The Year's 5 Disappointing Albums

     There was a lot to be disappointed in from 2016. They took Bowie, Prince, Merle, Leon and Leonard away from us. Kanye created one of the coolest stage sets -- the mid-crowd hovering platform -- only to implode a few weeks in as the stage was mechanically reeled in. Macklemore headlined Bonnaroo. Coldplay played the Superbowl. There was a mountain of notable releases this year (next week see our Best Of list) and in that pile were a number of albums that just didn't live up to their heightened hype. Here are the year's 5 most disappointing, though not totally bad, releases.

5. A Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead

     Okay, I feel shitty putting this here. Radiohead is the greatest running band in the world. Five musical geniuses working in unison to deliver album after album of genre defying and re-conceptualizing--each one rewriting the code of the last. It's always a big question mark as to what the next Radiohead album will sound like. A Moon Shaped Pool, still a beautiful collection of songs from the band in their purest form, just never feels cohesive. Fine as it is, the album is in a way the first to not fully pull the carpet from under their sound. Most of the 11 songs were already available in some form for years and they're not so radical from their initial blueprint. Not that there's anything wrong with reaching back, but it feels a bit like the tying up of lose ends. But, rest assured, it's always a good year when Radiohead is releasing music.

Apologies to: "Burn the Witch," "Daydreaming"

4. LEMONADE by Beyonce

  Sorry but, LEMONADE doesn't come close to the last visual album from Beyonce -- self-titled -- released in the final hours of 2013. Beyonce's fifth album, a supposed airing out of dirty laundry from Bey and Jay’s relationship, was released by surprise with a suite of videos that ended up being more iconic than any of the actual songs. It’s Beyonce in a frilly yellow dress with a baseball bat in hand that instantly sticks out.

     Beyonce took ideas and input from all across the music spectrum and threw them in the air like confetti to see where they’d land. I respect her for casting a large net for collaborators, but, really, how many people does it take to make an album theses days? It’s getting to be like factory work. In the end what you get is a hodgepodge collection of songs bouncing from style to style without ever feeling like a whole piece. She takes a classic John Bonham beat and buries it in the mix. She does less singing and more yelling and censored swearing. Dips into country with the Dixie Chicks. And I really didn’t think artists were still sticking that obnoxious dancehall horn in their songs. It just can’t be snuffed out. Despite Beyonce's best efforts LEMONADE fails to evolve her sound in any way--her message, maybe, but not her sound.

Apologies to: “Pray You Catch Me”

3. VIEWS by Drake

     Drake. Oh my Drakey Poo. Buddy. You've gotta cut out the fat. VIEWS is an unfortunate bloated circumstance. I know 20 tracks is a great way to capitalize on streaming sales, but that's what the mixtapes are for. Don't give us an album where we're skipping every third track. At the very least, they used to be called bonus tracks. Now we're just removing the asterisks. Drake went from someone I abhorred and passed off as something Lil' Wayne pulled out of his jacket pocket to someone who I spent late nights drinking wine with and falling asleep with. Take Care and Nothing Was the Same are back-to-back classics. VIEWS is an oily mirrored version of the two, trying to set the same mood and hit the same spots. It doesn't. It feels empty. While I still reach for NWTS at least once a week, I think I'll leave VIEWS in the hard-drive.

Apologies to: "Hype," "Redemption," "Feel No Ways," Child's Play"

2. Endless / Blond by Frank Ocean

   Big sigh. We wait and we wait. We wade through rumors and false starts. Years since Channel Orange. Years since we've heard Ocean's syrupy sweet croons and high pitched tear-yanking melodies dominate an album. Then, surprised, he comes out unannounced with two bulbous, overstuffed albums as some sort of consolation prize for our time in wait. Despite a handful of songs that could stand on their own, the two albums are juiced and greased with intro and outro tracks that weigh them down. Wise man once sang despondently, "Every single record auto-tuning, zero emotion, muted emotion / pitched corrected computed emotion, uh-huh."

1. The Life of Pablo by Kanye West

     Kanye's always been a maniac. I've always loved his every move. But this shit is tragic. Other outlets are out of their collective mind putting this album in their top ten lists. Sonically, okay, he always puts something together that makes you want to listen and figure out. Sometimes, though, his splicing gets to be too jumbled. TLOP is made up of all these really incredible pieces, but when they're thrown into Kanye's blender it don't always mix and match.

     Mostly, though, what stinks this album up to hog heaven are Kanye's lyrics. Lord God they're hideous. A lot of Kanye's best lyrics have sounded corny and nonsensical the first time you hear them, but later they reveal a six-sided meaning connecting pop culture to his inner sadness and the guilt it he feels for it. Well, it's been months since this album was released and the lyrics still sound corny and nonsensical because mostly they are. A lot of the time he doesn't even finish bars and just gasps and blows into the microphone. 

     Here I will give Kanye the award for worst lyric of the year, from "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1": "If I fuck this model / and she just bleached her asshole / and I get bleach on my t-shirt / I'mma feel like an asshole." This is where the Kanye force field finally disintegrated around me. To make all this worse, the album's greatest line was replaced in later versions. "She be Puerto Rican Day parade waving," from "Famous" was changed to, "She in school to be a real estate agent." Just not the same flair. And why wasn't "All Day" on this?

