Indiecast - Our Favorite Albums of 2016

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

After a brief tangent on Steve's experience this week recording an audiobook and a review of the week's scant slate of new releases, the guys get into a deep conversation about the music of 2016, a fascinating year of transition in a tumultuous time. Steven and Ian talk about the year, what it meant for the future, and share their top five albums lists. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Amazon Music. Hello everyone and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talk about our favorite albums of 2016. Not 2026, 2016. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. He'll be doing most of the talking today because my voice is shot. Ian Cohen.

Ian, how are you? All right, so we got two options here. The first of which is my plan to do a line by line analysis of RXK nephews, the real Little Reese for the next five hours. Or we can get our Amazon benefactors to get the Daniel Lanwham mics going on and we can have kind of a time out of mind sort of thing. Oh, man. Where, you know, the crags in your voice just give this sense of richness and an impending sense of mortality to our indie cast today. Which one are you thinking? Well, there's a new Lanwa album out today.

I don't know if you knew that if you're making a timely reference, but Daniel Lanwa, my man, new record, which we'll talk about here in a minute. You know, my voice is actually okay. I think I'll have a lot to say, and I think it'll hold up. I just made that reference at the top of the episode because I've been recording the audiobook for my upcoming book, Is This It, the Never-ending Rise and Fall of the Strokes and Rock and Roll. I was in the studio laying down tracks.

Monday through Thursday, which is why the podcast is a little late going up on Friday. Ian, I don't know if you have any plans to record the audiobook of the upcoming Emo Bible that you're writing, but doing an audiobook is hard. It is hard, hard work. It's rewarding. This is the second time I've done it, but it's exhausting. Yeah, you're definitely not going to get me to do it because there are so many quotes in mine. I've just been interviewing people non-stop. And the one time, I remember it was like a

Ronan Farrow book. I think it was one about Harvey Weinstein where he did everyone's voice, including like the Latina maids. So he had to do different accents and different genders. That's kind of what I would probably have to do. Although that being said, most of the people I'm interviewing are guys from like the Midwest. So there isn't too much difference. Yeah, you just have to do a slight Fargo type accent and then you'll be fine. I only did that in my book when I was quoting

Julian Casablancus. I did a not an impression of Julian Casablancus. I did a sort of like a weary somewhat stone sounding voice for Julian Casablancus. So if you get the audiobook

kind of talk like this whenever I do the Julian Casablancus. Because most of it is me doing music criticism, but occasionally, you know, you interject some quotes. I didn't do that for Albert Hamann Jr. or Nikolai Frascher or anyone else, just for Julian. But yeah, it's hard. I mean, just reading your book anyway out loud, I don't think it's a pleasurable experience, especially when you've been working on it for, you know, a long time and you're just tired of it. But the people require, I think the people like it when the author reads it.

Do you still have time to decide that you want to do it or have the publisher, have they already reached out to the voice actor? Have they already got that person secured for this? Maybe you can get writer strong to read your book. He did the Anthony Kedis memoir, which I did that as an audiobook. and Riders Strong of Boy Meets World did the, I don't know how he landed on Riders Strong. I feel like all those guys want Johnny Depp or someone like that to do the book. Johnny was probably busy, you know, in one of his mansions, you know, just mainlining wine all day long so he couldn't do it. So he got writer strong.

He started to work on the Hollywood Vampires album or whatever, that side project band he's doing. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, did Ben Savage say no? So Ben Savage didn't do it, or Topanga? Maybe Topanga couldn't do it. I don't know. Do a gender swap that Red Hot Chili Pepper's story. That would be pretty cool.

I'm sorry, man. If I'm reading an Anthony Keatis book, I am imagining it in Anthony Keatis's voice and cadence. There's absolutely no way I'd want anyone else to do that one. Yeah, no, he didn't do it. It was Ryder Strong. He did a good job. Shout out to a Ryder Strong out there. I remember, did you ever watch Boy Meets World?

I have vague recollections of it, and this will actually get into our 2016 conversation because Pup used to be called Topanga. Okay. I knew of Boy Meets World. It's just one of those shows that you could absorb because there were five channels and more of a monoculture, but I never, like, sat down and watched it. But I'm aware of its impact on certain people. I think, I could be mistaken, but I think writer strong's character grows up to be a music journalist who writes for a Rolling Stone.

Am I totally imagining that? I'm the wrong guy to check you on that. I didn't even know who Ryder Strong was before we started this conversation. TV's Ryder Strong? You don't know, right? He's the co-star Boy Meets World along with Ben Savage and Topanga, the, whoever played Depanga. That's the power trio, which I don't even feel like I watch Boy Meets World, but somehow I have it in my head that Ryder Strong, his character,

because I think at the end it shows them as adults. And I think he's like a journalist for Rawlings. Someone needs to write in and confirm this for me. I could be totally wrong, and this could be the most pointless tangent we've ever had on the show. But I just love to imagine, because writer strong, I guess I don't know the timeline of the show, like when he would have, like when they would have been growing up. Like, is writer strong a Rolling Stone journalist in like 2036 or something since it's the future?

Or would he be a journalist now? Like, would he be one of our peers? Well, I mean, he's our age. Yeah, I suppose. Right. Was an actor, now a writer, director, podcaster, teaches too. I mean, I got like at least two of those things going on. Maybe like one of the pop cast guys is like the grown-up writer strong.

You know, like, because I could see that happening. That could be the scenario. Like, you grow up as a show and then you grow up to be one of the hosts of popcast. Like, that could have been the thing. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I'm looking at his picture and he kind of has that popcast look about him. Yeah, like the guy who's not Caramanica kind of looks like he could have been on Boy Meets World. That could be him.

Could be something else. Let's talk about the releases that are coming out this week because there's not that many of them. The Juneteenth holiday is on Friday. So not a lot of albums. That's why we're talking about 2016 today because there's not a lot going on. But we've been wanting to do this for a while.

Like you wanted to talk about, I feel like every week you were bringing up a new album that came out in 2016 that you wanted to talk about. And I'm like, let's just group it together into one episode because we're entering the dog days of summer here. You know, it's late June. We're going into July. Things are going to be slowing down. So we're going to have to be doing some more kind of retrospective episodes.

