RIB's 2016 Album of the Year: Bon Iver -- 22, A Million

This year, a great year for new music and an absolutely awful year for just about everything else, my Album of the Year pick came down to a final three artists: Radiohead. Leonard Cohen. Bon Iver.

(You can read more about what informed that choice here.)

The muse of Radiohead's "A Moon Shaped Pool" is Rachel Owen, Thom Yorke's partner -- and later wife -- of 23 years, a relationship that produced two children, and ended last year. The record is a post-postmortem on their love affair, at times angry or foreboding, but mostly resigned, restrained, and beautiful. On Sunday, Dec. 18, 2016, amid 365 days of death and destruction, Rachel Owen died of cancer. She was 48.

The day before the worst news of 2016 happened (hint: a Tuesday night in November), Leonard Cohen died. He left us with a final work worthy of a canon of music that has and will stand the test of time. His voice on "You Want It Darker" is deeper and, yes, darker than ever; his words as poetic and meaningful.

There is loss, too, in Bon Iver's "22, A Million" -- though it's buried a bit in numerology and vocal effects and his sometimes inscrutable lyrics. But there's a reason, for me, Justin Vernon's first missive in five years rises above the pack to win my 2016 Album of Year: hope.

It seems, at the end of such a brutal year, that we don't have much of it right now. I wrote at length about how the acceptance in Radiohead's "True Love Waits" made it finally ready to be put to tape, and to close "A Moon Shaped Pool." No longer a live take -- a desperate, pathetic plea to a leaving lover, sang over an acoustic guitar strummed so hard it could shred fingers -- it's now a recording of quiet acceptance, with no catharsis, no dramatic flourish at the end. It's just a goodbye, long after all the goodbyes have been said.

A breaking heart, though, is different than a broken heart. It's far more painful in the moment, yes, but then the feeling hasn't turned empty yet. The hole is forming, but it's more a fresh, gaping wound than a crater, covered in several layers of thick gray moon dust, too deep to ascend.

So when Thom Yorke sings, "Please, don't leave. Don't leave," on the album version of "True Love Waits," he's talking to a ghost. It's harrowing and beautiful in its own right.

But when Justin Vernon, on "715 Creeks", sings, "Turn around, you're my A-team. Turn around now, you're my A-team. Goddamn turn around now, you're my A-team," his voice digitally manipulated so it forms tendrils around itself, it's heart wrenching. The moment is unfurling in real time. Will his A-team turn around? It might. And it might not.

It's the last words of the song, so we never know. The mystery is unsolved. The yearning continues.

"It might be over soon," Bon Iver's record warns you on its opening track. But maybe it won't be.

There is so much wisdom on the Radiohead record -- one of the best of the band's career, a record which might have won easily another year, and was the front-runner most of this one -- and on Leonard Cohen's, a spiritual incarnation of so much secular import, but they hit the intellect for me more now than they do the heart. Right now, I need the heart. I need room to believe. It's why "Glass Eyes" is probably the best Radiohead song this year -- maybe there's hope in the woods, if you only get off the train from the city and walk.

Bon Iver's record is full of heart. It takes the cabin in the woods intimacy of "For Emma, Forever Ago" and mixes in the richness of production that helped define "Bon Iver" to find a home in the center. It's the band's finest record yet; far from perfect, meandering in some places, but peppered with moments that grab on tight. I didn't know I needed it, or even wanted it, until I heard it. It's warm and inviting, even amid the mystery of the coded song titles and the artwork, littered with symbols, that could very well turn some away -- and kept me at a distance at first, too. It has a sense of humor, too, at one point rhyming "quandary" with "waundry" in an off-hand manner in the midst of a much deeper sentiment.

But the two lyrics on "22, A Million," I find most compelling come on the final track, "00000 Million":

"I worried bout rain and I worried bout lightning/But I watched them off, to the light of the morning"

Bon Iver's darkness yields to the dawn; it's not Radiohead's darkness, which is at worst the sun covered over by a spaceship in your darkest hour, at best the glassy-eyed light of a dreary, cloudy day, or Leonard Cohen's darkness, the moment the flame is extinguished.

And then there are the final words of the song, and indeed the final words of the record:

"Well it harms it harms me it harms, I'll let it in"

The takeaway? Hope that comes out of hurt takes work. It's time to feel it, let it in, and get going.

