8. Lady Gaga - Joanne

Yees yes yes yes. Lady Gaga is done with being shocking and making big statements and changing pop music forever and also making boring songs. On Joanne all we get is good music.

Nothing else. Looks good.

After years where it seemed to Gaga that bigger was the only way to go (not an easy statement when you start your career off with worldwide megahits "Poker Face" and "Just Dance"), she finally kind of imploded on herself with 2013's Artpop. It had a ridiculously extravagant rollout and turned out to be all wrapping and no content. Drenched in glitter and gloss and terrible thumping beats the hour-long album was absolutely inpenetrable and had none of the charm, inspiration or promise visible in Gaga's earlier stuff. And she realized it herself, smart as she is, that she'd got caught up in a pointless pop spiral. She took a hard left turn and stepped out of the toxic spotlight, and all we've heard from her since is Cheek to cheek, an album of jazz standard duets with 89-year-old Tony Bennett, and the very powerful Oscar-nominated piano ballad "'Til it happens to you". Now she's returned with a back-to-basics pop/rock album, and thought it may sound cliché, it's a massive and well-deserved success, since it's just honest, fun, and 100 % her.

This album sounds like Lady Gaga just enjoying her job. She's a singer-songwriter at heart, with an amazing voice and a penchant for theatrics and showmanship. Through the glitzy pop messiness it's always been the singer alone at the piano that's kept me interested in Lady Gaga. Fantastically weird but talented performances of her biggest hits (like this one back at age 23) is what sets her apart from the Taylor Swifts and Rihannas and Katy Perrys and whoever else is competing for her throne as the current queen of pop. Here she shows off her best sides, in a much more likeable way than before - this is an album you should listen to even though you think you don't like Lady Gaga.

Despite its occasional unfashionable dip into bubblegum lyrics and hillbilly twang, this album is firmly rooted in indie rock. Gaga, now 30, has been working with awesome musicians like Josh Homme (QOTSA), Kevin Parker (Tame Impala), Florence Welch (+ the Machine), Josh Tillman (Father John Misty) and Mark Ronson ("Uptown Funk"), and though you can hear them well none of them end up stealing the show, it's always the music that's in focus. There's that studio jam feeling, of people having fun playing music together. There are plenty of great pop songs on here, a few truly beautiful ballads, and only a couple missteps where I hear too much of the annoying diva of Gaga past ("Dancin' in circles" combines the two in not an entirely successful way) or too much pastiche ("Sinner's prayer" has the full country package going, with the cigarette-stained voice, the bassline, the shuffling beat, that archetypical bluegrass backing vocal on the fifth note, the modulation on the last chorus, even the steel guitar... OK I'll let it pass just this once).

Gaga is less of this and more actual music these days, thankfully!

The organic instruments suit Gaga so well. Listen to the drums on "John Wayne". They're uncertain and shaky on the verse, lilting and strange on the chorus. This is where she formerly would have smashed an annoying nightclub n-ts-n-ts all across the song. It's so much more creative and fun here. The intro of the Florence Welch duet "Hey girl" more than nods to "Bennie and the jets", but the song turns into a beautiful ode to friendship and the two singers' voices go great together. Lyrically there's a bit to laugh at on Joanne, but for the most part it's heartfelt, mature lyrics. "Come to Mama" is a lovely big-band-inspired anthem about loving each other in these troubled times. The opener "Diamond heart" sees Gaga acknowledging her alleged missteps with the clever punchline "I'm not flawless but I got a diamond heart", and the title track "Joanne" is a beautiful letter to her deceased aunt, and a stunning vocal performance as well.

Joanne leaves me wanting more. Many of its most poppy songs are less than three minutes long - stopping before they get annoying, so that although I may have wanted another chorus then and there, the effect is just that I keep coming back to listen to them again. While Joanne has no hits to join her show-stopping and chart-topping best, it's still easily her best album as far as music's concerned, and hopefully the first in a new exciting era of Gaga's career.