Apologies to: "Feedback" (been waiting for someone to rap over feedback), "Famous," (if only for the awesome Taylor Swift hubbub), "Real Friends," "No More Parties In LA," "Fade"

source: http://imp

TOP ALBUMS--2011

10. THE WHOLE LOVE-Wilco
Wilco, always the go-to for Americana experimentation, roar back with The Whole Love. Jeff Tweedy reigns supreme as the most daring and fruitful songwriter of these times and with a crack professional band backing him up, another page turned in their history. From the blast-off of “Art of Almost” to the quiet, stirring confessional “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)” Wilco cement their feet in the palace of rock and roll.

9. BAD AS ME-Tom Waits
Tom Waits is baaaaack! The scrap metal blues are alive and well in 2011 with Waits grumbling and moaning of leaving wherever he is right now. Bad as Me is all about unrest and anxiety and with two and three minute songs, it sounds that way too. Enlisting the help of Keith Richards, Les Claypool, Flea and Marc Ribot, Waits crafted a funky, brash, junkyard treasured album for these monolithically troubled times.

8. HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE PART 2-Beastie Boys
Yo, throat cancer ain’t nothing but a bitch to the Beastie Boys. Put on hold after Adam "MCA" Yauch discovered a cancerous tumor intruding his salivary glands, Hot Sauce was finally released this year and I almost trashed my entire room by the end of opener “Make Some Noise.” After experimenting with instrumentation on The Mix-Up, the B-Boys returned, a little older and more grizzled, to their trademark goofball raps. All you crab rappers, you’re rapping like crabs.

7. HELPLESSNESS BLUES-Fleet Foxes
Words that have described Fleet Foxes: pastoral, melancholic, folksy, harmonious. After the wild success of their first album it’s easy to get frightened that expectations will get the best of them. Not so with Blues. They made a record that sweetly illustrates the struggle of today’s common man: dragging oneself to work while dreaming of the peaceful woods and searching for moments of tranquility and acceptance. The harmonies are prevalent and folk strumming comforting. This is home, wherever that may be.

6. BLOOD PRESSURES-The Kills
The greatest girl-boy duo since those siblings in red and white stopped production, The Kills return with the very fine Blood Pressures. The songs are quick, to the point, drenched in reverb and tinged with that subtle nostalgia that keeps you coming back. Alison Mosshart vocals slice through the distortion of guitarist Jamie Hince creating end-of-the-world black ballroom music.

5. 4-Beyonce
Beyonce very well could be the supreme diva of our time. It’s so refreshing she didn’t take the electronic pound-it-in-your-head dubstep route other divas (Lady Gaga, Rihanna) have taken to broaden their sound. Each song touches on different genres of pop music to create a well-rounded album. It starts with a downcast mood reflecting on troubled relationships (c’mon Jay!), but pulls itself from the mud to emblazon the speakers with songs like “Love on Top” and “Countdown.” Get it girl!

4. SMOKE RING FOR MY HALO-Kurt Vile
Kurt Vile woke himself up long enough to record this layered acoustic gem. Still less hazy than his previous albums, Smoke Ring is the soundtrack to the marijuana-laced dreams you can never remember. He takes Kurt Cobain’s angst-fried snarling and pours cough syrup all over it. There’s a comfort in lethargy as the world swoons all around your bedroom.

3. THE KING OF LIMBS-Radiohead
The most challenging record of the year is also the most rewarding. Radiohead raise their ceiling of creativity with each new release and The King of Limbs, certainly, is no different. At first you’re not sure if the drum tracks are lined up with the electronic tracks and then you’re wondering what Thom Yorke is saying and before you realize it the song is splashing in glorious ponds of connectivity and all is right with the world. Inside of 38 minutes, but demanding repeat listens, Radiohead prove, once again, why they are skyscrapers above the rest of the pack.

2. WATCH THE THRONE-Jay-Z & Kanye West
Docked from the top spot only because “Made in America” is a terrible song and totally disrupts the mood, Watch the Throne, fulfilled its promise to be the biggest release of 2011. Jay and ‘Ye get deep dissecting what it means to be black, rich and successful in America—pretty fucking fun, but also lonely and disengaging. Their thoughts move past bling and supermodels just long enough to reveal a landscape of paranoia, distrust and insecurity that may give its white audience something to think about before they mutter ‘nigger’ to their friend in the passenger seat. Let’s hope these fuckers never leave their zone.

1. LET ENGLAND SHAKE-PJ Harvey
England’s angel soars above the clouds to deliver the most poetically scathing portrait of her homeland. Dreamlike on arrival, but haunting in tone, England captures the drifting prominence of the United Kingdom as well as America and the rest of the E.U., for that matter. Harvey reflects on the atrocities of war and the unrelenting aftermath that follows. “The Words That Maketh Murder” offers a soldier’s deathly perspective as he walks the battleground filled with an unknown regret. It’s national pride gone awry, turned inward and defensive, and it comes through on the haunted breeze that is Harvey’s voice.