Past winners:

1993: Counting Crows -- August and Everything After
1994: R.E.M. -- Monster
1995: The Innocence Mission -- Glow
1996: Dave Matthews Band -- Crash
1997: U2 -- Pop
1998: R.E.M. -- Up
1999: John Linnell -- State Songs
2000: Radiohead -- Kid A
2001: Bjork -- Vespertine
2002: Wilco -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2003: Bonnie "Prince" Billy -- Master and Everyone
2004: Wilco -- A Ghost is Born
2005: Sufjan Stevens -- Illinois
2006: The Decemberists -- The Crane Wife
2007: Radiohead -- In Rainbows
2008: Shearwater -- Rook
2009: Animal Collective -- Merriweather Post Pavilion
2010: Laura Veirs -- July Flame
2011: PJ Harvey -- Let England Shake
2012: Animal Collective -- Centipede Hz
2013: Mogwai -- Les Revenants
2014: Sun Kil Moon -- Benji
2015: The Tallest Man On Earth -- Dark Bird is Home

Nominees: 2016 Album of the Year

Happy Turkey Time! If all goes to plan, this should auto-post while I am happily enjoying a trip to Iceland with the family. (I am, however, writing it more than a month in advance, on a sleepless night -- so *fingers crossed*.)

Anyway ... say it with me: It's been an awesome year for music. Three former winners are up for the award this year, and many of the honorable mentions might have been nominees in past years. I have so much to choose from, they're all so different, and -- though no one ever believes me when I say it -- I have no idea which one I'm gonna pick.

So let's get right to it. Here (with admittedly brief descriptions; I said it was a sleepless night, but now all of a sudden I'm getting kinda drowsy) are my 2016 Album of the Year nominees -- in the usual iTunes alphabetical order:

***

THE AMAZING - AMBULANCE

There's that cliche about books and their covers, but I saw the cover of this record -- a black cloud descending down a flight of stairs (see right) -- and I was sold. (Technically, I finished the glowing review I was reading before I downloaded it, but you get the idea.)

The Amazing is a Swedish band I had never heard of before I stumbled upon this album. I tweeted that the band is a sort of Mark Kozelek-meets-The War On Drugs, which of course is a physics puzzle because those two very much have met -- and were repulsed by each other. Which I guess is too bad, because The Amazing sound ... well ... amazing.

***

BASIA BULAT - GOOD ADVICE

Canadian Basia Bulat was one of my annual Newport Folk Festival discoveries, but like one notable previous folk-fest find, Tift Merritt, I actually missed her performance -- hearing a bit of it on the radio in the car as we parked, and then listening to the very end of her set wafting over the walls of The Fort as we walked toward the front gate.

Unlike Tift Merritt, I didn't find myself hanging out with her briefly outside the Museum Stage. But I hope that, like Tift Merritt, I get to see her several times at folk festivals of the future and otherwise.

***

BON IVER - 22, A MILLION

I really didn't think I needed another Bon Iver record. And then I heard this one.

Look, the album titles are weird. And with my limited listening time these days, there is so much more to unpack that I haven't yet (but plan to). But the way Justin Vernon mixes in his little electronica dabbling with his soulful voice -- and even a saxophone -- is entrancing. Listen to the song below, and you might understand why I keep hitting repeat.

***

case/lang/veirs -- case/lang/veirs

Unlike Basia Bulat, I got to see case/lang/veirs perform at the Newport Folk Festival -- and it was awesome. k.d lang's voice filled the summer air as Neko Case and 2010 Album of the Year winner Laura Veirs dropped to her knees on stage with her guitar in mock rock-goddess pose.

The record is a perfect mix of the three songwriters and voices. Veirs is my favorite of the three, but some of the best songs on here are from the others, like Case's Delirium and lang's Honey and Smoke and Why Do We Fight -- although they all are served by the harmonies they make together. Of course, I love me some Laura, which makes the song below one of the ones I keep returning to the most.

***

KANYE WEST - THE LIFE OF PABLO

I have no idea how the version I have differs from the final version, or if there is a final version, but this record really didn't need any tinkering IMO (but what do I know -- the video below is different from what I've been listening to, and it's awesome).

All of the many sides of Kanye can be found on this record -- musical prodigy, asshole, salesman, showman, sincere, insincere, dark, vulgar, you name it. It all works together to paint the picture of a complicated, thrilling, frustrating and confounding genius.

***

LAURA GIBSON - EMPIRE BUILDER

She may never get a Nobel Prize for Literature (go Bob!), but Laura Gibson is a poet who happens to set her words to music.

Just listen to the song below. Listen to the lyrics with your eyes closed as she sings, or read them as the video plays. Nothing I could write in this space could approach them.

***

LEONARD COHEN - YOU WANT IT DARKER

(Late-breaking edit on this one.) We lost Leonard Cohen the same week America lost an election. The video below -- though not a song from his last album, or even his own performance of it -- shows how much we still need letters from L. Cohen.

