expectation without becoming indulgent, always anchored by Walker's melodic singing and skillful acoustic fingerpicking — at least until the 40-minute live jam included with the digital release, which rivals the instrumental tracks of pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd at their most far out. 

 

Car Seat Headrest — 'Teens of Denial'

It's been a long time since indie rock sounded as confident as it does on Teens of Denial, the 10th album from Car Seat Headrest but only their second since signing to Matador Records and graduating from a solo act to a full band in 2015. Frontman Will Toledo uses his expanded sound to fulfill the promise of his earlier, more lo-fi material, and the result is a powerful record built on simmering Pixies-style guitar tension and explosive finales. When he's not conjuring up energetic hooks to match the thrillingly noisy rock, Toledo alternately yelps and monologues about the unromantic side of drug-fueled hedonism in lyrics as witty as they are emotionally impactful. 

 

James Vincent McMorrow — 'We Move'

We Move completes James Vincent McMorrow's transition from acoustic folk to textural R&B. The Irish songwriter sounds so assured in his new genre, it's a wonder he was ever doing anything else, particularly given his talent for delicate falsetto crooning and conjuring rich atmosphere from minimalist rhythms and vocal effects. The songs are intimate, even at their most upbeat and crowd-pleasing, reflecting the mental issues and loneliness of constant travel that inspired McMorrow's songwriting this time around, particularly in the most vulnerable of tracks like the gorgeous, album-ending ballad "Lost Angles."

 

Drive-by Truckers — 'American Band'

American Band is political rock music at its finest, delivered at a time when most Americans could probably use songs like these — wordy non-fiction tales that balance deeply personal emotion with lyrics that take a clear-eyed look at the touchiest of subjects, including school shootings ("Guns of Umpqua"), immigration ("Ramon Casiano"), black lives matter ("What It Means") and censorship ("Once They Banned Imagine"). The decidedly modern songs sound timeless in the hands of the Drive-by Truckers, a band of veteran southern rockers who have honed their dynamic to accommodate both hard-edged rockers and moving acoustic reveries. It seems that most people don't look to rock for their political music anymore, which is a shame when an album this vital and refreshing comes along. 

 

Blood Orange — 'Freetown Sound'

Dev Hynes wrote Freetown Sound, his third album under the pseudonym Blood Orange, for "everyone told they’re not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way." With lyrics like "You are special in your own way" contrasting with others like "can you see the nigger in my face?" all in the same song, Freetown Sound is often life-affirming, but always aware of the struggles that come with simply being who you are, particularly when who you are doesn't fit neatly into established cultural norms. In confronting the many positive and negative impacts of identity — racial, sexual, or personal — Blood Orange has made a sultry funk pop record for the ages.

 

Muncie Girls — 'From Caplan to Belsize'

In their debut LP From Caplan to Belsize, Muncie Girls cloak their righteous anger in an addictive haze of crunchy guitar riffs and irresistible power pop hooks. Lyrically, the band wittily chronicles their youthful frustrations about social issues like bullying ("Respect"), purposeful ignorance ("I Don't Want to Talk About It") and inequality ("Learn in School"), but never at the expense of their chiming guitar work and driving pop-rock rhythms — instead the sharp social commentary comes as a bonus for listeners paying close attention. It's a uniquely perfect distillation of determined dissatisfaction and bouncy melodies, two cornerstones of great indie rock. Even if From Caplan to Belsize doesn't reinvent the wheel, it doesn't have to when the songs are this uniformly catchy and well-written. 

 

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