Going back to our roots, really, it reminds me of how we got started in the throes of the pandemic. Like we launched this show in August of 2022. I'm sorry, August of 2020. The absolute worst time to launch a music podcast, I don't know what we were thinking. We were bored, just anything. Like, hey, it would be cool to do a pot. I mean, the podcast was like long in discussion

prior to pandemic, but it's like, I guess this is the time to do it. I guess so. So upcoming albums or albums are out today. I already mentioned this. Daniel Lanwa, the great producer, producer of or co-producer

of the Joshua Tree, Peter Gabriel So, a couple Bob Dylan albums. I think he was one of the guys who did like Battleborn, The Killers album. And I know that because he did the last arcade fire album. Yes. In the midst of doing that, I realized, I made some like joke about how, you know, since you two, he's best, his popular rock CV includes some of the lesser loved killers and Dashboard Confessional albums. I mean, he also did a lot of great albums by, like, roots people in the 90s.

Like, he did a great Emmy Lou Harris album called Recking Ball. He did this Willie Nelson record, like, Teatro. It would be like all these roots people would come to him, and they'd be like, give me the Lanwa treatment. You know, just drench me in reverb, have some, like, tribal drums going on, have some, like, spooky treated guitars. going on and it was magical for a long time.

I love Lanwa. I'm a huge Lanwa fan. Some people are more mixed on him. I know like in the Bob Dylan world, time out of mind is a somewhat controversial record in terms of the production. It was that box set that came out where they redid the production.

They de-Lanwaized it. I had no idea. I had no idea the Dylan community had like that strong of opinions on Daniel Landau. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? They have strong opinions on everything. That's true, but I figured that like time out of mind was like a consensus pick.

Well, because Bob typically doesn't work with heavy-handed producers. It's usually just Bob in the studio, plug it in with a band. He does his thing and then he leaves. Lanoua was the only producer he's ever worked with that was like a co-auture. you know, like where his production was very visible. And obviously it paid off with time out of mind one album of the year at the Grammys and brought Bob back. But I think, you know, Bob Dylan is the star of a Bob Dylan album. It's not Bob Dylan and co-star.

But when you're bringing Lanwa on board, there's a lot of, there's a lot of Lanwa there. It's a tonnage. with Daniel so it might have been a little too much he has a new record out today called Belladonna nocturne which it's amazing that there's not already an album by Daniel L'Anwa called that

that's a very Daniel Lannois type album title Belladonna nocturne you know like a mysterious woman in the night yeah I also learned that I also learned there's a Bob Lannois

as well he has like a brother who also makes music. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. He passed away in 2021. Yeah. Yeah.

Also, I thought. French Canadians? Yeah. French Canadian posse, you know, start out with Brian Eno. And, yeah, they were homies with Brian, and then, you know, Brian lifted him up from doing all those U2 albums together. Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, Octune Baby. Good stuff. How does man, man, alone, atomic bomb? Yes.

That was just Lanwa, right? Yeah, I think I think the only worked together on the U2 albums And then they also did Some of those, like, I think they did one of the ambient albums. Like, Lanwa is on like Land,

I think. Ambient 4 by Eno, I think Lanwa's on that one. He's on one of the early 80s ones And that's how he does that. It is for, yeah. It's four. But he's Danny Lanwaugh on that one.

Yeah, exactly. He was a kid. Yeah. And then, Then they did the Unforgettable Fire together, and then Lanwa did So with Peter Gabriel on his own. I think that was his first solo blockbuster. And then he did the insane Robbie Robertson album from 87 that I love, one of my favorite albums of all time. That is the hyper Lanwa production, just super over the top.

You two, Peter Gabriel, the Bodine's. They're all in there doing guest spots. I always call that album. That's like the Landwa Avengers assembling to do the Robbie Robertson record. A lot of people hate that record. I love that record so much.

It's so over the top. Graham Coxon, he has a new record, Castle Park, from Blur. It says previously unreleased LP. I don't know if this was in the vault somewhere and they're letting it out. I don't know.

I got, I mean, this is like Daniel Lanwa album, a Graham Cox, an album that may or may not have been made in 2011. My recommendation corner is also like proof positive of just how dead this

day is. And I think, you know, understandably so, given it's a holiday. But yeah, we are we're definitely got to go 2006. We got to go to 2006. Well, I mean, Landau to me, if you can't tell, I could have, I could have given 20 more minutes

on Landau. So, you know, I'm not I'm not pointing to him as evidence that this is a dead day. Pond has a new record out today called Terrestrials. I believe, is this the Australian psych rock band? Yeah, I can't. Like, well, I guess I'm like the resident expert because I anticipated you bringing this one up. And I thought, man, I feel like I reviewed a Pond album, like back in 2012 thereabouts. And it turns out I did.

It was called Hobo Rocket. You go. They were kind of like a, they had a couple of guys in Tame and Paula early on. So, yeah, that's them. It's probably way more popular than like any of us could imagine. I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, bands like that always have huge audiences. I have one of their records somewhere in a box.

Is it a hobo rocket? No, it's not Hobo Rocket. It's one of the non-Hobo Rocket albums for Pond. But yeah, they were. I just think of them as a satellite band of Tame Impala. Have they followed the same path of doing pop music?

I think they've stayed true to the psych rock. Yeah. So all the Tame Impala heads who are like dropping out after you know inner speaker or lonerism or whatever,

they're like I'll screw currents much less you know whatever the last record was called. Deadbeat. There you go. And you don't forget about the slow rush. Of course, slow rush. One of the most pandemic albums of that time. We'll just list Hayman Paula albums for the rest of this episode to fill it up.