And we do have one last missive in You Want It Darker.

From Treaty, an instant Cohen classic: "I heard the snake was baffled by his sin/He shed his scales to find the snake within/But born again is born without a skin/The poison enters into everything."

He was a giant. Good thing he'll never really leave us.

***

RADIOHEAD - A MOON SHAPED POOL

Radiohead has already won Album of the Year twice -- a win this year would separate it from fellow two-time winners R.E.M., Wilco and Animal Collective. Is Radiohead better than those other bands? Obviously, I'll likely never put any band past R.E.M., but Radiohead is a notch above the other two.

If Radiohead does win, I'll have to come up with some new things to say about the band, and this particular record, but for now I feel like I've said most of what needs to be said right here.

***

SHEARWATER - JET PLANE AND OXBOW

It's time to finally stop asking where Thor and Kimberly are; this band is basically unrecognizable -- except for lead singer Jonathan Meiburg, who in recent years has taken Shearwater from mysterious and beautiful to poppy and political.

It works. This album rocks; it's catchy and fun but still smart; and it has perhaps the most uplifting song of the year -- the song of the spring, at any rate -- Pale Kings. But if you haven't heard Jet Plane and Oxbow yet, start with the first single, embedded below.

***

WARPAINT - HEADS UP

I've been madly in love with this band from the moment I first saw the video for Elephants while randomly flipping channels one day seven years ago.

Their last album, which was self-titled, narrowly missed out on Album of the Year. I'm not sure if the band will ever quite reach those heights again, but I'm digging this new joint at the moment. Don't forget -- it's still October for me. I have to live with this one a bit longer, but it's on heavy rotation at the moment, as the days get shorter and Halloween approaches.

***

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Also in iTunes alphabetical order:

Andrew Bird -- Are You Serious

Angel Olsen -- MY WOMAN

Animal Collective -- Painting With

Anna Meredith -- Varmints

Cross Record -- Wabi-Sabi

Daughter -- Not To Disappear

David Bowie -- Blackstar

Gillian Welch -- Boots No. 1: The Official Revival Bootleg

Ingrid Michaelson -- It Doesn't Have To Make Sense

John Prine -- For Better, or Worse

Mike Mills -- Concerto for Violin, Rock Band, and String Orchestra

Mogwai -- Atomic

Okkervil River -- Away

Savages -- Adore Life

Violent Femmes -- We Can Do Anything

RIB's 2015 Album of the Year: The Tallest Man on Earth -- Dark Bird is Home

Blurb reprinted from here.

Swedish guitar-picker Kristian Matsson, AKA The Tallest Man on Earth, often writes songs about being a traveler in solitude, but on his new record he’s added a backing band to his caravan, including Bon Iver’s Mike Noyce. And while that full-band sound might qualify as “going electric,” Matsson’s acoustic guitar has always had plenty of its own voltage. Ironically, this record, thematically, though far from cloistered – songs like “Little Nowhere Towns” and the standout “Seventeen” definitely have that open-road mix of hopefulness and weariness – there’s a lot less of that thrill of the chase which helped characterize past albums like “The Wild Hunt.” Matsson, who sings about a traveler coming home in “Slow Dance,” ends the record with the title track, in which a dying man sings to his lover as he enters into the afterlife. At one point – earlier on the record in “Sagres” – he laments “all this fucking doubt”; by the end of “Dark Bird is Home”, though, he’s crystal clear: “I thought that this would last for a million years/But now I need to go/Oh, fuck.” It’s the realization that another strange and extraordinary journey has come to an end, and a new one is ready to begin.

Past winners:

1993: Counting Crows -- August and Everything After
1994: R.E.M. -- Monster
1995: The Innocence Mission -- Glow
1996: Dave Matthews Band -- Crash
1997: U2 -- Pop
1998: R.E.M. -- Up
1999: John Linnell -- State Songs
2000: Radiohead -- Kid A
2001: Bjork -- Vespertine
2002: Wilco -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2003: Bonnie "Prince" Billy -- Master and Everyone
2004: Wilco -- A Ghost is Born
2005: Sufjan Stevens -- Illinois
2006: The Decemberists -- The Crane Wife
2007: Radiohead -- In Rainbows
2008: Shearwater -- Rook
2009: Animal Collective -- Merriweather Post Pavilion
2010: Laura Veirs -- July Flame
2011: PJ Harvey -- Let England Shake
2012: Animal Collective -- Centipede Hz
2013: Mogwai -- Les Revenants
2014: Sun Kil Moon -- Benji