The Best Albums 2016: Top 10 (part 3/3)

1 The Rolling Stones – Blue & Lonesome

Released 2 December 2016
Recorded 11, 14 & 15 December 2015
Studio British Grove Studios
Genre Electric blues, Chicago Blues, Blues-rock
Length 42:36
Label Polydor
Producer Don Was & The Glimmer Twins

The all-covers song selection reflects a lifetime of Chicago blues crate-digging, with the band breathing new life into obscure, left-field picks by Magic Sam and Memphis Slim. By going back to their roots, the Stones found a way to grow up.
– Rolling Stone Magazine
The Rolling Stones released their latest album December 2nd 2016, their first album in over a decade is a return to the blues. It is a great blues album, and a tremendous return to form by The Stones.

The album is fresh and spontaneous and was recorded in just 3 days last December (2015) with co-producer Don Was. It really sounds like band enjoying themselves. (Read more)
– Hallgeir

Best songs: Ride ’em down, Little Rain, All of your love
End Year List
(due late release date, this album was not part of most “End Year List´s”)
# 44 – Gigwise
# 7 – Rolling Stone
# 7 – Rolling Stone (Australia)
# 40 – Sound Opinions
Ride ‘Em On Down (official video):

 

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Best Album 2016: The Rolling Stones – Blue & Lonesome

rolling-stones-blue-and-lonesome-artwork-1024x1024

The Rolling Stones released their latest album December 2nd 2016, their first album in over a decade is a return to the blues. It is a great blues album, and a tremendous return to form by The Stones.

The album is fresh and spontaneous and was recorded in just 3 days last December (2015) with co-producer Don Was. It really sounds like band enjoying themselves.

“This album is manifest testament to the purity of their love for making music, and the blues is, for the Stones, the fountainhead of everything they do.”
– Don Was

It’s a very good introduction to the blues, by a band who clearly pours their love into the songs. We’ve included the versions that are closest to the Rolling Stones’s takes on these songs. It isn’t always the original recording.

The entire list part 3, part 2, part 1

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The Best Albums 2016: 20 to 11 (part 2/3)

(Check out part 1 here, 30-21)

20 Cass McCombs – Mangy Love

Released: August 26 , 2016
Producer: 
Rob Schnapf, Cass McCombs & Dan Horne
Label: Anti Records
“Mangy Love makes itself distinct from its predecessors with its outright jazziness and ethereality. Wit’s End was a traipse though the densely forested hills of solitude; Big Wheel and Others was a road trip through odd, nameless American sub-societies,; and Mangy Love is Cass McCombs in outer space.”
– Dustin Lowman (Drowned in Sound)
This album really made me listen to the lyrics, I was fooled by the sweet melodies – but the lyrics are tough, hard, rough poems about love,sex, life and death. McCombs knows how to play with words (Switch):
Turn you on, you light up the room
Turn you off, it’s dark as a tomb– Hallgeir
End of Year lists
# 33 – American Songwriter
# 59 – Gorilla vs. Bear
# 29 – LA Music Blog
# 26 – MOJO
# 25 – Piccadilly Records
# 7 – Q Magazine
# 31 – Stereogum
# 31 – Uncut
Best songs: Opposite House, Bum Bum Bum and Switch 

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the 25 best concerts 2015 according to Hallgeir

It’s time to look back at the concerts I attended in 2015. I saw 59 shows, these 25 are my favourites. Rayland Baxter, Undergrünnen and, especially, Lydia Loveless were the biggest pleasant surprises.

The biggest dissapointment was Calexico, I love the band, really like the last album, but they did not play to their full potential on the concert I saw (hell, they were boring, and that’s the worst I can say about a show). …but I will buy a ticket the next time they come visiting.

Anyway, these are the 25 best concerts of 2015:

25. Jon Byrd, 15. oktober, Ferkingstad

Jon Byrd Ferkingstad list-1

24. Doug Seegers, 24. June, Oslo

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The 25 Best Albums of 2015

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to look back on the last 12 months in music and as tradition goes, this involves the unveiling of our 25 Best Albums Of The Year.

– as always, it has been a struggle, we have fought and bled and finally agreed on the 25 best records of 2015. The ones we’ve played most, that has gotten us most excited or are just too good to ignore. We, as you can see, listen most to music in the, so called, roots oriented genres. However, we do listen to all kinds of music, it’s just that there aren’t that many good albums (in our views) in the other “genres” this year.

What did we get wrong? What did we miss? Well, nothing of course, this is THE list. No, just kidding, this is our view of the year in music, and as we have said many times before, we only write about the stuff we like and we can not reach everything.

Click on the covers or the title and see a post on each album.

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