And then Tucker Zimmerman, Dream Me a Dream, the posthumous record from him. This is on your fantasy team. This is your last album, I think. It is. And I think it's getting like the golf. clap aates we we needed uh we needed something bigger to to hang with uh i basically needed this guy to outflank olivia rodrigo and they're definitely not they're definitely not not in the same league head to head but yeah i think this one's uh pretty much in the bag we will not have a uh

NBA finals game four comeback well we'll we'll confirm it next week because i don't think there's a metacritic score for this yet i looked it up but uh i think i'm going to win this quarter. So I'm excited about that. Speaking of Olivia Rodrigo, can I be the guy in his late 40s who says that he really likes the new Olivia Rodriguez album? I've been into this. I bought this album this week on CD because I think it is a total CD album. You and I texted about this a little bit. I don't know if you've dug into this album. I actually really like it. And, you know, we've talked amongst ourselves about the discourse about this record and how

inevitably it's super annoying. Like, whenever there's a big ticket pop record that comes out, conversation about it evolves pretty quickly. But I will say, you know, this record to me, I think it's like a pretty strong and specific homage to like a big ticket alt rock record from 1995 that would have sold for 1898 on CD. You know, it's like if Natalie and Bruglia had made a record with Robert Smith in 1995, I think it would have sounded a lot like this. And the thing I like about it is that it It has that thing that you don't really see anymore because there's not as much money

in the music industry for this kind of music. But I think in the 90s there was this thing of you have a pop star who came up in the pop world, but their heart lies with rock music. So they have this huge budget that they can use to make this very expensive sounding kind of rock that's like very catchy but also is pop music. music at the same time. And I've always had a weakness for that kind of record. And this album is totally in that lane.

Like, I actually think you would appreciate it on that level. I mean, I can appreciate it on a level, like you said, about, like, being a CD. Well, first off, it would be probably $11.99 first week, because CDs were on sale. That's why you had to buy in that. $9.95, they were, I don't think they were on sale. I feel like they were lowering the price in the 2000s. Gotcha. But 90s, I think, because that was.

That was a salad days. It was like, oh, yeah, who cares? I think, though, no matter how big the record was, it was on sale week one. All right, well, we'll set aside the price debate here for a second. But it is absolutely a mall album. It's exactly the sort of thing that I'm going to say 1998, like when I was working at the gap. It could have fit right in between, say, Luscious Jackson, another band that Daniel Landau produced

and like whatever garbage album was out at that time. I mean, I say 95 because I think that the parallels to Jagged Little Pill are obvious to me. Because I think Alas Morset also came up in the pop world. And she made this record that was, I think at the time, if you were cynical about it, you'd be like, oh, she's just exploiting the alt rock trend. And she's making a record that's copying a lot of what's going on in Alt Rock. But then you listen to Jake a Little Pill and it's like, well, there's so many bangers on this album. It's kind of undeniable.

Like you can't be that cynical when you actually listen to the record. And I think I say 95 because the Rodriguez, I think, record has that flavor to me of it. Like where it is just taking that kind of music and sucking it into pop music and doing it in a way that I think is totally convincing. and works. And the plasticity of it, I think, actually adds to the appeal of it. So. Well, by this logic, I'm hoping the next one is her supposed infatuation junkie. I would love to hear where she goes off the rails. I mean, the album title is kind of like that already. Although it's kind of like a 1975 album title. Absolutely. It strikes me more as that than something like people are going to make fun of, you know.

You seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. Yeah, I feel like that. I feel like there's less friction with the fan base than like supposed former infatuation junkie. But like, were Atlantis fans making fun of that or was that outside people? I don't think Atlanta fans would have made fun of that album title. That's a great question. I think there were a lot of other things that people made fun of, like, Thank You India and whatever that song was. That was a wild piece of work that one.

I mean, people just made fun of pop stars more back then than they do now. I mean, if we lived in a different era, people would be making fun of this album title, I think. But, you know, we're just more reverent. I shouldn't say we. I should say the culture is more reverent of pop stars than they were in the West. Well, we are 40-something male music critics with Beard. So I think we are included in the reverent towards pop stars group. I'm just saying, I think this Livar Rodrigo record, it's good stuff.

I like it. It's been in the rotation this week. All right, let's get the 2016 here, which we're talking about, obviously, because this was 10 years ago, 10 years being a magical number in the music criticism business in terms of like when you look back. And you've been wanting to do this for a long time. This is going to be an interesting conversation because I feel like you're more nostalgic for this year than I am. And I think that's reflected in how you really wanted to talk about several records that came out this year already. And how I was a little slow to do that. And then this week, just looking at 2016 and thinking about it.

And from my perspective, when I look at that year, first of all, I think about Donald Trump getting elected, of course. I mean, that's the number one headline that everyone thinks about in 2016. On a personal level, my daughter was born that year, so I think about that. She was born a week before Trump was elected, which is an interesting timing thing. Also born on the day the Cubs won the World Series. So if you want to think about the Knicks winning the NBA title after 53 years, maybe it's not so good when curses get lifted for sports franchises. Just saying the Cubs thing seem like we traded something.

in terms of the sports win and then there was a huge weird political thing that happened right after it. But just looking at the albums that came out that year, for me personally, I don't think that there's like a great, great album from this year. There's a lot of albums I like a lot in albums that I think are great with like a lowercase G. But in terms of like all-time classic years or all-time classic. albums, I should say. I don't know if this year has any for me personally. We'll talk about this, because I want to look at the Paz and Jop poll from that year, like one of the last years they did that, the critics poll, the albums that did well on that list. But I was just thinking

about this in general. This is like an even bigger picture thing. But just looking at the 2010s in general, I think that's easily the worst decade for music in my lifetime. Like, just going through the decades. Like, I was born in the 70s. Clearly, the 70s are awesome. The 80s, I feel like people talked about how bad the 80s were in the moment, but clearly in the 21st century, like, that's the most influential decade of the 20th century by far. I mean, we're still hearing 80s retreads all the time. The 90s, obviously. awesome. Love the Natives. The aughts, I think, for indie rock in particular, are great. I mean, from the early 2000s to the late 2000s, there's like a real range of things going on. The 2010s,

like early 2010s, I think there's some cool stuff going on. I think the late 2010s are totally a wasteland. And I don't want to be too reductive because maybe if I sat down and I really thought about this for a long time, I would come up with a more nuanced take. But stepping back and looking at it more broadly, it seems awful. Like the resistance era, I mean, we were trying to figure out whether to talk about Lizzo this week, because Lizzo, her record, which I think it's called Bitch. It is. Her recent record came out, and it didn't even break the top 200 on the Billboard album chart, you know, it pulled an arcade fire on the album chart, which is kind of stunning to me. I mean, knowing that, I know that she's slipped in recent years, but like,

even like her last record, I think debuted at number 23. Like, you would think that her album would at least land at like 141 or something. But no, didn't make the top 200. And just bringing up Lizzo, because she seems like a symbol or one of the symbols of that late two, 2010's period. But I don't know, man. When I think about 2016, to me that's almost like the beginning of that. The beginning of that bad period. And there's some good stuff in 2016.