Best tracks: "Hey girl", "Joanne", "John Wayne", "Angel down"

Spotify note: The "Deluxe" edition featured on Spotify contains three bonus tracks, so the record is meant to end after the first "Angel down". (The bonus tracks are all good, but it feels strange with a second version of "Angel down" just after the first one.)

9. Kanye West - The life of Pablo

It's quite an atrocious album cover. There's no doubting it's 100 % Kanye, though, no media advisor did this.

It's been a rough year for Yeezy. Always eccentric, his stage antics and public persona have this year turned so crazy that you end up just shrugging off his absurd rants (that last one is priceless, bruh), mindless Twitter-attacks and ambitions of running for President in 2020 (never say never!) as Kanye "just being kanye", in a similar way as we did for Trump's craziness before it got serious, like during the primaries. But the spiralling has gone too far, and the year has ended with Kanye getting hospitalized "for his own health and safety" and cancelling the rest of his "St. Pablo tour" due to ongoing need for psychological and medical treatment. I sure hope sorts himself out.

The rollout for his new album was similarly crazy. First announced to be called SWISH, then Waves, the album was renamed The Life of Pablo just days before its release. In a move that could be seen as either pioneering and groundbreaking or just impulsive, indecisive and rash, he kept changing the tracklist of the album after its release. Admittedly, the "album" concept is not the physical product it once was, it is now equally or more an online bundle easily subject to change and such the changing could feel like an interesting statement. But by the way it's done, there's nothing that indicates that this was a planned move, the haphazardness of his behavior just takes away the effect of the statement. Mixes kept changing, late-album tracks were added, some of them days after the release, some of them months after.

At the moment the album is 20 tracks and over an hour long. It's a sprawling, unfocused album, some of it absolute gold, but ultimately too incohesive as a whole and packs much less of a punch than Yeezus or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. There are uninteresting "ad-lib" tracks, and Kanye's freestyling is much less interesting than, say, Kendrick's, But for better or worse, West is still absolutely fascinating to watch, a true master of his craft and probably our generation's most iconic musician.

Kanye's Saint Pablo tour features him above the crowd on a floating stage.

When you listen to his best tracks, you want him to continue balancing on the genius/madman line, and Life of Pablo is packed full of new ideas, challenging the listener and the contemporary music scene, cutting and pasting from the most unlikely places and creating shocking collages. It doesn't just make me want to go back and freak out to Yeezus, I actually want more of the good Pablo. You see the link from his last albums, but one thing that sticks out is that there's a lot more gospel here. These are the most frequently fantastic ones. There are certainly songs here that sit neatly alongside his best, feeling like instant classics (see "best tracks"). Also the more melancholy songs shine especially brightly; the sparse glory of "FML", "Wolves", "Saint Pablo", "No more parties in LA" and "Real friends" is 2016-Kanye at his best. They're concentrated on the album's second half, so if you manage to get past a lot of cringeworthy dick-jokes and meaningless interludes you're in for a lot of pleasant surprises.

To sum up: There's a lot of genius present here, but there's also a lot of lazy and/or crazy. A 12-track Best of Pablo would be on par with Kanye's best work. There are songs you should skip, but it's still very worth a listen. Kanye addresses many of his problems in an interesting way, and while he really often delivers unforgivably bad lines, he remains a master hiphop producer and is often a great rapper and lyricist.

Best tracks: "Saint Pablo", "Ultralight beam", "Famous", "Waves".

10. Whitney - Light Upon The Lake

The list starts off real nice and easy. Whitney's debut album Light Upon The Lake is magical summer evenings in the woods destilled on to a record. Joyous, careless, free, beautiful. Enjoy!

Simple and pretty. Perfect for the music within.

Whitney is a band centered around Julian Elrich and Max Kakacek, the former drummer and guitarist of Smith Westerns. After their surprisingly successful teenage band broke up in 2014 due to artistic differences and perhaps some drama and such, the two put together a new gang of friends, and started writing the kind of songs they wanted to play and going on a lot of cabin trips together. Drummer Julian takes singing duties, which leads to an unusual and maybe  rather static stage setup, but his delicate falsetto vocals are beautiful and perfect for the vibe of the music. Light Upon The Lake is produced by Jonathan Rado of Foxygen, and hearing that delicious jangly Foxygen sound without the mess and noise of that chaotic band is really great. Other acts that spring to mind are Beirut at his best, Bon Iver at his most lo-fi, and some sprinkling of country and even soul.

