#10 John Richard – I Wish You’d Come With Me
Summoning his inner Van Morrison, John Richard gives us a bluesy classic that might have been dredged up from the 60’s, with its horn section, and analogue sound. He gets into the guts of it, rasping away with bits of longing and heartache under what is otherwise a seduction for the road.
#9 Monomyth – Fuck With Me
Halifax has apparently had a good year for psychedelic rock. Monomyth wind down their album ‘Happy Pop Family’ with this tune, the culmination of bittersweet introspective melancholia, musing about lost love and quoting The Human League.
#8 T Thomason – My Kind
T Thomason is a legend in the making. If you look like T’s kind, you’re in good company.
#7 Partner – Ambassador To Ecstasy
It’s like we’re revisiting our grungy childhoods with Partner’s Ambassador To Ecstasy, as these up-and-comers give us an angsty telling of a fumbling failed romance, but isn’t that where all the best songs come from?
#6 The Summer Rabbit – Jimmy’s A Lady Now
The Summer Rabbit’s Blair Lucas admits that Jimmy’s A Lady Now is an homage to Ziggy Stardust, giving a gender identity questioning ode as an exercise in glam rock. For its vintage sound , it’s plenty brilliant and catchy in its own right.
#5 Jont & The Infinite Impossibility – Someone To Love Me
We don’t have a lot of go-to songs for dancing barefoot around Rome, and we didn’t realize we required one either, but Jont’s Someone To Love Me is the sort of uplifting song that makes you want to give up all of your worldly possessions, beginning with your shoes, and get to travelling.
#4 The Burning Hell – The Stranger
Mathias Kom is a natural storyteller, and while you might get sucked in with a saxophone solo or two, it’s his tale of two trysting lovers on the run and their unfortunate end that’ll make you a little more wary the next time you need to talk strangers.
#3 Hillsburn – Shout
Hillsburn’s In The Battle Years demands to be listened start to finish, then repeated. Full of anthems and mandolins, it’s the type of music to lead your feet astray. If you’re lucky maybe you’ve gotten off light and caught yourself unconsciously dancing a little in public.
#2 Kurtis Eugene – Old Room New Lights
The final eponymous track to Kurtis Eugene’s debut Old Room New Lights is a slow build with a big finish. Its bleeds with a raw and heartfelt intimacy. The whole album is a heartfelt work of genius. We don’t use that word lightly.
#1 Wintersleep – Amerika
After a year like 2016, there could be only one choice for who would take the number one spot on this list. Incorporating both a speech from Donald Trump, and working in a poem by Walt Whitman about the inherent beauty in the principles that America was founded on, Wintersleep’s Amerika provides a strong juxtaposition between past and present.