I don't want to paint too broad a brush, like my top five. We're going to share our own top five favorite albums of this year. But, man, I don't know. I think this is a pretty rough era overall. And 2016 is like a transitional time for that. So it's better than a lot of the later years in the 2010s. But man, I don't know. I think this is a rough decade for me.

It's a really rough decade. I think we, to put a cap on the Lizzo discussion, just to give you a sense of like what's required to make the top 200, number 197 is a black-eyed peas album from 2009. it's the one with Boom Boom Pow and I got a feeling It's not even the one with Let's Get It Started That has been just kind of endlessly Memed so yeah

I mean that's it's pretty stunning Because you know she had like radio hits You know like album She won like song of the year Or record of the year for One of her I can't remember I mean yeah like I can't remember the song I know that she won that award

I mean It's like Childish Gambino winning like For This is America like Who the hell has even thought about that song, you know, in the last, you know, five, six, seven years. I mean, I don't know. It's so bad. Can I just read this list? This is the list of top ten, Paus and Jop records. Oh, okay. I thought you're going to read the top ten, the top ten Billboard ones. It's probably like a Metallica greatest hits, like five Ariana Grande. But yeah, let's read the top 10 because I don't know what they are.

So from the Paas and Jop poll, this was a critics poll that the village voice did for many, many years. and it was considered the most comprehensive poll of music critics. And I forget the last year that this happened. It was around this time, though. I don't think it went much longer after 2016. So here's the top 10. Number 10, life of Pablo, Kanye West. Number nine, teens in denial, car seat headrest.

Number eight, you want it darker, Leonard Cohen. Number seven, a moon-shaped pool, radio head. Six, blonde Frank Ocean. Five, a seat at the table, salange. Number four, coloring book, chance the rapper. Number three, we got it from here. Thank you for your service. A tribe called Quest.

Two, lemonade, Beyonce, one, Black Star, David Bowie. What's fascinating to me about this top ten is that you either have super venerated legends. Two of which died this year. Like Leonard Cohen and David Bowie died. Bowie, like both of them like right after the albums came out. I think, I think Leonard was still alive when you want a darker came out, but I remember. What happened was that like Leonard Cohen died like very shortly after Trump got elected. Right.

People were like, yeah, that's so cool of him. He's like, yeah, I want out. Peace. I remember you want a darker came out and all the reviews were talking about how Leonard Cohen was going to die at any minute. And I got really annoyed. And I wrote a piece saying, hold your horses. Leonard Cohen is fine.

He's in an artistic prime. He's doing great. And then he died like the next week. So that showed me. But anyway, you have super venerated legends. You've got Bowie and Cohen. You've got a tribe called Quest. You've got Radiohead.

You've got, I mean, Kanye West at that point. I mean, he's deep into his career. You've got Beyonce. So mostly, what I would say, pretty chalky legends. Or you have people that are super specific to 2016. people that I would say did not have much shelf life beyond this year and that would be Carcy Headrest,

Chance the Rapper, I mean the quintessential example of that. Solange who I don't think is, has she made a record since. She has. One came out in 2019. It was really celebrated. It was like a top fiver. But yeah, I mean, I think this album's like hold up extremely well.

That album. A seat at the table. I do like that one a lot. But, you know, teens in denial has held up. But I'm just saying like she's very specific to the late 2010. Oh, absolutely. And then and then you have blonde by Frank Ocean, which I think is clearly the most impactful record from this year.

It's interesting that it's only at number six. I would have assumed, I mean, I would have guessed that Lemonade and Black Star would be one and two. But to me, it's like, okay, they weren't polling young enough people for this. I remember specifically about this year. It was one where people started to not submit. Because as you go further down, you see a lot of what I would describe as, you know, like, ones that were skewed by individual choices.

Like, you know, the hotel year is at number 34. That's all you got to know. It's like the sort of people who still cared enough. Yeah. But that wasn't going to be. I mean, that's a pretty niche record, though. It is. And I'm saying because it's so high, like this was one that.

This was like a Pazzov that I distinctly recall being skewed by a lesser number of people voting. But I'm just saying I'm surprised Frank Ocean isn't higher just because I feel like that record, even in the moment, was pretty revered. I think it's clearly the record that most people would probably point to, especially if you're indie leaning as being like, oh, that's the most important record. Like if I were to make, you know, I said earlier, like there aren't any. like all-time records. I mean, that would be the one that you would probably say is the all-time classic from 2016 in a broader sense. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's just interesting to me that you have, you know, there's not a lot of artists that you would look in in this top 10 as being like, oh, they were ascendant at this moment. You know, it's either people who are firmly

ensconced in their career or this was their peak and they fell off pretty dramatically after that. I mean, even Frank Ocean hasn't put out a record since 2016. So to me, that says something about the year, that this is a transitional year. I mean, to go back to what I was saying before, about the decades of my life and what's the worst musical decade, even the 2020s to me, I think have potential to be quite a bit better than the 2010s. Especially in the last couple years. I feel like there's been quite a few exciting artists. Now, I'm saying this, not knowing how they're going to turn out. I mean, and this is a little unfair. I mean, like with Car Seed Headrest, who I assume we're going to be talking about when we talk about our individual top fives. But that's a

band that the conversation gets affected a little bit because of how the career has gone since. And maybe that's an unfair thing to think when you're looking back, although I think it's inevitable. You can't really not think about that. I mean, we might look back in 10 years and feel like geese peaked with getting killed, and then they never did anything after that. I mean, we don't know how they're going to turn out. Or like M.J. Lenderman, maybe he just totally craps out after this, and that's going to affect how we look at the decade.

But I don't know. This list to me is very telling to, you know, for all the flaws maybe in the voting body, I think this is actually pretty reflective of what people liked that year and maybe what is, in retrospect, kind of weak about this year for me personally. I mean, Iggy Pop at 27, and I want you to name the Rolling Stones album at number 30. Well, you're asking the wrong guy, because I know it's blue and lonesome. That's their blues covers album. That's a really good album.