The falsetto vocals and affectionate guitar playing form the basis of these songs, but most are fleshed out by accompanying violins and trumpets, resulting in a record that feels dynamic and fun, despite a slightly limited range of different styles and tempos. It's only half an hour long, but the brevity and lack of filler tracks works to its advantage. I could choose any of these ten songs as my #soundofsummer2016, they've all had such heavy rotation and I wish I had another Whitney record in my life right now. Leave them wanting more - and boy do I ever.

Happy times. Marching band people: is that a cornet way out to the left?

Sometimes I'm not all too convinced that this nice little ditty is worthy of a top-ten place. Occasionally a slightly more upfront guitar riff comes in, reminding you of the heard-it-before Smith Westerns period, as on "No matter where we go", but the trumpets and that bouncy summer vacation feeling wins me over every time. The quieter songs might not sound like anything special either, but they all bear the sure mark of quality that they get better with repeated listens. But I think they're best at their mid-tempo sunniest like in second single "Golden days" and the album closer "Follow".

Everything is very stylistically complete. It's got that sepia filter all over it, but it never feels tacky or over-produced. I think it's got to do with it being real, as in not fake. Life is full of those sepia moments, the ones you just know you should archive in your mind, for some time in the future when you need to feel happy, or remember one time when you were truly happy, for example in case you're attacked by a dementor. Sometimes they're melancholic-happy, sometimes they're ecstatic-happy, but most of the memories you find in that situation, will be colored in sepia. You don't set out to take a sepia picture, it's just there afterwards, perfect. That must be where the success of this album comes from.

Best tracks: "Golden days", "Follow".

More honorable mentions - and a winner

Welcome back, here's a few more runners-up, as well as one that gets the title of EP of the year - not exactly a category I worked particularly hard at, but it's a great EP, I considered including it in the official list, but it is after all only four tracks, so that feels a bit unfair. But yes, more below.

Chairlift - Moth

I like it. Very neat. Good colors, cool artistic impression of NY.

Those of you who know Chairlift probably only know their breakthrough single "Bruises", a cute, bubbly song from their 2008 debut album which has more Spotify plays than the rest of their discography put together. But the New York duo managed to avoid become one-hit-wonders, at least in my head, through successfully evolving their sound and actually becoming better musicians after the age of 21. Hard work actually paid off, and 2016-edition Chairlift features a confident singer with an intriguing edge to her voice and a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter with way bigger ambitions than giggly little indie love songs.

Their third album Moth is a wonderful amalgamation of pop, jazz and disco, and an entirely unique sound. The beats are fun and creative, as are the instrumentations, full of horns, synths, bouncy basslines and the odd squelching guitar. 4/4-bangers like "Romeo" and "Moth to the flame" and pop songs that sound guiltily fun stand side by side with more experimental, soundscapey tracks like "Look up" and "Ottawa to Osaka", together creating a cohesive, satisfying whole. There's a lot of work here. The songs are edited and fiddled down to just the length they need to be, but the perfectionism has paid off. The result is a 40 minute package where only the last song really is skippable. Instead of comparing Chairlift to others, I'm now comparing others to Chairlift.

Best tracks: "Polymorphing", "Crying in public", "Ch-ching".

Moby & The Void Pacific Choir - These Systems Are Failing

Good cover.

Moby started off as an activist, but despite continued veganism and radical opinion pieces on social media, it's been a while since it shone through in his music. He even stopped putting essays in his CD booklet, which is strange considering the current state of the world. His musical output the last 15 years has increasingly bared the mark of a middle-aged multi-millionaire sitting alone in his way to big Beverly Hills mansion not quite sure what to do with himself. His latest passions seems to have been ambient music and collecting analog drum machines. I wasn't exactly excited when he claimed that his new album was angry and urgent and loud and rocky. These Systems Are Failing is released under a slightly different moniker "Moby & The Void Pacific Choir", perhaps to further distance itself from the at the moment not-too-strong Moby brand. So the biggest surprise with These Systems Are Failing turns out to be not its high tempos and thick walls of sound, but rather that it actually is very good.

