Best Local Albums of 2016
By Jeff Milo
Zander Michigan – 48018
Zander’s pretty unforgettable. It’d be one thing if his performance style, his music and his lyrics weren’t already charismatic and theatrical, but he’s often sporting a bow-tie, a stately blazer and a basher hat brimmed over a typically smiling face. With his third album, the local songwriter conjured a bit of his own mythology, inventing a city inside which the narratives of each song could play-out, with heartbreak, soul-searching, community spirit and existential contemplation, over a sonic gravel path of acoustic folk strums and rock ‘n’ roll riffs. I think most early fans remember Zander’s implicit nods to Dylan, but this album’s strayed admirably towards his own signa-ture sound and style.
www.zandermichigan.com
Anthony Retka – Fields & Fortresses
Local songwriter Anthony Retka’s heart has always been on his sleeve, going back more than a decade ago with Americana/folk projects like Tone & Niche. With Fortresses, his mind and his musings are both exceedingly more observant of the human condition with a weary voice melodically threaded to slow a pulse or percolate some goosebumps. There’s often a raging storm inside of Retka, but emotional torrent never sounded so sweet.
https://anthonyretka.wordpress.com
Counter Elites – Pledge of Aggrievance
We interviewed the two Ferndalians behind this terrifically tempestuous hardcore punk-rock band in the October 2016 Edition of Ferndale Friends. Together for four years now, they’ve industriously assembled several DIY recordings, satirical dadaist/gallows-humor propaganda sheets and a slew of sweat-drenched concerts (continually incognito with bandanas, sunglasses, wigs and more). While still keeping their tight tunes as aerodynamic as ever, the riffs and the reverb, the rhythms and the rhetoric are showing substantial stylistic evolution. Beautifully cathartic, philosophic, and at times straight up metal!
https://thecounterelites.bandcamp.com
Nolan The Ninja – He(art)
I can’t remember hearing hip-hop with such urgency, such ferocity, such profundity. Nolan The Ninja is Detroit-based emcee/producer Nolan Chapman, and his He(art) LP is a tour-de-force of vital conversation-starters lyrically catapulted with rapid/energizing cadences of words and beats, imbued with soulful brass samples, atmospheric jazz vibes and propulsive rhythm. The credits in the liner notes are also noteworthy, with plenty of cameos and contributions from big name producers and contemporary emcees in the recent renaissance of hyper-conscious hip-hop.
https://nolantheninja.bandcamp.com
Audra Kubat – Mended Vessel
This is the most powerful album on my list. Audra Kubat’s got a voice to freeze time. It’s supernatural; able, it would seem, to even alter the luminescence of the very room or space where you find yourself listening, glowing radiantly at the choruses or dimming to a chilled discreteness during her more muted verses. Mended Vessel finds the local composer/music-educator embracing her family’s roots in holistic healing and her own already-assured renown for reinventing the folk-singer trope. While her majestic voice is salve enough for any weary heart, there’s also excellent production and accompanying Americana-inclined instrumentation to sweeten the overtures.
Six & The Sevens – It Has To Be That Way
The second this EP kicks off, you feel like you’re flying… driving, running, moving, pure power pop with a bit of refreshing grease and grit, this local quintet have some dangerously enticing guitar hooks, classic garage-rock bluster, but sweetened with an earnest baring of hearts on sleeves. Some songs feel like ‘80s underground-indie (“Nothing To Say”), others like throwback ‘60s pop (“You Belong To Me”), while others trudge some tremendous blues and funk onto the dancefloor (“Go, Go, Go”). And then, “By My Side” is full on tsunami of soulful rock, packed with such a full-sounding production by Zach Shipps (with a handful of songs also recorded with Jim Diamond).
www.sixandthesevens.com
Escaping Pavement – the Night Owl
Guitars, mandolins and mellifluous voices merged in melody are all you’re going to need… Ferndale-based songwriting partners Emily Burns and Aaron Markovitz are gracefully getting us back to the basics and the beauty of folk, country and bluegrass, exuding the power of the organic/earthy qualities of acoustic musical performances, strums and serenades. The Night Owl is a fully realized folk odyssey, the recordings so full of intonation, heart and harmonies.
Ryan Allen & His Extra Arms – Basement Punk
Allen’s still a young man, but the pop-punk auteur got started in bands bouncing off basement walls in his teenage days, finding him nearly in his mid-‘30s with a deep well of perspective and perceptive poise. This collection has some tenacious and tough tunes that are as urgent and aggressive as anything on his resumé, along with some softer acoustic mini-ballads bearing the more heartfelt sides of “punk” without a shred of self-consciousness. Riffed-out and as rambunctious as anything you’d need, but enriched with more of a storyteller’s insightfulness.
https://extraarms.bandcamp.com
Zoos of Berlin – Instant Evening
We can’t limit this record to any genre-tag. These are ornate sonic smorgasboards of funky bass lines, caustic guitar drones, buoyant synth-pop runs and carefully reverb-coated vocal crooning all fused together into an uncanny harmony, with toe-tapping percussion that you could almost dance to and a nonchalant-chic or casual epic-ness simultaneously tightened by post-rock guitar riffs and salved by smooth clouds of ambient dream-pop.
https://zoosofberlin.bandcamp.com
FAWNN – Ultimate Oceans
FAWNN’s pretty much a super-group, with each member having fronted, or continuing to front, other local bands leading up to their formation in 2012. The rhythms are energetic and agile, the dual vocalists hit us with a sonic yin and yang with their harmonies, and the guitars are splashed with a splendid amount of reverb so as to evoke this dreamy fog, like gazing at a sunrise through a rain-beaded windshield or hearing distant thunder at a shore as the tide comes in. Each song is full with timbre and tone, a tidal din of pretty sounding drones barreling into ornately threaded earworm riffs.
https://fawnn.bandcamp.com