I would have put that one up higher on this list. But you clearly have more nostalgia for this year. And I think you feel more highly of this year than I do. So why don't you give me the counter argument, I guess, to what I've just said. Yeah, I mean, the reason that I've wanted to bring up 2016 albums recently is because in May, that was the day that Pups, The Dream is Over and the Hotel Year's goodness came out on the same day. Like, Car Seat Headrest came out in May. Like, May was specifically a very big month, you know, a Moonshape Pool as well.

And when I, when I, when I drove up to L.A. to interview Ben Gibbard, I listened to a lot of mixes I had made in 2016 because, you know, that was the last year. That was the year I moved out of L.A. Like, I was moving on to the next thing of my life. And it was a very poignant time for me. Like, there was a lot of meaning being made for me. And I think that's maybe why the music hits me in a different way than it does, perhaps for you. I mean, the most 2016 memory I have is about a, like, a week or two before I left L.A. There was a show at the Echo slash Echoplex in L.A., which was Joyce Manor, modern baseball in the hotel year. And Barry from Joyce Manor, called it Ian Cohenfest from the stage. I mean, what a better way to go out. But, you know, yeah. But we've talked about how in this year, whether we have like a music problem or a media

problem, and it just seems like 2016, something was happening regardless of what your lens of enjoying music was. You know, you have Blood Orange, Lawness, Beyonce, Rihanna, Frank Ocean doing the Artur-R-N-B thing. You know, Mitzki and Carseat Headrest representing like the band camp wing, you know, like, or porches and Frankie Cosmos. Tribe called Quest, the moon-shaped pool, the avalanches and American football came back. And it just felt like there was something exciting to talk about and something exciting to listen to. And my view of 2016 for like, I would say 80% of the year was just this kind of warmed and preemptive nostalgia. But in reality, it was the last of the good times.

Because when, you know, when Trump gets elected in November, all of a sudden this exciting internship I have in Kentucky, this like residency. Oh, I have to brave a Kentucky winner with like no friends or family. and, you know, Leonard Cohen dies. Is it Kentucky winter? What's a Kentucky winter? Does it get cold? It's bad. It's like, think about, don't think of it like the south. Think of it more like Cincinnati.

Okay. Where you're on the river and, you know, you wake up and the water bottle you have in your car is frozen. It's like you get a couple weeks maybe of fall and then it just gets like really dark, really cold. Tom T. Hall song, a cold Kentucky winter. Yeah. Cold Kentucky winter, my water bottles, frozen salad. Yeah, I don't know what I mean. Let's get the Wanwam mic on that.

We're sounding good, man. We're cooking. That would have been beautiful. Yeah, I mean, I think 2016 is definitely, you know, I don't want to be too negative because, again, I think my top five, which we'll share our top fives here in a moment, I really love all the records, I bear. And I will say, I think, I mean, I think with this year, when I think about it, there's like albums, even the albums I really like, they're not my favorite albums by the artists. Like, the artists have, like, other records from around the same time of different years that I like a little bit more.

So maybe that colors it a little bit for me. But I do agree that this is like a, this is a better year than what's going to come after for sure. And I think in terms of music and also like the media, how things just got really weird, certainly on social media is very weird. It's interesting too. I always think about the cable bundle in the 2010s because that to me is the ultimate barometer of the sort of the melting of institutional media that started happening in the 2000. intends. You know, because

partly I think that because I used to work for Grantland and the only reason why Grantland existed really was because of the cable bundle and all the money that ESPN had because of that. I mean, ESPN in 2011, which was the year that Grantland started,

had 100 million subscribers. It was like the peak number of subscribers they ever had, just ungodly number of subscribers. And Grantland was shut down in 2015. And that was awesome because then I didn't have a job, but I was under contract. So I just got paid to not work for like the last three months of 2015 and for about half of 2016. And then I started at Uprox in July.

But in 2016, they had 90 million subscribers. So they lost 10 million subscribers or 10% of their total revenue in about five years, which is a pretty big drop, obviously. But still, they had 90 million. subscribers. Now they have 60 million. And that number just keeps going down, obviously. So that to me is, if you want to talk about media and like how media wasn't, I don't think it was at its peak in 2016, but it was still strong enough that things seem relatively normal. And then, but you could see signs that I was going to start going seriously down. And now we're 10 years later and it's in

shambles. I mean, the old media system is definitely over. So anyway, I think that's an interesting other wrinkle here, too, when we talk about the music of this time, because I think it's all together. I mean, I think if you look at all forms of popular entertainment, whether it's music or film or television, it's all shrunk since 2016. You know, like TV, like, what is TV now. TV is so dispersed. There's no show. I feel like every day I hear about a show where it's like

yeah, ginormous on Amazon Prime season four is coming out of ginormous and it's like Seth Rogan is on the show and it's like what the hell is ginormous? I've never heard of this show. Yeah, I mean that's totally different now like movies now are totally diffuse

and music is like that too. And in the media, obviously, the digital media is totally diffuse. But like, I feel like in 2016, you saw that starting to break apart. Like, that was when, like, it wasn't the peak, but it was starting to go down a little bit. And the trajectory was clear, I think, already at that time. Yeah, it's a time where you're like, and I thought this, you know, my good bye party in L.A., like, and I'm not the type person to do good bye parties. I'm thinking, like, man, it doesn't get any better than this. And like it's such a warm, awesome feeling. Then you real, oh, wait, it didn't get better than this. You know, it's like it, it turns like dark mode. And yeah, and by the way,

if you want to talk about like the monoculture of TV, if my work is any indication, it's all summer house and love island. Like that is what is TV right now. Yeah. Everything else is just like fringe. Yeah. Or, you know, we're walking at my house, we're watching Schitt's Creek reruns. Like that's how desperate we are at our house for entertainment. I want to talk about resistance era stuff, man. That's that to me is hand in hand with Lizzo in a way. Yeah,

I mean, it's yeah, I can't even really argue with that. I have not laughed at the show in like several seasons, but my daughter likes it, so she calls it S word creek. It's very sweet. Anyway, let's do our

top fives. And we haven't shared our top fives with each But you were saying before we started recording that there's probably some overlap. Unlike our favorite albums of 2026 so far, I think there will be some overlap. And there's even some albums that I would predict ahead of time we're probably going to both have on our list. But let's run through it quick here. We'll just go back and forth. Let's start number five.