I think the genre is what they call "new wave". Not that I know much about it, but one of my first associations when listening to it was the song "Bo jo cie kohom" by De Press, a band that's been described by the weird Norwegianization "nyveiv". It's fast and very punky, with synths and guitars and bass all distorted beyond recognition. Quite often, thankfully, Moby's voice is also distorted beyond recognition, because he's not very fun to listen to on his own. Intense panic for the future is a good starting point for good music, and it's certainly helped Moby here. Accompanied by doomsday artist Steve Cutts, the desperate music video for "Are you lost in the world like me?" is either cringeworthy or brilliant, depending on the ideological leanings of the viewer. Either way, it fully succeeds in what it attempts to do, and the same goes for the album. It doesn't provide any subtlety, and neither does it try for it. These Systems Are Failing hammers in its message with capital letters and fist-pumping Mobys layered thick with sweat. The lyrics aren't as activist as you think, it's more the context, the alarm-like backdrop and the These Systems Are Failing manifesto, that make it seem like it. It's not a pleasant listen, but it's not supposed to be. Importantly, this album has hooks that actually work and memorable moments that make you remember its message. 

Best tracks: "Break doubt", "Don't leave me", "A simple love",

... and Best EP of the Year goes to:

Massive Attack - Ritual Spirit

It's close-up, and slightly too cropped. The letters don't even fit. Cool effect. 

I didn't see this one coming, a Massive Attack comeback! But an EP is a perfect bite-sized chunk for presenting some new output, and Ritual Spirit is the perfect EP. Each of the four songs are awesome, they complement each other, all show different things and all leave you wanting more. I haven't ventured deep into Massive Attack's back catalogue, but the British trip-hop kings proved their worth back in the 90's, and left an indelible mark on music history with the beautiful song "Teardrop". They don't go that pop here; the terrain is much darker and spookier. They've got four very black guest artists delivering stunning performances, although I have no idea what they're about. The beats, production and buildup of these songs chill me to the bone, I feel this album in my whole body. There's plenty of Burial in the dark beats, some Kanye West in the genre-mashing and cut-and-paste-ing. It's awesomely danceable, catchy and moody, I absolutely love every moment of this record. When the last song "Take it there", whose riff weirdly echoes Radiohead's "A wolf at the door" epically ends, I find myself reaching for the replay button immediately.

There were rumours of a full-length release later this year, but it never came. Instead we got another two-song relase, The Spoils, which is also pretty good. Altogether it's been a great year for Massive Attack. "Voodoo in my blood" was used in Skam, a Norwegian television series with its finger very much on the pulse of today's kids. Who'd have thought in 1999 that Massive Attack would be as relevant in 2016 as then?

Best tracks: Hah, no way am I leaving any out. All four of them.

Honorable mentions

It's December 1st, so here comes the 1st batch of honorable mentions! Happy advent everyone (does one say that?), enjoy the festive season, whether it's raining, snowing, sunning or hurricaning outside wherever you are, although I really hope it's not the latter!
By the way, in case it wasn't clear: this list (as all of them have been) is going to be extremely diverse. There's no way you're going to like everything on it, unless you're me. I try to be as undiscriminating in terms of genre as possible, and a quick browse through this and previous years' lists reveal both gangsta rap, doom metal, instrumental jazz, acoustic folk, and everything in between, although my main focus is around the pop and rock shelves. So if you hit one or two albums that really don't sit well - stay tuned, there'll be something for you around the next bend!

Wild Beasts - Boy King

 

Dark but bright, garish but stylish, unsettling but slightly alluring. Perfect for the music within.

