Better Late Than Never: The Best Albums of 2016

What possessed me to account for my favorite 2016 releases on Twitter while ignoring that task here?

Let's put it down to the annus horribilis that was 2016, and get the bookkeeping done, at long last. After all, there will be another year's music to sift through soon.

Here, with video or audio of my favorite track from each album, are my favorites from the year that was:

10. Fly; Danielle Lewis
Like most young women, Danielle Lewis is obsessed with Taylor Swift-style pop, but her second EP provides ample hope that trendiness will fall by the wayside in subsequent work.

With her clear, pure soprano and an ear for melodic quirkiness, Lewis puts me in mind of the early work of both Joni Mitchell and art rocker, Jane Siberry. Lewis' gift for traditional Welsh singing distances her even further from the pack. A young woman to watch.
Listen: Hiraeth

9. Swimmin' Pools, Movie Stars; Dwight Yoakam
Yoakam has done bluegrass before -- most notably, with Ralph Stanley. But this marks his first full bluegrass record. He assembled a crackerjack team of bluegrass music's first-call session players, and re-recorded a batch of his own tunes in traditional bluegrass style.

Ricky Skaggs does this sort of thing quite competently; he did, after all, start his career as teenage member of Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys. But it's Dwight Yoakam, the rightful heir to the bluegrass-drenched Bakersfield Sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, who does it with greater emotional truth. The only complaint I have is that Yoakam didn't reach back for some of his earliest hits.
Listen: What I Don't Know

8. Cycle; Lady Maisery
One of the most innovative bands of Britain's vibrant folk music scene, Lady Maisery distinguish themselves with exceptionally-strong performances and compelling arrangements of traditional tunes, as well as off-the-beaten-path selections from the likes of Todd Rundgren and Sandy Denny.

Foot percussion; unusual instruments (Rowan Rheingans' dad is an instrument maker with some intriguing hybrids to his credit); a strong social conscience; and a resurrected, wordless singing style known as diddling (Americans, shut up right this minute) make this album and this band one to treasure. Who knew folk music could be this unpredictable?
Listen: Diggers' Song

7. Whole and Cloven; Nathan Bowles
The clawhammer style of banjo playing is generally confined to the old-time (i e. pre-bluegrass) country and string band music of the Appalachian South. With Whole and Cloven, Nathan Bowles transforms clawhammer banjo into a style of playing equally applicable to chamber music, adding some neo-classical, Windham Hill-style piano for good measure (It's no accident that bluegrass banjoist par excellence, J. D. Crowe, was profoundly influenced by the rolling blues and gospel piano of Fats Domino).

Superb music for the road or a pastoral Sunday afternoon, Whole and Cloven is superbly innovative as well.
Listen: Gadarene Fugue

6. Auprès du Poêle; Ten Strings and a Goatskin
These young Prince Edward islanders display amazing versatility. They can be rollicking and boisterous, righteously angry and socially conscious, good humored and a little bit naughty.

They do it all in two languages, with breathtaking instrumental technique and a repertoire that encompasses traditional songs and fiddle tunes from the United States, Great Britain, and Quebec.
Listen: Maudit Anglais (The Damn Englishman)

5. Rattle and Roar; The Earls of Leicester
Spurred by his love of traditional bluegrass music as played by the first generation of bluegrass artists, in 2015, Alison Krauss vet Jerry Douglas -- the man who Eric Clapton once called "the Muhammad Ali of the dobro" -- assembled a who's who of bluegrass musicians. 

Their mission? Resurrect the repertoire of bluegrass pioneers, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs (The Earls of Leicester -- get it?), their corny humor, understated showmanship, dazzling musicianship -- even their Stetson hats and string ties.

Their debut effort won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album and, suddenly, millennials who'd logged festival time grooving to bluegrass jam bands like Leftover Salmon and Greensky Bluegrass were singing along to "Hot Corn, Cold Corn" (Bring along a demijohn/Yeeeess, sir). On this, their sophomore effort, the Earls haven't let up, and that's as it should be.

Once, all top-name bluegrass acts sounded this driven. The Earls of Leicester offer hope that the best bands might push themselves to sound this hair-raising again.
Listen: What's Good For You (Should Be All Right For Me)

4. Rise Aurora; Rosie Hodgson
Norma Waterson. Shirley Collins. Sandy Denny. These are the first ladies of English folk music. One day, Rosie Hodgson will take her place beside them all. She possesses Waterson's stately vocal style -- an astonishing choice in 2016. Like Denny, Hodgson reinterpret traditional songs, and writes her own tunes in a traditional style, with subject matter that's would have been as relevant to Hodgson's Renaissance forebears as it is to her millennial contemporaries.

In an age when "authenticity" is little more than a buzzword, Rosie Hodgson exemplifies it with every note she sings. Rise Aurora is the kind of debut that inspires listeners to commit to further journeys with the artist.
Listen: Rise Aurora

3. God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson; Various Artists
I'm sure this is an odd way to review a record, but here goes: The songs are the stars here, and this compilation is worthwhile if only for casually-interested hipsters to trace some classics of bluegrass, gospel, and rock to their origins.

The standout performance comes from Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, but there's also fine work from Maria McKee, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band.
Listen: Tom Waits: The Soul of a Man

2. Blue and Lonesome; The Rolling Stones
Rockets and V8 engines. Railroad tracks and factory floors at 8:05 a.m. Mid-20th century blues sounded like our world. With digital devices and electronic blips dominating our soundscape, nobody but old hands like The Rolling Stones could reproduce those sounds with anything approaching meaning or emotional truth.

The Stones absorbed more than instrumental sounds, though. At the feet of men like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, they learned to sound cool and confident, even as they were singing about entire worlds falling apart.

Yet, the Stones themselves were hardly the originators of these musical homages to the sounds of industry and emerging technology. They were careful and humble students (just imagine it!) of men who, goaded by poverty and opportunity, traveled north. Men who, when they arrived, traded in their acoustic guitars for electric instruments that could be heard over Friday night throngs in sweaty clubs -- instruments that mimicked the industrial sounds those Southern migrants heard in their new, northern homes.

And so, The Stones learned. With Blue and Lonesome, they came back to the music they had studied so long ago, and they did it exactly right. Which means they finally got good enough to stop learning and start teaching. To have the technique down so cold that they didn't have to think about being perfect anymore. They just were.

Listen: Hate To See You Go

1. Hearts Broken Heads Turned; Jarlath Henderson
As I write, I still can't get over how remarkable this record is.

Henderson is an accomplished uilleann piper who cleaned up on Britain's competition circuit. With this, his debut album, he expands the relevance of his instrument across centuries, playing it not only in the conventional manner, but recording the instrument's ambient noises -- key clicks, the inhalation and exhalation of the bellows, etc. -- and processing them electronically for hypnotic, haunting sounds that could not come from any century but this one.

His ultra-traditional vocals would have been familiar to Appalachian singers like Roscoe Holcomb and Ralph Stanley, whose ancestors brought the style with them when they came. (No, melisma does not originate with the noisy and tasteless Mariah Carey). For a fan and practitioner of traditional acoustic music, the sheer daring of this record is earth-shattering.
Listen: The Making of Hearts Broken Heads Turned