What's number five on your list of favorite albums from 2016? Well, I just want to get this one out of the way because I know we're going to share it. It's Whitney's Light Upon the Lake, the beloved, not I'm just playing. I'm going to put Mitzky puberty too in there. Like, I think this is an example of an artist that it's my favorite record of hers, but clearly she had, you know, more peaks to ascend to. This is just for me, my preferred Mitzky. It's still kind of punky.

It's still kind of, you know, of the emo world, but very fully realized. and not totally in command of her, I would say her image. So it is the aisle I revisit the most, and it holds up really well. Otherwise, I would have put Car Seed Headrest Tina Denial, but it's kind of a cheat code because I have the original version from Soulseek with the just like I needed in its original form. So I don't know if I can really count car seat headrest. So I also had Puberty 2 on my list.

It's number three on my list. And it's funny because if I was going to make a parallel to the National, I feel like this is boxer in her catalog where the older indie heads love this record. But her current audience, this is almost before they started caring. So it doesn't have the same resonance. Like whereas someone like us, you know, gets really excited when the National plays all the wine, you know. At a Mitzky show, you know, she may have. not even play your greatest American girl. You know, that's the

state of affairs for Mitzky right now. I think I got her last live record, actually. Like, that song isn't on there. And you would think at the time of 2016 that, I'm sorry, it's your best American girl, not your greatest American girl.

Sorry, that's how old this song is. I can't even get the song title right. But I feel like at that time, that was totally her anthem. And that was one of the big indie songs. of 2016, but, you know, she's progressed so far in a lot of ways beyond this album. But I love this album, too. I mean, I'm a fan of Mitzki's entire catalog.

I really like how she's evolved over time. I wrote a big piece about her fairly recently, and I was actually pleasantly surprised by how Be the Cowboy hit for me. Because I remember at the time not loving that album because I love Puberty too so much, but that's a really good album as well. my number five I'm going to say a record that was not even reviewed by pitchfork

really when it came out and I remember complaining about this to you which is a very 2016 sort of qual but it's a drive-by trucker's American band and this is an album

this is actually in the second tier on the Paz in Jopold I think it's at number 18 or something and I remember feeling at the time like a like a bit of comeback for drive-by truckers. I mean, they've been around for so long. They've had so many different waves over the years.

Obviously, in the past couple years, they've been having another wave of so many younger artists name-checking them and being influenced by them. But American Band was a record that came out actually before Trump was elected. And I guess counts as a resistance era record, but it doesn't have the cringy qualities of all the resistance era music that came out after 2016, it's just like a really lean rock record that is politically minded, but it doesn't get in the way of like how hard this record rocks. And I really think it's like one of the great drive-by truckers records that have come out sort of post that glory year run of, you know, direct decoration day and Dirty South and all that.

You know, I would say like brighter than Croatian's Dark, American band, those two albums were probably my two favorites that have come out since that period of time. So it's number five on my 2016 list. What's your number four? Well, it's an album that kind of aligns with the way you describe the drive-by trucker's album. It's Jeff Rosenstock's Worry, which came out before Trump got elected, but I reviewed it after it came out. And it's just an awesome, really enjoyable record. I love the back half kind of going Abbey Road with it, with all the kind of little snippets into one suite.

Peak Rosenstock for me. And it's really the album that kind of sold me on him. Like, I was not familiar with too much with like Bond the Music Industry or We Cool before that. but this is an album that obviously was written long before the election, but I think what made it resonate in 2017 and beyond more than the stuff that was written in reaction was that it talked about everything. This wasn't like an isolated event, right? It was everything from the past 10 years led up to it. You know, I love how, you know, wave goodbye to me was about the vice offices getting closed down, just a lot about like gentrification and, you know, like DIY politics.

and it's a very, it's an album that this was all going to happen if you were paying attention. Jeff Rodenstock pays attention. Also, it's just a really catchy album, a lot of fun, which I don't think a lot of like 2017 political music was. So it's kind of a painful album to re-listen to because it is what I think about when, like November 13th or whatever. 2016, but it holds up

really, really well. It is my most 2016, 2016 album. Yeah, I thought that would maybe be

higher on your list, so, but I'm not surprised to see that in your top five. I guess you

have some real, real Ian Cohen favorites coming up ahead. My number four album is a record that did not do really all

that well on year-end list this year, which is interesting because I said earlier that On the Pazanjopalist, it doesn't seem like there was a lot of, like, ascendant artists or bands,

like bands that really made an impact over the course of their career who got started around this time. But this band did, and they didn't really start to get notice until their second record, but I loved their first record as in my top five that year. It's Big Thief Masterpiece. I think that this is still the most underrated Big Thief record. In a lot of ways, it's the most modest of the Big Thief records, especially what came after. You know, they were, for a time, one of the most ambitious and prolific bands in the genre in the late 2010s. I mean, and they really are like one of the exceptions to the rule that we've been talking about in the 2010s.

I think they were a clear bright spot in music at that time. But this record, I think, totally holds up and it announced itself as, you know, this is a band that's like a real band. And you can hear it on the record. They fit together. obviously Adrian Linker was the tour of this band and her voice is dominant here just the way that they play together, the way this record

sounds. It's a wonderful record and it was a start of a great career for Big Thieb. So slept on, I think, in 2016, but I'm not going to sleep on it and I didn't sleep on it back then, so it's number four on my list. Number three for me is an album

that I thought might have, might show up on yours. It is Dives is the Is. is our. And it's the album I've definitely listened to the most since 2016. I can just throw it on whenever. And it is, you know,

in my view, Apple Music agrees with me, the essential dive album. And it's interesting how it is, I mean, like, I remember I think Pitchfork did a Shoegays albums list that year and I participated in that. And what I recall is that there was nothing happening in Shugays

for a lot of 2010. At least like, not above the surface. Nothing's tired tomorrow also came out that year out. I really, really enjoy. But this is to me, uh, like their version of kiss me, kiss me, kiss me or what have you. It is this, uh, precipice where dive is still kind of the old dive where, you know, Cole, I'm glad he's gotten his life together, but it was still, you know, like a very troubled, very drug addled, very experimental, uh, phase. And, you know, the, I guess what I would call, like the accomplished. dive of the past two records.

But this is a experience of an album. It's beginning to end, like very immersive, a lot of great pop songs, a lot of great ambient pieces. And I don't know where, you know, the shoegays or dream pop heads see this as whether it's like a classic or whether it's like underrated or whether they like the first dive album or the most recent to. But this is, I don't think this made Pazin Jop. I don't think it made too many year endless.