There's been a lot of music like this lately. R'n'B-inspired, synthy, moody, full of 80's-style production... you know the drill. A lot of it's been good, but for my part the good stuff tends to drown in the mediocre stuff that sounds generic and formulaic, and I've grown slightly tired of the whole scene. However, when Wild Beasts went down this road on their 5th album Boy King my interest was piqued. "Mecca" from their previous album has been a playlist favorite of mine, and I appreciate the Beasts' cleverness, sense of rhythm, catchy melodies and attention to detail. Boy King does exactly what I hoped with the genre: Plays on all its strengths - strong, sexy beats, exciting electronic touches and sparser, more effective instrumentation - and flips its standard lyrical tropes upside down: R'n'b is overstuffed with strongly male chauvinist lyrics and the artists somehow get praised for it, but here the narrator is the uncertain, sex-crazed, desperate one, idolizing the strong females all around. 

It's a refreshing change of frame, eyeing modern-day masculinity critically. The glossy figure on the cover is immature, fragile, hollow and cracking all over, full of jealousy, and it's an impressive release from the four 30-year-old, white UK guys. In an interview with The Independent about the album, lead singer Hayden Thorpe says “The Boy King is so much bigger than us as an alter ego. He's been to the gym, he's had his protein shake,” Thorpe says, adding, “That hyper male character is in me, I’m a guy in a band for God's sake. My projection of self, my projection of identity is pretty large. ... [Y]ou have to ask, what is that masking? What insecurities and vulnerabilities is that masking?”  

The music is excellent too, especially on the first and last thirds. As I wrote about the cover (this may become a habit): dark, garish and unsettling, yet bright, cool and alluring.

Best tracks: "Alpha female", Big cat", and the only acoustic-ish song, closer "Dreamliner".

Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial

Effortlessly cool cover. Was that picture border made in Word 98?

Indie rock has seen better days. The throne that was so highly competed in the early 00s is now pretty empty. The Strokes, Hives, Shins, Sounds, Decemberists, Antlers, Wombats, Killers, Kooks, Libertines, Walkmen and so on have all gone quite thoroughly out of style. So steer away if you want, for here is a record in exactly that alley which adds nothing new to the genre. 24-year-old Will Toledo, a.k.a. Car Seat Headrest, has made a loud, gritty, ugly coming-of-age record with Teens of Denial, his first major-label original album after self-releasing eight (!) albums on Bandcamp. 

If you don't feel like giving a prolific 24-year-old's ninth record of unoriginal grungy guitar rock a spin I don't blame you, but you'd be missing something. This could have been utterly boring, but it isn't. Teens of Denial is urgent, meaningful, funny, shocking, and most importantly, it rocks. The music is energetic, not just loud, and Toledo's sloppy singing feels truly emotional, not just ugly. The lyrics are oftentimes hilarious in their frankness, but I tend to laugh with him rather than at him when he tells bad jokes. The songs expertly portray the lazy, self-obsessed teens that think the world revolves around them, while they ultimately know nothing about the world. You see the "fake it till you make it" kids fumbling around blindly in the first steps of adulthood, but for all the idiotic things they say, teens are often the ones that see the world the clearest. Both sides of the coin are revealed here. The messy guitars really transmit the angst and pain and confusion this sprawling coming-of-age album needs. Even at one hour and ten minutes long, I enjoy listening to this whole thing through - there are enough awesome songs for that, and the occasional indulgence in a super-long intro or multi-part ramble-opus is totally justified . This record makes me both smile, think, dance, and shout along.

Lyrics snippets about the misplaced kids:
"You have no RIGHT to be depressed, you haven't tried hard enough to like it!!"
"Last Friday I took acid and mushrooms, I did not transcend, I felt like a walking piece of shit, in a stupid looking jacket."
...and the ones who profit on them:
"Hello my friend, we've been waiting for you for a long time. We have reason to believe that your soul is just like ours. Did you ever get the feeling you were just a little different? Well here's our web page, you've finally found a home."

Best tracks: "Drunk drivers/Killer whales", "Fill in the blank", "(Joe gets kicked out of school for using) Drugs with friends (but says this isn't a problem)"

Explosions in the Sky - The Wilderness

Beautiful, complex. Natural and electronic elements mixed seamlessly.

