Ramble On

Here we go again.  I've been curating my playlist for this post since January 1, and now we're already in 2017! We've come a long way, 2016. The songs of this year fell pretty easily into clear categories.  I don't know if my year could be categorized so easily, or even into the same categories, but it was helpful to see how these themes just naturally came forth when I started taking a hard look at this year's selections.  And some of them are pretty accurate reflections of my thoughts about what the year has led me through. I've culled this list WAY down from 79 songs, so count yourselves lucky.  I could have written about all 79 of them, and many of the ones I cut appear on my " Albums of 2016 " list, which, I fully admit, is sort of cheating.  I tried, really tried, to get it down to 25 songs.  But I just couldn't do it. In many ways, this list serves as an archive of my memories for the year, so if a song has a specific memory tied to it, ...

 And so here are the albums that played a big part in my year in 2016. They aren't in any order or organization.  I just loved these bodies of work and the artists who made them.  Let's dive in, shall we? Bon Iver - 22, A Million Sonically, I think this was probably the most interesting and beautiful album released this year. Justin Vernon has a head for laying down tracks and paints these rich canvases of sound that I can listen to over and over.  It took me a while to get into this record but once I finally put it on in my house on a cold winter night and spent some time with it, I really heard it and started to love it.  It was 8 (circle) that initially grabbed me.  The horn arrangements on this record alone.  Haunting. This is an expected choice.  This was on everyone's list this year and I believe it deserves a place among the best musical contributions of 2016 for sure. Lori McKenna - The Bird and the Rifle Definitely my favorite al...