I think a lot of people saw it as a disappointment. because they were kind of seen as like the next great Brooklyn band and then they just veered off into their own sort of individual space but this one holds up incredibly well I listen to Shugay's albums I mean there's more Shugay's albums that I know what to do with none of them have the swag none of them have the melodies uh and none of them make an album experience I think that's an important piece of it so yeah dive is the Azar number three yeah I didn't have this in my top five, but I love this album. It would have been right outside my top five.

I think that at the time, my memory is that, you know, there was so much scandal going on with this band around this time that, you know, with Cole Smith and, you know, his whole thing with Sky Ferreira. And I think that just totally overshadowed the music. I don't think people really even get this album a chance in 2016. and it fell by the wayside, but it's a great record, and I think it totally holds up 10 years later. Number three, I had Mitzky Puberty 2. I'll just add a quick honorable mention, and that would be Sturgle Simpsons,

a Sailor's Guide to Earth, which is actually one of my lesser favorite Sturgle records. I love the records that came out on either side of this album a little bit more, but it's clearly a great record and it's clearly a landmark record in a lot of ways for the genre this album ended up nominated for like album of the year it was probably the peak of Sturgel's mainstream profile you know and if he had been a guy who was going to play the game he could have been just the perpetual Grammy nominee

I think after this he's clearly had a very successful career after that but it's a fascinating fork in the road moment for him and a really strong record. So honorable mention for Sturgel there. Number two on your list, Ian? I mean, you saw this coming. I like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, the 1975. And yet to me, this is the peak of their powers. It will forever be the peak of their powers.

You know, not in the same way that I've talked about like dive and Mitzky, but this is where they get you know the really snappy pop songs you know like the sound uh love me but they start incorporating like the title track like doing this kind of idm stuff and the instrumentals and this must be my dream coming on and like paris i mean it is such a and i i know i can't sell you on this but i love how it does like the deer hunter micro castle sort of sequencing where it's like bangers at the beginning it goes off on this weird sort of ambient tangent in the middle then comes back with the hits um this is uh i love this album because it is a sign of i mean they've always been like a self-aware band but this is where they didn't have full control over it yet and so

they would they still did things that was like oh my god is this going to work and also i thought it was really cool because like i liked their first album like as a collection of songs but they were kind of dipping their toes into being an important band, or at least a band as important as they thought they were. It's overblown. It's very pretentious. It's ridiculous. But I think it pulls it off in a way that they're more intentional forms of pretension

that came later on didn't do. So this still holds up. I used to think, like, man, is this like, it's because I was like going through so much like stuff in 2016 that it hit in the way it didn't now. Nope, still love it. I don't know if you'll agree it. I think maybe you'll agree that it's great

as in big or immense, but I still love this album so much. No, this is their best album. I like this record. I think that this is the album where they made the excessive, big, we're going to throw everything against the wall,

and it works on this record. And then they did that a couple more times. And I feel like critics were excusing them for making records that, like, didn't really work on, in their totality. And it's like, you don't get to make that record over and over again, I don't think. You get this record. And then when you're doing it again, to me, this, I feel like they tried to repeat this album a couple times and with diminishing results. But, yeah, this record totally works. I think that the singles are sharper,

that sort of indulgent middle section that you talked about, I think it works better on this album than it does subsequently. They don't yet have the sort of profound statementitis that they would have on some of their later records, like where you really felt like people were treating Maddie Healy, like he was some sage philosopher of the Internet age. That's when it starts to get really irritating with this band. I mean, one thing I didn't talk about,

I had a whole riff in the notes that I think. forgot. I was going to do a rant about how bad I think millennial culture is in a lot of ways, like how millennials, I think, have a lot to answer for. And this kind of goes back to the 2010s. Like, when they were totally in control, I think we had some terrible culture at that time. I actually think that I have more faith in the Zoomers than I do in millennials. I think that they have it more together. And the millennials were so smug about it too. And, The 1975, I think, were part of that, but they weren't yet with this record. Like, when they entered, when the, when the 1975 entered the resistance era, that was a different story.

But I think this is like the pre-resistance era, 1975. So, yeah, I like this record. Number two, I'm going to go to $22 a million by Bunny Bear, which I think is one of the records I would point to if I was going to talk about, If I was going to make a case for an album being great with a capital G, this would be one of them. Because I think just as an experience, I feel like it does a lot of the things that you're talking about with the 1975, but it's like in a 34-minute package. It feels expansive and excessive and indulgent, but it just doesn't need to go 70 minutes to do that. I think the production by B.J. Burton is brilliant on this record, and it was clearly influential on a lot of music that came afterward. Although not so much now, I think you could make the case

that if you're not a fan of this album, maybe you would say that the production is dated, because it does feel like what he was doing on this album had a lot of relevance in the 2010s and maybe not as much afterward. But still, I think, an experience as a piece of music, you know, the insane song titles, all of it. I'm a fan of this album. I understand it's like a love it or hate it type record, but I really appreciate it, and I think it still holds up. So that's my number two.

I have a feeling you probably don't like this record. Yeah, I mean, I like one of the songs on it. The titles escape me. You know, I think that's a forgivable offense. But, yeah, I think with BoniVears, like, controversial take. I only really revisit the self-titled one. I think that is

for me, we've talked about with several albums here, this kind of hinge point between the old and the new. I think that that incorporated a lot of the more deconstructionist tendencies of his past work and like the concision of his earlier work. But I've tried a lot

with 22 a million and I-I, if that's I think that's what the 2019 one called. I want to love this album. I really, really do. And it just doesn't do it for me. What's your number one, Ian? All right.

And so this album is, I mean, it means everything to me, but it's like not great in terms of how it influenced, even its own genre. It chimed in somewhere in the 30s. It's obviously the hotel year is goodness. They are currently doing a 10-year anniversary tour for it. I might get up to L.A. to see it. I think it's during a weekday, so that's a little iffy. This to me is a real, okay, to backtrack a bit, at the end of 2016, I wrote this article for Spin about the end of the emo revival.