I can't help it, I'm a sucker for post-rock. If you aren't familiar with the term post-rock, it's the genre with often instrumental, really long songs that feature repetitive guitar tinkering, everlastingly long crescendos, and skull-shattering, gigantic climaxes. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and I won't claim it's the most interesting genre in the world. The Texan quartet Explosions in the Sky is one of post-rock's godfathers, releasing their debut in back in 2000, and their 2003 landmark The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place was my gateway to post-rock and has remained their most acclaimed album. They didn't change their very rigid setup much, and so none of their subsequent releases have really caught my attention. But they shake things up on their seventh album, The Wilderness. Promisingly or perhaps uninterestingly, the standard reception of their seventh album The Wilderness has been that it's "their best since ...Cold Dead Place". And the key to the success is the introduction of some new elements. There are more electronics, some actual human vocals at a few key moments, and also some ambient passages, resulting in a way more diverse album than your "standard" post-rock recipe.

I've started doing something this year I never really appreciated before: listening to music while hiking in the woods. It may sound like a strange thing for a biologist to do. It's true, it's not the best for noticing all the things going on around you, but it sure is a fantastic way to listen to music. It's how Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool first clicked for me, and it cast a fantastic light on The Wilderness. Though obviously nature-inspired, The Wilderness feels more intimate and human than the grandiose events of post-rock past. Someone wrote that it's the same grandiose events going on, fireworks exploding in the sky or whatever, just that it's as if you're watching them more from a distance, paying more attention to the person beside you than the show itself. I liked that impression. and I'm beginning to really like this album. When I listen to it in the woods I find that it makes me really aware of my own situation, like how lucky I am to be where I am or how good the cold air feels on my face or that my ankle doesn't hurt when I run.

OK that was enough abstractions for today, I'll stop there. You might like this or might not, but I enjoyed it.

Best tracks: It's a cohesive whole, but with a long buildup, so I'll highlight "Logic of a Dream", "Landing Cliffs" and "Disintegration Anxiety" so you don't miss them.

Thomas' Christmas calendar: Now in English!

Hey everyone (?) !

It's soon December again, and as has been the case the last several years, that means I'll be summing up the year in music here on my very seasonal music blog. I first post some runners-up, and then my top 10 favorite albums of 2016 one by one as we get close to Christmas Eve. Some years I haven't got through the whole list on time, which may very well be the case this year too, but I'll give it a try. This has always been in Norwegian, but I have a feeling that's been to more people's disappointment than joy lately (perhaps always), so here it goes in English this time.

For any newcomers looking through old titles, I figured I'd start things off with a little guest appearance from Captain Hindsight: Some cruelly overlooked titles from last year's list. There could be many reasons for me missing out on the best releases any given year. There's so much great music out there that some great things just go under the radar. Other albums might have been under consideration for the list, but not deemed worthy of inclusion at the time of writing, only to later reveal themselves as growers. These are sometimes the worst, slowly becoming my favorite albums a year or two later when I didn't even give them a sideways glance on that year's list. So here are some of my biggest blunders from last year. I don't know how they would have placed on the list (probably the list itself has changed a bit), but these hidden treasures need to be shared.

Eivør - Slør

She actually looks just like that in person - and I met her in March!

We had a funny time.

The Faroe Islands' biggest music export, the amazing singer Eivør, released two albums last year. One sung in English, Bridges, and a sort of companion piece sung in Faroese, Slør. It was a bit much too take in, and at first glance they both seemed less thrilling than her 2012 highlight Room. But Slør turned out to be the real grower, each song captivating me one by one, until the entire album plays like a great movie you've seen over and over again, each scene taking you to a new yet familiar place. You come for Eivør's incredible voice, but you end up staying for the mystical Faroese land- and seascapes she so vividly conjures up.

Hear: Í tokuni, Mjørkaflókar.

Buffy Sainte-Marie - Power In The Blood

She's a cool lady. I like this album cover.

Native Canadian folk artist Buffy Sainte-Marie rose to fame in the sixties as a protest singer and had a few hits, including "It's my way", and I don't think the international music scene paid much attention to her for the next 50 years, but she's done some really cool work in her later years. Protest songs from the people of the land are as important as ever, and this record really resonated with me. Buffy, now 75, writes with her heart on the outside of her football jersey, aswe'd say in Norway. Power in the Blood won her the Polaris Music Prize over fellow Canadians like Drake and Caribou, with its captivating folk rock tinged with a bit of world music spice courtesy of some traditional Cree instruments, the odd lyrics in Cree, and the energetic Cree Indians chanting along. Her lyrics about nature and God and peace and Mother Earth versus greed and money and oil and corporations and media are mostly both beautiful and powerful. Only occasionally does a rant about GMOs poisoning our groceries and such become a bit much. But she totally gets away with it, this is a fantastic album that delivers a strong message and certainly gets your blood pumping.

Hear: Carry it on, Ke sakihitin awasis (I love you baby).

East India Youth - CULTURE OF VOLUME

Take a perfectly normal picture and pixelate it weirdly. Repeat on the music.

This guy means business. Not only his album, CULTURE OF VOLUME, but also every single song therein, is titled in CAPS LOCK. In this, his STATEMENT, William Doyle a.k.a. East India Youth takes perfectly good pop songs and pretends that they're weird and experimental. They're not, they're catchy and often quite simple. But the strange ambient-techno opener "THE JUDDERING" puts you in a dark and excited mood, making the thrill of the grandiose pop-climaxes here even bigger. Doyle's second album as East India Youth is loud, it's long, it speaks in CAPS, it could have been pretentious and over-the-top, but thanks to Doyle's bubbling creativity and sheer songcrafting skill, it turns out to be a thundering success.

Hear: "HEARTS THAT NEVER", "ENTIRETY", "TURN AWAY"

Ane Brun - When I'm Free

It's a strange picture, but fitting for the album: Sparkles, and the fact that there's actually true emotion behind them.

Here's another one I just can't believe didn't get a nod from me last year. Ane Brun is a wonderful singer, performer and songwriter, and I'd claim that When I'm Free is her best work to date. It's a bit understated, definitely a grower, but not difficult. It's rather comfortable, glossy, and easy to enjoy in the background, but oh my do these songs stand out when listened to closely. There's a Björk-like quality in the slightly off melodies, structure of the songs, ways she sometimes strains her voice, especially in the opener "Hanging". There are a few songs here that dip to mediocrity, but they're never not pretty, and the highlights bring Ane Brun for me into the very top tier of Norwegian artists.

Hear: "Hanging", "All we want is love", "Shape of a heart".

Tune back in on December 1st for my countdown of 2016's best albums. In the meantime, feel free to scroll through old posts - if there's any particular Norwegian review you're curious about, let me know and I'll happily talk to you about it in English.

1. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly

I fjor var det ingen over og ingen ved siden av Kendrick Lamar. Verdens nye rapper-wunderkind leverte oppfølgeren til good kid, m.A.A.d city, og hvilken triumf det ble. To Pimp A Butterfly er et monumentalt verk. Enten det er musikken, tekstene, rappingen, tematikken eller King Kunta-dansen du falt for, skal det godt gjøres å tenke seg hvordan det kunne blitt gjort bedre enn Kendrick gjorde det.

Fantastisk cover! Sjekk den døde (hvite) dommeren på bakken.

Hvor skal man begynne? Dét er vel mye av grunnen til at denne posten er flere uker forsinket, beklager det. Det er så utrolig mye å ta tak i. Jeg tenker jeg begynner med musikken.