And I did it in kind of like a warm, loving way where it's like we've accomplished, you know, we, they've accomplished everything that they set out to do. They've made it a credible genre. There's like this new wave coming along. and, you know, kind of like Radiohead, kind of like Frank Ocean, it was the last album that they made. You know, End of Reel is a perfect place to end on. And yeah, this album is not as beloved as Home Like No Place is there. I think it's a better record in terms of musicianship.

I think it's a better album lyrically. I always thought of it as to how it feels to be something onto Home Like No Place's diary, where it's the best indie rock album of that year as opposed to the best emo album that year. And I think it was just kind of underappreciated, even by its own audience, because one thing we learned in 2016 is that a lot of emo fans

did not want to follow emo bands as they tried to do different things that happened with modern baseball who broke up, you blew it who broke up, balancing composure who broke up. Beautiful record, incredible performances, great production. also like a little bit of Boni Vair style production trickery happening.

It's an album. I can understand if it doesn't mean as much to other people as it does to me because the soundtrack so many like important personal milestones. But it's not a record I can throw on very often. But when I do, I'm really transported to the times I was talking about before, like right where I was about to leave L.A. and everything just seemed full of possibility, even if that didn't turn out to be true. So I imagine this will be my number one in 2036 as well. So you didn't even mention that there's like several full frontal dongs on the cover of this record,

which probably didn't help its reach either. But no, yeah, this is a good record. You are a hotel year guy. I remember we did like favorite albums of the 2010s and you had two hotel year albums in your top five for the decade, which was an incredible thing by you. The top hotel year. head in the critical community for sure. My number one, I'm going to say teens of denial by car seat headrest. You talk about the best indie rock album of the year, which you feel like was the hotel year record. I feel like the consensus pick would probably be tins of denial for people who are into

the guitar-oriented pop rock from the indie world. And I'd have to agree with that consensus. I just think that this record is great. We talked about this recently because... They recently re-recorded this album for whatever reason for the 10th anniversary. And it just falls in line with how annoying this band has been in the last 10 years since this album has come out. But to me, this record, it's almost like the capstone to Car Seed Head Rest 1.0. You know, the band that started out as a Will Toledo project at Band Camp, you know, he puts out almost a dozen records,

between 2010 and 2014. Then he gets assigned to Matador, puts out teens of style, and then puts out teens of denial. And I feel like that body of work holds up as some of the best indie rock of the 2010s. You know, a decade again that I feel like is a pretty weak decade overall. But Carsteed Hadrest's body of work, I think, is really strong. In this record, you know, anytime I put it on and I think,

oh, I'm sick of this band, they've let me down. down, I put out of this record, and it still totally works for me. And it just seems like the kind of album where, I'm sure for people who are younger than me, they probably look at this in the same way that I think of, like, my favorite records from the early 90s. You know, it just, you know, like the blue album or Alien Lanes, you know, like records that you can just listen to and revisit over and over again, and they just work. And I think teens of denial, it feels like it has that kind of legs, even as Carseat Headress pursues their own Weezer-esque twilight career of just being the most annoying band on earth at times. Yeah, I love this record. It probably would be number six. I wanted to

try somewhat to avoid like common picks, but this to me feels like not just the peak of Carseat Headrest, but also I think the band camp wave of indie rock, which is really one of the most important aspect. I mean, Mitzki, you can throw that in there as well. It's just like the culminate, in the same way like Mary Weather Post Pavilion felt like a culmination of whatever you would call like that wave of bands and that style of engaging with music. I think teens of denial did that as well. And so it's like 2016 said time and time again, it was the best of times, like right before the worst at times. We now reached part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I talk about something we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first?

Speaking of re-recorded albums and just albums that, you know, like how light this week is, I want to give attention to placebo recreated. This is maybe like a larger, yay or nay on the entire concept of like remaking albums, but placebo, maybe an Indycast Hall of Famer. I don't remember whether I put, without you on nothing in there, but they re-recorded, rearranged their self-titled album after 30 years. You know, with better production, more money. They got synth now. And I can't lie.

This album sounds pretty awesome. Because you can hear the bass. And yeah, because I, this album, I never really got too much into it because like a lot of the emo albums I'm profiling for my book. The first album, they had no money. Sounds like ass. But nowadays, I can re-appreciate it.

Look, 90% of Pacebo's album is terrible. 90% of placebo's music is pretty terrible, but this isn't one of them. And it's an important record from one of the most secretly enormous UK bands of that era. Whenever they come to America, they're playing like huge room. So this album sounds like it could have been made in 2026, and it's a pretty remarkable album to have come out in 1996 as well. So it's a new album, but it's an old album, Placibu Recreated. So I want to talk about a band from Nashville called Styrofoam Wino's in their new record that is out today called Any River. The name Styrofoam Winoes, it really evokes this sort of back alley, dumpster diving, kind of unseemliness.

It's not as crazy of a band name as like Diary a Planet, another band from Nashville. But, you know, it belies, I think, how comfy and homie sounding this band is. and I put their last record real time on my year-end list for 2024. And I said basically, this is what patio music sounds like. And it really does. And by the way, if you are into patio music on my substack this week, evil speakers, I created finally the official patio music Hall of Fame, and I inducted 10 albums and five artists into that.

So a lot of patio music discussion happened. on the substack this week. But this man has three songwriters, and they have this great chemistry on this record where it feels like just friends hanging out, trading songs, is a real laid-back vibe. But at the same time, there's a real sense of weirdness going on with this record. You know, it's not like an alt-country record. It's not like a folk record. It really is like an indie record in the classic sense. It reminds me in a way of... of like pavement around the time of Waui Zowie, where on that album, you can hear pavement playing around with a lot of these kind of all-American musical elements, whether it's country music or

folk music, along with just like regular rock music. But they're coming at it from an up-kilter perspective. So things aren't totally down the middle. Things are a little noisier. There might be a tempo that's a little bit off, just something happening that leaves you off balance a little bit and keeps you listening and it just feels intriguing. And I think that that's true of styrofoam Wino's as well. They're working in these American music traditions, but they're coming at it from like a Dutch angle. And I really love it. And I think it's a really great record. And if you are looking for music to play at the cookout, that might also weird out some of your more straight-laced guests.

Put this record on, I think it'll totally go down well. Again, the album is called Any River, and the band is called Styrofoam Wino's. That about does it for this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news reviews and hashing out trends next week.