Dette er så mye mer enn et hiphop-album. Joda, det rappes flere romaner med tekst her, vers etter vers med rytmisk og lyrisk sykt imponerende rapping pøses ut. Men musikalsk høres det ikke ut som noe annet hiphop-album jeg vet om. Sterkt jazzpregede arrangementer fulle av improviserende blåsere og strykere akkompagnerer rappingen her, med kraftige innslag av funk, ska, r'n'b og frijazz. Jeg kjente umiddelbart igjen fjorårets Flying Lotus-plate You're Dead!, hvor man finner et meget bra gjestenummer av Kendrick, "Never catch me". Den er skikkelig sær, men avstanden derfra til To Pimp A Butterfly er kort. TPAB er likevel mer tradisjonell og tilgjengelig i at de fleste sangene har tydelige og minneverdige refrenger, noe som absolutt er til platas fordel. De mest jazzete sangene (som "Complexion (a zulu love)", "You ain't gotta lie" og "For sale? - Interlude")  har fortsatt fengende hooks som gir nok holdepunkter til at man greier å henge med på hele den en time og nitten minutter lange plata.

Men 16 slike spor hadde ikke brakt denne plata til topps om tekstene og rappingen var aldri så sterke. Nei, det som sikrer TPAB klassikerstatus er de mer iøynefallende låtene. De mest fengende sangene skiller seg ut som store høydepunkter fra start til slutt, og det er mange av dem. Singlene "King Kunta" (By the time you hear the next pop, the funk shall be within you! POP), "The blacker the berry" (The sweeter the jizz) og "Alright" (silence for the record AH!) sprenger karakterskalaen. Den episke åpningslåta "Wesley's theory", det dramatiske motsetningsparet "i" og "u", ett-eneste-stort-smil-låta "For Free? - Interlude", og forførende deilige "These walls" er også høydepunkter på sine egne rare måter. Det var 8 stykker det, bare halvplaten av platas 16 spor. 

Her er den vanvittig kule videoen til "Alright":

Her er det mye å fortelle. Historiene - Kendricks personlige reise og afroamerikanernes felles kamp - veves sammen i et flott helhetlig verk, og jeg klarer og orker ikke gå i detalj på alt han synger om her. Man får ærefrykt av å begynne å skrive om et slikt opus. "Skal jeg liksom bruke ord? Kendrick bruker jo ord tusen ganger bedre enn meg!" Han har nok å skrive om, i alle fall. Han har ikke hatt det lett, Kendrick, og det har neimen ikke hans rasefeller heller. I tillegg til å hausse opp niggahs over hele USA til regelrett krig, går han dypt inn i sitt eget post-suksess, post-penger, post-kjendisliv-hode. Jeg fikk den tidlige versjonen som ble sluppet av "i" litt i vrangstrupen - den virket så standard hiphop-skrytende, den manglet det kritiske synet og den fortellende røsten som gjorde good kid, m.A.A.d city så interessant - men i lys av alt han har vært gjennom tidligere på TPAB (spesielt hjerteskjærene "u") får den en helt annen betydning, og vi skjønner at det skulle en del til før han kunne triumferende synge "I love myself" på platas nest siste spor. I tillegg til selvransakelsen har vi også nok av tilfeller hvor historiefortelleren Kendrick briljerer, som i "How much a dollar cost", Barack Obamas favorittlåt fra 2015.

Nå skal jeg ikke si så mye mer, men jeg skal nevne diktet som går gjennom hele plata. Jepp, Kendrick bruker et virkemiddel jeg aldri har sett maken til før. Mellom flere av låtene leser han større og større biter av et dikt, og slutten på hvert segment fungerer som en slags introduksjon til den neste låta. Etter siste låt leser han opp hele diktet, og det avsløres at han leser diktet til hans store helt, avdøde Tupac Shakur. Det veves inn i et intervju med Tupac, hvor Kendrick klipper inn biter av et gammelt Tupac-intervju til å passe med hans spørsmål, og hvor sprøtt det enn høres ut blir det faktisk skikkelig fint. Hele plata er dedikert til Tupac, og det er ytterst passende. Den skulle nok egentlig hete "To Pimp A Caterpillar" men det ble for obvious.

Kendrick Lamar er den beste helten denne generasjonen kunne fått. La ham lenge leve.

Beste spor: "The blacker the berry", "u", "Alright", "Wesley's theory", "King Kunta", "How much a dollar cost"